Better Left Unsaid

Better Left Unsaid

Draco Malfoy had spent a sleepless night tormented by his most hated memory and the new shame of having it witnessed by a blithering idiot of a Ravenclaw. Damn her! Was this some kind of a trick? Was it a test of the Dark Lord's? Was it a cruel joke of fate? Had she seen the whole memory? Had she felt the pain he relived just as humiliatingly as the first time he had lived through it? He had so many questions, but he would be in her debt if he revealed to her that he did not know the answers. He hated feeling vulnerable to anyone. And now he was at the mercy of a slip of a girl who had just happened upon the memory of the very moment when he was most helpless.

After class he had swept from the room as quickly as possible and stood shaking in a deserted boys' bathroom. As his breathing slowed and his mind stopped reeling, he looked up into the mirror. While his face may have been a little paler than usual, his neat platinum hair had not a strand out of place. He glared into his own icy blue eyes, the eyes Luna had just been staring through into his innermost thoughts. His outward appearance gave little to no indication that his mind had just been violated. Or that he had just relived a nightmare. He still felt the perspiration beading on his forehead and staining the underarms of his shirt. Damn her if he wasn't starting to feel the same way now, just thinking about, it even days later as he lay in the safety of his own bed. He was starting to feel clammy and his stomach was roiling.

He decided he wouldn't tell Snape what Luna might have seen, figuring that the fewer people who knew of his shame, the better. He was relatively certain she wouldn't have told anyone about the memory. She might not even have seen it, he consoled himself. Just because he relived the memory in his head didn't mean she was a party to it. Hell, she could've been daydreaming about unicorns dancing in tutus for all he knew. He snorted at the thought.

He had toyed with the idea of threatening her into keeping her silence, but threats could have unpredictable results. He considered trying to convince her it was a nightmare or a false vision, but that, too, could lead to a slippery slope. He didn't want to draw undue attention to how important the memory was to him; that would be showing his hand. No, he was going to use his Slytherin cunning to control this situation. For the most effective damage control he would need as much information as he could gather about his prey. He had to study Luna Lovegood. He was going to find out everything about her. He had been certain at first that she could be of no consequence to him, but now she was a liability. He would have to find out just what was in her head. If, he corrected himself, if there was anything in her head. He didn't know which possibility he feared more: that she might be a harmless dunderhead, in which case learning more about her would be maddening, or that she might have everyone fooled and be an adversary of whom he must be wary.

Luna meandered down the corridor in the general direction of her next class. No one spoke to her. It was not done as an outright insult; it was just that no one really noticed her as she walked by. Her gaze was directed up towards the ceiling and she was imagining birds flying above her and thinking how pretty the birds were that she had seen when she and her father had gone hiking that summer. She would have to find a charm to make birds fly about. Maybe she could Transfigure some. She'd have to ask Professor McGonagall after her next Transfiguration class. She heaved a bit of a sigh as she thought what a shame it was to be inside on this day. It was one of the last days before winter truly set in and made it necessary to bundle up in layers of clothing to go outdoors. It was too late in the season to see many birds but she might be able to see a few remaining geese heading south, especially if she went down by the lake. The air would be crisp and flush her skin when she walked outside, but it would be warm enough in the sun. She resolved to walk down by the lake after her classes were through for the day. She was anxious to be out of doors. But she still had Defense Against the Dark Arts with the formidable Professor Snape. The reminder of her next class sobered her. She was about to go practice Legilimency with Draco Malfoy.

The week before had been startling. She had never before had such an intimate experience in any capacity in her life. She had felt like an intruder as she had watched Draco in that library. It was as if she was right there next to him, but she knew she was there as a witness to a memory and was seeing something that had already come to pass. She could see Draco and the room he was standing in. He looked no younger than he was now, she mused, so it must've been a recent memory. She could see his father on the other side of a formidable desk scattered with quills and parchments and crumpled newspaper. She thought she saw a Quibbler partially tucked under some scrolls. That was interesting, that Lucius Malfoy read her own father's newspaper.

And then she could feel Draco breathing as if her own chest were heaving anxiously. She could feel what Draco felt. He was terrified. Watching him from the outside, no one would know the depth of emotion or the speed of thought coursing through Draco Malfoy. He had practiced long and hard to hide his emotions. He was considering what he should say in answer to his father's questioning, wondering if the infamous Malfoy dungeons would be a fate preferable to facing this man that he loathed and feared, especially knowing he had disobeyed his father's express orders. But Luna knew that even though Draco accepted that he was guilty of disobeying, he was not sorry for what he had done.

She had never imagined anyone using an Unforgiveable Curse on their own child. It was, well, unforgiveable. But Draco hadn't been surprised in the memory when his father cursed him. He had braced himself, but not for an unknown experience. He had prepared himself for what he knew was coming. He had been through it before. Draco Malfoy had lived through the Cruciatus Curse before. Just when she was starting to get lost considering the possibility of that, all of her thoughts suddenly emptied out of her head and she was paralyzed by his pain.

