Entry tags:

100quills, fanfiction, fic: far away as moonshine, writing

FIC: Far Away as Moonshine (4/28)
Title: Far Away as Moonshine, Part I: Malfoy Manor
Author: zephre
Rating: PG (R for whole fic)
Prompt: 100quills table 50.2: Snow
Word Count: 1,750
Summary: For Draco Malfoy, the war was one endless nightmare. Until Luna Lovegood gave him a reason to hope. Can he find his courage, make his luck, and become more than a pawn to those in power?
Warnings: (for whole fic, highlight to view) *mature themes, imprisonment, mention of rape, abuse, battlefield violence, various canon and other character deaths, sexual situations*
Notes: The title is from the song, "Street of Dreams" by Oysterband.
Chapter Index:
Part I:   1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 ||
Part II:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 ||
Part III: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 ||
Epilogue

Chapter 4: In which Luna sees the sky once more.


Draco's rooms were on the fourth floor of the east wing, far from any guests the Manor may have been hosting.  He had taken these rooms when he entered Hogwarts, leaving behind the nursery quarters above his parents' suite. Here he had his own small empire with access to the roof garden and the sky, and no one but house elves came this far upstairs with any frequency.

After the darkness of the back corridors, his parlor was bright with moonlight.  Luna's face turned to the windows the moment he set her feet on the floor.  She was not entirely steady, so Draco kept a grip on her as she walked right up to the glass. She flattened both hands against the window but made no move to open the casement. She just looked out.

A light dusting of snow covered the grounds, glowing wherever the moonlight touched it.  All else was shadows upon shadows, trees and sculpted shrubs, winter rose bushes and fallow garden beds.  Across the courtyard the windows of the west wing were dark, the stones and moss leached of color.  Luna drank in the sight greedily, her eyes flicking from place to place too rapidly for Draco to follow.  He realized abruptly that except for the one evening when she had been Bellatrix's after-dinner entertainment, Luna had been alone in that small cellar room for ten days. 

Somehow it became the most important thing in the world to see Luna standing under the open sky again. Draco summoned his formal cloak and his school cloak from the wardrobe in the dressing room, and wrapped the thick warmth of his Hogwarts colors around Luna's shoulders. The formal cloak was more decorative than actually warm, but he was at least wearing shoes. He cast a warming charm on Luna's feet.  "Come out," he said, tugging gently at her hand as he opened the door to the balcony.

She followed him onto the snow-dusted balcony and up the steps to the garden.  She ignored the snow-covered flower beds and even the single shade tree now nude and skeletal above them. She stood with the edge of his cloak brushing the outer railing and tilted her head back, exposing the long pale curve of her throat to the cold air. It was a clear night, and facing away from the moon they could see a vast array of stars stretching to the horizon. 

Luna pulled the cloak closer around her and sighed happily.  "I missed them."

Draco stood apart from her and let her stare, let her feel the cold and the wind. He watched her until he realized that there were tears running down her temple into her tangled hair, along the delicate curves of her ear. Then he stepped close enough to encircle her with his arms, to pull his cloak around them both. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

She turned, dropping her face into the curve of his throat above his collar.  "I'm so tired," she said, her breath warm against his skin.

He closed his eyes.  "Time to go back in. Let's get you clean and warm and in a decent bed." He felt her nod against him, and led her back to the steps.

Once inside, Draco led Luna, cloak and all, into the hallway and then to this floor's elaborate bath.  There was a new dressing gown on a hook next to Draco's, and a second cabinet next to the one that held Draco's towels and supplies.  His mother had obviously had the house elves working fast.  He pointed out the new things as he turned on three of the taps, letting hot water mix with oils for soothing aches and calming nerves. "Luna." He waited until she met his eyes.  "Will you be all right on your own, or shall I send for a house elf?"

She looked at the tub - it was a small pool to rival the prefect's bath at Hogwart's - and nodded.  "I'll be fine." The dreamy calm had returned to her voice.

Draco nodded once.  "Very well.  If you change your mind, call for Emmy." Then he left her alone.

The elves had made up the suite next door to Draco's, and opened the door linking their parlors. By the time the lights came on in Luna's suite, Draco was curled in bed trying to take his mind off the coming term by reading a Quidditch magazine. He still had no idea how to change anything without leaving himself or his parents open to torture and death. Best not to let the problem run in circles in his head.

