Chapter Text
The first time Draco went to the dungeons to visit her, it was only out of curiosity. He’d overheard Fenrir laughing with Yaxley about “some little Ravenclaw whelp” they’d thrown into the cellar. Draco knew things were getting bad, but it was hard for him to believe that Death Eaters were actually kidnapping Hogwarts students. And if they were, he was curious about who.
Just curious, that’s all.
It wasn’t hard, in the general chaos of the Manor these days, to slip away unnoticed. He made his way through secret passages that opened only to Malfoys, feeling his way through dark tunnels and breathing in the damp and mold.
Eventually, he emerged in the central dungeon, a grim, earthen-floored space with various torture implements hanging on the walls. An iron-barred enclosure extended the length of the far side. It currently held two occupants. Draco spared a brief glance for Ollivander and then turned away, his stomach curdling. It was one thing to have known Ollivander was here, but another thing entirely to see the man who’d given Draco his first wand curled up in a ball in the corner of a cell. He was seemingly asleep, breathing shallowly.
Draco shifted his gaze to the other, newer occupant and startled, taking a full step backward. Luna Lovegood’s luminous blue eyes stared at him out of the darkness.
What the fuck, he thought blankly. He’d thought Fenrir and Yaxley were making idle boasts; they had to be, because there was no way they’d actually kidnapped a Hogwarts student. But here was Loony Lovegood, blinking up at him from the floor of his family’s dungeons.
This was…bad.
Draco knew they were working for a madman. Of course he knew that. He’d known it for a long time. But Lovegood? What possible strategic value could Lovegood or her barmy father have? Nobody even read his stupid bloody fish wrap. The only explanation Draco could think of was that they’d kidnapped Luna because they wanted to, and because they could. It would be a miracle if he himself managed to survive the War. Or even the next few weeks, he thought grimly.
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see that Luna was sitting against the far wall of the cell, hugging her knees to herself. She was barefoot, and her clothing was torn and stained. Her hair had been braided at some point, but most of it had escaped the braid, forming a halo of blonde, wispy hair around her face.
“Draco,” she said, her voice rasping from disuse. “Have you come to torture me?” His stomach did a slow, queasy turn. She’d asked it so matter-of-factly, as though she were asking to borrow a quill from him in class. As though she expected it. Here’s Draco; he’s a Malfoy, so he must be here to torture me.
“No,” he said. “Are you—” He stopped mid-sentence. Like an idiot, he’d been about to ask her if she was all right. “I didn’t know you were here,” he said instead, lamely.
The ghost of a smile touched her lips. “That’s nice,” she said. “I did wonder.”
Nice. Draco felt sick. Did she think he was here to be kind? Kindness was a luxury he couldn’t afford, and it had never really been his thing, anyway. “It doesn’t change anything,” he snapped.
“It does, a little,” she said. Her wide eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Draco, will you do something for me?”
Draco barked out a laugh. “Probably not,” he said. The cruelty was a reflex, but the answer was true. There was so very little he could do for her.
She went on as though she hadn’t heard him. “If I die here, will you tell someone? I wouldn’t like my father to have to wonder.”
He stared at her. She showed no signs of torture; no whip-marks, no brands, no lacerations or bruises that he could see. Certainly the cell wasn’t comfortable, but prisoners could—and had, in the distant past—lived there for decades.
“Are you mental?” Draco asked at last. “You’re not dying.”
“I am,” she said. Her voice was thin and breathy, hanging in the damp, misty air. “I’m starving.”
He narrowed his eyes and looked at her closely. In the gloom, it was hard to make out the details of her face, but she did look more drawn than when he’d last seen her. Gaunt, with hollows in her cheekbones. And she’d been thin to start with.
“They only give us enough for one person, and I’m sharing with Ollivander,” Luna whispered. “He doesn’t know. He’s hardly ever awake anymore. It’s all right,” she said, even though it wasn’t. “Just tell someone if I die. That’s all.”
