Storytelling, Luna Lovegood and Hermione Granger, PG-13
Title: Storytelling
Author:das_kabinett/Becca
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Adult themes and menstruation, if that squicks anyone.
Fandom:Harry Potter
Prompt:Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.--Katherine Mansfield.
Summary:“Did,” she crooned, and pressed the heels of her hands into her ears, her elbows sticking up, frail and fragile like the wings of a downless little bird, “I told them everything. I didn't listen to their questions, I answered my questions, but I told them everything.”
Notes: This was strange for me to write, but good. Thank you Sar and Jocey for the beta and thank you gehayi for the chance to do this.
When they took Hermione for questioning, Luna was asleep. In the intervening time that Hermione didn't like to think about, didn't record in her notebooks except for little shorthand notations about what she possibly could have revealed, what she thought they were looking for, Luna must have awoken. Hermione knew this because Luna was awake and speaking by the time the guards took Hermione back, accompanying their disappearing footsteps with a personal rhythm of words.
"I'm sure you've heard the story of the witch that liked getting burned, because it tickled. I can't remember the charm, but it prevented her from really feeling the flames. My father told me about her once, said she'd go from village to village and do her witchcraft. They normally blamed magic on innocent women, but she was always guilty and she was never guilty of the usual things, the things that deserve guilt. Oh right-I'm sure you know this, but they always blamed the bad things on magic. Makes sense, I guess, but I've always thought bad magic to be rather unpleasant.
"Anyway, this woman would go from place to place and work good magic, kind magic, magic that healed people and saved crops instead of turning foals into monsters with two heads. Have you ever seen a two headed animal? My dad once had a cat like that, a little tabby creature, and they were eerie. They died, but they had the cutest little mewling noses and oh, they were divine. I named them Flopsy and Cottontail, rabbit names, but the creature was a kitten. But this lady didn't do things like that, though I don't think magic does that sort of thing anyway, --can you just imagine how grand she must have been? With a tattered cloak, smelling of soot and burning, going from place to place and flaunting magic-"
"Luna," Hermione said, interrupting. Luna blinked, tilting her head to the side and looking like a magpie contemplating various shiny things. It wasn't an unusual look; Luna always looked a bit remote and Hermione thought she'd either catch Luna's madness or be driven to it, between the Death Eater's curses and all those words.
"Luna, I'm very tired and I would like to have a bit of sleep now," she said, trying to be patient, trying to understand that Luna was trying to cope or something. Hermione didn't have a book for this, not here.
"Do you think you could be quiet for a little? You could use some of the paper that I gave you and that charcoal pencil I made. Write everything down," Hermione said, with what she hoped was gentle encouragement.
Luna just smiled and shook her head, leaning against the wall. A few strands of thin, light hair caught in between a old thumbtack that was still stuck into the wall. It was the first Hermione noticed it and her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't say anything, just yet, couldn't point it out. She didn't want it taken away before she even thought of a use for it.
Typically, Luna interrupted her thoughts with more words. "I've got nothing to write down," she said, blithely.
Hermione muttered, "Well, you've got plenty to say."
Luna continued as if she hadn't heard her -and she probably hadn't-saying, "I wish I could turn off the lights for you. They are very harsh and bright."
"You know," Hermione chuckled, trying for rueful and succeeding at bitter, "Industrial lighting. Not even the Ministry of Magic can avoid it."
Luna's eyes were still wide and watching, as Hermione fell asleep.
***
“There's a monster that hides under the beds of children--”
“--oh please, Luna, don't be absurd.”
Luna sent Hermione a level look, and Hermione rolled her eyes, settling back against the wall. She fussed with the corner of the desk, her fingernail digging into the wood and peeling off the paint.
“There's a monster that hides under the beds of children and it isn't absurd. Don't you remember when you were little? You knew it was there then, but nooooo, everyone forgets, everyone gets sensible, everyone doesn't realize that it just doesn't make any sense for a bunch of little children to independently come up with the same, frightened notion” Luna said, without bitterness.
“Society reinforces it, I imagine. Get told enough times that you should be frightened of something and you are,” Hermione offered.
