A/N: Sorry, I just realised how long I've gone without updating! Well here it is, chapter 8! I wasn't quite sure whether I was happy with how this one turned out towards the end or not. But bahh well, we'll see :) I've just spent 19818476473993939000 hours reading 'Bad Jokes' by Naturally Unlucky and 'Broken' by inadaze22. It took me a while to get through them both but they were just so brilliant I couldn't stop. I highly recommend both (the former is within the Batman - dark knight Universe and Broken is Draco/Hermione in Harry Potter!) Anyway, here it is. I hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters, places, spells etc... they belong to JKR!


Luna tossed around, feeling much more out of herself than she had in days.

Her sleeping patterns were quickly rearranging themselves into some senseless puzzle and, though she longed for them to return to the simple 'eyes-shut-and-let-the-dream-begin' state they had been for many years, she lacked the motivation to do much about it. And so it began: a frequent tug of war between her conscious mind and her dreamy inner thoughts. The two had become accustomed to each other over the years, never once mixing, but they still recognised their counterpart when they saw it. Now though, Luna was not so sure they would. Her dreams just fizzled away on the surface, often crossing that fine line which prevented Luna from recognising them for what they were. She began to wonder, whilst staring up at her high window, whether this was a whole long dream in itself. But he hair had grown, and in dreams it never grew. No. Luna Lovegood was not dreaming.

The cold nights of October were being admitted into Britain, she knew for the sky retained a golden colour at all times of the day now. It matched the same topaz-infusion of the falling Autumn leaves. It must have been weeks by then, since Luna last laid eyes on a tree.

What was she becoming to her captors now? A small breath locked in a room, a small heart with an irregular beat, a small girl lost in a time of murder and war. Luna knew she was neither.

It had been at least a week since Draco had been in there and Luna was starting to feel invisible. Loneliness had never been too hard in school because she had never truly been alone, she must have stuck out a little too much, for people seemed to find it very difficult to not stare. Now though, she was both lonely and alone: now wasn't that just a fantastic duo?

She had spent her days doing three things; plaiting, twirling and combing. Thoughts really were diverse things after all.

From her room, the outside world seemed to be hovering between autumn and winter, lazily dancing on each side for a few days without making any real commitment. Luna wanted to smile at the likeness between the weather and herself. It was exactly as she imagined her views were playing out inside her head: storming ideas of anger at being captured and completely forgotten, a thundering cloud of bad musings where she would feel betrayed by the order: how could they have not realised? There was an impostor in their midst, and, despite hours spent in meetings making arrangements to avoid it, they had all been hoodwinked. All of them. Then would come the rain. Luna thought of her father, and of Ginny and Neville (her first true friends), and it would rain. Tears splashing on her cheeks, staining her dreamy composure with their sad rivers. When the storm of emotions had passed, then would come the time of tranquillity. The sun would not shine, nor would clouds rain. The climate would simply be. It would take no form. Just like Luna right then; she gazed at the wall with the intent of forcing the bricks to crumble, though they held themselves together. She willed her eyes to break them into shattered stone remains, but still they stood firm and proud. Some things in this life could simply not be broken.

Luna looked up to find the mid-morning sun casting it's rays, hooking them into the earth like an old man on a fishing boat would use bait. Luna was hooked. She watched the sun for hours: slowly creeping through the sky like the stubborn, unmoving hands of an old clock. They never ticked when watched. Luna wondered if that was what people meant when they said time just stopped.

Every couple of hours a tray of prisoner-inspired food was handed to her by Dolohov: Luna guessed, from his weary aura and slow movements when thrusting the food at her, that he now had his own little post in the house. Right outside the door of an imprisoned young woman. Luna wanted to laugh sometimes; it just astounded her that the death eaters were so afraid of her escaping.

'You know, I won't try anything if you want a bit of rest,' She offered to Dolohov. She knew he had heard her from the ungrateful grunt that followed.

'You must be tired. Though I suppose this place makes it feel like night all the time. I think your eyes might be adjusting themselves to the light, you know. You want to be careful of that. You'll be acting like a bat soon enough.' she informed him. He seemed to be dozing off. She hoped her company, or what there was to offer of it, was not disturbing him to the point of sleepiness.

