Canto X
"I'm not alone," she stated, her celestial eyes luminous and feline as they wandered over the moorish terrain. "Moreover, I have often found that those who have passed away are the best company."
"Do tell me about when you've previously had the occasion to entertain those bound to an empty world for eternity," asked Snape, his sarcasm more self-pitying and bitter than accusatory. Sisyphus was a man, not a wild robin dropping dead from a bough and incapable of feeling sorry for itself.
"I'm great friends with Myrtle, with whom I'm sure you are acquainted," said the girl, her features becoming soft with woe. "What a terrible time she had. But she mightn't like if I told you about her problems."
"Not at all, she can scarcely bring herself to utter the dark secrets of her soul," replied the deceased potions-master with airy sardonicism.
"And then there's my mother," continued the girl without acknowledging his comment, a result of her being as apparently fair of heart as Themis or Dike of yore. "She lingered after she passed, though now that my father is gone to be with her, they are undoubtedly rolling together in the Elysian fields."
Snape was caught off-guard enough to stop; his moodiness at having not received the perceptionless peace of death that he thought he deserved left him, and he was abashed. This gentle, light-footed being before him had just lost her father, and yet she was traipsing around like a healing nymph?
"Oh, you don't need to tell me you're sorry," Luna said, stopping and looking at him with deep understanding in her eyes. "You are too much pain at the moment to mean it as much as you wish you did."
The girl had an acute sense of something, Severus realized, though it wasn't precisely intellect. He began to try and respond, but quickly came to the conclusion that he had nothing worthwhile to express, it being that her simple diagnosis was so accurate.
Seeing his desire to be known, Luna Lovegood regarded him with fond attention. "If you would like to say something, why don't you mention something that you think is beautiful?" she suggested, a lopsided, dimpled smile rising on her face. "I think that Rainbow-Anglers are beautiful."