Chapter Five

Chapter Five

'A Yule Ball?' Snape asked faintly. 'This year?

'Yes, Severus,' Minerva said shortly. 'A Yule Ball, this year, and not only that... but this year, unlike others, you will attend.'

'I most certainly shall not,' Severus snapped back.

'And not only will you attend, you will assist me in the preparations,' the headmistress went on, as though Snape's objections had not been worthy of note.

'I am far too busy for such nonsense,' Severus snarled, glaring first at Minerva, and then at the scheming old busybody in the portrait behind her desk, as though it were his fault, which it probably was. 'Get someone else to do it.'

'I have permitted you to hire an assistant, Severus, so that you are no longer too busy,' Minerva argued. 'No one else, myself included, has an assistant.'

'You have so,' he retorted. 'You have Aurora.'

'It might be fun, Severus,' Luna piped up from his side, making Snape wonder how and why it was that she had accompanied him into a private meeting with the headmistress anyway, instead of telling her to keep out of it, as he would have done to anyone else. 'We could make everyone go in fancy dress,' she added. 'I could go as a Blibbering Humdinger, so everyone would know what they look like. I've always worried that people might pass one on the street, and not realise what it is, and no one would ever find one.'

'I'm not sure Blibbering Humdingers actually exist, my dear,' Dumbledore murmured unhelpfully from his portrait.

'How do you know?' Severus snapped, shooting the old man a murderous glare that might easily have killed him, had he not already been dead.

'Just an observation that Miss Lovegood might find it difficult to dress up as something when she does not know what it looks like,' Dumbledore replied, sitting back, apparently satisfied that he had stirred the water up enough to muddy it a little.

'Oh, I do,' Luna replied. 'And please do call me Luna, Albus.'

Severus smirked at the portrait as the former headmaster drew back a little in what might have been surprise. 'See! You don't know everything, after all. So mind you own business,' Snape said smoothly, in some sort of short-lived triumph, before realising the noose he had tied around his own neck was tightening.

'Well, I'm pleased that's all settled then,' Minerva said, tucking her victory quickly under her belt, and turning to Luna. 'Do you require to go home today, Miss... er... Luna, to collect the remainder of your belongings?'

'May I, Severus?' Luna asked, turning to Snape as though it had been he who had asked. 'I have some specimens to bring, and I quite forgot to tell my father I was coming for an interview. He might wonder where I am.'

Snape was going to ask what specimens she might be talking about, but thought better of doing so in front of Minerva. 'Very well. But I expect to start tomorrow before nine, Miss Lovegood,' he said instead, almost surprised when she stood up and left the head headmistress's room, leaving him feeling slightly cast adrift. It caught him quite off guard to realise that McGonagall had begun speaking again, and he hadn't the vaguest idea of what she had said. 'I have work to do, Minerva,' he said, hoping that would suffice as a rejoinder to whatever her remark had been, but he wasn't terribly comforted by the way her eyebrow disappeared into her hat, and the old pest in the portrait chuckled in a way that made Severus almost wish he were still alive, just so that he could choke him.

*****

Severus wasn't quite sure what woke him, not at first. It wasn't the light, he knew that; living underground, as he did most of the time, there wasn't any, save that of his own creation. It was certainly Monday, he knew that too, yet that didn't account for the fact that it felt considerably earlier than his normal frantic scrabble to get to the Great Hall in time for breakfast and social chitchat, one of which he could have forwent quite happily for a cup of dark tea, and the other which was hardly worthy of his disdain. He eventually came to terms with the fact that someone was in his living room. He dragged himself out of bed, confirming the worst; it was shortly after half past six, and he was awake. Whoever the ungracious interloper was who had broken into his rooms, had not only breaking and entering to atone for, but also the fact that their actions had added an hour onto the most unpleasant day of the week. All in all, Severus didn't feel particularly well disposed towards his unwanted visitor.

'Miss Lovegood,' he said, instantly regretting the fact that he hadn't seen fit to shower, shave and dress before accosting whoever had broken in.

'Oh,' she said, 'I haven't woken you, have I? I thought you wanted to make an early start.'

'I said before nine, Miss Lovegood,' he replied, terribly conscious of the fact that she was deliberately not scrutinising everything from his bare feet, to his faded black nightshirt, to the fact that his hair would need some fairly advanced wand work to untangle itself. 'I did not say the castle was going to be on fire at seven o'clock.'

'Shall I come back?' she asked, holding him out a glass of clear black tea like she had once before, and he found himself wondering if that were another of her odd little habits, like preceding a response to anything awkward with 'oh', and arriving anywhere she happened to arrive, neither announced nor invited. 'Or shall I just get started?'

'Started doing what?' he asked, dragging his long white fingers through his hair, and regretting that as they got caught halfway, as he realised that he hadn't actually got around to discussing a work schedule with her, and wasn't awfully sure just what it was he had hired an apprentice for in the first place. It was about then that he noticed that the blue and gold box had accompanied her once again.

'I could take the box along to the lab... if that's all right with you,' she said. 'I don't like to leave it for too long.'

