Entry tags:

100quills, fanfiction, fic: far away as moonshine

FIC: Far Away as Moonshine 20/28
Title: Far Away as Moonshine, Part III: Seven Years Later
Author: zephre
Rating: PG-13 (R for whole fic)
Prompt: 100quills table 50.2: Welcome
Word Count: 2,160
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?
Secondary Pairings this chapter: Neville/Ginny, past Luna/Rolf Scamander.
Warnings: (for whole fic, highlight to view) *mature themes, imprisonment, mention of rape, abuse, battlefield violence, various canon and other character deaths, sexual situations*
Concrit Wanted? Sure! Please alert me to typos or errors of continuity. This one may have gone a bit awry.

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 2: In which Luna takes a chance and makes a promise.

May, 2005
Prague

A knock at the door woke Luna from her doze at the desk; her shoulders were sore from sleeping in the uncomfortable hotel chair, and her quill had dribbled ink over her letter, the blotter, and three of her fingers. A glance at the digital clock beside the bed told her no more than an hour had passed since she had cried herself into exhaustion over the post. She rubbed her eyes with her ink-free hand and snagged a flannel from the bath on her way to the door.

She peered through the peephole, then pulled back in surprise, pushing the chain lock open and swinging the door wide. "Rolf, what are you doing here?" she asked, glancing behind him for any other visitors out of long-ingrained paranoia.

Rolf Scamander, explorer, naturalist, teacher, and not so long ago Luna's lover, leaned on the door jamb and smiled. "Such a welcome. Can I come in? I have an idea - to help with your little, ah, problem?" He, too, glanced out at the empty hallway. "I can't discuss it out here."

Luna sighed. He wanted to talk about her curse again, and certainly he could not do so in the corridor of a muggle hotel. She braced herself and gestured for him inside.

"Thank you," he said as he squeezed past her in the tiny entryway. He sat on the corner of the room's one bed and watched her as she engaged the door locks then wiped ineffectually at the smear of ink she had left on the paint.

She really had no reason to be so concerned with the mess, but it gave her time to think.

The last time she had seen Rolf, on Boxing Day, he had left her standing on a country bridge in Ireland after accusing her of all manner of insanity and infidelity and - well, best not to get too bogged down in the past. The point was that they had not parted on good terms, yet here he was, barging back into her life, no doubt ready to instruct her in all the ways she had messed up since their parting.

She closed her eyes for a moment. She did not want to be reminded of all the ways she had messed up already. Rolf's accusations, after all, hurt the most when they cut closest to the truth. He was right, though, wasn't he, she thought, taking a steadying breath. I have become a danger to more than just myself. 

She turned back to the room and reclaimed her seat at the messy desk.

"Do I smell something burning?" Rolf asked, sniffing the air.

Luna smoothed one of the letters on the blotter, flicking bits of char off the edges of the paper. "Not burning any longer," she assured him. "An accident with a candle is all." She would not tell him how angry she had been to get this letter, how she had broken down after she had read it. She would never tell him that she had started to burn it, then changed her mind and rescued what remained. She re-folded the unblemished bottom half of the letter, where Ginny's signature was a messy scrawl that almost hid Neville's smaller, neater hand.

They were having a baby, Ginny and Neville. A little girl, they said. Alice. They were so happy, and they knew that Luna would be happy for them, and wouldn't Luna please consent to be godmother?

For a few sweet seconds after reading the news, Luna had felt joy. It did not last. Her rage had almost destroyed the rest of her post along with this one letter. How dare they be happy? How dare they write as if the war had never happened? How dare they move on? In the end, although Luna felt like she hated them more than she loved them, she could not destroy the evidence of their love for her.

Rolf was too quiet. While she had been remembering, he had been watching her face, no doubt noting the tear tracks and reddened eyes. Merlin, she had hated that habit even when she thought she could love him.

She swiveled the chair away from the desk and glared at him. "What do you want, Rolf?"

He held both hands up, palms out, a gesture of surrender. "Just for you to listen to me. That's all. I want to help you, Luna."

She sniffed, and leaned back. "Fine. Talk."

He looked surprised, and she took some small satisfaction in that. His cruel words in the winter still hurt, and seeing him only opened the old wounds again.

Otto wound his way out of her braided hair and hooked his tiny body around the curve of her ear, his tail tickling the lobe. Rolf's eyes went immediately to the movement, but he said nothing. Rolf, after all, was intimately acquainted with her familiar's habits. Luna lifted her hand and ran one fingertip over and over down the tiny lizard's spine, the caress soothing and calming both the reptile and the witch.

"I think that we were looking in the wrong place, trying to break your curse with European magic," Rolf began.

"It was inflicted with European magic," Luna interrupted.

Rolf stood up. "Let me talk," he said, beginning to pace the tiny space between the bed and her chair. Luna had chosen a very cheap hotel, so he only had four steps to traverse before he would run into her.

She conceded with a small gesture of her hand, giving him the floor, as it were.

"As I said, European magic may be the wrong place to look for a cure. Curse-breakers and mediwitches can't see it, anyway. There is a kind of magic that works through the victim herself, that sustains itself not through the connection with the caster but through its connection with the cursed body. Why else are you still suffering side-effects so long after the caster's death?"

Rolf smacked his fist into his open hand and turned to face her. "I can't believe I missed it for so long, but it's so obvious once you know."

