It only took me three hours to complete the mission and get back to Snape. I knew where the grave was. The task in and of itself was easy, even. But digging up the man that had been my headmaster for so many years...the man I had gotten killed on the astronomy tower...that was more difficult. I found myself unable to look at his face as I opened the casket and took the wand. I didn't have much of a choice about the situation anyways. Snape had kept Luna with him as leverage to ensure my cooperation. What I couldn't understand is why Snape even wanted the wand.

"I really can't understand how you stand the insufferable girl." He complained as I reentered his house. He had been sitting in a chair with his back to the fireplace. "She may be bright in potions class, but she is more impractical than a bloody unicorn."

"Where is she?" I demanded as I stepped toward him.

His eyes began to search me for the wand. "Give me the wand." He demanded back, even more forcefully.

I took it out from my cloak and handed it to him roughly. He inspected it with his eyes and turned it all over in his hands, examining it. Not bothering to look up from his prize he sneered the word "upstairs."

I nodded to him and went up to find her. Although Snape's house was nothing in comparison to the Malfoy Manor that I had been raised in, I still had to check into several rooms before I found my loon.

"Luna?" I questioned softly as I approached her figure lying still on a bed in the corner of a small bedroom with a lit fireplace. She was facing the wall away from me. I swept her hair away from her face as I looked down at her sleeping form. She appeared at ease and unharmed. I covered her up better with the comforter and ran my fingers through her long beautiful hair before backing away quietly and leaving the room to rejoin Snape.

Snape sat where he had been before, looking deeply troubled and drawn into thought. I sat down in the chair across from him and he suddenly rose from his place, walking towards me and using his own wand against my forehead in a legilimens charm. There was no polite way to describe the feeling. It felt as if my brain was being raped. I could feel him forcing his way into my mind and I desperately wished that I knew how to make him stop, but I didn't. I had no way to know how long I been sitting there before he was finished. Whatever he saw there, I didn't know, but he seemed quite pleased with whatever it was that he found. I wondered if perhaps he hand obliterated whatever it was from my memory so that I couldn't know.

He lowered his wand and took a few steps backwards and away from me. "I will be keeping Miss Lovegood here under my protection, Draco. You may stay with her if you wish but in return I will require complete loyalty from you. Is that understood?" Behind his usual grim expression I could almost swear I saw a grin.

I agreed.

The next six weeks went by uneasily. Snape would appear here and there in his house as he seemed to shift back and forth from Hogwarts. I followed whatever instructions he gave me, though most of it didn't seem to make any sense and a lot of it was fairly dangerous. I was lucky that Luna seemed to have a natural talent with healing spells and that very little made her upset. Once, she had to heal a giant gash that extended all the way from my elbow to my wrist from climbing a ledge as I bled all over her and she didn't even blink. Snape would watch these scenes after I returned from his missions and pump me for information, often commenting on how ironic it was that Luna was using my wand to heal rather than hex me considering her position.

I didn't let it phase me. In all honesty, everyone knew that Luna could have used my own wand to incapacitate me and escape a million times over since she had been with me, but she never had. I didn't even try to keep my wand from her anymore. There was really nothing to stop her from leaving even just physically from Snape's home either...she could have walked right out of the door anytime with nothing to hold her in and there were lots of times when she was in the house alone. In truth, I was beginning to wonder just who the captive here was.

At night there had been one major change. Ever since that night out in the tent when I had lifted my covers to Luna and held her we never had gone back to sleeping away from each other on opposite sides of the bed. Every night when I would go to lay down, usually long after Luna had drifted to sleep, I would come up behind her close and wait for her to back up into me. She always did and I would always wrapp my arms around her tiny little figure, take in the smell of her hair and kiss at the back of her head. Sometimes, she would sing her strange little muggle's song for me at night, as I rubbed at her side.

I see the moon and the moon sees me

And the moon sees someone I want to me

So God bless the moon and God bless me

And God bless the one I love

Over the mountain over the sea
Back where my heart is longing to be
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one I love

I see the moon the moon sees me

Down through the leaves of the old oak tree
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one I love

I kissed the rose and the rose kissed me
Fragrant as only a rose can be
Please take the kiss that comforts me
Back to the one I love

One night, Luna squirmed out of my arms. It was around two twenty in the morning. Thinking that she was just trying to sleep walk (which I had long ago learned the hard way that she was prone to) I tried to hold her down more forcefully.

"Draco, please." Her bell like voice requested.

Realizing that she was indeed awake I let go of my grasp for a moment. "We can go see the moon later Luna! I'm really tired. Now come back." I grabbed at her as she sat up and I felt more and more irratated. She didn't lay back down as I had demanded.

Instead she continued to silently get up, walked to the door and pressed her ear to it, as if listening intently to something that I could not hear from my place on the bed on the other side of the room. When I saw her frightened expression I knew that something must be horribly wrong. I knew that other deatheaters were in the house that night, visiting with Snape. I padded over to Luna softly and lead her away from the door and back to the bed. She didn't struggle this time but only looked as if in shock. It worried me.

I quickly got dressed and bent down in front of her in the dark room. "Stay here, Luna. No matter what happens. Here's my wand. If anyone other than me comes in here, kill them and apparate yourself away to some place even I wouldn't know about. Don't wait for me. Do you understand?"

