[FIC] Phoenix (Firefly/HP fusion, various)
Title: Phoenix
Author: White Aster
Prompt: Firefly/Harry Potter fusionthing of doom
Pairing: Draco/Snape hinted, with some Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron also mentioned.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Years after Serenity Valley, Fate and Luna Lovegood brings old allies together again.
A/N: I heartily apologize, but this is not, particularly, finished. Real life kind of ate me for breakfast after a good first push at this. The ending coda is an attempt to give some kind of closure, a hint of the ending that I didn't have time to write...including the yaoi part of this challenge. I very, very much apologize that there's not more to it than this, but I hope that you enjoy what I got done anyway. :)
PART ONE: SPINNER'S END
Spinner's End was a wart on the backside of nowhere. The Alliance had discovered shortly after terraforming began that the titanium and uranium deposits the survey teams had reported were smaller than expected. They'd consequently dropped the planet faster than a Companion's drawers, leaving the planet terraformed just enough to make it habitable. Nothing since had made it any more hospitable: the place was spare, dusty, dry, and filled with hard-as-nails locals who thought that the best neighbor in the world was one that left them the hell alone.
Just the way Snape liked it. Private. Peaceful. Cheap enough that he could have a large tract of land filled with stubbornly cultivated herbs, a large laboratory, and venomous insects and snakes that he didn't even have to breed himself. It was practically heaven.
Which was, of course, why it couldn't last.
--------------------------
The week had started out ordinary enough. He spent Monday morning in the west quadrant of the garden, coaxing a stand of the scrubby native trees to new heights of shade-providing greatness via a carefully-throttled Growing Charm. He could have, of course, had them thrice the size of his house in an instant with just as much effort, but since the war it'd never been particularly wise to draw attention to one's magic, even out of the sight of Muggles. Nowadays most wizards and witches were either Alliance-trained...or the remnants of Dumbledore's outfit. The Alliance hadn't quite made it illegal for people to perform magic without Ministry consent (though Snape half-expected to hear of a new law to just that effect every time he went into Hogsmeade), but it hadn't escaped Snape's notice that a lot of browncoat veterans, after a particularly showy bit of magic, had found themselves on the wrong end of one Ministry law or another.
Monday afternoon he had made a few rounds: To old Bathilda's place, to give her the compress for her arthritis. To the Trantons' place to make sure that their sickly youngest hadn't gotten any worse with the brief and spectacular allergy season that Spinner's End could produce. Over to Layton's Point to pick up that week's worth of orders for remedies. Most were non-magical: fever kits, analgesics, and a few allergy remedies. While he was there, Anna LeStrange had waved him down in town, asking, with a sidelong glance at the Muggles on the street, to come take a look at her son's "broken leg". Said leg had been broken in the sense that the boy's brother had managed to hex all the bones out of it. Snape had promised to send along a bottle of Skele-Gro via owl, for which Anna had traded him a few drams' worth of the nightshade oil she was so proud of (and rightly so, as Snape himself hadn't yet found a way to grow nightshade in the End's dusty soil.)
Tuesday had started with an emergency. He'd woken to young Billy Harcourt pounding on his door and crying that his family was dying. Twenty-four hours, four ill and nearly comatose people, a rushed and frustrating interview with a hysterical child, and some Cleansing Brew masked as an herbal tonic later, Snape collapsed in bed wondering where the hell his day had gone and why the hell people couldn't figure out for themselves when a jar of pickled beets had gone bad.
Wednesday, he awoke to find an owl tapping on his window imperiously. It flew away as soon as it saw him sit up, its message wordless. Snape had sighed and thrown off the covers. It had been too much to ask for this particular problem to disappear, he supposed.
He headed into Hogsmeade.
--------------------
The owner of the general store was perched on top of a ladder, sorting canned goods with machine-like efficiency, when Snape walked in. She peered down through her glasses as the bell on the door rang. "Severus, good morning! A pleasure, as always."
"Good morning, Minerva." Snape tucked his hat under his arm as Minerva McGonagall hopped down off the ladder like a woman half her age. "How are you this fine day?"
"Fine, fine, though I do wish it would rain. My pepper plants are positively drooping." McGonagall wiped her hands on her apron and pushed a bit of iron-grey hair back into its place. "So! What can I get for you?"
"The usual. Cooking staples. Jerky, if you have it. A few lengths of rope. Oh, and that red tea you gave me last time. That wasn't half bad."
McGonagall smiled, pulling a half-filled box with Snape's name on it up from behind the counter. She started pulling the extras off the shelves, almost without looking. "I told you, didn't I? One thing I have to give the soil here: it somehow grows excellent tea." She set the last pack of jerky in the box with a sigh. "Speaking of tea, I was just thinking of closing up for a bit and having some. Would you like to join me?" She glanced upwards, then out at the street beyond her door.
Snape shifted his medical bag on his shoulder. "Sounds lovely."
---------------
"How has she been?" he asked quietly, after McGonagall'd locked up the store and led him through the back room to the stairs. Her living quarters were above the store: a bit sparse but bright, airy, and impeccably clean, as usual.
She paused. "...well enough...I suppose. Certainly I've no thought to her physical health. The steady feeding has done her well And she's slept a great dea. There hasn't been much time to talk with her. She worries me, though, Severus. She was always a bit off, of course, but that had more to do with being fed a load of rubbish when she was young than her actual mind. This is ...something different. She fades in and out, mentally, and sometimes says the oddest things. Usually she's as lucid as...well, as she ever was, but sometimes she'll stare off into space for hours on end. It's right disturbing."
"Magical?"
"I can't quite tell. She's not doing any spells, at least, but if she's gained some kind of innate ability...," McGonagall shrugged as she filled the kettle and put it on to warm. "I just don't know."
Snape glanced over at the closed bedroom door. "What kind of ability?"
McGonagall sat, pushing a tin of biscuits over towards Snape insistently. He knew better than to refuse. She took one herself and quietly contemplated it. "I would think perhaps Seeing, if she made more sense, or if she went into a proper trance when she was doing it. But if she's prophecying, it's for people I don't know, and in more symbolism than I can decode. Sometimes she's obviously reliving...Serenity Valley, or making allusions to things that are easily-recognizable. A black snake that eats the stars. A phoenix flying free with a tail of gold. I think that the silver snake with one fang is you, and the cat with one ear is me--"
Snape snorted, coughing a bit on his biscuit and a smile as McGonagall got up to deal with cups and tea and sugar.
"Others.... I've no idea. A wide green lake where the sunlight comes to play. A room full of music and waterfalls. A silver gryphon with a mouth full of swords." She glanced over at him hopefully, but Snape just shook his head. None of it rang any bells.
McGonagall sighed, setting down the sugar bowl with a bit more force than necessary. "Ironic, that I've always thought Divination almost useless and now I'd give almost anything to know whether she's speaking truth or just babbling." She stared out the window above the sink. "Lord knows that we could use a Seer's help." The kettle whistled, and she moved to pour.
"She was never a Seer at Hogwarts," Snape murmured, thinking out loud. "I know that it can be unpredictable, but Seeing usually appears earlier, rather than later. She didn't have it at Serenity Valley, nor in the camps afterwards, though the fates know that that was enough stress to bring out a latent gift in anyone. And she must be close to thirty now. Why would it suddenly appear?"
"The ministers called."
Years since they could carry them openly, years since they agreed that blending in with the Muggles would be the best way to stay out of the Alliance's eye, and still they both went instinctively for their wands as they turned.
Luna Lovegood stood in her bare feet and one of McGonagall's dressing gowns, pale hair mussed as if she had just woken, eyes as faraway as ever and apparently unconcerned that two wandtips had just flicked her way. She looked much like Snape had last seen her, hollow-cheeked and shaking on his doorstep, though there was less panic and delirium in her eyes now. He'd been right, he decided, to bring her here. Minerva had been much better on the girl's nerves than he would ever have been.
"The ministers called," Luna said, earnestly, her voice soft and sing-song in the way that had irked him when he'd taught her Potions. "And they said that I was the only one who could answer. So I did, because my father...he was there...but not there. The ministers told me to go with the alchemists, who would turn me into gold. And they did, but first there was fire...and water...and more fire." Her hands twisted slowly in the tartan fabric of the gown, but her face didn't change. "It hurt. I decided that I didn't want to be gold anymore, that pyrite was just fine, but the ministers insisted...."
Snape glanced over at McGonagall. Her lips were so thin that they'd almost disappeared.
"...and in the end I was gold, but flawed, brittle. Not fool's gold but still the fool. Not to specifications, not pure...." Luna looked down at her hands, as if they held some kind of answer for her.
"Luna." McGonagall's voice was soft, and deadly in a way that Snape had only heard a handful of times. He dearly wished that some of Lovegood's "ministers" were there to bear the brunt of it. "Are you telling me that the Ministry of Magic blackmailed you into being some kind of...of human test subject? And held you against your will while they...what, tried to make a Seer out of you?"