'Would you like to play a game, maybe?' Luna did not wait for a response, though she was pretty sure what it would have been, before launching into a wide and expansive list of games for the two to have a shot at. With each new suggestion she could feel his face stiffen a little more.

'Or if you don't enjoy spot the swizzle, we could sing...I've not heard you sing yet. That might be fun...' she hummed a soft song, hoping to get him in the mood. God only knows the dungeons could do with a little lightness to brighten their dim atmosphere.

Luna's own voice was the only sound. She gave him the benefit of the doubt and just assumed he was shy, and not being deliberately unfriendly.

'How long will I stay here?' she asked him.

The Death Eater seemed to sigh, as if he knew what was coming. 'Not my problem, so I don't know.'

Luna wanted to ask the question that had stuck itself on her tongue, she needed the answer but feared it all the same. 'Do you think I'll die?'

Dolohov shuffled, his feet not quite sure where they were supposed to go: he had never been one for talking to prisoners like her: The ones who asked questions.

'I don't know.'

In that moment, his words sounded strained, fearful and it led Luna to consider the possibility that maybe Dolohov had not even considered the fate of this unfortunate prisoner. He was probably not the only one left out of such information. The Death Eaters had multiplied into their hundreds by now, but Luna knew, from something Harry had said once, not all had been appointed that oh so desired position which entitled them to a large black tattoo on their forearm. Had Dolohov's arm been burned with the very same mark? She was not sure, and did not want to offend him by asking.

'I don't either. Strange that I suppose, isn't it?' Luna mused, speaking in a tone one would normally reserve for an old friend.

'Huh?'

Luna watched the door, waiting to hear him start shuffling around uncomfortably, she knew he would. He might already be doing so, but just had quiet feet.

'How even we, as different as we are, still have things in common.'

There was silence from outside.

'I think everyone has that one thing though don't they? Not truly having any control over our future.' Luna sighed with heavy understanding. 'You're going to die too. Maybe not in a dungeon as I might, but someday. You can't change that, you know. Death Eater or not. No dark magic can match death, not in the end.' She still held her gaze with the door, wondering if he could perhaps feel her hard stare through the wood.

A quiet scuttling around in the corner caught her attention. The soft pitter-pattering of claws on stone, reminded her she was sharing the room with other, smaller inhabitants. A small rat clawed at the wall, he must have been in here for days for he seemed incredibly skinny for a rodent; Luna knew they had lager appetites than most other animals: The Fat Friars of the animal world, as Luna thought of them.

Except she just couldn't imagine rats bursting into a chorus of Jingle-Wands during the yuletide festivities. She had always suspected the Hufflepuffs of wearing extra padded earmuffs close to Christmas: the Friar simply did not have a very likeable voice, despite being a very likeable ghost.

Luna watched this rat with an air of suspicion. He seemed far too well adjusted (as mad as that sounded) to moving his way around. In fact, if she squinted into the wall's shadow in which he dwelled, she would have sworn he was walking around in circles. Just like a mad man. A mad man with a purpose.

'Hello.' she whispered to him.

A small set of eyes gleamed back at her. They seemed to know she was powerless to hurt the rodent.

'Are you lost?', he stopped his circling, choosing, instead, to watch this curious new specimen. 'I haven't met any of your family. Are you alone?' she crawled over to him, forgetting her talk with Dolohov. He must think she had finally lost it by now. Talking to herself. Whatever next?

He did not frighten her, as unappealing as he clearly was, for she had lived, and was living, through one of the worst wizarding wars in history. She had seen far worse than a starved rat.

Luna kneeled before the poor old thing, bending down so that her hair fell in a shower over the two of them: as though they were about to discuss a most secretive topic and should not be heard.

The rat's eyes seemed to peer, untrusting, and somehow distrustful. She had a gut feeling this small creature would not be one of her more friendly pets. But she was lonely, and for that reason alone Luna would try to get along with him. Slowly, because he seemed like the type to be easily frightened (his slowly widening eyes told her so), Luna held out a finger. For a split second he seemed to contemplate eating it and she wondered if the darkened room had made her cheese-like. Did rats eat cheese though? She was not sure.

But then the hungry look went from his eyes and with it, his guard he had held up against her. Luna's palms pressed gently into the floor and she opened them up, leaving a small valley into which he could crawl. She scooped him, and held him carefully, though not too much so. She did not want to frighten him after all.

