House: Slytherin

Category: Drabble

Prompts: Black Lake (Location)

Characters: Theodore Nott; Luna Lovegood

World: AU (Alternative Universe). I decided to do this as to allow me to talk about a more sensitive subject without being penalized.

Word count: 779 (Excluding Author's Note, but including entire Short Story and Title)

Summary: This is for the girl, for one inexplicable moment, made me forget who I was and where I've been. Who had the audacity to lend a caring hand, and befriend the freak that I was.

Rating: T

Author's Note: Not really an A/N, but who doesn't love a good LunaxTheo fic? Or, is it only me?

As always, enjoy

-Carolare Scarletus

Following the Sun

The water was cold beneath my toes. My gaze was locked to the glowing object as it slowly transgressed the sky and dipped below the horizon. I could almost see the pearly gates, touch the soft banner, and hear the songs of angels that would have welcomed me to heaven if it wasn't for the scorching pits of Hell licking at my feet. On my good days, I came here to think. On my bad days, I came here with the intention of dying. Yet, only one thing kept me from going.

It was her.

I suppose death was quick. Though, to be frank, it wasn't something that I thought about often ever since the end of last term. I had come back to finish my last year at Hogwarts after being diagnosed with a terminal illness that had inevitably taken my mother shortly after my birth. I've dreamt of seeing her again. Seeing her smiling face as she embraced me with all the supportive love only a mother can give. Unfortunately, life wasn't as fair as everyone said it would be and I was thrusted back into reality in hurtle of hatred and hurt. Just as I was about to take another step, she called to me to assuage my woes.

I rarely got past this point before she called me back.

"What do you think you're doing Theodore Nott?" she would always ask.

Sheepishly, I replied," Taking a dip."

"I do hope you weren't planning on killing yourself," she murmured softly beside me. "I've been watching you, you know. You're stronger than you think."

"How can you say that… knowing what I've been diagnosed with?" I gritted my teeth as I provided a question of my own. "I'm contagious, Luna. I got my mum, I might as well get you."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I-"

Did I?

Could I even validate such a statement without risking sounding restrained with doubt? Through the years, it was something I had grown to believe. A monster, a freak. Who would to be friends with the sickly little kid who could die any day?

Only her, though.

It has always been her.

Luna came around, pushing my body against the wave that threatened to take me. The bottomless pit along with the caretaker of the lake were armed and ready to swallow me whole. She looked up at me with those wide, caring eyes and for a moment I was inexplicably lost. I gulped suddenly, looking between my ultimate destination and the stop that I hadn't plan on taking her.

She was so much like a great thundering cloud of rain despite her carelessness. She was everything that I ever needed.

"Do you really believe that your mother would've wanted you to die, Teddy?"

I stared at the lake once more. If anything, she made me question everything that I believed in. This disease was preventing me from the things that I wanted to do. Without her pointing that out, I wouldn't have found any reason to persevere.

The Black Lake was an embodiment that I could never touch. I dropped the guise of a sickly person, my heart seizing with the mere action. My body was attacked with violent sobs that when she came up to me, I scarcely felt her presence beside me.

"You were more than this disease, you know." Luna smiled. "You've been through so much, and yet, you would just throw it all away in a heartbeat without appreciating what you have now."

"I-I'm so-"

"Let go. Everything will be alright" Luna said to me, her hand pressed to my back as she leaned her body into mine. As the water encased my body in an unescapable trap, I looked up, welcoming the cold sensation of the water as it washed away my anxiety and all my troubles. "Just let go."

I clung onto the only person that ever gave me the light of day. While the sun finally dipped below and the moon came up, I held onto my own personal sun. She had always been my rock, my coverage and support. Without her, I was nothing. Without her, I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't have overcome the odds and thrived. She was my everything; my cure, my reason for life. My own personal sunshine in this day of coldness.

As the waters washed away all lingering sins, I felt the weight of my disease lift from my body and dissolve. When I came up from the sprawling waters, I saw her smiling face, and knew that I was home.

Born anew, I welcomed her lips as another day ended.