Entry tags:

100quills, fanfiction, fic: far away as moonshine

FIC: Far Away as Moonshine, 13/28
Title: Far Away as Moonshine, Part II: The Battle of Hogwarts
Author: zephre
Rating: PG-13 (R for whole fic)
Prompt: 100quills table 50.2: Enemies
Word Count: 1,059
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 makes some uncomfortable observations, and a battle begins in earnest.


There was something wrong with Harry.

There was something wrong with the whole world, to be truthful, and Luna was not entirely certain that she could cope with that. But there was something seriously wrong with Harry.

His fingers were leaving bruises on Luna's shoulder as he held himself upright, and while Professor McGonagall seemed unperturbed by Harry's state of mind, Luna felt herself on the verge of panic. It was the eyes. She knew those eyes, green as the first uncurling leaves of spring, unmistakable to anyone who had met him, but at this moment they were terrible, dark with knowledge and shadowed by pain and utterly blind to the events in front of them. What did those eyes see, as Harry clutched at Luna to stay upright and present in the room?

He said nothing about it, just shook himself as if to rid his mind of a lingering dream. And then words of explanation, hurried and frantic, words that persuaded his Head of House that the time had come for action.

They were invisible again as they jogged beside Professor McGonagall through the corridors, but Luna felt eyes on her nonetheless. Now their invisibility felt false, a thin facade of protection where no true protection could ever be. Stray hexes would still strike them both, and they had enemies in the castle.

"Who's there?"* Professor McGonagall asked abruptly as she stopped short, wand raised.

"It is I,"* said a terrible, familiar voice. Luna cringed back even as Harry leaned forward, his wand ready to strike.

Luna bit her lip and clutched her own wand as she realized that any retreat on her part would expose Harry. In the darkness, the Headmaster's face floated like a ghost's above the swirling shadows of his cloak. One pale hand held his wand extended. He walked in his own invisible miasma of cold and hopelessness, a condition contagious to anyone within his vicinity. Luna could feel all of her courage falling into the vacuum created by Snape's despair. He was unnaturally still, and he spoke with a calm so perfect it could only be a carefully maintained mask. And he knew that Harry was there.

Professor McGonagall kept the man at bay until he actually spoke Harry's name aloud.

"Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva?"* he asked, and before he could finish his next sentence Professor McGonagall had attacked. Attacked the Headmaster, the Death Eater, with Harry right here in the corridor!

A torch flew from the wall and Harry grabbed Luna's arm. He pulled her almost off her feet to avoid the sudden flames that came alive and flew toward Headmaster Snape. Luna could not see all of the duel; Harry foolishly stood in front of her, as if her own life were of greater importance in the scheme of things. Luna wanted to shake him for his ridiculous chivalry at a time like this, especially when he had a job to do that no one else could possibly complete.

A suit of armor came flying out of what was now a pitched battle in the corridor, Headmaster Snape versus Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout. Luna ducked and then dove sideways, trying to stick to Harry for as long as they could remain under the Cloak.

The Headmaster fled.

When Luna caught her breath after their run to the broken window, when she stood in the room with the Invisibility Cloak dangling from her fingers, listening to the Professors and Harry exclaim at one another, she found that strange. The Headmaster fled, leaving a hole in a window and a faculty fully intact and ready to mount a defense.

The Headmaster fled, having not once even tried to use an Unforgivable Curse.

The Headmaster fled, and no one else had died.

Luna let the conversation wash over her - Harry's urgent tones, Professor McGonagall's firm declarations, Professor Flitwick's high-pitched spellcasting - and thought about this. She thought about the Malfoys living imprisoned in their own house, facing a reality far more twisted and painful than their nightmares. She thought about Mr. Ollivander slaving over Death Eater wands, day after day, with nothing but hard knocks for his trouble. She thought about Dean and his stories of living on the run from the Muggleborn Registration Commission. She thought, and shuddered to think, about the cellar's darkness interrupted only by flickering candlelight and the laughter of sadistic men. Luna was not naive enough to believe that she would still be alive if Draco had not taken her out of the cellar. 

Detentions with the Carrows had come all too close to serious injury until the Headmaster had taken them to task. The members of Dumbledore's Army had been singled out for that most ambiguous punishment of chores in the Forbidden Forest. Why, when the Death Eaters had so little regard for anyone in opposition to them, would such a man as Headmaster Snape show such leniency? Why would he take such risks for so little return, knowing that no one would see compassion as anything but weakness? Why give the students or his fellow Death Eaters a reason to challenge his authority? Why, when he faced a sudden inexplicable rebellion from his faculty, did he run?

Unless he was truly a coward, as Professor McGonagall and Harry believed.

Luna did not get a chance to follow that thought to any conclusion, because once again everyone was moving and Harry dragged her along through the castle and back down to the Room of Requirement.

"We're fighting,"* Harry announced, and Luna blinked in surprise. Is that what they had been discussing?

There were so many people crowding into the room and up the stairs that Luna had to take a step back. Where was Neville? She saw him coming, and with him Lavender and Padma and Seamus. Dumbledore's Army would not back down from this fight. They had been fighting it alone for the whole year, had they not? Now they would face their true enemies at last, and they would not falter. The Death Eaters would not find the school so easy to invade this time.

"Come on, Luna,"* Dean said as he paused on the stairs. 

With a brief glance back at Harry, Luna took Dean's hand and joined the crowd headed toward the Great Hall.

They were fighting.

- - -
*this dialogue quoted directly from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, American edition.

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