Luna knew the moment it happened. Despite her best efforts, she had dozed off; curled up on the bed she and Draco had shared, some time after midnight. And it was a cry of wordless anguish coming from above that woke her.
It woke her out of a nightmare and into a nightmare.
And she knew. She knew, without being told, what that haunting cry on the wind meant. The nameless dread she had been laboring under all day turned to the certainty of disaster, and as she struggled to clear the fog of sleep from her eyes and stagger upright, she felt, not an anguish matching the wails now being muffled, but a kind of numbness.
It was as if someone had just cut off her arm, and she just hadn't felt it yet. It was going to hurt; she knew it was going to hurt. But at the moment, she could only stare at the bleeding stump in a mingling of despair and disbelief…
Except that instead of a bleeding stump of a limb, she knew it was Draco who had been amputated out of her life. She knew when she felt what had happened, it would be worse than any physical wound.
With leaden feet, she forced herself to go to the Den room. There, they were all gathered, standing in a huddle. And she did not say a word, could not manage a single syllable, as she listened to Neville stammer out the tale, while someone else helped him out of his clothes. He looked terrible. He must have pushed himself to new speeds to get here as quickly as he had.
Neville looked up at the end of his tale, past the others, and saw her. The others followed Neville's gaze, and an echoing silence fell, one of those silences in which, no matter how it is broken, it just sounds wrong.
She stared at them, stared at their stricken expressions, at the guilt in Neville's eyes, at the pain in Remus's face. Stared, and finally, because there was nothing she could say that would not simply have brought more pain, she turned away.
She stumbled blindly back to their room, falling into walls and bruising her shoulders, as her eyes burned and she held back her tears by main force of will. She couldn't weep the way she wanted to until she got some privacy. But once she was back in their room, inhaling his familiar scent, she threw herself down onto the bed, and howled her grief to the stars.
Hermione joined her at some point, and Luna clung to her beloved's twin like a life line. Everyone else left them alone. Not even Meghan came near them. And that suited both of them just fine, because Luna didn't want their pain she wanted only her own; she didn't want their apologies, she wanted to nurse her anger against everyone who hadn't listened to her. But even anger wasn't enough to overcome her own guilt or her anguish, and she wept into Hermione's shoulder until she had no more tears to weep. They clung to each other as the only place of safety in the world, as the sun rose, and burned its way across the heavens, and sank again.
Luna would always be grateful to Hermione for that day, for the older girl had never left her side. So long as Luna had been clinging to her neck, she showed no signs of budging. Even when others brought food Hermione ate with only one hand, the other curled protectively around Luna.
That was how Danger found them, when she eventually came in. Her hands held two envelopes, both addressed in a familiar handwriting that threatened another onset of tears.
By common consent, both girls took their letters and retreated: Hermione outside, for the first time in a day and a half, and Luna back onto the bed.
It took her a long time to open the letter, but finally she did. And she smiled, because the way he wrote it was so like him.
"Luna,
If you're reading this, Danger's sitting there
Looks like I only got a one-way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss,
And war was just a game we played when we were kids.
Well, I'm laying down my wand and hanging up my boots,
I'm up here with your mom and we're both watching over you.
So lay me down
In that open orchard out on the edge of town.
And know my soul
Is where my mama always prayed that it would go.
And if you're reading this
I'm already home.
If you're reading this halfway around the world,
I guess I won't be there to see the birth of our little girl.
I hope she looks like you,
I hope she fights like me,
And stands up for the innocent and the weak.
I'm laying down my wand and hanging up my boots,
Tell Moony I don't regret that I followed in his shoes.
So lay me down
In that open orchard out on the edge of down.
And know my soul
Is where my mama always prayed that it would go.
And if you're reading this
I'm already home.
If you're reading this, there's gonna be a day,
When you'll move on and find someone else, and that's ok,
Just remember this.
I'm in a better place,
Where soldiers live in peace and sweet voices sing Amazing Grace.
So lay me down
In that open orchard out on the edge of down
And know my soul
Is where my mama always prayed that it would go.
If you're reading this…
If you're reading this…
I'm already home.
Love, with all of my heart.
Draco"
Luna pressed the paper to her lips, then to her heart, and finally to the small mound of her stomach.
"See this, Irene?" she asked. "This is your Daddy."
And she let the words heal as they should.
A/n/Disclaimer: I own nothing! The words Draco writes to Luna are from Tim McGraw's "If You're Reading This".