Of Liars and Pretenders
'A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.'
(King Lear)
…
{ darkness}
…
She had slipped through the shadowed hallways, clinging to the darkness. Her hair floated down her back like waterfall moonlight. Her body rippled with death, fading softly. Her eyes were bright like the stars, reflecting misery and memories.
"I knew you would return." She had stated, her voice carefully breaking the cold silence. "You had nowhere left to go."
He stiffened, watching her. Her bare feet skipped lightly on the bitter stone, and he shivered from the cool air. "Well, I am back. I suppose you can leave now."
She giggled lightly, stepping forward slightly. "And where would I go?"
Silence struck him, and he was unsure. "To your home. The Weasleys. Anywhere, really. Just not here."
"I am happy here though. My home was destroyed, remember? And the Weasley's never remember me." She sighed, tilting her head. He looked at the broken windows, and the dusty floors. His footsteps marked his presence, while the glow of her death created her own presence.
"Why would you assume I would remember you?" He scoffed, kicking a piece of broken glass with the toe of his shoe. His mother had gotten him these very shoes when he was two years younger and she was still alive. They're scuffed and worn, dirtied with blood.
"Because you killed me, silly!" She giggled, tilting her head back to laugh. A long scar marked her throat gently, burning reality against her soft figure. "You never forget a person you kill, never. Even Voldermort never forgot a name." Her figure glows like pearls, a soft light that wraps around her body. She's tangled and woven deep within death's grip, and he can only watch as she remains to watch. Eternity, she had said. She had eternity to watch him.
He flinched at the name and glared. "Stop saying his name."
"Harry isn't afraid. Why are you afraid?" Luna whispered from his harshness. She stepped back, darkness breaking through her form.
"Why on Earth would I be scared? Malfoy's are never scared." Draco sneered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the dead girl. Respect the dead, in an odd sense.
She smiled at the idea of it all, and began to step forward. "You didn't look to brave when you sliced my neck," Her eyes widened with laughter, and she continued. "You had asked if you had to. Hadn't wanted to get my dirty blood upon your robes. But the mean lady said yes. And then she made you kill me."
He paled at the memory, and shuddered. "Get out." He hissed.
Her darkness began to shimmer, hiding her figure from him. "You can't hide from the past."
"Get out."
"I can't, Draco."
…
They meet at the stroke of midnight. He doesn't sleep and she is unable to sleep. They fit together like puzzle pieces, in a strange retrospect. Worn away and left to cling to one another. He resists her though, hiding from her silvery form.
"You never smile." She muses, perched on a railing as he slumps over on the stairs. A fallen chandelier marks a battle, and a blood stain marks a death. He remembers the sudden spells and curses, the screams and pleading. The knife had been awkward in his hands, and her neck had been so delicate.
"Why should I?" He gifts her with his words. For days he stayed silent, buried under blankets. She had hummed soft Muggle tunes, and drifted through hallways meaninglessly.
She giggles. She always giggles. Her white lips stretch into a wide smile. "Because you look nicer when you smile."
"Go to hell."
Her giggling ceases quickly, and he feels cold and she feels dark. "I can't Draco." Her long fingers play with strands of her hair, twirling them softly. Her eyes glistened with tears, glazed over. It's a stunning reminder to when his Father was still alive and had taken him ice skating on frozen winter ponds in his younger years.
"Why not?" He's unsure, but has to know. Her soft presence had been grinding him into the past, her death and her life reflected through her spirit. He wants to hide from it all, but she is always there. Watching and waiting.
She tilts her head softly, and gives a mournful sigh. "Is my company that wretched?"
He withdraws a small packet of Muggle cigarettes and sighs. "Yes. You've been driving me insane."
Her eyes harden, and he feels pinned down beneath her gaze. "Good. You've driven me to death."
Somehow he feels a simple sorry will not ease his suffering, or undue the past.
…
"Did you ever play the piano?" She asked one night when the clouds stole the moon away. He had lit candles to fight the suffocating darkness away.
He remains frigid, like icy stone. "No."
"How very shameful. You look like you were taught." She speaks oddly half the time, and he had never quite figured the art of ignoring her or understanding what she was rambling.
"It's a sin." His words remain short and bitter. Almost like her life.
Silence grew between the two for stolen moments, and he relished the quiet. "Don't say that word, Draco."
"And why can I not speak it?" He raises a mere eye brow at the foolishness of this girl.
She shivers from the past and shuts her eyes. Frost coated her harsh words as she whispered into the darkening night, "I swear to the Lord that you will live to regret it, if you do."
He stilled, watching the inner rage take control of her body. "Alright then."
"Good." She relaxed softly, dim light warming her figure. Her dark orbs reflect pain though, glistening with darkness and afterlife.
He peels back slowly layer after layer of wallpaper while she hums slight tunes. "What is it like to be dead?"
She draws her one word out, rolling the vowels and stretching the all out. "Marvellous,"
"Really?"
She chuckles, and stands. "No. It's a living hell."
…
Some night he wanders to the cellar.
She follows, of course. It's been her sworn duty to make his life misery ever since her last breath. She's floating in darkness, a bright shining light. Like a beacon of life, with sick irony twisting the statement.
