Mad Snorkacks and Englishmen

Chapter 1: Lunar Teacake

”Dunno.” said Harry, lying back on his bed fully clothed and staring blankly upwards. He felt no curiosity about R.A.B.: He doubted that he would ever feel curious again. As he lay there, he became aware suddenly that the grounds were silent. Fawkes had stopped singing.
And he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that the phoenix had gone, had left Hogwarts for good, just as Dumbledore had left the school, had left the world….had left Harry.
-Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, pg. 631

Harry gazed up into the red mass of his four-poster’s canopy without blinking. His eyes felt hollowed out and dry, the tears that had threatened to escape having long ago left him. He lay back with his arms crossed behind his head listening to the snores of his roommates resounding in the dark space. It was not quite approaching dawn, but he could feel the lateness of the hour and still he continued to stare, as if waiting for an answer to appear in the folds of the curtains. He felt old and tired and wondered if he could ever find rest in slumber again. The whole world seemed silent to him, whirring faintly on an imaginary axis like an old record on its player.


He attempted to move around and dispel the stiffness that had settled into his joints. There was a restlessness in his belly that hummed and vibrated like a tuning fork, insisting upon action, and Harry felt it only too easy to give in. It was obvious he’d be getting no sleep tonight, regardless of the exhaustion weighing down his bones, so it only seemed practical to walk things off. He needed to be in motion in order to help him understand the events that had taken place in the last ten hours. Scouring out the inside of his brain to make sense of it all while draped across his bed seemed a fruitless effort.


Quietly, he hopped to the floor and shuffled to his trunk, slipping on his trainers as he wound his way around the bed. As he bent to lift the lid, he suddenly flashed on his frozen form atop the Astronomy tower, and the subsequent dash towards Snape and Draco the moment the spell had lifted. His cloak was still up there, of course. No time like the present to retrieve it, he supposed. He was unconcerned in being apprehended; the school’s faculty was still in shock, and he didn’t believe Filch would have it in him to be on his usual patrol. He left his map and headed out of his room, shuttling quickly down the stairs and through the portrait door.


The hallways were even more silent, but Harry felt he could detect the walls of the castle itself breathing in and out in its rest, or perhaps it was just the collective exhaled sighs of its residents. He moved at a deliberate pace, yet unhurried or furtive. His echoing footsteps only amplified the surreal feeling that he was the last man left in the universe. The defeated boy wasn’t particularly eager to be back at the scene of the crime, as it were, so soon. How he could look at that wall again without seeing the great man fall backwards to his death, he was unsure. Yet, Harry knew that he needed to see it anyway. His mind continued to scatter around for the missing pieces in the night’s events; clues to show him where it had all gone wrong, how every mistake could be laid at his feet. His heart was too sick and his gut too full of rage to dwell on self-blame, however.


He had to find Snape. Snape would pay for his betrayal to his headmaster, Harry swore, and perhaps alleviate this wretched grip around his heart. In the distraught hero’s mind, he imagined exacting his retribution on the man in grisly, horrible sequences. Plunging a sharp blade into the miserable git’s throat and watching the blood spray, a look of surprise in those black beady eyes. Performing endless Crucios until the former Potions teacher went mad from the pain. Of course, he knew that none of it would bring back Dumbledore; that this was nothing more than a primal need to avenge, but he felt that with everything he’d witnessed tonight, he reserved the right to indulge in a bit of disturbing fantasy.


Soon, he was ascending the final staircase of the tower to the exit atop the roof. His stomach leaped a little in nervous apprehension as he grabbed the handle to the door outside. As he stepped through, he gaped at the scene awaiting him. The stone floor seemed awash in moonlight, the brightness cutting through the black corners to reveal an empty, desolate space that remained spellbound with the cold static zing of violence in the air. He held his breath as he scanned the ground. There was a distinct shimmering by the furthest rampart and Harry recognized the location of his earlier imprisonment under his Headmaster’s spell. The frustration he’d felt then came back to consume him in full force. Why had Dumbledore done it? Why didn’t he let him fight? His mind scrambled for reason once more as it looped through various scenarios in which the outcome did NOT result in his mentor’s death. It seemed that his Headmaster had left him, as usual, ill-equipped to handle this all on his own. Harry reached for his grief, but kept tripping over the indignation of being deserted once again. Trying to avoid getting lost in another minefield, Harry scrunched his eyes shut and shook his head, as if to cast off the troubling thoughts like so much fleas from a dog.