Luna blinked slowly, a bit uncertainly, as if she were trying to understand something in a different language. "...isn't that what I said?" Her eyes slid to the table and brightened. "Oh! May I have a biscuit?"
McGonagall made a noise not unlike her teakettle, turning swiftly away to the counter. "Yes, dear, of course," she said, voice strained. "You haven't...you haven't eaten yet today, have you? Would you like a bit of stew?"
"Yes, thank you." Luna helped herself to a biscuit, curling on one of the chairs, her feet tucked up under her. The next time her eyes wandered over Snape, she actually saw him, and smiled. "Oh, hello, Professor Snape. How are you this morning?"
"Good morning, Lovegood. Quite well, thank you. And we're neither of us professors anymore, if you please. Snape will do just fine."
Luna frowned slightly. "I can't call you that, it would be rude."
Snape's lips quirked. "Doctor is fine, then. It's what I'm usually called here."
"Are you a doctor, now?" Luna asked interestedly. "A Muggle doctor?"
"No, though I know enough to keep people alive, and that's all people here seem to require. I'd like to take another look at you when you're finished eating, if that's all right. To make sure that there's no physical harm I missed the other day."
Luna nodded solemnly. "Life is important."
McGonagall set a bowl of stew, smelling of onions and rabbit, down next to Luna's elbow. Her lips were still thinned, and there was worry behind the steel in her eyes as she handed Snape his teacup. "That it is."
--------------------
Physically, Luna was fine. She submitted to her abbreviated physical with ease, and didn't seem at all put off when Snape asked if he could use some magical scans as well. All of her major systems, humours, and lines of power were functioning normally, though here and there Snape could make out what might have been a nip and tuck of magical manipulation here and there. Magically, she did not look particularly odd, either. There were no precipitous vortexes of magic or influxes of power. Snape thought that he could see more modifications, however, where the power flowed a bit too orderly, its paths a bit too neatly branched.
Snape had a hunch that a good deal of the changes that had been made were mental. Obviously, whatever had been done had scrambled Lovegood's mind even more than it had been to begin with. Even her oddities had rules, seemingly. She could speak perfectly clearly about mundane things: the weather, what she'd like for dinner, how well she'd been sleeping. She only lapsed into symbolism when the subjects were magical.
Snape picked up his wand again. "I'd like to try legilimency on you, Lovegood. It would give me a better idea of what's been done."
Her eyes focussed on him for a long moment. Oddly, he realized that she didn't wear her glasses anymore, nor seem to need them. She pressed her lips together as she thought, and Snape didn't push. Finally, she closed her eyes and raised a hand to her face, rubbing her temples. "A dark wood, briars and dragons.... Things that bite and slosh and snap and spill all over everything...."
Snape rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I'm sure it's terrible, but I am--"
Luna shook her head and reaching out and catching his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip, her eyes wide, her voice urgent. "Wolves at the gate. Wolves that bay at the moon. Knives in the dark and bells and sirens and--"
"Wards?" McGonagall asked, from where she stood in the doorway. "Something that could tell them where you are if we meddle?"
Luna nodded, once, releasing Snape's wrist. "Wolves."
"I see." It worried Snape that he'd not noticed any warding spellwork on the girl. It made him wonder what else he might have missed. "Fine then. No legilimency." It was a pity. Luna had always been a bit obtuse, but now she was...something else. She sometimes looked frustrated even at her own inability to communicate. Obviously something more than a little magical pruning had been done to her.
McGonagall asked, "What about spells? Your wand is gone, but have you tried nonverbal spells?"
Luna nodded. "Never tested well. Too slippery. A slew of Dreadfuls and Poors. Only one Outstanding."
"Which one was that?"
She looked from Snape to McGonagall, as if it might be a trick question. "The...a...." She grimaced, hands clenching for a moment before she took a deep breath. "The ghostly chariot to the doctor's door."
That took a moment to digest, and then another to try to believe. McGonagall's voice was alarmed. "She Apparated to your house, Severus?"
There had been no car, no noise that he'd noticed before he'd heard the thump against his door that night. No crack of Apparition, though he might not have noticed, over the crackle of the fire. "I...didn't ask, but there was little other way.... Lovegood, were they holding you here? On Spinner's End?"
A slow shake of the head. "The alchemists' fates were full of green. Trees, jungles." Luna blinked, slowly. "Horizon. Where the sun meets the land...."
Snape looked over at McGonagall, just in case he was missing something. She looked just as confused as he felt. "Luna," she said, carefully. "Horizon's in the next system. You...if you Apparated from there, that's...impossible. No one can Apparate that far, and across dead space at that."
"And how did you know where I was, by the way? And why me of all people?" Not that Snape had been wondering that since Luna had shown up or anything. Not that he was a suspicious or paranoid old snake, certainly.
Luna's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, her eyes tracking along the bedspread as if she could find the words there. "You...it's...." But nothing else came out, and her hands balled into fists again in the covers.
Snape sighed, slipping his wand back in the pocket of his coat. "It's all right, Lovegood, it's--"
"No!" Again the quick, stronger-than-expected grab, for his shoulder this time, and it tried his patience a bit too much.
"Lovegood," he snapped, "unhand--"
"Stay here! I'll take the hill, you provide the cover, and come up with the second wave when you see the signal. We're not beaten yet. I won't let them win." A tear, apparently unnoticed, rolled down Luna's cheek, as she held his eyes. "I won't let them win."
Snape stared.
"Severus?" McGonagall's voice was quiet, confused.
Snape took a deep breath, and carefully laid a hand over Luna's before unlatching her from his shoulder. "Those were the last orders I gave her unit, in the Valley. Before the end." To Luna, he whispered, "Don't look at me like that."
She shook her head, pressing her free hand to her chest, then to his, with a thump. Her mouth worked again, and this time she pushed the words out. "Fate...is...a web. It...catches people. All people. Everywhere." She took a deep breath at his uncomprehending look, and the words appeared to come easier, as if she were a teacher trying a new approach to make a student understand. "Fate is a web. The web is everywhere. Here." A press to his chest. "Here." A press to her own. "In between." She lowered her head, eyes earnest on his, waiting. "Everywhere in between. Always in between."
Snape wasn't sure whether to be happy or not that he was beginning to understand her confunded sort of sense. "You were on Horizon," he murmured. "And you wanted to leave. So you Saw...my fate...here on the End."
Luna nodded, eagerly. "Always."
"And you used that...as a focus for a wandless Apparition...across a solar system." It sounded like madness. Snape couldn't believe that he was actually saying the words. The greatest wizarding minds had been trying for hundreds of years to find a way to Apparate across the etherless vacuum of space.
Luna laughed and clapped, nodding. "Everywhere!"
Snape was so caught up in thinking of the implications that he didn't even react when she threw her arms around his neck in a delighted hug.
A Seer that could prophecy about anyone, anywhere? Instantaneous Apparition across star systems?
The Alliance had bombed entire planets to slag for less.
Snape turned his head to look at McGonagall. She was white as a sheet, and Snape imagined that he didn't look much better.
---------------------------
"We have to get her off-planet, Severus," McGonagall said, when Luna had drifted off to sleep and they were back at the kitchen table. "Muddle her trail. They must be looking for her."
"I know." Snape sipped his tea, trying to compartmentalize what he knew and plan accordingly. "They might already know where she is, at least vaguely. If I were doing incredibly valuable experiments on someone, I would put a Trace on them, as a precaution."
"That makes sense. Which means they already know she Apparated, though it would be difficult to trace exactly where."
"As far as we know. We are assuming, however--" Snape held up one finger "--that they did not have some lingering legilimancy spell on her and--" He held up another "--that they do not understand Luna's 'webs' any better than we do. Which might be a rather lethal assumption."
McGonagall's eyes narrowed behind her glasses, flicking her wand at the lunch dishes. They trooped to the filled sink and started washing themselves. "She said she used your fate to guide the Apparition. I suppose it could leave some kind of a trail."
"Your guess is as good as mine. Apparition moves in straight lines. If they caught the direction and realized that she'd gone off-planet, all they would have to do is find where the line terminated."
"If they realized. Obviously they didn't know enough about her to keep her from escaping."
Snape nodded. "It probably has bought us some time."
McGonagall turned from the sink to smile at him. "Us, hmm?"
Snape scowled into his teacup. "Yes, us. Don't be daft, it's not sentimentality. They must know her past, and if you think that the Alliance doesn't know that you and I are here, then you are fooling yourself. Even if the girl Apparated to Earth That Was this very moment, we'd still have the Alliance knocking on our doors."
McGonagall made a hmm of agreement, and for a long moment the only sound was the clinking of crockery in water. "What will you do?"