Her pale face didn't show any signs of response, but I knew that she had heard me. I shoved my wand into her right hand that had been resting in her lap and, without thinking about it or even realizing what I was about to do until I was already doing it, I leant down and kissed her. Her small pink lips were soft and sweet and I kept the kiss very gentle. I could tell that Luna was a little bit suprised and was inexperienced, but I didn't care other than the slight feeling of guilt for taking that from her instead of letting her choose some idiot for herself, like she had mentioned wanting to save those things for. Longbottom, perhaps, or even Ron or Harry maybe. The thought turned my stomach a little. Instead, I was taking it from her. Still, she did not feel upset or even rigid in my arms, as most would when surpised, but as relaxed and sweet as ever. The only problem was that it only made me want to kiss my sweet little loon more. I didn't have time for that, so I just left her sitting there in her little white night gown with her feet dangling off the bed.

Without a word, I got up and quickly left the room, shutting and locking the door behind me. As soon as I got out into the hallway where I could hear into the dining room I could immediately tell what Luna had been so freaked out about. Around the table sat a large group of deatheaters and, at the head, Voldemort himself. Something about Snape's features became uneasy as he noticed me come in, though I came to sit beside him anyways as it was the only empty place. Apparently, the Dark Lord was ranting and raving about the fact that some mystical wand he had been searching for was missing. A wand that was exactly like the one that I had stolen out of Dumbledoor's grave for Snape. I was beginning to get very confused, though I knew to keep my mouth shut about it.

"I need something to kill." Voldemort finally said, as if he were asking for something to make him feel better. I shot a warning glance over at Snape, desperately trying to figure out what he was going to do.

I was shocked when he quickly left his seat and ushered in what looked to be a random muggle. It was a hard looking tatooed man in his forties who wore an orange prison jumpsuit. I watched Vodemort's face closely for some sign of acceptance of the offering. His face turned up into a snarl and he let out a loud breath. While he tortured the man to death I noticed something unusual. The serpent that always stayed with Vodemort wasn't there with him.

"And some people have the audacity to suggest that self respecting witches and wizards should mate with creatures like that." The Dark Lord sneered as he finished off the man slowly. The meeting dragged on while I stayed frozen in my place, too afraid for Luna and too confused about Snape to find my voice in anything discussed. Why did Snape have me get the wand and then lie to Voldemort himself about it when he knew that it was something he wanted? What was his game? Whatever it was, I didn't like it. If the Dark Lord found out I would be killed as well and as soon as I was dead the other deatheaters would be picking at Luna like vultures. She'd be lucky to die with me.

As soon as it came to a close and everyone else left I pulled Snape aside, demanding to know what was going on. To my surprise, he put a hand at my shoulder and led me back up to a sleeping Luna, stopping at the foot of the bed in clear view of her.

"Look at the girl, Draco." He demanded quietly, as though he did not want to wake her.

I did as he said. She was sleeping soundly again on her side with the comforter pulled up to her waist and her upper body exposed to the cold air with only her thin little nightgown as a barrier. Without thinking, I walked over to cover her up better and tucked her in up to her neck before returning to Snape.

"Are you in love?" The professor asked, straight out, though his tone indicated that he thought he already knew the answer.

I only blinked at him, not understanding what he wanted from me. He took the lack of response as uncooperation and drew out his wand, holding it to point at her.

"What are you doing?" I demanded, immediately taking the wand I had left with Luna from the nightstand and drawing it out to face off with him if necessary.

He raised an eyebrow at my actions. "And if I cast the killing curse on her now?" He asked almost sarcastically.

I held my wand more rigidly at him. "I don't want to kill you Snape, but if you touch her-"

"Oh calm down boy." He groaned out while rolling his eyes. He drew back his wand and put it away into his cloak. "I was only trying to illustrate a point. As inconvenient for you as it is, you obviously are in love with the girl."

I slowly lowered my wand away from him, still feeling highly on edge.

"You know, if the Dark Lord wins eventually she will be killed. A creature like that has no place in his society, even if she is a pure blood." He seemed to study my facial expression.

"What? Did you think you could keep her locked up forever as your personnal pet? Think about it, Draco. After this war every witch and wizard will be made to obey him. Miss Lovegood is not one to renounce her beliefs to save her own skin." I began shaking my head 'no' at him, knowing that I didn't want to hear anymore.

He stepped closer and took hold of my shoulders to make me listen. "She will refuse to change her alliegence and then she will be tortured to death. And, trust me Draco, to be young, pureblooded, and beautiful like her will not fall to her advantage when they decide on the methods. You need to decide right here, right now where your allegiance falls. You cannot have it both ways. You need to decide right now whether you are willing to die for this girl or let her die for your beliefs. Which way is it?"

At that point I realized what Snape had been doing and why he had the wand and, despite everything I had been raised to believe and mostly still believed in, I knew what I had to do. What it came down to was this: a world full of intermixed muggles and magic was annoying and wrong, but the idea of a world in which Luna didn't exist...well, it was easy for me to say that I would take up with the stupid muggles, thank you.

I paused for a moment and looked down at my sleeping Luna's sweet and trusting face. "What do you need me to do?" I asked him and, in doing so, gave him my answer.