Disclaimer: All characters you recognize belong to J.K. Rowling
Author notes: Lucius/Luna, and Tom/Luna…Just a drabble I shared with my cousin, who looked over it for me. And also the title is influenced by Stephen King's works.
All Things Eventual
Luna knew the cause of his illness. It was simple. He was much too sane. Unfortunately, now he was just as sane as she was, and she wouldn't wish that state on anyone.
The end of the world began as most endings do.
After a wedding;
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Luna had gotten the wedding summons for the wedding late; under the cover of the fall leaves. She and her father had a nice time decorating the charmed paper, signing their names with the pride that comes from being part of a secret. Luna had pretended to be surprised to get the paper. She liked surprises.
Sometimes she wished she could find that piece of paper. To add to her collection. She remembered asking her father if she should cry at the wedding. That's what people do, you know. She suspected it had something to do with washing away the old, and when it didn't rain on the special day then it was up to the guests to make up for the lack of storm clouds.
She remembered walking with her father through Ottery St. Catchpole, a place lacking both otters and saints. It was one of their rare trips. Her mother had loved the town, and without her mother, it didn't seem the same. It had changed. The occupants were unaware that they had been transfigured but she was sure that they sensed it, in their Muggle way.
Harry had sat near the back, looking guilty. As if he did not deserve to be there, if he was supposed to be elsewhere. Guilt painted the strangest colors to skin. She wondered what guilt would taste like and imagined kissing him just to find out. He left, slipping out the back while his friends were dancing.
She went to look for Ginny.
They talked the rest of the night. Luna tried to remember what Ginny looked like in the night air, how her hair seemed to be the color of Mars in autumn. Luna learned about secrets and trust. How trust can be broken when not handled with care. She learned about a boy who did terrible, but great things, and another who she counted as a friend.
She had held Ginny until she stopped crying; touching her hair and finding that it burned her palm with familiarity, and she wanted to make a necklace out of her friend's fears so she could carry them instead.
And that was the last time Luna ever saw her again.
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She had even changed out of her clothes yet when she had heard the voices downstairs. A curious withering of tension covered up with reassurances is what the voices carried.
Luna stepped near the stairs in her favorite place and listened, trying to still her heart.
"…Attack came just after three, sir. The Ministry has ordered this village to be evacuated immediately."
Luna looked out the window pane covered with cork-screw glass(what is that, pray tell)? and saw the Muggles, all lined up in a row. She recognized the curse. She had seen it once before, and it came with instinctual knowledge. There was no other way for their expressions to look so vacant.
She had the odd thought that the wizards were going to lead them right into the ocean. Where they would go quietly and without a fuss, smiling even as the waves swallowed them up. She shivered. Yet even under the Imperius curse, she noticed, an older gentleman had his arm draped protectively around his four-year old grandson. It made a nice portrait in her mind. In later years, she found mentally returning to the pair.
Except this time, in the landscape of her mind, she would paint herself in to walk with them.
Her father smiled mechanically and nodded to the official. Yet the man would not leave, claiming to have been ordered to see them off in person. For safety reasons, you know.
He had a little scroll with him and a red quill to write down their names and their location.
As she spun in the fire place like a salamander, becoming quite dizzy, she saw him write in the book with flourish.
&&&
The weeks following the attack, Luna and her father kept the Quibbler in circulation.
She lost herself in the stories. With her hair piled on top of her head and ink smudges lingering across the bridge of her nose, she worked the press for hours on end. It didn't matter if anyone believed the stories now. It just mattered that they heard them.
It was just the two of them. The rest of the staff had left. Her father didn't blame them. They had their families and their fear.
Luna had no fear, not with the press. With the onslaught of words, the fear ebbed away.
She was in another place, another time. Her father made a blanket for her out of the paper's old archives and she breathed them in.
The papers covered the windows in splotches, like fruit bats clinging to apple trees. No prying eyes could see inside this fortress, Luna thought.
Until the small man with the red quill came and told them they had to leave to Azkaban.
&&&
Her father did not come with her to Azkaban like the other magical evacuees. He remained with the press. She wondered why. He had only responded with a pinch on her cheek, and told her that she would understand one day.
Luna had met Neville where the leftover survivors had been gathering to make the journey. His uncle had died during the weeks Luna had been in her fortress. St. Mungo's had been captured, and his parents were still there, he told her, while they ate the stale rations the Ministry provided. Over her bread, she had promised to watch over his grandmother.
Over her chipped cup, Luna watched him sneak away from the site.
And that was the last time she saw him.
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Lucius awoke to the feeling of fingers pulling on his hair with eager intensity.
His first slumbering thought was that his wife was stirring besides him yet that was impossible. These fingers were ungainly and small and merciless. His back was on cold stone, and he heard a whisper in his ear.