It was the question Snape had been asking himself for the past hour. He disliked the Alliance more than he'd hated anything or anyone except, possibly, Voldemort himself, and the Alliance had so far returned the favor. When faced with knowledge that he might have been contacted by Luna...knowing that he was a superb Occlumens and that they could never be sure whether or not he was telling them the truth....
Well. Snape knew what he would do, were he them. And the Ministry was no more merciful than he when it came to disposing of loose ends.
"What else can I do?" He sneered, the words bitter on his tongue. "Run. Again." Snape let go of his empty cup as it floated over to join the other dishes in being scrubbed within an inch of its life. He sighed, rubbing one temple. "Silly fool of a girl. She destroyed both of our lives here the moment she arrived."
"Mmm. Yes, I suppose so," McGonagall agreed. Snape only then realized that she was moving about with a purpose, pulling this and that from cupboards and drawers, most of it disappearing into a handbag that looked at once physically incapable of holding it all and perpetually empty.
Snape shook his head. "You don't seem too disturbed by this. What about your business?"
McGonagall waved a hand dismissively. "I've been thinking of a vacation anyway. All that lifting and carrying. It's taken a dreadful toll on me," she murmured serenely, producing a pistol from somewhere, checking the chamber, and putting it, loaded, into the bag. "I'm a delicate old woman, you know."
Snape snorted.
"And really, there's no use crying over spilled milk now. Weren't you the one, after all, who was complaining not too long ago about having to hide here amongst the Muggles?" She snapped the bag shut, waving her wand over it twice in a complicated pattern.
"I would have preferred to make this decision myself, Minerva, rather than have it forced upon me." Snape stood, gathering his own bag.
McGonagall shrugged, but she was smiling. "True. Though I think that we can draw a little hope from Luna herself."
Snape stopped, just looking at her. "You did just hear the words coming out of your mouth, didn't you?"
McGonagall shook her head. "Out of all the people she's ever looked up to, Luna chose you to run to. Given what she can do...I think that we can assume that she chose a course of action that would turn out well for all involved."
"Lovegood? Do something reasonable? You'll forgive my skepticism."
McGonagall shooed him back towards the stairs. "You're sure you can get out a 'wave without being detected?"
"As certain as I can be." Snape followed her down the stairs, ignoring the creaking of his knees. "I wish to go on the record, however, as being against asking them for favors."
"Duly noted. Consider it my asking them for a favor, if it makes you feel better. I just hope that they're nearby. Otherwise, two weeks is a long time to wait for the next transport."
"Perhaps they'll be busy," Snape suggested. "Or refuse to come. Or in jail." The idea was slightly cheering.
McGonagall mock-scowled at him as she went about reopening the shop. "If at all possible, they'll come. Three friends in need, after all."
Snape bared his teeth at being included in the "friend" category. He set his payment for the week's supplies onto the counter before settling his hat back on his head and picking up his packages.
She paused after unlocking the door, looking out at the dusty street. "They'll come." Her voice left no room for uncertainty. She held open the screen door for him.
"Yes," Snape murmured, squinting in the sunlight. "Far be it from me to suggest that they would do anything so sensible as tell us that we're on our own."
Minerva McGonagall looked much too cheerful for a woman facing leaving her life behind. Again. It was almost contagious, and Snape was willing to bet that she knew it. "Good day, Severus," she said, pointedly.
Snape raised an eyebrow at her and touched the brim of his hat. "Good day, Minerva."
Snape nodded to a few customers as he walked out onto the street, already tallying what he should start packing and what could be left behind. He was slightly disturbed at how little he was disturbed by the idea.
Honestly. Gryffindors, and now Ravenclaws. Always getting him into trouble.
--------------------------------------
PART TWO: PHOENIX
He was flying.
The clouds whipped past him in a cool mist, soft and intimate on his face, the ground beneath him a blur of green and brown. The wind was cold and sharp, invigorating, and the sense of speed, of limitless possibility, of heady power and grace, was everything he'd ever loved about playing Quidditch. He could see the snitch ahead of him, glinting in the sunlight, and then, a second later, Malfoy zooming in on an intercept course, shouting something unintelligible but no doubt derogatory over his shoulder. Harry leaned over his broom, determined not to be fazed by the strange fact that suddenly both he and Malfoy were naked on their brooms, his eyes only for the golden flash of snitch ahead of him as he swooped, dove, veered, elbowed Malfoy in the face, and reaaaaached--
---and yelped as he hit the floor, blankets tangling around his legs, his hand numb and not at all helpful in his scramble to get his more delicate bits away from the cold metal floor. "Whafuh? Ow." He hissed as his hand chose that moment to come painfully to life. He shook it while he squinted at the chrono on the wall long enough to determine that yes, it had stopped again. He grumbled as he cast about, simultaneously trying to find his watch and his trousers.
Of course, that was the moment that there came a banging knock on the plating above his cabin door, followed by Ginny's sadistically cheerful, "Everyone decent in there?"
"Hell, no," he replied, groping under the bed when the floor was depressingly lacking in clothing.
"Oh, good, just how I like it." A groan and bang of metal, and then steps coming down the ladder. "We've got a--hey, now, I like that view just fine."
Harry turned his head just in time to see Ginny smiling appreciatively at his backside. He rolled his eyes as he straightened and fished his watch out of his trouser pocket. It had stopped. He gave up and let it fall. "What time is it?"
"A little after 1100. You've been asleep for...oh, 'bout nine hours. What're you hunting for?"
"My...." Harry made a vague gesture in front of his face. Ginny translated and handed him his glasses from where they'd ended up the night before, on the desk, next to his wand.
Harry put them on and frowned through his yawn. "Why didn't you wake me?"
Ginny ran a hand fondly through his no-doubt thoroughly sleep-rumpled hair. "You looked so cute lying there, snoring. Drooling a bit on your pillow. I just didn't have the heart."
Harry made a face and wrapped his arms around Ginny's waist, burying his face in her stomach. She smelled of soap and musk and gunpowder. Good, familiar, Ginny things. Had he not quite been as sleep-muzzed as he was, he'd have been tempted to do something with the firm muscle of her abdomen other than use it as a pillow. As it was, though, Ginny merely dropped a kiss on top of his head and said, "You're needed up on the bridge."
Harry pulled back, groping about for a shirt and finding one at the end of the bed, entwined with one of Ginny's. "Something wrong?"
Ginny's wry look boded nothing good even before she said, "We've got a live 'wave from Snape."
Harry blinked. He couldn't remember the last time that Snape had voluntarily contacted them...if ever, now that Harry thought about it. That couldn't mean anything good. And that was in addition to having to deal with Snape in the first place. Harry sighed. "And I thought that the morning couldn't get any worse. What's he want?"
Ginny pulled a face. "Won't say until you're there. Said he didn't want to have to repeat himself."
"Git," Harry mumbled to his buttons as he put his shirt on.
"Oh, and Malfoy was looking for you earlier. Don't be surprised if he ambushes you. He seemed pretty torqued off about something."
"So what else is new." Harry sighed again and stood, catching Ginny around the waist for another quick nuzzle. "You're just the bearer of bad news this morning, aren't you?"
He could feel her chuckle against his lips. "You don't seem to be too upset."
"POTTER!" The voice sounded triumphant and right above their heads.
"Hide me?" Harry said, pulling them around so Ginny was between him and the hatch.
"Hell, no," she said, turning and giving him a good push towards what sounded suspiciously like someone tapping an impatient foot on the deck above. "Up, before Ron says something to piss off Snape."
"Cruel, cruel woman," Harry muttered fondly, climbing the ladder and coming face-to-face with what looked to be a very angry Slytherin. Harry could tell, because not only did he get the Crossed Arms, not only did he get the Scowl, not ONLY did he get the Tapping Foot, but he also got the Annoyed Eyebrow. "Good morning, Draco, you look lovely today. Is that a new coat?"
It did, indeed look like a new coat, or at least one that Harry didn't see all the time. Deep emerald green, looked to be velvet with silver brocade around the edges. Expensive. And kind of fetching in a thoroughly Slytherin type of way, though even Harry could tell that it didn't match the cheongsam under it. He opened his mouth to say so when Malfoy shoved his hand in front of Harry's nose, fingers splayed. "Five, Potter. FIVE. Do you know what five is, Potter?"
"...Is this a trick quest--what am I saying, I'm talking to a Slytherin, of COURSE this is a trick question." Harry jumped a little as Ginny goosed him to get him to move out of the way and let her come up the ladder into the corridor. She flashed him a grin as she slid past, but pointed pointedly to the bridge. He nodded and started to sidle in that direction, Malfoy in pursuit.
