A/N: This is for round 6 of Lamia's Test Your Limit's Competition. Prompts used: Shadow of the Day by Linkin Park and the word "nuzzle."
Thanks for reading and enjoy!
Nargle Hunting
For the past several weeks, a terrific batch of Nargles had been disturbing the shores around the Black Lake at night, and Luna wasn't about to let it slide.
Sure, Hogwarts was pretty much infested with the devious buggers by now; she'd been letting her guard slip since the Carrows arrived, wreaking more havoc than a pack of a thousand Nargles ever could.
Nargles were everywhere, whirling through the halls, gliding around the pillars, and swirling above the students' beds. To Luna, it seemed they multiplied by the second, and for the first time in her entire remembrance, she was completely overwhelmed.
The Black Lake was the last straw, though. What business do Nargles have bringing their mischief to the somber, unsuspecting shore? She hoped they were not tormenting the Thestrals when they came out to drink. But what else would draw the twirling devils so far from the castle?
Luna had been intending to find out, and, tired as she was from Nargle chasing within the castle, she knew she couldn't delay the trip any longer. Besides, she hadn't seen the Thestrals since the start of the term. A visit was long overdue.
Resolutely, Luna slipped out of the Ravenclaw tower and scurried lightly on her bare feet through the castle and out onto the greyish-black grounds.
The sun now vanished from the sky, Draco's eyes shifted to the edge of the wood and watched with passive disinterest as a group of Thestrals slowly creeped out and began to drink their fill from the lake.
Lately, his eyes followed anything that moved. His real vision was much further within himself, trapped in memories and fear. As with every time he saw the creatures, his thoughts were on Dumbledore and that fateful night at the end of last term. He resisted the urge to turn and look back towards the tomb of the late headmaster. Instead, he stared ahead at the shiny wings of the Thestrals, now glistening with less sunlight than moonlight.
Draco's vision refocused when a figure half floated, half danced down the slope, right past where he was sitting and straight to the shoreline of the lake. Her hair fluttered behind her, wavy and waist-length, making her identity annoyingly obvious. Draco cringed and slunk his shoulders closer to the ground, hoping he'd stay unnoticed.
Luna walked straight into the icy water, letting her bare feet sink into the soft sand. She loved this thrilling pain of cold, how it woke her up and gave her life. She lifted her skirt up to her knees and waded deeper, all the while walking towards the group of Thestrals. She learned in first year that as long as she approached them from the direction they were facing, they wouldn't scare away.
She gently reached out and stroked the Thestral nearest her and allowed the leathery beast to nuzzle her ear with his wet muzzle before lowering his head back to the water.
Draco watched the girl's slow and graceful movements as she waded out of the lake, dragging her hands across the backs of the two Thestrals nearest her. She looked eerie, with the moonlight in her ridiculously long hair, and the wind blowing it softly about her body.
For a second, Draco almost equated her to some animal charming goddess. That is, before she bent over and picked up a piece of driftwood. She then closed her eyes and walked forward, clinging onto the wood with both hands and waving in it front of her as if clearing a path through the pure night air.
Though stumbling around blindly, Draco was quite certain that she was progressively nearing him. He suspected she'd seen him and promptly straightened up and looked away across the lake. Maybe if he stayed perfectly still, she'd mind her own business.
He tried to convince himself he was still alone, that there was no deranged girl on the beach. It was a fact he could no longer deny when the driftwood practically smacked him in the face.
"Watch it!" he yelped. He reached out to snatch away the branch, but the girl was quicker, despite her still closed eyes.
"Draco Malfoy," she said with a small smile, "I should have known."
Her eyes opened and landed directly on Draco's, startling him. He looked away quickly, hoping against hope that she'd realize she was out of her league, that batty witches don't talk to Malfoys.
Couldn't she see he wanted to be alone?
Luna cocked her head at the Slytherin sitting straight and looking stoically ahead. She was sure every hair on his back was standing erect, afraid of her looming above him. Little did he know that the Nargles enveloping him in a grey cloud were beginning to fade away. Well, at least she could make this process more comfortable for the proud Malfoy.
She purposefully placed the driftwood down beside Draco before sitting neatly on the other side of it. Draco gave it one glance before shooting her a horrified glare, to which she gave her best comforting smile.
"Oh, don't worry. It's just absorbing the Nargles," she explained. "Utterly painless."
Draco let his head drop. Of all the people who could have found his go-to place, it had to be her.
"Nargles aren't real," Draco replied half-heartedly. He wasn't in the mood to argue with insanity itself. He wondered if she would simply follow him if he got up and moved to a different spot. He decided it wasn't worth the effort to find out. Besides, he was here first. If anyone should leave, it was her.