'You're lovely aren't you?' she smoothed the tuft of fur close to his ear with her thumb. It was rough and ragged, she noted. Nothing like she would expect of an animal around winter, when many would grow thick luscious coats. She had always loved petting Crookshanks during the Christmas holidays at the burrow. Would she see the next Christmas? Just a few months to go. Yes, Luna believed she would.

The rat, whom she was currently deciding on a name for, nuzzled her thumb with his long nose. He was incredibly ugly, Luna noticed with honesty. She did not mean it to be unkind, it was merely the truth. His eyes, which she now spotted small watery droplets lingering around, were weak and helpless. He was no threat at all.

Luna hummed them a soft song, swaying in time to a tune that played in her ears only.

'For you only...' she sang. Her voice melting into the hard exterior of the rat, as he settled down into a shabby ball.

The rat slept. His untrusting eyes slipping shut very quickly.

Luna's mind began to work, she needed to try an escape. There would be no guarantee, but then again she had a better chance of escaping if she actually tried, instead of sitting patiently for an opportune moment to stroll casually across her path.

First there was a decision. Aided or unaided? Would it even be worth looking for help amidst an overwhelming abundance of enemies?

That was made quickly enough, for she had nobody in this house who had earned themselves a trustworthy tick next to their name. She would go it alone.

Then what was there....Means? Would she escape from the room, or hope to be allowed to venture into the house again?

That was unlikely. She would find a way out of the room on her own.

Door or window? The only two ways available to her.

Directly out the window, and she would have a likelier chance of succeeding. The only problem with that though, was that she was in a dungeon, and any window would only be followed by landing by someone's feet. Plus, she was no giant and, at least last time she had checked, Luna's legs were still only a touch longer than average.

And then time, day or night? Night she would likely go undetected, but what if the Malfoy's were smarter than that? Surely that would be when she would be expected to try anything. Plus it would be harder to see anything, and without her wand she....

Luna's thoughts halted like a broom crashing back down to earth. Why was she doing this? This was Hermione thinking, it was logical and structured. Not like Luna at all. True, it might come in handy in helping her escape, but then in thinking like it she may miss points her regularly perceptive mind would not.

For a second time, Luna made the decision her way.

She smiled down to her new friend, as his tiny chest rose and fell in perfect sync with her own. 'I'll wing it.'

The rat's (whom Luna had named Tinpaw, due to the strange metallic look of one of his front paws) heart leaped around, she could practically feel it as he arose some time later. He frantically began an inventory of his surroundings, and upon seeing the person in whose hands he lay, he bit Luna sharply on her finger until she let him go.

He backtracked into his corner once again, not looking at Luna until he was securely away form her. Two watery eyes revealed his whereabouts though Luna made no move to approach him again. She moved back to the door, waiting to hear the struggled breathing of Dolohov beneath his dark cloak and mask.

'Who are you talking to?' he demanded, upon hearing her approach.

Luna meant to say Tinpaw, but a quick glance at him told her not to. He had begun his scarpering around once again, circling around as though his life depended on it. Luna did not know why, exactly, but she had a feeling he did not want to be found.

She would sound mad and she knew it: 'Just myself. It helps organize your head.'

'Organize? You're bloody bonkers you are girl!' he spat, though not without something of a laugh to accompany it.

She would try to talk to Dolohov, since that was more than he had said to her so far during her stay.

'Can I please ask you something?'

'No'.

'Please?' she hoped he would humour her at least, for that was all she really wanted right now.

'What the bloody hell do you want little girl?' snapped the Death Eater. His tone did not discourage her.

'What does Voldemort have that you find so valuable?' this was followed by lots of coughing form the other side of the prison door.

'What right have you to-' Dolohov stuttered, though his calm, cocky composure began to fail him.

'You follow him. I'm only asking why?' Since Draco had failed to give a satisfying answer to the same question, Luna had decided she would look elsewhere. It was a very intriguing topic to say the least.

'Went to Hogwarts did you?' he asked, hinting he was getting at something bigger than just school-talk.

Luna smiled remembering her time there. 'Yes, I went.'

'And were you popular with your friends?'

'For four years I didn't have friends.' she said, blunt as could be.

There was an edge in her voice she had never really paid any attention to before. Was Luna angry? Surely not. It was silly to be mad for not having a true friend for years. After all who could she possibly be mad at...herself?

