"Fear is not the same as loyalty. But it will do, in the meantime."
—Blaise Zabini
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The morning light drifted through the tall, leaded windows in ribbons of gold, the kind of gentle illumination that softened the hard edges of stone and gave even the dust in the air a kind of sacred stillness. It did not pour in loudly. It arrived like something reverent, brushing its way across the surfaces it touched, catching faint halos along the curved handles of spoons, the lip of a cup, the softened threads of linen stretched across the table.
The dining room itself had the strange, unsettling perfection of a scene preserved in memory rather than life. The long table, wide enough to seat a dozen, stretched forward in glossy silence, too pristine to feel lived in, too carefully arranged to suggest anything spontaneous.
It reminded Luna of a painting left deliberately unfinished, a room paused mid-thought, its brushstrokes delicate but lacking the warmth of movement. It felt staged. Watched. Like something that was waiting to be remembered properly before it allowed itself to exhale.
She sat near the far end, not at the center but close to it, positioned with quiet intention. Her posture was relaxed but composed, the lines of her frame softened by the same pale linen she had worn the day before. The fabric, once crisp, had now molded to her shape with the kind of intimacy that only comes from sleep and silence. There was a faded stain near the inner sleeve, not quite gone, a ghost of something older that refused to lift. It tugged faintly when she moved her elbow, but she did not seem to mind.
Blaise was already seated when she entered, though he gave no indication that her arrival altered anything. He sat at the head of the table like a man who had always been there, motionless in the way statues might be motionless—not absent, but present in a way that refused interaction.
His robe was black, the kind of black that drank light rather than reflected it, and though simple in cut, it carried the weight of something intentional. His shoulders were squared, his back unnervingly straight, as though he had learned stillness as a discipline and never forgotten it. He did not speak. He did not move. But he watched her, and there was something in his gaze that made the room feel smaller.
The table had been set with an elegance so precise it felt almost eerie. The silver teapot, tall and narrow, sat perfectly centered between two matching cups, its curved spout still steaming in soft wisps that curled like breath into the cooler air. Beside it, slices of dark rye and honeyed wheat rested on an ivory plate, the bread still warm enough to cloud the porcelain. A pat of butter, carved into a perfect spiral, gleamed beside a silver knife. The honey was held in a shallow glass dish shaped like a leaf, and the light gathered in it slowly, giving it a viscous, golden glow, as if it moved at its own pace, obeying no rules but its own.
The fruit had been arranged in a bowl with a kind of obsessive artistry that made it difficult to look at without discomfort. Apples, peeled into perfect spirals, nested atop one another like shells. Grapes dark as ink glistened in tight clusters, their skins taut. Blood oranges had been sliced so cleanly that their interiors looked almost unnatural, the red flesh gleaming like rubies under the morning light. Figs lay open, split with practiced precision, their soft pink centers exposed like secrets no one had dared to eat.
Still, despite all of it, no one reached for anything.
Not the tea. Not the fruit. Not even the bread.
They sat like that for some time, suspended in a stillness that felt curated rather than incidental, caught in the fragile pause of a ritual that had been set into motion long ago but forgotten the next step. The air between them did not shift. The light filtering through the windows remained constant. Even the dust seemed reluctant to move.
The only sounds in the room were small, almost delicate in their restraint. The faint clink of porcelain when Luna adjusted her cup on its saucer. The soft scrape of a chair leg dragged slightly to the left when she shifted her weight. The distant, echoing sigh of wind against glass that was thick enough to muffle the world outside but not so strong it could keep it out entirely.
Somewhere beyond the garden wall, a bird called once. Its song was bright, brief, a single note of life punctuating the silence like a pinprick in cloth. Another bird answered it, softer, hesitant, and then both were quiet again. Whatever conversation they had begun did not survive the hush that lingered inside the manor's bones.
She didn't speak. Neither did he.
With slow, measured precision, Luna reached for the teapot. Her fingers curled around the handle as though testing the weight of something older than it should have been. She poured the tea without hurry, her hands steady, though the motion was careful enough to suggest she was treating the act as something worth tending to.
The scent of bergamot and dried lavender rose with the steam, curling in soft tendrils that twisted through the cool morning air. It was subtle. Faint. The sort of scent that never lingered on skin, only in memory. She did not reach for the milk. She did not sweeten it. She stirred only once, the spoon touching the edge of the cup with a sound so faint it barely registered. Then she placed the spoon back on its dish with a quiet that was almost reverent.
Blaise had not moved. His gaze was sharp, though not cruel. He looked as though he were waiting for something to change in her expression, some crack to appear, some truth to bleed through the stillness like ink through water. But she offered him nothing except her quiet.
Luna lifted the cup to her lips and took a sip.
It wasn't a challenge. It wasn't deference. It wasn't anything so dramatic. Just a gesture grounded in rhythm, in the kind of everyday movement that becomes its own form of survival. It was the same energy one might use to fold laundry, to braid hair, to close a window against the coming storm.
She did not meet his eyes. She did not react to his attention, though she felt it. She behaved as though she were alone in the room, or perhaps as though she had come to terms with the idea that he was merely another presence like the moths in the hallways or the silence in the corners. Something constant. Something strange.
The quiet did not loosen. It grew thicker, as if fed by the absence of speech. It wrapped itself around the room, coiled in the corners and beneath the table, padded along the baseboards like a cat that had always lived here. It was not awkward. It was not frozen. It simply was. Like mist resting heavy on a morning field. Like the first snowfall blanketing a garden left too long untended.
And it might have stretched on like that for the rest of the morning, that strange communion without language, the room breathing softly around them while neither made a move to disturb it—had Blaise not lifted his hand at last, slow and deliberate, and reached for a single slice of fruit.
His fingers closed around it without hesitation. No twitch. No falter. He brought the slice to his plate and placed it there with a care that was not exaggerated but felt deliberate, almost symbolic. A choice made quietly. A decision shaped by stillness.
For a moment, Luna's eyes flicked toward him, but she did not speak. She watched the movement without reaction, cataloging it the way one might watch a strange bird choose its perch. Not startled. Not intrigued. Just observant. And when he cut into the fruit, when the blade of his knife slid cleanly through the soft flesh and left behind only silence, it felt as though the house itself exhaled.