"Then why do I see them all around you?" Luna asked, her voice airy and distant.
"Because you're bonkers. Go away and take your delusions with you," Draco snapped.
"You think you know me?" she asked, less offense and more amusement in her tone.
Draco's eyes narrowed and he turned to look at her.
"Of course, I know you. You're Loony Lovegood. The joke of Ravenclaw and the defender of all things imaginary. You and your family is an embarrassment to the pureblood lines. You're father runs the lunatic Quibbler that is only kept in business by profits from your mother's potion inventions. Oh, and your mother wasn't the brightest herself-"
Draco stopped himself from continuing for no reason other than he didn't particularly feel like being cruel to the girl. Her sanity was the issue, not her sob story.
Luna merely shrugged, still meeting Draco's eyes with such intensity that he was forced to look away.
"Nothing I haven't heard before," she commented. She'd heard the same old, same old every day of her life it seemed. Though perhaps not with such a mean spirit. However, Luna knew Draco's Nargles were causing his anger. He really couldn't be blamed.
She reached over and turned the driftwood, hoping it could attract more of the Nargles away from him. He looked so miserable.
"You don't care?" Draco asked, before he could stop himself. Was he really going to contribute to a conversation with her?
"No," Luna responded with another shrug. She leaned forward into a passing breeze and took in a deep breath of air through her nose. "It's so beautiful here. I can see why you come every night."
"How do you know that?" Draco asked with a frown, alarmed that she'd been actually stalking him for longer than just recently with a piece of wood.
"The Nargles!" she answered, as though it were the most obvious explanation.
"Of course," Draco muttered, rubbing his head in his hands. "Now will you please go away?"
Luna gave Draco a curious look from the corner of her eye. The way he sat with his shoulders both stiff and weighed down made him seem entirely oppressed by Nargles, despite the fact that they were slowly dissipating into her enchanted driftwood Nargle trap. With all the other Nargles in the castle, it was no wonder he came out here every night. Somewhere in Luna's heart, she felt a surge of pity for the Malfoy. Although she herself had never carried more than one or two Nargles at once, she could empathize with the pain of Draco's uninvited load.
"It must feel nice, getting away from the castle," she commented. While her voice sounded as distant as it always had, her head was cocked to the side and her eyes keyed in on Draco's.
Draco tensed, immediately wondering if she guessed his disdain for what the Carrows were doing to Hogwarts, despite the "privileges" granted the Slytherins. As much as he tried to force himself to take pleasure in the new situation, Draco could not feel anything but disgust at the siblings. The Carrows were nothing more than idiots. Careless, destructive idiots.
"I don't come here to escape. There is… nothing wrong with Hogwarts," Draco said, choosing his words carefully. He couldn't let her keep the impression that he was running away like a scared child from the dark.
Luna sighed.
"Draco, one of the perks about being considered loony is that people are always honest with me. No one cares what I say, so if I tell anyone, it doesn't matter. You can tell my anything."
The Malfoy inside of Draco instantly let out a bark of laughter. Why would he want to talk to Loony Lovegood? What could he possibly say that she would understand outside of all her imaginations?
After his initial reaction, however, his thoughts were frozen when he caught her steady gaze on him. She was listening, not to the Malfoy part of him, but to something deeper. Something resonated within him and cried out to be heard with a voice Draco had buried so far down, he'd completely forgot it existed.
She was right. The outrageous things suddenly fighting to escape him would be ignored by everyone if she were ever to repeat them. No one would believe a Lovegood. So why not speak?
Luna watched as Draco's face turned solemn and his eyes met hers, filled with a swirling tornado of reflecting Nargles. He opened his mouth.
"I come here to watch the sunset," he said as though it were a confession. "It's the only time of day that isn't shadowed in grey. When I'm here, I don't have to torture people. I don't have to watch the Dark Lord's most daft followers and remember that I am one of them."
Draco paused to lift his sleeve and reveal the edge of the dark mark that blackened his forearm. Then he looked back at Luna, nervous that he may have said too much. But Luna's eyes were still on his face, searching. She didn't even glance down at his arm.
"The sun set already," she pointed out.
"I stay to watch the Thestrals," he admitted in a low voice. As of yet, he hadn't even realized why he stayed on the beach so late.
"Beautiful creatures," Luna hummed, looking over at the beasts that were slowly retreating back to the woods.
"Oblivious," Draco added. That was why he liked them so much. No matter how much pain surrounded the creatures, they didn't notice. Even when they relied on pain to be seen.