“I suppose,” Luna was neutral and disengaged, like usual, ”but that seems complex. I think there is a monster. Dad called 'em the Anti-Morpheus. The bad sandman, the one that gets sand in your bed and scratches your skin and hurts your eyes and leaves you raw and scraped when you wake up in the morning. And he whispers suggestions and fears from under your bed, his words to soft to hear really, but loud enough that you can hear them threw all the mattresses and springs and spells and feathers and whatever else people sleep on.”
Hermione yawned, not meaning to be rude but incapable of resisting the lethargy seemed to be smothering them both. Even Luna's voice was slipping softer and lower, until she was speaking rhythms instead of sentences. It had taken them about a week before they could sleep in the harsh light of the office, but now it was almost soothing.
“And if you sleep on nothing at all?” Hermione asked, wincing and bringing her finger to her lips. She had gotten a sliver of wood underneath her nail and it hurt.
“Than you've got more problems,” Luna said, not seeming to mind or even notice Hermione's yawn.
“That's not that scary,” said Hermione, straightening “Magic never is.”
“Well, then, Miss Expert, tell me a scary story,” Luna said. She sounded irritated, but still slow, as if she was getting pissy through a hundred thousand gallons of molasses.
“The scariest story I ever saw--”
“Saw?”
“Yes, saw. As in, watch a movie. I've told you about them, the long moving pictures?” Luna nodded and made a motion for Hermione to continue, “Anyway, yes. The scariest story I ever saw had no magic or weirdness in it at all, it was just a story about people. It was called Silence of the Lambs, not that it would mean anything to you, of course.”
“How are people scary?” Luna said.
Hermione laughed.
“Even Dark Magic needs people to use it. Beasts are largely benign, even the ones that will eat people. Maybe this is just me, but I'd prefer to get eaten than killed.”
“Well, that's a bit morbid,” Luna said, sounding as if she approved.
Hermione gestured at her as if she was tossing something, “When we are locked up by Death Eaters, I am officially allowed to be morbid.”
Luna grinned, though it wasn't at all funny, “I'll hold you to it.”
***
One day (it could have been morning, it could have been evening, it could have been the end of the world, but the lighting was always the same) Hermione woke up and found that Luna had burned her notebook.
It was lying in the center of the room, like an offering, blacked and crumbling into pieces.
"You bitch!" Hermione screeched, trying not to cry, trying not to care about how she had found anything with which to start a fire, "You fucking bitch! What did you do that for?"
Hermione didn't feel the pain of scabs breaking on her knees as she threw herself to the floor, running through the procedure for handling delicate documents that Madame Pinch taught her when she wanted to do some personal research. She forgot a step and she forgot that it didn't matter, because her notebook was far too gone. Luna was silent, barely even moving on her cot. Hermione wanted to force her to speak, wanted to shake all her words right out of her and spill them on the floor, like the blood the book so dearly deserved.
She crawled over to Luna, leaving the volume on the floor and grabbed her shoulders, hard enough to hurt.
"Are you insane?" she snarled.
"I figured out why they stopped questioning me and kept questioning you, even though neither of us told them anything," Luna said, quietly. Her eyes shifted around Hermione's face, but Luna was looking at her.
"What nonsense are you saying now?" Hermione said, but her scorn was less certain.
"Neither of us told them anything, Hermione, but you wrote down what you didn't tell them and what you thought they wanted. Hermione, they had some way to get into that book," she said and touched her shoulder tentatively, as if the worn fabric of Hermione's blouse would singe her skin. Hermione backed away, quick enough to stumble over her own limbs and collide with the opposite wall with a painful bump.
"You are absolutely mad," Hermione said, "Mad and silly and foolish. They didn't question you because you didn't know anything!"
"Hermione-" Luna began, but she didn't want explanations.
"Don't talk to me, you don't even know all that you've ruined!"
"Could you tell me, then?" Luna said, curling her knees up to her chest and hugging them.
Hermione shuddered in the effort of holding in a sob and she's still furious, but not really at Luna. Luna can't help it, and even if she could, she was right. They probably had a charm on the book, as she hadn't renewed the protections since she had her wand, which was over two weeks ago.
"Couldn't you have just told me?" Hermione said. It was more accusing than she intended, although most of her was clamoring and crying that there was plenty with which to accuse.
