A/N: The prompt was to write a character coming to the light side, so that is shown through Draco's decision in this chapter. Also there's something about sharks snuck in for a prompt.


Turn Around

Instead of the lively celebration Halloween usually brought to Hogwarts, the Carrows used the holiday as an excuse to inspire more fear into the hearts of the students. Many of them marked it down as the day overnight detentions were invented. Still others recorded it as the day of the first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson of hallucinogenic torture. The most unlucky ones remembered both.

To Luna, it was the day the Nargles completely took over the school. No matter where she went, a pack of them surrounded just about everyone. She could tell by all the slumped shoulders, a sure sign of Nargles hitchhiking on the backs of their victims. The glazed looks and droopy eyes gave it away as well. Nargles were notorious for fogging the vision with their constant swarming about the head. Naturally, this made chatter challenging as well, which in turn made the Great Hall thick with somber silence.

The quiet could also have been due to the alarming number of teenage wizards who apparently lacked any appetite. Another effect caused by Nargles, Luna concluded. She proceeded to drive herself to nausea by attempting to count the number of whirling devils that seemed to bury alive the few students remaining at the Ravenclaw table.

Sick to her stomach, Luna sprung up from her seat and scurried out of the Great Hall without having touched her meal. Not even the candied apples could convince her to stay.

Only one pair of eyes bothered to look up at the distressed girl making a hasty exit. Most kept their eyes on the depressing feast, slowly rotating their forks around and around their plates in a mindless rhythm.

Draco Malfoy was seated at the only table where cutlery was actively moving from plate to mouth, and the clinking and clanking of it was giving him a resounding headache. If only he could flee the scene as unnoticed as Lovegood could. Though, judging by the way she was holding her stomach and the color of her face, he guessed he wasn't the worst off.

Every so often a fellow Slytherin would look up, smirk, and launch into an unsolicited story about the day's professor-endorsed brutalizing. Draco wished he could say the stories were getting old, that they weren't changing day by day. But they were. The more desensitized the Slytherins became, the more and more horrifying their stories grew.

And of course, they weren't just stories.

Twisting an invisible cork on the loop around his neck, Draco carefully schooled his features into a mask of petulant boredom. He knew as long as he kept up the pretense, his status could be maintained without having to participate excessively in the violence. Appearing aloof somehow even gave him a higher standing than the seventh year boys most eager to inflict pain, regardless of his father's disgrace among the Death Eaters.

Sometimes, though, it seemed as though the stories worsened as a deliberate attempt to elicit some reaction from Draco. Perhaps some sick competition amongst his peers to be the first to "impress" him. The thought nagged at Draco's mind, contributing to the pile of guilt he stored away. Was it his impassiveness that inspired the cruelty? Was he the reason the second year girl Cierra Flick was Crutiated?

Though he pretended to not be listening, each story weighed on him like … like a Nargle. Yes, he'd been spending way too much time with Lovegood.

And yet, the evening couldn't come fast enough.


Around the time of the traditional Hogsmeade trip (which did not occur), Luna stopped counting the Nargles. She stopped rummaging through bins for old Butterbeer corks to later string up around the castle. She stopped collecting driftwood and slipping them under tables and chairs. There were simply too many Nargles and too few Lovegoods at Hogwarts.

Instead, Luna lurked down to the lake every night and sat by the Nargle-infested Malfoy as the sun crept away and the Thestrals slunk out of the forest. When the boy could breathe again with ease and hold his own shoulders back, she'd stand, wish him goodnight, and float away.

At least, she used to float. Lately Draco had been noticing more and more times when her bare feet made solid contact with the ground. Her hair, though still entrancing, seemed to fly a little less freely. And was it just him, or was she not holding her eyebrows as high on her brow as normal?

Perhaps she had some Nargles of her own?

Draco mentally slapped the thought from his brain. He'd definitely spent too long listening to the girl's Nargle jargon. Besides, why should he care if she was not acting quite as strange as she normally did? He was supposed to care about nothing…

"So, what imaginary creature is eating you," Draco asked Luna the next night with an appraising glance. He couldn't stop himself. The girl had sighed. Sighed. Luna Lovegood.

"Same as you," she responded with an uncharacteristic shrug, "I've got a Nargle on my back that I can't shake off. Maybe I'll beat it tonight."

"You, Miss Nargle Slayer, have one yourself?" Draco scoffed in mock horror. He didn't realize why he'd said that until the chiming of Luna's laughter sounded out. That was why. He could fall asleep to that sound and not wake up until the war ended, he was sure.

Draco waited all the while until the Thestrals settled into the lake to drink, and still Luna did not elaborate.

"Don't you have to have worries in order to attract a Nargle?" he asked softly so as not to break the silence into too many pieces. He quickly added, "or something like that," so she wouldn't think he listened all that closely to her crazed Nargle talk.

She fixed her blue eyes on him, as she always did before speaking.

"Mm," she confirmed, "My father is the writer, editor, and publisher of The Quibbler."

It sounded like the "my father is…" phrase Draco used all the time, until last year. The familiarity made him flinch, as did the meaning, once it sunk in.

Xenophilius Lovegood ran the last remaining public media source not controlled by the Dark Lord. He was taking a huge risk, no doubt larger than he realized.

Luna's eyes were glistening.

Draco looked away.

"No offense, but I'm sure the Dark Lord has more important things to worry about than that absurd magazine. The Quibbler is hardly a threat to him," he said, making a concerted effort to sound as sure as he wasn't.

Despite the dis, Luna let Draco's words soak in and in no time, she was Nargle-free again. Thrilled, she shook out her newly loose shoulders before grasping Draco into a quick hug.


Draco was torn in two.

A part of him was acutely aware of the keen look his housemates were using to scrutinize him. He was showing emotion for the first time that term, and he looked afraid. If he didn't get his mask on in five seconds, he would lose his status among them. He would lose everything. They would understand that it wasn't that he was so strong that nothing impressed him, it was that he was so weak that he avoided everything, even feeling.

Another part of him was gaping through the train window at the back of the bundled up witch standing on the train platform and thinking, begging: "Turn around. Now."

If Luna boarded the train, she'd be captured. Theodore Nott had just boasted of this, himself watching Luna with bright, greedy eyes. He wanted to watch the girl as she walked into her trap, believing she is safe and happy to be headed home.

Luna's hair cascaded out from beneath her scarf and down her back. It swished aside the fresh snow that had just landed on her shoulders when she took a step towards the door of the train.

Draco sprang from his seat like a tiger from a tree.


By the first snowfall of the season, Luna was sure Nargles outnumbered the wizarding population of Hogwarts fifty to one, though she wasn't at all keeping track. The fact that so many students had returned home and left Hogwarts was only making the ratio more extreme. The incessantly multiplying creatures circled around the remaining students like sharks about their prey, and the disbelieving students had no idea.

Luna desperately needed the holiday break. She knew her father had no doubt kept the house Nargle-less and for the last month she could imagine no other place in the world she'd rather be. Well, maybe by the lake.

She did wonder how Draco would manage over the Christmas vacation, and he seemed to be wondering as well, based on the amount of Nargles he'd been attracting. There was no point in dwelling on it, though. Especially not here on the train platform where there was absolutely nothing she could do. She'd see him soon enough. She just really needed to go home.

She stepped forward to board the Hogwart's Express, making a clean, neat footprint in the snow.

"Luna, no! Wait!" came a call from a voice she'd never heard quite so pure.