Merlin’s balls. Draco wondered if this was Yaxley and the rest toying with the prisoners out of cruelty, or whether they’d simply failed to pay enough attention to feed them properly. He’d readily believe either.
Luna waited in calm silence for his answer.
How are you not afraid? Draco wanted to scream. She was trapped and starving in his family’s dungeons, and she looked so peaceful that he wanted to shake her.
“Yeah, all right,” Draco said. “If there’s anyone left to tell. Don’t thank me,” he snapped, just as she opened her mouth. His chest burned, like he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs. He had to get out of there. He abruptly turned his back on the cell and retreated to the secret passageways.
Once he was well away from the dungeons, he sat down heavily on the damp earthen floor of the tunnel and cradled his head in his hands. His stomach writhed like a snake, and there was a hard lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow past.
“It’s just Loony Lovegood,” he told himself, trying to soothe his nerves. But the effort backfired, because the sound of his own voice made his gut lurch. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was Lovegood’s thin, pale wrists, sticking out of her torn jumper like a scarecrow’s arms.
He stared at his own wrist, with the greenish-black death’s-head grinning up at him. For a short time, he’d thought that taking the Mark would mean power and status. His head had been filled with childish dreams of revenge against petty enemies, of his schoolmates being forced to kneel at his feet. By the time his father brought him to Voldemort to be branded, he’d known it was a farce, but he was too much a coward to back out. It had brought him nothing but a constant nauseated terror and, now, a Hogwarts schoolmate dying in his family’s dungeons.
Well done, Draco, he thought bitterly.
Fuck, he had to pull himself together. He was surrounded by Death Eaters who would love nothing better than an excuse to feed him to Voldemort’s fucking snake, and here he sat, sniveling on the floor feeling sorry for himself.
Well, Lovegood didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. He let out a choked laugh, the sound echoing from the tunnel walls. Maybe he should get some pointers from her.
Draco picked at his roast dinner, listening to Carrick and Fenrir making filthy jokes about Muggle women. He wished he didn’t know that Lovegood was trapped five floors below them. And he didn’t want to think about how long she’d been malnourished, or how long it might take her to starve to death.
But he did know she was there, and he couldn’t stop thinking about her thin bones and her pale face.
He eyed his dinner, wondering how difficult it would be to… No, he told himself. Don’t be a fucking idiot.
It wouldn’t be terribly difficult, but he couldn’t afford to take any risks.
He was in no mood to eat. He wiped his mouth with his linen napkin and rose, leaving half of his food untouched on his plate. Dolohov and Yaxley were well in their cups and shouting increasingly lewd vulgarities at the other end of the table, so no one even noticed when Draco left.
Draco spent that night, and the next day, in an agony of trying to put Lovegood out of his mind. Had they brought her meals? Was she still alive? It was like prodding a sore tooth, checking over and over again just to make sure it still hurt. It’s only Lovegood, he told himself furiously. Why do you even care?
He couldn’t stop thinking about her eyes, steady and unafraid as she asked him to please tell someone if she died. She had no right, he thought. She had no right to be that brave.
He held out for two more days.
On the third day after he’d gone to see her, Draco waited until an outburst from the end of the table captured everyone else’s attention—it never took long, these days—and cast a quick Shrinking Charm on his dinner plate. He was sure nobody had seen him, but nonetheless the hair on the back of his neck stood up as he rose from the table to leave. If anyone noticed that his plate was missing before a house elf had had time to magick it away…
But no one did. He left the dining room unnoticed and went straight to the tunnels, willing himself to look calm and natural. Once inside, he let out a long, shaky breath and cast the Engorgement Charm on the plate to expand it again. He couldn’t do it inside the dungeons or it would set off the wards, and he couldn’t afford for anyone to ask questions about why the wards had gone off. He took a moment to collect himself, because like bloody hell was he going to appear before Loony Lovegood looking a nervous wreck, and then he made his way to the dungeon entrance.
