Entry tags:

fanfiction, fic: far away as moonshine, writing

FIC: Far Away as Moonshine (5/28)
Title: Far Away as Moonshine, Part I: Malfoy Manor
Author: zephre
Rating: PG-13 (R for whole fic)
Prompt: 100quills table 50.2: Awake
Word Count: 1,009
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 story has three parts, each broken into chapters. 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 5: In which there are answers and evasions.


It was not Draco's habit to share his bed with another person.  When he woke up curled around Luna Lovegood, his first, instinctive reaction was panic - what had he done? Then memory returned and he allowed himself to relax his guard slightly. Nothing untoward, nothing wrong had happened, except that everything was wrong with the entire situation. He tried to ignore the effect her closeness, and the sweet smell of her hair, had on his body. Bad enough to be seventeen, alone, ruled by hormones and balanced on a constant knife-edge with death; there were some lines he would not cross.

He eased himself away, just enough that he could lie on his side, curled against the headboard, and look down at her face on the pillow without their bodies' touching. Some of her hair had come loose from its braid and lay across her face. Draco reached down and tucked those strands behind her ear, letting his fingertips brush lightly over her skin. She still looked exhausted, but the battered, defeated Luna of the night before was gone. She was beautiful, and Merlin, he felt such longing. He wished he could truly save her, could spirit her somewhere out of harm's way, out of prison, out of the danger zone. Away from everything he knew he must be in order to survive.

Her eyes opened as he pulled his hand back from her face, and he realized that she must have been lying awake for the last few minutes, all too aware of his movements.  Her fingers closed with unexpected swiftness around his wrist. The sleeve of his shirt was loose, the cuff gaping open, and she must have caught a glimpse of the inside of his forearm.

His left forearm.

She shifted beneath his arm, letting her shoulder lie flush against his chest, and with her other hand she pushed his sleeve up to his elbow.

"Luna," he said, trying to think of something to tell her.

She looked at the long white lines running down his forearm, like the mark of some wild beast's claws. "You haven't taken -"

"Not yet," he cut her off. "It is the Dark Lord's pleasure to give the Mark only to his trusted servants. I'm a tool in his collection, nothing more."

Luna's fingertips ghosted across the scars, raising goosepimples on his skin. "And these?" she asked.

"When my father went to Azkaban, I felt the Cruciatus for the first time, and I saw my mother suffer under it." He looked down, feeling his cheeks flush with shame. "I would have done anything to make the pain stop, and my wine glass had shattered there on the floor beside me..." He pulled his sleeve back down, but did not pull his hand free of hers. "When that did not work, and I was sober and free of the curse, I thought that I would do anything, could do anything, to be certain that my mother and I never felt such pain again." She said nothing, and he could not bear the compassion in her eyes. "I was wrong, of course. And I think I've been wrong for a long time."

She rolled up onto her side against him, pulling his hand down over her shoulder.  "I'm sorry," she whispered against his chest. 

He tensed as she curled once more around him, their legs tangling.  Her hand was a distracting warmth against his ribs. She was so thin beneath the borrowed pyjamas that he felt the bumps of her spine as he ran his hand down her back.  "Why are you apologizing?" he said. It pained him that she might ever feel she had anything to be sorry for in this wretched war. If it could be called a war.

She wriggled, putting an excruciating pressure on Draco's restraint, until her head rested on his shoulder.  "You didn't deserve that," she said.

She was tracing her fingertips around one of the buttons on his shirt. It was distracting, and arousing, and Draco felt ridiculous because he was sure she had no idea what she was doing.  He covered her hand with his to stop the movement.

"After all those detentions, you still say that?" he asked, and was grateful his voice did not break halfway. She was maddening.

She shuddered in his arms, her hand fisting in the fabric of his shirt. "No one deserves that, but at least at school that was the worst they could do. The Headmaster was there to stop them going to far." 

Draco felt a sudden chill at her words. She had been ten days in a small room with no one to stop anything from going too far. "Luna," he began, and then had no idea how to ask. In much the same way that his upbringing had not prepared him for waking up with a girl in his bed, it had never once addressed dealing with any sort of trauma. It had been assumed that any pureblooded girl Draco might eventually marry would be, as much as possible in their increasingly Muggle-influenced world, innocent. "Did anyone, in that cellar-?"

She shook her head.  "Don't ask me. Not today." She pressed her face against his neck. "Please, please, just hold me, remind me what it's like to feel alive. Make me believe this isn't a dream." 

He gave in to his longing then, and wrapped her tight in his arms, moving one leg over hers. She fit frighteningly well against him, her head tucked under his chin, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "It's not a dream," he said with a strength that surprised him. "I won't let them take you back there." 

Her tears soaked through the fabric of his pyjamas. He let her cry herself out on his shoulder, his own discomfort forgotten in his need to sooth her distress. Her sobs had quieted and her breathing eased by the time Emmy appeared at the foot of his bed with a breakfast tray.

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