Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

That year's Yule Ball was as interminably awful as it always was, and had it not been for the fact that Severus had the daunting task of keeping a steady eye on Dean Thomas, he would have headed to his lair long before the fancy-dress parade. He stuck it out though, gritting his teeth at everything from the ridiculous to the absurd, not failing to notice that those who considered themselves to be his peers, were those who had made the biggest fools of themselves.

He had twice been accosted by a rather drunken Septima Vector, dressed in what she assured him were seven veils. It took a considerable effort on Snape's part to assure her in turn that he took her word there being seven veils, and that she had no need to remove any of them to prove the fact. He found he was quite unable to show any enthusiasm for the play on her own name though, even though she repeated the words 'seven' and 'Septima' several times, like some kind of mantra only the extremely astute would understand, and he refused point blank to have anything to do with any dances of seven veils, or any other amount of veils, come to that. He had just got shot of her, when Sybill Trelawney made a beeline for him, and he almost considered denying he was Severus Snape at all, but decided against that, just in case her eyesight was clearer than her second sight appeared to be, and settled for being downright rude instead.

He panicked for a moment when he realised that he had lost sight of Dean and Luna, cursing Trelawney for having distracted him, and cursing himself for not having taken Luna to the damn ball himself, thus getting rid of not only Vector and Trelawney and Dean Thomas, but actually getting what he wanted for himself.

'She's over there,' Binns said vaguely. He was dressed in sombre dark grey as he always was, the only one of the male staff, save Lupin, whom Snape hadn't seen, and Snape himself, of course, not to have made total arses of themselves. 'She's just behind the pillar at the door over there.' Binns floated off, feet not quite touching the ground, before Snape could get the chance to deny he was looking for anyone, female or otherwise, or wonder how Binns could see through pillars in the first place, or know he was looking for Luna in particular. But the fact that Luna had moved to the seats just beside the door, behind a pillar, meant she was just a few steps away from being outside, and Snape didn't intend to miss a thing.

*****

'I always thought it was a shame about Harry,' Luna said, taking not Dean Thomas's hand, as Severus had feared, but a charmed young woman's, a woman Severus guessed was Ginerva. 'His parents died, and he had such a lot to do, and he suffered from some bad press, and then he became a hero, and nobody seemed to have noticed that underneath it...' She paused and sighed deeply. 'Well, he wasn't a very nice person anyway.' Luna sighed again. 'It was a shame nobody realised that.'

'Not even me,' Ginny replied, turning away quickly as her brother came towards them, lest her charms failed her, and moving off to where Severus assumed she had left Lupin.

'Harry wants to see you,' Ron said, clearly not noticing he was being used as a messenger boy for the young man who stood watching them from the bar, or perhaps he was just used to it.

'He's not very happy with you, Luna,' Hermione added, shaking her head so that her huge Marie Antoinette wig moved ever so slightly to the left, 'and quite frankly, neither am I.'

Luna stared at her, and Severus wondered for a moment if, unlikely as that seemed, she were stuck for words. 'Oh, I took my Burping Chumper charm off ... I thought the fancy-dress parade was over,' she said, her eyes fixed on the white wig.

'It is,' Ron replied, 'but she got all hot and sweaty, and her hair's gone all funny underneath...' He trailed off as Hermione shot him a look just short of loathing.

'If Harry wants to see me, he doesn't have far to walk,' Luna said, reverting back to Ron's original comment, and Snape suspected she had contented herself with having played whatever little game she was playing with Granger's self-esteem.

'Who do you think you are, Luna?' Ron said, and Snape could see he was a little the worse for drink. 'Who do you think you are to try to make fools of us in front of McGonagall the other day?'

'Oh, that wasn't me,' Luna replied, seeming shocked at the suggestion. 'Didn't you know, you did that all by yourselves?'

'It's all an act with you, isn't it? All the stupid nonsense of odd clothes and ridiculous animals,' Hermione hissed, her face twisted in a rather ugly sneer that Severus thought suited her, as though it were an expression often donned in private that had just slipped out for a public airing. 'Don't think we can't see through it.'

'And to think I was willing to use my influence to get McGonagall to help to get you away from Snape,' Potter added, from where he had ambled over. 'Leave her, guys, she's not worth our bother. She deserves Snape, and I hope she's stuck in the dungeons for a long time. Come on, the "Daily Prophet" guys want our pictures.'

'What about Ginny?' Ron asked, as though wondering whether he should have or not. 'Are we not waiting for her to arrive?'

'I don't think so,' Harry replied. 'I mean, she's not really one of us... if you know what I mean. I don't know where she is anyway... I don't think she's coming.'

Luna had stood up, and she seemed to wait until the threesome had begun to turn away to lap up whatever adulation they felt was their due. 'Why would I want to be away from Severus, when I came halfway around the world on the off-chance of making my most secret dreams come true?' she asked, a puzzled frown crossing her face.

'Snorkacks?' Hermione asked, turning to face Luna again, her face twisted in disdain. 'Oh, don't worry, they'll be exposed for the frauds they are, just like you... Harry will see to that,' she said, as Ron nodded his agreement, and Potter pretended not to preen.

