"The Elusive Snorkack," Luna/Dean, G, SPOILERS
Title: The Elusive Snorkack
Author: kethlenda
Pairing: Luna/Dean
Warnings: DH SPOILERS
Rating: G
Word Count: ~2200
Summary: There's something unsaid and unresolved, something suspended in the air between them, and though she's rarely at a loss for words she's not sure which ones to use now.
Summer
"I've got to go home, make sure my father's all right," Luna says. "They'll be letting him out of Azkaban now…"
"I think I'll go home for a while too. My mum and sisters haven't seen me in months; they'll be worried sick."
Luna nods and meets his eyes. A peculiar sensation clutches at her, and she has to look away. There's something unsaid and unresolved, something suspended in the air between them, and though she's rarely at a loss for words she's not sure which ones to use now.
Dean clasps her hand again in his. "Luna? Does the offer still stand?"
Luna blinks, confused.
"To drop by your place. See the Crumple-Horned Snorkack horn." His smile makes her feel strange, unsettled. "I mean, I know it's rude to invite myself, but…"
She bats the Wrackspurt away and returns his smile. "You can come by anytime you like."
***
Daddy is suddenly an old man. Luna notices the change in him before she fully takes in the damage to the house, and then the two ravages seem to run together.
He is content to sit, wordless, between two heaps of rubble and stare into nothing. Luna masks her alarm in a flurry of activity, using magic to levitate out the larger chunks of wall and floor, then charming a broom to sweep away the dust as she pours him a glass of Gurdyroot extract. He takes it and drinks in silence.
The Quibbler printing press lies broken on the floor in a heap of newspapers. Luna picks up one of the papers, shaking the dust from it so that she can read it, then drops it as if it were hot or poisonous.
"Daddy?" Her voice comes out in a hoarse whisper. "They took over the Quibbler?"
He trembles, hugging his knees. "No. They told me…they told me they would give you back if I--"
Luna feels like the floor has just fallen out from under her. "Daddy, no."
"I'm sorry."
"They wouldn't have given me back no matter what you did, don't you know that?"
He says nothing more on the subject, and Luna doesn't want to talk about it either; to speak of it would mean she'd have to decide between hating him and forgiving him, and she's not ready to choose.
Instead, she climbs the mangled staircase to her room, noticing along the way that the Crumple-Horned Snorkack horn is gone.
Everything, they destroyed everything is her first thought.
Her second is, Dean will be so disappointed.
Autumn
Luna repairs the printing press, but people are not so easily mended, and the machine collects dust. "I just don't feel like doing it anymore, Luna," says Daddy, and if the Death Eaters weren't already defeated she'd find them and hex them for putting that grey aimless look in his eyes.
She cheers herself by touching up the paintings on the walls, smoothing fresh plaster over the holes left by the struggle, dabbing bright dragonflies and peacocks and Dirigible Plums in the empty spaces. Upstairs, Luna blends ochres and umbers with meticulous care and adds another face to her ceiling. She entwines it in her golden chain of friendship and hopes it's a strong enough tether to pull him here.
Owls arrive for Daddy every day from every corner of Britain and sometimes from beyond, carrying tales of Snorkack sightings and dastardly conspiracies. Daddy lets them pile up; Luna reads them instead and decides not to go back to school, at least not yet. It's a little sad when she realizes the Hogwarts Express has come and gone without her, but there are stories to be told, mysteries to investigate. Before long the press is whirring and clanking again.
"I'm proud of you," says Daddy when she sets her first issue in front of him at the dinner table. "Illustrations are a darned sight better now, too."
September ripens into October. Sometimes, mixed in with the Quibbler mail, there are letters from her friends. The ones from Dean feel hot in her hands, and she wonders if he's using Pyrogenic Papyrus or if it's just the Wrackspurts again. She wears her Dirigible Plum earrings every day; believing the impossible never hurts.
On the most perfect day of the fall, Luna takes a break at twilight and climbs one of the crab-apple trees, dangling her feet into the air and savoring the crisp air and the scent of woodsmoke. The apples are round and scarlet now. She takes one; the tart juices burst on her tongue.
From here she can see the gate; the sign that hangs there is turned the other way, but she knows it says THE QUIBBLER. EDITOR: L. LOVEGOOD, and she feels a mixture of sadness and pride. She can see the hills stretching into the distance, burnished gold, and she wonders how far Ottery St. Catchpole is from London, and how far from the sea.