"Loopy Loony Luna Lovegood," she said, in an insane sort of answer. She pulled her legs tighter into her chest and rested her chin on her knees, her hair spilling forward into her face.
Hermione rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand hard, trying to wrestle back composure. She was older, more mature, more sane. She was used to being in this position, so it shouldn't bother her. She liked being mature.
"We could have talked about it, Luna," Hermione said.
"Well, I'm trying too," Luna neatly replied and Hermione blinked, "What did I destroy?"
Hermione flinched and her gaze dropped from Luna to the burned book. It was sitting precisely in the center of the room and she thought it was faintly obscene.
"Research, for one," Hermione said.
"You keep extra research notes, I've seen you. Besides, research is just records and magic can't be written down. That's why it's magic. When you write magic down, no one will ever believe it," Luna said, simply and as if her words made any sense at all.
"Letters from Ron. The letter where he told me he loved me," she snapped, irritated.
"What do you need letters for when you can talk to him, soon? And he was a bit a loon for telling you that in a letter, when he could show you in person."
"How do you know he isn't dead?" Hermione said and clutched the dingy blanket of her cot, almost pulling it down on top of her.
"Because if he were dead, Harry would have gone and done something insanely heroic and insanely stupid, getting himself killed in the process. And, Harry can't be dead, because they are still asking you about his whereabouts."
Hermione choked, "So, you think they'd both be dead if one was dead?"
Luna appeared to think about it for a long moment, her forehead wrinkling and her face shifting into a focused expression, as if it was a new and difficult question instead of just rephrasing her randomness until it made sense.
"Yes, basically," she finally said, face clearing.
Hermione laughed, the sound catching her throat and shifting almost into a sob, "Well, I can't say that's exactly reassuring."
Luna waved one hand, "Well, you know. Boys."
***
They took Luna, for the first time in ages, after they had finished brewing the Veritaserum. They took her and left Hermione because Hermione had been taught by Mad-Eyed Moody how to resist it, had been given tactics and lessons and would bite her cheek bloody to speak for talking. She'd leave her tongue, mangled and bleeding and dripping on the floor before she's say a single word. Hermione knew this with what she prayed was certainty, but she didn't wish they had taken her.
Well, at first she didn't. At first she was sickly-glad it wasn't her, delighted to sit on the hard carpet floor, manky with dirt and sweat and the refuse they couldn't avoid. There was a doodle on the painted wall, near a place where Hermione had stained with red leaning against it once, it said, “god, I hate my job.” Hermione laughed for a moment, laughed for a year, laughed until she thought she could hear a higher voice laugh with her, but she realized she wasn't hearing anything at all.
At that point, she was no longer thankful to be the one left behind.
She made the cots that they had been given, the sticky-icky plastic of the mattress and the thin blanket. It wasn't so bad, she thought, as long as they tidied up. She stacked up the metal dishes (transfigured, she guessed, from office supplies) and pushed the flowerpot they used to contain their waste (shit and piss, to be less polite) further underneath the immutable desk. She ripped off a piece of her sun-dress. revealing a bit more of her scabby, hideous knees, and wiped off the top of the desk, the dishes, the dirty bits of the wall.
Just before she had cleaned herself to peace, Luna was tossed back into their mid-level management office.
Hermione crouched on the floor, her hand fluttering out to touch the greasy piece of hair that had fallen into Luna's eyes. Luna smiled.
“Did you tell them anything?” Hermione said, trying to make her voice desperate or serious or anything but relieved.
“I told them everything,” Luna said, “Absolutely everything. They couldn't get me to stop talking.”
“Luna, no, you didn't--”
“Did,” she crooned, and pressed the heels of her hands into her ears, her elbows sticking up, frail and fragile like the wings of a downless little bird, “I told them everything. I didn't listen to their questions, I answered my questions, but I told them everything.”
Hermione fell back, trying to figure out what nonsense Luna was speaking. Hermione found her hand on Luna's knee, her thumb feeling the rush of blood underneath Luna's skin and the roughness of Luna's short dusting of hair; she couldn't hear the words for all the noise Luna's body was making.
“I told them about that movie you told me about, about the frozen man and the woman with the metal tits. They got very frustrated with me, so I told them about the secret rebel planet and I told them about our plan to blow up their fort. That part they were very excited about,” Luna told Hermione, pulling her hands away from her ears and flicking Hermione's temple, “I don't think they knew I meant the Dog Star.”