He jogged to the site and reached down for the cloak while his gaze swept over the misty grounds down below. Could he make out the darkened spot of grass where the powerful wizard’s body had landed? He pretended that he could. His hands against the brick, Harry peered out into the night and let the light summer chill dance on his flesh. As his gaze moved up towards the sky, he gave a slight jump as he discovered the Dark Mark had not quite dissipated yet, the ghastly visage still leering in its victory as it hung between the clouds. He turned away from its mocking grin and concentrated instead on the silvery moon, not quite full, but shining incandescent all the same. Its luminous presence pulled something deep out of his well of loneliness, and without a thought, Harry leaned back his head and bayed like a wolf. The sound was mournful and piteous and not what Harry had intended. His shock not yet subsided, the boy’s eyes glazed over as he contemplated his options.


“When did you become a werewolf, Harry Potter?” a voice murmured behind him. In a flash, Harry’s wand was out as he whipped around to face the intruder. He jolted yet again, when he realized he was pointing his wand at the heart of none other than Luna Lovegood. Fuck, he was ridiculously jumpy tonight.


“Luna? What are you doing up here?” he practically growled, a slight embarrassment tingeing his gruffness. “You should be asleep,” he added without a hint of irony. Luna just stared at him in that unsettling way of hers before commenting. “So should you,” she shrugged.


“Well, then, we should both get to it,” he grumbled and gripping his cloak he started towards her.


She stood a few feet away from the door, but Harry couldn’t figure out how she came through so soundlessly. He wondered briefly how long she’d been observing him. She was so pale out under this moon, as ghostly as the spirits that roamed the halls. Before he could reach her, though, Harry abruptly stopped short when he suddenly noticed what she was wearing. It was a simple, light cotton slip, decorated in an eyelet lace around the borders that fell a few inches above her knees, revealing an expanse of milky white flesh beneath. Harry took great care to skim his glare over her long legs in appreciation for a few seconds while attempting not to appear obvious about it.


However, bathed in the unearthly light of the moon’s gaze, Luna’s body was silhouetted under the now diaphanous material. He could make out her hips and breasts, and to his ever growing mortification, her nipples, which stood out pert and stark against the barely masking chemise. Even the indentation between her thighs was highlighted. She looked soft and pliable and imminently touchable, and Harry was surprised to find himself responding to her in a most unheroic fashion. His thoughts already adrift in a sea of muddled misery, he groaned inwardly at the new onslaught of confusing stimulus added to the bevy. Why on earth was she appearing at this moment to vex him with her distracting figure? He’d never even considered her body’s attributes before, and now he had a full view of it to ogle. This was not the time for hormones, man, he chided himself. He was in a state of shock, for fuck’s sake. He had issues to deal with.


“If you are attempting to turn into your wolf shape, I’m afraid to inform you that you’ve got the wrong night, Harry. The moon won’t finish its cycle until the end of the week.” Luna’s soft voice quickly brought him out of his self-reprimanding to focus on her face once more. Her eyes were their usual bulging brightness, but there was a trace of a smile to her lips.


Harry couldn’t find anything even remotely humorous about the situation, nor any situation that had occurred since his flight to Voldemort’s secret cave. A sudden anger flared up behind his eyes at her dreamy countenance. Did she even have an inkling of the havoc wreaked by the Death Eater attack? Did any of the fighting penetrate her gauzy-eyed view of the world? Did the girl comprehend danger at all? The young teenager wanted to shake her into reality. To watch her crumple into an emotional mess like the rest of them. Her equanimity that had so soothed him in the past now taunted his ever-weakening sanity.


“You haven’t answered my question, Luna,” he reminded her, his bespectacled green orbs now boring holes into her chest. “What are you planning on doing up here? Looking for Blibbering whats-its? This is hardly the place to mess about in your nightgown…and bare feet.”


His downward glance took in her shoeless attire and he shook his head again at her oddness. He wasn’t quite sure where all this derision was suddenly coming from, but he was too tired to wrestle with it at the moment. He just wanted to hurt someone and it might as well be the shining girl in front of him.