A crack shatters the softly rustling evening and she scrabbles at her branch, hoping the noise isn’t coming from the tree.
"Hi, Luna," says Dean.
"Hi, Dean." She smiles, but sadness washes over her when she remembers the bad news she has to break to him. "The Snorkack horn's gone, Dean. The Death Eaters stole it. Or the Ministry. Same thing, last year, wasn't it?"
"Don't worry about the horn," he says. "It was you I came to see anyway."
Winter
Dean invites her round for the Christmas holidays. She's never been to visit Muggles before, and the first thing she notices is how strangely shaped the Thomas house is.
Mrs. Thomas is a kind-faced, bustling woman, and she smiles broadly when she sees Luna. "My son has told me so much about you," she says, and it's not the tone of voice people use when they're saying Did you hear what Loony did today?, and Luna doesn't spare another thought for the oddness of the house.
Dean has three sisters. Danielle is mad about football like her brother, and some nights Luna sits between the two of them as they watch the game on a contraption they call the "telly" that's sort of like a wizarding portrait except with knobs and antennae. She doesn't quite understand the rules, but the way the game lights up Dean's face makes her happy.
Dahlia takes Luna shopping for Muggle clothes, and the two of them laugh and exclaim over racks of brightly colored garments. Luna falls in love with a bright yellow dress patterned with sunflowers that reminds her of summer. Dahlia pronounces it "perfect," though she does give Luna an odd look when she pairs the dress with a shiny pair of red boots.
The youngest sister, Deborah, is a quiet sort, usually closeted in her room with a book. On Christmas Day she shyly presents Luna with a drawing of a unicorn, and grins from ear to ear when Luna draws her a Blibbering Humdinger in return.
There is little time to talk alone with Dean, but Luna almost doesn't mind; she loves this peacefully busy house and Dean's family. They don't treat her like she's weird, or rather, they don't treat her like she's any more weird than Dean, which is a refreshing change.
She's sitting on the staircase two days after Christmas watching a fascinating blue-and-green spider when she overhears Dean and Mrs. Thomas talking quietly in the kitchen.
"…sorry about that Snorkack thing at dinner, Mum."
"Don't be silly. What's to be sorry about?"
"Er…it's just that Crumple-Horned Snorkacks aren't…commonly believed in, that's all."
"Dean. Your first year at school you come home and tell me unicorns are real. Next thing it's centaurs, and Blast-Ended Skrewts, and giants, and God knows what else, and you're telling me there's no room in your philosophy for this Snorkack thing?"
Luna rises to her feet and meets Dean's eyes, doing her best to approximate Professor McGonagall's beady stare.
"Luna! Er…"
"If you can't be with me without apologizing for me," she says, "then you'd best not bother."
She Apparates home. Daddy stirs in his armchair and blinks. "Didn't expect you home so soon."
"Dean and I had a row." Luna looks up the stairwell, hoping to catch sight of his face there, wearing that smile she'd thought meant I believe in you. What they had is all in ruin now, as surely as the house was last summer. "He…he said the Snorkack didn't exist."
Daddy creaks to his feet and wraps his too-thin arms around Luna. "Oh, Luna. Sometimes…sometimes I'm not sure they exist either. I'm not sure of much of anything, anymore."
Spring
The leaves return to the trees later in Sweden than in England. Luna is grateful for the sheltering green when it comes; the Crumple-Horned Snorkack is a shy and easily frightened creature, and crouched among bare branches Luna was far too conspicuous. She tells herself that's the only reason she hasn't sighted one yet.
Dean owls her every few days. She pays the owl each time, giving it an extra helping of treats for the long journey, then tucks the letters into her backpack unread.
Luna wears green every day to blend into her surroundings. Strange caterpillars nibble at the leaves and she sketches them, at first out of boredom, then out of fascination with their beautiful stripes and spots. She draws the birds, too, sitting as soundlessly as she is able to avoid startling them, or any Snorkacks that should happen to come along.
She sends some of the drawings and her notes to her father, who surprised her before she left by offering to take over the paper until she came back. Luna smiles to herself as she envisions the delight on her subscribers' faces when they read about the exotic creatures she's seen.
What surprises Luna most is the desire to move on; she can't explain why she wants to leave this forest without having seen a Snorkack even once, but the prospect of other forests, of other strange beasts, sings to her. She travels further afield as the days grow longer, exploring here and there, drawing and writing and filling her bag to bursting with unread letters.