“Death Star,” Hermione corrected, “We'll see that movie when we get out of here.”
Luna smiled.
***
When they started on their periods, they knocked on the door and shouted and couldn't get any one of the guards to give them anything to clean up with. The cell smelt like a slaughterhouse, even though there hadn't been really enough blood to make things truly miserable. They were undernourished, so their flows were negligible, but still enough to stain the dirtproof carpet red in pieces and leave Luna sniffling with the cramps.
“Men,” Hermione said, running a soothing hand down Luna's back, “can't bear to think about girls bleeding from betwixt their legs.”
Luna pressed her palms in the space where her leg met her hip, presumably hoping to relieve the pressure. Hermione, her fingers stained with foul smelling blood and near hysterical with the filth of it, decided enough was enough.
“We can survive with only one blanket, can't we?” she said, standing. Luna looked up after her, confused.
“I suppose,” Luna said, “But we have two blankets.”
“Not for long,” Hermione said, smiling weakly and making her way to Luna's cot. Grabbing the blanket, she ripped of a piece, grimacing at its roughness. It wouldn't be very comfortable, but it might make them feel a bit less disgusting. Hermione rolled the fabric up into a ball and pulled her knickers down a little from underneath her dress, stuffing the makeshift sanitary napkin in them. It wouldn't help much; her things were already black with blood and caked and smelling foul.
Hermione handed another bit of fabric to Luna and watched her do the same, watched her rub her fingers futilely on the knotted carpet.
“God, this is miserable,” Hermione said and Luna grimaced in response. Hermione sat back down on the floor, curling herself around Luna.
There was a long moment of silence and Hermione was overwhelmed with the easy comfort. It shouldn't have been so easy to fall together, not in this sort of situation.
“Luna?” she said finally, when the silence got too much, “Could you tell me a story?”
Luna's smile was sudden and bright, incongruous with the way she still shifted and pressed to avoid the pain of her body.
“Sure, Hermione.”
***
Hermione was shivering, shivering so hard she felt like she would never stop, like she would simply vibrate into her component atoms, drifting away from this place, through the bars and out the theoretical ventilation chutes into the sun again. Luna touched her shoulder and she shied away from it, incorporating her sudden need to get as far away as possible into the movement, into the involuntary muscle contractions that she's read about and now was experiencing, because of extreme cold, trauma or pain.
"Why can't you help me?" she said, though her teeth were chattering and the quickest way to bleed to death was to bite off one's own tongue.
“Hermione, I'm trying the best I can,” she said, “I think you have some sort of fever.”
“Fever? But I'm cold, I'm very cold,” Hermione said, running her hands helplessly up and down her arms, feeling her own skin rise up into goosebumps. It wasn't helping. She was still cold and sweating and feeling like she was simply going to die.
Luna grabbed her shoulder again, this time preventing her from shying away, all but pulling Hermione into her arms. Luna's hands were warmer against Hermione's skin and Hermione gratefully leeched heat from her, burrowing her cold nose into Luna's neck. Luna wiggled a bit, as if it tickled or startled her, but prevented Hermione from pulling away with firm hands. Luna got strong all of a sudden, or Hermione got weak. So weak that Luna's gentle touch felt impossible to escape from.
One hand stopped tracing patterns on Hermione's back and they leaned to reach the one remaining blanket on the cot. Luna wrapped it around Hermione's shoulders, another layer of protection against the cold of the room. It shouldn't be that cold. It hadn't been that cold yesterday or the day before, and the spells that kept the temperature stable shouldn't have degenerated so quickly.
“Luna?” she said, “Luna, is the magic failing?”
Hermione felt Luna's fingers like metal buttons against the back of her neck, warmed from the ever present Hogwarts fires. Luna smelled foul and Hermione told her so, only to receive hushing in reply.
“I hate being hushed,” Hermione said, sounding cross and feeling crosser.
Luna's lips smiled against her forehead. Hermione could feel them distinctly: warm and wet and good.
“I know.”
***
A few days later, the lights went out.
Hermione couldn't decide if they were dead, or in the process of being rescued. She pulled Luna closer to her, hearing the girl sleepily murmur her protestations at the disturbance, and realized that the darkness didn't matter.
