Luna and Voldemort--drabble

[black_hat]

Luna Lovegood and Lord Voldemort make a bargain in the afterlife.



“I see a shade of me in you,” it spoke, direly, from under the dark space beneath the bench. “But I don’t know if I like that. I used to savor it, mind, when I could see myself in everything I touched, everything I molded. Now, though…now things are different. Now I don’t care for it. At all.”

The thing from the otherworld was quite moody tonight, it seemed. Luna thought it most unnecessary, but hey, she wasn’t the one stuck on a platform for years.

“How so? I think we are not alike, so perhaps you need glasses,” she offered. His red eyes burned brightly, and she could almost see the stripes he used to have.

Hunger burning bright, with need, hate, jealousy coming up to lap at the flames. Amazing. No. Beautiful in its ugliness.

“I’ve met you once before. Somewhere.”

It may have been the simple fact that their dreams lined up, even in death. She dreamed of his sad situation, and in dreams, people got to know one another. It was just the natural, and only, course of action. Luna looked down at her arms, thin and pale, and wondered—once again—if she’d be strong enough to move him to where he needed to be. It seemed like such a loss. Of course, he’d keep bothering her until things changed, and things never were going to change.

She sat cross-legged on the cold, white wood, and looked around at the way station. He had begun to call to her in sleep exactly two weeks after his defeat. He didn’t waste much time, this on. Every night she was brought to this place to sit, and wait, and debate death, life, and more, with no answer in sight.

For no one, no thing ever approached the way station. The tide had moved on, and the gateway to the afterlife had gone with it. The way station was useless, a ghost town in everything but the spirit of it.

“You’re killing me,” she commented, placing her chin gently into her hands. “You’ve taken my dreams away. You’ve taken my faith.”

“Does it shock you that even in death, the world is ugly? Foolish girl, we are born alone and we die alone. I felt this with every breath I took while I was alive. Now I just feel it, and like with all pain, I’ve gotten used to it. There’s nothing. Nothing.”

“Untrue!” she sang out, her breath curling against nothing but cold, grey, and blue. “I’m here with you!”

“Ah yes. I have the pleasure of your company.”

There was a silence, and she tapped a melody out with her fingers.

“You sleep more and more,” he observed. “If I’m guessing correctly, and I always do, you are sleeping your life away. Why?”

Luna bit her lip; she could bite as hard as she could. Through the lip and back again. Nothing mattered here, and there were no consequences. Her faith, oh, her faith was gone, washed away by his siren calls. She had to sleep, though, sometime, eventually. And eventually, she had given up to this routine.

Devouring every possible dream, he was worse than a Dementor. He took everything away but the cold reality of life.

“Rolf wants a child.”

“And? Most men do. It’s their legacy, their birth right. Well, for normal men who know they are going to die and accept it.”

“Yes, yes,” she whispered, nodding. “I agree, Tom.”

Another silence. “Then what’s the difficulty, you daft girl?”

“The difficulty, your lordship, is that I am barren.”

It took nothing to be a figment of someone else’s imagination. Too much of this, too little of that, and there you have it—a figment. Maybe she wasn’t a real girl after all. A real girl could give life, a precious gift indeed, wrapped in pleasures and pain, with tears first and laughter later.

“I see.”

“No, I do not think you do. I have done this, most likely, to myself.”

“That’s presumptuous of you,” he said, rasping. His way of laughing. “You, of all people, have the ability to pick and choose what cross you bear, while the rest of us just had to bear. That’s the most absurd thing you’ve said to me…yet.” He turned, as much as he could, his dismissal evident. “We do have forever for you to top yourself.”

“…I’ve looked into death for too long. I’ve seen in its eyes, and maybe when my mother died, she took my motherhood with her.”

“Foolish,” he whispered but he was entranced. He was ravenous like a wolf, and her displeasure pleased him.

“I mean, I didn’t do anything to myself, as I can recall. I ate properly, I didn’t ingest any panespear eggs, I-.”

“You spent time in my dungeons.”

She blinked.

“Surely, it was not good for your health, child. Did they curse you, hex you? Try to see how far your mind would stretch to the breaking point, as it did not have far to go? Why, did one even just…kick you in the stomach? Perhaps with the right, perfect amount of pressure, he cut your life line and you were unaware…”

Pale. She could feel her paleness, pallor, so contrasting to the blood on the stones during that time.

“Oh.”

“Hhn. Well, that mystery is solved. Pity, that was one of the few left. What has become of me? I’ve had it all, all those supposed mysteries. Of nature, sex, and death, and I’m reduced to this shell, wondering about your pathetic barren body.”

“Oh…” she repeated, letting her mouth shape the word from sand. Tears wouldn’t come. Speaking of mysteries, she had been curious about what it would have been like to be a mother. “It’s funny. Now that I can’t have it, I want it all the more.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Maybe someone can fix it.”

Silence ebbing back at the edges of the dream, nibbling it to shreds.

“You’re very much a child, though, in this place. Isn’t that ironic? Perhaps we were supposed to meet. Perhaps this is connected, my past imprisonment, your forevermore imprisonment…”

A sharp noise, a sharp sound as the pieces fell into place. “Possibly, possibly…”

“Maybe if my body feels like it has a purpose, I…you could come back through into life again. Then the burden of seeking out a new soul to bring into the world wouldn’t be a strain on me, physically speaking. Would you like that?”

“I’m torn. What shall I choose? Existing in this hell-hole forever or being stuck with you as a mother for a lifetime.”

She tilted her head. “Or we’ll just keep dreaming this dream until I die. Same thing, in a way.”

“Indeed.” There was a sudden turn of the fixture in the darkness of this place, like someone was holding their breath. Something caught her like a spider-web, grasping her closer and pulling her apart, holding her in-between with the spaces of her arms and legs open, and she agreed. She offered herself willingly and twisted upwards.

“Don’t worry about your body, girl,” he whispered in her ear, along her neck, sounding like dry leaves on a day in fall. “I’ll come of my own accord.”

Strong enough for this...an echo, from inside or out, she could not tell.

“Really? Truly?” she exclaimed, exuberant with ecstasy, looking up into whiteness, as the dream staggered and died with the sharp promise, born unto the world.

Luna awoke twisted up in damp covers, hot, burning like faith, with the sunlight pouring through the window. She gazed at her husband who slept peacefully besides her. She touched a piece of his hair reverently and sighed in bliss.

Oh, Rolf will be so happy.

And as surely as she lived and breathed, Lord Voldemort kept his word.

...

AND ALL WAS WELL. HAHAHA~