"Nargle-free," Luna agreed.
"What is it with you and Nargles?" Draco asked, slightly annoyed. Mostly, he was tired. He didn't understand the relief he was feeling at having admitted so little to a girl who obviously wasn't a hundred percent.
Luna twirled her hair as she contemplated the question. Why was she so intent on keeping Nargles far away? She never thought of a reason for it, it just seemed like common sense. If a Nargle causes distress, of course you want it gone! Unfortunately, she knew very well that this would be lost on someone who didn't even believe in the existence of Nargles.
Sighing, she shifted to sit on her legs and face Draco, still safely on the other side of the driftwood. He gave her a wary look, but didn't back away as her hands rose and reached behind her neck, brushing her hair to the side. In one swift move, she pulled off her Butterbeer cork necklace and lunged forward, capturing Draco's neck in it. It was clasped before he could jerk away.
"Are you crazy?!" Draco yelled, springing to his feet and trying to rip the necklace off. It was no use, the thing seemed unbreakable
Luna just grinned at the incensed Slytherin.
"You need it more than I," she said, before flouncing away, up the hill towards the castle.
Pansy Parkinson noticed an improvement in Draco's moodiness right away. He actually woke up in time for breakfast and even asked a question in Herbology. Admittedly, it was a snide, rhetorical question, but still. Draco was showing an interest in his surroundings. She could swear she'd even seen him almost smile to himself at one point.
Draco would be the first to deny this change. If he were to recognize how his step felt ever so slightly lighter or how his mind didn't wonder quite so often to the Astronomy Tower incident or the wretched summer, he would be assigning value to the ridiculous necklace made of garbage that he unwillingly wore everywhere.
The only thing he wanted to thank Luna for was not placing an anti-invisibility charm on the thing. He'd have had a hell of a time explaining that to people.
No, Draco Malfoy would never admit that sometimes, he fingered the individual cork caps along the necklace and remembered the intensity in the eyes of the odd girl with long hair. He did do this though, almost every time the Carrows crossed his path or his memory became too active.
But even Draco couldn't deny his disappointment when Luna did not show up at the Black Lake the next night.
Luna was surprised when the days passed and still, even without her necklace she hadn't attracted any more Nargles than normal. She wondered if it maybe weren't as powerful as she'd thought. She hoped that wasn't the case, for Draco's sake.
Thinking of him, she kept a look out on the Black Lake at night, watching for a dangerous surplus of Nargles. Each night didn't show anything as drastic as the day she'd met Draco there, though, and so she kept her distance. Hogwarts needed her attention more than the Malfoy. Right?
Luna's mind often wondered to the night by the beach and to the boy so bogged down with Nargles that even his angry voice fell flat with sorrow and stress. She wondered if he'd found a spell to remove the necklace. Whenever she pictured the look on his face as he realized it was charmed un-removable, she couldn't hold back her self-satisfied grin. So she thought of it often, because grinning is one of the best Nargle-be-gone tricks.
Draco Malfoy had every right to be miserable. To be a Death Eater with no appetite for death would be a prison that Luna didn't particularly want to consider. She was, after all, trying to keep Nargles away. Thoughts like that would only invite them near.
However, the plight of the Slytherin boy crossed her mind so much that she was debating giving up on de-Nargle-ing Hogwarts in order to focus more on him. There must be something that could be done to free him from his situation.
It was with practical glee that one night she discovered a batch of Nargles by the lake worthy of immediate disbanding. Within minutes, she was seated beside the peroxide haired boy, watching as the sun ducked under the lake, splaying colors across it like a blanket.
"You found me without wagging a stick around," Draco finally said, having ignored her original greeting with no more than a nod.
Luna smiled and shook her head, but made no retort. They both turned towards the woods to wait for the Thestrals to arrive.
"Why'd you come?" Draco asked, his voice much softer than Luna expected. She looked at him curiously and found a vulnerability she also hadn't expected.
"Did you miss me?" she asked, guessing at the underlying question.
Draco scoffed, but did not deny it.
"You have an extraordinary amount of Nargles swarming around you," she informed him. "I want to help."
Draco's brow furrowed and his face darkened even compared to the grey of the night.
"Dumbledore said that, too. Just before he died."
Luna smiled at Draco comfortingly and placed her hand, open palmed, on her knee.
Draco looked down at the offered hand, then back at her warm, practically Dumbledore-like, twinkling eyes. He'd refused once, and look where he was now. Haunted by the death and surrounded, apparently, by Nargles. What's the worst that could happen?
Tentatively, Draco raised his hand and set it gently in the ultra-soft open palm.
Draco had nothing to lose.