'Oh, that was only part of the dream,' Luna replied serenely, looking out of the door and up to the sky, past where Snape had hidden himself behind the yew hedge that edged the path from the door. 'I've still to dance by the light of the moon too.'

'Maybe she is mad,' Ron remarked, not that either of the other two were listening to him as he trailed behind Harry and Hermione like some kind of pageboy.

'Oh, Hermione, when you're finished with that lovely big hat...' Luna called innocently, waiting until Granger turned, and nodding to the huge white wig in a way that made Severus actually have to bite his knuckles to stop the laugh exploding from him, '...can I have it for nesting material?'

'Oh, there you are,' Dean Thomas said to Luna, walking across the lawn towards her, and Severus gritted his teeth, having quite forgotten him for the moment, and Potter began to drag the enraged Granger-Weasley back into the Hall. 'I thought I'd never find you.'

'I just wanted to say thanks for looking after Dean for me,' a young woman, whom Severus couldn't quite place, said from Dean's side. 'He wouldn't have come if you hadn't asked him to take you, and I just couldn't get away early from work.'

'Oh, that's all right, I was arriving on my own anyway,' Luna replied. 'And he made a very fine fish. Pity we didn't win.'

'Who did?'

Luna cocked her head to where Ron had stomped off in what looked like a bad mood; either that, or he had been sent to get another round of drinks for Harry and Hermione. 'Harry, of course, who else? I thought Minerva was going to hex the man from the Ministry who did the judging,' she replied.

'Em, I think that was the Minister of Magic, Luna,' Dean supplied.

'Of course it was, Dean. He's a man from the Ministry, isn't he?' Luna replied, as though the man from the Ministry, Minister of Magic or no, was similar to the man who fixed the taps, or delivered the onions. 'Of course, Harry made a lovely speech he seemed to have brought with him for the occasion, about how he felt he couldn't accept such a prize, as he was no longer really attached to Hogwarts. They gave the prize to Pomona, but I think that was for setting fire to Hagrid's beard with her pipe when she was dancing the tango with him, and not for being dressed as a pumpkin. I told her that; I told her she always looks like a pumpkin, so nobody would think she had bothered to dress up.'

The girl laughed, and Severus recognised her at last as a very slim, and quite pretty Lavender Brown, with whom the years between leaving Hogwarts and returning as a woman had dealt kindly. 'There seems to be one person too many in that marriage,' she said, nodding across to where Harry and Hermione were posing for pictures, and Ron was stomping back towards them with a tray of drinks.

'Yes,' Luna replied. 'It's a pity it seems to be Ron.'

'Come and spend the rest of the evening with Dean and me,' Lavender said. 'There's no point in sitting on your own.'

'Oh, I'm not on my own, not really. I'm just waiting for someone to realise that,' Luna replied.

'Is there really anything else you need to know?' Lupin asked, making Snape start as he realised he was no longer alone behind the yew hedge.

'No, I don't suppose there is,' Severus replied, watching Luna refuse Lavender's invitation, as Lupin moved away again, with the other unknown young woman at his side, the one only Snape and Luna, and, of course, the werewolf, knew was Ginerva Weasley. Then again, Snape mused, as he caught sight of Minerva looking down from her office window, maybe she knew too.

He had to do it now, Severus knew that, before he could think too hard, before his courage failed him, and the most perfect of nights snatched itself away from him, like a precious gift he didn't take the time to unwrap.

He moved away from behind the yew hedge where he had been watching her holding her peculiar court at the doorway, as though she had been checking those coming and going between the grounds and the Hall, as if looking for someone or something she was determined not to let pass her by, and touching everyone in her odd little way.

'Luna,' he said, stepping into the Hall, ignoring Dean and Lavender. 'I've been looking for you. I want to show you something,' he said somewhat lamely, wishing he had made up his lines before he opened his mouth, and finally recognising the actual words didn't really matter anyway. He glanced through the open door, and felt her eyes following his to where the still fat waning gibbous hung in the night sky. Severus closed his eyes, just for a moment, as he felt her slip her arm into his, almost gasping at what a perfect fit it seemed to be, and walked out into the grounds.

*****

Minerva McGonagall looked down again, her lips pursing in disapproval. She hadn't seen Severus for a while, and she was quite put out that he hadn't seemed to take his patrolling duties just as seriously as he normally did. It was definitely coming to the part of the evening when goings on that shouldn't be going on would indeed be going on. She was about to turn from the window, when she caught sight of a man and woman alone at the lakeside, dancing together to the thin strains of music that filtered from the Hall. As the slow waltz that had issued from the ballroom fell to silence, the couple at the lakeside drew even closer to one another, and he tilted her chin to him, and kissed her.

Minerva drew herself up. Well, really, there were students around the grounds who should be being actively discouraged from this type of behaviour, and it was completely inappropriate that the very man she had put in charge of such discouragement was indulging himself in such a manner, and she fully intended to tell Severus Snape that it was one thing to be led by the admirable nose to the horse trough, but quite another to be seen drinking in public. She put on her hat, and straightened her shoulders, before she felt her mouth twist again, this time without her permission.