The illusion of civility returned in increments. She took another sip of tea, her fingers wrapped around the porcelain like it was something worth anchoring herself to. He buttered a piece of bread but did not eat it. The teapot emptied just slightly. The scent of lavender began to fade.
And the world inside the manor, for the span of those few minutes, began to pretend. It pretended that it was just a home. That they were simply two people sharing a quiet breakfast. That no blood had ever dried on the floor beneath their feet. That no ghosts whispered behind the walls.
It was not peace. It was not kindness.
But it was something close to calm.
And this time, though she still didn't look at him, something about the corner of her mouth shifted. Just slightly. A small movement, so faint it might have been imagined if one wasn't paying attention. Not a smile. But perhaps the suggestion of one, like the trace of perfume left behind in a room, or the memory of warmth on a chair long after someone has stood. It was the kind of almost-smile that could be mistaken for something gentler if someone wanted to believe it. If someone, like him, was foolish or desperate enough to hope.
He watched her raise the teacup again, her fingers curved around the porcelain as if it might vanish into mist if she held it any less carefully. Her hands were small. Delicate. But steady. She drank slowly, without rush, her movements composed, polite, like a guest at a table that was not hers and might never be. As if they were simply two acquaintances sharing tea in a sunlit manor on a quiet morning. As if this place were not haunted by things unspoken. As if the bruises beneath her sleeves had healed, or had never existed at all.
And he noticed something else. A shift in her coloring, subtle but there. Her new room had brought it back—the soft flush returning to her cheeks, the dullness behind her eyes beginning to lift, the pallor in her skin giving way to something closer to life. Her hair caught the morning light differently now, not quite gold, not quite silver, but something in between, like frost melting over wildflower stems. He had noticed it when she entered, and he noticed it still. The change was small, but it stayed.
His voice, when it broke the stillness, did so gently. Not with command, not with intrusion, but with something quieter, something closer to care. "Did you sleep better last night?"
It wasn't a question meant to challenge her. It wasn't something weaponized. The way he asked it felt careful, intentional, like every word had been selected from a place he rarely let others see.
She lowered her cup, setting it into the saucer with a softness that barely made a sound. "Yes. Thank you."
There was no hesitation in her answer. No false sweetness. Just honesty, plain and undisturbed. He found that it settled something inside him, though he did not name what.
He nodded once, the gesture small, his fingers resting on the edge of the table beside the honey dish but not moving. "Would you like to take Bubbles into the greenhouse this afternoon? You don't need to stay inside all day. The air might do her some good."
She didn't look at him, not directly, but something in the angle of her head shifted, like a curtain drawn slightly back from a window. "That would be lovely. Thank you."
Her voice held no edge. No irony. Only that strange, gentle calm that wrapped around her like fog, quiet and persistent, impossible to grasp. He studied the way she folded her hands in her lap after speaking, how her thumbs brushed against each other in slow, unthinking circles, the kind of absent motion that people made when they were not entirely on guard, but not entirely safe either.
There was something in that small gesture that made his throat feel tighter than it should.
He let a moment pass before speaking again, and when he did, the question came softly. "Is your new room better?"
She didn't answer right away. She tilted her head slightly, the way one might when listening for something distant—a change in weather, a shift in tone, a bird too far to name.
"I hope it's better," he added, his voice quieter now, almost careful. "If it isn't, I can call the designer again. Or have it redone entirely."
It could have been a test. Another small trap disguised as courtesy.
But it wasn't. He asked because he wanted to know. Because something inside him had begun to twist each time she looked like she didn't belong here. Something quiet and unbearable, the kind of ache that took root before a man knew it had begun to grow.
Luna didn't look at him, but she responded all the same. "It's better," she said, her voice soft but certain. "I like the window."
He almost smiled at that. Not because the answer was perfect, not because it had been polished or pleasing in any performative sense, but because it felt unfiltered, genuine in the way that mattered most to him. It was a response that didn't ask to be measured or weighed. It simply existed, clean and unvarnished, and it belonged to her. And that, more than anything, made it precious.
He nodded again, slower this time, his gaze resting on her for a moment longer than was strictly polite, as though committing her words to memory, as though he might one day take them out and replay them for himself like something secret, something warm. He tucked her gratitude into the quiet center of himself, somewhere private, somewhere he rarely allowed others to reach.
"Tell me what you want to change," he said, and this time his voice was even quieter, a low murmur that softened at the edges. "Anything at all. Just ask."
She hesitated—not with fear, not out of uncertainty about his sincerity, but from a sense of caution, the kind that came from someone who understood the value of choices and did not want to waste a single one. It was not mistrust that kept her from answering immediately. It was consideration. The desire to choose wisely, to ask only for what truly mattered.
"I would like to go outside," she said at last, her tone light, almost tentative, as though she were handling something delicate between her palms. "If that would be okay with you."
The simplicity of the request hit him harder than he had expected, as though her voice had curled around a part of him that had been too tightly wound and given it the slightest, most merciful tug. It was not the content of her request that unsettled him. It was the fact that she had asked. As if the very concept of stepping beyond the threshold required permission. As if freedom itself had become a favor she felt the need to earn.
His stomach tightened in response, a slow, unpleasant coiling of instinct he barely managed to suppress. There was no rational threat in her words, no rebellion, no defiance. And yet the image of her walking beyond the grounds, disappearing into spaces where his eyes could not follow, where his presence could not surround her, filled him with a kind of quiet dread that settled deep in his chest and refused to let go.
He didn't want her leaving the estate.
Not the gates.
Not the walls.
Not even the quiet symmetry of his daily line of sight.
The idea of her slipping somewhere out of reach made his pulse spike in a way that felt neither healthy nor logical, but which he had no intention of reasoning away. He wanted her here. He wanted her close. Not because he believed she would run, but because the thought of her beyond his protection twisted something in him he did not yet have a name for.
And in that brief silence he felt something crystallize inside him. Something old, maybe, something that had been waiting for the right shape to take.
He didn't just like her. It went far beyond that. He didn't simply care about her comfort or her strange, disarming calm. He didn't only admire the way she seemed to belong nowhere and everywhere all at once, her stillness threaded through with something ancient. He didn't just find her intriguing, or soothing, or quietly magnetic in ways he couldn't explain.
