I didn't see her again for three weeks. The stress of being a deatheater was getting to me and I found myself making frequent trips to my family's expansive wine room. I was just outside the basement door, walking to the only thing that could possibly dull the stress of the day. It was one of those days when I needed a good glass of firewhiskey…maybe some of the eighty year old collection. That was when I heard it. At first I didn't know what it was; just that it was high pitched and sounded pretty. It even scared me a little, making me wonder whether there was some sort of ghost. Then, when I followed it to the wall of the basement, I realized that someone was singing. Not my mother, for she had been far too depressed for far too long to do anything of the sort, nor aunt Bellatrix…the voice was much too sweet for it to be possibly coming from that mad woman. None of the house elves would dare to sing. That only left one female in the house. Feeling called to the owner of the voice as if being hypnotized by a siren, I opened the door to the cellar and walked slowly down the stairs, casting a luminous charm on my wand so that I could see in the pitch darkness down there. I could hear the sound my leather shoes made against the stone each time I took and step and it seemed to blend with the melody of the song. The words were strange… I had never heard them or the melody before.
"I see the moon and the moon sees me
And the moon sees someone I want to see
So God bless the moon and God bless me
And God bless the someone I want to see…"
I stopped several yards from the cot she was sitting in, crossed legged and still barefoot. This time, she did look worse for the wear. I wasn't sure if anyone had been feeding her at all based on the looks of things. Before that moment I had no idea that a person could even lose that much weight in only three weeks. She looked more like a ghost sitting there than she looked real. It spooked me, a little.
"Hello, Draco." She greeted as she noticed me there, in an ordinary and unsurprised voice.
"What are you doing?" I couldn't help but demand. My voice sounded angry, but I didn't realize that I was angry until I heard it. She was singing to herself! Singing! In a dungeon in the dark while seemingly starving to death! What is wrong with this girl? She really must be just as mad as people are always saying. She didn't even look sad or angry…or even scared.
She reached out to me and began to stand up, but immediately she began to falter a bit. I quickly caught her, more out of reflex than a desire to help her. While she was pressed against me, she gave me a look of…sympathy. The look unsettled me. It was as if her silvery blue eyes could see straight through me. I had never seen anyone look at me like that before and it made me incredibly uncomfortable.
"You're stressed." She stated calmly. I felt my face scrunch into disgust and quickly helped her back down onto her cot to get some distance in between us. "You should try to relax more; stress is known to attract the wackspurts."
I backed up a little to take a look at the crazy loon. She was so thin and dirty that I almost felt like I was looking at a prisoner in Azkaban instead of a young girl that I had gone to school with. I didn't know what to do. I kept getting flashes of how I had seen her at school before…with her skipping happily down the hallways wearing her crazy radish earrings. She was a nut, but she had always been a nice girl…even to me the few times I had ever come into contact with her. She was a year younger than me, so we didn't have any of the same classes.
Suddenly, I needed some air. I was having an attack of conscious that I wasn't used to. The idea of this little loon literally wasting away in the dark basement below my feet just seemed too entirely unreal to me. Feeling a sudden panicked need to getting away from her, I turned and ran up the long flight of stairs, down three hallways, and out the first available exit that I came to. I stopped only when I reached the courtyard's marble railings that overlooked the lake. Grasping on to the railing, I gasped for air. It was like I had been holding it without my knowledge so long that could do nothing but panic. Like I suddenly found myself a mile underwater and had to frantically swim upwards before my lungs flat out exploded. Finally, after several minutes, I caught my breath and tried to think rationally. I was very uncomfortable with the way that I was feeling.
Luna Lovegood. The name itself sounded cooky. Did she even realize that she was being tortured? That she was starving to death down in that basement? That she would never see the moon that she was singing about ever again? Realizing that I had been pacing back and forth around the marble flooring, I stopped and sat down on some steps nearby. There were things that I could do about her position, if I wanted to. I knew this. I knew that I could conjure up other things she surely needed down there, or order the house elves to start giving her more food. But the question that I was wrestling with was WHY SHOULD I CARE? What difference should it make to me if the girl starves to death? Immediately, though, I knew that I could not let this happen for reasons that I could not quite grasp within myself. She was just a prisoner. Finally, I came to a decision. I decided that the reason that it was all bothering me so much must be because of the fact that she too is a pure blood, making her not at all like the other mudblood and halfblood vermin that I was used to seeing tortured.
Finally, I made a decision. I would simply bring some food down to her and then go to bed. In the morning, surely, I would be once again capable or rational thought and all this strange guilt will go away. Feeling confident that this would fix the situation, I walked quickly over to the kitchen. All of the house elves immediately stopped what they were doing and waited for my demands.
"That prisoner down there, when was the last time anyone fed her?" Draco demanded.
The house elf closest to me immediately got down on all fours and bowed so deeply that her nose touched the ground. "Mas- Master Lucius told Milly that she didn't have to be fed. But, but Milly…" The house elf, apparently overcome with grief and guilt began bashing her head against the stone floor, seemingly as hard as she could. "Oh Master, forgive me! Milly is sorry! Milly betrayed the Malfoy name!"
Wanting to get information out of the stupid elf before it killed itself, I kicked her so that she would land on her back side and could no longer bash her head. "Did you feed her?" I asked.
