Narglebane

Lorcan sat down at his usual spot at the end of the Slytherin table, reaching for a handful of toast. It was 6AM on the dot, as it always was when Lorcan sat down for breakfast. He was a creature of habit, and one of his habits was waking up early. Another one of his habits was sleeping late, but he tried not to think about that one.

After all, he wasn’t a wizard for nothing. There were potions far more potent than coffee out there. What was a few hours of lost sleep in comparison to the opportunities those free hours provided? He was no worse for wear after he had his potions, so it was fine.

With one hand, he reached for the toast and deposited a few slices onto his plate, while with the other he covertly cast a switching spell on his pumpkin juice, replacing it with butterbeer. He always used his lonely mornings to get a drink in, or five. It wasn’t a problem, really, butterbeer was hardly alcoholic at all for humans. Of course, that didn’t mean it was advisable to drink a dozen of them a day, but you only live one, do you not?

Then, something that was decidedly not part of his morning routine happened. He hadn’t seen her approach, but he definitely heard her sit down, and he could hardly ignore it when Luna wished him a good morning.

“Why are you here?” he asked bluntly, his usual subtlety rather suppressed in the mornings. Luna smiled at him, stealing a slice of toast from his plate. He reached over to the larger plate for another one, bringing the count back to the status quo. He always had four slices of toast at breakfast.

“You told me to stick by people outside of classes. We’re outside of class right now,” she reasoned, taking a bite out of her toast. Lorcan just nodded, eating one of his slices in one. It wasn’t very dignified, but there usually wasn’t anyone around to see him, and habits were hard to break.

He shook his head slightly at that thought. After all, had he not broken very many habits these past few weeks? A month ago, he never would have imagined heading a DADA group with Potter of all people, nor could he have imagined himself becoming so concerned with the wellbeing of the little Ravenclaw by his side.

The penny might have dropped then, if it weren’t for Luna grabbing his arm, apparently wanting his attention. He turned to look at her, and saw that she was frowning, an expression which looked unnatural on her cherubic face.

“Why is your goblet full of butterbeer?” she asked. She didn’t sound angry, but Lorcan couldn’t tell whether she was just concerned, or whether she was actually angry at him, with the frown and all. 

He sighed slightly, wishing his senses weren’t so dulled in the mornings. If it had been midday, he would have had no trouble piecing together Luna’s expression. Now, though, it felt like he only had half his wits about him. Still a considerable amount of wits, but not nearly enough to be dealing with real people.

“Does that bother you?” he asked, hoping to assess the feelings he normally would have picked up nonverbally through a conversation. He reached for the goblet and took a sip. When she didn’t smack it out of his hand, he figured she wasn’t majorly annoyed with him, but was still waiting for a response.

“It doesn’t bother me. It does worry me, though. Why are you drinking so early?” she asked, stealing another slice of toast from his plate. Lorcan quickly replaced it, a flicker of irritation flaring up inside of him. Couldn’t she see that she was interfering with his routine?

“Because no-one’s here normally, so I can get away with it,” he replied, too tired to lie. He drained the goblet and ate another one of his slices of toast, trying to pick up the train of thought that Luna’s arrival had derailed. It had been something to do with his breaking of habits, but the details were fuzzy. Perhaps his potions were going out of date, he was usually sharper than this in the morning, even if his faculties weren’t all there.

He started again, thinking about his habits and the breaking of them. There was the DA, and his caring for Luna. That was what he had been thinking about, but he was still struggling on where he had been going with that thought, and so he backtracked. Had he always been so uptight about his habits as he was being right now, the DA and Luna notwithstanding?

With a frown, he realised that he hadn’t. He liked to get up early, but he had never made sure to be at the table at 6AM precisely. Similarly, he liked a late night, but he had always had the sense to go to bed at a reasonable time every so often. He had enjoyed a coffee in the morning once, and it was only recently that he had turned to potions.

It had been creeping up for a while, but it had started in earnest after Granger had sat with him in the library. He still remembered the violation of the barrier they had established -  a breaking of his habits - and how it had shaken his perception of things.

He had gone to bed late that night, and he had woken up early, sitting down at the table at 6AM. Since then, his normal had taken hit after hit. His changing perception of Granger, the DA, his relationship with Potter, Draco’s condition, and, above all, Luna. They were all a perversion to the norm, and he found that everytime something out of the ordinary happened his habits had gotten worse.

His routine had tightened, with the strict 6AM rule taking shape, and he had turned to potions as he found himself hopelessly tired every morning. His mental faculties had been dulling since he had started taking the potions, but it was worse than ever today, and he couldn’t help but feel that, if he hadn’t been taking them, he’d have reached whatever conclusion he was trying to work towards by now.

However, he had decided to lean on the potions, and so he was still lost as to what he was building up to. He knew it was something, and that he was close to reaching it but…

Click.