It's cold beneath the house, and death rots deep underneath the floorboards. Dried blood coated frigid ground, and chains rattle with the soft whispers of afterlife. She remains quiet, and he says nothing. This was her prison for months upon months. He has no right to ruin the peace.
Some nights he lights candles.
He imagines that with each candle lit, she might stop resenting and hating and haunting him.
He's pretending that he isn't terrified.
She's lying when she promises that she doesn't mind being dead.
"You stole my breath away," she whispered in the shadows.
…
She wanders through the Manor with no purpose nor life.
Paintings of past ancestors of the Malfoy's glare down at her. As if they know she is unwelcomes and unwanted and simply not needed. She smiles however, and trades comments with them. She replies sweetly to their scathing words that she wises them plenty of happiness through the years to come.
"Do you remember when I was locked up?" She sometimes asks.
And he of course can never forget it. "Yes. You drew paintings on the floor with your blood." He had never been quite sure where she had found the nail. He wondered what ever happened to the nail after she died. If it was still lying in the basement or if it was gone somehow.
"Did you ever remember that I was buried underneath your home?" She looks at him, eyes bright with wonder. "Ever regret?"
He flinches from the memories. His aunt's laughter ringing through the home and the wretched screams of agony that he couldn't help nor prevent. "Every night."
"It's a shame, isn't it?" Luna's words float with a strange hollowness.
The words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them. "What's a shame?"
It's a single word that hangs between them, scowling down upon them. She's standing on a railing and he's leaning against the opposite. Around them moan the age of the manor, and the whispers of the dead.
"Life."
…
He's able to leave now. He doesn't have to stay. He's been cleared of war crimes, because it's an endless wonder what large sums of money can do. He returns to the broken Manor, rotting with her death and his life.
"You look like your Father," She smiled at him as he slumped over a bottle of Dragon Mead. His Father's favourite, of course. He studies the fire carefully, watching it crackle and burn. The flames writhe in agonizing care, dancing before him. He remember the times when Father had been sitting in this very chair, bent over one paper or another, with his Mother close by. He doesn't like thinking of them much any more, because they're dead now.
"I know." He speaks carefully. His ears ring from the night when the rain fell and the thunder roared. She had become a banshee, wailing into the night. She had turned into a creature of hate and destruction, howling rage and deception.
She finishes with ease, as if he never said a word. "But your eyes are similar to your Mother's eyes."
He repeats his earlier statement, unable to pull his eyes from the dancing flames. The cackle like his Aunt had. Luna had upon occasion displayed the very same laugh.
"Almost like Harry."
He stiffens at the words and looks at her.
Luna had drifted to the floor, sitting cross legged on the embroidered carpeting. Her fingers drum soundlessly against the floor, and her eyes are shut. The angry scar on her neck glares at him, reminding him that she is dead and there is nothing he can do about it. Sometimes he finds himself wishing though, that he never killed her and she never died.
"Why do you bring him up?" He questions, and she smiles.
"Did you know he was my first kiss?" Her words are bittersweet. "I used to think I loved him. But he lied and used me, and left me behind."
"Potter's a prick." He speaks blunt truth. Not every being in the word worships the very breath the Boy-Who-Lived took.
She giggled, and opened her eyes. "I think you are right."
He sighs. "What did it feel like when I killed you?"
She smiles. "Wonderful. Like a lover's touch upon my life, sealing it within my death."
Silence reigns for moments, and he shatters it with forced ease. "Do you enjoy being a ghost?"
"No. It's not particularly interesting." She giggles, and her head tilts to the side and hair falls into her face. The scar upon her neck looks softer now, in the light of midnight.
He turns away. "You're strange, Lovegood."
"No, Malfoy. I'm dead."
…
She is serene being of death. She hides in the night.
He is a horrid beast of life. He eats death for eternity.
In another world, they would have perhaps been right for one another. In this life though, he was the one whom had stolen her away from the living, and she was the one that haunted him with the voice of the dead.
She doesn't mind watching him suffer. He doesn't mind her blood stain marking the floor.
They're so intertwined that he can never escape her clutches and she can never abandon his grasp.
Some nights she reminds him of an angel, palely lit in the night. Some days he swears he sees a devil when he catches glimpse of his reflections.
…
Sometimes he manages to fall to sleep. Blankets shield his sleeping form from the coolness of the air, and the spiders hanging above. Spider webs had become common in the corners of the Manor far too frequently it had seemed. Luna had noticed as well, because she commented often of the population.
"Are you sleeping yet?" She asks on occasion.
His response runs like clockwork. "Yes." Always a yes, never a no. She had hated it when he said no to her questions, and he had found himself slipping into saying yes. The truth hidden beneath his words.
"What is it like to sleep?" She's forgotten now how to live. The very concepts of food had become foreign to her now, and sleep was a mere long lost whim of living.
He feels guilty of course when he fails to answer her.
…
"Are you ever going to leave?"
"I cannot leave."
…
The first installment in the three shot. I'm pretty proud. So, my final DracoxLuna story for this long little while. Might try a Black Butler story soon. I got a Death Note one laid out, and I am very excited to start working on it.
The next chapter will be called 'daybreak'.