"Five is how many degrees Celsius it is in my shuttle, Potter. AGAIN." Malfoy shoved his hand back in his coat pocket triumphantly. "I demand that you do something about this. I pay good money to rent that shuttle and that includes the environmental system. You promised that this would be fixed a WEEK ago--"
Harry rubbed his temple and sighed. "And it WAS, Malfoy. I'll tell Hermione to get on it, first I see her--"
"Wait, what, did I hear my name?" Hermione asked, sticking her head out from the bridge. Behind her, Harry could already see Ron and Neville. Ginny hadn't been kidding that Snape wanted to talk to everyone, evidently.
"Malfoy's shuttle's a bit nippy."
"AGAIN?" Hermione scowled. "I KNEW that coupling wouldn't hold. I'll get right on it today, I promise."
"See?" Harry said, stepping onto the bridge. "Shiny. Happy now?"
Malfoy sniffed disdainfully as he followed Harry through the hatch. Actually SNIFFED. Harry hadn't known that people actually DID that. "I hope you don't expect any rent for today, as my quarters are unliveable and it is quite beneath my--urgk."
Harry turned around to see what "urgk" meant but only got a brief glance of Malfoy taking a step back before his attention was brought back to the crowded bridge by an all-too-familiar voice. "Ah, Potter, a slow starter as usual, I see."
Harry turned back, slowly. Exactly how could the man's voice still pour ice water down his spine? "Pr...Mister Snape. How delightful to see you this morning."
If the voice was a cup of cold water, the face was a drop in Hogwarts Lake. There was a lot of history between them, bad and not so bad, but really the shock was that Snape looked older. Part of it was the crappy comm screen, but the rest of it was just age and living. Harry hadn't seen Snape in...years. Not quite as far back as Serenity Valley, but close to it. Just after the camps, maybe. And a part of Harry would always remember Snape as he'd first seen him: twenty years younger, dressed in black and disdain at Hogwarts' head table. But that...that was not something to be thinking of now. After all, a few more lines on his face or not, Snape's sneer was still the same. "Is the rabble finally all assembled, Longbottom?"
Neville glanced about and cleared his throat. "Yes, sir." It made Harry feel a bit better to know that he wasn't the only one made to feel like an errant schoolboy again.
"Delightful. Your attention, please. I don't wish to repeat myself." Snape's face set. "You are absolutely certain that this channel is secure on your end, Mr. Weasley?"
Ron's fingers twitched over his panel, more for reassurance than anything else, it seemed. He made a face that was almost an eyeroll. "Yeah."
"You would wager your life upon it?"
"Y...yes?" Ron frowned in puzzlement, his fingers twitching again, smoothing over the settings on instinct. He looked over at Harry, but Harry just shrugged and frowned back. Snape had always been paranoid, but it was a paranoia that had kept them all alive more than once. If Snape thought things that bad....
"Good." Snape's eyes made the rounds of the assembled faces before settling on Harry's as he began. His voice, seemingly unknowingly, fell into a lecturing tone, steady and concise. The Phoenix's bridge was silent, first from attention and then from shock and anger as Snape laid out his tale, one fact at a time, methodically as any Potions protocol.
When Snape was finished, Ginny laid a hand over Harry's own. He looked down at him, forcing himself to unclench the fist he hadn't even realized he'd made. He'd thought that he could not hate the Ministry any more. Evidently he'd been wrong. The bastards. The lying, blackmailing, inhuman bastards. Luna's face swam before his eyes: smiling vaguely in Hogwarts, and then set in grim determination, streaked with soot as she threw Shield Charm after Shield Charm around them in Serenity Valley as the fire rained down--
Hermione was the first to recover, though she was white-lipped and apparently trying to strangle an oily rag in her hands. "Apparition over empty space is...is...."
"Impossible, yes," Snape said. "Or so it has been thought. From her story, the Ministry has stumbled upon, either by design or chance, an entirely new branch of Seeing-based magic. I can verify for a fact that someone has been in her mind, nipping and tucking like some inept surgeon. And although she is not altogether comprehensible on some points, she is quite lucid on others. I've no reason to believe that she is any madder than usual, only...altered."
"And the Ministry, of course, wants her back," Harry said, his voice sounding flat even to his own ears. Ginny's hand tightened on his.
Snape's lip curled. "Of course. She is, at this moment, their most valuable secret and greatest weapon."
Hermione bit her lip, thinking. "Do they have a way to track her? Do they know where she is?"
"Unknown. I doubt they allow their test subjects to wander about without some kind of tracking spell. We have layered her in enough Banishing Charms to break the average Tracking Spell, but it is impossible to tell for certain." Snape's scowl deepened. Harry couldn't blame him. It sounded like Snape had been dragged into a right mess.
"Then they could be coming for her right now!" Ron exclaimed.
"Insightful deduction, as usual, Mr. Weasley."
"What do you need from us?" Harry asked quietly. "Transport?"
Snape all but bared his teeth, perhaps at the idea that he needed anything from them. The thought warmed Harry's heart. "Minerva has requested that I contact you about transport. The next ship off Spinner's End does not arrive for another two weeks."
"Ron...?"
Ron's hand were already flying over his console. "We...could be there in five...no...about four and a half days."
"Four days, six hours," Hermione said, her eyes steady. "I can get another ten percent out of the engines, easy."
Harry nodded and looked back at Snape's face on the comm. "Four days, six hours. We'll contact you when we're about to hit orbit for landing coordinates."
"Fine." And, without another word, Snape cut the 'wave on his end.
Ginny hugged him from behind. "Poor Luna."
"Yeah," Harry said, turning his head to kiss her cheek. He saw Malfoy, who had hung back through the whole exchange. "What were you hiding for, Malfoy?"
Malfoy drew himself up. "I was not hiding, you imbecile. Just because I had no desire to be stuffed onto the bridge like the rest of you sardines--"
Harry didn't buy it. He'd seen how Malfoy had recoiled when he'd seen Snape's face. It was strange. He'd always thought that the two of them got along. "You don't have some problem with Snape, do you?"
Malfoy shifted, his eyes flicking to the side. "Of course not."
"Good. Because if the Ministry is hot on their tails, likely we'll be picking up more than just Luna." Harry grinned at the wide-eyed look on Malfoy's face, then shook his head in puzzlement again when Malfoy went pale and stalked away back towards his cold shuttle.
Harry sighed and said, "All right. Everyone, let's get to Spinner's End, fast as we can. Hermione, work your magic."
"Right." Hermione squeezed Ron's hand and trotted off the bridge, already muttering calculations under her breath.
Ron looked pained. "...Snape, Harry?"
Harry shrugged. "Well, I'm not going to leave them there if they want to run. The Ministry might already know they have Luna, and I'm not leaving anyone to their tender mercies, let alone old--" enemies? friends? "--allies."
Ron sighed and went back to plugging coordinates into the navigation.
Neville was looking at him, arms crossed. "You sure this is a good idea, Harry?"
"No. It's probably a terrible idea. Likely to get the Ministry on our tails again, if we're not lucky."
"I'd feel better if you didn't sound so cheerful about that," Neville said, glumly, his lips quirking.
Harry found himself grinning back. "C'mon, all we've got to do is get there quick and then stay one step ahead of them." He looked back at Ginny, who was grinning herself. He reached back, patting her thigh. "What could possibly go wrong?"
--------------------------------
Luna woke to a wash of silver gossamer. The threads were visible tonight, gleaming about her like a cocoon in the dark bedroom. Some were thick and strong, like Professor Snape's and Professor McGonagall's, close and steady. Others were fainter, shifting about her in an intricate dance, catching up in her own thread, in the professors'. Fate was changing, the future was changing, things were...changing.
Luna reached out, tentatively, her fingers barely brushing over the new threads, catching images from she knew not how far into the future--
-- Harry and Ginny, laughing, each carrying a toddler--
--a firefly ship, a home of metal and love, blazing into the night with wings of flame--
--a gunfight, Harry and Snape arguing even as they take cover, then bursting out to both fell dark shadows with wand and revolver--
--Draco Malfoy, looking nervous and unsure as he watches Snape walk away down a ship's corridor--
--Neville, reading something from a large book, his brow furrowed in concentration--
--Hermione, her face pale and her hands covered in oil and blood as she grabs a wrench and slides under some machinery as metal groans all around her--
--Ron Weasley, grinning as he maneuvers a ship through a sky thick with pursuers--
--a pulled trigger, clicking on empty chambers--
--a hall of mirrors and a clock of sand--
--Minerva McGonagall, pulling a gun from her handbag and calmly putting a hole in a uniformed man's forehead--
--Draco, straddling Snape's lap as Snape's hands slide up his bare back--
--Ginny, firing a very large rifle into a crowd of Ministry soldiers, whispering a Reloading Charm over and over--
--the silver gryphon, the one-eared cat, the one-fanged snake, an otter, a tiger, a knight, a bird, a stag....
The visions faded away. Luna yawned, closing her eyes again, and fell asleep, inexplicably reassured by the image of a phoenix, wings spread against a sea of stars, flying free.