His lagging mind had finally put the pieces together and it suddenly made sense. He was being taken away from his norm, and he was reacting by entrenching himself more deeply in the habits he had unknowingly formed in the years prior.

Of course, that didn’t help because he was being thrown head first into new situations every day now, and so he started developing new habits. His breakfast had to be the same everyday, he had to have a butterbeer, then he had to have three, then he had to have a dozen. He was tired, so he had to have his potions. Without his potions, he was even more tired, and so he had to have even more potions.

What had started as a routine had become an addiction. He wasn’t doing any of this because he wanted to do it, he was doing it because he had to. It very suddenly became apparent to him that he wasn’t hungry, even though he had only eaten two slices of toast, and that he didn’t want another butterbeer, even though his mind was telling him that he needed another, and that he was tired, even though he had his potions. 

“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”

Luna’s voice cut through his contemplations. Her tone was gentle, not airy like normal but purposefully soft, and she said it like it was a statement rather than a question. Lorcan nodded, unable to bring himself to speak just yet. He wanted to leave, but he felt compelled to stay until 7AM, as he always did, and was also unwilling to leave Luna alone, and if he took her with him his goal of getting some space would have been entirely defeated.

He buried his face in his hands, his unbearable tiredness seeming insurmountable. It barely felt like anything had changed when he dozed off there, Luna humming something by his side.

-

“What were you thinking, you foolish boy?”

Madam Pomfrey’s stern voice was not what he had been expecting to wake up to, nor was it something he particularly wanted to wake up to. He groaned, pressing a hand to his forehead as he nursed a splitting headache.

As he did so, he became faintly aware that he wasn’t in the Great Hall with his head in his hands anymore, but rather in a bed on the Hospital Wing. That explained why Madam Pomfrey was here, but he still couldn’t quite figure out why he was there in the first place.

“You hush now,” Madam Pomfrey said firmly, pressing a bottle of something to his lips and tipping it back. He swallowed reflexively, and slowly felt the searing pain in his head dissipate, and with it the clarity of his thoughts returning.

“You gave us quite a fright, collapsing like that in the Great Hall. Miss Lovegood had the good sense to go fetch me, thankfully for you. Honestly, mixing potions like that, and taking alcohol with them no less… It’s a wonder you even woke up today, I would have thought you’d have been out til tomorrow, at least.”

Fuck, they know.

That was all Lorcan could think as he nodded dumbly, slumping back into his bed. They knew, they knew, they knew. It reverberated in his mind like an echo in a cave, the thought crushing him. He was almost certainly going to be expelled.

Brewing potions without the supervision of the Potions Master was against the rules, not to mention taking them, and alcoholic beverages were not allowed in the school. Of course, it wasn’t often one got caught with alcohol on their person, but he had been fool enough to allow exactly that to happen, hadn’t he?

“When am I going to be expelled?” he asked, his voice hoarse. Madam Pomfrey tutted, pushing a glass of water into his hands to drink, but through his bleary vision he could see her expression soften.

“You aren’t going to be expelled. No-one besides Miss Lovegood knows why you collapsed, so, in the board’s eyes, there’s no cause for expulsion. I daresay you’ve learnt your lesson, regardless of whether you’re expelled or not, so I will refrain from alerting the Headmaster. As far as anyone knows, you’re here for severe exhaustion, rather than potion withdrawal.”

Relief. It washed over Lorcan in a wave, and he relaxed properly in his bed. He didn’t do that often, and he could feel the tension in his muscles slowly working its way out as he allowed himself to sink into the mattress.

“Thank you,” was all he managed before he drifted off again. Madam Pomfrey sighed fondly, tucking the sheets in where he had disturbed them.

-

Lorcan spent the rest of the night in the Hospital Wing, sleeping, but he came to again very early in the morning. After some examining, and some berating about the foolishness of what he had done, Madam Pomfrey declared him fit to go. He arrived in the Great Hall at precisely… 6:13AM.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he realised the time. The battle wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but this was a start, and he was more than willing to embrace it. Feeling lighter than he had felt in a long time, he took his seat at the end of Slytherin table. 

He served himself three slices of toast, and took a sip of pumpkin juice. It made him want to vomit, but he didn’t think he could trust himself around butterbeer for a little while longer. 

“Hello Lorcan.”

Luna was sitting next to him again. It didn’t surprise him this time, but he didn’t feel completely at ease with it either, as he had thought he might. He felt like he had something to tell her, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then, she pinched a slice of toast off of his plate, and it clicked.

“You knew, didn’t you? That I was stuck in a rut, and you nicked stuff off my plate and pointed out my drink to make me think about what I was doing?”

It was a statement more than a question, and Luna blinked owlishly at him for a moment before cracking a wide smile. 