He wanted her.
Not as a guest in his home. Not even as a companion at his table. He wanted her as something tethered. Something his. Something so utterly claimed that the idea of her choosing another path, another hand, another world—felt unbearable.
His most beautiful obsession. His most precious possession.
He let the corners of his mouth lift, barely, just enough to soften the tension that had begun to gather in his jaw. He shaped the expression into something gentle, something that might have passed for kindness if one didn't know better.
He smiled, slow and small, the kind of expression that looked soft only if one wasn't paying attention. It did not reach his eyes, not fully. And beneath the surface of that practiced calm, there was a cost he did not allow to show, not in the tension behind his teeth, not in the subtle twitch of his jaw. He only hoped she wouldn't see how much it took from him to offer that smile at all.
"We can take a look at the garden, little witch," he said, the words shaped with a care that felt deliberate, precise, as though each syllable had been sculpted to appear light when in truth, they were heavy. "There will be visitors this weekend, so not just yet. A few more days."
She nodded, that same quiet nod she always gave him when she was choosing not to fight something. There was no resistance in it. No protest. Just a quiet acceptance that somehow made the moment ache a little more. "Okay," she said, and the word was soft, nearly weightless.
Her voice gave no hint of disappointment. She didn't sigh. She didn't frown. But he saw it anyway. He saw it in the way her fingers curled just slightly into the fabric of her skirts, as if they were trying to ground her, to give her something to hold onto. He saw it in the way her eyes wandered toward the nearest window, where sunlight gathered on the glass in soft, golden haze but never quite reached the floor. As if even the light was not allowed to cross certain boundaries in this house.
He leaned forward then, just enough to alter the air between them. The shift was barely visible, but it changed the space around the table, the weight of it, the way one might feel the change in pressure before a storm.
"Please don't be disappointed," he said, and though his voice was gentle, there was something threaded beneath it that clung to the words like tension held in silk. "We will see the garden. I promise you that."
Her eyes flicked back to his, steady and unreadable.
"It's okay," she said. And in a way, it was.
But in a way that neither of them admitted aloud, it wasn't.
He turned his full attention to her just as the remnants of their breakfast began to vanish, carried off by quiet enchantments that did not announce their presence. Plates lifted. Cups floated. Crumbs disappeared as if they had never existed at all. He watched her through the shifting light, the way the sun brushed against her cheekbone but did not linger. His gaze had the kind of stillness that suggested calculation, not cruelty, but something colder than affection.
"Can you dress up for me prettily?" he asked, his voice even lower now, quiet enough that it did not need to compete with anything else in the room. The tone was light, almost casual, but it carried the weight of something practiced. Like he already knew she would agree, and wanted to hear the answer anyway.
Luna did not flinch. She did not tilt her head or raise a brow. She did not ask why. She simply met his eyes and answered, calm and clear and unblinking, "Of course."
Something flickered in his expression then. Not quite satisfaction, not quite triumph. It was softer than either. The kind of flicker that came from being given what one wanted without having to demand it. A quiet recognition that something had shifted. That she had said yes, and she had meant it.
"I'll send you a dress," he continued, his hand moving lazily toward his teacup, though he didn't lift it to his lips. "And a glam team. Hair, makeup, the whole thing. Nothing too much. Nothing showy. Just… polished. Something elegant."
Her voice remained soft, but it carried a strange kind of weight this time. The kind of calm that does not come from trust but from understanding the rules of a game. "What is required of me?"
At that, his gaze lifted again. Not suddenly. Not sharply. But with an intensity that made the space between them narrow, like the room had drawn in a breath and held it.
"Absolutely nothing," he said, each word spoken slowly, as if he wanted her to feel how serious he was. "I just want to introduce you to the others. The people in my life who think they know me."
He paused. His fingers tapped once against the curve of his ring. "You'll stand beside me. You greet who I greet. And when you've had enough, you leave. No one will stop you. You walk out whenever you choose, and that's the end of it."
She held his gaze a beat longer, not blinking, not smiling. Just watching him. "That's it?"
"That's it," he said again. And though the words were simple, the way he said them was not. It wasn't casual. It wasn't light. It sounded like something he had rehearsed over and over until the sharpest edges had been dulled. Like a promise he didn't entirely believe she'd trust. "Nothing bad will happen to you. No one will lay a hand on you. Not while I'm standing there."
He leaned back slightly then, his forearm resting against the polished wood of the table, the glint of his ring catching the morning light again, fractured into thin lines that ran like veins across the surface.
"You stay near me," he said, quieter now. "And leave whenever you feel like it."
Her shoulders eased, just slightly. Not in surrender. Not in trust. But in something that brushed close to permission.
"Alright," she said.
He nodded once, as if sealing something between them that he wasn't ready to name aloud.
And neither of them spoke the truth they both knew but chose not to give voice to. That the word leave meant something different in each of their mouths. That in hers, it meant freedom. And in his, it meant the edge of something sharp he wasn't sure he could survive.
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The glam team arrived just after tea, their footsteps soft but coordinated, echoing down the hallway in a rhythm that spoke of practice and repetition, as if they had done this a hundred times in a hundred different rooms. They did not knock. They entered with the confidence of people who knew they were expected, their arms full of garment bags and velvet-lined cases, their voices lowered to a hush, like people who had stepped into a sacred space and were trying not to disturb it.
There was something almost ceremonial in the way they moved. Their tools gleamed faintly in the soft light, brushed silver combs and glass pots of pigment nestled beside spools of thread and polished clasps. Everything about them felt curated, choreographed. They did not rush. They did not hesitate. They treated the room, and her place within it, as if it were part of a larger ritual that none of them needed explained.
He had sent five dresses. Each one looked as though it had been made for a different woman, for a different version of her that might exist in another story. One was pale green silk, weightless as mist, catching the light like water rippling under moonlight. Another was ivory, stitched with faint silver constellations that glimmered across the sleeves and shoulders, as if someone had mapped a sky and laid it across her skin. A third was dark sapphire, heavy and rich, its neckline dipping in a way that felt like an unfinished thought, like something whispered and then taken back. The fourth was stranger, a shade of rose that looked faded with time, something regal and half-forgotten, like it belonged to a portrait that hadn't been dusted in years.