~~~~~
Author: White Aster
Prompt: Firefly/Harry Potter fusionthing of doom
Pairing: Draco/Snape hinted, with some Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron also mentioned.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Years after Serenity Valley, Fate and Luna Lovegood brings old allies together again.
A/N: I heartily apologize, but this is not, particularly, finished. Real life kind of ate me for breakfast after a good first push at this. The ending coda is an attempt to give some kind of closure, a hint of the ending that I didn't have time to write...including the yaoi part of this challenge. I very, very much apologize that there's not more to it than this, but I hope that you enjoy what I got done anyway. :)
PART ONE: SPINNER'S END
Spinner's End was a wart on the backside of nowhere. The Alliance had discovered shortly after terraforming began that the titanium and uranium deposits the survey teams had reported were smaller than expected. They'd consequently dropped the planet faster than a Companion's drawers, leaving the planet terraformed just enough to make it habitable. Nothing since had made it any more hospitable: the place was spare, dusty, dry, and filled with hard-as-nails locals who thought that the best neighbor in the world was one that left them the hell alone.
Just the way Snape liked it. Private. Peaceful. Cheap enough that he could have a large tract of land filled with stubbornly cultivated herbs, a large laboratory, and venomous insects and snakes that he didn't even have to breed himself. It was practically heaven.
Which was, of course, why it couldn't last.
--------------------------
The week had started out ordinary enough. He spent Monday morning in the west quadrant of the garden, coaxing a stand of the scrubby native trees to new heights of shade-providing greatness via a carefully-throttled Growing Charm. He could have, of course, had them thrice the size of his house in an instant with just as much effort, but since the war it'd never been particularly wise to draw attention to one's magic, even out of the sight of Muggles. Nowadays most wizards and witches were either Alliance-trained...or the remnants of Dumbledore's outfit. The Alliance hadn't quite made it illegal for people to perform magic without Ministry consent (though Snape half-expected to hear of a new law to just that effect every time he went into Hogsmeade), but it hadn't escaped Snape's notice that a lot of browncoat veterans, after a particularly showy bit of magic, had found themselves on the wrong end of one Ministry law or another.
Monday afternoon he had made a few rounds: To old Bathilda's place, to give her the compress for her arthritis. To the Trantons' place to make sure that their sickly youngest hadn't gotten any worse with the brief and spectacular allergy season that Spinner's End could produce. Over to Layton's Point to pick up that week's worth of orders for remedies. Most were non-magical: fever kits, analgesics, and a few allergy remedies. While he was there, Anna LeStrange had waved him down in town, asking, with a sidelong glance at the Muggles on the street, to come take a look at her son's "broken leg". Said leg had been broken in the sense that the boy's brother had managed to hex all the bones out of it. Snape had promised to send along a bottle of Skele-Gro via owl, for which Anna had traded him a few drams' worth of the nightshade oil she was so proud of (and rightly so, as Snape himself hadn't yet found a way to grow nightshade in the End's dusty soil.)
Tuesday had started with an emergency. He'd woken to young Billy Harcourt pounding on his door and crying that his family was dying. Twenty-four hours, four ill and nearly comatose people, a rushed and frustrating interview with a hysterical child, and some Cleansing Brew masked as an herbal tonic later, Snape collapsed in bed wondering where the hell his day had gone and why the hell people couldn't figure out for themselves when a jar of pickled beets had gone bad.
Wednesday, he awoke to find an owl tapping on his window imperiously. It flew away as soon as it saw him sit up, its message wordless. Snape had sighed and thrown off the covers. It had been too much to ask for this particular problem to disappear, he supposed.
He headed into Hogsmeade.
--------------------
The owner of the general store was perched on top of a ladder, sorting canned goods with machine-like efficiency, when Snape walked in. She peered down through her glasses as the bell on the door rang. "Severus, good morning! A pleasure, as always."
"Good morning, Minerva." Snape tucked his hat under his arm as Minerva McGonagall hopped down off the ladder like a woman half her age. "How are you this fine day?"
"Fine, fine, though I do wish it would rain. My pepper plants are positively drooping." McGonagall wiped her hands on her apron and pushed a bit of iron-grey hair back into its place. "So! What can I get for you?"
"The usual. Cooking staples. Jerky, if you have it. A few lengths of rope. Oh, and that red tea you gave me last time. That wasn't half bad."
McGonagall smiled, pulling a half-filled box with Snape's name on it up from behind the counter. She started pulling the extras off the shelves, almost without looking. "I told you, didn't I? One thing I have to give the soil here: it somehow grows excellent tea." She set the last pack of jerky in the box with a sigh. "Speaking of tea, I was just thinking of closing up for a bit and having some. Would you like to join me?" She glanced upwards, then out at the street beyond her door.
Snape shifted his medical bag on his shoulder. "Sounds lovely."
---------------
"How has she been?" he asked quietly, after McGonagall'd locked up the store and led him through the back room to the stairs. Her living quarters were above the store: a bit sparse but bright, airy, and impeccably clean, as usual.
She paused. "...well enough...I suppose. Certainly I've no thought to her physical health. The steady feeding has done her well And she's slept a great dea. There hasn't been much time to talk with her. She worries me, though, Severus. She was always a bit off, of course, but that had more to do with being fed a load of rubbish when she was young than her actual mind. This is ...something different. She fades in and out, mentally, and sometimes says the oddest things. Usually she's as lucid as...well, as she ever was, but sometimes she'll stare off into space for hours on end. It's right disturbing."
"Magical?"
"I can't quite tell. She's not doing any spells, at least, but if she's gained some kind of innate ability...," McGonagall shrugged as she filled the kettle and put it on to warm. "I just don't know."
Snape glanced over at the closed bedroom door. "What kind of ability?"
McGonagall sat, pushing a tin of biscuits over towards Snape insistently. He knew better than to refuse. She took one herself and quietly contemplated it. "I would think perhaps Seeing, if she made more sense, or if she went into a proper trance when she was doing it. But if she's prophecying, it's for people I don't know, and in more symbolism than I can decode. Sometimes she's obviously reliving...Serenity Valley, or making allusions to things that are easily-recognizable. A black snake that eats the stars. A phoenix flying free with a tail of gold. I think that the silver snake with one fang is you, and the cat with one ear is me--"
Snape snorted, coughing a bit on his biscuit and a smile as McGonagall got up to deal with cups and tea and sugar.
"Others.... I've no idea. A wide green lake where the sunlight comes to play. A room full of music and waterfalls. A silver gryphon with a mouth full of swords." She glanced over at him hopefully, but Snape just shook his head. None of it rang any bells.
McGonagall sighed, setting down the sugar bowl with a bit more force than necessary. "Ironic, that I've always thought Divination almost useless and now I'd give almost anything to know whether she's speaking truth or just babbling." She stared out the window above the sink. "Lord knows that we could use a Seer's help." The kettle whistled, and she moved to pour.
"She was never a Seer at Hogwarts," Snape murmured, thinking out loud. "I know that it can be unpredictable, but Seeing usually appears earlier, rather than later. She didn't have it at Serenity Valley, nor in the camps afterwards, though the fates know that that was enough stress to bring out a latent gift in anyone. And she must be close to thirty now. Why would it suddenly appear?"
"The ministers called."
Years since they could carry them openly, years since they agreed that blending in with the Muggles would be the best way to stay out of the Alliance's eye, and still they both went instinctively for their wands as they turned.
Luna Lovegood stood in her bare feet and one of McGonagall's dressing gowns, pale hair mussed as if she had just woken, eyes as faraway as ever and apparently unconcerned that two wandtips had just flicked her way. She looked much like Snape had last seen her, hollow-cheeked and shaking on his doorstep, though there was less panic and delirium in her eyes now. He'd been right, he decided, to bring her here. Minerva had been much better on the girl's nerves than he would ever have been.
"The ministers called," Luna said, earnestly, her voice soft and sing-song in the way that had irked him when he'd taught her Potions. "And they said that I was the only one who could answer. So I did, because my father...he was there...but not there. The ministers told me to go with the alchemists, who would turn me into gold. And they did, but first there was fire...and water...and more fire." Her hands twisted slowly in the tartan fabric of the gown, but her face didn't change. "It hurt. I decided that I didn't want to be gold anymore, that pyrite was just fine, but the ministers insisted...."
Snape glanced over at McGonagall. Her lips were so thin that they'd almost disappeared.
"...and in the end I was gold, but flawed, brittle. Not fool's gold but still the fool. Not to specifications, not pure...." Luna looked down at her hands, as if they held some kind of answer for her.
"Luna." McGonagall's voice was soft, and deadly in a way that Snape had only heard a handful of times. He dearly wished that some of Lovegood's "ministers" were there to bear the brunt of it. "Are you telling me that the Ministry of Magic blackmailed you into being some kind of...of human test subject? And held you against your will while they...what, tried to make a Seer out of you?"
