Disclaimer: HP isn't mine.

The Death Eaters had materialized from nowhere. Severus had seen her walking back alone from Hogsmeade wrapped in her deep blue cloak, snowflakes in her hair, cheeks white and pink and soft. She'd smiled at him, that special secret smile he could never understand. Luna Lovegood.

He had glowered back dutifully, as he always did. His breath caught like ice, as it always did.

Then...a swift burst of black, the wide flashing light, a man's voice. A girl's scream.

Severus acted from instinct, casting a shielding charm around her body, silently cursing the assailant. But it was over too quickly...they scattered far as leaves, and his countering curse vanished in smoke.

His actions had deadened the force of the curse...but Luna lay crumpled from the blow, some dark residue from the attack enveloping her body. He raced over.

Severus had seen this before. No, no, no...

After a swift appraisal, he knew she would be in for a rough night, but she'd live. She would live.

Now he knew her ailment, he knew the cure: he choked emotion beneath action. Severus swooped down, taking her slender form in his arms, and Apparated to the castle gates. Striding in, he sent a silent call to Poppy. She knew what do do: prepare a bed, give him space.

They both knew he was far better equipped to deal with Dark Magic that she.

His student stirred fitfully in his arms. He moved his hand lightly against her skin; hot already. The fever was taking hold quickly.

The infirmary was empty when they arrived, which Severus liked. Let him heal alone.

Luna's eyes flickered open when he laid her in the bed. "Professor?" He was moving smoothly about the room, preparing potion ingredients.

Always the same questions. Where am I, what happened, what's going on.

But apparently not so for Luna Lovegood. He shot her a quick glance; she was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.

Ah. She's trying to remember by herself. His fingers closed around a tiny vial of phoenix tears.

They were so different, Luna Lovegood and Severus. He'd never say, but she fascinated him. Every expression, every word, every thought that rippled in the strange brilliant Luna Lovegood was alien to him. Severus liked puzzles. After observing her for so long, he had gleaned some understanding of his fey, curious, elusive, wise, young student, could almost read her...

Well, he liked to think so, anyway. No chamomile, he decided...it might ease her pain, but he preferred she stay awake throughout the night. Otherwise, she might succumb to the fever and break...

Her silvery voice stirred his musings in the stillness of the room. "You protected me, didn't you? I hardly even saw them, but you were so quick..."

Severus glanced sideways at her. Was she trying to flatter him? Of course not. There is no veil between her mind and her words.

So he nodded, put on his best teacher voice, hoping that and his busy hands would prevent her from spotting the beads of sweat on his brow, the tiny tremors that shook his spine.

What if he hadn't been there? He turned away.

"Indeed. It was most lucky for you, Miss Lovegood, that I decided to browse the book shops." His potion prepared, Severus pressed a beaker into her hands, avoiding the strange and purple regard.

"Thank you," she said.

He knew she was referring to the attack, and the soft true gratitude in her voice made him swallow thickly.

"Drink," he murmured, hiding.

She obeyed. "Will this heal me?"

He adopted the business tone again, accepting the empty beaker and Vanishing it with his wand. "It will help. You are feverish now, Miss Lovegood. But the worst is yet to come. You will feel terrible pain, I'm afraid, and will grow very weak."

She remained impassive, watching, waiting.

"But fortunately, the odds are good that there will be no lasting damage."

"Good," she breathed, relief dancing like wind behind her eyes.

He slid a heavy wooden chair by her bed and settled down comfortably, work done. "You'll need to be kept awake," he informed her in response to her questioning look. "I have the most experience of all the faculty with this sort of injury, so the task falls to me."

Sudden unusual guilt came upon him. Did he sound too bothered, too harsh? Then Severus wondered at himself: why did he care if she felt like a burden?

But she was different. Always, Luna Lovegood was different.

He looked at her again, troubled. She was panting slightly, eyes narrowed; the fever was bearing down on her, and pain was coming quickly too.

"Talk to me," he commanded.

Luna blinked, surprised.

Severus sighed. "I need you to maintain consciousness. As much as you can...I know it's hard, Miss Lovegood."

"Mmmm," she replied, in a high wandering voice. "Very well, then, I can talk." She paused. "I feel very peculiar, Professor. Like part of my brain has gone to sleep."

Well, he thought. Not far off.

She continued dreamily. "And I feel tired. But something else, too...something is mounting in me-" she stopped abruptly, and Severus perceived that, for all her uniqueness, Luna was, at this moment, just a frightened girl.

He patted her arm awkwardly, unused to physical contact, to comfort, to gentleness.

"I know. It's the curse...or a remnant of it. It will manifest shortly as pain-"

The agony seized her then, blinding as a winter storm; Severus could see it rising in her eyes, feel the quaking in her skin. He clenched her hand, feeling, feeling, despite himself.

He watched her pityingly in her private pain, mouth parted in an unsounding scream. "Breathe," he said firmly, "breathe!" and he held her as she quieted, trembling from weariness and fear.

For the next few hours she was wracked on and off with the pains, one episode after the other, gasping, the fever taking stronger root in her mind. Severus noted the deepening fever with mounting concern, knowing grimly there was no help he could offer at this point save the comfort of his presence.

Gradually, the knowing brilliant light dimmed in her eyes, giving way to some obscure, mysterious delusions. Madness, she spoke of, strange ramblings that occasionally made bizarre sense to Severus, exhausted as he himself was.