Luna was curled up on the floor of her cell, unmoving, and Draco’s stomach clenched in fear. He thought about the three days he’d just wasted trying to work up the nerve to come down here.
“Lovegood,” he whispered. She stirred, and his knees went weak with relief.
It’s just bloody Lovegood, he told himself, shocked at the intensity of his own reaction. Her eyes opened, reflecting the dim light.
“Draco,” she murmured.
He went to her, unlocking the door to the enclosure with the palm of his hand. Like everything else in these dungeons, it was spelled to open to Malfoy blood, something Draco hoped his father hadn’t revealed to the Dark Lord along with the rest of the family’s secrets. He knelt beside Lovegood, put the meager remnants of his dinner in front of her, roast and carrots and a bit of mash.
“Eat,” he said curtly. “Quickly. I can’t be here for long.”
“They don’t know?” she asked, her eyes wide. “I thought you’d been sent.”
He shook his head. No, he hadn’t, and if anyone found out he was here, he’d likely be snake food before the day was out. He shoved the plate of leftovers toward Luna. “Just eat,” he said.
Luna stared at him for a moment with those luminous eyes, but then turned her attention to the food before her. Draco hadn’t brought cutlery, not wanting to remove more than the bare minimum from the table. But Luna didn’t hesitate; she tore at the bread roll with her fingers, shoving it inelegantly into her mouth. The roast beef and carrots proved more difficult; she picked at them with shaking fingers, dropping them several times. Finally Draco snapped, “What’s wrong with your hands?”
“Cold,” she said, making Draco feel a right idiot. He himself was chilled in the subterranean damp, and he wore a full set of robes. Lovegood had been here for weeks and wore only a thin jumper and jeans. No shoes. Her hands were bluish pale and so stiff she could barely work her fingers.
Draco wanted to scream with frustration. He shouldn’t have come here. There was nothing he could do for her. Couldn't do a warming spell, because if he used his wand, the wards would go off. Couldn’t bring her a blanket or warmer clothes, because her captors would notice. All he could do was bring her food she couldn’t bloody eat, which was fucking well useless.
“It’s all right, Draco,” Luna said, as though she’d expected no better from him. She gave him a weak smile.
He clenched his jaw, staring at her. He was not going to be defeated by a roast, for fuck’s sake. Abruptly, he tore a bite-sized chunk from the roast and held it out to her in his hand.
Luna’s eyes widened. She hesitated, giving him a wary look. He couldn’t blame her; he’d certainly been cruel enough to her in the past. He maintained a carefully neutral expression on his face as he held the food in front of her.
Watching his face, she leaned forward to gently, delicately mouth it from his hand. Her lips brushed feather-light against his skin.
He silently tore off another little chunk and held it out. She lowered her head, hot breath warming his fingers, and ate it as well. He fed her a third bite, and a fourth. She grew more bold, her tongue flicking against him, soft and wet.
Heat coiled through Draco like a spring being wound tighter and tighter. I shouldn’t be doing this, he thought. His breath was fast and shallow, puffs of fog condensing in the air between them.
She took the last bit of roast from his fingers and met his eyes, waiting. Neither of them spoke, as though they shared a tacit understanding that speech would destroy the strange magic of this fragile moment.
Draco slowly, deliberately dipped two fingers into the mash, scooping a bite’s worth and holding it out to Luna. Her mouth curved into a tiny smile that made Draco’s insides clench, and then she bent her head to his hand and took his fingers into her mouth, closing her lips around them.
He made a choked noise, loud as a whipcrack in the silence of the dungeon. Luna delicately traced her tongue along his fingers, licking them clean, and she—she had to know. She had to know what that was doing to him. His libido, long-dormant from terror, roared back to life like a fire under the bellows.
He fed her from his fingers again and again, and by the end, he was glazed over and breathing harshly through an open, slack mouth. When he slipped his fingers from her mouth for the last time, he had the strange, powerful urge to push them into his own mouth, to get the taste of her onto his tongue.