“I don’t know if you’d noticed, but somebody died up here tonight. People were injured. You did happen to catch the gouges on Bill’s face, did you not? Weren’t you sitting by Neville’s hospital bed last time I saw you? This is serious shit, Luna. You don’t go wandering around the castle in the middle of the night like nothing’s happened while you daydream about nonsense! This isn’t a fucking game!”


His breaths were rapid as his chest heaved in his shouting. He was going to have to calm himself quick or he’d be liable to do something (else) rash. He knew he wasn’t being rational and his vehemence with Luna alarmed him. The boy was amazed that she had managed to get under his skin like this.


It didn’t seem possible, but Luna’s protuberant eyes widened even further in her dismay. She took a step backwards with some trepidation as she shrank back from his fury. For a sick second, Harry drew some satisfaction from her expression before the guilt set in. He hung his head and mentally pulled himself together before he could launch into another tirade. He recalled with some humility that raging fit he had thrown in Dumbledore’s office after Sirius’ passing. It seemed so long ago now. Dumbledore had faced his wrath with steely patience and understanding then, but Luna was not Dumbledore.


“Harry, I’m… so sorry,” she whispered. “I-I was following you, I suppose. It was impetuous of me, I know. I couldn’t sleep and the moon was shining through my window like a beacon. I only meant to come up for a bit to pay my respect.” She hurried through her explanation in a decidedly uncharacteristic acquiescence.


“Pay your respects? To Dumbledore?”, Harry asked, perplexed. How was she planning on going about that up here?


“No, to the moon, of course.” Luna seemed nonplussed by his confusion. “I didn’t really know the Headmaster very well, but daddy insists that he is a great man. But the moon and I are old friends. She calls to me often.”


Harry didn’t need to know anymore. He sighed loudly and looked towards the heavens in resignation. “Well, far be it from me to intrude upon your communing with the big dead rock in the sky. I’ll leave you to it, then.” He surreptitiously scraped his eyes over her figure once more before turning towards the exit.


“You’re angry at him.”


Her voice was clear in the stillness of the night, but it held no accusation in her tone, merely pointing out fact. Harry froze in his tracks.


“Who? Who would that be?” He turned to her. “Snape? Malfoy? Voldemort? I’ve got a whole bloody crew to rail against. But you’re damn right I’m angry. I have every right to be. Snape has no idea what he’s in for when I find him,” he bit out nastily.


“No. I meant Dumbledore.”


Harry’s head snapped back at her blank face in open shock. A swirling mass of conflicting emotion slammed into his spine and roiled around the pit of his stomach. What could she possibly know about his feelings toward the old man? How could she say such a thing? What kind of a cretin would he have to be to direct his fury at the victim in all of this chaos? The questions raged in his mind while he stood there blinking at her with his mouth agape. But even as his outrage weighed in over her audacity, underneath that bluster Harry suspected she spoke the truth. As much as he revered the professor, he knew deeply that he felt betrayed by the loss. Even their recent meetings over the Pensieve had all come too late. There would be no partnership now for Harry and his teacher to suss out a game plan to defeat the evil warlord once and for all. Maddening as ever, the headmaster had given him just enough information for Harry to seize unto his duty, but then left him to figure out the rest on his own. Where and what were the missing Horcruxes? How was he to go about destroying them when even the great Albus Dumbledore had stumbled? And how in the hell could Harry ever hope to achieve victory against a madman even if he managed to work all that out? He was only a sixteen year-old boy with a few skills in his forte up against the most cunning evil the wizarding world had known in centuries. It was too much. There was an absurdity to Harry’s predicament that threatened to engulf him into a fit of inane giggling. The determination he’d felt before Apparating away with the elderly wizard to set things in motion had now faltered. Albus had fucked up. Now Harry had to contend with the fallout. It was a bitter pill that lodged in this throat.


Harry took in his surroundings in a befuddled daze. As if struggling under the tangible weight of this realization, Harry’s legs buckled and he folded heavily upon the ground with a grunt. He allowed his head to fall into his upturned hands and wished that he could be someone else for the millionth time in his life. That illusory feeling of control that the headmaster had visited upon him during the school year had now fled in the aftermath. He needed to get it back. A small hand crept into his periphery, moving behind his head to begin gently stroking the back of his neck, and for once tonight he didn’t startle. He allowed Luna’s fingers to slide up towards his scalp in a gesture of comfort and his body automatically curved towards her presence.


