Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Finally, finally, it's the Easter break, and he boards the Hogwarts Express with a strange lightness in his heart, despite everything. No-one wants to sit in his compartment except Crabbe and Goyle, and they don't really talk to him, spending most of their time eating. He tunes out of the munching noise of their jaws, looking out of the window and petting Lucille with one finger as she lies sleepily in his hand.
His mother meets him on the platform at the station, and he puts his arms around her as she kisses him on his cheek, an unusually public display of affection. He shows her Lucille, and, weirdly, she looks for an instant as though she might burst into tears, as the little mouse looks up at her, cleaning its whiskers. But the moment passes, and she just smiles, a little unsteadily.
And then, at last, his trunk's back in his bedroom; he's gone through the ordeal of greeting Bellatrix and her husband, both of whom are, thankfully, rather uninterested; and he's had tea with his mother, pale and silent and forlorn. Finally, he's left alone, and he goes down the steps to the cellar with dry lips and clammy hands.
At first, he can't see anyone in his bright wand-light, and his heart gives a great painful thud against his chest.
'Luna?' he says, and his voice is panicky.
'Draco.' He hears her soft voice, and then she comes out from one of the alcoves with her hands out towards him, smiling a little, her eyes big and grey and soft. Relief, warm and delicious, washes through him, making him go weak at the knees.
'You're all right,' he says unsteadily.
'Pretty much,' she agrees. He reaches out and then hugs her suddenly, fiercely. Lucille, who's in his pocket, protests with a squeak at being jolted, climbing down his leg to the floor.
'Oh!' Luna says happily. 'You have a mouse!' She twists to peer around his arm at Lucille.
'Or she has me, you might say,' Draco grumbles half-heartedly. He's realising something, with his arms around her like this. 'Luna. You're not alright, you're too thin!'
'I'm OK,' she says vaguely. 'What's her name?'
He takes her shoulders and looks at her from a little distance. 'You're all – peaky looking – too.'
She has her dreamiest look on. 'Maybe she's a Moon-Mouse and can talk to you when the moon's full…'
'Luna,' he says sternly. 'Has something happened? Tell me.'
'She's got really long whiskers, like a Moon-Mouse…'
'You're a Moon-Mouse!' he says, half laughing, half exasperated. He pushes her face up with his fingers to make her look at him. 'Honestly, Luna... please, tell me?'
She meets his eyes, looking a little worried, and runs her tongue over her lips. 'It's all right, really, Draco. But Bellatrix came down her a few days after you'd gone, and I was – scared, a little bit.'
His stomach lurches when she says Bellatrix's name, and his fingers tighten on her shoulders. 'Did she do anything?'
'She kicked Mr Ollivander.'
'But to you?' he says urgently.
'She didn't touch me,' Luna says gently. 'She just – shrieked, sort of, and laughed at us.'
He feels sick. 'Insane,' he says helplessly. 'Insane… oh, Luna.'
'It's all right,' she soothes. 'It's fine, I looked at her, and she stopped kicking Mr Ollivander after that.'
'You looked at her?' he says.
'Yes,' she says. 'She didn't hurt us, and she hasn't come back, either.'
They sit down on the mattress, and she slips her hand into his, squeezing it. He tells her Lucille's name, and the little mouse sits, bright-eyed and alert, on her palm, as Luna talks to her softly. Lucille looks like she's listening, and then she does a little somersault, landing neatly on Luna's palm again and looking smug.
'Show-off,' he says.
Luna laughs, delighted. 'She's sweet! She even smirks like you do, Draco.'
He's sitting there, watching the gentle curve of her lips as she tells him about one of her strange fancies – in fact, she's wondering if his crazy aunt Bellatrix is suffering from a bad case of Hovering Slow-Flies, whatever they are.
'She just mad,' he says, still watching her mouth, the softness of it and the little dip in the upper lip.
'But maybe she can't help being mad, Draco,' she says earnestly, looking at him with those big grey eyes, and it's too much. He uncurls himself from the floor and swoops towards her, bringing his hands down on her shoulders.
She just kneels there in front of him, looking at him with a trace of a smile. The heat of his hands is soaking into her too-thin shoulders, and he leans down and covers her soft lips with his own. She's trembling, kissing him back, her arms slipping around him.
And the feel of her mouth quivering against his makes everything in his head go bright and needy and boldly coloured, throbbing, and he pulls her closer, closer, his hands running over her frantically…
This time, she doesn't pull away, but it's as though she's cast into stasis, trembling on the edge between holding back and melting into him. 'Luna, Luna,' he mumbles, his face dropping into the soft white sanctuary of her neck, and he wants her, wants her so much, and he thinks all his pain could go away if she'd just let him…
'No…' she says, her voice just a smear of sound, like the tiny mew of a newborn kitten. No – but she's still there, not pulling away, not pressing closer, quivering against him.
No.
No. It drops like a pebble into the deep waters of his consciousness, and he suddenly knows that if he's going to respect what she wants, if he's ever going to have a shred of self-respect ever again, he has to be the one to pull away.
Away from her. Now!
It's the hardest thing he's ever done, though a part of him is busy telling him that it's ridiculous that this should be so hard, when he's tortured people and watched them being killed, and eaten, by a giant snake…
But it is hard. It's like moving a mountain or wrestling a – a bear, or something. He peels his hands off her, and it's as though there's some sort of glue between them.
Then he sits down again, a good four feet away from her, and looks down at his hands for a while. When he looks up at her, she's smiling, and looking curiously like a child and a woman at the same time, with those wide, moonshadowy-grey eyes, and a soft flush still on her face.
'Thank you,' she says, her voice the tiniest bit unsteady. She's smiling, smiling like light again, so that it casts a glow on him, and he feels warm inside, warm in a place in his chest that's always been cold before. He thinks, suddenly, oddly, of sunshine streaming through stained glass, of multi-coloured light spattering on creamy stone.
And he knows, then, like another pebble into deep waters, that he's lost. He loves her.
He loves her – and she's a prisoner in his damned cellar. It could almost make him laugh, if it wasn't so hideous and tragic.
'I'm sorry,' he says suddenly, and it comes out like water from a burst dam. 'Luna – Luna – I'm sorry.'
'I know,' she says, looking at him tenderly, and something breaks inside him.
'I love you,' he says, and he passes a desperate hand over his eyes.
'Yes,' she says gently. 'I love you too, you know.'