Luna touched a fingertip to her mouth briefly, as though she were pressing the traces of his fingerprints into her lips. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
Draco came back to himself with a hard jolt. He couldn’t be sure of what she meant by that—was it a manipulation? A seduction? A rebuke? But watching her, he realized that she meant it only as a statement of fact.
“No,” he said, “I suppose I didn’t.”
“I liked it,” she said, and for Merlin’s sake, how could she just—
“You can’t just say things like that,” he snapped.
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s the truth,” she said.
“Exactly,” he said. “People will—they’ll—” They’ll take advantage of you. They’ll use you. But Draco, unlike Lovegood, knew better than to just blurt things out that came to his mind. And he was hardly going to give her the idea that he cared somehow. “Nevermind,” he said. Hot, sharp prickles traveled down his spine.
He didn’t care. Fuck, he shouldn’t even be here in the first place. He’d let this get far, far out of hand. He took the plate away with trembling hands and left without saying another word.
Draco laid in bed that night, bundled under a warm duvet, trying not to think of Luna. He couldn’t afford to think of Luna. He’d perfected the art of sliding through his days seamlessly, with no errant thoughts to flutter loose and get snagged by some passing Death Eater. Occlumency was so much easier when he had nothing specific to hide.
But he couldn’t stop thinking of Luna, no matter how much he wished he could. He’d wanted her. It had been so long since he’d wanted anything other than to escape pain and punishment that it had taken him entirely by surprise, but it was undeniable. And the worst of it was that he could easily have her, if he so chose. He could go down to the dungeons and do it right now. No one would stop him. The other Death Eaters would probably cheer him on.
A wave of nausea overtook Draco, so powerful that he had to form his hands into fists and breathe through it. He might be a coward, and he was well on the path to becoming a blood traitor, but he…he wasn’t that.
Well, Draco thought. Finally he’d found a line he wouldn’t cross. It was nice, he supposed, to know that such a thing existed.
The next day, Draco found his mother working needlepoint in the drawing room, perched elegantly on an Elizabethan-era armchair with the Malfoy family crest emblazoned on the back. As far as Draco was aware, she had absolutely no interest in needlework, but it was an unobtrusive hobby that allowed her the opportunity to sit quietly in the corner of a room and eavesdrop. She’d not told Draco any of this, but he was a Malfoy. He didn’t need to be told these things.
“Mother,” he said, “I’m going to meet a few friends in Diagon. I’ll be back before dinner.” It was only partially true; he was going to Diagon Alley, but he had no intention of visiting friends. Which Narcissa would know; custom and propriety dictated that Draco name the friends he intended to visit, so that his mother would know if any important social connections were in play. Draco hadn’t named them; ergo, he was not actually going to visit friends.
“In this weather?” Narcissa said, not looking up from her needlepoint. It was a chilly early spring day, but what she meant was This isn’t a good idea. Are you sure that you need to do whatever it is you’re doing?
Draco lifted a shoulder in an easy shrug. “I’ll dress warmly.” I’ll be careful. There is no significant danger. In truth, he only meant to do a bit of shopping. But he’d wanted to warn his mother that he’d be gone from the Manor for a short time, in the event that she needed to cover for him.
“Be sure you do. One never knows when the weather might change.” Be mindful of who might be watching you. “And if you have an extra moment, would you mind stopping in at the stationer’s? I’ve nearly run out of ink.”
The mention of ink was a subtle reminder of Narcissa’s frequent correspondence with wizarding families across the continent, keeping communication open in hopes of eventually securing their escape. In other words, Do nothing to endanger our chances of leaving. It was also possible, of course, that she was actually out of ink.
Narcissa never said anything that had less than two meanings, and most of what she said had many more layers than that. But Draco had been raised to it, and these days he usually understood her perfectly.
“Of course, Mother,” Draco said, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. “It’s no trouble at all.”
Two days later, Draco went back to the dungeons, better-prepared this time. Before he gave Luna the food, he took her hands and pressed them tightly together in his, chafing warmth into them. He couldn’t afford a repeat of last time. It worked well enough, and to his relief she was able to eat unassisted.