The wild roses are in bloom when Luna decides it's time to go home. She needs to see to the paper; she needs to catch up with her friends and check on Daddy, and he was never any good at cultivating the Dirigible Plums, was he? Yes, it's time. She resolves, though, that this won't be the last time she goes exploring. She wonders if there's a way to make the press portable, with magic…
On her last night on the Continent, Luna draws a deep breath and opens her backpack. Letters spill out, tumbling over one another in a flood of parchment. She doesn't want to read them, she tells herself, yet she can't look away, and besides, if Rowena Ravenclaw were here, surely she'd tell Luna that passing up any kind of knowledge is the most foolish thing she could do.
Sliding her fingers through the wax of the seal, Luna opens the letter at the top of the pile. Before the writing, she notices the drawings. In one corner is a little sketch of Luna in her flowered dress and boots; next to that is a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, perfect in every detail, purple ears and splendid horn. All around the margins, Blibbering Humdingers and Nargles and Umgubular Slashkilters, all just as she'd described them to Dean.
He'd listened to every word.
The words blur, and Luna finds herself unable to read the letters at all.
Summer
"Luna, what are you doing lying there in the grass?"
"I think I've got a rare strain of Loser's Lurgy," she says. "Exposure to direct sunlight can sometimes have a positive effect--"
It dawns on her mid-explanation that she knows that voice. Luna opens her eyes; he's only a silhouette against the blinding sun, but she doesn't need to see his face to know him. "Hello, Dean."
He offers her a hand. She takes it and lets him help her to her feet.
"I'm sorry," he says simply. "I shouldn’t have said that, about the Snorkack. I should never have apologized for you. And for all I know, maybe they do exist…"
"I'm not so sure," says Luna and shrugs. "Maybe they don't. I saw a lot of other things, though; have you read the Quibbler lately?"
"The illustrations are brilliant, all of a sudden." He winks, and Luna can feel the symptoms of Loser's Lurgy fading away. Must be the sunlight, she thinks.
"Thanks," she says. "Do you think your mum can ever forgive me?"
"Forgive you for what?"
"I did make a bit of a scene in her house, you know. And then vanished into thin air…"
"She took your side," says Dean. "And she was right." He looks down at the ground, quiet for a moment, then, "Would you…would you be willing to try again?"
Luna squeezes his hand. "Come back to the house with me. There's something I want you to see."
Author: kethlenda
Pairing: Luna/Dean
Warnings: DH SPOILERS
Rating: G
Word Count: ~2200
Summary: There's something unsaid and unresolved, something suspended in the air between them, and though she's rarely at a loss for words she's not sure which ones to use now.
Summer
"I've got to go home, make sure my father's all right," Luna says. "They'll be letting him out of Azkaban now…"
"I think I'll go home for a while too. My mum and sisters haven't seen me in months; they'll be worried sick."
Luna nods and meets his eyes. A peculiar sensation clutches at her, and she has to look away. There's something unsaid and unresolved, something suspended in the air between them, and though she's rarely at a loss for words she's not sure which ones to use now.
Dean clasps her hand again in his. "Luna? Does the offer still stand?"
Luna blinks, confused.
"To drop by your place. See the Crumple-Horned Snorkack horn." His smile makes her feel strange, unsettled. "I mean, I know it's rude to invite myself, but…"
She bats the Wrackspurt away and returns his smile. "You can come by anytime you like."
***
Daddy is suddenly an old man. Luna notices the change in him before she fully takes in the damage to the house, and then the two ravages seem to run together.
He is content to sit, wordless, between two heaps of rubble and stare into nothing. Luna masks her alarm in a flurry of activity, using magic to levitate out the larger chunks of wall and floor, then charming a broom to sweep away the dust as she pours him a glass of Gurdyroot extract. He takes it and drinks in silence.
The Quibbler printing press lies broken on the floor in a heap of newspapers. Luna picks up one of the papers, shaking the dust from it so that she can read it, then drops it as if it were hot or poisonous.
"Daddy?" Her voice comes out in a hoarse whisper. "They took over the Quibbler?"
He trembles, hugging his knees. "No. They told me…they told me they would give you back if I--"
Luna feels like the floor has just fallen out from under her. "Daddy, no."
"I'm sorry."
"They wouldn't have given me back no matter what you did, don't you know that?"
He says nothing more on the subject, and Luna doesn't want to talk about it either; to speak of it would mean she'd have to decide between hating him and forgiving him, and she's not ready to choose.
Instead, she climbs the mangled staircase to her room, noticing along the way that the Crumple-Horned Snorkack horn is gone.
