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Draco drummed his fingers on his bedroom desk. He had been staring out of the window for a long time. He guessed it at half an hour – which was a long time to be looking at anything, never mind the general bore that was the Manor’s grounds. But Draco was not simply surveying the way that the ice clung to the grass, or how ghostly the bare trees looked as they blew in the wind.

He had been sitting at his desk, composing a letter to Pansy in the hopes that she would invite him to her house for Christmas, when he saw a group of people hurrying up the drive. Two of them carried something that looked suspiciously like a body. It was draped in what appeared to be a black cloak, with a pair of shiny black girls’ shoes visible at one end, and a wisp of dirty blonde hair at the other. The size of the body, combined with those school uniform type shoes made Draco sure that the girl was a student at Hogwarts. This explained, of course, why the Hogwarts Express had halted for a short time mid-journey the day before.

The sight of this mystery girl had held Draco in his place at the window. It wasn’t concern that he felt exactly, more a sort of morbid intrigue. After all, it was impossible to tell what state the girl had been in – dead, unconscious, stunned. And who could it possibly be? One of Potter’s cronies, no doubt. But not Granger, and not Weasley, that much was certain. It had to be someone fairly important, or they wouldn’t have been brought to the Manor. No one had mentioned that someone was being brought from Hogwarts. Then again, information wasn’t shared very often, especially with someone as unimportant as him: he wasn’t warned that the Muggle Studies teacher was going to be eaten in front of him until it happened after all. His stomach churned a little at the memory.

It was late afternoon, and darkness was falling over the grounds, causing Draco to glimpse his reflection in the window, much to his displeasure. He was thinner than ever, something that he knew even the annual Christmas binge would not fix. It made his face appear longer and more angular than ever. His grey eyes looked sunken and tired where they used to be piercing, and his skin an unhealthy sallow where it was once simply pale. War did not look good on him.

He did not have time to brood on his lack of good looks, however, as the figures that had brought the girl in were now retreating down the driveway. She did not appear to be with them. Draco took this as his cue, and made his way through the lavish house down to the drawing room.

Inside, he found his mother and his aunt, looking tense. The former was sitting in an armchair, whilst the latter paced the room. They did not look up when he entered.

‘Wait for Lucius, Bella, we weren’t told to do anything except keep her,’ his mother said in a hushed tone.

‘I don’t care what we were told. The girl has information. She speaks in riddles.’ Aunt Bella was thoroughly riled up by whomever they had downstairs, and she did not stop pacing as she spoke.

‘She’s just a girl. She’s bait – not important. We get to Potter through the father – that’s the plan.’

‘What’s the point of waiting around when we can get the information immediately? All it’ll take is one little Crucio.’ Her eyes lit up, and she clenched her right hand tightly around her wand. Draco knew that she had grown tired of her games with Ollivander, he was mostly unresponsive to the curse nowadays – just lay there like a dog.

His mother seemed to accept defeat at this juncture. ‘Do whatever you want, Bella. We both know you’re going to anyway – it doesn’t matter what I say. In fact, I don’t know why you discussed it with me in the first place, except perhaps to have someone you can point the finger of blame at if it all goes wrong. Do what you like. I am no longer interested.’

‘Well then, in that case, I shall,’ Bella said, her voice a little too sweet, and she disappeared through the door down to the cellar.

His mother watched her sister go, and then raised her eyes to look at Draco. Apparently she had noticed him come in after all, but had not cared to comment on the matter.

‘Dinner won’t be ready for an hour and a half, Draco,’ she said, and he was reminded of days long gone when he would accidentally interrupt her afternoon teas in the hope of a little attention.

‘I’m aware of the time, mother,’ he said, ‘I came to see what was going on. I believe we have acquired another house guest.’

She didn’t respond for a moment, but tilted her head, as if to gauge whether or not this was his true motive. It was a look she gave his father often, and it worried Draco that she had begun using it on him too.

‘Yes. A girl. She and her father have connections to Potter.’

Draco noted that it was strangely quiet still. There was no screaming to punctuate the current conversation. It was unusual occurrence when his aunt was alone with a prisoner, more than unusual in fact, it had never happened before. Even Ollivander still made some noise.

‘If you wanted a girl with connections to Potter, why didn’t you just grab the Weasley?’

She shrugged. ‘It has nothing to do with me, darling, I am merely the organiser of dinner parties, not of kidnappings.’

At this point, Bella reappeared, looking more harassed than ever.

