The curse caught her off guard. It hurt terribly, more than most of them, and when she fell to her knees and then her side, her cheek pressed into the damp earth of the forest floor, a beetle caught her eye even as her attacker yanked her wand from her hand.

The beetle scurried off and disappeared under a half-upturned rock, wriggling down into dirt.

Luna could feel the blood running down her arm. It was peculiar. She hadn't thought she'd die this way, cut open by a vicious curse, cut down and bleeding on the leaves. She blinked up at the Death Eater she hadn't expected to be there. They were impossible to tell apart with their black robes and silver masks and she'd thought before that it was probably easier to hurt people when you hid yourself away like that; it allowed you to take on the role of monster. It was one reason she refused to disguise herself. If she was going to strike at people she would do it as herself. She wondered who this one was, this would-be monster who stood over her, the wand he'd snatched from her in one fist, his own shaking in another. Did he go home and brag about what he'd done, or wash his hands and try not to look at the robe hanging in his closet.

Given how his hands trembled, she suspected it was the latter.

The blood was coming out faster now and she wondered what would grow here. Sacrifice and blood made for good fertilizer and that little beetle might get fat on her. Fat on her fat. The word play, weak as it was, made her smile so she smiled up at the death who'd stopped his journey just for her even as she got fainter and he got fainter and everything was white. Her last thought before losing consciousness was that she hadn't expected going through the veil to feel quite so much like apparation. Wasn't that interesting?

. . . . . . . . .

The sobbing boy suggested she wasn't dead. Luna wasn't wholly sure what the afterlife would consist of but she thought a dark-haired boy leaning his head on her bed and sobbing seemed unlikely. "May I make you better?" she asked him. Fever dreams could be so very vivid but you could control things in dreams in ways you couldn't in real life. Still, it was best to ask. Not all dream figures wanted to be changed.

He jerked his head up at her words and she saw his eyes were the darkest blue, so dark they were almost black, and that they had bags under them, and that his pale skin looked haggard and unhealthy. "You're conscious," he said. Before she could respond he fumbled for a flask on a table and uncorked it. "Drink this," he said. "I…I healed what I could. That… that One likes to hurt people plus I tend to get cursed a lot in battles so I've gotten pretty good at…but I've never tried to do any of it on someone else before, only me, and you'd lost so much blood and I couldn't get you to swallow."

She stared at him and made no movement to drink what he was pressing to her lips until he said, perhaps considering she might not just trust any old thing handed to her, "It's a blood replenishing potion, nothing more."

She thought about that and decided that it might be very interesting to find out what happened if she drank in this pretend world and so let him tip the medicine into her mouth. She could see the dark robe thrown onto the floor; a silver mask had been tossed onto the same table as a collection of potion flasks, a cup of water, and her wand. "I guess the beetle will go hungry," she said.

He might have thought she was mental - people so often did - but he was a dream figure so he just nodded.

"Tell me," she invited though she could feel herself spinning further and further away which frustrated her. She needed to listen. She needed to hear what he said. She couldn't go just yet.

"There's nothing to tell," he said. "It's the same story we all have, all had, all will have; just change the names to suit the time and side. There's a war. I was told what side I was on and told to go out and kill people. No one asked what I wanted and I can't leave." He shoved his sleeve up and she saw the writhing black snake. "Locked in, locked down, locked away. No choices, no hope. You don't need a seer to tell your future when your father's a Death Eater." He sank to the floor and leaned his back against her bed. "Still haven't quite killed anyone, though. I'm good at finding the opponents who are stronger than me." He let out what sounded like another sob. "They all think I'm brave. Look at Theo, not hiding away at the edge of the fray. A model Death Eater. So aggressive. So violent."

"Theo," she repeated.

"Theodore Nott," he said, not looking at her. "Your attacker and savior, at your service."

The room had begun to wobble a bit but she wasn't sure what she was supposed to make of his message. It didn't matter, however, when he gasped out a sharp cry of pain and grabbed at the Mark on his arm. "Battle's over," he said. "Calling all the outs in free." He doubled over and struggled to stand. "Let's hope it went well or you might not see me for a bit while I recover. Cottage is warded, area right around it is warded, you'll be fine. Just don't go past the sand until you're well enough to apparate home again."

"Home again, home again, jiggety jig," Luna said. "Why not cast a protego on your arm?"

"Doesn't work like that," he said.

She squinted at his arm and at the snake that twisted and turned and looped in and out of the skull mouth and shook her head. Maybe in life it didn't work like that but in dreams you could do anything. She bent down, shocked at how much it hurt to twist her body, and set her hand over the Mark on Theodore Nott's arm. "Protego," she said and pictured a cage of light that kept the snake trapped and away from its master. "Protego."

The room began to spin as she hung over the edge of the mattress, collapsing from her injuries and the effort to create the spell, and thought she'd misunderstood her whole dream. He hadn't come to her to bring a message but because he needed her help. Maybe now that she'd done that task she'd fatten up her little beetle and find out what the voices whispered.

. . . . . . . . . .

"I can't decide if you're brilliant or just have a death wish."

It was the first thing Theo said to her. She'd woken up and found him slumped on the other side of the bed, so soundly asleep he hadn't stirred when she'd gotten up, when she'd found the shower and washed the blood and sweat and dirt off her body, or when she'd made porridge. When she was halfway through her bowl he opened his eyes and immediately squinted against the bright morning sun.

"There's honey," she offered.

"Since I'm the one who stole it away and put it there, I know that," he said. He'd sat up and was watching her as she spooned the cereal into her mouth. "You seem better."

"You're real," Luna said.

"Real enough." He looked down at his arm where the black serpent was still visible but curled up and slumbering as snakes are opt to do on hot summer days. "What did you do?"

"Magic?"

"But it's not possible," he protested. It wasn't supposed to be, after all.

Luna laughed at that and licked her spoon. "We fly on brooms, turn animals into water goblets, and can brew potions that regrow bones overnight and you are caught up in the idea the possible is limited?"

"You're daft," Theo said.

"It's been said," she agreed. "I'm tired of fighting. Harry can call me back for the final battle but I think I want to go to the beach today."

Theodore pulled himself off the bed and walked to the bright window and looked out at the water. "I'm free," he said quietly.

"Now you have to make choices," Luna said. "Heavier chains, I think."

"Still," he said, "at least I'm putting them on myself. It's different." The beach beckoned from beyond the glass. "You have a way to know when it's the end?"

She handed him a bowl of the porridge. "I do," she said.

He took a bite and looked at the space where the waves hit the shore, erasing what had been there and leaving a clean sheet of sand. "That's good," he said. "That's… that's good."