//------------------------------// // Snape's Dreams // Story: A Tale of Two Lunas // by Everythingpossible //------------------------------// WHUMF. Luna sighed as the gargantuan text made contact with the stage that had been set up in the middle of her classroom. Teachers and national sovereigns have very similar job descriptions, in that they both deal with large numbers of idiots and large amounts of paperwork. Her usual ‘Dump-it-all-into-Tia’s-pile’ strategy was useless here; she was somehow expected to teach this crap to a class of moody, hormonal teenagers. “The bloody ‘ell is that?” Ron Weasley said, breaking the pregnant silence. “This,” Luna said, lifting the titanic tome from its resting place with a swirl of blue ether, “is your O.W.L. review book”. “Jesus Christ, you expect us to learn all of that?” “This wasn’t my choice, Mr. Weasley. If it was up to me, I’d give all of you an ‘Outstanding’ as long as you didn’t die in here” she said. “And I’d be quiet, Ron, unless you’d like the whole class to learn about a certain dream of yours about a certain student in a certain article of clothing”. Ron’s face went red as a fresh-picked tomato. The ability to see into another person’s dreams has its advantages, even if it involves seeing Hermione Granger in a bikini. “Any more questions?” Luna said. “Is it true that you were banished for trying to kill your sister?” asked a voice near the back of the room. Luna’s eyes focused on its source with a cold stare. “This room has two exits, Mr. Malfoy. The door, and the window. I’ll let you decide which one to take today” she said, after which Draco astutely edged further back into the crowd. “Now,” she sighed, “Let’s begin”. The door to the small room on the seventh floor shut with a percussive slam. Although her office was much larger, Luna had grown sort of fond of this little space. It lacked the grandiose opulence of her chambers in Canterlot, but really anything is acceptable once you’ve spent a millennium sleeping on solid rock. Wasting no time, she heaved herself into the small bed in the corner, and instantly fell asleep. Although she wasn’t exactly envious of the massive loads of legislature, the annoying dignitaries, and the other assorted burdens of running a government that her sister was burdened with, she was a bit jealous of the fact that, at the end of the day, Celesta could just rest peacefully for hours before doing it all again at sunrise. Luna’s job was pretty much 24/7. She was technically supposed to only visit the dreams of the ‘highly disturbed’, but this archaic, unwritten rule went pretty much ignored. The dimensional shift had also affected this aspect of her life. Disconnected from the familiar web of Equestria’s dreamscape, she was now before a universe of six billion sentient beings, all with problems and night terrors of their own. However, seeing that most of these people would not be welcome to psychiatric help from a talking horse, she mostly focused on Hogwarts students and staff. Tonight’s dreams were pretty much par for course for most of the night. Harry with his constant terrors of Voldemort, Neville’s irreconcilable fear of dragons, Professor Flitwick’s fantasies of being six feet tall, they all played like reruns of terrible reality shows. Unlimited divine power comes with an eternity of bad television. One of them, however, was new. It began like a lot of them, with Luna appearing in a generically placid field. She groaned as she saw two young humans walking over a hill. “Great,” she said, “Another love story”. The two looked vaguely familiar. The boy’s face was pale as snow, with shiny black hair coming down to his shoulders. As happy as he might have been, he had one of those faces that was eternally drawn into a frown. The girl, by contrast, looked overjoyed, with brilliant eyes as green as emeralds and long, straight hair of scarlet. As they were both wearing robes and scarves, Luna could only assume that they were Hogwarts students, or possibly staff at a younger age. They looked like they both should be in their fourth year. They were talking about something, something that seemed to distress the boy. She nonchalantly walked towards the couple, wanting to get whatever this is over with. However, something strange happened. The young boy looked away from the girl for a second in Luna’s direction. As soon as their eyes met, the boy and the girl disappeared and the pleasant hillside lost its colour and faded into nonexistence before her eyes, and Luna was left floating in an empty, black void. “One should not go peering into other’s thoughts,” came a somber, yet familiar voice like a loudspeaker. Suddenly, the void disappeared, and Luna fell into nothingness. She was suddenly catapulted into consciousness with a jerk, suddenly understanding the meaning of “waking in a cold sweat”.