A/N yay! a new chapter with BOTH Draco and Luna! They even get to talk to each other! Happy day!
By the by, you may want to go back and reread the first bit of Chpt 6 (Christmas morning breakfast disaster) in order to get a quick refresher on the Abraxas stone business because it's revisited in this chapter.
Draco sprinted through the long halls of Malfoy manor. The library was in the west wing of the manse and quite a distance away from the cellar stairs, but Draco didn't notice his ragged breath or the sweat running down his neck. His beating heart, however, he did feel, and it was fueled by his own increasing dread. Bellatrix has a three-minute head start on me. Draco imagined what his aunt could do to a wand-less person in only three minutes. He ran faster.
He leapt down the grand staircase 5 steps at a time. Every time his foot made contact with the ground, he added another second of agony to his image of Luna under the Cruciatus curse. Vaulting over the marble table in the parlor, Draco stumbled over his robes for a moment but kept running toward the cellar door. He flung it open and hurled himself down the dark stone steps.
In his mad dash he never considered how exactly he would stop Bellatrix from doing whatever she pleased to the girl. She was as powerful as she was crazy and both traits earned her the top spot at the Dark Lord's side. Ability wise, she could probably only be bested by Lucius and only on his best day.
Draco had been about to tear open the door to Luna's dungeon, but the thought of his father stilled him as he gripped the iron handle. He had been the most powerful Death Eater, before Lovegood and Potter ruined him. The past year, the worst and possible last of my whole life, would never have happened if it wasn't for that freak. His hand slipped off the door and he stepped back toward the stairs that he had been so willing to leap down only moments earlier. Fuck her then; she's a dead girl anyway.
As he turned to climb back up to the main floor, he heard a blood-curdling scream from the cellar room. Draco barely noticed the stone glow hot in his pocket because, before he could open the door to the dungeon, it blasted off its hinges. Without stopping to wonder at the incredible wand-less magic he had just preformed, Draco ran into the dungeon.
What he found was shocking but far less than the worst that he had imagined. Luna was hanging upside-down from the low ceiling with her long hair skimming the stone floor. As Bellatrix-The crazy bitch didn't even notice the fucking door blast away- shrieking about blood traitors and sharply jerked her wand back, clumps of Luna's hair were ripped out of her head and fell to the ground. The girl screamed again.
Draco had to think and act quickly. He silently cast a levitation charm to keep Luna in the air. Bellatrix must have sensed the magical disturbance because she turned around to face her nephew.
"Yes? Draco, you're interrupting our little girl chat." She laughed maniacally. "I'm offering my best hair styling lessons in exchange for a little bit of gossip about where our favorite teen wizard heartthrob is hiding." As he listened to his aunt speak, Draco's mind was whirling. What was the extent of my plan exactly? Barge in here like a hero and politely as her to stop torturing my….friend? Definitely need a less ludicrous approach. Idon't even believe it.
"Is that what you were doing? Funny, I thought you were just shaking out the fleas." He sneered at Luna. "Still, I'd have thought you'd have a little more finesse than this. It's really rather boring."
"I'm not doing this to entertain myself, boy. I am fulfilling my constant service to the Dark Lord."
"Yes, exactly as Uncle Rodolphus would have gone about it."
She glared at him, "What do you mean?"
Well it seems to be a common train amongst Death Eaters, you know? They display their uncanny abilities to mindlessly maim or torture without art or subterfuge and then look to the Dark Lord for a pat on the head and a biscuit. Like they had actually DONE something worthy of their blood status or Slytherin house, when really, they've proven themselves less tactical than a rampaging hippogriff." Draco could have sworn he saw Luna smile at this comment out of the corner of his eye.
Bellatrix seemed to consider this for a moment. "Well, then what do you suggest?"
"The Dark Lord should look at our family and see both our purity and our cunning. Yes, mistakes were made, but only because we are willing to take the risks that the others are to stupid to even realize might pay off. Now, listen: every sycophantic follower of our Lord is scurrying around looking for Potter, so it's only a matter of time before one of them stumbles upon him, most likely by accident. I say: Let them.
"ARE YOU INSANE? Whoever finds Potter will rise to the Dark Lord's right hand! Exalted above all—"
"Yes yes, for a time. That Death Eater will smugly brag to the rest of us that only he or she was clever and loyal enough to find Potter, and we will suffer it. Do you know why? Because the Dark Lord knows all and will tire of the boastful idiot quickly. How long will he want a pretender touting about how he succeeded where the Dark Lord failed?" Bellatrix gasped sharply, but Draco ignored her and flicked his wand towards Luna while yelling, "stupefy". However, while speaking the stunning spell, he focused his magic, not through his wand, but towards the Abraxas Stone in his pocket. By channeling his magic through the stone, he was able to cast a placidio(1) and a caecarsus(2)spell simultaneously while producing impotent red light out of his wand. There, I hope Luna has the sense to keep silent on her own. She did.
"So we won't have to worry about wiping her mind later. Now, as I was saying, Potter is a distraction, nothing more. The true war will be fought amongst all the wizarding families in the world. Instead of handing him a boy, we should be working to give him the Patil's, the Li's, and the Vulchanov's. He needs followers for his new world order. We can give him those."
