Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.


It's worse than ever, at Hogwarts, grey and lifeless. Draco doesn't have to do the Cruciatus on the other students, when they have detention, but he hears the screams and knows that it's his fault, really. The Carrows sneer at him for not wanting to join in the torture, but don't touch him – he's an initiated Death Eater, after all. The other students despise him, but fear him even more, and he supposes, dully, that it's fair enough.

Luna wasn't afraid of him, and he wants her, wants her so that it's like an ache in his chest. No-one else will even talk to him freely – even the other Slytherin students are carefully wary of what they say around him.

But most of all, there's a constant cold sick fear inside him, fear of what might be happening to Luna in the cellar of his house. It's so bad that he actually throws up sometimes, emptying his stomach till he's gasping for breath and his face, in the bathroom mirror, is the grey-white of old laundry. Then he slumps on the floor of the prefects' bathroom, spent, not caring much that he's missing lessons.

The teachers' suspicion and fear is almost harder to bear than the students'. McGonagall goes through her lessons stiffly, her face cold, looking past him and through him, never at him. Slughorn fumbles nervously when Draco's near him, assuming a painful joviality that's worse than McGonagall's iciness. Flitwick is kind to all the students, even the Slytherins. He tries to make them feel better by conjuring things like cupcakes and bracelets and small white mice out of the air. But when he looks at Draco, his eyes are angry. Luna was one of his favourite students.

Draco catches one of the white mice, though, while everyone else is still laughing and exclaiming, closing his hand around it before it can scuttle away and probably be eaten by Mrs Norris. He holds it under the desk, feeling its little palpitating heart under his fingers, trying to calm it down by running a finger gently along its back. No-one's even noticed – he sits at the back, rather away from the others.

Finally the mouse goes to sleep in his hand, its little scrabbly paws clutching his finger. He takes it back to his bed in his deserted dormitory and sits there for a long time, gently petting the velvet of its back. It doesn't seem to be scared of him any more, the silly thing, and he lifts it up and looks at the tiny, perfect, silken ears, the pointed nose and little pink paws. For some reason it makes him think of doves and lambs and Luna.

He thinks it would be nice to have some living company, even if it's only a mouse, and he flicks his wand at a pair of socks and transfigures them into a little silver cage. But as he's about to slip the little creature in, he realises that it's another prison, and he can't do it. So instead he gives it a last, regretful stroke, bends down and puts it on the ground.

It looks around with bright eyes, sitting on its haunches and cleaning its whiskers with its front paws. 'Go on,' he says. 'You're free. Mrs Norris doesn't come into the dormitories. Go on!'

The mouse just cocks its head, looks far, far up at him, and laughs. Then it climbs into his trunk, curls up into a pile of handkerchiefs, and closes its eyes.

'What are you doing?!' he says. It opens one eye and looks at him limpidly. Maybe it's a magic mouse. He sits down on the edge of his bed, reaching out his hand to it.

'Come on,' he says. 'You don't really want to stay with me, do you?' As though in answer, it climbs composedly onto his hand, up his sleeve and sits on his shoulder.

The mouse takes to travelling with him wherever he goes, under his robes or in his pocket. He calls it Lucille, and feeds it little scraps of cheese and bread and bacon when people aren't looking. It makes everything feel slightly, just very slightly better, that Lucille, like Luna, neither fears nor despises him.