The Singing of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack

Summary: Xenophilius Lovegood always thought his wife was insane. Until he himself began to hear the singing of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack...

Author's Note: This fic is written for the third round of Everyone Loves An Irish Girl's So You Think You Can Write Competition. For this round, I have to write a story reflecting on how Luna became as whimsical as she is.

...

"Look what I found in the forest, Daddy!"

Xenophilius Lovegood put his copy of The Daily Prophet down on his desk and smiled at his young daughter. His pale, stern face softened for a moment as he looked at the little girl.

"What do you have there, love? Pine cones? They look lovely, dear."

He reached out for the plain brown cones his daughter held up.

The little girl shook her head. "Oh, no, they are not just pine cones, daddy. Mummy says that they are really magical horns, horns from the Crumple-Horned Snorkack."

"I see." Xenophilius' face was emotionless, but his voice trembled a little. He lifted the small girl up onto his lap and kissed her white-blond hair softly. "Listen, Luna. There are some things you should know, dear. I think you are old enough to understand now. Your mother... Your mother is the sweetest and most beautiful woman I have ever met, but her mind..." He swallowed. "We both love her, don't we, Luna?" His voice was a whisper now. "But her mind is not quite like that of other people, you see. It is not her fault, really; it's a sort of sickness that has come over her gradually."

"Mummy is sick?" The little girl's eyes were wide with fear.

Her father kissed her quickly on the nose. "Oh, it's not a regular sickness, love. She doesn't have a fever or anything like that. But her sickness sometimes makes her see things that aren't there and believe in things that aren't quite true. All the things she writes about in her journals..." He glanced around the small cramped study, and nodded towards the tall stacks of leather-bound journals piled up around the room. "All those fantastic things only exist in her imagination, my love. There are no Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, you see, no lost continents at the bottom of the lake, and no secret messages hidden in the text of The Daily Prophet."

"What? No Crumple-Horned Snorkacks? I know that very few people have seen Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist, does it?" whispered Luna. "Sometimes, you can even hear them singing at dawn, but Mummy says that you need to listen very carefully, because their singing is so soft."

Her father's grave face looked tired and terribly old all of a sudden. "Luna, dear, there are no Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, except in your mother's mind..."

"How do you know that?" Luna's eyes were wide.

Xenophilius Lovegood closed his eyes for a moment. "Because," he whispered, "there are all sorts of books written by natural historians, both Muggles and wizards, and between them they have described all the beings that exist."

Luna eyed the shelves and shelves of books that lined the study thoughtfully. "So it's all in there, then, in those other books, all the things that are true?"

A slight smile passed over her father's pale sculptured face. "Not quite all of them, perhaps, but a good many of them."

"And the things in these books..." Luna brushed a finger over one of her mother's leather-bound journals, "are not true?"

Xenophilius sighed. "They may be true to your mother, love, but the things she describes do not exist in the real world."

"And the places she draws on her maps..." Luna picked up a scroll tied with a purple ribbon and untied it. "Are they not real, either?" She pointed at a colorful hand-drawn map of an island surrounded by a deep blue sea.

Her father shook his head slowly.

"Oh." Luna sat quite silent for a moment, her eyes on the floor. Then she whispered: "I wish it were all true, though. All the wonderful things in mother's stories... That would have been lovely, wouldn't it?"

Her father kissed her gently on the head. "Yes, it would have," he whispered. "But don't forget, love, that real life is quite lovely as well."

...

Later, Luna could only remember a few things from the day her mother died. Everything happened so terribly quickly: her mother trying that new spell the Snorkack had whispered to her, the sudden flash of bright light, her mother lying horribly still on the floor, her father's scream...

Luna sobbed and sobbed in her father's arms for the rest of the day, but her father didn't cry. He just sat there, frozen and still, as they came and took the body away to prepare it for the funeral. His arms were warm and comforting around her, and Luna cried until darkness fell and she fell asleep on her father's lap.

When she woke up the next morning, dawn was a silver-white streak at the horizon; the color reminded Luna of her mother's hair. She found herself lying on the sofa in the corner of the study, a blanket wrapped securely around her.

Her father was still sitting at his desk, his white-gold hair dishevelled now, as if he had been tugging at it all night. His face, as he turned to look at her, was white and drawn, and there was a distant look in his eyes.

"Father? Have you been up all night?" whispered Luna.

"What?" Xenophilius glanced at her, an almost baffled expression on his face. Then he nodded slowly. "I've been up... yes."

Luna glanced at the stack of leather journals in front of him on the desk, and her heart gave a strange little lurch. "You've been... reading her journals..." Her voice trailed off.

"Yes... I've been reading them. I wish I had read them long ago." There was a strange glitter in his eyes. "Oh, Luna, they are amazing, all the things that are in those journals! All her magnificent thoughts and ideas, all these fascinating secrets of the natural world that no one else has discovered yet..."

Luna stared at her father. "But you said that none of it was true, father, that she had made it all up..."

"What?" Xenophilius looked at her blankly. "Did I really say that?" he whispered. He shook his head slowly. "Perhaps I did... Yes, I seem to recall something like that. But I was wrong, of course. Your mother would never lie to us. How could she? She was the wisest and truest person I have ever known. It has to be true, everything she writes about... I only wish I had seen it sooner, my dear. How could I have been so blind? I have been spending all night reading her journals, and it feels as if I finally understand her. She was a brilliant woman, your mother, Luna, even if the world did not understand her. We should read her journals together; reading them feels like hearing her dear sweet voice again... " He reached eagerly for a volume from the stack in front of him. "You have to listen to this, love. Look at this part right here, where she writes about the possibility that mermaids are the descendants of the original population of Atlantis... It explains so much, doesn't it?" His hands, clasping the small leather-bound book, were trembling slightly.

Luna glanced up at his face. Something seemed different about him now; his customary stern calmness was gone, but there was a strange, almost childish enthusiasm in his movements as he rifled through the pages of the little book. Something about him suddenly reminded Luna of her mother. She felt her breath catch in her throat. Perhaps that is what the kind man from the ministry meant, she thought to herself, when he spoke to us after they took mother's body away. "Those that we love will always remind with us in spirit." Yes, it must be true, for her father, who had always frowned when he saw her mother fill the pages of the journals with her tiny handwriting, had now begun to add notes of his own to the margins, caressing the yellowed pages with his pen.

Luna touched her father's wild, dishevelled hair, and he glanced up at her with a smile. "Are you sure, father?" she whispered. "Are you sure that all the things in here are true? You said before that they weren't."

"Oh, but I was wrong," said Xenophilius softly. "Terribly wrong. I can see that now. Everything your mother has ever said makes so much sense now, when I read it all in context. And besides, Luna..." A beautiful smile suddenly illuminated his haggard face. "I have something wonderful to tell you. I have heard it myself. The singing of the Snorkack... I heard it last night, as I was sitting here, reading your mother's journals. It was so soft at first I almost couldn't hear it, but then I listened more closely. And it was so haunting and so lovely that it almost broke my heart." He turned his head slightly towards the window. "Hush, love. There it is again. Can you hear it, Luna?"

Luna held her breath and listened. Then she shook her head slowly.

"Then you need to listen better." Her father lifted her gently up on his lap, and they sat quietly together, surrounded by the stacks of leatherbound books and rolled-up maps, until they could both hear a faint, distant silver voice on the wind.