Canto IV
But what he did feel, as his fingers passed through the marble-white palm of her open hand, was a strange, glowing pulse of vitality, as subtle and welcome as the most devilish and attractive whispers of Satan.
This frightened him, and he withdrew with the intent of keeping his integrity, though the brief euphoria was ravenously desired as soon as it dissipated.
His emotions, while fleeting, must have been betrayed by his face, but Luna just smiled with the complacency of the ever-knowing divine.
She did not let her hand falter or her fingers recoil, though he knew that she must have felt the chill that he had himself experienced frequently in his many years at Hogwarts-the familiar but unsettling absence of warmth that came when a ghost whisked through him on its way to an unknown destination with unknowable motives, neither of which time or mortals could touch.
"It's almost endothermic," she stated with great patience, "I give you some of my life-energy. Haven't you ever wondered why some of the ghosts of Hogwarts choose to linger in crowded halls?"
This had never occurred to him; he presumed that it was the shades' indifference to the existence of mortals that rendered them ambivalent to the presence of students in their path.
"It's why they haunt places with people, you know," Luna continued softly. Then she laughed, "I'm such a silly goose. Of course you know this; you taught us Defense Against the Dark Arts."
Severus Snape would not admit that, in fact, he did not know this; his obsession had always been with the werewolf, that mysterious creature of the night with the uncontrollable fate to destroy all that approached it, even those that approached it with love.
For this trait he reviled the werewolf above all things, perhaps because he deeply feared that this creature's schizoid essence bore similarities to that of his soul.
Thus filled with litost, a sudden feeling of agony brought about by his acknowledgement of this sad paradigm, he remembered that the moon above, while nearing the point of its setting, was at the cusp of its first quarter.
He had nine long days of hell before the night of the next full moon.
"How did Remus Lupin fare in this battle?" he asked, expecting a tale of vindication and glory for the last of the Marauders.
This was the first time Luna displayed significant emotion in the entirety of their exchange; she drew in her breath and whispered, "You will miss him."