She finished the last of the black bread and butter he’d smuggled her, and she gave him a curious look. “Why are you helping me?” she asked. “Not that I mind. I just wouldn’t have expected it.”
He nearly retorted that he wasn’t helping her, but he didn’t want to have the argument that would undoubtedly ensue. He considered and discarded a dozen different lies. “I don’t know,” he finally said.
Luna blinked. “Oh,” she said, eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Not what you were expecting?” Draco asked, leaving off his usual sneer. He was tired, and sarcasm was wasted on Lovegood anyway.
“Well,” she said, cocking her head and giving him an appraising glance, “you’re a Slytherin and a Malfoy, so everything you say usually has three or four meanings, but I don’t think that one did. I think you said what you meant.”
Draco stared, realizing abruptly that he’d made a severe error. He’d mistaken honesty for simple-mindedness. But she wasn’t stupid. She was honest, and because he was a Slytherin and a Malfoy, he’d read that as stupidity. A massive, glaring blind spot in his world view.
Luna gave him a little smile. “It’s hard not to know things,” she said. “I don’t like it either.”
“I’ve brought you something,” Draco said, having reached his limit of stark truths for the day and wanting to change the subject. “But first, how often is anyone else down here, and how closely do they look at you?”
Luna licked a bit of sauce from her thumb and gave him a curious look. “They bring food every day, but they mostly just throw it at us and leave. They’re not exactly inspecting us, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Draco spared a glance for Ollivander, curled up asleep in the corner of the cell as usual. Until Luna had mentioned “us,” he’d forgotten the old man was even there.
“He wakes up for his daily meal,” Luna offered, seeing where Draco’s eyes had drifted. “But apart from that, he sleeps all day. I think he might be in some kind of magical coma.”
Draco turned his attention back to Luna and drew a pair of gloves out of his pocket. “If no one looks at you closely, then these are probably safe,” he said. They were calfskin gloves, lined with vicuna fleece, butter-soft and sleek. He’d told the shopkeeper they were a Yule gift for his girlfriend. It was probably ironic, considering that he’d never bought Pansy anything half this nice when they were dating.
Luna took the gloves from him, gazing at them in wonder. She pulled them on, and Draco was gratified to see that they fit perfectly. “They’re so soft and warm,” she said, flexing her fingers inside them. Her hands were small. Elegant. The expensive material suited them.
“Make sure no one sees them,” he said. “I have to go.” He made to stand, but Luna caught his hand in hers.
“You’re really brave, Draco,” she said. From anyone else, it would have been a mockery or a manipulation. But she radiated sincerity, and somehow that was even harder to take.
“I’m really not,” he said, yanking his hand away and turning his back on her to leave.
At dinner the following week, Aunt Bellatrix pointed out that Draco had barely eaten anything on his plate. It was true; on Luna nights, he saved most of his dinner to take to her.
“What’s wrong, Draco?” Bellatrix cooed in her sing-song voice. “Appetite off?”
Draco’s appetite actually was off, ta, because he’d always had a bit of a nervous stomach, and living at the Manor right now had made it ten times worse. Which Bellatrix bloody well knew, so this was just a bit of nastiness on her part. She was drawing attention to Draco’s nerves in the hopes he’d suffer repercussions for it, which in turn would upset Narcissa, her true target.
Draco did a quick Occlumency exercise to clear his mind, carefully thinking of nothing at all. He forked up a bit of roast and then glanced up as though surprised to have heard his name. “Hm?” he asked, shoving his food into his mouth. “Oh, hello, Aunt Bellatrix. I didn’t see you there.”
His mother, sitting directly across the table, quirked her mouth up infinitesimally to indicate approval. “Bellatrix, darling,” she said, “did you suffer terribly in the weather on the way here today?” Bellatrix’s hair did look a bit more like a drowned rat than usual, and she glared at Narcissa. It was bog-standard sniping between the two sisters, but it did the job of taking the spotlight away from Draco.
