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


He stays away from the cellar and Luna for the whole morning, the next day, before he cracks and goes down there again. And she looks so happy and sweet when she sees him, with such big soft eyes, that he forgets everything and reaches out his hands to her.

She takes them, and then he's bringing his lips down to meet hers, and it's so innocent, so gentle, that he feels an odd, wistful tightness at the back of his throat. He slides his arms around her, down her back to her waist.

She's soft, and little, and warm from the charm he cast in the cellar the night before. She makes a little satisfied sound as he kisses her, and it gives him a strange sharp shiver through his body.

And then, abruptly, everything lurches, tilts, changes; and there's a haze tingling at the edge of his vision.

Everything is suddenly too tight and hot, and his breath is coming shortly, and his hands are seeking at her white neck, his fingers beating against the silky skin of her collarbone. He can't think straight, and a searing fierceness is pulsing through his body. I need… please! I must… I want…

She goes very quiet. Then, her hands come up to cover his, softly, stilling them as they tug at her neckline.

'No,' she says gently.

'Luna…' It comes out jerkily, between hard fast breaths. But she takes his hands in her soft ones and moves them away from her neck, and twists herself around so that her back is against his chest. She twines her fingers in his, holding them in a safe, neutral sort of position over her stomach.

His mind is still fuzzed and pulsing, and she seems to understand, because she says nothing for a few minutes. He can feel his heart thudding hard against her at first, but slowly it quietens.

When she speaks, her voice is soft. 'No,' she says again. 'I don't think that would be a very good idea.'

'Why not?' he rasps.

'We aren't married, for one thing, Draco.' She tilts her head to gaze dreamily at the cellar ceiling.

He stiffens. But – it somehow seems right for pure little Luna to feel that way. She rubs the back of her head against his shoulder softly, comforting.

He can't help it. He says – and it comes out horrifyingly like a whine – 'Who – who could give a damn whether we're marriedor not?'

She doesn't say anything right away, and when she speaks, it's softer than ever, and her eyes are full of light. 'Some things are too special to give away so easily, I think.'

Shame washes over him, so that he wants to lash out at something. He says a foul word, spitting it past her ear.

'That sounds very ugly, Draco,' she murmurs. He thinks that no-one should say that kind of word around Luna Lovegood, and wonders suddenly, randomly, what awful kinds of things the other Death Eaters have said to her.

'Oh, Luna,' he says, and bows his head down heavily, till his chin rests on her shoulder. She tilts her head to nestle against his face, and she smells like the soap he brought to her before, mixed with the damp earthiness of the cellar.

'And I'm a prisoner here, too,' she says quietly.

Yes. She's a prisoner. And it would be wrong, so wrong, quite apart from any other reason, just for the fact that she is a prisoner.

He feels suddenly worthless, unclean, and peels himself away from her, scooting about a foot away. A sick sort of self-hatred seethes in the core of his stomach. He might have raped her. He's always been a bully, after all.

'I'll go,' he says, quick and hard.

But as he's starting to get to his feet, looking anywhere but her, she reaches out her hand. 'Wait,' she says dreamily, 'come here?'

He doesn't come, but stops half-way between sitting and standing, balancing on one knee. She crawls over to him slowly, and reaches up, and sinks her fingers into his hair. He freezes, his eyelids squeezing shut at her touch, as her hands caress through his hair, moving over his head in soft circles.

It's awkward and wonderful and soothing, and something about the feel of her fingers manages to dissolve the twist of hatred in his stomach. And then she slips her arms around his neck for a fleeting hug that's more motherly than anything.

She slips out of his reach before he can put his arms around her, facing him and smiling softly. 'Maybe you should go now, Draco,' she murmurs, and he looks into her eyes, and tries to say that he's sorry, for everything. But it sticks in the back of his throat, because he's never said sorry to anyone before, not really.

Her eyes smile at him, though, and give him a sort of strength, as though she's transferring an echo of her courage to him. All the same, he knows he's still a coward inside, and he wishes he wasn't, because then he would be able to tell her how sorry he was.

His hands feel oddly heavy, tired, as he locks the cellar door behind him.


Strangely enough, he sleeps well and deep that night, and wakes at dawn to hear his mother's soft steps, returning, he thinks, from the chapel. She's the only one about at this time – he thinks the Dark Lord and his followers seem to work more at evening and night; he never sees them in the freshness of early morning. On a whim, he slips from his room, up the long corridor, and raps softly on the door to his mother's chambers.