But it was the fifth that had already been placed beside her chair, its zipper drawn down halfway, the fabric spread carefully as though inviting her in. Cream and silver, delicate as spider silk, with embroidery that seemed to change shape depending on the angle of the light. It was heavier than it looked, and she knew that this was the one she would wear. Someone had known. Someone had chosen it not for how it looked on a hanger, but for how it would feel once it belonged to her.
Luna didn't resist, but she didn't offer herself either. She allowed their hands to shape her, to lift and pin and brush, her body pliant beneath their touch but distant in the way a statue might allow ivy to grow around it.
Her eyes stayed fixed on a crack running across the ceiling, its path jagged and uneven, like the remnants of a spell that had tried to flee and left a scar behind. She followed it with quiet focus, tracing the way it curved and split, wondering if it would eventually spell something out, or lead her somewhere, or simply vanish into nothing the way so many things had begun to do.
When it was finished, they stepped back not with reverence, not with awe, but with the brisk, silent pride of craftsmen satisfied by their own precision. They didn't smile. They didn't praise. They simply appraised her the way one might evaluate a newly unveiled portrait—checking the lines, the symmetry, the silence in her shoulders. Not a single person asked her how she felt. No one needed to. That wasn't part of the ritual.
She stood when they told her to. Her movements were fluid, practiced, the soft sweep of her gown trailing behind her like a breath remembered too late. The silk whispered against the stone, catching on the slightest imperfections in the floor, and still she made no sound of her own. She walked to the mirror, but didn't meet her own gaze. Her eyes hovered somewhere near the neckline, just low enough to avoid the truth of what had been done.
And there, in the reflection's edge, she saw a girl who looked like her, but dimmed somehow. As though seen through water. Or memory. Or the veil that falls between one life and the next. She looked like someone who had once known how to smile. Someone who had not yet bled into the soil of this house. Someone who had not yet learned to speak softly so the walls would not answer back.
Behind her, the bathroom door creaked open.
Bubbles emerged slowly, the cautious tip of her moon-shaped head peeking out first, followed by her round, silvery body. Her enormous eyes blinked once, twice, then locked onto Luna with quiet suspicion, as though unsure whether the figure standing there was truly hers. With delicate steps, the mooncalf padded forward and nuzzled into the folds of the dress, her breath warm against the fabric, as though trying to weigh it down, to hold Luna in place, to remind her that she was still something real.
Luna crouched slowly, the silk pooling around her knees, and reached for the smallest ribbon in the accessory box—a strip of soft gold, thin as a sliver of dawn.
"There," she murmured, tying it gently around Bubbles' neck, fingers moving with practiced tenderness. "Now we match."
The glam team remained silent. Their work was done. Their presence already beginning to dissolve from the edges of the room like steam after rain.
No one responded. No words were offered.
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He had lied to her.
Of course he had. He had called it a gathering. A quiet evening with a few acquaintances. Just conversation, he had said. Just familiar faces. He had promised she could leave whenever she wished. That no harm would come to her. That no one would demand anything. That she would not be expected to do more than exist beside him, smile if she liked, and let the room see her there.
But he had left out the most important part.
Because he knew that if he had told her what this really was, she might not have come. Or worse, she might have looked at him with fear instead of trust.
He hadn't said the words.
He hadn't told her it was a Death Eater meeting.
They arrived slowly, in ones and twos, each more carefully dressed than the last, like royalty attending a coronation rather than fugitives from justice. Their eyes were sharp. Their laughter was quiet but confident. Their footsteps made no apologies as they crossed the threshold, not one of them pausing to wonder if their presence was unwelcome. They carried themselves like people who had never once feared the consequences of their choices. People who had never been taught to flinch.
Luna stood beside Blaise as they entered, her gown smooth and pale against the dark wood of the doorway. She did not reach for his arm. She did not retreat. Her hands folded gently in front of her, the delicate silver cuffs at her wrists catching the candlelight as she nodded to each new arrival. Her smile was small, soft at the edges, and entirely unreadable. She greeted them with the calm politeness of someone hosting a party she hadn't been invited to plan.
Not a single person questioned her presence. No one asked why she was there or who she belonged to. They saw her beside Blaise and they understood. Or they pretended to. And that, somehow, made it worse.
Because she was still standing. Still smiling. Still calm.
But it was a gut punch all the same.
The realization sat heavy in her chest, blooming outwards like a bruise, slow and unmistakable. These were not friends. These were not guests. These were the men and women whose names had been whispered in fear, whose actions had left shadows across the world. Some of them had worn masks. Some hadn't needed to. And now they were here, drinking wine and admiring the candlelight like nothing had ever gone wrong.
She knew them.
These were the same people she had once passed in hallways, shoulder to shoulder in too-small classrooms, their names called out beside hers on lists read aloud at the start of every term.
She had eaten beside them in the Great Hall. Had stood beside them during assemblies, brushed sleeves with them in Potions, laughed once—with one of them after a poorly-cast charm had backfired on a professor's wig. They had grown in the same soil, twisted in different directions, but started from the same fractured roots.
Malfoy entered first, with that same practiced tilt of his chin, as if the world owed him space. As if every eye in the room was already his. He did not glance at her. But his presence swept into the space like a draft beneath a closed door.
Nott followed closely behind, pausing just long enough to offer a shallow bow, the motion too precise to be accidental. His eyes lingered on her for a second longer than the others did, but there was no recognition in them. Only calculation. As if he were trying to match her face to a name that had slipped just beyond reach.
Parkinson arrived in a rustle of silk and perfume, lips painted a vivid red that looked almost violent in the warm light, her smile poised too perfectly to be sincere. Her eyes flicked once toward Luna, cool and unreadable, before drifting away, already bored.
Then came Crabbe. Goyle. Others whose names she had once spoken out loud without hesitation, names that had sat beside hers in alphabetical order on seating charts and in shared punishment lines. Faces she could have drawn from memory. Faces she had dreamed about in the weeks after the war, waking with the taste of fear still sharp on her tongue.
They passed her without question.
Not one of them spoke her name.
