Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to Harry Potter.


For a few days, Draco just tries not to think about the fact that there's a girl just a year younger than he is, a girl he went to school with, being kept a prisoner in the cellar of his house. No-one goes down there much – after all, she's just a hostage, and as for the old man – well, the Dark Lord has got what he can out of him.

It's only when he's eating, alone, in his room one evening – delicious tender lamb with rosemary and mint – that a terrible thought jumps into his mind.

Are they feeding the prisoners?

He goes into an undignified panic, jumping up and nearly tripping over his own long legs. A corner of his mind – the scrap of logic that he still has left – says that of course they're feeding them, what use would they be if they starved, but still, but still…

He rushes out of his room, through the long high-walled corridors towards the cellar steps. Horrible pictures float in front of his eyes, pictures of Luna Lovegood crumpled on the floor with arms thin as sticks, legs too weak to hold her up, her cheeks hollow instead of rounded like an apple.

His unlocking spell has far too much power in it and he clangs the door shut behind him. 'Lumos,' he pants, and the light from his wand floods the cellar.

And she's there – not starved! – though rather thinner and paler than before, her huge eyes blinking painfully in the sudden brightness. The old man is lying listlessly in the back corner, facing the wall, and he doesn't even twitch, but Draco can see him breathing.

'Draco Malfoy,' Luna says softly, watching him.

'You're all right,' he says. 'They've given you food.' He feels weak and boneless with relief suddenly, like he could melt right on to the floor.

She's looking up at him, a questioning sort of look. 'The elves bring us food,' she says. 'Is that why you came to see us?'

'I – I thought,' he says, and stops, grasping for his trademark cool assurance. He tries to sneer at her, but it's hard to sneer at someone who's looking at you with the biggest, softest eyes you've ever seen. The sneer slips and melts, sliding off his face.

She's silent for a minute, and then she says, soft as a butterfly's wing, 'Did you wonder if they weren't feeding us, Draco?' And oddly, she looks away from him, past him, as she speaks, the way someone would try not to alarm some wild, frightened thing by making eye contact.

'Well, turns out they are, aren't they?' he says, roughly, but his voice goes up a little at the end. His hand is clenching and unclenching reflexively by his side.

She looks at him, then, and smiles slowly, softly. 'Your house-elves make wonderful food. Even when it's for prisoners.'

Weirdly, he's finding it hard to stop looking at her, her long tangled fair hair framing her softly curving, dirty face, her eyes great dreaming pools of reflected light. He's not sure where the words come from, but he suddenly mumbles, 'Do you need anything else?'

Her face lights up and her smile brightens. 'Well, I would like some soap,' she says. 'Do you think that maybe you could bring us some?'

'Soap,' he says awkwardly. 'All right.'

'Thank you so much,' she says, and points to some buckets of water. 'The elves who bring the food are so kind, they bring us water, but they don't have any soap. They clean everything by magic,' she adds meditatively, 'and they're forbidden to do magic in here, or they might help clean us up.'

He suddenly shivers, realising how cold it is in the cellar. Luna's dressed in a long, flowing, multi-hued tartan skirt and knitted jumper, but her skin looks pale and bluish.

'Are you – cold?' he asks, tentatively, and reaches out without thinking and touches her little curled hand. It's like ice, but he pulls his hand back like it's been burnt when he realises that he's reached out to her. 'You are cold,' he says, and, looking around, 'what do you sleep on?'

'There's some sacks there,' she says, waving her hand vaguely, and he feels colder than ever, ashamed, so that he can't look at her. He points his wand at a sack, concentrates, and transfigures it to a thick green blanket; there's a mocking voice in his head that asks why he's bothering, but somehow the delighted beam on Luna's face drowns it out.

'Thank you,' she says, and he glances at her sideways and transfigures another sack. This time, the blanket comes out in the same bright pink and blue and yellow tartan plaid as her skirt, which wasn't something he consciously intended to do, and she giggles softly. She shouldn't be giggling, not when she's a prisoner in a cellar, and he frowns sternly as he transfigures the next sack into a mattress and levitates it out of sight around one of the cellar partitions.

When he's done, he turns back to her, and finds that she's looking at him, with a smile not on her face but in her eyes.

'You're kind, Draco Malfoy,' she says softly, and she sounds – wondering? He looks away quickly.

'No, I'm not kind,' he says tonelessly, turning to go. 'You don't know me.' At the door he remembers something, and turns round.

'I'll bring you some soap.' He can't conjure something like soap out of thin air.

As he locks the door, it suddenly occurs to him that she could have tried to overpower him, take his wand, while he was distracted. But somehow he doesn't think she would have done that. He slips to the closest bathroom and finds the soap – great luxurious, purplish cakes of it, scented like violet. He thinks that Luna will like the smell.

She does, too, back in the cellar, taking the cakes of soap in her hands like a precious gift and breathing in deeply. 'Soap!' she says delightedly. She kneels down on the floor as he watches and washes her hands with one of the bars, using the water sparingly, and then looks up at him with a blinding smile.

'It's lovely,' she says simply. He gives her an awkward almost-smile back, before he realises what he's doing and looks away.

'It's alright,' he says.

As he leaves, she says, 'Good night, Draco,' and her voice is soft and sort of soothing, like a dove in the twilight, and he almost says goodnight to her as well, glancing back uncertainly. She's watching him go with her head tipped to one side and a soft look on her face.