Luna blinked slowly, a bit uncertainly, as if she were trying to understand something in a different language. "...isn't that what I said?" Her eyes slid to the table and brightened. "Oh! May I have a biscuit?"
McGonagall made a noise not unlike her teakettle, turning swiftly away to the counter. "Yes, dear, of course," she said, voice strained. "You haven't...you haven't eaten yet today, have you? Would you like a bit of stew?"
"Yes, thank you." Luna helped herself to a biscuit, curling on one of the chairs, her feet tucked up under her. The next time her eyes wandered over Snape, she actually saw him, and smiled. "Oh, hello, Professor Snape. How are you this morning?"
"Good morning, Lovegood. Quite well, thank you. And we're neither of us professors anymore, if you please. Snape will do just fine."
Luna frowned slightly. "I can't call you that, it would be rude."
Snape's lips quirked. "Doctor is fine, then. It's what I'm usually called here."
"Are you a doctor, now?" Luna asked interestedly. "A Muggle doctor?"
"No, though I know enough to keep people alive, and that's all people here seem to require. I'd like to take another look at you when you're finished eating, if that's all right. To make sure that there's no physical harm I missed the other day."
Luna nodded solemnly. "Life is important."
McGonagall set a bowl of stew, smelling of onions and rabbit, down next to Luna's elbow. Her lips were still thinned, and there was worry behind the steel in her eyes as she handed Snape his teacup. "That it is."
--------------------
Physically, Luna was fine. She submitted to her abbreviated physical with ease, and didn't seem at all put off when Snape asked if he could use some magical scans as well. All of her major systems, humours, and lines of power were functioning normally, though here and there Snape could make out what might have been a nip and tuck of magical manipulation here and there. Magically, she did not look particularly odd, either. There were no precipitous vortexes of magic or influxes of power. Snape thought that he could see more modifications, however, where the power flowed a bit too orderly, its paths a bit too neatly branched.
Snape had a hunch that a good deal of the changes that had been made were mental. Obviously, whatever had been done had scrambled Lovegood's mind even more than it had been to begin with. Even her oddities had rules, seemingly. She could speak perfectly clearly about mundane things: the weather, what she'd like for dinner, how well she'd been sleeping. She only lapsed into symbolism when the subjects were magical.
Snape picked up his wand again. "I'd like to try legilimency on you, Lovegood. It would give me a better idea of what's been done."
Her eyes focussed on him for a long moment. Oddly, he realized that she didn't wear her glasses anymore, nor seem to need them. She pressed her lips together as she thought, and Snape didn't push. Finally, she closed her eyes and raised a hand to her face, rubbing her temples. "A dark wood, briars and dragons.... Things that bite and slosh and snap and spill all over everything...."
Snape rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I'm sure it's terrible, but I am--"
Luna shook her head and reaching out and catching his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip, her eyes wide, her voice urgent. "Wolves at the gate. Wolves that bay at the moon. Knives in the dark and bells and sirens and--"
"Wards?" McGonagall asked, from where she stood in the doorway. "Something that could tell them where you are if we meddle?"
Luna nodded, once, releasing Snape's wrist. "Wolves."
"I see." It worried Snape that he'd not noticed any warding spellwork on the girl. It made him wonder what else he might have missed. "Fine then. No legilimency." It was a pity. Luna had always been a bit obtuse, but now she was...something else. She sometimes looked frustrated even at her own inability to communicate. Obviously something more than a little magical pruning had been done to her.
McGonagall asked, "What about spells? Your wand is gone, but have you tried nonverbal spells?"
Luna nodded. "Never tested well. Too slippery. A slew of Dreadfuls and Poors. Only one Outstanding."
"Which one was that?"
She looked from Snape to McGonagall, as if it might be a trick question. "The...a...." She grimaced, hands clenching for a moment before she took a deep breath. "The ghostly chariot to the doctor's door."
That took a moment to digest, and then another to try to believe. McGonagall's voice was alarmed. "She Apparated to your house, Severus?"
There had been no car, no noise that he'd noticed before he'd heard the thump against his door that night. No crack of Apparition, though he might not have noticed, over the crackle of the fire. "I...didn't ask, but there was little other way.... Lovegood, were they holding you here? On Spinner's End?"
A slow shake of the head. "The alchemists' fates were full of green. Trees, jungles." Luna blinked, slowly. "Horizon. Where the sun meets the land...."
Snape looked over at McGonagall, just in case he was missing something. She looked just as confused as he felt. "Luna," she said, carefully. "Horizon's in the next system. You...if you Apparated from there, that's...impossible. No one can Apparate that far, and across dead space at that."
"And how did you know where I was, by the way? And why me of all people?" Not that Snape had been wondering that since Luna had shown up or anything. Not that he was a suspicious or paranoid old snake, certainly.
Luna's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, her eyes tracking along the bedspread as if she could find the words there. "You...it's...." But nothing else came out, and her hands balled into fists again in the covers.
Snape sighed, slipping his wand back in the pocket of his coat. "It's all right, Lovegood, it's--"
"No!" Again the quick, stronger-than-expected grab, for his shoulder this time, and it tried his patience a bit too much.
"Lovegood," he snapped, "unhand--"
"Stay here! I'll take the hill, you provide the cover, and come up with the second wave when you see the signal. We're not beaten yet. I won't let them win." A tear, apparently unnoticed, rolled down Luna's cheek, as she held his eyes. "I won't let them win."
Snape stared.
"Severus?" McGonagall's voice was quiet, confused.
Snape took a deep breath, and carefully laid a hand over Luna's before unlatching her from his shoulder. "Those were the last orders I gave her unit, in the Valley. Before the end." To Luna, he whispered, "Don't look at me like that."
She shook her head, pressing her free hand to her chest, then to his, with a thump. Her mouth worked again, and this time she pushed the words out. "Fate...is...a web. It...catches people. All people. Everywhere." She took a deep breath at his uncomprehending look, and the words appeared to come easier, as if she were a teacher trying a new approach to make a student understand. "Fate is a web. The web is everywhere. Here." A press to his chest. "Here." A press to her own. "In between." She lowered her head, eyes earnest on his, waiting. "Everywhere in between. Always in between."
Snape wasn't sure whether to be happy or not that he was beginning to understand her confunded sort of sense. "You were on Horizon," he murmured. "And you wanted to leave. So you Saw...my fate...here on the End."
Luna nodded, eagerly. "Always."
"And you used that...as a focus for a wandless Apparition...across a solar system." It sounded like madness. Snape couldn't believe that he was actually saying the words. The greatest wizarding minds had been trying for hundreds of years to find a way to Apparate across the etherless vacuum of space.
Luna laughed and clapped, nodding. "Everywhere!"
Snape was so caught up in thinking of the implications that he didn't even react when she threw her arms around his neck in a delighted hug.
A Seer that could prophecy about anyone, anywhere? Instantaneous Apparition across star systems?
The Alliance had bombed entire planets to slag for less.
Snape turned his head to look at McGonagall. She was white as a sheet, and Snape imagined that he didn't look much better.
---------------------------
"We have to get her off-planet, Severus," McGonagall said, when Luna had drifted off to sleep and they were back at the kitchen table. "Muddle her trail. They must be looking for her."
"I know." Snape sipped his tea, trying to compartmentalize what he knew and plan accordingly. "They might already know where she is, at least vaguely. If I were doing incredibly valuable experiments on someone, I would put a Trace on them, as a precaution."
"That makes sense. Which means they already know she Apparated, though it would be difficult to trace exactly where."
"As far as we know. We are assuming, however--" Snape held up one finger "--that they did not have some lingering legilimancy spell on her and--" He held up another "--that they do not understand Luna's 'webs' any better than we do. Which might be a rather lethal assumption."
McGonagall's eyes narrowed behind her glasses, flicking her wand at the lunch dishes. They trooped to the filled sink and started washing themselves. "She said she used your fate to guide the Apparition. I suppose it could leave some kind of a trail."
"Your guess is as good as mine. Apparition moves in straight lines. If they caught the direction and realized that she'd gone off-planet, all they would have to do is find where the line terminated."
"If they realized. Obviously they didn't know enough about her to keep her from escaping."
Snape nodded. "It probably has bought us some time."
McGonagall turned from the sink to smile at him. "Us, hmm?"
Snape scowled into his teacup. "Yes, us. Don't be daft, it's not sentimentality. They must know her past, and if you think that the Alliance doesn't know that you and I are here, then you are fooling yourself. Even if the girl Apparated to Earth That Was this very moment, we'd still have the Alliance knocking on our doors."
McGonagall made a hmm of agreement, and for a long moment the only sound was the clinking of crockery in water. "What will you do?"