She stood exactly where Blaise had asked her to stand. Not a hair out of place. Not a breath wasted. Her hands remained folded, her shoulders pulled back with a grace that did not need rehearsal. Her expression was composed, almost serene, though her chest had begun to ache with the strange pressure of knowing too much and being allowed to say none of it.
Not to them. Not to him. Not even to herself.
The house offered no comfort.
The walls made no sound.
The candlelight burned steady in its sconces, unnaturally still, like it too had learned to hold its breath.
And Blaise, always watching, always near, leaned in just enough for his words to reach no further than her ear. The motion was subtle. The intimacy deliberate. His voice was velvet, carefully wrapped around the cruelty of knowing exactly what he had done.
"You look radiant, little witch."
He smiled when he said it. That soft, dark smile that could almost be mistaken for affection if you didn't know him well enough to see the hunger just beneath it.
She did not smile back.
She didn't even blink.
Time had begun to slow in that peculiar, suffocating way it always did when something inside her stirred without warning, something without shape or language, something that coiled low in her stomach and made the edges of the world stretch and blur. The room had grown too soft, too distant. Sounds came muffled, as though the entire gathering had dropped beneath water. Words melted into one another, indistinct. Laughter flickered from across the room, brittle and strange. The low hum of voices wrapped around her like a fog, heavy and impossible to lift.
The candles still burned. But too evenly. Their flames stood like held breath. The faces around her passed in and out of clarity. Wineglasses flashed with gold. Laughter cracked through the hush like broken glass. Her own glass had gone untouched. It sat in her hand like something borrowed, like a detail from a dream. She had long stopped pretending to sip. The warmth of the room brushed her skin but failed to settle into it.
And then, without warning, a hand gripped her arm.
Another covered her mouth.
Her vision snapped into brightness. Panic detonated in her chest, fast and sick and choking. She stumbled backward, breath caught mid-inhale, her fingers clawing at the unseen hand, her body twisting hard in resistance. Her heel caught on the trailing hem of her gown, her balance vanished, and for a moment she was weightless, tilting toward the floor.
But the stranger caught her. Spun her around.
Only, he wasn't a stranger at all.
He was memory made flesh.
"Luna," Draco said, and the sound was low, rushed, something crumbling at the edges. His hand dropped from her mouth. The other rose to cradle her face. His palms were warm against her cheeks. "Shhh. It's just me. Please. Darling, it's me."
Her eyes widened, blinked hard against the soft blur of his features.
The room came back into focus, moment by moment.
His hair was longer now, swept back in waves the color of bone and starlight. His robes were pressed but not perfect, the collar slightly askew. His face looked tired in the way grief makes a person older, not in years, but in weight. His mouth trembled slightly before settling. His eyes, always sharp, were rimmed in something so tender it made her throat tighten.
"I thought you were dead," he whispered, like it was a secret he had never said aloud before. "Me and Mother—we looked everywhere. We thought we'd lost you forever. Merlin, I can't believe this. You're alive. You're right here."
He didn't ask before he pulled her in.
The hug was immediate. Fierce. A breaking point disguised as an embrace. His arms wrapped around her like he was afraid she might vanish between heartbeats. And for a second, for just a moment longer than reason allowed, she let herself be held.
Her body tensed, but not entirely. Her hands hovered for a heartbeat, then slowly rose, fingers curling into the fine fabric of his coat. Her cheek pressed into his shoulder, and she breathed in the scent of him—clove, wool, ink, something familiar from school days and nightmares, both.
He exhaled like he had been holding his breath for years.
When he stepped back, it was reluctantly. His hands didn't leave her face. His thumbs traced soft, reverent lines beneath her cheekbones, as if confirming her shape, as if checking she was still solid and real.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, voice thick with worry. "Please tell me the truth. Has he done anything? Has he frightened you? If you want to leave, we can leave right now. I can get you out tonight."
Her mouth opened. Closed again.
Then she spoke, quiet and even. "I'm fine."
He didn't believe her. She saw it in the flicker of something dark behind his eyes, in the way his jaw clenched tight enough to ache.
"You're coming home with me," he said, firmer now. Not a suggestion. A promise.
Her gaze dropped to the floor, then back up again. "He's… kind," she said, and her voice was different now. Softer. Not quite confusion. Not quite conviction either. "He's been nice to me. Genuinely kind."
Draco stared at her like the words had unseated something in him. His mouth opened, but nothing came.
"Are you sure?" he said eventually, his voice dropped to something close to a whisper. "You don't have to lie to protect him. Not to me. If you're scared, even a little—Luna, I swear to you, I will come back for you. I will burn this place to the ground if I have to."
She looked down at her hands. At the way her fingers had twisted themselves into the folds of her gown. The silk felt too tight against her knuckles.
"I think I'm safe here," she said, and it was not a lie. Not entirely.
He didn't interrupt. Didn't argue. Just stood there with grief still bleeding from his eyes.
"I have Hermione with me," he said. "She'll come. Pansy's with Neville now. Theo's at the Burrow more than the Manor. We're all still here, you know. You don't have to be alone anymore. We'll come to you, if that's all we can do. We'll come whenever you need."
She nodded slowly. Her throat felt too tight to speak. "I'm not allowed outside."
His expression twisted. Fury blooming fast.
"Then I'll drag you out myself," he whispered, his voice a knife held flat. "I'll walk in and carry you past every fucking door. You're not staying here forever. You're coming home with me."
She looked at him then.
And there was something in her face, something hollow and aching and far away, like she had forgotten what home meant.
Blaise appeared at the far end of the corridor with a kind of quiet that didn't ask for attention so much as command it, the silence around him deepening rather than softening as if the very walls knew better than to make a sound in his presence.
Each step he took was measured, unrushed, and almost too precise to be casual, and though his face revealed nothing, the moment his eyes landed on Luna's, something in the air pulled taut. It was not quite tension, not quite threat, but something more intimate than either—like a storm that had not yet broken but had already stolen the breath from the sky.
"My Luna," he said, his voice a low murmur that carried with startling clarity across the space between them, each syllable spoken as if it were a spell meant only for her. "Is he bothering you?"
