Draco Malfoy sneered at the horizon. Around him, fog billowed like heaven’s robes, dirtying its hems as it brushed against the grounds of Hogwarts. He stood next to the lake; a traditionally scenic sight, but he could not see it through the rain. It burned away the layers of dust that had long since enveloped the abandoned school. He closed his eyes, falling into an ancient vast black.
His vision of the void peeled like paint with each flutter of his eyelashes as raindrops tugged his eyes back open. The only visible tension was his hand which was clutching the side of his robes, sending out ripples of wrinkles.
“Don’t get upset because you’re not waterproof.” Luna appeared like a spectre, floating in behind him. Her blonde hair was oddly plastered to her face like melted plastic, blue eyes open swallowing the rain. It was coming down hard, slicking every word into a painful needle, and every glance clean of longing. The dazzle in her eye had long ago faded to a gleam. Part of her hated that he had made her see things as they really were, while another part knew that was the only reason she loved him.
“Is that supposed to be cryptic?” They were unravelled before each other, naked without their pretence of redemption and seduction. There was no beauty in it; only the infinite primeval horror of all the world’s faults unveiled. Beyond the veil, there was indeed something, but not anything worth seeing for mortal eyes. And how mortal they were, standing silent between the crescendos of tiny raindrops and preludes to thunder.
“I didn’t ask to be your mystery.” She had fallen from the perch of confused angel to an earthen creature. There were smudges under her eyes and she was wearing tiny golden studs that he had given her instead of the radishes. Her wand was in her pocket.
“You aren’t anymore,” he said.
This hurt her more than anything else. She had been like a child, and now she had been thrust into the faithless world. She had thought that he would guide her. It was sensible. He had afterall invited her to eat the forbidden fruit; he was the maestro of this dark game. He didn’t guide her out of Eden, but instead snuck in through the back gate into her garden, leaving her locked outside.
“Potter’s happy you’ve redeemed me.” Comments like that reminded her that he still thought she couldn’t love him, that Potter would always be better. Back when Potter was the only Gryffindor who could stand her she doubted she could love anyone.
“The light offers only vision of what is, and sometimes the power to what could be.” She made sense now; a sort of twisted, bitter sense that wasn’t common or useful. Her sense was impractical, but didn’t have the beauty of being divorced from reality.
“Or what couldn’t.” He hated that he almost didn’t say it, was considerate of her, hated himself for not being able to just brush her off with an apathetic sneer and programmed aristocracy.
Thunder penetrated the fog, lighting it up like thousands of dying stars. There was so much of it they could see nothing in the white and thickness. The ashes of stars consumed their senses until they couldn’t taste the familiar perfumes of each other. Gone was the lilt of jasmine and spice that belonged to her, or the fresh pine that was silkily claimed by him.
They had nothing of their own anymore and both of them could hardly find the power to hate what they had become. She brought up her tapered fingers to his unshaven cheeks. She played out unspoken elegies onto his cheeks with each caress. “Oh what haven’t we sacrificed?” She laughed bitter and flat, too powerful to come from lips that creaked like well-worn pages of a novella.
Somehow, what had been simple turned into an impure kiss. Fingers grasped arms too tightly, visceral and cold with each practiced movement. She sucked on his lip, too passionate to be herself anymore. She wanted back the pieces of herself so much she would unknowingly give even more un-found puzzle pieces to him. He had long since memorised her every phrase or blink, and was surprised to see how much she had changed into what he used to admire in himself. They opened their eyes to perceive the angle at which their lips met, not caring as the passion faded, leaving only an awkward operation of tongue and teeth.
They surfaced sometime later. “You’re leaving,” she said. “You’re going with them, to defeat him.” There was no need to specify, their lives had been consumed by it, more his than hers as of late.
“And you’re not.”
“I’m afraid.” The rain softened to let the light reveal the thousands of puddles. They were like holes in the rough fabric of earth and sky. Luna began to take off her shoes. She still loved to feel the mud beneath her toes, the power of the rude to birth the grand. Once, long ago, the universe had been one of these puddles and out if it, after thousands of years, sprung people strong enough to love this painfully. Now, she wasn’t sure if that’s how it had begun, but when the mud stopped friction and allowed her once again to glide through beginnings and endings, she could believe.
“I am not,” he said. There was no pride in it, only a bleak kind of resignation permeated by the closing once again of his eyes. He was dissolving into the dust and air, becoming one with something ancient and vast that she had once understood. He was going to go where she once was, and now she could not follow.
“Because you want to die.”
He did not deny it merely looked out at the balding clouds and thinning rain. “I have killed my own father.”
“You did what you thought was right.”
“I did what you thought was right. Because I loved you.”
“Loved?” She was not surprised, but certainly stopped her shifting in the shallow puddles. The mud lost all significance and was once again mud. Dust to dust.
“I leave tomorrow.”
She did not repeat the question, but instead allowed her hand to seek out his own. He accepted it with the tentativeness of a child. Now the rain had faded them leaving them clothed in the muted silk of fog and echoes of swirls of dust. “Draco, be careful.”
“Why? Because you love me?” He twisted his face into the gothic harlequin twin of a smile.
“I do,” she said breathily, divorcing herself from the moment.
“That’s not good enough.”
“I can’t be a mystery forever.”
“I cannot be a villain again.” They had somehow collected themselves into the familiar roles. She with her blank expression and eerily quite footsteps and he with his waxy polish of arsenic wit, but part of them would always be lost inside each other. For a moment they glanced at each other, searching for an expression. She began to cry and he turned away, refusing to comfort her for something that wasn’t his fault.
“Better an alive villain than a dead hero,” she countered; afraid of how much she cared.
It was a passionless love now; a simple connection that was irrevocable and yet was being untied in front of her eyes. He was slipping through cracks that she didn’t know she had. The hole that they had fallen in was deeper than the earth, and somehow they had popped out on the other side. Neither knew that on the Earth’s backdoor was a graveyard of stars.
“I’m redeemed because of you.” There was calm in his acceptance of the events about to come, but certainly an after-taste of bitterness to the trained taste bud, and Luna was trained.
She was trained to the squinting of his eyes as he studied something unsatisfactory, or the widening of them when he saw her coming down the stairs in a gown he had picked out. Part of her didn’t want the echo of him tainting her memories for the rest of her life, and another part didn’t want any part of him at all.
“You’re redeemed because of yourself.” Even she knew that this was a lie. He had changed for her, and now she couldn’t bring herself to love a man that had everything she had once loved about herself.
“Only because you have made me in your image. You just don’t want to lose your creation.” He turned away from her and began walking to the castle.
“Do you hate yourself so much that you would hate me for becoming as you wish me to be?” She didn’t want to touch him, but she would, just to soften the acid edge of leaving.
“Come with and prove me wrong. Prove to me that you are as you were.”
“I can’t--”
“Then you know my answer.” And he left, his footsteps in the mud fading as a new veil of rain shined the ground.
And she swore in a thousand ways, not realizing that every word she had learned from him.
Ashes of Stars and Rain by Visceral Love
Chapter Notes: I would like to thank my lovely betas: Moonysgirl, HermionexRon and Natasha Jones. Thank you guys so much, it wouldn't even be half as good as it is without you.