Written for Hogwarts' Potions Assignment, Task #2: Write about someone being forced to relive or remember a past trauma, 'She's just another broken doll, dreaming of someone with glue.', the Gobstone Challenge: Bronze Stone - Memories, (action) Singing, (action) Stretching, (weather) Lightning, the Writing Club: Creepypastas, 1999 - Write about someone having sudden memories back to a bad childhood experience, Showtime - Genetic Emancipation - (character) Draco Malfoy and the Around the World Challenge - South Sudan - Action: Singing.
Word count: 1687
a song for broken souls
For a dungeon, the Malfoys' basement isn't so bad. Luna misses Hogwarts terribly, misses her friends—something that she'd never thought she could have—but at least she's not alone.
That, she thinks, would have been truly terrible.
They don't hurt her the way they torture Mr. Ollivander or that goblin, Griphook. She is only there as a way to keep her father silent—is he alright, she wonders, counting the days since she last saw him. There is nothing they want from her except having her out of the way, and they don't need to hurt her for it.
Or at least, not physically.
She is alone when it happens.
(of course, she is)
It starts with the cold, slowly creeping in; her breath now fogging the air as the damp stones she sits on frost over, the breeze drifting through the room now curling around her shoulders, freezing like winter as it wraps her in its deadly embrace.
She knows what this is even before she hears the Dementors, their tattered cloaks ruffling as they glide by, their breath rattling as they inhale air they don't need.
The memories sneak up on her, even though she knows they are coming—even though she's known it ever since she first felt the chill caress her skin.
A year they had been at Hogwarts—a year she had had to live with those memories creeping up on her when she didn't expect them, with the bittersweet pangs of seeing her mother again, only to have her die in front of her eyes every time.
She doesn't want this now any more than she did then, but the Dementors, like their master, care not for what Luna wants.
.
Her father isn't there that day—there had been a problem with the presses, and he had Floo-called to say he couldn't make it to dinner. Luna had waited afterward, but she had drifted off to sleep almost the instant her mother had tucked her in.
The lightning wakes her up, great, big flashes illuminating her room in stark white light, leeching all that is warm and good about this place she loves. The thunder that follows—close, too close—makes her jump in fright and she whimpers in her bed, drawing up the covers.
All the shadows seem to come alive then, and Luna clenches her eyes shut, repeating her mother's words like a mantra.
There are no monsters here, it's just a trick of the light. There are no monsters here, there are no monsters here.
It's just a trick, just a trick.
The words don't help, not when lightning flashes again and Luna's closet now seems to have gained unfathomably dark depths. What hides there, she wonders, but she knows it can't be anything good.
She burrows beneath her covers and pulls her pillow above her head, but even then, she still hears the thunder, still sees the light flashing red behind her closed eyelids.
She doesn't know what makes her leave the safety of her bed, but as she slips out of her sheets, she lets out a low hiss, rubbing at her arms to chase away the chill the cold night air has brought upon her.
Her parents' bed is empty, and Luna's heart starts beating faster in her panic before she remembers that sometimes, when her mother can't sleep, she goes to work in the shed she's remade into a laboratory.
The floorboards creak loudly as she goes down the stairs, and Luna sticks close to the wall, fighting shivers.
"It's just a trick of the mind," she mumbles to herself, hugging her arms to her chest. "Just a trick."
The wind howls outside, making the window rattle, and Luna runs the last few meters to the place she knows her mother is, bare feet padding along the cold floor.
The door to her mother's laboratory opens with a loud squeak, and instantly, Luna's mother's face turned from frustrated to lovingly fond.
"And what are you doing here, pumpkin?" she asked softly, gesturing at Luna to come closer.
"I couldn't sleep," Luna confesses, playing with the hem of her nightshirt.
"The storm, huh?" her mother says sympathetically.
Luna nods mutely.
"Come here," her mother says, opening her arms and stepping away from her experiment.
Her embrace is warm and comforting, and Luna melts into it, hugging her mother tightly until the woman steps away, and Luna reluctantly has to let go.
"Do you think you can go back to sleep, or do you want to stay here with me for a bit?" her mother asks kindly.
It's a thing they do sometimes: Luna sits in a corner by the window, and if she tucks in her legs just so, she can see both the sky outside and her mother's work.