‘Ah, Draco. Excellent,’ she said, and Draco got a sudden sense of foreboding. ‘You’re familiar with Potter’s lot. Go downstairs and decipher the code this girl is talking in.’

‘Code? How do you expect me to know about any codes that Potter and his friends have got going?’ Draco arched an eyebrow at her, sceptically. She didn’t seem to notice.

‘I don’t know or care how you decipher it,’ she said, and then after a short paused added: ‘I’m sure The Dark Lord would be most impressed if you managed to do so.’

To be perfectly frank, at this point in time Draco didn’t give a flying fuck what The Dark Lord thought of him, as long as it wasn’t strong enough to result in his murder. Nevertheless, to avoid any unnecessary confrontation, he headed downstairs.

It was too dark to see anything inside, but he could hear the breathing of another person. He pointed his wand in this general direction, and said, ‘Lumos.’

‘You’re Draco Malfoy,’ said a voice, before he had time to take in the person before him. ‘I wondered if I’d be seeing you at all.’

Of course. Luna Lovegood whose father ran that rag, The Quibbler. He had been supporting Potter, and could very well have information on the boy’s location. Draco was inclined to agree with his aunt, though, it was worth talking to this girl. She had become part of Potter’s group over the last couple of years and Draco couldn’t say he was surprised about it, being that they were a group of social outcasts and utter losers. Potter had even taken her as his date to Slughorn’s Christmas party at school the year before. Draco had never really spoken to her, save for a couple of times he’d attempted to taunt her: it didn’t seem to have the desired effect, and so he grew tired of her and gave up.

‘My aunt tells me you’re talking in codes and riddles, Lovegood,’ he said after a moment. Her saucer-like blue eyes stared up at him from her place where she sat on the floor. She didn’t look too out of sorts – her school uniform was dirty and dishevelled, and her hair was a looking a little frazzled, but it was clear she hadn’t been in the Manor for very long. Draco suspected that even now, he looked worse. After a long moment, she blinked. He took a step backwards in case this was the prelude to some sort of attack.

‘Codes and riddles?’ she asked, and Draco relaxed a little. ‘I don’t think so. I was telling her that this place is the perfect breeding ground for the Midnight Millipede, and I wondered if she knew how to correctly make sure that there wasn’t an infestation.’ She paused. ‘Of course, if you would like me to talk in codes and riddles, it wouldn’t be a problem.’

Draco sighed. ‘No, it’s fine,’ he said, ‘I’m having trouble enough as it is.’ She had just reminded him exactly why she had had no friends before her sudden inclusion into Potter’s group. These weird stories. Barely a day would go by at Hogwarts without Draco overhearing the phrase, ‘You’ll never guess what Loony said this time’. She was loony all right: Draco was surprised she and Bellatrix weren’t getting along like a house on fire.

‘Well I don’t know where Harry is, Malfoy,’ she said, beating him to the question, ‘and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.’

‘Indeed,’ said Draco: he had already taken that particular sentence as a given. ‘Are you sure there’s no information you want to give me? It’d make it easier on you.’

She moved very suddenly, and Draco stepped back out of her grasp. A moment later he realised that she was not reaching for him at all, but rather flicking a hand around, as if there was something irritating near her head.

‘Sorry, Wrackspurt,’ she said, by way of explanation when she had finished. ‘I don’t have any information. I have been at Hogwarts. We’re not allowed to share that kind of information.’

Draco raised his eyebrows. ‘That doesn’t stop you sneaking off to the Room of Requirement.’ She didn’t break eye contact with him, but stayed silent. ‘Just because we can’t get in, doesn’t mean we don’t know what’s going on.’

‘I don’t have any information,’ Luna repeated.

Draco shrugged and headed back towards the door. He had been there long enough to convince his relatives that he had tried.

‘Malfoy,’ she called, as he reached the exit. ‘When can I go home?’ He considered her question for a moment. His light wasn’t on her, and he was glad not to have to look her in the eye.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, honestly. ‘Maybe next week, maybe next month: maybe never.’ He left the room then, not wanting to listen to any so-called ‘codes and riddles’ that she may have had to apply to the situation.

*

Later that night, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about his encounter with Luna Lovegood. It troubled him to think that he lay on satin sheets, whilst that fragile little thing, a girl younger than him, was forced to sleep on the cold ground. Yet, he couldn’t say that he particularly cared about her well-being; he had never even given the girl a second thought until that day. The truth was, he was fascinated by her current predicament. How must it feel, he wondered, to lie in the dark for hours on end knowing that one’s death was the only probable outcome? How must Luna be able to cope knowing the futility of her own continued existence?