It was an edge, it was not ignorable, but Luna decided she was not mad.

'Loner eh? Haven't changed much have you..' she could not see him, but he was smirking and she knew it. That annoyed Luna.

She responded with silence.

'Well, there'll have been an in-group. One who taught the others their place, you know the sort.' Luna did know.

Her eyes stayed on the rat in the corner for a while; watching him watching her. He circled around and then some. Luna noticed his eyes did not look dizzy at all despite his monotonous walking pattern.

'That's what you think he is then? A popular school boy?' Luna surprised even herself with the spite which poured out through her words.

'Of course not you silly little girl! The Dark Lord is much more than such a mundane title.' Pride, pride, pride. He sounded like a Father of an overachiever. Lord Voldemort might have just received eighteen Outstanding OWL's. 'But he has the same appeal.'

'You mean he draws you in?'

Luna had never been a part of any 'crowd' in school (Dumbledore's army could not be counted as such a simple, ordinary thing. It had been so much more. Plus, they had hardly been popular.) But Luna had watched her classmates with well-trained eyes. She saw the admiration the girls and boys showed one another and it was usually very easy to pick out the alpha males in each pack. They were the ones who appeared calm and relaxed in most situations, when their friends always seemed to look for their support before speaking. It was not an obvious thing to spot really and, had Luna been surrounded with friends of her own, she would not have been able to pay half as much attention. Over the years, though, she had soon interpreted the way in which such alpha's worked their given magic: Lure them in, test their loyalty, use it for their own means, and then (more often than not) swap them for a new friend. She had never liked the way it happened, but found it interesting enough to watch. It was just like how older women used their jewellery. Bright, shiny, interesting little things always got the most attention.

'Draws us in?' he scoffed. Dolohov laughed with a new kind of funky chuckle. The years seemed to drop off his voice as he laughed. 'We're not bloody players in a game girl, you know!'

'I didn't mean that. I meant, well, would you still have respect for him if he were less popular?'

The Death Eater laughed quite horribly at her observation. She knew he was probably just a rusty chuckler: one they started it was never easy to get them to stop.

'Popular? That's what you call him is it?'

'Well, I suppose you would use a more respectful word but it's the same idea as what you were saying. About school. If those wizards weren't as popular, people would see them differently.' Luna pondered whether she should ask her next question, only for a short while of course. Then it came out anyway. 'Do you ever wish you'd not turned over to the dark side?'

He stopped laughing and leaned into the wall. Luna heard the thud that confirmed it.

'Yes.'

He was telling the truth.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was late into the night when the switch occurred, much to Luna's befuddlement. She was having trouble sleeping, no surprises there, and she awoken from her dreamy state in the same moment that two cloaks swished together outside her door. Two males exchanged brief words, then she was sure it was Dolohov that left.

'Hello.' Whispered Luna, pick and mixing her choice of who the voice might belong to. For a moment, and no longer, she fancied it was Neville or Ron. Not Harry, for he would be busy with his girlfriend cuddling under a duvet somewhere. That was why she ruled out Ron quickly, too. He would not leave Hermione in these sad times.

The make-believe hope could not stay, for the gruff reply deflated it easily.

'I'm down here for peace Lovegood. Not to pretend I'm your friend.' Draco moaned, she heard him conjure a chair and set it down somewhere by her door. She wondered how it felt to sit down like that, of his own free will. Luna had not done so in a while.

She was happy to hear his voice, for he was probably the closest resident to her in age in the whole house, but a nagging feeling told her not to overdo the welcome. If she scared him off with her bright voice he might wonder why she was so happy, and where would that lead? Probably a thorough examination of her room to check the bricks for scratch marks. Nails might be considered dangerous for her to have as an escape. They had always been long, and long nails would make much more progress in scratching away at stone than regular blunts.

Luna would talk to him soon. But for now the clouds seemed to be too beautiful to ignore. Night-clouds, outlined in silver and drifting ever so smoothly across the sky. They moved so slowly they could in fact just be floating, not going anywhere, not moving at all.

Draco unlocked Luna's door after about an hour and, as he stepped inside, something about his expression worried her. She had seen it before but could not place when. He sat in the doorway, lodging his chair between the gap and the open door, propping it open, and looked at her. Not speaking. Hardly even breathing. He seemed to be deciding whether or not she was real.