Draco didn't flinch at the question, didn't shift his weight or break the stillness that hung between them. He turned only slightly, eyes narrowing as he angled his body just enough to face Blaise. "I was asking her questions, Zabini."
"And I," Blaise replied with a level gaze and the calm of a man who did not need to raise his voice to be heard, "am asking Luna."
It was then that she moved.
Without a single word, she crossed the short distance between them and reached for him, her fingers curling around the sleeve of his robe with a quiet sort of desperation, like a child reaching for a hand in a room that had turned unfamiliar and too loud.
Blaise's eyes dropped to her, his posture shifting almost imperceptibly as one of his hands found the small of her back, the touch gentle but unmistakable. His voice, when he spoke again, had softened with an intimacy that didn't need to be explained. "It's alright, darling," he said, letting the words fall like balm. "You didn't do anything wrong."
Draco's jaw ticked with restrained anger. "She's not a child."
"And Granger," Blaise said smoothly, his gaze flicking toward him with something cold and deliberate beneath his tone, "is not your fucktoy". But I suppose we all make strange exceptions when it comes to the people we claim to care about, don't we? We all carry our contradictions."
Draco took a single step forward, his voice clipped with warning. "Do not test me, Zabini. We are in love."
There was a pause, just long enough to sting. And then a smile touched Blaise's lips, not wide, not warm, but sharp enough to leave a mark. "Of course you are, Malfoy," he said, the words so lightly spoken they might have passed for agreement, if not for the way he turned, gathering Luna against him as though she were something rare and irreplaceable, something meant only for his keeping.
He said nothing else. Neither did Draco. There were no parting threats.
Just the clean, unhurried sound of Apparition.
And then they were gone.
Her room welcomed them back with its usual stillness, the kind of quiet that came not from peace, but from something paused mid-thought. The scent of the glamor potion still lingered in the corners, floral and faintly sweet, clinging to the air like a memory.
Luna moved instinctively to step back, but Blaise didn't release her. His grip was not tight, not possessive in that moment, but steady in a way that anchored her.
"I'm sorry," she said in a rush, the words tumbling out before she could catch them. "He only asked me questions. Really. It wasn't anything—"
"Shhh," Blaise whispered, his thumb sweeping gently across her cheek. "Baby girl, no. You didn't do anything wrong. You were perfect. Just like always."
"But he didn't say anything cruel," she added, her voice quickening again, hands twisting slightly in the fabric of her sleeve as if unsure where else to go. "I just answered because it felt rude not to and—"
He stopped her with both hands, cradling her face like he was afraid she might dissolve under too much pressure. His fingers were firm beneath her jaw, anchoring her gently, and his voice was low enough to pull the breath from her lungs.
"Please don't spiral, not now. Stay in your room tonight. Let it all settle. I promise you, little witch, you didn't falter. You didn't stray. You did exactly what I asked you to do."
She nodded, the movement slow and shaky. "I did."
"Then that's all that matters," he said, his voice as steady as it was final. "You were good. You're always good."
And then he leaned in, pressing a kiss to the center of her forehead with a tenderness that startled even her. He didn't pull away quickly. He stayed there, lips resting against her skin as though he could somehow soothe the tremble beneath her thoughts, as though that kiss alone could remind her who she belonged to and why that meant she was safe.
When he drew back at last, he let one hand fall slowly down the side of her face, his thumb tracing the edge of her jaw before letting her go.
"I'll come back to you once they've settled for the night," he said, his tone quieter now, the edge tucked away behind something softer.
She nodded once more, this time more slowly, more certain. "Please."
And when he answered—"I will"—he said it like a promise he would bleed to keep.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆
It was late.
Luna was seated on the floor beside her dresser, her legs folded neatly beneath her, one hand reaching toward the soft silver clasp of the necklace Blaise had fastened earlier that evening around Bubbles' neck.
Her fingers worked gently, careful not to startle the little mooncalf, who blinked at her with solemn, impossibly wide eyes, as if she understood that something wasn't quite right. Luna murmured something soft under her breath, something half-spoken and half-sung, the kind of sound one used to calm a frightened animal or quiet the remnants of a storm still echoing in the blood. Her nerves were wound too tight, too close to the surface. The strange rituals of the evening had settled beneath her skin like static.
Then came the noise.
It cracked through the stillness like a snapped thread. One sharp sound, quick and startling, followed by two more in rapid succession. A muffled thud. Something heavy dragging. The scuff of boots or shoes caught against stone. A voice—someone's—cut off in the middle of a word. It was not chaos exactly, but the kind of violence that moved with purpose. And it was happening just outside her door.
She stood before she knew she meant to. Not thinking. Not even breathing properly. Just moving. Her hands slipped from the chain, the delicate silver clinking quietly against Bubbles' soft fur as she stepped back from the dresser. Her feet were bare, her toes pressing into the thick carpet without a sound. The mooncalf let out a low, breathy huff and lowered its head. Luna didn't look back.
The noise had stopped. But something in the air had changed. The walls felt closer. The air inside her lungs felt heavier, like the house itself had joined her in holding still.
"Luna."
His voice came from beyond the door. Calm. Measured. As smooth and unshaken as ever. Spoken like a simple request, but edged with something colder, something final. The way only a command could be when it wore gentleness like a disguise.
"Come here."
She crossed the room at once.
Her steps were slow, careful, but she didn't falter. When her hand curled around the knob, her fingers trembled, though she did her best to hide the shake by slipping them into the folds of her skirt. The door opened without resistance.
And what met her on the other side was not chaos. It was something quieter. Something worse.
A man knelt on the floor just beyond the threshold, slumped forward slightly, as if too exhausted or too beaten to hold himself upright. His robes hung in tatters, the hem torn and soaked with something that might have been wine or blood or both. He was breathing hard through his nose, his mouth slightly open, his head bowed low enough that his chin nearly touched his chest. She had never seen him before. Or if she had, she did not remember him like this.
He looked young. No older than Blaise, perhaps younger. But his face was marred beyond recognition, a patchwork of bruises and grime and sweat. The left side of his face had begun to swell, the skin around one eye already darkening to the purples and greens that would linger for days. Dried blood marked the corner of his mouth, and when he shifted slightly, he winced.