“Something like that,” she replied absently, taking a bite out of her toast. Lorcan smiled fondly at her before turning back to his own plate, scarfing down one of his slices. This was so unlike him, first looking out for Luna in the first place and now receiving her help, but it just felt right.

It wasn’t like the DA, where he was constantly having second thoughts about joining. This was, unequivocally, the right thing to be doing. He felt better for it, which shouldn’t have been surprising, but he spent most of his life pushing aside what he felt was right in favour of what was expected of him. It felt nice to just let go, and do what his heart was telling him to do.

It took a while, but the other Slytherin fifth years began to arrive at around 7AM, beginning with Theo Nott. He was probably the closest thing Lorcan had to a best friend - Milicent notwithstanding after their falling out -  although they probably didn’t spend enough time together for that title to apply. Theo’s company just came easier than everyone else in Slytherin - mainly because he was a glum, brooding bastard like Lorcan.

They got on quite well, and as such he was the only one who knew that Lorcan and Luna were anything more than reluctant acquaintances through the DA. Therefore, he only raised an eyebrow at Lorcan after seeing the little Ravenclaw sitting at Slytherin table before he assumed his usual seat, opposite Lorcan. 

Unfortunately, the rest of Slytherin house weren’t so accepting.

“What’s Loony doing here?” were the first words out of Blaise’s mouth as he reached the head of the house table, taking his usual seat next to Theo. Lorcan sent a glare at him, and Blaise had the decency to shrink under its venom, but the damage was already done.

“Luna happens to be a friend of mine, Zabini. I’d appreciate it if you spoke more respectfully about the company I keep, as I so politely did for you when you decided that you fancied little miss Weasley,” Lorcan sneered. He didn’t realise what that implied about him and Luna until he said it but, thankfully, no-one around him seemed to either.

Theo let out a snort of laughter, sending pumpkin juice flying across the table which Lorcan quickly vanished, while Blaise looked like a deer in headlights, eyes darting around for someone to save him from Lorcan’s barbs.

That saviour didn’t come, and so he instead looked down and began eating, looking defeated. Lorcan smirked, knowing that he had won, and asked for Theo to pass him the bacon. He usually only ate at breakfast, but what a resplendent breakfast it was, as he put together a bacon butty and deposited some sausages on his plate.

He pretended not to notice when Luna pilfered one of his sausages, instead attacking his sandwich with reckless abandon. It was quite fun to do that when the other Slytherins were here, as they always seemed torn between wanting to reprimand his poor table manners and not wanting him to hex them.

Theo knew, of course, and no longer rose to the bait, but he could see Blaise’s faint expression of disgust as the other boy meekly chewed at his toast.

His good mood was cut unfortunately short when someone cleared their throat behind him. Turning around, he was met with Draco, a slight scowl on his face, tapping his foot expectantly, with his lackeys, Crabbe and Goyle, standing behind them.

“There appears to be someone in my seat,” he said haughtily. Lorcan fought not to roll his eyes. That did no good with Draco, you had to speak to him in terms he understood - which meant that you had to be just as snobby as he was.

“My apologies, but there’s been a change to the seating arrangements. Feel free to take one of the free seats,” Lorcan drawled, smiling slightly as Draco’s scowl deepened. The blonde knew when he’d been outplayed, however, as he reluctantly took the seat next to Luna’s, with Crabbe and Goyle taking the seats opposite and next to him respectively. 

He didn’t miss Luna shifting closer to him on the bench as Draco sat down, but decided to push it aside for now. She probably just didn’t want Draco sitting next to her after he had probed about her mother yester- no, the day before yesterday. He realised with a jolt that he had, in fact, missed an entire day, and wondered what he had missed out on.

“I didn’t miss anything interesting yesterday, did I?” he asked, speaking to no-one in particular. Draco shifted uncomfortably at the question, and Luna moved further along the bench, even closer to Lorcan. Something had definitely happened there, and he had a feeling it wasn’t anything good, but now was not the time to ask. Instead, he turned his gaze onto Theo, looking expectantly at him. 

“Not really. Potter got himself another detention with Umbridge, but that’s par for the course. Flitwick was lamenting the loss of his most studious pupil, while McGonagall seemed glad to be shot of you. I’ll never understand how you can get straight O’s in Defence and Charms, but barely scrape an A in Transfig,” Theo said, the conversation coming easily to him despite the stilted silence of the rest of their group.

Lorcan let out his bark-like laugh which he barely even registered as being forced anymore, taking a bite out of his last sausage.

“Well, that’s easy, isn’t it? Defence and Charms are interesting, Transfig is dead boring. I wouldn’t even bother learning it at all if it weren’t as useful as it is, but I’m never going to care about most of the stuff we learn in that lesson,” Lorcan replied, finishing his sausage. 