Author:das_kabinett/Becca
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Adult themes and menstruation, if that squicks anyone.
Fandom:Harry Potter
Prompt:Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.--Katherine Mansfield.
Summary:“Did,” she crooned, and pressed the heels of her hands into her ears, her elbows sticking up, frail and fragile like the wings of a downless little bird, “I told them everything. I didn't listen to their questions, I answered my questions, but I told them everything.”
Notes: This was strange for me to write, but good. Thank you Sar and Jocey for the beta and thank you gehayi for the chance to do this.
When they took Hermione for questioning, Luna was asleep. In the intervening time that Hermione didn't like to think about, didn't record in her notebooks except for little shorthand notations about what she possibly could have revealed, what she thought they were looking for, Luna must have awoken. Hermione knew this because Luna was awake and speaking by the time the guards took Hermione back, accompanying their disappearing footsteps with a personal rhythm of words.
"I'm sure you've heard the story of the witch that liked getting burned, because it tickled. I can't remember the charm, but it prevented her from really feeling the flames. My father told me about her once, said she'd go from village to village and do her witchcraft. They normally blamed magic on innocent women, but she was always guilty and she was never guilty of the usual things, the things that deserve guilt. Oh right-I'm sure you know this, but they always blamed the bad things on magic. Makes sense, I guess, but I've always thought bad magic to be rather unpleasant.
"Anyway, this woman would go from place to place and work good magic, kind magic, magic that healed people and saved crops instead of turning foals into monsters with two heads. Have you ever seen a two headed animal? My dad once had a cat like that, a little tabby creature, and they were eerie. They died, but they had the cutest little mewling noses and oh, they were divine. I named them Flopsy and Cottontail, rabbit names, but the creature was a kitten. But this lady didn't do things like that, though I don't think magic does that sort of thing anyway, --can you just imagine how grand she must have been? With a tattered cloak, smelling of soot and burning, going from place to place and flaunting magic-"
"Luna," Hermione said, interrupting. Luna blinked, tilting her head to the side and looking like a magpie contemplating various shiny things. It wasn't an unusual look; Luna always looked a bit remote and Hermione thought she'd either catch Luna's madness or be driven to it, between the Death Eater's curses and all those words.
"Luna, I'm very tired and I would like to have a bit of sleep now," she said, trying to be patient, trying to understand that Luna was trying to cope or something. Hermione didn't have a book for this, not here.
"Do you think you could be quiet for a little? You could use some of the paper that I gave you and that charcoal pencil I made. Write everything down," Hermione said, with what she hoped was gentle encouragement.
Luna just smiled and shook her head, leaning against the wall. A few strands of thin, light hair caught in between a old thumbtack that was still stuck into the wall. It was the first Hermione noticed it and her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't say anything, just yet, couldn't point it out. She didn't want it taken away before she even thought of a use for it.
Typically, Luna interrupted her thoughts with more words. "I've got nothing to write down," she said, blithely.
Hermione muttered, "Well, you've got plenty to say."
Luna continued as if she hadn't heard her -and she probably hadn't-saying, "I wish I could turn off the lights for you. They are very harsh and bright."
"You know," Hermione chuckled, trying for rueful and succeeding at bitter, "Industrial lighting. Not even the Ministry of Magic can avoid it."
Luna's eyes were still wide and watching, as Hermione fell asleep.
***
“There's a monster that hides under the beds of children--”
“--oh please, Luna, don't be absurd.”
Luna sent Hermione a level look, and Hermione rolled her eyes, settling back against the wall. She fussed with the corner of the desk, her fingernail digging into the wood and peeling off the paint.
“There's a monster that hides under the beds of children and it isn't absurd. Don't you remember when you were little? You knew it was there then, but nooooo, everyone forgets, everyone gets sensible, everyone doesn't realize that it just doesn't make any sense for a bunch of little children to independently come up with the same, frightened notion” Luna said, without bitterness.
“Society reinforces it, I imagine. Get told enough times that you should be frightened of something and you are,” Hermione offered.