Blaise stood a few paces away, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, revealing the sharp lines of his forearms. There was no fury in his stance. No dramatic flare. Just the cold stillness of someone who had done what needed doing and saw no reason to explain it twice. His expression was composed, his mouth set in a line so calm it made Luna's stomach twist.
"This," he said quietly, as though introducing someone at a dinner party, "is Barnabas."
Luna said nothing. Her eyes drifted back to the man, who remained on his knees, unmoving. The candlelight from her room spilled across the threshold, illuminating him in a soft, flickering glow that made everything feel more surreal. A ruined guest. A punished trespasser. A warning dressed as a man.
Blaise lifted one hand slightly, not enough to be theatrical, just enough to draw her attention downward.
"Barnabas," he continued, his voice steady, almost bored, "is a little disrespectful scum who decided he had courage tonight. Liquid courage, of course. The kind that comes in a glass too many, and never lasts through the morning."
He let the silence stretch for a moment before speaking again.
"In that courage, he decided to speak out of turn. To insult someone under this roof. Someone under my protection."
His eyes found hers again.
Still, she said nothing.
Her lips parted, but no words came. She stared at the floor, at the dirt crusting the edge of Barnabas' robes, at the way his knees had started to shake under his own weight. Her breath was too shallow, and the ache behind her eyes was beginning to burn.
Blaise's gaze shifted, finding hers with slow precision. His voice cut through the stillness, smooth and dark, as if he were speaking a line he had rehearsed a thousand times. "Say hello, darling."
She swallowed hard. Her throat felt dry, her voice small and brittle in her own ears. "Hello."
Barnabas glanced up, just for a second. There was something shattered in his eyes. Not defiance. Not even shame. Something emptier than either. He did not reply.
Blaise's eyes didn't leave her. He spoke again, and this time his voice had quieted, nearly fond, the way someone might explain a problem to a child who didn't yet understand the rules of the world. "Barnabas thought it would be clever to insult you in front of the others. Said some very creative things about your presence here. About your body. About your mind."
His jaw twitched once, a brief betrayal of the control he held so tightly. But his tone never lifted. "He forgot, of course, that you are not simply my guest. You are mine."
He didn't emphasize the last word. He didn't need to. It rang like iron all the same.
There was no fury in his voice. No sharpness in the way he stood. Just that calm, measured stillness. The kind that could freeze a room. The kind people recognized too late as lethal.
"Tell her what you said," he murmured, soft enough that it could have been mistaken for kindness if not for the knife now glinting in his hand.
Barnabas opened his mouth again. His lips trembled around silence. His throat bobbed with a swallow that looked more like an apology he couldn't form. His eyes flicked up to Luna again, flicked back down, and still he said nothing.
Blaise didn't move. His face didn't change. He crouched slowly, fluid and patient, and pressed the flat of the blade to the hollow beneath the man's jaw.
The metal gleamed faintly in the candlelight, catching a line of brightness along its edge as if to remind the hallway it was there, waiting.
"SAY IT," he said, his breath brushing the space between their faces. The words were barely louder than a whisper, but they landed like thunder. "Say what you said. Say it to my treasure's face."
Luna stood frozen in the doorway, her heart beating too fast, too loud, as if it might drown out the rest of the world. She could feel Bubbles' presence behind her, warm and hesitant, but she didn't turn.
Barnabas looked like he might vomit. But slowly, through clenched teeth, he forced the words out. "I said—" his voice broke, then steadied through force alone, "she's just another pretty hole for you to fuck."
The silence after that was pure. Absolute. It stretched into something cold.
Blaise tilted his head, just slightly, the movement elegant and strange. Like a wolf examining whether the thing in front of it was still worth the trouble of chasing.
"Brave little boy," he said, almost conversational. Then louder, the control finally cracking, "HOW FUCKING DARE YOU."
The words shattered the quiet. Not with volume, but with impact. His voice broke open something hot and unnameable, not the heat of anger, but of something deeper and more sacred. This was not just about what had been said. This was about who had heard it. Who it had been meant for.
The knife moved—but not with violence yet. He held it steady, like a promise.
He turned toward Luna, and his voice dropped again, low and hoarse with something that nearly trembled. "What should I do with him, little witch? Tell me. What do you think I should do with someone who is disrespectful to you?"
The question wasn't rhetorical. It wasn't a threat. It wasn't a test.
It was permission.
Luna stood still. Her fingers had curled into fists, hidden in the folds of her dress. She didn't blink. She didn't glance at Barnabas. She didn't even acknowledge the blade.
Her eyes were on Blaise.
And when she spoke, her voice did not shake. "Anything that you think is equal to that disrespect."
The silence that followed felt ancient.
And then Blaise smiled.
It wasn't a charming smile. It was smaller. Simpler. Like something private had been answered at last.
He smiled like a man who had been waiting a long time for someone to say those words.
Without ceremony, without hesitation, Blaise dragged the blade clean across Barnabas's throat.
There was no pause. Just one sure, practiced motion that split the skin with a wet, sickening sound. Final. Absolute. The kind of sound that didn't echo, but sank.
The man's body crumpled to the floor in a heap of limbs and cloth, landing with a dull, bone-heavy thud that seemed to pull the hallway into stillness. His arms twitched once. Then nothing.
Luna stepped back before she could stop herself. Just one step. Just enough for her shoulder to brush the edge of the doorframe. The air changed instantly, thickening around her with the rush of blood in the space, metallic and warm, folding into her lungs before she could stop it.
She didn't scream.
But her breath caught hard in her throat, like something had snagged on the inside of her ribs.
Blaise stood over the body, unmoving. He wiped the blade against the edge of Barnabas's robe, slow and precise, as if it were a ritual he had done a hundred times before, and lifted his gaze to her once more.
The fury that had filled him moments before had gone quiet. It had not vanished, not truly, but it had curled into something else now. Something colder. Something older. A different kind of danger, honed and sharpened in silence.
"Let them all see," he said, voice low and deliberate, every word honed like the edge of the knife still resting in his grip. "Let them choke on the sight of what happens when they forget what you are."
He took one step closer to the lifeless body, but his eyes never left her.
"You are not to be spoken of like common things," he continued, his tone unwavering. "You are not for their filthy mouths. Not for their little jokes passed around like coins. Not for their trembling coward laughter when they think you can't hear them."
