Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Doctor Who.


When Fred and George found her it was late afternoon, and she was numb. Numb and heavy, but finished crying, finished being sad and hopeless and helpless. She was angry, a quiet, simmering anger that warmed her up, that guided her thoughts with crystal clarity. Janice, Dumbledore, Xeno, Dad, a complete circle, again and again, seeing the connections. Not in the gold - that was dim, gone almost completely, the most disturbing (and yes, terrifying) part of it all. No, she planned in her own mind, the mind of a half-Time Lady with a score to settle.

And, if Janice had known that, she would have been the terrified one.

As it was, though, Janice didn't know. As far as she was concerned, she had won that round, and Luna had to concede the victory. She could run, of course, but she didn't want to run. She wanted to find Janice and find out why. She was curious, a dark sort of curiosity that left a glint in her eye and cleared room around her. Yes. Something would be done. Not now, but soon.

Soon.


Except it wasn't soon, because it was the end of term and there were exams and the Weasleys had left early citing a family crisis and Luna was stuck on a train, shipped away to Xeno Lovegood's house and a life she had left long ago. She sat alone. Not technically – a few of her Gryffindor year-mates were chatting right next to her – but inside her mind she had cut herself off from everything, buried herself in thoughts and ideas and a little fear and more than a little anger, all wrapped in a projected calm that kept the innocent (clueless, all so clueless) children from interrupting her. They eyed her and ignored her. The Hogwarts Express chugged on.

It was past noon when they arrived. The station was busy, nearly as busy as it had been at the start of the term. Parents and their children milled around. Students waved goodbyes and hellos, parents eyed friends and wrapped sons and daughters in hugs. Luna navigated it carefully, one eye on everyone around her and the other looking for an unforgettable shock of pale hair. She easily wound her way through the teeming mass. And then she froze, because there he was.

She saw him first. Standing at the very back of the platform, pressed against a well-worn wall of red brick that had long-since faded to brown. His off-white hair and multicolored robe stood out clearly against the dull wall, shifting every time he twisted his head back and forth. He looked ragged; his eyes darted quickly, almost afraid to stay staring at one person for too long. He was not happy to be there: it was easy to read in his body language if you knew where to look. It had not been his choice. Luna' filed away that little tidbit, then straightened and slipped through the crowd towards him.

"Xeno."

He jumped and wet his lips nervously. "Ah. Hello again, kumquat." Seven years gone and he still had those nicknames. "It's been a while."

There was really nothing to say to that. Rather, there was too much to say to that, so Luna just nodded and spared herself the trouble of finding an answer. Xeno wet his lips again.

"Shall we go now? We're, ah, taking the Knight Bus…" She stayed silent as he trailed off and followed him into Muggle London. Their silence continued throughout the trip to Xeno's home. Every once in a while he glanced over at her and wet his lips or opened his mouth, but neither of them actually spoke. It wasn't that Luna was against talking to him (he was most likely her best way into Janice's mind, in the figurative sense), she just didn't know what to say. What do you talk about with your estranged, superseded legal guardian that you ran away from over seven years before?

It wasn't until they reached the house - the Rook, Cira had once called it, because it reminded her of a rook on a chess board - that either of them spoke again.

"It looks exactly the same." Well, that wasn't quite true - Xeno had let the garden go, though there were a few floating plums that looked like they had been pruned within the last few months. Besides that, though, Cira's once-neat vegetable gardens looked like they hadn't been looked after in… well, since she died. Luna swallowed past a lump in her throat. That was a long time ago, and her nightmares had long since passed. She didn't need to recall them now.

"Ah, yes." Xeno bobbed his head, birdlike. He had passed her and was fiddling with the door while Luna stood at the top of the path, staring at it. Memories, all of it. Just memories. A flash of gold and she could actually see it, silver-eyed little girl running back and forth while Mum worked in the garden, carefree. Worn, yes, and too old for her little body, but still a child. Then Luna blinked and it was gone. Xeno turned back to her. "Are you coming in, radish, or are you going to stay out here tonight?" It was a perfectly serious question, and Luna shook her head. He hadn't been like that, not before. Joking and a little lost, yes, but not so… not so gone. Absent completely.

She just smiled, a fake, dreamy, vacant smile for the crazy man. Not mad, not like her father. Just crazy.

"I'm coming."

The door swinging shut behind her was like a death sentence. Luna kept on smiling.


Her old room had been cleaned up a bit. It was empty except for a rough-hewn wooden bed without sheets and empty bookshelf, but that was fine by her. There were no memories in the fresh furniture. She didn't bother unpacking because there was no reason to. Instead she left her trunk open at the foot of her bed and sat on the floor, eyes closed. The last time she had needed major meditation had been when the Master had held them all prisoner for the Year That Never Was. Funny how once again she was a prisoner, how once again she needed the exercise to focus her thoughts. She had thought it wouldn't be necessary again, not once the gold spread calmly before her. Now, though, it was necessary. So she sank into herself. Xeno was busy downstairs, she could hear him clearly (and smell the alcohol, but she didn't dwell on that). For the first time since Dumbledore had called her up, since Dad had disappeared, there would be no interruptions.

It was sort of like falling. Falling through layers of herself until she reached the core, a golden nebula. But it wasn't a nebula like it should have been (like it had been, before). It was a ball, a solid golden marble, shored up behind dark strands that at first looked like shadows but solidified into a web when she touched them. A spider's web. Ribbons of gold floated through it, but only a few managed to slip through the sticky trap. Luna examined it, careful not to touch. And careful not to panic, because someone had put a web in her mind and she hadn't even noticed. There was a certain tang to it, a signature for her to examine, to become aquatinted with.

