InsaneJournal

NaNo FanFic Part 10
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Pairings this part: None
Rating: PG
This didn't really turn out anything like I thought or planned, but here it is anyhow.

March 2000, Ottery St. Catchpole

Draco Malfoy left Wiltshire uneasy in mind.  His parents were faring well, although they did not go out in public if they could help it.  Public opinion had not quite turned that far.  Not even the word of the great Harry Potter at their trials could completely eliminate the taint to the Malfoy name that Voldemort's service had caused.

Given how many times Draco had been attacked in London since the war ended - by Death Eater loyalists and anti-Voldemort factions both - it was probably for the best that his parents stayed within the safety of their family wards, at least until his father's probation ended. 

In Paris, Draco was a man of influence in the Wizarding community, but he was English born and bred and could not live in exile forever.  Jenieve insisted that she would be able to manage her couture house from London as well as Paris, so they had plans to return permanently within the year.  Part of Draco's trip this time had been to tour possible townhomes and office premises. 

He left his businessman persona behind him, though, as he apparated to Ottery St. Catchpole.  He had put off this visit for too long.  It may already have been too late. 

He had never been a friend to any residents here.  The Weasleys and the Malfoys had been enemies for all of Draco's life, until the war ended and Harry managed to turn everything upside-down.  The Lovegoods had been the butt of jokes at Hogwarts for years, and Draco had taken his turn bringing down ole Loony Lovegood.

But for years his dreams had been haunted by her filthy, frightened, hollow-cheeked face, eyes huge and so pale they could have belonged to a ghost.  She had cringed away from him, whimpering like an animal, and yet the next time he saw her she was upright, strong, and fierce, fighting her way through the grounds of Hogwarts before Voldemort's destruction.

There was something unfinished between them, something for which he could not forgive himself, and doubted she would forgive either.  He had to try, though. Jenieve said he would feel better if he saw her.  His Healer said he could only move forward if he addressed his unfinished business. 

He stepped up to the Lovegood's door and pulled the bell.  They lived in a tower surrounded by what were probably once gardens but now were fallow beds strewn with debris.  He recalled that the house had been destroyed twice, once that terrible winter when Luna had been a prisoner, and then again last year in the New Year's attacks.  Snape's home had been attacked last year as well, as had the offices he and Draco kept in London for The Prince Trust. Sometimes Draco wondered if the war would ever truly be over.

"Who's there?"  The door opened a tiny crack, just enough for Draco to see the tip of a wand and a wide, blinking eye.

"Draco Malfoy," said Draco, and expected that this was when he would be refused entry at all.

The door slammed and there was a clattering, followed by shrill whistling, from the inside.  A hoarse voice shouted, "Mind the kettle!"  Then the door swung open again. Draco belatedly realized that the clattering had been the loosening of several door-chains and the unlocking of a series of ward-keyed locks.

"Mr. Malfoy."  Xenophilius Lovegood glared down at Draco with one good eye, the other tracking his own nose.  The old man stood there, his hands braced on the doorframe so that his bold blue robes blocked any view Draco may have gotten of the interior.  "Well?  What do you want, then?"  There was nothing soft or even mildly mad in the look Xenophilius gave Draco, and for a moment the young man wondered if his father's stories about Lovegood had been fantasy.  When Xenophilius's wand hand released the door frame, it shook so badly that Draco doubted the man could aim a charm or hex.

"If she will permit, I'd like to speak to Luna."  Draco had rehearsed a speech for this moment, but he found he remembered nothing when it came time to say it. 

Xenophilius kept his wand pointed more or less at Draco and considered that, while Draco kept very still, his empty hands visible. "My Luna doesn't wish to speak to a Malfoy." 

Draco would have accepted that, and even began to turn away, when her soft voice spoke from behind the door.  "Daddy, invite him in for tea." 

Xenophilius's other arm dropped to his side and there she was, looking not so different than she had in school. Her hair was shorter and less scraggly now, and curled around the wand tucked behind her ear.  She wore no jewelry, odd or otherwise, just a knee-length gray checked dress with no shoes.  Her socks were purple. 