Everything, they destroyed everything is her first thought.
Her second is, Dean will be so disappointed.
Autumn
Luna repairs the printing press, but people are not so easily mended, and the machine collects dust. "I just don't feel like doing it anymore, Luna," says Daddy, and if the Death Eaters weren't already defeated she'd find them and hex them for putting that grey aimless look in his eyes.
She cheers herself by touching up the paintings on the walls, smoothing fresh plaster over the holes left by the struggle, dabbing bright dragonflies and peacocks and Dirigible Plums in the empty spaces. Upstairs, Luna blends ochres and umbers with meticulous care and adds another face to her ceiling. She entwines it in her golden chain of friendship and hopes it's a strong enough tether to pull him here.
Owls arrive for Daddy every day from every corner of Britain and sometimes from beyond, carrying tales of Snorkack sightings and dastardly conspiracies. Daddy lets them pile up; Luna reads them instead and decides not to go back to school, at least not yet. It's a little sad when she realizes the Hogwarts Express has come and gone without her, but there are stories to be told, mysteries to investigate. Before long the press is whirring and clanking again.
"I'm proud of you," says Daddy when she sets her first issue in front of him at the dinner table. "Illustrations are a darned sight better now, too."
September ripens into October. Sometimes, mixed in with the Quibbler mail, there are letters from her friends. The ones from Dean feel hot in her hands, and she wonders if he's using Pyrogenic Papyrus or if it's just the Wrackspurts again. She wears her Dirigible Plum earrings every day; believing the impossible never hurts.
On the most perfect day of the fall, Luna takes a break at twilight and climbs one of the crab-apple trees, dangling her feet into the air and savoring the crisp air and the scent of woodsmoke. The apples are round and scarlet now. She takes one; the tart juices burst on her tongue.
From here she can see the gate; the sign that hangs there is turned the other way, but she knows it says THE QUIBBLER. EDITOR: L. LOVEGOOD, and she feels a mixture of sadness and pride. She can see the hills stretching into the distance, burnished gold, and she wonders how far Ottery St. Catchpole is from London, and how far from the sea.
A crack shatters the softly rustling evening and she scrabbles at her branch, hoping the noise isn’t coming from the tree.
"Hi, Luna," says Dean.
"Hi, Dean." She smiles, but sadness washes over her when she remembers the bad news she has to break to him. "The Snorkack horn's gone, Dean. The Death Eaters stole it. Or the Ministry. Same thing, last year, wasn't it?"
"Don't worry about the horn," he says. "It was you I came to see anyway."
Winter
Dean invites her round for the Christmas holidays. She's never been to visit Muggles before, and the first thing she notices is how strangely shaped the Thomas house is.
Mrs. Thomas is a kind-faced, bustling woman, and she smiles broadly when she sees Luna. "My son has told me so much about you," she says, and it's not the tone of voice people use when they're saying Did you hear what Loony did today?, and Luna doesn't spare another thought for the oddness of the house.
Dean has three sisters. Danielle is mad about football like her brother, and some nights Luna sits between the two of them as they watch the game on a contraption they call the "telly" that's sort of like a wizarding portrait except with knobs and antennae. She doesn't quite understand the rules, but the way the game lights up Dean's face makes her happy.
Dahlia takes Luna shopping for Muggle clothes, and the two of them laugh and exclaim over racks of brightly colored garments. Luna falls in love with a bright yellow dress patterned with sunflowers that reminds her of summer. Dahlia pronounces it "perfect," though she does give Luna an odd look when she pairs the dress with a shiny pair of red boots.
The youngest sister, Deborah, is a quiet sort, usually closeted in her room with a book. On Christmas Day she shyly presents Luna with a drawing of a unicorn, and grins from ear to ear when Luna draws her a Blibbering Humdinger in return.
There is little time to talk alone with Dean, but Luna almost doesn't mind; she loves this peacefully busy house and Dean's family. They don't treat her like she's weird, or rather, they don't treat her like she's any more weird than Dean, which is a refreshing change.
She's sitting on the staircase two days after Christmas watching a fascinating blue-and-green spider when she overhears Dean and Mrs. Thomas talking quietly in the kitchen.
"…sorry about that Snorkack thing at dinner, Mum."
"Don't be silly. What's to be sorry about?"
"Er…it's just that Crumple-Horned Snorkacks aren't…commonly believed in, that's all."