The next hours she spent gently coaxing the dark weave to release her golden ribbons, allowing them to coalesce again behind the web, cut off but untouched by the sticky strands. When she surfaced again it was dark out, and she was shaken and nauseous. Xeno didn't notice when she skipped dinner. While she lay on top of the uncovered mattress, he talked to himself downstairs, half of a conversation with people who didn't exist. Luna lay with her eyes open, ghosting by the web every once in a while. Now that she knew it was there it was easy to sense, like a missing tooth. She looked at the signature too, tasting it and feeling it in the back of her mind, memorizing it and trying to connect it with something, anything. She found an echo, ever so faint, in her memories of Dumbledore's office, a thought which unsettled her.

She had noticed, though, hadn't she? …in the shadows, something pulling the strings… From the minute she had examined Dumbledore, there had been something wrong about him. Now she could put a name to that something in the shadows. Now she had a connection, a clear connection. Something pulling the strings. In the shadows, eyes in the dark. Connected. Linked without the gold. Janice.

"Her web in my head," she told the ceiling flatly, then in a singsong voice: "Will you walk into my parlor?" She giggled at that, and drifted off with thoughts of spiders and gold webs circling her mind. That was the first night she had the nightmare, the nightmare that wasn't her normal nightmares of Daddy and Mum and the Master and a hundred things between. This nightmare was different, was specific.

It tasted of Janice.


Very far away, and a week earlier, a man cleared his throat and settled in a chair. Across from him was a desk, and another chair, and in that chair a woman, perfectly coifed and ice cold, smiling with rosy cheeks and golden hair and icy eyes. The man smiled thinly at her.

"Lady Arakne. A pleasure."

"The pleasure is mine, I assure you." Her voice was silk and ice and a hint of some sort of accent.

"I hear you have something you want to discuss. A weapon of some sort?"

"Indeed." She lifted a clear sphere the size of a fist from her pocket. Something spun lazily inside, an image that the man had to peer closely at to see clearly.

"And this is…?"

"An advanced life form," she answered. "Able to withstand more than any humanoid to date. Altered cardiovascular system, increased bone durability, and highly superior mental functions. Also, genetically able to regenerate cells on a massive scale. This specimen is literally able to come back from the dead."

The man's eyes flicked between the image floating the bauble and the woman. "Indeed." His voice was dry with disbelief. The woman bristled.

"I have spent the past decade researching this creature. Believe me, everything I tell you is true. In addition," She fished a manila envelope out of a bag at her feet, "I have a file for you."

The man flipped through it, eyebrows raising ever so slightly. "This is from the muggle government."

"Torchwood, yes. Not strictly under government jurisdiction. They've been keeping their eyes on this one for a while."

"There's another?"

The woman grimaced. "Unfortunately. They're rather protective of each other as well. It's a… father-daughter thing."

"I'm not agreeing to this if there's the possibility that the other one will want revenge."

She waved it off. "Neither are the revenge type. I've sectioned them off from each other anyways. The girl is trapped by your backwards laws and Dumbledore's misguided attempt to help. The man's being held by Torchwood 4. Neither is a threat at the current moment."

The man mulled it over for a moment. "And what exactly do you want from this? It is one sided, and not in your favor."

"Let's just say I have a certain… distaste for them. I'm sure I could think up my own cocktail of revenge, but it's so much sweeter to sit back and watch it happen. I don't like to get my hands dirty."

"Indeed. And why exactly have you come to me with this information?"

"Why, Mister Malfoy, your loyalties of course. I'm sure your Master would love a gift like this. Happy Christmas." She smiled as she rose, and for a moment the firelight fell across her, and her shadow had too many arms. The door swung shut behind her.

Lucius Malfoy stared at the door long after she was gone. Then, certain of his decision, he picked up the bauble and walked to the fireplace.

As the green faded back to crackling flames, the eyes in the dark grinned.


Cold metal and dark. Voices, always voices, smooth and rough and dark and airy but always cold, always frightening (but she is not frightened, she will not be frightened). There's one worse than the others, cold and high and hissing that sends shivers down her spine and makes her want to curl into the cold metal, the unyielding metal. But that voice is only their for a moment, a whispered conversation, and then gone.

She's sleeping (she thinks, because everything is fuzzy and half-there and almost-real) and dreaming; it has the taste of a dream, and Janice, but there's something around the edges that tangs of reality, something she can't touch, can't see. Can't reach. She flinches into the cold metal again, flinches against pricks and lights that she can't see (she can't see, her eyes are closed and she can't open them, but she will not be frightened). There are needles, something in her arm (but she will not cry out), and the scratch of a pen on paper and whispers, voices, always voices, smooth and rough and dark and airy but always cold, always frightening. Voices and dark, and cold metal. She wakes with a jolt.


Luna woke with a jolt, scrabbling with her sleeve and staring at unmarked skin. Downstairs, a frightened Xenophilius Lovegood showed a spider of silk and ice out the door. Very far away, a man smiled at his reflection with the certainty that his new weapon would win him the war.

Thus, night passed.


-'Will you walk into my parlor?' is the first line of "The Spider and the Fly," written in 1829 by Mary Howitt.

Reviews are, as always, welcome.