When lightning illuminates the room for a long instant, followed by the loud rumble of thunder, Luna jumps a little, and really, it's not even a question anymore.
"Can I stay here for a little while?"
Her mother smiles kindly. "Of course. Go on, then, get settled."
Skipping, Luna gets to her little corner. She already feels better, and once she's there, wrapped in her warm blanket and sharing curious looks with her mother, she feels even safer.
She's dozing off when it happens. It's too fast for her to see what, exactly it is, and at first she thinks it's lightning.
But it was too bright, and no matter how long Luna waits, there is no thunder to follow this light.
Stretching her legs slowly to get rid of the awkward stiffness lingering there, Luna walks slowly toward her mother, not daring to call her name yet. The silence that has settled over the room after that last flash feels oddly potent, and something in Luna's stomach tells her not to break it.
Her hands are shaking when she finally reaches her mother's side, and she knows what's going to happen even before it does.
Her mother's frozen in place, a half smile pulling her lips into a cold rictus that makes Luna's stomach twist, and her eyes… Her eyes are gone. Burned away into empty black sockets that Luna knows will haunt her forever.
"Mum?"
She doesn't even realize that the word has left her lips until she hears it echo in the room. She feels that echo down to her bones, and when Luna reaches with a hesitant hand to touch her mother's sleeve, her mother's body just topples over, like a marble statue knocked off its pedestal.
Her mother falls with a muted thud, but somehow, that sound too echoes down to Luna's bones.
She doesn't notice when she falls to her knees to be at her mother's side, and she doesn't hear the screams. She doesn't even know she's screaming until she tastes blood at the back of her throat, when her father comes back in the morning and finds her there, a weeping, broken girl kneeling by her mother's side.
.
She comes to slowly, tasting salt on her lips, and for a few moments, Luna's surprised to have woken up at all.
There's a hand on her head, trembling as it caresses her hair slowly, and a low hum carrying sung words Luna can't quite catch but that she wants to curl into nonetheless, and Luna wants to keep her eyes closed, wants to pretend that this is her mother's hand and her mother's voice, comforting her the way she used to, when Luna had nightmares.
But her mother's been dead for almost a decade now, and her mother's voice was never this sad.
She opens her eyes and isn't surprised to see Draco Malfoy staring down at her, eyes wild and rimmed red. His hand in her hair halts suddenly, and he stops singing.
Luna wishes he hadn't—he has a nice voice, and the room feels so much colder now, with no sound to fill it.
"I'm sorry," he says, and Luna has the sense that he doesn't really know why he's apologizing.
Luna sits up, crossing her legs and stretching her neck, listening to her back crack with a half smile. "You're forgiven," she says, staring into his stormy eyes. "And thank you for chasing the Dementors away, they weren't very nice."
For a second, Luna could swear she sees a spark of amusement in Draco's cold eyes, but it's smothered out all too quickly. "They're Dementors," he replies. "They're not supposed to be nice. And I only did that because you wouldn't be of any use to the Dark Lord if you were dead," he adds, staring at her defiantly like he's daring her to contradict him.
Luna shrugs. "Thanks for the singing, too. You have a lovely voice, and it was a nice thing to wake up to."
Draco scrambles away from her, paling. "Don't—you can't tell anyone."
Luna stares at him silently. "Who would I tell?" she finally asks, licking her lips slowly.
Draco stares back, nearly collapsing in half in his relief. "Right," he says. "Right, that's, that's good."
He nods to himself as he stands up, hands shaking a little. "That's good," he repeats, and then Luna watches him go.
This time, when the door closes shut behind Draco's back, leaving Luna alone with her thoughts, the sound of it doesn't sound quite as final.
She doesn't move from her spot until Ollivander's thrown in again, body shivering in pain still, feverishly muttering words Luna half wishes she couldn't understand, but even then, she can still feel Draco's hand in her hair, can still hear his soft voice echo in her ears.
It was so kind, and so sad, that song, that Luna can't help but feel for him too. Draco may not be inside this cell with them, but he's as much of a prisoner as they are.
Luna wonders what it must be like, to be trapped inside the place you've always called home—and then she decides that she doesn't want to know.
She'll carry Draco's song with her, though. Maybe, that way, some part of him will be free, too.