He tried to raise his head but his hair was braided to the bars of his cell. He felt like a giant that had been tied down during his slumber.
"Oh, you're all right. I didn't know if you were still here."
She was sitting cross-legged on the other side of the bars, looking at him like he was an interesting pet. Lovegood's empty-headed daughter. Instantly, he wanted to make that look disappear off her face.
"You."
He quickly unsnarled his hair and took in the sight of her. A glass of water was by her side, drawing his attention to his parched throat. "What curse brings you here?"
Her fingers traveled to pluck at the string around her thin neck where he could see her bones. Very fragile.
"The Ministry said this is the only safe place left. Daddy stayed with the paper."
So she's alone, he thought. Her wand was tucked recklessly behind her ear. And of course, his mind pieced a solution to his escape with unnatural ease.
"You've brought that for me…" He motioned to the glass at her perplexed look.
"That's for Neville's grandmother. She's thirsty. But this place has a mind of its own. You're the only prisoner left, and it wanted me to find you, I suppose."
He had heard the rumors about this family. The madness of the mother and the daughter.
He would feed that madness; mold it into the key to his freedom.
"You're right. It did. I am close to death. You were meant to save me. And Azkaban is not Azkaban without a prisoner."
Wide-eyed, she nodded, and tentatively slid the glass foreword with her toe. Not close enough yet. He feebly grasped the glass, adding a moan of dry pain for emphasis. He was quite used to the sound, after all.
"What does death taste like?" she asked cheerfully.
He paused. "Spongy."
"You would know. I've always thought it was an odd name to have."
She propped herself up on her elbows, musing.
He groaned again, longer this time. "Funny. A drink only makes my hunger more unbearable."
"You have plenty to eat here," she reassured him.
"Be that as it may, I do need some variety."
The next day she presented him an apple, her body trembling. A trembling that he detected with pleasure. To have such power over another…an aphrodisiac of the purest drop.
"Such a good girl. Your father must be proud."
"I don't know," she whispered. "He says the paper is his brain child. I don't think I came from his brain."
Lucius didn't expect that response, and he carefully averted his eyes.
"You don't talk very much, do you?"
"I haven't spoken in such a long time," he whispered. "If you came closer, perhaps you could hear me better."
&&&
"Please take me back," she said through the wind. "I made a promise to Neville. I have to look after his grandmother."
"You should worry about yourself," he hissed at her. In a moment of desperation, he had transfigured driftwood into a boat, and he regretted it. She shook more than usual, rubbing her arms and moving with the waves.
"I don't like this one bit," she said. "You tricked me."
His eyes glimmered as if he had a fever, and he placed his hand against her lips and took her mouth.
&&&
After awhile, he let her have her mouth back.
She went with him to his manor, and searched with him in all its secret places, until they found the biggest secret of all. A raggedy man with a bottle in his hand, fast asleep under the dining room floor. Luna thought that he was oddly familiar.
Mr. Malfoy bound him tightly with ropes from his wand, and lifted him up into the light. Something fell from his nibbled through pocket, and she caught it swiftly before it hit the ground. A strangely beautiful locket. It was like silk under the skin when she touched it.
"Go outside to the garden," said Mr. Malfoy, with his back turned. "Don't come in until I call for you."
The man shuddered.
Luna liked the garden very much.
&&&
Eventually, she began to notice the dreams. In the womb of her mind, there was a dark haired boy who was born every night and whispered excoriating things, things that brought both pain and pleasure. Somewhere in the midst of it, she thought he was a part of her that she hadn't known before. He was much too familiar to be apart from her.
She drew pictures for him in her head, made places for them to explore. She told him secrets and he kept them, like she kept the locket tightly in her palm.
Eventually, Mr. Malfoy discovered the locket and took it away, tearing it from her palm. Luna found its imprint in its stead.
Behind his eyes there was someone else and Luna, always polite, didn't mention it.
Occasionally, he would forget himself during their time together.
"He has my hands. I've have given them once, and now he wants everything."
One day, she woke up, and Mr. Malfoy was gone. She suspected a sort of rare metamorphosis had occurred.
For in his place was a young man with eyes that held every shadow of the world within their depths.
This is rather awkward, Luna thought.
"You've changed," she observed, clutching at her pillow. He stretched, as if he had been trapped in a very small place for a long time, and touched her face, memorizing it.
"For the better, wouldn't you say," he said lightly.
When he kissed her, she felt things, and she hadn't felt anything in a very long time. She had dreamed him up, and he had come to help her. She just knew it.
"You're made of wishes."
"Not quite. But I can be. Wishes are very dangerous things."
"Could you help me find my father?"