It was the question Snape had been asking himself for the past hour. He disliked the Alliance more than he'd hated anything or anyone except, possibly, Voldemort himself, and the Alliance had so far returned the favor. When faced with knowledge that he might have been contacted by Luna...knowing that he was a superb Occlumens and that they could never be sure whether or not he was telling them the truth....
Well. Snape knew what he would do, were he them. And the Ministry was no more merciful than he when it came to disposing of loose ends.
"What else can I do?" He sneered, the words bitter on his tongue. "Run. Again." Snape let go of his empty cup as it floated over to join the other dishes in being scrubbed within an inch of its life. He sighed, rubbing one temple. "Silly fool of a girl. She destroyed both of our lives here the moment she arrived."
"Mmm. Yes, I suppose so," McGonagall agreed. Snape only then realized that she was moving about with a purpose, pulling this and that from cupboards and drawers, most of it disappearing into a handbag that looked at once physically incapable of holding it all and perpetually empty.
Snape shook his head. "You don't seem too disturbed by this. What about your business?"
McGonagall waved a hand dismissively. "I've been thinking of a vacation anyway. All that lifting and carrying. It's taken a dreadful toll on me," she murmured serenely, producing a pistol from somewhere, checking the chamber, and putting it, loaded, into the bag. "I'm a delicate old woman, you know."
Snape snorted.
"And really, there's no use crying over spilled milk now. Weren't you the one, after all, who was complaining not too long ago about having to hide here amongst the Muggles?" She snapped the bag shut, waving her wand over it twice in a complicated pattern.
"I would have preferred to make this decision myself, Minerva, rather than have it forced upon me." Snape stood, gathering his own bag.
McGonagall shrugged, but she was smiling. "True. Though I think that we can draw a little hope from Luna herself."
Snape stopped, just looking at her. "You did just hear the words coming out of your mouth, didn't you?"
McGonagall shook her head. "Out of all the people she's ever looked up to, Luna chose you to run to. Given what she can do...I think that we can assume that she chose a course of action that would turn out well for all involved."
"Lovegood? Do something reasonable? You'll forgive my skepticism."
McGonagall shooed him back towards the stairs. "You're sure you can get out a 'wave without being detected?"
"As certain as I can be." Snape followed her down the stairs, ignoring the creaking of his knees. "I wish to go on the record, however, as being against asking them for favors."
"Duly noted. Consider it my asking them for a favor, if it makes you feel better. I just hope that they're nearby. Otherwise, two weeks is a long time to wait for the next transport."
"Perhaps they'll be busy," Snape suggested. "Or refuse to come. Or in jail." The idea was slightly cheering.
McGonagall mock-scowled at him as she went about reopening the shop. "If at all possible, they'll come. Three friends in need, after all."
Snape bared his teeth at being included in the "friend" category. He set his payment for the week's supplies onto the counter before settling his hat back on his head and picking up his packages.
She paused after unlocking the door, looking out at the dusty street. "They'll come." Her voice left no room for uncertainty. She held open the screen door for him.
"Yes," Snape murmured, squinting in the sunlight. "Far be it from me to suggest that they would do anything so sensible as tell us that we're on our own."
Minerva McGonagall looked much too cheerful for a woman facing leaving her life behind. Again. It was almost contagious, and Snape was willing to bet that she knew it. "Good day, Severus," she said, pointedly.
Snape raised an eyebrow at her and touched the brim of his hat. "Good day, Minerva."
Snape nodded to a few customers as he walked out onto the street, already tallying what he should start packing and what could be left behind. He was slightly disturbed at how little he was disturbed by the idea.
Honestly. Gryffindors, and now Ravenclaws. Always getting him into trouble.
--------------------------------------
PART TWO: PHOENIX
He was flying.
The clouds whipped past him in a cool mist, soft and intimate on his face, the ground beneath him a blur of green and brown. The wind was cold and sharp, invigorating, and the sense of speed, of limitless possibility, of heady power and grace, was everything he'd ever loved about playing Quidditch. He could see the snitch ahead of him, glinting in the sunlight, and then, a second later, Malfoy zooming in on an intercept course, shouting something unintelligible but no doubt derogatory over his shoulder. Harry leaned over his broom, determined not to be fazed by the strange fact that suddenly both he and Malfoy were naked on their brooms, his eyes only for the golden flash of snitch ahead of him as he swooped, dove, veered, elbowed Malfoy in the face, and reaaaaached--
---and yelped as he hit the floor, blankets tangling around his legs, his hand numb and not at all helpful in his scramble to get his more delicate bits away from the cold metal floor. "Whafuh? Ow." He hissed as his hand chose that moment to come painfully to life. He shook it while he squinted at the chrono on the wall long enough to determine that yes, it had stopped again. He grumbled as he cast about, simultaneously trying to find his watch and his trousers.
Of course, that was the moment that there came a banging knock on the plating above his cabin door, followed by Ginny's sadistically cheerful, "Everyone decent in there?"
"Hell, no," he replied, groping under the bed when the floor was depressingly lacking in clothing.
"Oh, good, just how I like it." A groan and bang of metal, and then steps coming down the ladder. "We've got a--hey, now, I like that view just fine."
Harry turned his head just in time to see Ginny smiling appreciatively at his backside. He rolled his eyes as he straightened and fished his watch out of his trouser pocket. It had stopped. He gave up and let it fall. "What time is it?"
"A little after 1100. You've been asleep for...oh, 'bout nine hours. What're you hunting for?"
"My...." Harry made a vague gesture in front of his face. Ginny translated and handed him his glasses from where they'd ended up the night before, on the desk, next to his wand.
Harry put them on and frowned through his yawn. "Why didn't you wake me?"
Ginny ran a hand fondly through his no-doubt thoroughly sleep-rumpled hair. "You looked so cute lying there, snoring. Drooling a bit on your pillow. I just didn't have the heart."
Harry made a face and wrapped his arms around Ginny's waist, burying his face in her stomach. She smelled of soap and musk and gunpowder. Good, familiar, Ginny things. Had he not quite been as sleep-muzzed as he was, he'd have been tempted to do something with the firm muscle of her abdomen other than use it as a pillow. As it was, though, Ginny merely dropped a kiss on top of his head and said, "You're needed up on the bridge."
Harry pulled back, groping about for a shirt and finding one at the end of the bed, entwined with one of Ginny's. "Something wrong?"
Ginny's wry look boded nothing good even before she said, "We've got a live 'wave from Snape."
Harry blinked. He couldn't remember the last time that Snape had voluntarily contacted them...if ever, now that Harry thought about it. That couldn't mean anything good. And that was in addition to having to deal with Snape in the first place. Harry sighed. "And I thought that the morning couldn't get any worse. What's he want?"
Ginny pulled a face. "Won't say until you're there. Said he didn't want to have to repeat himself."
"Git," Harry mumbled to his buttons as he put his shirt on.
"Oh, and Malfoy was looking for you earlier. Don't be surprised if he ambushes you. He seemed pretty torqued off about something."
"So what else is new." Harry sighed again and stood, catching Ginny around the waist for another quick nuzzle. "You're just the bearer of bad news this morning, aren't you?"
He could feel her chuckle against his lips. "You don't seem to be too upset."
"POTTER!" The voice sounded triumphant and right above their heads.
"Hide me?" Harry said, pulling them around so Ginny was between him and the hatch.
"Hell, no," she said, turning and giving him a good push towards what sounded suspiciously like someone tapping an impatient foot on the deck above. "Up, before Ron says something to piss off Snape."
"Cruel, cruel woman," Harry muttered fondly, climbing the ladder and coming face-to-face with what looked to be a very angry Slytherin. Harry could tell, because not only did he get the Crossed Arms, not only did he get the Scowl, not ONLY did he get the Tapping Foot, but he also got the Annoyed Eyebrow. "Good morning, Draco, you look lovely today. Is that a new coat?"
It did, indeed look like a new coat, or at least one that Harry didn't see all the time. Deep emerald green, looked to be velvet with silver brocade around the edges. Expensive. And kind of fetching in a thoroughly Slytherin type of way, though even Harry could tell that it didn't match the cheongsam under it. He opened his mouth to say so when Malfoy shoved his hand in front of Harry's nose, fingers splayed. "Five, Potter. FIVE. Do you know what five is, Potter?"
"...Is this a trick quest--what am I saying, I'm talking to a Slytherin, of COURSE this is a trick question." Harry jumped a little as Ginny goosed him to get him to move out of the way and let her come up the ladder into the corridor. She flashed him a grin as she slid past, but pointed pointedly to the bridge. He nodded and started to sidle in that direction, Malfoy in pursuit.
