Challenges: butterflygirly99's Prompts Mania Challenge (medium) on HPFC X Screaming Faeries' Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge on HPFC X DobbyRocksSocks' Harry Potter Chapter Competition on HPFC.

Characters: Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood.

Prompts: songs 5: Counting Stars by OneRepublic./colors 6: Aquamarine./dialogue 7: Nothing can save you now./random 7: Ice. X 60. Nemesis: Write about Draco Malfoy. X Chamber of Secrets, chapter 7- Mudbloods and Murmurs: Write about someone being called a horrible name/about a horrible rumour. Bonus prompt: murder.

Word count: 1,481

A/N: There's a 200 word shot of this that ended up being largely conceptual. It would be 100 Seconds chapter 7, same title as this. It's also inspired largely by malfoysotter-theyre-better-off-without-you on Tumblr, for better or worse.

"Petulant child, arrogant boy. Love yourself, so no one has to."

The words split the night like ice, echoing in the darkness of his mind and his surrounds. The music from the party inside pounds too loudly, drowning out the rasping, dry sobs of people who've cried too much in the past three hundred and sixty five days, in the time since the war officially ended. Indoors, people too tense or too proud to cry are shouting at each other, trying desperately to lose themselves in the chaos of music, distorted to the point of illegibility by the volume. The war might have marked everyone in some way, but the only unity is in their coping. Nobody knows how to deal with their new, promised freedom - no way is Voldemort coming back this time, everyone agrees on that - from oppression, let alone with the costs.

He stands alone outside the formal dance hall, his pale hair dampened by the humid evening. He doesn't look like the wreck he is inside, but his fathers' words eat at him nonetheless, corrupting his soul in a manner not unlike the poisons of Azkaban and the exiled Dementors. "Nothing can save you now."

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

Disturbed by the appearance of his new companion - intruder - he whirls to meet her guaranteed accusations with cheeks inflamed by the biting wind and his own humiliation. He has not intended to speak aloud for some time now, and the insults spat to fill his silence make black nights seem bleaker. Traitor. Lucky bastard. Murderer, criminal, fiend.

Monster. Get away from me, you monster. A woman, shaking in the corner of a room in the heart of muggle London, her arms around her child, She trembles violently, a leaf in a cyclone, and her daughter's bright blue eyes are wide as saucers, wide with fright and confusion. She already shows signs of the gift of magic, this little half-blood, and she might be powerful, as powerful as the dying members of the Order of the Phoenix and their rebellion. She doesn't understand now, neither of them do, that they have to die. How could some muggleborn and her naive child even begin to comprehend why they are at fault, when the only thing he's sure of is that he doesn't know better than them?

Oaths and vows dance in the solemn loop of his mind, serve, obey, life, death, pride, family, honour. But what is pride worth, or all these generations of Malfoy 'honour', when nightmares full of blood and screaming tear through the blinders he wears in daylight and public and leave him shaking like a muggleborn doomed to death, seconds from screams that no one will run to him, no one will save him from. His fathers' words are guides to avoid pain: "Love yourself so no one has to."

He shakes himself - by my own choice, thank you, he scolds his own traitorous doubts - and turns his gaze to her. Aquamarine cloth touches the wet ground, and her dirty blonde locks are awash in the seizure-inducing lights flickering through double doors, open to the extremes: she's stopped right on the edge of the sphere of light, casting him into deeper shadows. Her wide silver eyes are fixed on him, peering through more than at him, and no accusations came. Not even the newly popular rot with Voldemort - as though anyone other than the Order had ever been brave enough to call Him by name while he lived- falls from her lips, all done up in scarlet that smears as he watched - she has attempted to wipe it away, staining the back of her hand the all-too-familiar colour of blood.

"I don't much like make up," she offers as a casual explanation, her normally dream-like tone warped by exhaustion as she tells a lie he doesn't care to hear, but does nonetheless. She smiles thinly, and he blinks warily back at her, suspecting yet another plot against him. "And I can see that you don't, either."

