A/N: Written for The 2012 Hogwarts Games (Event: Swimming – Freestyle – 100-1000) and the 5, 10, 20, 50, 70, 100 Fandoms Challenge, which both can be found at the HPFC forum.
Many thanks to my beta-reader mew-tsubaki!
Tell me a fairytale I might believe
The darkness around them was unyielding, like a firm material of some kind—it was so much more than only the absence of light. It was as though he could touch it, Dean thought. It was as though it was something that lived, that pulsated and spread, that seeped into his body through his skin and into his veins, poisoning his blood with small grains of obscure, black dust or powder.
Dean took a deep breath, but it only made him fear that he inhaled more of the darkness, that soon his lungs, intestines, everything would be contaminated with it.
"Stories," a voice said to the left of him. A voice that belonged to Luna—a voice that, even though it wavered, was suffused in light. "We need stories. This quietness isn't doing us any good."
A bit further away, in the corner, a grumble could be heard, but not of the disagreeing sort. There was a rustle and, because in front of his eyes it was as unbendingly dark, Dean imagined the scene in his head: him scooting up to rest more comfortably against the wall, Luna stretching her hand out to grab Ollivander's and beckoning him closer and then removing a tinsel of hair from her eyes as she began to speak.
Her voice was calm but rough at the edges, and Dean pondered over why this was, while her story played out in the background as a comfortable lullaby. Was it because of not having used it in so long? And how long had it really been, since he lastly had heard her screams of pain? The darkness didn't only defile them; it also defiled the prospect of time.
Or did the rusty quality to her voice depend on how Malfoy's mother's fingers had closed around her throat in a desperately rapid movement, something so clearly out of character for the woman who Dean once had believed to have such self-restraint, such composure so firm that not even an earthquake could shake her?
Dean couldn't tell. He let Luna's voice regain his attention and he closed his eyes, because then he could pretend that beyond his eyelids, it was a bright summer day—maybe even so bright that he had had to shield his eyes.
"And there, in the forest, she'll be found amidst the trees, hair cascading down her naked body, but she will never turn around. It's not until you're hopelessly lost, with no chance of finding your way back, will she show her back, which consists of a hole. And then you know you've been tricked."
"I've…" Ollivander paused to cough. "I've heard that story, I think."
"It's a folktale from the Northern countries. My mum used to tell me it." Dean sensed Luna turning to face him, and he could imagine her eyes being round and big. "Dean, do you have a story to tell?"
And Dean thought of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, of Snow White and The Ugly Duckling, but somehow there was dark powder on the surface of them, and he suddenly caught himself thinking of Seamus' laughter when he once had told him of a poisoned apple and a glass cage. "No, tell another instead, Luna," Dean said in a whisper.
His cheeks became wet and, for the first time in that cellar, he appreciated the darkness.