"Five is how many degrees Celsius it is in my shuttle, Potter. AGAIN." Malfoy shoved his hand back in his coat pocket triumphantly. "I demand that you do something about this. I pay good money to rent that shuttle and that includes the environmental system. You promised that this would be fixed a WEEK ago--"
Harry rubbed his temple and sighed. "And it WAS, Malfoy. I'll tell Hermione to get on it, first I see her--"
"Wait, what, did I hear my name?" Hermione asked, sticking her head out from the bridge. Behind her, Harry could already see Ron and Neville. Ginny hadn't been kidding that Snape wanted to talk to everyone, evidently.
"Malfoy's shuttle's a bit nippy."
"AGAIN?" Hermione scowled. "I KNEW that coupling wouldn't hold. I'll get right on it today, I promise."
"See?" Harry said, stepping onto the bridge. "Shiny. Happy now?"
Malfoy sniffed disdainfully as he followed Harry through the hatch. Actually SNIFFED. Harry hadn't known that people actually DID that. "I hope you don't expect any rent for today, as my quarters are unliveable and it is quite beneath my--urgk."
Harry turned around to see what "urgk" meant but only got a brief glance of Malfoy taking a step back before his attention was brought back to the crowded bridge by an all-too-familiar voice. "Ah, Potter, a slow starter as usual, I see."
Harry turned back, slowly. Exactly how could the man's voice still pour ice water down his spine? "Pr...Mister Snape. How delightful to see you this morning."
If the voice was a cup of cold water, the face was a drop in Hogwarts Lake. There was a lot of history between them, bad and not so bad, but really the shock was that Snape looked older. Part of it was the crappy comm screen, but the rest of it was just age and living. Harry hadn't seen Snape in...years. Not quite as far back as Serenity Valley, but close to it. Just after the camps, maybe. And a part of Harry would always remember Snape as he'd first seen him: twenty years younger, dressed in black and disdain at Hogwarts' head table. But that...that was not something to be thinking of now. After all, a few more lines on his face or not, Snape's sneer was still the same. "Is the rabble finally all assembled, Longbottom?"
Neville glanced about and cleared his throat. "Yes, sir." It made Harry feel a bit better to know that he wasn't the only one made to feel like an errant schoolboy again.
"Delightful. Your attention, please. I don't wish to repeat myself." Snape's face set. "You are absolutely certain that this channel is secure on your end, Mr. Weasley?"
Ron's fingers twitched over his panel, more for reassurance than anything else, it seemed. He made a face that was almost an eyeroll. "Yeah."
"You would wager your life upon it?"
"Y...yes?" Ron frowned in puzzlement, his fingers twitching again, smoothing over the settings on instinct. He looked over at Harry, but Harry just shrugged and frowned back. Snape had always been paranoid, but it was a paranoia that had kept them all alive more than once. If Snape thought things that bad....
"Good." Snape's eyes made the rounds of the assembled faces before settling on Harry's as he began. His voice, seemingly unknowingly, fell into a lecturing tone, steady and concise. The Phoenix's bridge was silent, first from attention and then from shock and anger as Snape laid out his tale, one fact at a time, methodically as any Potions protocol.
When Snape was finished, Ginny laid a hand over Harry's own. He looked down at him, forcing himself to unclench the fist he hadn't even realized he'd made. He'd thought that he could not hate the Ministry any more. Evidently he'd been wrong. The bastards. The lying, blackmailing, inhuman bastards. Luna's face swam before his eyes: smiling vaguely in Hogwarts, and then set in grim determination, streaked with soot as she threw Shield Charm after Shield Charm around them in Serenity Valley as the fire rained down--
Hermione was the first to recover, though she was white-lipped and apparently trying to strangle an oily rag in her hands. "Apparition over empty space is...is...."
"Impossible, yes," Snape said. "Or so it has been thought. From her story, the Ministry has stumbled upon, either by design or chance, an entirely new branch of Seeing-based magic. I can verify for a fact that someone has been in her mind, nipping and tucking like some inept surgeon. And although she is not altogether comprehensible on some points, she is quite lucid on others. I've no reason to believe that she is any madder than usual, only...altered."
"And the Ministry, of course, wants her back," Harry said, his voice sounding flat even to his own ears. Ginny's hand tightened on his.
Snape's lip curled. "Of course. She is, at this moment, their most valuable secret and greatest weapon."
Hermione bit her lip, thinking. "Do they have a way to track her? Do they know where she is?"
"Unknown. I doubt they allow their test subjects to wander about without some kind of tracking spell. We have layered her in enough Banishing Charms to break the average Tracking Spell, but it is impossible to tell for certain." Snape's scowl deepened. Harry couldn't blame him. It sounded like Snape had been dragged into a right mess.
"Then they could be coming for her right now!" Ron exclaimed.
"Insightful deduction, as usual, Mr. Weasley."
"What do you need from us?" Harry asked quietly. "Transport?"
Snape all but bared his teeth, perhaps at the idea that he needed anything from them. The thought warmed Harry's heart. "Minerva has requested that I contact you about transport. The next ship off Spinner's End does not arrive for another two weeks."
"Ron...?"
Ron's hand were already flying over his console. "We...could be there in five...no...about four and a half days."
"Four days, six hours," Hermione said, her eyes steady. "I can get another ten percent out of the engines, easy."
Harry nodded and looked back at Snape's face on the comm. "Four days, six hours. We'll contact you when we're about to hit orbit for landing coordinates."
"Fine." And, without another word, Snape cut the 'wave on his end.
Ginny hugged him from behind. "Poor Luna."
"Yeah," Harry said, turning his head to kiss her cheek. He saw Malfoy, who had hung back through the whole exchange. "What were you hiding for, Malfoy?"
Malfoy drew himself up. "I was not hiding, you imbecile. Just because I had no desire to be stuffed onto the bridge like the rest of you sardines--"
Harry didn't buy it. He'd seen how Malfoy had recoiled when he'd seen Snape's face. It was strange. He'd always thought that the two of them got along. "You don't have some problem with Snape, do you?"
Malfoy shifted, his eyes flicking to the side. "Of course not."
"Good. Because if the Ministry is hot on their tails, likely we'll be picking up more than just Luna." Harry grinned at the wide-eyed look on Malfoy's face, then shook his head in puzzlement again when Malfoy went pale and stalked away back towards his cold shuttle.
Harry sighed and said, "All right. Everyone, let's get to Spinner's End, fast as we can. Hermione, work your magic."
"Right." Hermione squeezed Ron's hand and trotted off the bridge, already muttering calculations under her breath.
Ron looked pained. "...Snape, Harry?"
Harry shrugged. "Well, I'm not going to leave them there if they want to run. The Ministry might already know they have Luna, and I'm not leaving anyone to their tender mercies, let alone old--" enemies? friends? "--allies."
Ron sighed and went back to plugging coordinates into the navigation.
Neville was looking at him, arms crossed. "You sure this is a good idea, Harry?"
"No. It's probably a terrible idea. Likely to get the Ministry on our tails again, if we're not lucky."
"I'd feel better if you didn't sound so cheerful about that," Neville said, glumly, his lips quirking.
Harry found himself grinning back. "C'mon, all we've got to do is get there quick and then stay one step ahead of them." He looked back at Ginny, who was grinning herself. He reached back, patting her thigh. "What could possibly go wrong?"
--------------------------------
Luna woke to a wash of silver gossamer. The threads were visible tonight, gleaming about her like a cocoon in the dark bedroom. Some were thick and strong, like Professor Snape's and Professor McGonagall's, close and steady. Others were fainter, shifting about her in an intricate dance, catching up in her own thread, in the professors'. Fate was changing, the future was changing, things were...changing.
Luna reached out, tentatively, her fingers barely brushing over the new threads, catching images from she knew not how far into the future--
-- Harry and Ginny, laughing, each carrying a toddler--
--a firefly ship, a home of metal and love, blazing into the night with wings of flame--
--a gunfight, Harry and Snape arguing even as they take cover, then bursting out to both fell dark shadows with wand and revolver--
--Draco Malfoy, looking nervous and unsure as he watches Snape walk away down a ship's corridor--
--Neville, reading something from a large book, his brow furrowed in concentration--
--Hermione, her face pale and her hands covered in oil and blood as she grabs a wrench and slides under some machinery as metal groans all around her--
--Ron Weasley, grinning as he maneuvers a ship through a sky thick with pursuers--
--a pulled trigger, clicking on empty chambers--
--a hall of mirrors and a clock of sand--
--Minerva McGonagall, pulling a gun from her handbag and calmly putting a hole in a uniformed man's forehead--
--Draco, straddling Snape's lap as Snape's hands slide up his bare back--
--Ginny, firing a very large rifle into a crowd of Ministry soldiers, whispering a Reloading Charm over and over--
--the silver gryphon, the one-eared cat, the one-fanged snake, an otter, a tiger, a knight, a bird, a stag....
The visions faded away. Luna yawned, closing her eyes again, and fell asleep, inexplicably reassured by the image of a phoenix, wings spread against a sea of stars, flying free.
~~~~~