It was best that she didn't notice the shadow under the bed that was much too big and still to be spare socks. Much too eventual.
&&&
The Quibbler nest was empty by the time they arrived.
She stood in the middle of the room, silent, and dust littered her head like a halo, having gathered from months of neglect. Negligent. The printing press had been partially destroyed, singed and scarred, and all of the papers had been burned or stained. Tacked all over the walls in harsh, violent patterns, and notes.
Instinctively, he held her. She thought he expected her to cry, and she really couldn't. She was afraid he would think her strange, then, and leave her to the archives. But he didn't.
"There, there," he whispered, stroking her hair. She closed her eyes and leaned into his chest, breathing him in. He smelled nice, just like he tasted nice.
"Your father wouldn't want his legacy to be forsaken, now, would he."
&&&
"You know, it would help if you pretended," she whispered to him, as they sat on the spiraling tower and watched as the sky seemed to evaporate. He was fond of doing that, as she had discovered. She thought it had something to do with his blood. Yes, she thought that might be it.
"You'll do enough for the both of us," he muttered, with a parchment in his hand and a quill behind his ear. He had picked up some of her habits, and she always felt oddly warm inside. Unraveled.
"Are you certain the same people will receive this through your father's network? I do so want to keep up the morale."
Luna nodded and sat up.
"Here," she said kindly, taking the quill from behind his ear. "I'll write the first story. What first, the Ministry's mad toenail rot or the Bert Botts conspiracy."
He considered his options. "The rot...is oddly appropriate."
She thought it was so generous of him to spare his ink. Her fingers tasted magic when the quill met the page and the oddest feeling overtook her. Just looking at the letters made her toes tingle, like they did when they sensed the winter and the warm fire and drinks, and her heart raced.
"Yes...very felicitous." He breathed in her ear and traced the tip of it with his fingers. Just the word alone was like cat whiskers. Of all places, imagine, and pressed his lips to places, and burned the magic there, sealed like warm, peppermint wax. Imagine.
&&&
Luna learned how to paint with her mind while she was awake.
When he was bored or restless, she would think up another world for him to do as he pleased.
"You take over each and every one of them. You don't always have to do that, Tom. You spend so much time taking, you don't even enjoy them."
Or give, she thought. All the people she had named. All the skies, and moons, and seas with talking whales, swords, and pegged legs…and every single time they became his alone.
He caught the thought with ease, and smiled like a cat.
"There's still one thing I haven't taken."
His hands lingered.
&&&
She made him a picnic on fields of myths, legends, and stories.
The old paper often left words on her knees, but that was welcomed. She liked to smear the words and draw circles.
"May I have this dance?" he asked, and even though there was no music, there was a symphony. She didn't care much for dancing, yet with him, there was no routine. There were stings but she loved the way they felt across her skin.
"You already have," she said truthfully, having dreamt of this moment before. Where she could not place.
She liked holding him, and feeling his own heart like a tiny bird in a cage. She liked to think she owned that cage, and the bird would sing only for her.
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"Where did they all come from?" Luna asked calmly, gripping the broken window pane tightly, ignoring the pain that comes with learning the sharp realities.
"From all over, it appears," he mused. "I would say your story is a success."
They came in every state possible. A mass of her father's readership. One that had been increased tenfold by Harry's interview in her fourth year.
Empty-eyed, and doll-like smiles, and fit to fill to the brim with ideas since their heads only contained webs and powdered sugar. An odd drinking goblet full of the mead for the present day gods.
They were all lined up, women and children first.
"I'll let you have your moment with them."
He kissed her forehead.
And she was left with a captive audience.
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She was framed, trapped against the wall, and he fit perfectly against her. Such a pretty picture, she mused.
Her clothes had lost all her buttons, and she counted them on the floor where she used to play marbles as a child. He would brush his lips against her chest, and soon she couldn't count any more. She shuddered and burned against him, and he remained the ever constant dream.
Always beginning and never ending.
In her mind, he was everywhere, touching every fabric and memory. Tasting every empty crevice, and weaving in something new. A trail of warm fingers, and she wondered who was screaming. She realized the sound was coming from her. The feelings…they…were so good that they hurt and if it ended, she would go blind.
In her mind, she was in a temple, dark and old and bound, on an altar of blooming wet flowers, then deep in water, and someone was touching her.
Never ending.
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He assured her that she would be around for a very long time, and she was.
Long enough to realize who he was, and what he had done, and why he was eternity.
Long enough for him to take everything, as was his custom.
Long enough to see him tire of it. Long enough for him to shudder and burn against her.
She could help him on a diet of lotus land fantasies if he wasn't much too sane now.
But one day, he would be mad enough to let go, and she would be there, too.
...Please tell me what you think. :)