“It’s alright, Harry. It’s okay to be mad at him. You feel helpless; I can see it in the slump of your shoulders. That’s an understandable reaction, Harry Potter.” She settled down on the ground next to him, her knees up against his folded leg as she leaned her body into his side.


He could feel her breath on his ear as she continued to massage the tightness descending into his back. His head turned a few degrees sideways and he curiously regarded the breast that suddenly loomed in his sightline. The exhausted boy remained unruffled by the proximity and fixated his thoughts towards the shapely flesh. It was so close, and Luna’s fingers felt so welcoming on his bare neck. He just wanted some relief from all this suffering. So, with his hands still cradling his head, he leaned over to kiss the tip of that beckoning globe. The nipple still standing at attention through the thin, now straining, fabric hardened further at his grazing lips. He moved back and sighed, watching his breath move across the dark stain the wet imprint of his mouth had left on her shift. Meanwhile, Luna’s body stiffened.


“So,” he spoke, his voice scratchy and low, “how long have you been mates with the moon, Luna?” he enquired lazily, watching with some fascination as his left hand reached towards her and clutched her waist.


He stared as his thumb slid inward, caressing the edge of her soft belly in a semi-circular motion. Luna’s hand had stopped moving, but her palm lay flat against the knob in his neck as his head drooped. He sensed her hesitation. He could wait her out, he thought confidently. In the pending silence, he let his grip loosen and head south. He watched as his hand curved around her hip in a slow glide as his fingers extended to her backside. In another brazen move, he groped the right side of her bottom in his continuing journey as it wound its way toward the back of her thigh. He tugged at it, attempting to bring her closer to him, but Luna only allowed her leg to be lifted before setting it out of his grip.


“Did I ever tell you my mother’s name, Harry?” She went on without waiting for his response. “It was Selene. The Ancient Greeks used her name for their moon goddess. She was the daughter of Hyperion and sister to Helios, the sun god. My mother used to read me stories about them when I was very young. Sometimes, she’d call my father her Endymion. He was a mortal prince that Selene the moon goddess fell in love with. At bedtime, my mum would sit me on her lap while we watched her counterpart through the window and sing me songs or recite poetry. Her hair would glow and I would wrap it around my fingers like the finest spun gold. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful as my mother,” Luna finished somewhat shyly, and she pulled a strand of her own hair dangling in temptation to Harry’s imagination quickly over her ear.


He couldn’t quite interpret her reaction to his boldness, but he listened intently while his fingers continued to peruse the map of her curves, trailing lightly over her skin as they wove their way up and across her stomach. He wouldn’t raise his head to her, but he motioned her to go on with a nudge to her shoulder. His hand reached for her again, but this time settled quite obviously just under her breasts. His open swipe across her midriff gave him an exhilarating thrill and he finally pulled his eyes up towards her chest once again. He had a great urge to kiss one breast and then the other, with more intent than before, possibly involving teeth, and without the interference of that gauzy barrier this time. Luna cleared her throat briefly, but then a strong, even voice started to boom from her mouth,


Hail, white-armed goddess, bright Selene, mild, bright-tressed queen! And now I will leave you and sing the glories of men half-divine, whose deeds minstrels, the servants of the Muses, celebrate with lovely lips.


Harry couldn’t help it. His head moved back and goggled at her lit expression with a goofy grin plastered to his face. The last line hung in the air between them like tendrils of mist and roaming his eyes towards her mouth he found that her lips were, indeed, lovely. Did she draw attention to them on purpose? In his heart, he knew she had no guile about such things. His scrutiny took in the plumpness in her bottom lip, regardless; the soft pink set against her fair skin and blonde halo in an inviting picture of innocence waiting to be debauched. He could hardly refuse, could he? It suddenly became very important for Harry to discover what pleasures awaited him with that slightly open mouth: more important than Snape’s treachery, more important than Death Eaters and mad despots. This moment he could manage on his own.


“That was really beautiful, Luna. I think I’m going to kiss you now, okay?” he told her in a steadfast declaration that insisted on an affirmative.