"Luna," Draco said, hearing the relief and surprise in his own voice.  She looked, well, as normal as she ever had. 

"Draco," she replied.  "Have we moved on from surnames, then?  That's a change."   As her father stepped back into the house she waved a hand.  "Come in, then." 

She led him to a cozy kitchen with a wide wooden table set to catch the sunlight streaming through the wide windows over the sink.  A mismatched tea service had been set, three cups of varying sizes on chipped saucers.  The milk jug had obviously been Reparoed one time too many and must only hold liquid now because of an impervious charm.  Draco found it incredibly welcoming, despite the stark and obvious contrast to the Manor he had just left. 

Luna poured, and Xenophilius sat across from Draco with his wand out. 

"You have a lovely home."  It was a trite compliment, but sincerely meant. Draco didn't expect Xenophilius to react quite so violently.

"Home?  Home?  This is no home."  He pushed his cup and saucer away with such force that the cup and tea went crashing to the floor. 

Draco leaned back, startled, as Luna calmly cast a cleaning charm, levitated the broken pieces to a little stack of such shards on the countertop, and summoned a new cup.  "Now, Daddy, it is a lovely home, and we'll soon have it to rights," she said, with a small shake of her head. 

She turned to Draco as she blew gently on her own cup.  "We've only been in the new house for a few months, you see, and he isn't used to it," she murmured, glancing sadly at her father.  "He hasn't been the same since Azkaban, and then this, well." 

Draco looked at Xenophilius Lovegood with a new surge of understanding and sympathy.  Lucius had not been the same, either, after Azkaban. 

"Starting over is never easy," Draco said at last, unsure of how to turn the conversation where he needed it to go. 

Luna watched her father struggle stubbornly to drink his tea with shaking hands without sloshing.  "No," she whispered. 

The three of them made civil conversation after that.  Luna told Draco about her invitation to join Rolf Scamander's latest expedition to South America, and Draco in turn told her about The Prince Trust and his efforts to clean up the Malfoy name.  They spoke until Xenophilius finally set his cup, rattling, back onto the saucer and pushed himself away from the table.  "There are things to do-" he waved his hands vaguely toward a door off the kitchen, "in my office. . ."

Luna nodded as her father walked away.  "I'll call you for supper, Daddy."        

Draco turned his teacup in circles between his hands as Luna looked at him over her cup.  He wondered how long she could stand to let the silence grow between them, because he could not bear to break it himself.

At last, she set her cup delicately on the table and said, "Draco."

He looked up.  She smiled at him, and somehow that only sharpened the spike of wretchedness in his gut.  How does one make amends for unforgivable crimes?

"Come outside.  Let's walk."  She pushed away from the table and looked at him expectantly. 

He set his cup down, leaving the last few sips, and followed her through the store room at the back of the kitchen and out into their back garden.  There were four pairs of wooden clogs by the garden stairs, one of which Luna slipped on before leading Draco along the central path.  This was actually a garden again, neat rows of greenery marked with thread and colored flags.  Halfway down the slope, a twisting path laid with uneven stones glinted in the late afternoon sun, cutting through rows of medicinal herbs, and disappearing through a gap in the hedge at the bottom of the hill.  

As Luna led him through the gap and into the fields beyond, she glanced over her shoulder.  "You know, for someone who came here to speak to me, you are remarkably silent."

Draco shrugged, throwing his hands out to the sides.  "I don't even know where to start.  'I'm sorry' seems so inadequate." 

Luna brushed her fingertips over the heads of nearby wildflowers as she walked.  "Inadequate, but perhaps a good beginning."  She stopped walking to let him catch up and walk beside her.  "Shall we go down to the shore?  I like to listen to the sea." 

As they waded through the grass and scattering of blossoms, Draco tried to begin that speech he had spent so long composing.  "I am sorry, though, for so much during that horrible year.  Everything seemed beyond my control, and -"

He cut himself off when she put her hand on his arm.  "Tell me something," she said softly, looking out across the hills toward the hazy mist of the sea.  "When you came to me that day during Christmas hols, why were you so afraid?" 