'I want to talk.' He said, after simply staring for over two minutes of silence; during which, Luna felt her body stiffen to match Draco's low breathing.

He said it simply, with no hint of amusement or frivolity. It was good enough for Luna, who made her mind up that he was not joking around. 'You sound like you need it too. Your throat sounds bad, you should exercise it more. Personally I think you sound a lot darker, if that's what you're going for, but if you're not then I'd try honey. It works wonders on your throat you see. Bees lose their ability to speak in human tongue when they make it for us: all the pollen makes their brains go a little off, you know? That's how it helps your throat, so don't be worried if you feel an urge to make a sort of buzzing sound. It'll just be bee voices your borrowing for a while.'

Luna rounded off her little speech with a careful smile, not too friendly, not too mocking. Just in the middle so he would not think she was barking, as she already assumed was his impression.

'Are you messing with me?', the intimidation he had tried to bring out wouldn't work quite right. It was as if his bad throat (which was due to not speaking a word for over a week) had caused him to lose all sense of tone. He reminded Luna of a singer when they began to talk normally, when they lost that little spark form their chime-like words, and suddenly sounded human. Draco, just for that first moment as his voice adjusted, sounded incredibly normal. In Luna's truthful opinion, it was the nicest he had ever sounded.

'No you're not silly enough to play games. Seriousness comes with a catch you know, once you start talking and acting like an adult it's hard to go back to being a child again. Not that you'd want to of course...' she said. He stared again.

And stared, and stared. Feeling like a wild animal caught in a trap, Luna began to join in the competition. He would probably lose, for she was particularly gifted at not blinking for a reasonable length of time.

'How do you do it?' Draco asked, his arms folding over in his lap, one hand sliding his wand out of view. Coupling her common sense with the fact he had now blinked, thereby losing the contest anyway, Luna had a feeling Draco was talking about more than her unblinking eyelids.

'What?' Luna asked.

He sighed in frustration, 'Oh, come off it! I mean your in a cell, with no friends, you have no idea where your family is or if they're even alive-' Luna's eyebrows swept up out of sight; Draco sure did like to look on the bleak side. '-you've been out of sunlight for days and have barely eaten more than a bunch of apples since you got here-'

Oh, Luna thought to herself, it was not pastry after all.

'-you don't even know what's going on out there, and you seem perfectly calm with the idea of a Death Eater casually talking to you at about two in the morning. How have you not broken up yet?' he finished with putting slight emphasis on his last few words. He seemed to think Luna would break sometime. She would prove him wrong.

'Broken up? Draco I think it takes a little more than simply being a prisoner to make someone totally lose themselves.' She tried to look at him and see a boy. Not a Death Eater, not even an enemy. Simply a boy. One who had clearly been through enough to make him paranoid beyond normality, and had lost his innocent perspective of the world along the way.

'You're not scared?' He expected her to say yes, and she would be truthful.

'Yes, I'm scared.'

Relief flickered across his face. So, Luna imagined him thinking, she's human after all.

'But, people don't always break up because they get scared Draco.'

'Oh no?' challenging her, Draco quirked an eyebrow. It made a curvy sort of arch that looked like a reinvention of the legendary Himalayas. He had a few freckles too, Luna spotted. So faint that she imagined he had not even noticed them himself before. There were only a couple, and Luna saw them as backpackers. Hiking tirelessly up the various peaks of the mountain as Draco's brow furrowed and straightened. She had not even realised him lean in until he was about three or so inches away, his wand the only thing separating them as equals, for Luna still had none.

Neither, she realised, had she bothered to question how he knew she would not attempt to escape. There he was, in the doorway leaving a good few feet for her to slip past. Luna questioned it now, as she looked into his eyes with a new kind of curiosity. Draco looked like he had broken down already. A good few miles ahead of her on the path to emptiness, she noted.

His lips parted and she could see the dusty outline as cold air met warm breath. It had a dreamy kind of wispy thing going on that she liked watching as he continued to breath through his lips. Clearly frustrated.

'Well then Luna, just how scared are you?'

Suddenly she found the backpacking, pale freckles stop, at a standstill, at the same time the dusty wisps seized.

'Scared enough to question some things.' said Luna, 'But brave enough to still trust myself.'

Luna did not lie but, then again, would she have noticed if she did?