~Drabble Collection: In Search Of Wonderland~

III

The Rememberings of Rabbits

(Tend To Come Mostly In Dreams)

Whether what Luna – Lovegood – had said was true or not, she did stay with Draco and went nowhere; the little room he had been sequestered in when he arrived, in the arms of a confused and somewhat conflicted House Elf, had its own loo attached and was apparently being kept undisturbed by the outside world.

Perhaps his fangs had disturbed that Healer more than he thought?

For a moment – just a moment – he found the idea truly amusing – but then it only reminded him of the indignity and annoyance of his present situation, and he proceeded to sulk. Luna – Lovegood – why did he keep thinking of her in such familiar terms – was not interested in his behavior, being occupied with reading one of her father's eternally odd magazine publications – and sulking grows tiring quickly if one is not being observed.

Luna – Lovegood Lovegood – Lovegood – only turned her eyes toward him again when she thought that he had finally sulked himself into sleep, but he caught the blue glimmer of her gaze at the edge of wakefulness, and brought it with him into his dreams.

Then she went to the edge of the table on which he was seated, and began to stroke the deadly softness of his pristine white fur. She spoke quietly, so as not to wake him, but in conversational tones – as if he was still awake, and not a rabbit, and might answer.

"You know, Draco, a Killer Rabbit – it's a very interesting creature. It's not meant to be a killer – it's the only predatory rabbit, even among magical species – and it isn't born from its mother with terrible fangs and bloodthirsty instincts. The Killer Rabbit is a magical rabbit that has been forced to abandon its previous nature...but no one knows how it happens.

"I think you can't transform back into yourself, because that is the nature of what you are, what you have become; you have abandoned your own nature, to become something with fangs that have no purpose but to steal life."

Her voice is winding and echoing down into Draco's dreams, but he is not hearing what she says there. There, he is back in time, back ten years before in the worst days of the neverending-endless-war. Before Potter had achieved his last bit of glory; before the last hopes of his parents and their fellows and all those dreams they had instilled him him had faded forever..

She had really been Lovegood in those days, not Luna; it was not until halfway through the torture that she became Luna.

Because his father called her Lovegood, and Aunt Bella chanted Loony Loony Loony Loony until he thought his ears would crack; from that or the silence, because Luna did not speak or scream or cry. Only sometimes she panted, or gasped strangely – the gasps were terrifying -

And one night, when he couldn't take it any more, he went down to the cell of this girl who had walked the hall of Hogwarts with him, and left a clean, refilling bucket of cold, clear water; a plate of sandwiches that she could hide – a cracked, old cup no one would miss to drink from.

She had stood up right in front of him and taken the filthy, ripped robes from her body, and stood naked and gleaming, soft mounds of breasts and moonstruck hair – she had taken the bucket and held it over her head and let the water cascade down, and down, and down, and down -

He had watched her for a long time, and then turned and let her be.

The sound of the water followed him up the stairs and through the winding of his dreams.

A/N: Chapter three is a chapter indeed, and reviews are pleasing from those who read!

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