Luna remained sculpted in her repose, her glittering eyes downcast while her breath sucked in sharply. The sound of it gave Harry a light squeeze in his groin, but then his right hand curved around the back of her neck and pulled forward before all this temporary bravado could desert him. His lips touched those rosy petals of provocation and immediately pushed forward. Luna exhaled softly as she opened her mouth to him and squirmed under his grip. He held her head in place as the kiss deepened, all the while his tongue demanding she proffer her secrets to him, to relent to his bruising exploration and outside world be damned.


Harry slid his hand down her back and met with the other as he clasped his fingers together above her bottom and pulled her towards him again. His body shifted in front of her now, so that he was almost straddling her lap in his zeal to encase her with his limbs. Their breath escaped in tiny gasps as the kiss went on in a fevered dance and Harry waged war on her submission. If she would give in this easy, she would give him everything, he decided. He tugged her upwards in a crushing embrace and his crotch rubbed against her own in a manner that could bear no misunderstanding. Still his mouth enveloped Luna’s own, as he slowly thrust against her, but there was no shame in it. He felt a surge of adrenaline and floated on an endorphin high even as the nature of his objective became clear. The din of screams and curses from the earlier fight on this very spot faded into the background of Harry’s senses as his desire for Luna took over.


The dreamy girl’s fists brought Harry back from his rumination as she banged them against his chest in a desperate plea for air. He tilted his head backwards as he ended the suction from his mouth, but didn’t let up on his tight hold. He needed to escape his life for an hour, and Luna understood escape better than anyone, he reasoned. He searched her face as they both took deep gusts of oxygen into their lungs. There had to be a connection in those sparkling irises, and he looked deeply for a sign that he could move forward, that she was his fearless companion in this new and thrilling course of action. He let the sexual fire in his loins flow through his veins and fill him with a power he’d never felt before now. No longer did he feel the embarrassment that had accompanied Cho’s weepy peck. The recent enthusiastic snogs with Ginny had primed him for something more, something darker that pushed up in his breastbone and fluttered like a distressed moth. He didn’t just want to kiss Luna, he wanted to devour her.


“Uh…mmm, Harry, um…I-I wasn’t…um”, Luna stumbled around her words in a daze. She met his glances briefly while her head twirled about in a fanciful figure eight, her eyes rolling in the whites as she brought her breathing under control. Her hand remained on Harry’s chest and the steady pulse therein settled through her fingers to affect a sort of calm in her speech. “I didn’t expect that,” she exhaled. “Are you suffering from the Wrackspurts again? Maybe they’ve convinced you I’m Ginny?” She looked up at him quizzically now, her sense of order returned.


His eyes locked with hers and he allowed a steely glint to highlight the vulgar purpose of his inspection. “Luna.” He stopped to savor the sound of her name. “Luuuu-na” he echoed in an elongated whisper, letting the vowels caress her in an evocation. “I know who you are.” She trembled in his arms. “I know what I’m doing,” he asserted.


To clarify his words, Harry revisited her right breast and his thumb smeared a path of sweat across the mound. His head swooped in for another kiss, but his ardor spilled over his control and his arm moved hastily up to her shoulder to grasp the strap of her gown to drag it downwards. Her flesh was calling to him in a singing chorus of hallelujahs and he was loathe to refuse it. The lighter kisses he rained upon her patterned their way down her neck and clavicle until his mouth reached its destination. His tongue clumsily sought the tightened nub of the twin now firmly ensconced in his other hand. He could hear faint cries of his name issued from Luna’s lips, but this only served to intensify his craving for her passivity. His fingers sought her hair as he groped and suckled her. They gripped tightly like a vise as he wrapped her dishwater locks around his digits and pulled her back towards the stone floor.


Somewhere in the fog of his consciousness, he surmised that this was Luna’s first experience with any kind of intimacy and he wondered just how far he could push her with his sheer will. He wanted to see her lie down and open herself to him like a lotus in bloom. His imagination was suddenly aflame with the notion of sex and all the curiosity burning within him. He wanted her sex, he admitted to himself. Right here, right now, he wanted to fuck her. Surely he would come to his senses any second and roll off of her, but the mental admonition never came, so he rutted against her instead in a delicious frenzy, his nerves electric in the night breeze. There was sanctuary in her soft embrace and as this epiphany punctured his thoughts Harry suddenly felt a sob rip through his throat before he could contain it. The desolation curled around his spine while his grief surfaced like a whale for air. His only respite was the body beneath him.


