Thus the Cookie Crumbles

(for Scoffy, aka sc010f on LiveJournal, whose journal title got stuck in my mind)

"I knew you would like that article," Luna beamed. Then her smile faded and she blinked, her eyes growing round and owlish. "Oh! I almost forgot."

She picked up her bag and began to search through it. At last she extracted a package wrapped in sandwich paper and triumphantly brandished it.

"Cookies!" Luna announced. "Triple chocolate cookies from Starbucks."

Hermione couldn't keep the corners of her mouth from twitching into a smile.

The cookie was great—kept fresh by a convenient spell. If Hermione closed her eyes, she could imagine sitting in the Starbucks closest to the National Gallery with her mother…

But she was lying in her bed in the hospital wing at Hogwarts. And Luna Lovegood was keeping her company, while her husband terrorised one of her study groups. A lump formed in her throat. Suddenly the sweet, rich morsels of cookie and chocolate felt like sawdust in her mouth.

A nervous gesture, her hand sneaked up to rub her eyes—and encountered the eye patch. She let her hand fall as if burnt. Instinctively, she must have tightened her grip on the cookie.

It broke apart.

Sweet crumbs rained down on her lap.

"We're all breaking apart," Hermione whispered.

She hadn't meant to say that. Least of all to Luna. Such confidences were really not her style. "When we really should be all right. There's no V–Voldemort. No more N–Necromancers. We sh–should be okay. I'm back. Everything is all right. Really. B–b–but we're all of us breaking apart. It's not fair."

The tears burnt painfully under the patch and she had to ball her fists to keep from dashing at her eyes. Swallowing hurt. Her nose stung as if she'd inhaled chilli pepper.

"I just don't get it," Hermione mumbled. "They should be okay. Even if I'm not."

Luna didn't flinch. She didn't blink, look away or tighten her shoulders. She just gazed quietly at Hermione, her eyes huge, limpid.

"Why?" Hermione asked. "Why?"

Luna looked at the crumbled cookie in Hermione's lap. "It's because you were their yeast," she declared.

"What?"

"Yeast," Luna explained serenely. "You're like yeast. Saccharomyces cerevisiae. That is an organism used by Muggles and wizards alike as a leavening agent for baking. It converts the fermentable sugars in the dough into carbon dioxide. It's what makes dough expand or rise."

Luna waved her wand over the cookie and whispered, "Reparo." The fragments of the cookie realigned themselves in Hermione's lap. Luna picked it up and held it out to Hermione once more.

"Though I think this cookie was actually made with baking soda. Which is slightly different." She frowned. "Anyway, it's what you do, don't you? Make people expand, and grow. Even to the point that Harry and Snape can get along. You know, I have a theory about that."

Hermione stared at the cookie in her hand. But Luna went on blithely. "It's because you care. So much. About Harry. And Ron. About hippogriffs and house elves. About what is Good. And what is Evil. About all kinds of things, even if they are nasty. Like Snape. Umm. I probably shouldn't call your husband nasty, should I?"

"No," Hermione managed. "That's quite all right."

"Well," Luna concluded. "I guess they all did what cookies do if left to their own devices. They crumbled a bit. But for all that they're still sweet and good."

Hermione sat in her bed and stared at Luna, at a loss for words.

Luna gazed at her, earnestly. All at once her wide-eyed look was disconcertingly penetrating. "Hermione, life may grind us down to cookie crumbles, but that won't change what and who we are. It's still us who get to cast 'reparo' when all is said and done."

Once more the absence of her wands cut Hermione, acute and painful as the absence of a limb. And once again she couldn't silence the voice at the back of her mind that insisted, "This is no less than you deserve…"

oooOooo

Severus slumped down into his chair and cupped his throbbing forehead in his hands, completely exhausted.

…Barret Cruddace at least should be very happy with the how the afternoon had turned out. And being the Gryffindor fool that he was, he'd probably share the proceeds with the rest of the little self-appointed Don Quixotes prancing about the castle these days.

The Potions Master dropped his hands and stared at them. How he'd longed to wring Sean Cúchulainn Ferguson's stringy little neck.

"So much for hoping that Hogwarts will be a peaceful place after Voldemort's demise," he muttered.

As if to prove his point, someone knocked on the door of his office.

"What?" he snapped irritably.

"Don't tell me," Harry commented dryly. "It's a bad time for you right now."

"If you know that," Severus drawled, "why are you still here?"

"I need to talk," Harry replied. His wand pointed ahead and to the floor. Obviously he was using some non-verbal spell for guidance and secure footing, as he cautiously walked into the room.

"By all means, do come in," Severus asked snidely. "Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. You know my door is always open for you."

Harry actually grinned at him—a disconcerting sight, Lily's smile beneath those dead black eyes. "I knew I could count on you."

He fumbled along the outline of the chair and let himself fall with a barely noticeable sigh of relief. Severus winced internally. Magic could replace a missing sense—but at an expense of considerable energy. It was a testament to the strength of Harry's magic that the blind man managed to get around almost as if he was able to see by now.

For a few minutes they sat in silence, separated by Severus' desk, a symbol of too many years spent as student and teacher, as penitent and saviour.

Finally Severus shook his head and snapped his fingers. At once a house-elf appeared.

"A bottle of Ogden's," Severus ordered. "And two glasses."

A/N: Sorry that it's been so long. Sorry that it's just one chapter. But I've been rather busy with the online writers' workshop that I'm a co-mod of. We're running our second evvah SMUT writing workshop over at "There and Back Again" (link on my FFNet profile), and I'm contributing a big fat essay. Also, I've been doing some original art and some fan art. So I've been a busy little bee all around.

That said, I hope you like this chapter, and I'll try to churn out a complete set tomorrow.