'More Nifflers?' he asked suspiciously, sensing something in the box, which whilst not quite alive, wasn't quite inert either.

'Snorkack eggs,' she replied, as though she knew that he really knew. 'Shall I be teaching Potions this morning, Severus?' she asked quickly, changing a subject she wasn't quite ready to broach.

'Take the box along to the lab, Miss Lovegood. I shall be along shortly,' he replied, instead of making a comment along the lines of removing blue and gold boxes of imaginary species from his rooms, and never bringing them back. A myriad of possibilities were rolling themselves out in front of Severus, all centring around his at last being able to stay rent free at Hogwarts and continue his research into matters so profound that they hadn't thus far revealed themselves to even him, yet never again having to engage in the thankless task of teaching Potions. 'And kindly remove that too,' he added, nodding to where she had laid the "Quibbler" on his table, right on the place reserved for the "Daily Prophet". He did notice the headline though, one that caused his lip to twist with more amusement than contempt of the subject matter.

"Should Arabella Figg get the Order of Merlin?"

'She slugged Lucius Malfoy across the back of the head with a string bag full of cat food, and knocked him out cold,' Luna replied to the unasked question, as Severus dragged his eyes back to her.

'In that case they should make the Order first class,' he murmured, 'considering she got a better result than the assembled masses of the Order of the Phoenix ever managed.'

Luna lifted the box and tucked it under her arm, before lifting the "Quibbler" and tucking it between her teeth, much the way a spaniel would do, and opened the door with her free hand, as Severus stifled a smile which had almost crept unbidden onto his harsh features.

*****

'They both left his rooms this morning for breakfast,' Hagrid said at the mid morning break, clearly inviting speculation. 'Argus said they was both in his rooms.'

'Really?' Flitwick replied, from behind his newspaper, as though trying to appear disinterested. 'And what else did Argus say?'

'Wants to mind his own business, if you ask me,' Binns interjected. 'Maybe the girl just went down to his rooms to get something. Nice girl,' he said with a sigh. 'She used to watch me coming through the walls.'

'You don't think...' Dean trailed off as the rest of the men looked enquiringly at him, as if it were one thing to make unspoken hypotheses, but to voice them was quite another. 'No... no, of course not.'

Lupin dropped his newspaper at last. 'I think our Luna has a lot more sense than any of you give her credit for,' he said, seeming to pick his words carefully, as the door opened, and Snape stepped into the staffroom.

'I hear we're having a Yule Ball this year, Severus,' Flitwick said by way of greeting, as though that was what they had been discussing.

'Fancy dress too, I 'eard,' Hagrid added.

Severus looked at him, wondering what in all creation, apart from perhaps a whale or a troll, the giant could possibly dress up as, and reminding himself that the formulating of excuses for his own absence at the event had to begin immediately.

*****

'Quite tied himself up in knots yesterday, he did,' Minerva said to Aurora. 'One moment he was refusing to have anything to do with the Ball, and the next he was defending call-me-Luna when Albus reminded her that one of her weird imaginary creatures didn't exist.'

'Bless her, with her Glimpies and Crumple-horn thingies,' Pomona said, her pipe puffing a rather sickly-sweet pink cloud that smelled of overblown roses. 'She'll do well for Severus, I think.'

Septima sighed, as though she had thought that she would have done every bit as well, and on a first come, first served basis, it might be wise for her to make a move. 'Perhaps I shall ask him to accompany me to the Ball,' she said, as though throwing the idea open for approval.

'Perhaps not, dear,' Minerva said in a hurry. 'Do remember what happened last time you invited him to accompany you somewhere.'

'He didn't turn up, did he?' Sybill said, her voice laced with what might have been dread, and waving her arm so dramatically that she almost knocked Pomona's pipe out of her mouth. 'I see the same fate, if you ask again. Perhaps I should ask him myself.'

Minerva and Aurora exchanged long looks, as though perhaps cancelling the Ball would be a safer option than allowing another disastrous race for the arm of a man who had no interest at all in any of the occupants of the staffroom.

'Oh, I shouldn't waste your time, ladies,' Poppy said, from where she sat beside Irma. 'I was just collecting stores for the infirmary from Severus early this morning, well before eight. I was quite surprised to find him not only wide awake and dressed, but in what I could only describe as good humour. It gave me quite a turn not to have my stores thrown at me as they normally are. Miss Lovegood was there,' she added, as though pretending that mattered not a whit, but was the actual reason why she had seen fit to offer an opinion in the first place. 'I wonder why she was there so early in the morning.'

"So do I," Minerva thought to herself. What was the man thinking of? If Poppy had seen them together at that time in the morning, a student could just as easily have seen them leaving his rooms. Staff gossip about inappropriate goings on, imaginary or otherwise, was one thing, the students would be quite another. She glanced across to the door as it was thrown open.

'I would never have guessed that teaching Potions could be so much fun,' Luna said brightly, looking down at a purple stain that seemed to be eating its way through her yellow dress.

'Did you say "teaching Potions", dear?' Minerva asked, the smile on her thin lips feeling more like a rictus of horror.

*****