"What is?" Luna asked.

"You need a shaman," he answered.

"A shaman! What are you on about?"

"Look, you are part of the problem now -" Rolf held up his hands again, warding off her automatic denial, "No, I said that wrong. Just listen. Most spells require active direction from a caster to be effective. Lumos, Mobilicorpus, Rictusempra, even Crucio. They don't work once the caster's concentration has been broken. The spell that made the cuts in your flesh only lasted as long as the wand was directing the action. So why have we been trying to break a cutting curse? There is something else living in your body now, and the only possible way it could still be affecting you is if you yourself are fueling it."

"Not this again. A mediwitch in Cairo told me it was psychosomatic and to meditate it away," Luna said angrily. She had spent too much time over the years being patronized by the medical profession to appreciate the novelty to Rolf's approach. She could not help but admire him for trying, though. He was the only one who ever had.

Rolf shook his head. "Not psychosomatic. Symbiotic."

Luna leaned back, staring at him. This she had not heard before.

"It's the only answer that makes sense. It explains everything - the nightmares, the pain, the magical disruption."

"Magical disruption?" Luna interrupted him again. "There's nothing wrong with my magic."

Rolf looked pointedly around the room - the very muggle room. "No? Light that candle, then."

Luna turned toward the poor stump of a candle on the corner of the desk. The wick was almost buried under hardened wax. She frowned. "Why?"

"Just light it," Rolf insisted. "With your wand."

Luna looked at the desk. There was a box of matches sitting in plain sight beside the candle holder.

"You can't, can you?" Rolf asked gently. "How bad has it gotten, Luna? Really?"

She waved one hand, dismissively. "It's nothing. Minor spells just go a bit awry. I can still Apparate."

"But for how much longer? Do you really want to splinch yourself into hospital before you accept that you need more help than traditional Wizarding medicine can provide?"

Luna covered her eyes with her hand. Otto licked at her cheek just beside her ear. It felt like the fluttering of tiny wings against her skin. "All right, Rolf. What do you propose?"

"I have a friend called Tymas. He is a powerful shaman who has worked with symbiotic body-magic before. His people infuse scars and tattoos with energy, so he may even be able to see more in your scars than anyone before has."

Luna let her hand drop. Rolf looked terribly earnest. He was a wonderful man. She had wronged him terribly. He was still talking about his friend's ability to see magical energy when she reached out to take his hand.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry, Rolf."

To his credit, Rolf did not pretend to misunderstand. He blinked several times and looked away. "So am I. But you cannot direct the heart." He squeezed her fingers. "Please let me do this much."

She nodded. "Where must I go?"

He told her. She laughed, but it was no different from any of her adventures now. She would see a new part of the world and be glad of it.

By the time he finished his description and had written out instructions, the sun had begun to set over the rooftops of Prague. "Thank you," Luna said, standing and tugging him to his feet. "Truly, Rolf. Even if this is unsuccessful, it is the most anyone has ever done to help me."

"That is because your truest friends do not even know you are in trouble," Rolf said, the familiar bitterness back in his voice. "I require something from you in return, Luna."

Luna was startled. "What?"

"I require something from you. I will send you to Tymas with my introduction, and in return you will do something for me."

Luna was wary of him now, for this was more the Rolf who had shouted on the bridge in Ireland. "What do you require, then?"

"I want you to go back to where this all started."

Luna took a step back already shaking her head, but Rolf was too quick and took hold of her arms, keeping her from running.

"Luna, go back to England. Go back to Malfoy Manor, and look at the place that haunts your nightmares." Rolf's voice was soft, even gentle, but it still cut Luna to the quick.

"No."

Rolf's fingers tightened. "Yes. Do you think I don't know how much it haunts you? How much the Malfoys tempt you to return? Do you think I don't understand how much you hate yourself for running away, and even more for wanting to go back to them?"

Luna had thought he did not know quite that much.

"Merlin, Luna," Rolf said, "you have written to him every week for years and you think I would not notice? Why do you think I left? I no longer wanted to compete with a memory and a dozen pieces of parchment every Saturday!"

Oh. He understood more than Luna ever credited.

"So now I am telling you - you must go back. Perhaps Tymas can fix the magic running wild in you, but he can't work miracles. You can keep running, without physical pain, and what will that solve? Go back. Promise me you will."

Shaken, literally and figuratively, Luna nodded. What else could she do? She had every intention of going back, after all.  One day.

"Swear it, Luna. Swear that before this year is out you will go to Malfoy Manor and confront them."

So soon? She said nothing.

Rolf stared at her, and seemed willing to stare indefinitely. "Please, Luna." Perhaps if he had shouted, or demanded, she could have continued her refusal. This, though, was a whisper of defeat, of last hope, and she had only seen him this way once before. Then, someone had died.

The measure of her cruelty to him became terribly clear to her. He loved her so much he would send her into the arms of another - a man who would crush her spirit and discard her, for all he knew. For all rumor said. Yet he did this, for her.

"Very well. I swear it, Rolf. I will go back to Malfoy Manor...  before the year is out." The oath tasted like ashes on her tongue, but once made she could not unmake it.

Rolf pulled her close, whispering "Thank you," into her hair, and then just as quickly he was gone, out the door and away. Luna stared at her empty room and felt suddenly quite alone.

Next Chapter

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