"Dean. Your first year at school you come home and tell me unicorns are real. Next thing it's centaurs, and Blast-Ended Skrewts, and giants, and God knows what else, and you're telling me there's no room in your philosophy for this Snorkack thing?"
Luna rises to her feet and meets Dean's eyes, doing her best to approximate Professor McGonagall's beady stare.
"Luna! Er…"
"If you can't be with me without apologizing for me," she says, "then you'd best not bother."
She Apparates home. Daddy stirs in his armchair and blinks. "Didn't expect you home so soon."
"Dean and I had a row." Luna looks up the stairwell, hoping to catch sight of his face there, wearing that smile she'd thought meant I believe in you. What they had is all in ruin now, as surely as the house was last summer. "He…he said the Snorkack didn't exist."
Daddy creaks to his feet and wraps his too-thin arms around Luna. "Oh, Luna. Sometimes…sometimes I'm not sure they exist either. I'm not sure of much of anything, anymore."
Spring
The leaves return to the trees later in Sweden than in England. Luna is grateful for the sheltering green when it comes; the Crumple-Horned Snorkack is a shy and easily frightened creature, and crouched among bare branches Luna was far too conspicuous. She tells herself that's the only reason she hasn't sighted one yet.
Dean owls her every few days. She pays the owl each time, giving it an extra helping of treats for the long journey, then tucks the letters into her backpack unread.
Luna wears green every day to blend into her surroundings. Strange caterpillars nibble at the leaves and she sketches them, at first out of boredom, then out of fascination with their beautiful stripes and spots. She draws the birds, too, sitting as soundlessly as she is able to avoid startling them, or any Snorkacks that should happen to come along.
She sends some of the drawings and her notes to her father, who surprised her before she left by offering to take over the paper until she came back. Luna smiles to herself as she envisions the delight on her subscribers' faces when they read about the exotic creatures she's seen.
What surprises Luna most is the desire to move on; she can't explain why she wants to leave this forest without having seen a Snorkack even once, but the prospect of other forests, of other strange beasts, sings to her. She travels further afield as the days grow longer, exploring here and there, drawing and writing and filling her bag to bursting with unread letters.
The wild roses are in bloom when Luna decides it's time to go home. She needs to see to the paper; she needs to catch up with her friends and check on Daddy, and he was never any good at cultivating the Dirigible Plums, was he? Yes, it's time. She resolves, though, that this won't be the last time she goes exploring. She wonders if there's a way to make the press portable, with magic…
On her last night on the Continent, Luna draws a deep breath and opens her backpack. Letters spill out, tumbling over one another in a flood of parchment. She doesn't want to read them, she tells herself, yet she can't look away, and besides, if Rowena Ravenclaw were here, surely she'd tell Luna that passing up any kind of knowledge is the most foolish thing she could do.
Sliding her fingers through the wax of the seal, Luna opens the letter at the top of the pile. Before the writing, she notices the drawings. In one corner is a little sketch of Luna in her flowered dress and boots; next to that is a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, perfect in every detail, purple ears and splendid horn. All around the margins, Blibbering Humdingers and Nargles and Umgubular Slashkilters, all just as she'd described them to Dean.
He'd listened to every word.
The words blur, and Luna finds herself unable to read the letters at all.
Summer
"Luna, what are you doing lying there in the grass?"
"I think I've got a rare strain of Loser's Lurgy," she says. "Exposure to direct sunlight can sometimes have a positive effect--"
It dawns on her mid-explanation that she knows that voice. Luna opens her eyes; he's only a silhouette against the blinding sun, but she doesn't need to see his face to know him. "Hello, Dean."
He offers her a hand. She takes it and lets him help her to her feet.
"I'm sorry," he says simply. "I shouldn’t have said that, about the Snorkack. I should never have apologized for you. And for all I know, maybe they do exist…"
"I'm not so sure," says Luna and shrugs. "Maybe they don't. I saw a lot of other things, though; have you read the Quibbler lately?"
"The illustrations are brilliant, all of a sudden." He winks, and Luna can feel the symptoms of Loser's Lurgy fading away. Must be the sunlight, she thinks.
"Thanks," she says. "Do you think your mum can ever forgive me?"
"Forgive you for what?"
"I did make a bit of a scene in her house, you know. And then vanished into thin air…"
"She took your side," says Dean. "And she was right." He looks down at the ground, quiet for a moment, then, "Would you…would you be willing to try again?"
Luna squeezes his hand. "Come back to the house with me. There's something I want you to see."