"I fed her just very little, Master. I couldn't bear it! Milly is sorry! Milly gave the girl water and breadcrumbs from Milly's rations. Milly must be punished!" She started trying to hurt herself again and I quickly jerked her up.
"Stop trying to hurt yourself. I don't care that you fed her! I want you to go get some food for her now and bring it to me!"
The elf scrambled to its feet and ran over to the stove, quickly fixing a large tray and running it over to me before dropping to all fours again at my feet. "Oh thank you Master! Thank you!"
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." I huffed out, annoyed by how pathetic house elves were. I took the tray and walked back down to the basement.
This time there was no singing and, when I got down there, the blonde seemed to be asleep. Conjuring up a chair to sit in, I sat for a moment and let my eyes roam over the girl once again. Her almost white, waist long hair needed washing and her lips were chapped. The wool blanket that I had left with her covered much of her body but I could see her face and one of her hands. Her skin was a pale and beautiful alabaster. I didn't even realize it until it had happened, but I reached out to her hand and touched the cold skin. She moved a little and I flinched, moving my hand back to keep to myself. Finally, I just decided to leave the tray on the chair and go. As I got up, however, she blinked her eyes open a little.
"You look like shit." I said to her, lying through my teeth even though she was in bad condition.
"Good morning, Draco." Her bell like voice greeted me.
I pushed the food tray into her lap as soon as she sat up. "It's not morning. It's like eleven thirty P.M." I stated dryly, wondering once again what the hell I was doing.
"You brought a picnic!" She exclaimed gleefully. "Are we going outside to eat?"
I looked at her again like she was crazy. "Why would I let you go outside?" I asked, wondering what on earth would make her think of something as random as outdoor picnics when she was starving to death.
"Well, if it is eleven thirty at night, I should think that the moon would be high and beautiful. Also, the cold air helps to fend off those wackspurts that were bothering you…"
I had no idea what the hell a wackspurt was, or really what she was even talking about. However, she was obviously weak from her time down here and it wasn't like I couldn't handle her if she tried to run off. Suddenly, I was tempted. Her spontaneity was a bit off fresh air in an otherwise very dried up house. Plus, somehow I knew that she wouldn't try to run off anyways, though I knew that I would if I were her.
"Can you walk?" I asked, genuinely curious.
Luna blushed a little in the dark room. The color on her cheeks looked lovely. "With some help, I'm sure."
Whether it was out of guilt, or curiosity, or just plain loneliness, I felt myself caving in. "Fine." I did the best I could to make my voice seem more cross than I was. Honestly, I was feeling somewhat amused by the whole thing. I leant down and wrapped my arm around her waist to help her support her weight. As we walked I could feel every rib and bone and it occurred to me how much she looked like someone with anorexia. I decided to take her out to the gardens to the back of the mansion. It wasn't the closest to the basement, but I thought that she would probably like that place best. As we walked, she never said a word, but looked all about the hallways and everything we passed. To the casual observer, one would think she was trying to memorize the layout for escape purposes, but I could clearly see from my position up against her that, in fact, she seemed to be looking at the patterns in the ceiling and floor. I didn't even try to imagine why.
When we got outside, I helped her to sit on a nearby bench while I called for a house elf to prepare a picnic blanket for the two of us. Within a minute it was done and the food spread was out on it as well. I came over and helped Luna to stand up and walk over to the blanket. In all honesty, I was very tempted to just pick the girl up and carry her. It would have been easier, but somehow that felt too intimate considering the situation. We sat and I talked with her a little as she politely ate, very much unlike how I had expected her to. One thing that particularly stuck out to me while we were out there was just how intently she seemed to stare at the moon, as if there were something other than just the big pale circle to study about it. It reminded me of the song I had heard her singing earlier. I decided to ask her about it.
"That was an old song that my mother used to sing to me. She learned from a muggle friend of hers." She finished off her tea and biscuit and leaned back to lie down on the blanket, facing the moon. "I always found it very comforting, you know."
"You're going to die." I said coldly, straight out, testing whether anything could break the peculiar girl's calm.
Her expression never even changed. "Humans do have a habit of that, don't we?"
"Are you mental?" I asked her, becoming frustrated at her lack of self preservation.
"Not that I know of, but everyone sure does seem to ask that a lot." Luna commented, as if seriously considering the possibility. "But, if I am just going to die here, I don't see that it makes that much of a difference."
I didn't know what to say to that. It was an odd statement and I would end up spending the rest of the night obsessing over it. After a while, Luna had gone back down to the basement quietly and without any signs of resistance. She seemed like she was just resigned to her fate. The problem was that I wasn't. It was four thirty in the morning and I was still tossing and turning in my silken sheets. Something had to be done. I had gone through every possibility that I could think of to try to get her off my mind and out of my conscious. The girl was like a damned unicorn…she was just so bloody pure and good and beautiful that I couldn't stand to see her wither away without it driving me mad in the process. It was as though Satan himself had sent her here purely to torture me. Well, either him or Lord Voldemort…if there was any difference between the two. She was every single thing that I wasn't.
There were only two solutions that I could come up with to keep her alive on any semi permanent level though, and one of them would surely get both me and my family killed. So I chose the other one, although I knew it would only grant me a one way ticket into hell.