With Narcissa and Bellatrix engaged in a cold war of subtle digs at each other, Draco was easily able to cast a quick Shrinking Charm on his plate and make his escape. He left the dinner table as quickly as he could manage and retired to his room, where he warded the door and then spent half an hour or so lying on his bed hyperventilating while his heart beat out a fast, sickly rhythm.
When he arrived in the dungeon a little later on, he sat on the floor across from Luna and watched as she delicately, carefully removed her gloves to eat. When she was done, she licked her fingers clean and wiped them on her jeans before putting the gloves back on. She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them tightly to keep herself as warm as possible.
“I’d bring warmer clothes if I could,” Draco said, because apparently now he just blurted out whatever came into his head.
Luna startled a little at the sound of his voice. “It’s all right,” she said. “Your gloves help quite a bit, actually.” She gave him a conspiratorial little smile.
A wave of longing suffused Draco down to the bone. He had a sudden vision of wrapping Luna in his arms and carrying her away from here, taking her someplace warm and safe, getting her free from this hell.
Idiot, he thought at himself furiously. He wasn’t going to—couldn't—do any of that. He was going to bring her little bits of food, barely enough to keep body and soul together. Nothing more.
“I’m not brave,” he said.
Luna picked up the thread from their exchange three days prior. “You are, a little,” she said. “You’re here, and you don’t have to be.”
“I’m afraid,” he said harshly.
She shrugged, as though to say so what?
She didn’t understand. She didn’t get it. Draco was nothing more than a coward, caught in a raging current and not even trying to swim free. If he were brave, he’d have been able to say no to his father at the start of all this. He’d at least have been able to say no to the Dark Mark, or to the grotesqueries he’d been made to commit the previous year at Hogwarts. Even failing to kill Dumbledore hadn’t been an act of bravery in the end. It was just cowardice doubled back on itself. He’d been too afraid to act and too afraid to not act, and finally Snape had had to do his job for him.
“I won’t say it if it bothers you,” Luna said. Draco’s head snapped up. Her eyes were keen and observant, making him feel unpleasantly like being pinned under a searchlight.
“Why do you care what bothers me?” he asked. He ran his hands through his hair, seized with the sudden urge to grab it and tear it out. He was her captor, for Merlin’s sake.
She frowned and wrinkled her brow like she was actually considering the answer to that question.
“Don’t answer that,” Draco said, suddenly exhausted. The incident with Bellatrix at dinner felt as though it had happened days ago. “I brought this all on myself, you know.”
Maybe honesty was like a virus, and once you’d caught it you couldn’t help but spew out horrible truths every time you opened your mouth. Although in Draco’s case, it only seemed to apply to when he was around Luna.
Luna lifted an eyebrow. “Yes,” she said. “I know you did.”
This, weirdly, made Draco feel a little better. He’d expected her to give him some platitude about how none of this was really his fault, which might have made him actually vomit. He had no stomach for being told he was one of the good guys. He knew perfectly bloody well who he was and what he’d done.
“But that doesn’t make all of this any easier to deal with, does it?” she went on. She cocked her head and creased her brows in thought, “It might even make it worse, thinking that you could have chosen a different path but didn’t.”
Draco made a harsh noise in the back of his throat. He thought about that all the fucking time. It gnawed at him. If he’d just been braver—if he’d just—he pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead. Luna’s bright blue eyes had seen straight through to his battered, terrorized soul.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “It might.”
The damp mist of the dungeons swirled around Luna, embracing her with fine tendrils. “Can you stay?” she asked after a while. “Just for a bit. It’s less lonely when you’re here.” She gave him a hopeful smile.
From anyone else, it would have been a loaded question, an attempt to manipulate. Draco rubbed his eyes. It was late, and he’d already probably been here for too long. But nobody was likely to be looking for him at this hour. And…Luna wanted him to stay. No one else, with the possible exception of Draco’s mother, ever wanted him anywhere.