Knowing there was so little he could do, Severus indulged her questions, her queer speeches. Unable to save her, he simply watched, etching the memories of her into his heart. Here, guarding her dreams, her madness, was the only place he could pretend that she belonged to him...just for a night...

He let things be.

She took his hand, calloused and dry from years of preparing potions, in her own, tracing the blue veins, the long white thumb, the lifeline bisecting his palm. Luna's own fingers were deft and gentle, curiously feathering against his skin. He very nearly pulled away, but the feverish intensity in her had, like some fey enchantment, caught him up and bound him fast.

"Such a delicate vessel," she murmured wonderingly, "this mortal coil. So easily broken...but capable of such strength!"

Severus gazed long at her, filling his eyes with only her. She didn't notice, absorbed in her contemplations as she was.

"A marvel within a marvel." She examined his hand with infinite, meticulous care.

A tiny furrow appeared between her eyebrows. He wanted to smooth it out with a touch.

But she let her head drop back onto the pillows, still entwining her fingers with his. "Is my heart beating?"

He started, but was graceful enough to conceal it with purposeful movement. Deliberately, he pressed her fingertips to the warm skin just above her left breast. Nothing. He moved slightly to the right. There...such a delicate vessel...the movement of her heart...

He pulled back. "Yes."

"Good," she nodded slowly. "That's good, then."As though she might have died there with him and not noticed, too lost in him, with him.

A sad faraway look stole across her pale pointed features. "When the girl was born, she was twice-cursed."

"Oh?" Severus rumbled. He was more interested in running his fingers through the swath of silver-pale hair that flowed over the skin he had just pressed his hand against...but it wouldn't do to let her know that. So he feigned interest in her words.

Luna sighed agreement, a long 'yes' falling from her mouth like a trembling autumn leaf. "That she would never find home; that she would never know love." Her eyes fluttered, half asleep. "But that she would be human. She would be human..."

Severus blinked; bitterness stole into his heart, grasping with icy claws. Never know love? Was this more madness? The dreams of a fevered girl? Looking over her face, he wondered if he ought to prod her to make certain she didn't fall too deeply in slumber.

But she spoke again.

"I wanted to be human for so long...even what you hate, I wanted. What you love, what you fear. And your dreams...oh. I wanted it all." Luna curved onto her side, facing him now.

He traced the youthful jaw with his eyes. "Aren't you human now, Luna?"

Sleepy laughter. "I think we both know I'm neither one nor the other."

That gave him pause. Thoughtfully, he reached out and leveled the hair from her face; her exhaled breath was warm on his hand. Madness again. Fey madness. What are you, little one?

She seemed to read his mind, as she often did. "Of course, come morning, you will know this was just a dream. Feverish ramblings, you will know."

It sounded to Severus more of a command than reassurance.

She shifted again, sudden pain marring that strange tranquility she always carried with her like a cloak. "Oh, I'm drifting, Professor." She moaned low and keening, words stopping in her throat.

Severus watched helplessly, murmuring calming sounds, pressing a soothing hand to her cheek. The skin burned. She was right, he knew: she was drifting further away.

Fear bloomed.

"Look at me," he said suddenly, sternly. "Luna Lovegood, look at me."

Her eyes opened, silver and purple and pained. Severus found wilderness there.

"Dark Eyes," she whispered, wandering within thought. "If they were blue, I could anchor here-ah!" She grimaced when another wave of fire swelled in her veins. But she opened her eyes again, the pain wide inside, and stared straight into his mind.

And there, she quieted. Her lashes were still wet with tears. Severus wondered absurdly if it had been an invisible agony that caused them, if she treaded a far more lonely path than simple sickness.

Her voice came from ten thousand light years away, a high lament from beyond time.

"It's so unlikely...so peculiar, so cruel...that of everyone, it should be you. You..." Breath died within him. You too, my darling? The purple eyes fluttered closed, and Severus knew somehow she had fallen into a faint, no mere sleep. There it is.

He pressed the tip of his wand to her brown. "Ennervate," he said.

Nothing.

He tried again, again.

Again. Every spell he knew, some he didn't. Again.

Until, near tears himself, blood pounding furiously, mad rage welling, he stopped.

He understood.

Without thought, without rationalization, without shame, Severus slid slowly from his chair onto the bed. Luna...he whispered, pulling her white form, her white hair, wrapped in white sheets, to his chest.

He stayed like that all through the night, cradling her softness, the beloved face anguished, soul groaning in the body like trapped birds in a burning tree.

She slept a long time.

When dawn came and she opened her eyes, lucid at last, Severus did not draw back straight away. He saw the knowing resignation in her mind, so he let her caress his face, just once, just once.

She touched it with those fingers, those eyes, that sigh. Grief surfaced fiercely, giving her a haunted, dangerous, tender look. If anything, it only made her more beautiful.

You will love, little one, you will, you will. If not for Lily...if not for the war, for Dumbledore, he wanted to say. If not for you, so young...so young...

Almost, he let her see the swirling tumble of emotion in his heart. Almost, he pressed her fingers to his own chest, let her feel the rush of blood and longing. And almost, he pressed his rough lips to hers, so soft and close and warm. So young...

Severus withdrew, guilt riding his step. He gathered authority, distance, left her there unspeaking, small and trembling and alone.