She turned to the window again, and she felt her throat close, as a tear trickled from the corner of her eye and fell unchecked down her wrinkled cheek, and she remembered that she, too, had once been a young woman, and she, too, had had a beau more years her senior than Severus was to Luna, and though now long dead, she could still remember how he had felt, and how she had felt the night they had danced by the light of the moon.

*****

Epilogue

Four Years On

Severus looked up from the potion he had been making, as Luna came in the door, the bells tinkling happily on a hat he had never seen.

'It has been months,' he said, looking vaguely to the calendar on the wall, omitting to say he had begun to fret that she wasn't ever going to come back this time, despite the fact that she always did. At least he didn't have to teach when she was away; Minerva had given the position of Potions Mistress to Ginerva Weasley after her rather public divorce from Harry Potter, whom Rita Skeeter had quite charmingly, to Snape's way of thinking, named "Potter Rotter". Severus even managed to fool himself that his research would one day produce results to even eclipse Luna's spectacular success with her rare species, now funded jointly by Hogwarts and the Ministry's Department for Endangered Species. The bottom line for Severus was that he didn't really have to work, which was just as well, as he had quite forgotten what he was researching anyway.

'Oh, I know,' Luna replied. 'I always expect the unexpected to happen when I'm away on a field trip, and then when the unexpected becomes unexpected I get waylaid,' she said, putting a large blue and gold box down on the table, before peering over the edge and fussing with whatever specimens she had brought back from wherever she had been.

'What have you brought back?' Severus asked, as he tried to make sense of all the "unexpecteds", and decided that it wasn't worth the bother, and didn't matter anyway, not now that she was back. He looked around the living quarters they shared in the dungeons, when she wasn't wandering the world looking for that which he was sure didn't exist until she found it. The quarters had been extended almost the full length of one side of the corridor to house the finest collection of new and rare species in the wizarding world, so large that the Hufflepuffs had had to be re-homed a year before, much to Pomona's displeasure.

'Would you like to see them? They're still quite little, but very nice.'

'What are they?' he asked, still wondering what manner of odd creatures she had brought back this time, and what protuberances would be growing from where. 'Puffer-Backs? Crease-Toed Bloopers?'

'No, silly, I made the Crease-Toed Bloopers up for Lucius. They're babies,' she replied, taking off the red three-cornered jester's hat she wore, and laying it beside the blue and gold box, as the bells on each corner continued tinkling.

'Baby whats?' he asked, failing to mention that she had made up most of her species, a matter which hadn't prevented her from discovering them. He dropped his head to his cauldron, content with his lot, not really much interested in anything but the fact that she was back again, back with him. Severus Snape hadn't noticed he was becoming every bit as odd as the woman with whom he shared his life.

'Baby babies,' she replied.

Snape looked up again. 'You haven't stolen someone's babies, I hope?' he spluttered. 'Take them back.'

'They're mine,' Luna replied, digging into the box and pulling out a naked infant with a shock of black hair almost as long as the child itself. 'This is Boo,' she said, laying the boy down on the table, and digging into what Severus assumed were blankets, but were rustling a bit oddly, to produce another child, and he wondered just how many were in the box. 'And this is Peeky,' she said, holding up a girl baby, with a similar shock of long yellow hair.

'Peeky and Boo,' Severus said slowly, crossing the room to peer into the box to see not the blankets he had expected, but a pile of straw, and to satisfy himself that, except for the straw, it was otherwise empty. 'And you brought Peeky and Boo home in a box of straw?' he asked, warmth spreading through him as she slipped her arm into his and squeezed tightly.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'All the way from the Andes. I Apparated to Hogsmeade, and made a very smooth landing. They were very carefully packed, Severus. Straw is the best thing to pack fragile things in.'

'And are they going to stay here?' he asked, still rather confused. 'I mean, I'm too old to be a father,' he said, 'assuming that was the role you wanted me to play.'

'Apparently not, Severus,' she replied, 'although I confess at first I was as surprised as you seem to be.'

'And are you sure about the names?' he asked, bridling only slightly at her failure to fully disagree with his ageist and not entirely sincere self-criticism. 'I only enquire because they seem slightly odd...' He trailed off, watching her crestfallen look; and her necklace that seemed to have been made of dried prunes, but could have been dried anything; and the little bunches of grapes that hung from her ears, that he knew she would have snacked on; and the Ravenclaw school pullover, the one that didn't fit her anymore; and the fact that she was wearing her yellow summer Wellington boots on the wrong feet.

'I stopped off in Hogsmeade to buy you some whisky as a coming home present, and met Hermione Granger, and that's what she said too,' she said. 'Shall I change them? They're little enough not to notice one name from another, I think.'

'Certainly not. I forbid it,' he replied, finding one naked baby in the crook of one arm, and one in the other, and wondering just how they had got there. 'I said odd, odd but perfect.'

Luna smiled to herself. You're so easy to manipulate, Severus, she thought happily, feeling not in the least guilty about having lied about meeting Hermione. Then again, she thought, a girl has to work hard to dance by the light of the moon.

*****