“I suppose,” Luna was neutral and disengaged, like usual, ”but that seems complex. I think there is a monster. Dad called 'em the Anti-Morpheus. The bad sandman, the one that gets sand in your bed and scratches your skin and hurts your eyes and leaves you raw and scraped when you wake up in the morning. And he whispers suggestions and fears from under your bed, his words to soft to hear really, but loud enough that you can hear them threw all the mattresses and springs and spells and feathers and whatever else people sleep on.”
Hermione yawned, not meaning to be rude but incapable of resisting the lethargy seemed to be smothering them both. Even Luna's voice was slipping softer and lower, until she was speaking rhythms instead of sentences. It had taken them about a week before they could sleep in the harsh light of the office, but now it was almost soothing.
“And if you sleep on nothing at all?” Hermione asked, wincing and bringing her finger to her lips. She had gotten a sliver of wood underneath her nail and it hurt.
“Than you've got more problems,” Luna said, not seeming to mind or even notice Hermione's yawn.
“That's not that scary,” said Hermione, straightening “Magic never is.”
“Well, then, Miss Expert, tell me a scary story,” Luna said. She sounded irritated, but still slow, as if she was getting pissy through a hundred thousand gallons of molasses.
“The scariest story I ever saw--”
“Saw?”
“Yes, saw. As in, watch a movie. I've told you about them, the long moving pictures?” Luna nodded and made a motion for Hermione to continue, “Anyway, yes. The scariest story I ever saw had no magic or weirdness in it at all, it was just a story about people. It was called Silence of the Lambs, not that it would mean anything to you, of course.”
“How are people scary?” Luna said.
Hermione laughed.
“Even Dark Magic needs people to use it. Beasts are largely benign, even the ones that will eat people. Maybe this is just me, but I'd prefer to get eaten than killed.”
“Well, that's a bit morbid,” Luna said, sounding as if she approved.
Hermione gestured at her as if she was tossing something, “When we are locked up by Death Eaters, I am officially allowed to be morbid.”
Luna grinned, though it wasn't at all funny, “I'll hold you to it.”
***
One day (it could have been morning, it could have been evening, it could have been the end of the world, but the lighting was always the same) Hermione woke up and found that Luna had burned her notebook.
It was lying in the center of the room, like an offering, blacked and crumbling into pieces.
"You bitch!" Hermione screeched, trying not to cry, trying not to care about how she had found anything with which to start a fire, "You fucking bitch! What did you do that for?"
Hermione didn't feel the pain of scabs breaking on her knees as she threw herself to the floor, running through the procedure for handling delicate documents that Madame Pinch taught her when she wanted to do some personal research. She forgot a step and she forgot that it didn't matter, because her notebook was far too gone. Luna was silent, barely even moving on her cot. Hermione wanted to force her to speak, wanted to shake all her words right out of her and spill them on the floor, like the blood the book so dearly deserved.
She crawled over to Luna, leaving the volume on the floor and grabbed her shoulders, hard enough to hurt.
"Are you insane?" she snarled.
"I figured out why they stopped questioning me and kept questioning you, even though neither of us told them anything," Luna said, quietly. Her eyes shifted around Hermione's face, but Luna was looking at her.
"What nonsense are you saying now?" Hermione said, but her scorn was less certain.
"Neither of us told them anything, Hermione, but you wrote down what you didn't tell them and what you thought they wanted. Hermione, they had some way to get into that book," she said and touched her shoulder tentatively, as if the worn fabric of Hermione's blouse would singe her skin. Hermione backed away, quick enough to stumble over her own limbs and collide with the opposite wall with a painful bump.
"You are absolutely mad," Hermione said, "Mad and silly and foolish. They didn't question you because you didn't know anything!"
"Hermione-" Luna began, but she didn't want explanations.
"Don't talk to me, you don't even know all that you've ruined!"
"Could you tell me, then?" Luna said, curling her knees up to her chest and hugging them.
Hermione shuddered in the effort of holding in a sob and she's still furious, but not really at Luna. Luna can't help it, and even if she could, she was right. They probably had a charm on the book, as she hadn't renewed the protections since she had her wand, which was over two weeks ago.
"Couldn't you have just told me?" Hermione said. It was more accusing than she intended, although most of her was clamoring and crying that there was plenty with which to accuse.
"Loopy Loony Luna Lovegood," she said, in an insane sort of answer. She pulled her legs tighter into her chest and rested her chin on her knees, her hair spilling forward into her face.