“Harry! Harry, wait!” Luna insisted. She tried to reign in the dark-haired boy’s twisting form. If she could just separate him for a moment, she might be able to soothe his anguish. Her heart raced in a way that she hadn’t felt in a while, even during the attack on the castle. Harry was her friend and she desperately wanted to help him. His sorrow was palpable under all that prickling resentment.


Luna knew sadness, understood it in a capacity which marked her inexplicably. Hers was deep in a place that even the fabled Crumple-Horned Snorkack with its shaggy coat, tiny ears, and lumbering, bovine gait could never hope to appear. She kept it wrapped tightly buried under layers of stories and legends that obfuscated that profound ache always threatening to rend her in two. But Harry was a force in her life that she cherished. Ever since she’d first laid eyes on him, she knew he was special. He exuded a spark that eclipsed the rest of his peers in a way that had nothing to do with his history and everything to do with his presence. She could physically see the light manifesting from his slight frame in a pulsating aura and she felt the warmth of it penetrating her now.


Luna reached up and pushed her hands flat against his shoulders. As his upper body moved back, the loss of his heat and the cold snap of air across her bare skin caused her to shudder noticeably. She refrained from pulling him back to her, though, and focused instead on the gleam in his eyes. That piercing green glare held an unspoken demand that she acknowledged in her lower half as she felt the moisture between her legs tickle the inside of her thighs.


“Is there…something I can do for you to make it better, Harry?” she asked in a slow, measured query.


It wouldn’t do to make him startle and run away. He resembled a cornered animal to her right now, claws out and fangs bared, ready to leap on her in attack and then scrabbling to safety to lick his wounds. She would have to take this very slow, like her approach to the fairy hills deep in the Forbidden Forest, murmuring tributes as she cajoled and coaxed to bring the winged tricksters out of hiding and swarm around her in a leery dance of flittering light. She made sure to lock eyes with his before trying again.


“Would you like me to perform oral sex on you? It might calm your nerves.” His mouth dropped open in a dumbfounded expression for a moment, but then his brows quickly furrowed into a hairy black caterpillar as his eyes squinted dangerously at her awaiting look.


“What would you know about that, Luna?”


He had expected a complete naif in the starry-eyed girl. Luna was too wrapped up in her mythical creatures to be aware of the carnal desires of her schoolmates, surely? He couldn’t even imagine her masturbating, unless it was part of some odd ritual to summon a beast of questionable origin featured in the pages of her father’s quirky magazine. Did this mean she could have dirty thoughts, too? Did she have any about him? While Harry might be a novice in the world of sexual interaction, he certainly thought about it plenty amidst all those dark dreams of Bellatrix and Voldemort. Did ‘Loony’ Lovegood really just offer him a blowjob? Perhaps her familiarity with the term was merely something overheard from the girls in her dorm and not one subjected to empirical knowledge, Harry considered. He admitted that the idea of her not being a blank canvas was slightly disappointing. The thought of her having more experience than him somehow slipped the balance in her favor, and Harry wanted retain the upper hand in this little interlude. His hands moved to both of her wrists as his fingers circled around them tightening in a forceful grip.


He moved closer to study her face this time as he prompted her once more, “Luna?”


“Answer me,” he finished darkly.


“I think you would probably enjoy the same techniques they do,” she resumed breathlessly. “They’re usually fairly satisfied afterwards. I can change some tactics, though, if you’d like, Harry. Whatever would feel best for you.” She tipped her head sideways and regarded him solemnly.


“Who…the fuck….are THEY?” Harry demanded, feeling his ire spark back up again at Luna’s vague confessions.


In a mounting sense of unease, it suddenly occurred to him that the ostracized girl’s mistreatment at the hands of her house mates might have extended to something much darker than he originally would have thought possible. Not wanting to wait another second for an explanation, the boy dragged her wrists behind her back twisting them upwards as he brought her face right up to his nose.


“Tell me now. Tell me who it was, Luna.”