Over the next few days Draco found himself, when in idle moments, repeatedly putting himself in Luna’s position. He was now openly questioning the morality of his family – well, not so much his mother – with himself, something that had never occurred before. How could any of this be right when a young pureblood was kept prisoner? He would eat his dinner, and wonder just how good it would taste to Luna when all it was to him was bland. He would lie on his bed and imagine a cold stone floor. He would walk through the gardens and wonder what it would be like to be caged.

*

It was a week since she had arrived when he found himself face to face with her again. His father was out, his mother in the kitchens organising that night’s dinner, and Bellatrix had taken Ollivander off to some corner of the house, presumably for more ‘interrogations’. Draco sat in the drawing room for a while, attempting to read, but his eyes only found the same line over and over again. He eventually gave up, put the book aside, and headed down into the cellar.

Luna was looking far worse than she had done a week ago. And yet, her eyes were still just as wide. Perhaps the two of them shared a common inquisitiveness, Draco thought, however differently they used it.

‘Hello again,’ she said, her voice hoarse. Draco picked up a wooden goblet from the floor, and used his wand to fill it with water. She drank it down quickly. ‘Thank you.’

‘I have a question for you,’ he said, getting straight to the crux of things.

‘Yes?’ Luna replied. He had expected her to be less cooperative, having been asked the same questions for a week now.

‘The day you came here, you were tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange.’

‘She used the Cruciatus curse in an attempt to extract information from me, yes,’ Luna confirmed.

‘I was just upstairs, in the drawing room. I didn’t hear you at all. Why didn’t you scream?’ Draco asked, voicing something that had been bothering him immensely.

‘Oh, that,’ Luna said, as if this was the most simple question in the world. ‘I thought perhaps Mr. Ollivander was sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake him.’

Draco merely gaped at her. She was strange, no doubt about it, but she must have had more innate resilience than anyone he had ever met.

‘Are you returning to Hogwarts after Christmas?’ she asked, a moment later.

‘I believe so, yes,’ said Draco, with a small nod.

‘Oh, I will miss it ever so much. I think about it all the time.’

‘Me too,’ he said, and he meant it. It wasn’t that he was pining after the place because it was like a home, or because of happy memories. His thoughts were of Hogwarts in his early years there. No matter what was happening, it was so much simpler then. At least, it was for him. ‘Do you want some more water?’

‘Yes please,’ she said, and held out the goblet to him. He filled it and gave it back. She drank the water more slowly this time and then placed the goblet on the floor.

‘You told my father the house was full of Wrackspurts,’ Draco said, and he couldn’t help but smile a little.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is.’

‘He has spent the last three days attempting to get rid of them, despite not knowing what they are. He thinks you’ve set something on the place.’

Luna let out a little laugh at this, and Draco smiled again.

‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘Wrackspurts are found almost everywhere; everyone knows that.’

‘They do?’ Draco was extremely doubtful.

‘Well they should. Yes, you do come across them more or less wherever you go. Although there do seem to be rather a lot of them here.’

‘I don’t know what these things are, but I can’t say I’m surprised,’ he said, casting his eyes around the darkened room.

Silence fell between them. Draco thought about asking her more questions: things that had been plaguing him for the last week. He had a feeling that her answers would comfort him, put some of his fears to rest. But he couldn’t ask her. He couldn’t ask that of her – she was his prisoner, she was not supposed to help him. They weren’t supposed to interact this way. He looked at her for a moment, and decided that the fact that she had not gone insane must mean something. That the dark wasn’t so bad.

He cleared his throat, a little nervously. ‘I should go now, really.’

‘Are you going to come back and visit me again?’ Luna asked, and the look on her face almost made him say ‘yes’. But again, it was something that he just couldn’t do.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

Her face fell. Draco ignored this as best he could, turned and headed out of the cellar, up the stairs and into the drawing room. He sighed deeply. When he looked up, he noticed his mother sitting in the chair he had previously occupied. She tilted her head, and Draco made the mistake of breaking eye contact with her.
‘You will not interact with the prisoners unless instructed to,’ she said. Draco nodded curtly, and departed for his bedroom without another word. Arguing with her would prove futile, because Malfoys did not fight; they did as they were told and they did so quietly.

*

The next time he saw Luna Lovegood, she was fighting for what she believed in.

Draco envied her.