Hermione rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand hard, trying to wrestle back composure. She was older, more mature, more sane. She was used to being in this position, so it shouldn't bother her. She liked being mature.
"We could have talked about it, Luna," Hermione said.
"Well, I'm trying too," Luna neatly replied and Hermione blinked, "What did I destroy?"
Hermione flinched and her gaze dropped from Luna to the burned book. It was sitting precisely in the center of the room and she thought it was faintly obscene.
"Research, for one," Hermione said.
"You keep extra research notes, I've seen you. Besides, research is just records and magic can't be written down. That's why it's magic. When you write magic down, no one will ever believe it," Luna said, simply and as if her words made any sense at all.
"Letters from Ron. The letter where he told me he loved me," she snapped, irritated.
"What do you need letters for when you can talk to him, soon? And he was a bit a loon for telling you that in a letter, when he could show you in person."
"How do you know he isn't dead?" Hermione said and clutched the dingy blanket of her cot, almost pulling it down on top of her.
"Because if he were dead, Harry would have gone and done something insanely heroic and insanely stupid, getting himself killed in the process. And, Harry can't be dead, because they are still asking you about his whereabouts."
Hermione choked, "So, you think they'd both be dead if one was dead?"
Luna appeared to think about it for a long moment, her forehead wrinkling and her face shifting into a focused expression, as if it was a new and difficult question instead of just rephrasing her randomness until it made sense.
"Yes, basically," she finally said, face clearing.
Hermione laughed, the sound catching her throat and shifting almost into a sob, "Well, I can't say that's exactly reassuring."
Luna waved one hand, "Well, you know. Boys."
***
They took Luna, for the first time in ages, after they had finished brewing the Veritaserum. They took her and left Hermione because Hermione had been taught by Mad-Eyed Moody how to resist it, had been given tactics and lessons and would bite her cheek bloody to speak for talking. She'd leave her tongue, mangled and bleeding and dripping on the floor before she's say a single word. Hermione knew this with what she prayed was certainty, but she didn't wish they had taken her.
Well, at first she didn't. At first she was sickly-glad it wasn't her, delighted to sit on the hard carpet floor, manky with dirt and sweat and the refuse they couldn't avoid. There was a doodle on the painted wall, near a place where Hermione had stained with red leaning against it once, it said, “god, I hate my job.” Hermione laughed for a moment, laughed for a year, laughed until she thought she could hear a higher voice laugh with her, but she realized she wasn't hearing anything at all.
At that point, she was no longer thankful to be the one left behind.
She made the cots that they had been given, the sticky-icky plastic of the mattress and the thin blanket. It wasn't so bad, she thought, as long as they tidied up. She stacked up the metal dishes (transfigured, she guessed, from office supplies) and pushed the flowerpot they used to contain their waste (shit and piss, to be less polite) further underneath the immutable desk. She ripped off a piece of her sun-dress. revealing a bit more of her scabby, hideous knees, and wiped off the top of the desk, the dishes, the dirty bits of the wall.
Just before she had cleaned herself to peace, Luna was tossed back into their mid-level management office.
Hermione crouched on the floor, her hand fluttering out to touch the greasy piece of hair that had fallen into Luna's eyes. Luna smiled.
“Did you tell them anything?” Hermione said, trying to make her voice desperate or serious or anything but relieved.
“I told them everything,” Luna said, “Absolutely everything. They couldn't get me to stop talking.”
“Luna, no, you didn't--”
“Did,” she crooned, and pressed the heels of her hands into her ears, her elbows sticking up, frail and fragile like the wings of a downless little bird, “I told them everything. I didn't listen to their questions, I answered my questions, but I told them everything.”
Hermione fell back, trying to figure out what nonsense Luna was speaking. Hermione found her hand on Luna's knee, her thumb feeling the rush of blood underneath Luna's skin and the roughness of Luna's short dusting of hair; she couldn't hear the words for all the noise Luna's body was making.
“I told them about that movie you told me about, about the frozen man and the woman with the metal tits. They got very frustrated with me, so I told them about the secret rebel planet and I told them about our plan to blow up their fort. That part they were very excited about,” Luna told Hermione, pulling her hands away from her ears and flicking Hermione's temple, “I don't think they knew I meant the Dog Star.”