Draco stopped walking.  He shivered, thinking back to those days, which, except for her face candlelit in the dark, were a blur of pain and power and torment and panic.  No matter how many times he worked through it with his Healers, he  never seemed to be able to shake the tremors that accompanied those memories.  "The Dark Lord - Voldemort.  He was there, in our house, so often.  And that night, after Bellatrix, after she -"

"Tortured me," said Luna with that irritating calm.

Draco took a breath.  "Yes.  After that, He came back, and he was so angry.  He raged, he had been so close to Potter. It was Christmas, did you know? Christmas, and horrifying.  Nothing was safe when he was angry.  I saw him kill casually over the dinner table.  He would not have spared you.  So I had to make you stop goading them, I had to do something."  He stopped talking and Luna began to walk once more, so he matched his stride to hers. 

"You cared so much that Loony Lovegood not be killed?  In the middle of all of that?"

She sounded like his Healers.  He glanced sideways at her and thought about the news reports after the war, when she and so many others had been enrolled in St. Mungo's. 

"I didn't understand what it would mean, to be locked up like that.  I was a kid, and stupid, so many times stupid.  I didn't want to die, didn't want my parents to die, didn't want to watch my aunt torture anyone again, definitely didn't want to watch the Dark Lord use the Killing Curse again."

Luna picked a long green stem and started tying knots in it until it broke.  "And if you had been caught you would have been punished.  I do know something about what it was like.  I speak to Severus."

Draco felt a sudden and irrational envy for her, to so casually speak of his Head of House.  Draco was still sorting through his issues with Snape, despite going into the business with The Prince Trust together.  "How can I make it up to you?  I left you there - I left you there twice."

They had reached the bluffs overlooking the water.  Waves crashed below, and the wind picked up, flattening flowers and grasses when it gusted. 

Luna's hair, short as it was, blew into tangles that haloed her head.  "What do you want, Draco?  Do you want me to take a pound of flesh for every agony I suffered at your hand?  They were few.  You didn't steal me from the train, you didn't lock me in the cellar, you didn't torture me or kick me or hex me.  Do you want me to lock you up for equal time, just so you'll understand?   You had your own prison to live in, I think.  You still have it, or do you think that anyone attacks me at random on the street these days, just for being a Lovegood?" 

This was as close as Draco had ever heard Luna to angry, even when they were at school.  "I don't know..."  He sounded like the whiny kid he did not really like to remember being. 

"Well, you should decide, then."  Luna turned to him and poked him in the chest.  He took a step back, and she followed him, hooking her fingers in his lapel.  "You could match me hour for hour and scar for scar and never truly understand what I went through.  But the reverse is also true."  He stopped backing away when the slope turned steeper, and she got right into his face in a way no one else ever had.  "Do you want my forgiveness?  Do you want to know that things will be all right, that three months practically alone in a cellar don't really ruin the rest of your life?  Do you want to know that the Mark you had on your arm doesn't really poison you forever?" 

He wanted all of that, but he shook his head.  "Only the first.  The rest I can't have." 

"You'd be surprised."  Luna looked up at him, staring until he met her eyes.  He blinked but did not look away again.  She nodded after long moments of staring, as if she had found something she was looking for.  Then she stood up on her toes and leaned in, cheek to cheek, so that her lips brushed his ear, exactly as he had once done in that dark cellar, and whispered, "Draco Malfoy, I forgive you." 

She stepped back, but he held tight to her hand before she could move too far away.  She smiled sadly and squeezed his fingers before pulling free and turning to look out over the sea.  "I always find the waves rather comforting.  I could sit out here forever, and feel utterly free."  She took a few steps down toward the beach and sat on a rock jutting from the slope.  After she had settled herself, she patted the rock next to her without looking back.   

Draco took the invitation, sitting down and resting his elbows on his knees.  He watched the waves break on the beach below in silence, and accepted this small measure of peace.  Perhaps his Healer had been correct, and it would not be quite as difficult to make a good life in England as he had feared.

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