Entry tags:

100quills, fanfiction, fic: far away as moonshine

FIC: Far Away as Moonshine (17/28)
Title: Far Away as Moonshine, Part II: The Battle of Hogwarts
Author:zephre
Rating: R (R for whole fic)
Prompt: 100quills table 50.2: Blur
Word Count: 1,957
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! Another one written over a series of lunch breaks, so please alert me to typos or errors of continuity. It may, in fact, make no sense whatsoever.

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 8: In which things do not go as planned, for anyone.



Harry couldn't be dead.

Luna wanted to deny the evidence of her eyes, and leaned heavily on a piece of the wall as Hagrid laid his burden on the ground. Harry's hand curled so beautifully on the grass, white and soft in contrast to the sharp green blades and the churned mud all around him.

She felt a hand slip into hers, and squeezed the fingers without looking to see who it was. Did it matter? They were all doomed, now. Ginny screamed. Professor McGonagall did, too, and somehow that made Luna's knees go weak. Professor McGonagall should never, ever sound so undone, so raw. It was not right.

Then Neville ran out, and how had he gotten away from Luna, he had been right beside her... She turned her head, and found that Dean was the person holding her hand. A fading hex mark scored his cheek. Seamus stood at Dean's side, holding his wand awkwardly, two fingers bent at the wrong angle. Just beyond them a tiny gap, so small perhaps only Luna noticed it, separated Draco, Blaise, Millicent, and Daphne from the others on the stairs. There were tear tracks on Daphne's face, and Millicent had a black eye. Draco's sleeve was ripped and stained with blood. Blaise alone looked whole and unharmed.

Ginny was still screaming, but Charlie on one side and Percy on the other held her arms to keep her from running after Neville. A lock of her hair had been singed, and swung forward over her eyes every time she tried to break away.

Luna's attention turned back to Neville as the Sorting Hat flew onto the field. She felt like she was watching events through a pool of water; she could not catch her breath. The flames around the hat's brim curled in a slow blur of light over Neville's head, and his arm shattered the binding spell over the course of hours, hours which Luna spent fruitlessly trying to inhale. The blade glittered in the weak illumination spilling out of the castle, and it was so beautiful that Luna thought she might be happy to die now that she had seen it, now that Neville's hand had pulled it from the Hat.

When the snake's head spun, another blur of color that Luna's eyes could not follow through the air, time began again. Luna gasped. Dean pulled her back into the Great Hall as everyone began shouting, running, casting spells once more. Luna leaned against the wall just inside the doors and tried to make her lungs work properly.

"Luna!" Dean shouted, shaking her by the shoulders. "Hey! Don't you give up now!"  

She looked up at him and found her hand still held her wand. "No," she said, her resolve firming. "I'm not."

He looked relieved, and started to speak again, when Daphne came running toward them shouting for them to get down. Luna threw herself to the floor, and crawled for a moment in the shadows. Dean and Daphne vanished into the sea of moving, dueling bodies, and Luna kept low to the ground near an overturned table and looked out to get her bearings.

She saw Bill and Fleur fighting back-to-back against Death Eaters. Kingsley Shacklebolt and Professor McGonagall were fighting Voldemort himself. Against one wall a flash of blue caught her eye, and she saw Narcissa Malfoy running, looking like a ghost, shouting something into the din that Luna thought was shaped like Draco's name. Luna spotted Lucius, then, too, ducking to avoid a hex. He looked like someone had very recently used him for target practice. Neither of them wore Death Eater robes, nor masks, but had shed them if they had ever had them. She lost sight of the Malfoys when George Weasley crossed her line of vision, dueling so fast that his wand was a blur of light.

Luna was at the very point of leaping out to help him when she saw a pair of familiar boots just out of the corner of her eye. She dropped back to her knees and crawled closer along the wall. The boots were black leather, with pointed toes and buttons up the sides and narrow heels that looked like daggers. The stitching on the leather was red - red like the blood that had dried on those pointed toes, the blood that had dripped onto the rug in the dining room of Malfoy Manor where Luna had last seen them, just after their owner had kicked her in the mouth.

Bellatrix LeStrange.

Luna ran out of hiding with a curse ready on her lips, aiming for Bellatrix's back. The woman was incredibly fast; she ducked a bolt of red light that Luna saw had been cast by Hermione, then turned in time to deflect Luna's curse toward a wall. Ginny was there, too, and Luna quickly aligned herself with her friends to present a united front against the Death Eater. Hermione's curses were stronger and deadlier than Ginny's, but they flew wildly, as if Hermione were trying to cast four or five at once and her wand could not aim them all. Luna thought she might understand how Hermione felt; perhaps they could kill Bellatrix together.

Kill Bellatrix. Luna tripped on her own feet as the thought circled back on itself in her mind, making her last hex fly far from its target. Kill Bellatrix. As Luna had killed once already today. As Luna had killed. Luna dropped to the floor, smelling the hot rush of ozone as a curse just missed her head.