Draco nodded wordlessly and shuffled over next to Luna so that they were side by side against the stone wall. He opened his cloak, extending an arm. “Come here, then,” he said. He draped the cloak around both of them, letting her huddle into his warmth. She sighed contentedly and rested her head on his shoulder, her body a long line pressed against his side. Draco’s chest constricted painfully. Her hair was a matted, tangled mess, and her face was streaked with dirt, and she was so sweet and beautiful he could hardly bear it.
Merlin, I’m fucked, he thought.
He pulled her tightly against him, giving as much of his warmth as he could. He wasn’t brave, and he couldn’t get her out of here. But he could give her this, at least for a while.
Draco was in his room when the shouting started the next day. Hearing shouts and fighting wasn’t all that unusual at the Manor these days, so he reflexively cast a Quietening Charm in the direction of his door and went back to reading his book. He’d been trying to distract himself with Hitwizard novels, to limited success.
A minute later, he heard Bellatrix shrieking his name, and his stomach seized. Adrenaline surged through him, sending his heart racing and making his hands tremble. He put the book down and took a long, slow breath to steady himself. He’d learned from experience that if he could just breathe through the initial punch of terror, he could regain equilibrium relatively quickly.
He held his hands out in front of him, waiting until they were no longer shaking, and he unwarded his door. Whatever was going on downstairs, he could handle it.
Draco stared down at the so-called Savior of the Wizarding World, cowering on the drawing room floor with his face swollen and disfigured with welts. This has got to be a joke, he thought.
“Is it Potter?” Bellatrix hissed at him.
Draco was intensely glad for his months of practice in suppressing his emotions, because it took everything he had not to scream back, are you fucking serious? Obviously it’s Potter; I’d recognize him from a mile away. Look at his fucking eyes.
Draco hated Potter so much in that moment. He’d stupidly got himself captured in some forest, and his best plan for escape was to cast a temporary Stinging Jinx on his extremely recognizable face.
Bellatrix vibrated with glee, shifting excitedly from side to side like a small child needing to use the toilet, waiting for Draco to say the word. It was the moment they’d all been waiting for, wasn’t it? Potter in their grasp, and victory at hand.
Victory, specifically, in Draco’s hands.
He could turn Potter over. With a word, he could end this entire thing.
In any situation, examine your paths and pick the one most personally advantageous to you, he could hear Snape saying, part of his annual Slytherin Head of House speech.
Draco could see two paths here. In the first, he turned Potter over to Voldemort. Potter would be killed, his friends would be tortured and probably also killed, and Draco and his family would rise in the Dark Lord’s estimation. They might manage to escape to France, and even if they didn’t, they could at least regain control of the Manor. Highly advantageous to Draco.
Or Draco could lie. Potter would be thrown into the dungeons to wait until the Stinging Jinx wore off. He and his little band of idiots were highly likely to escape, especially if they had outside help, which they would, because they always did. (Draco thought “the Chosen One” was a moronic title, but anyone with more than two brain cells could see that Potter miraculously escaped from everything. There was no point even being upset about it; it was just a fact of the universe.) Luna was in the dungeons, so they would take Luna with them. Draco and his family would be severely punished, along with everyone else in the Manor who had allowed it to happen. Not advantageous to Draco.
Any Slytherin would consider it a simple choice. Draco watched Potter’s pustulent, stupid, open-mouthed face. He thought of Luna, shivering and starving in the basement. Luna, who thought he was brave.
Fuck it, he thought. For once he was going to do something not for material gain and not for prestige and not for politics and not for the Dark fucking Lord, but because he, Draco, bloody well goddamned wanted it.
“Draco,” Bellatrix hissed. “Is it Potter or is it not?”
Draco turned away from Potter to face his aunt, giving her a cool gaze. “Can’t be sure,” he said. “Sorry.”
It wasn’t bravery. He wasn’t brave.
But here, now, for this singular moment, he was free.