He looked down at the corpse for only a breath before returning his focus to her.
"You are not a girl to be named in the dark like some story they think they've survived. You are not something they get to touch or dismiss or pretend they understand. You are not something they get to reduce."
He glanced at the spreading pool of red across the stone floor and, with absolute clarity, said, "If they forget, even for a moment, what you are—this is the cost."
His voice softened. It shouldn't have made it worse, but it did. The gentleness made it more unbearable.
"You are something holy in a house that forgot how to pray. You are the only softness that still breathes in all this rot. And if they reach for you with anything less than reverence, let them bleed for daring to try."
He turned toward her then, fully. No blade between them. Just his voice.
"I will build the world around you with walls no one else can climb. I will make them fear the sound of your name in their mouths."
And then, almost to himself, almost like he couldn't bear to leave it unsaid:
"You are mine. And I will be your knife, again and again, if that's what it takes to keep you untouched."
Luna said nothing.
Her lips parted, then closed again. Her breath came slow, uneven, like her lungs had only just remembered how to draw in air. She stared down at the red seeping outward toward her bare toes. She shifted her stance, just slightly, back into the safety of the wall. Not out of fear of him, but from the weight of what had just been done. The reality of it was heavy and full. Not imagined. Not warned. Done.
And done for her.
Blaise was still watching her, his fingers loose around the hilt of the blade, his chest rising and falling in slow, measured breaths. He looked like a man only just returning to his body after something had broken loose inside him.
Her fingers found the wall behind her, her palm pressing to the cool stone as if needing to ground herself in something that hadn't shifted beneath her feet.
"I didn't think…" Her voice cracked on the second word. She swallowed. Tried again. "I didn't think you'd do that. Not for me."
He took a step forward, slow and quiet.
She lifted a hand—not in fear, not to stop him, but as if she needed space to breathe. He stopped. Waited.
"You killed him," she said quietly, as if saying it aloud would help her understand the shape of it. Her voice didn't carry judgment. Only a raw sort of bewilderment. "You killed him. Because of what he said."
The blood was still moving, a slow tide across the stones.
Her eyes met his.
And what he saw in them was not terror. It was something deeper than both. A wide, bright ache that didn't know where to go.
She wasn't afraid of what he had done.
She was afraid of how it made her feel. That was the part she hadn't expected. Not the blood. Not the silence that followed. Not even the smell of something violent settling into her lungs like smoke after a fire. It was the way her heart reacted that left her trembling.
"What he said was… horrible," she whispered, her voice barely strong enough to carry across the space between them.
She swallowed, and it wasn't just the taste of copper that clung to the air—it was the weight of the moment. The weight of what she had witnessed. What she had allowed.
Her arms lifted and folded around herself in a loose, almost hesitant way, like she wasn't entirely sure what she was holding together. Maybe it was her spine. Maybe it was the softer parts of her, the ones that had been blown open by the sharpness of it all.
"You were angry for me."
She said it like it was a new language. A phrase she had never spoken aloud before. There was no judgment in her voice. No fear, not of him. Only wonder. Only the quiet astonishment of someone who had never been protected without cost.
"I don't think anyone's ever been angry for me before."
She paused after that. Let the words settle. Let herself feel the shape of them inside her chest.
Her voice lowered.
"I don't know what to do with that."
And then, very softly, so softly it felt like a secret being let go before it was fully understood:
"It was terrifying."
A beat passed.
"But it was also… kind."
She didn't step toward him. Not even when the knife slipped from his hand and fell to the floor beside the body, its handle thudding softly against stone. She didn't reach for him. She just stood there in the center of the hallway, her pale gown catching the candlelight like a memory she couldn't quite place, her hair loose and wild around her shoulders. Her hands curled slightly into the fabric near her hips, but it wasn't fear that made her still.
The shadows held their breath around her. The light touched only the edges of her face. She looked like something sacred. Or something shattered. Or maybe both.
And she was looking at him like he might be the same.
Blaise didn't move closer.
His voice came low, deeper than usual, the kind of quiet that filled a room not with silence but with intention. It was the voice of someone trying to keep the world from spinning out too fast.
"I told you before," he said, like he was reminding her of something he had always meant. "No one touches you. No one harms you. Not in words. Not in thoughts. Not in any way I can see."
He stepped around the body without even glancing at it, as though it didn't belong to this moment anymore. As though the only thing that mattered now was her.
"Not just your skin," he added, his tone softening. "Not just what other people can see. Not just the parts of you they think they understand."
Luna's response was nearly a breath. Her voice barely rose above the flicker of the candles still glowing behind her.
"Thank you."
His brow creased, not in anger but in confusion.
"That's not something you thank me for," he said gently, though the firmness in his words didn't fade. "That's not a gift. That's not kindness. It's a rule. A truth. Something permanent. Like gravity."
She blinked slowly. Her arms remained wrapped around herself, but her shoulders dropped just a little.
"Then I would like gravity to clean this up," she said after a pause, her voice calm. Measured. Weary in a way that had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with too many days in a place that demanded too much. "Please. Make it go away."
There was no tremor in her voice now. No trace of panic. Just exhaustion. The kind that filled the bones. She wasn't crying. She wasn't shaking. She wasn't running. She was simply asking him to make the horror disappear.
And it undid something in him.
Blaise nodded, once, the movement precise and quiet.
"Of course, darling."
He turned toward the corridor. He didn't use his wand. He didn't speak an incantation. He simply snapped his fingers, and the house obeyed. There was a subtle shift in the air, a pressure change, as if the walls themselves were inhaling. A breath passed through the space around them, deep and unseen.
The blood began to retreat. Not vanish, not instantly, but draw back, like ink in water, until the stone was clean. The body followed. Folded into itself. Unmade. Absorbed by whatever darkness lived beneath the floors. The scent faded last, reluctant but obedient.
And then there was nothing left. No evidence. No trace. Just her breathing. Just his eyes watching her, still full of something raw and reverent. Like she was the only thing in the entire world worth looking at.
He didn't speak again. Didn't explain. Didn't try to console her with words she hadn't asked for.
He just stood there. And waited.