They were in agony together. She felt Draco's heart start to race, and her own beat to echo it. His body was burning from the inside like his bones were made out of lava and they couldn't support him any more. It was melting her bones, too. She went from seeing him and being on the outside to being witness inside him. They collapsed together. Their body was burning hotter and deeper, and they couldn't take much more. How could they stand this? How could they survive it? It was tearing at them, clawing through their body, but Draco's mind was still able to think through the pain. She reached out frantically for his thoughts. He was calm, he was reasonable even though she knew how much he was hurting. He knew there would be an end soon. Either he would pass out from the pain and wake up later or he would pass out and not wake up ever again, and either was fine with him. And when he resolved this for himself, deciding their fate without hysterics, he bolstered her faith that it was possible to ride out this pain calmly. They could do this together.

Then she felt another creeping emotion. Draco was thinking about his shame. He was ashamed. His will was so strong that he was carrying them both through this unholy curse, but he was ashamed of himself for what he perceived as his weakness because he felt his body start to betray him. He knew with certainty that he was about to cry out and could not forgive himself for giving his father that satisfaction. Draco had promised himself he wouldn't make a noise. That he would remain stoic and silent through it all. It was a point of pride. And he was about to fail.

And through all this they burned together. Their lungs gathered in the burning, flaming air that they would use to let out the traitorous scream, and just when their heart broke at their failure and the scream started to burn in their chest and move up towards their raw and tortured throat, an icy hand was painfully squeezing their shoulder.

And then Draco was gone. She was alone in her own head, and she was reeling. Her eyes could only see burning spots, as if she had been staring at the sun. Her chest heaved, and her throat was raw. She raised her eyes to look at Draco and he was staring back at her. She faced the tumultuous blue eyes she had just been on the other side of, and she was speechless. She was a gentle soul. She was brave, but naïve perhaps, and she was dumbfounded by what she had just seen and felt. She was amazed by Draco, who had always appeared shallow and spiteful but who she now knew was a brave and tortured young man. She had been dragged through hell with him just now. It was unreal. She had never in her life felt she knew anyone more intimately than she now knew Draco Malfoy.

Draco strode towards the dungeon classroom where Professor Snape would continue with his Legilimency lessons. Best to just face the situation so he could determine how to proceed. His robes billowed out behind him as he made his way through the halls. His jaw was clenched and the menacing look on his face had even fourth and fifth years clearing out of his way. He knew he had that effect on people, and he accepted it. Sometimes he even enjoyed it. He breezed down the corridors as if he had the run of the place, which he did, paying little regard to his surroundings. He was preoccupied with what was to come from this next class and didn't notice the small frame of a slow-moving girl in his path who he was about to plow into. At the very last second he tried to stop, but his body was already in motion. He stepped wide around her but couldn't make it far enough to the side to keep from knocking into her arm and making her spill her books all over the floor. He rolled his eyes; didn't this kid know to stay out of the way when a Malfoy was heading through?

He looked over at the offending child to find that what he had thought was a younger student was actually the tiny frame of Luna Lovegood. Perfect. This was a great way to start out, by bowling Luna over in the corridor before class had even begun. She was still standing there frozen in place, looking down at her books as if confused as to why they were on the floor instead of cradled in her arms. It took a moment for her to come back to her senses from whatever daydream had preoccupied her, but by that time Draco had folded his tall frame over and with a disgusted sigh picked the books up from the floor.

"Having trouble getting to class again, Lovegood?" he asked with a haughty smirk. "Don't worry, you can follow me and maybe you won't get lost." With that he turned and continued sweeping down the corridor, still carrying Luna's books with his own. It wouldn't do for him to treat her too differently than he normally would have. That would make him appear intimidated by their experience, by her. A Malfoy was not easily cowed. It was just that now he would notice her. How else could he learn about her? And, he grudgingly admitted to himself, after what they had been through together, she deserved to be noticed by him now.

Luna watched Draco Malfoy's back as he walked away. Was he carrying her books for her? Merlin's billy goat, would wonders never cease? Maybe he, too, felt they'd shared something intimate. But surely he wouldn't want to be reminded of it. Luna knew that with men especially it was oftentimes better to leave things unsaid. So she wouldn't say anything. It wasn't her place to say anything, anyway. She would accept this favor of him carrying her books, and she would not read anything into it. She would act as if this was any other class; that would be the best way to respect Draco and his privacy after what they had shared. At least she hoped so.

When she got to her desk her books were already sitting there. She took her seat and waited for Professor Snape to address the class and start them on their exercise for the day. She hoped it would not be as trying an experience as the last one. Malfoy now seemed to be purposely ignoring her. He was leaning back and sprawling in his chair with his long legs stretched out into the aisle. He turned to his right to say something to Blaise, and she saw Draco's profile. His really was quite striking. She had seen his face plenty of times before, but she had never thought to evaluate whether he was good looking or not. She had never really thought too much about him, or of him, before now. But now that she had seen inside his character even a little bit, had seen his humanity and his humility, it was as if he had suddenly come alive to her in her mind. He was a real person now. Not just a bully or the son of a Death Eater but a real person. He was Draco Malfoy. And according to Professor Snape, Draco Malfoy was about to invade her mind the same way she had invaded his. She wondered what memory he would find his way into. After all, she was certain he hadn't intended her to see what she had, so she might have no control over what he saw in her mind, either. She hoped it was a memory she could live with sharing.