"And you think this girl is the key to the wizarding world?" She snorted.
"I don't see how balding a possible source of information is the key to anything but your temper tantrum. Really aunt, emotional out bursts have no place in the workplace." Before she could scream and rend her clothing, he continued, "She comes from a pure blood family with international contacts, as ridiculous as they might be. For instance, do you know that the heir to the Chinese Wu clan is obsessed with her father's ridiculous magazine? Or that she and Lovegood went traipsing around the woods looking for some made-up creature with the French Minster of Magic? She has use, aunt. We will get information out of her and sew the seeds of the Dark Lord's power and ideals all over the world. By the time he conquers England, it will be our family that can practically hand him all the great magical nations, and we'll do it with out harming a hair on a single pureblood's head. The Dark Lord will reward us above all others. So yes, this girl is the key to our redemption. We need her cooperation." He finished and waited for his aunt's reaction.
At first she just looked at him, processing everything that he had suggested. "Fine then, I suppose she'll be a start. We'll convince her of the Dark Lord's power and right to rule, and we'll use her connections. Good. Wake her up." He panicked for a moment, he had made all of that shite up on the fly, he wasn't prepared to actually execute any sort of plan of world domination.
"Not just yet, she'll hardly be of any use in her currant state." Draco noticed that a bit of blood had begun to drip from Luna's scalp onto the floor. "I'll patch her up and have Gerda clean up this mess. You should probably discuss our strategy with Mother and Father." Draco thought he was being a bit heavy handed, but Bellatrix nodded distractedly and shuffled out of the room. No doubt she is lost in her own fantasy of the Dark Lord praising her vast intelligence and initiative in a private bedroom somewhere.
He shook his head in disgust before turning to the motionless girl hanging from the ceiling. He levitated her over to the cot before lifting the spells that kept her still and blind. Before she could open her eyes, he scourgified the floor of all her blood and hair so it wouldn't upset her. When he walked over to her she was already sitting up with he arms curled around her. She looked at him for a moment, and then burst in to tears.
"I do not have fleas!" She screamed at him. Draco was so taken a back by that sudden outburst that he couldn't even find it in him to laugh at how absurd it was. My aunt tortures her and she's more pissed at me for a stupid comment I didn't even mean. Funny old world, isn't it?
Luna kept shouting and her tears quickly evolved into a sob. "I wouldn't help you find Harry and I certainly won't help you convert the masses to your cause. You're disgusting and evil and I hate you." More blood began to slowly trickle down her face as she yelled and cried.
Draco felt no sting in her words, so concerned was he with patching her up. "Yes well, we'll deal with that all later. For now, hold still. I never was particularly adept at healing charms and I don't want to blast off an ear." He placed a hand on her shoulder, meant to keep her still but also to comfort. Mumbling an incantation, he saw her wounds heal up and the blood stop flowing.
"There, good as knew. Pomfrey would be proud. Er… being a bloke, I never bothered to learn any of those hair extension spells so there's not much I can do about your new look, sorry." Draco was trying to cheer her, to no avail. He meant to step back when he reached her own arm around his back and buried her face in his stomach. She was still crying, but softer than before. He placed his other hand on her head where the bald pink skin was most evident and stroked her soothingly. He did his best to keep back his own tears. I'm just as frightened as she is, and no one has tortured me in weeks.
They remained entwined like that for several minutes, both clutching each other to keep from falling a part. Luna was the first to pull away. With puffy eyes and a teary face, she was able to smiley weakly. "Thank you for saving me, and I'm sorry I ruined your robe."
Draco looked as his stomach in wonder. Indeed the product of her sobs was smeared all over his expensive fabric. "It's ok, Gerda will be able to clean it." She frowned at him and he couldn't help but smile. "Fine, fine. I'll toss it away instead, happy?" They both laughed at the absurdity. As if either of us could ever be happy again. What's a little snot between doomed prisoners?
"I'll pay you for it with another lesson, a double period."
Draco groaned. Latin class was just about the last thing he wanted to do right now; his hands were still shaking from the stress of the last 20 minutes. Besides, Professor Lovegood looks like she could collapse at any instant. "How about I tell you a story about your favorite twins and an adventure they took with their young Ravenclaw cousin?"
"They had a cousin in Ravenclaw? Was he extremely bright?" She moved over on the small cot so that he could sit down.
"Oh yes. As well as arrogant and socially inept, like all you know-it-alls."
"Sounds positively interesting. Go on then."
1) latin for still/unmoving
2) latin for blind
A/N this chapter was rough. Legit had to make it up as I went along, which is frustrating. I think it came out ok, even if Draco squirmed a little ooc. I hope you didn't think I'd actually let him not save our heroine! I tried to make him very Slytherin with the quick plotting, but I think the real Draco would make ANYONE who snotted up his clothes lick them clean, just saying. Next chapter seems like it may be a lighthearted one, for the most part :). Let me know what you think!
OH, and the reason I chose Luna's particular form of torture is because I'm vain about my hair and it just freaked me out. I hope you were as disturbed as me.