Entry tags:

100quills, fanfiction, fic: far away as moonshine

Fic: Far Away as Moonshine, 15/28
Title: Far Away as Moonshine, Part II: The Battle of Hogwarts
Author: zephre
Rating: R (R for whole fic)
Prompt: 100quills table 50.2: Smoke
Word Count: 1,465
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.
Concrit Wanted? Sure!

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 6: In which a warrior's will is tested and a line is crossed.


A battle was more difficult to navigate than Luna expected.  A battle was terribly different from the stories one hears from Aurors or veterans of previous skirmishes, and even from her own meager experience of conflict. It was the noise, she thought. And the smoke.

The shrieks of Banshees and roars of giants mingled with the shouts and screams of human combatants. Dust and smoke clogged the air as pieces of the castle fell, flew, or exploded onto the grounds. Luna had no idea which way she was running, only that she must keep moving and keep casting hexes at figures in black robes.

She tripped over a rock and sprawled across the grass. She smelled the ozone of spells zooming over her, and kept her head down for a moment. A voice screamed, anger and fear and terrible grief, and Luna was certain that she was about to be devoured by a Banshee. But no clawed fingers sank into her flesh.

When the air cleared slightly, Luna turned her head and opened her eyes. Professor Lupin lay beside her, his eyes also open, but sightless in the unmistakable manner of the dead. Her mother's eyes had looked like that.

Luna lifted her dirty hand to her face, surprised to find it was wet. Was she crying, in the middle of a battle? In the middle of a war? Over a man she did not even know except that he was her ally?

And then Professor Lupin's wife screamed.

Tonks faced two Death Eaters alone now; Professor Lupin's body behind her, and Luna behind him. To Tonks's right, a student in Hufflepuff colors lay, dead or unconscious. One of the Death Eaters threw back her hood, and Luna's breath left her in a hiss at the sight of Bellatrix LeStrange. 

Tonks threw a curse at Bellatrix, and soon the two women were entirely engrossed in a duel that took them across the grass away from the body.

The other Death Eater stood still, staring down at corpses on the lawn.

No, Luna realized suddenly.  Staring down at her.

She scrambled to her feet, wand ready.

"Well, the little spitfire," the Death Eater drawled, lazily.

Luna felt a chill run down her spine. She knew that voice.

The scars on her chest suddenly blazed into exquisite agony, and Luna arched backward, struggling not to fall. She bit her lip to keep from screaming.

The Death Eater pushed back his hood. Dolohov's scarred cheek wrinkled as he smiled. His teeth had been terribly white in the dark, crooked and sharp; but it was not dark now. Luna forced herself to remain present, stumbling backward until she hit the castle wall. She concentrated on seeing Dolohov in the dim illumination of stars and moon and lanterns and flashing colored spells. Fireworks went off to the south. This was not the cellar, black as pitch except where the glint at the tip of his wand illuminated those teeth. This was not the cellar.

She had a wand this time.

She cast a Stinging hex, and he dodged.

"You'll have to do better," he said with a laugh, closing the distance between them. "What game shall we play now?"

Luna's shoulderblades pressed so hard into the wall she thought they would bruise. She cast another hex, this one darker, stronger, benefit of the Carrows' teaching.

Dolohov dodged again, and then she could feel his robes brushing against her. The fingers of his free hand closed around her neck.

"I think you will scream much sooner this time," he whispered, his breath warm against her cheek. He licked her temple, smacked his lips as if the flavor pleased him. "I think you will scream much longer, too," he murmured, the affectionate tone of his voice belying the threat in the words.

Then he bit down, hard and fast, on the shell of her ear. When he pulled back, there was blood on his lower lip. He licked it away and smiled down at her.

That was his mistake. Luna had been paralyzed, almost hypnotized, by the sound of his voice and the hand around her throat. She was frozen by her terror and by the steady stinging pain that shot through her scars like a twisted echo of her heartbeat. Thump-thump, thump-thump. Pain-pain, pain-pain.

The abrupt and concentrated agony of his bite to her ear shocked her out of her immobility. Luna's wand was trapped between her body and his, the aim skewed, as likely to hit her as him. She cast the hex anyway.

Alecto Carrow would have been proud. Dolohov bellowed, pushing away from Luna as his robe smoldered and fell away from his shoulder. Blisters rose on the skin thus exposed. The edge of the flame caught her collarbone and the top of her shoulder, but she felt no new pain. Her whole body was one live nerve at this point, what was one more wound?

Before Dolohov could turn his shock into retaliation, Luna cast again. The skin of Dolohov's jaw bubbled and melted, and his bellow of rage became curses and invective soon enough. Another flick of her wand and the robe opened across his chest. Another and his wand arm reddened, blistered, and sloughed skin as if it were an ill-fitting glove. The curses became an incoherent shriek of agony.

Luna cast again.

Dolohov's voice hit an achingly high note and then broke as the spell fire ate through his leg and groin. 

Luna cast again.

And again.
   
And again.

The screaming stopped.

Luna cast again.

All she could see was red now, a haze of blood and tattered robes and stinging gray smoke.

"Luna!" Arms came around her from behind, pinning her wand arm to her side. "Luna, Luna, easy. You can stop now. He's dead."

She knew that voice, too.  "Draco."

Her hand twitched to cast the hex again, but Draco's embrace kept her from completing the motion. He eased them back against the wall, pulling her into his body, his forearms crossed over hers. "Luna," he said, right behind her bleeding ear. "It's over."

"It still hurts," she whispered, and as if the words had opened some secret door within her she began to sob.  "It still hurts! Why does it still hurt?" It was supposed to be over when her torturer died. This was supposed to be the end.

Her back, her wand arm, her right leg and foot, her belly just below her navel - all these points now ached. The sharpness of the pain had been blunted, but it had not ceased.

Draco turned her around and took hold of her hands, keeping her wand pointed well away from him. "Breathe, Luna," he said with an infuriating level of calm.

Then Luna looked up and met his eyes. Oh, there were storms in those eyes.

"Have a breakdown later, love," he continued. There was no inflection at all in his voice. It was disturbing. "You need to be awake now."

Luna turned from him and saw the battered lawn, the beseiged castle, the defenders still struggling.  The two bodies on the grass had not been disturbed, but a new one had joined them. Tonks, her hair brown in death, lay with one arm reaching toward her husband. Luna looked away and saw, in the other direction, Seamus shouting for the DA to gather near him. Mist was rising over the grass and at the edges of the field loomed a dark mass of Dementors.

Breathe, Luna. Just breathe.

Draco must have seen the change in her face. He let go of her hands. "All right?" he asked.

But she did not get the chance to answer, affirmative or no.  Draco moved with Seeker's reflexes, shoving Luna out of the way of a rogue Stunner, and when she looked back there were Acromantulas crawling over the debris.

"Go!" Draco shouted, as Blaise Zabini came running up already casting sheets of flame toward the giant spiders. Luna did not have time to consider alternatives. Draco sprinted to meet Blaise, working in concert to drive the Acromantulas over a different part of the castle wall. Neville appeared from behind the debris, firing curses at the spiders and then at a giant trying to take the roof off of one of the towers. Someone shouted Harry's name, and then another name that Luna could not make out in the sudden crushing explosion of stone. Part of the castle wall collapsed, and defenders began falling as the Dementors closed in.

Luna ran to catch up with Seamus, holding close in her mind the look on Draco's face when he asked if she was all right. She would need a Patronus. 


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