There's no answer, and he can sense her frozen, waiting apprehension.

'Mother?' he whispers.

The door opens a little way, and he steps through, hesitating, not sure what to say. She's sitting in a carved Queen Anne chair by the window, and she makes a slight motion of her wand towards the door, shutting it silently behind him. He stands just inside, looking at her uncertainly.

'Draco,' she says, and searches his face for a tiny second before opening her arms to him. And oh, she's his mother, and he kneels next to her chair and puts his arms around her, and she puts hers around him and draws him tightly to her. He presses his face into her shoulder, breathing in her faint mother-smell, and feels like he's five years old again, but it's somehow okay.

She strokes his back, and when he draws a little away from her, her eyes are damp as she looks down at him.

'Mother,' he says again, then stops, because he has no idea of what to say. The dawn is tinted in tender rose and gold and eggshell blue outside the glass panes, and he has the sudden thought that if Luna were here, she would say softly how beautiful it was and probably find some strange simile for the sun that glimpsed over the horizon. He thought it would make them laugh, which would be a good thing, and might make the burning in his throat go away.

But neither he nor his mother are like that, so they look at each other, wondering what to say, what they dare to say. He concentrates on not letting his breathing quiver.

He glances at the table beside her and sees that there's a book on it, large and leather-bound, and thinks she must have just closed it when he whispered at her door. When he looks back to his mother's face, there's something odd in her delicate features. Fear. She's afraid… but there's something else, too, something he can't put a name to.

'Oh, Draco…' she whispers suddenly, almost as though she didn't want to speak at all. 'Oh, my dearest… I don't know what to think… I'm afraid…'

'Mother,' he says quickly, and then, realising that it's the third time he's said it, makes himself go on. 'What – is it? Tell me!'

She reaches out and touches the book softly, running her fingers along the spine. 'What if – we've all been wrong?'

Draco's not sure why, but something about her voice alarms him. 'Be quiet,' he says, and can hear the rough edge of panic in his own low voice. 'Please, Mother. What are you talking about?' His hand is clenching and unclenching around the dainty arm of her chair, but he only realises it when his mother covers it with both her own. 'What is it?' he says again.

Her elegant fingers are stroking around his wrist soothingly, but then her hands, and everything about her, go still. She raises her head slowly to look at him, and there's a sudden indefinable dignity about her.

'Look,' she says, and motions, gracefully, with her head, towards the book.

He flips it over. Holy Bible. He looks at her, completely nonplussed. It feels like an anticlimax.

'It's just the Bible,' he says. Surely she doesn't think that there's anything in there that could make a difference to the Dark Lord. Not really.

'Have you – ever read it, Draco?' she asks wistfully.

He shifts a little, uncomfortably. He was brought up, of course, knowing that reading the Bible was a proper, well-bred thing to do. Not that anyone in the family actually ever caught anyone else reading it. He'd also picked up, quite early on, that it wasn't well-bred to draw comparisons between what the Bible said and how the Malfoys actually lived their lives.

He owns a Bible, of course – a huge, expensive tome that had been bestowed upon him at his christening – but it lives in a nice silver box somewhere and he can't quite recall actually reading it much.

'Um,' he says, 'I've read bits of it, yeah.'

He does know a bit about it. It's divided into two sections that are for some reason called 'Testaments'. It starts off with God creating the world. About half-way through, Jesus comes down out of heaven and heals lots of sick people, then dies by crucifixion, as a kind of payment for everything bad everyone else has done.

His mother clasps her hands together in her lap and looks down at them, the new sun glancing off the fairness of her hair. She says nothing for a moment, and when she speaks she sounds, again, almost as though she doesn't want to.

'It's all about – love,' she murmurs, the last word stumbling on her tongue as though she's unused to using it. 'Always. Nothing else can – stand against it.'

He wonders suddenly, awfully, if perpetual fear has driven her insane. She seems to realise what he's thinking from his look, because she draws herself erect and says in quite a different voice, cool and self-possessed, 'I'm not mad, Draco.'

With tacit understanding, they break off and talk about other things, whatever shallow superficial topics they can muster, for a few minutes. But before he leaves, she places her cool hand on his cheek and looks swiftly, searchingly, into his eyes, and he gets the distinct impression that they've left a lot unsaid.