“Death Star,” Hermione corrected, “We'll see that movie when we get out of here.”
Luna smiled.
***
When they started on their periods, they knocked on the door and shouted and couldn't get any one of the guards to give them anything to clean up with. The cell smelt like a slaughterhouse, even though there hadn't been really enough blood to make things truly miserable. They were undernourished, so their flows were negligible, but still enough to stain the dirtproof carpet red in pieces and leave Luna sniffling with the cramps.
“Men,” Hermione said, running a soothing hand down Luna's back, “can't bear to think about girls bleeding from betwixt their legs.”
Luna pressed her palms in the space where her leg met her hip, presumably hoping to relieve the pressure. Hermione, her fingers stained with foul smelling blood and near hysterical with the filth of it, decided enough was enough.
“We can survive with only one blanket, can't we?” she said, standing. Luna looked up after her, confused.
“I suppose,” Luna said, “But we have two blankets.”
“Not for long,” Hermione said, smiling weakly and making her way to Luna's cot. Grabbing the blanket, she ripped of a piece, grimacing at its roughness. It wouldn't be very comfortable, but it might make them feel a bit less disgusting. Hermione rolled the fabric up into a ball and pulled her knickers down a little from underneath her dress, stuffing the makeshift sanitary napkin in them. It wouldn't help much; her things were already black with blood and caked and smelling foul.
Hermione handed another bit of fabric to Luna and watched her do the same, watched her rub her fingers futilely on the knotted carpet.
“God, this is miserable,” Hermione said and Luna grimaced in response. Hermione sat back down on the floor, curling herself around Luna.
There was a long moment of silence and Hermione was overwhelmed with the easy comfort. It shouldn't have been so easy to fall together, not in this sort of situation.
“Luna?” she said finally, when the silence got too much, “Could you tell me a story?”
Luna's smile was sudden and bright, incongruous with the way she still shifted and pressed to avoid the pain of her body.
“Sure, Hermione.”
***
Hermione was shivering, shivering so hard she felt like she would never stop, like she would simply vibrate into her component atoms, drifting away from this place, through the bars and out the theoretical ventilation chutes into the sun again. Luna touched her shoulder and she shied away from it, incorporating her sudden need to get as far away as possible into the movement, into the involuntary muscle contractions that she's read about and now was experiencing, because of extreme cold, trauma or pain.
"Why can't you help me?" she said, though her teeth were chattering and the quickest way to bleed to death was to bite off one's own tongue.
“Hermione, I'm trying the best I can,” she said, “I think you have some sort of fever.”
“Fever? But I'm cold, I'm very cold,” Hermione said, running her hands helplessly up and down her arms, feeling her own skin rise up into goosebumps. It wasn't helping. She was still cold and sweating and feeling like she was simply going to die.
Luna grabbed her shoulder again, this time preventing her from shying away, all but pulling Hermione into her arms. Luna's hands were warmer against Hermione's skin and Hermione gratefully leeched heat from her, burrowing her cold nose into Luna's neck. Luna wiggled a bit, as if it tickled or startled her, but prevented Hermione from pulling away with firm hands. Luna got strong all of a sudden, or Hermione got weak. So weak that Luna's gentle touch felt impossible to escape from.
One hand stopped tracing patterns on Hermione's back and they leaned to reach the one remaining blanket on the cot. Luna wrapped it around Hermione's shoulders, another layer of protection against the cold of the room. It shouldn't be that cold. It hadn't been that cold yesterday or the day before, and the spells that kept the temperature stable shouldn't have degenerated so quickly.
“Luna?” she said, “Luna, is the magic failing?”
Hermione felt Luna's fingers like metal buttons against the back of her neck, warmed from the ever present Hogwarts fires. Luna smelled foul and Hermione told her so, only to receive hushing in reply.
“I hate being hushed,” Hermione said, sounding cross and feeling crosser.
Luna's lips smiled against her forehead. Hermione could feel them distinctly: warm and wet and good.
“I know.”
***
A few days later, the lights went out.
Hermione couldn't decide if they were dead, or in the process of being rescued. She pulled Luna closer to her, hearing the girl sleepily murmur her protestations at the disturbance, and realized that the darkness didn't matter.