– Luna –
She's walking along a barely visible path on the moor. It's dark and foggy. Getting darker. One misstep, or so they say, just one foot in the grasses instead of on the path and the hungry bog will suck you down. The bog monster is real; that's what her mother said before she died. She said, "Once it's caught you, it'll take it slow so you don't lose heart too soon. So you think there is still time? Still hope."
"Still time, still hope," Luna thinks.
It will pull slowly, slowly, deceiving you into trying, struggling for freedom while inexorably condemning yourself, sinking, sinking, until finally, you know, without a doubt, the cold, watery mud will be your grave.
"Or so they say," her mother would finish grinning at her horrified daughter.
"No time, no hope, Mom," she whispers, "for any of us," she is crying and careless and her foot squelches, but she struggles on, still trying to make sense of what's happening. How does Draco have a lover and a wife? How does Astoria go back to him at night?
How can she stand between, letting the bog monster drag her down and them with her? How can she want them both?
She lets guilt and sorrow consume her. Her feet are wet and cold, but she doesn't care. She wants to hurt.
The treacherous path gives, and she falls. The wind is knocked from her lungs, and she lies there, coughing for a long while. When she finally catches her breath, she doesn't move; instead, she stares at the heavy clouds and the swirling mist.
Draco comes here at night; she thinks about his hands, and what his steps might sound like on the path. But she knows he haunts the northern trails and that dusk is not his time.
Has Astoria been here? Has she met ghosts, caught a glimpse of the monster? Luna thinks not, but who knows where her lovers go to hide their guilt and shoulder the weight of their loneliness.
She will not see them again, Luna vows. She vows to her mother and the bog and her lovers.