She could not afford to break down, not now. Ginny ducked a Killing Curse and Luna scrambled up toward her, then suddenly their duel was usurped.  Molly Weasley came down like a wrathful Fury, and the girls could only fall back. Luna did not clearly hear the words Bellatrix shrieked, but she knew that laughter, and the tone of demented glee, that the woman used.

Harry was dead, and they were all going to die, too.

Luna found a piece of unmarked wall and leaned on it for just a moment. She had some cover from a broken piece of the Head Table, but it was not enough to fully hide her from the combatants.

"Luna, down!" someone shouted, and she obeyed without thinking, ducking farther behind the dubious protection of the wood.

A red curse hit the wall over her head, and shrapnel flew from the hole. Thin, sharp bits of rock hit Luna before she could shield herself, hit her raised arm, her scalp, her right cheek. She felt them hit, but she was not seriously hurt.

She looked out at the room just at the moment that Bellatrix fell before a spell from Mrs. Weasley's wand. She watched Voldemort blast Auror Shacklebolt and Professor McGonagall into the wall.

And then suddenly there was a new voice booming through the room. "Protego!"*

Harry.

Alive.

Harry.

Alive.

Luna might have felt something  - relief, fatigue, even anger - but she had no time for feeling. Not everyone in the room was riveted to the duel. Death Eaters still moved, Hogwarts defenders still shielded. Luna stood up and found herself facing the point of a familiar wand. She had not seen this one so often as she had seen Dolohov's, but she knew it, and the hand that held it, and the face half-hidden beneath the broken mask.  Rabastan LeStrange.

Only half of his smile was visible as he twisted his wrist. Luna heard something pop and found herself on the ground again with no clear sense of what had happened to get her there. There was a shadow on her face, and she blinked. Rabastan laughed. She heard it clearly through the chaos, which was in itself amazing.

Somewhere beyond her line of sight Harry must be fighting, but her whole world consisted of Rabastan's advance. She tried to cast her own Protego but it sputtered sadly as she propped herself upright on the wall. Her fingers had difficulty keeping hold of her wand, and when Luna looked down she saw that her hand was swollen, purple with bruises, and the broken edges of bones pressed grotesquely against her skin.

"Can't run now," Rabastan said, leaning forward over the remains of a bench.  "I saw what you did, little girl," he continued, twisting his wrist again. Luna heard the pop again. This time she actually saw the bones break in her foot. She had not even realized she had lost a shoe. "What you did to Anton," Rabastan whispered. He sidestepped a spell that came shooting toward them from across the room.

Luna heard a great noise rising from the other side of the Hall, a strange sound that could have been screaming, or could have been cheering. She wondered if the duel was over yet. It did not seem to matter for her, but she would have liked knowing whether Harry won.

She tried hexing Rabastan, and hit him, but her spell was so weak that it caused no more annoyance than the sting of a bee.

He aimed his wand again, and Luna closed her eyes. Then Rabastan made a strange cry, and Luna felt the curse stir her hair as it slammed past her head into the wall. This spell dissolved without damaging the stone.

She opened her eyes. Rabastan lay to her left, struggling against the ropes of an Incarcerous. He was still casting ill-aimed hexes, but this time not at her. She tried to turn her head, feeling a sharp pain in her neck, and saw Draco standing at her feet. Then abruptly Draco was no longer standing. He collapsed very quietly, first to his knees, then full-length beside her.

Draco looked at her, saw her, mouthed her name, before he passed out. Bloody froth bubbled from his lips with every breath.

Luna thought she might have screamed. Her throat certainly felt like she had. She ignored the pain in her broken hand and raised her wand. Rabastan was not the only one who knew a bone-shattering curse. She twisted her wand once, twice, three times. Each time Rabastan shrieked and tried to roll away, but he was hampered by the ropes. He dropped his wand at last when Luna's third spell broke the bones in his wrist.    

Luna summoned a chair that looked halfway sturdy and used it to push herself upright. She stood awkwardly, biting her lip against the pain in her broken limbs. She could still walk. She could still use her wand. That was the important thing.

She realized as she looked around that the battle was over. Everywhere she looked, she saw people she knew rejoicing. She saw a crowd of red heads that she thought might conceal Harry, and hoped that he had lived. She could not linger to find out.

"Mobilicorpus," she said.

Draco's body lifted a scant few inches from the floor. It would have to be enough. Luna gestured toward the back of the Hall and the corridor that led to the Infirmary, directing the spell. If the way was not clear, then she would have to find a different one. Luna paced beside Draco's body, clearing obstacles when she could. Her vision blurred as she walked, and she told herself it was fatigue, not tears.

Her hand kept straying to Draco's hair, just barely stirring it with her fingertips. She was afraid to touch him otherwise for fear of worsening the hurt. He breathed only very shallowly, and blood trickled from his nose. "Don't die," she whispered, bending close to his ear. "Don't you dare leave me alone again."

The walk to the Infirmary had never before seemed so long.

---
* quoted directly from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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