Luna herself appeared at his door moments after her lights went on, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold despite the warmth of the room. Her hair, frizzy and damp, hung in a loose, pale braid down her back, and she wore a pair of Draco's old pyjamas with the cuffs rolled over her feet. She still looked battered.  Draco pulled his wand from under his pillow.

"Can I -" she began, just as Draco said, "Come in."  He patted the foot of the bed. 

She sat facing him, curling up with her arms around her knees.  Draco reached carefully toward her. She flinched away from him.  "I'm no mediwizard, but I know the basics. May I?" Draco asked, and she held herself still as he ran his thumb lightly over her chin just beneath her split lip. 

Luna looked at him for a long moment, and he sat still through her scrutiny.  He knew he did not look his best, courtesy of a holiday full of sleepless nights, but he looked a sight better than Luna at the moment. And he did know plenty of first aid. At last she nodded.

Draco cast silently as Luna watched his face. The cuts on her face knitted slowly together, a process that Draco knew from experience itched like mad, and the bruises faded back into normal skin tone. His spells did nothing for the circles under her eyes or the thinness of her cheeks. Magic had its limits. 

"Thank you," she said as he lowered his wand, in a subdued voice. 

"Are you cold?" Draco asked.  She was trembling.

She shook her head, but did not look at him. She ran her hand lightly over his bedspread; one broken nail caught on a loose thread. Draco took hold of her wrist before she could pull away and turned her hand over.  Her fingertips were raw, her nails broken and their beds scabbed, as if she had been trying to claw her way through the wall. Perhaps she had.

"Why didn't you say something before?" He cast the healing spells on her right hand, and reached for her left. 

"Draco -" Again his given name uttered in a pained whisper, and he stopped moving, his fingers around her left wrist. He waited for her to say something else, but she just looked down at his hand around her arm. She was so thin that his hand seemed gargantuan in comparison. He did not want to think of how fragile she would be in the hands of a man like Rudolphus LeStrange, who had been one of those that kidnapped her from the Hogwarts Express. When his uncle clapped Draco on the shoulder at dinner, it felt like a threat.

"Yes?" he prompted.

She shook her head and simply held her hand open for him to cast the spell. Once her hands were healed as much as he could manage - he did not know spells to make torn and broken fingernails grow back - he sat back against his pillows and looked at her.

She looked everywhere but at him; the open windows, the paintings on the walls, the mismatched but comfortable furniture, the heavy ties holding the bed curtains. He wondered if this was some kind of visual therapy on her part, absorbing as many colors and textures as she could in the moonlit room after the empty darkness of the cellar. Like the moment with the snow, he left her alone for a while. 

The silence stretched between them until Draco took his magazine from the bed beside him and flipped it closed. The noise of the pages fluttering seemed absurdly loud. He set the magazine on the bedside table and made a great fuss of plumping up pillows and tugging the bedspread down so he could cover his feet. "It's late," he said quietly. "Will you be able to sleep?" 

Luna squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "Please don't send me away," she whispered. "I can't bear it alone in the dark."

Draco wished he had even the slightlest clue what she might be thinking. "You can stay, of course." He wanted very badly to offer her some kind of comfort, but she had flinched away from every attempt to touch her. Luna kept on not looking at him until he said the word that loosed the bedcurtains.

The curtains were heavy and when they were fully closed no light filtered through to the bed.  Draco let one foot hang off the edge of the bed so that it caught the heavy brocade before it could close. A thin triangle of moonlight bisected the mattress, and Luna's breathing became harsh sobs from her side of that divide. Draco cursed under his breath, jerked that one curtain back so that moonlight flooded the upper half of the bed, and pulled Luna bodily up into the light, cradling her against his chest. "Luna. You aren't alone anymore. Luna. I'm here." He lost track of exactly what he was saying, rocking her gently and whispering against the crown of her head. 

He had no experience offering comfort to another person, not real comfort for real grief. He could only try to remember what his mother had done when he was a child, with a child's sense of vast loss over the smallest of things. He stroked her hair, from the back of her head to the small of her back, but did not wrap her tightly in his arms as he wished to do. He did not wish her to feel imprisoned. When he paused in his litany of reassurance, he realized that she was quiet, and though she still trembled against him she was no longer weeping. He stopped speaking and simply stroked her hair, curling deeper into the pillows at the head of the bed.

Next Chapter