He grunted his assent - alright, that one's true - and her smile twitches into a greater one, then a frown. "Come inside with me?"

"Let me in."

His aunt has eyes like a madwoman, and his mother, pale from her months indoors, shies away from her 'beloved Bella'. The womans' cackling resounds, carving a path through the family Manor in a manner too similar to a plague through a city. The sound could peel paint, and it makes his eardrums bleed. The bleeding may not be caused by the laughter, though, but by his own suffering.

He's shaking all over again, his limbs throbbing and his heart pounding in his chest. Rationally, he knows she won't kill him, not quite - but she's not the right hand of the Dark Lord for nothing, and she will split him into two with a childlike laugh without hesitating if the urge takes her, and then stitch him back together to let him suffer for his crime. Serves him right, for failing them, letting snivelling Snape slay Dumbledore. But part of him, buried deep down, is proud for his failure, because it means he could be redeemed, when all of this falls apart. That part of him is submerged within an ocean of pain, though, and his throbbing body tells him he's not going to forgive his own crimes any time soon, and he's in for a world of suffering. He wonders if he will be missed, then denies himself the distraction. His fathers' words are tenets to live by: "They're better off without you."

"Why should I?" he snaps, startled out of his long habit of monosyllabic responses by her forwardness and his dreaded memories. She smiles anew, taking his covered arm - distractingly, her fingertips make the stain on the skin beneath itch - in hand. "To startle them into some gossip that isn't necessarily cruel, of course. Or perhaps to tear up my new fame so much that they will leave me alone."

He snorts at her logic, knowing it will never work. She's too much of a hero for that. "You're mad, Ravenclaw."

"Maybe a little," she allows, then grins. "You have to admit, it's more fun than sulking."

He's tempted to grunt again, but she shoots him a look that promises pain if he behaves like the obnoxious twat he has been all his life. He clears his throat instead, nodding once. "If you say so."

The words, so incredibly agreeable, feel wrong in his mouth, but her bizarre courtship isn't necessarily new, per se. No, Loony Luna Lovegood always seeks him out now. She is the reason he has kept up some pretence of unaffected placidity, but still he doesn't trust her. It isn't in his nature, after all, and the rumours of them are already so loud. They fuel the insults spat at him - corrupter, lawless, prick - by adding sins he wouldn't have even imagined committing, except perhaps in the darkness of a boggart-filled room or a nightmare crafted by his mad aunt, specifically for him. Draco might have been forced to do some atrocious things in the War and the mess that preceded it, but he had never committed any of the seven 'deadly' sins. No, he is not a rapist, or a murderer, though he had probably enabled it in his silence. Idiot, he chastises himself, and resents himself for it.

"Draco."

He flicks his gaze to her, sighing in dejected annoyance. She will strip you of your identity, his fathers' voice murmurs in his ear, patronising and arrogant.

My identity deserves to be gone.

"You want to make a scene, Luna Lovegood?"

"Very much so."

He sighs. "You're the boss."

"I am not," she laughs, but sweeps him away.

You are not my son, his fathers furious claim echoes in his mind.

Arrogantly, and for the first time without guilt, Draco closes the door on that part of him. There are worse punishments.

"Draco, you pay attention to me, mister."

"Yes, Luna."

Arrogantly, and for the first time without guilt, Draco closes the door on that part of him. There are worse punishments. But then the whispers started: Murderer, corrupter, villain. Bad influence. Prick. Media glutton. Arrogant child. Fool. Pretentious brat.

She tightened her hold on his arm, more like a vice-like hug than any attempt to pretend at controlling him. He appreciated the sentiment, but he rather wanted to leave, thanks. "Draco, you pay attention to me, mister. Me, not them. They don't know anything."

"Yes, Luna."

Maybe he is arrogant. Maybe he is a criminal. The one thing Draco will not do, whether he trusts her or not, is let Luna down - and he would never disappoint her, if he had anything to say about it. For her, he faces the world. For her, he will control himself. He will become something she can honestly say she cares for.

Maybe then he can convince himself to trust her.