Theo just nodded, looking amused, as he finished a slice of toast. The silence between the two of them was companionable, but with the rest of the table it was stifled. The cause for this between himself and Blaise was obvious, and he could pick up the pieces with what was going on with Draco, but he was at a loss as to why the silence between himself and Luna felt so unnatural.

It probably had something to do with whatever had happened between her and Draco, but he had no idea what that was, which was quite a conundrum, wasn’t it? He looked at his watch; 7:13AM. It was still rather early to leave for lessons, but he was getting impatient. Something was wrong, and he needed to figure out what it was.

“I fancy a walk. Anyone want to come with me?” he asked, getting to his feet. As he had expected, Luna was the only one who responded.

“That sounds lovely,” she said, getting to her feet a little too eagerly. There were some suspicious looks from the other Slytherins, but Lorcan ignored them as he nodded at Luna before turning on his heel to leave. 

There was quite a crowd outside the Great Hall, but Lorcan quickly picked his way through them, making sure Luna was close behind. Once he had escaped them, he left the castle, making his way to a rock he had found in his first year.

It dipped in the middle, creating a natural seat of sorts, and provided an excellent view of the lake, and the forest behind it. He figured it would make a nice place to talk about whatever Malfoy had done, and he climbed onto it, motioning for Luna to join him.

“Do you want to talk about what happened with you and Malfoy?” he asked once she had nestled into the divot of the rock. When he didn’t receive a response, he looked at her and saw that she was staring straight forward, eyes glazed over as though she were elsewhere. Luna often looked vacant, but she was always sharp and acutely aware of what was going on around her behind that mask. This was something different, and Lorcan looked away, deciding it best to give her some time.

“I’m not sure. I think I would quite like to spend some time with you here, though. It was rather lonely without you yesterday,” was her eventual response. Lorcan just nodded, giving no indication of the gut-wrenching feeling those words had instilled within him.

She had felt lonely without him. That was novel, and Lorcan wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. It was strange, but he couldn’t recall anyone ever missing his presence, at least not enough to tell him about it.

Uncle Sylas had certainly never cared to go looking for him whenever he made one of his foolhardy attempts to escape from home; it was only bad luck on Lorcan’s behalf that he found himself back where he started every single time. Even once he had started Hogwarts, no-one seemed to miss him when he was gone. Sure, they would ask him about his summer holidays on the Hogwarts Express every September, but he never heard the words ‘I missed you,’ leave their mouths, and their general sentiments didn’t seem to convey the message either.

He briefly questioned how dire Luna’s social life was for his presence to be missed, but then he felt a fool for needing to ask at all. He knew the answer, had known it since that first meeting in the Hog’s Head; Luna had absolutely no-one, or at least no-one dependable, if the grand total of zero times he had seen her hanging out with Ginny was anything to go by.

Considering that the Lovegoods and the Weasleys were neighbours, he wondered how much of Ginny and Luna’s friendship was organic, and how much had been parents pushing their children together for need of their kids having a friend outside of the family. It was uncomfortable to think about, but Lorcan was forced to consider the very serious possibility that he had been the first person to seek her out of his own volition in all her fourteen years of life.

“I’m sorry my absence had such an impact on you. You deserve better company than me,” he said sincerely, not tearing his eyes away from the view in front of him. The lake was beautiful in the morning, with the rising sun reflecting on its shimmering, mirror-like surface.

Luna hummed at his words, but it sounded discontented, as though she disagreed with Lorcan but didn’t quite have a response planned out yet. He waited, still looking out at the lake. Patience was no virtue in his eyes, but Lorcan knew he would always have time for Luna. No matter how long she took to respond to something, she always had the right response, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“I don’t think that’s true. If you were bad company, I don’t think you would drive the Nargles away like you do. They fear people of strong character, you see,” she explained, although her voice sounded far away, as though she were lost in thought.

Lorcan just nodded. He didn’t think that not being a bully like the rest of her housemates was a particularly high bar to set for good company, but he supposed he could concede her point.

However, she wasn’t quite done. The sound of her clothes scraping along the rough surface of the stone was stark in the quiet morning air, and Luna was suddenly on her side, looking at Lorcan with her owl-like eyes. He wasn’t facing her, but he could feel her gaze, and decided to meet it, turning on his own side to look at her.

Although they had been completely on their own before, the way they were now facing each other and each other only was new, and made it feel like a more private, more intimate moment than it had been only a few seconds before.

“You’re not like other people, Lorcan. You understand me, in a way no-one else ever has. When I talk about Nargles and Wrackspurts and things like that, people either feel sorry for me or they laugh at me. You don’t do either of those things. You understand what I really mean, even if I sometimes don’t. I couldn’t ask for better company than you.”

Lorcan tried.

In that moment, he tried so hard to stop the flood of emotions that threatened to wrench open his heart. This isn’t you, a little voice in his head hissed. You cannot allow yourself to fall down this rabbit hole again. There will never be another her , and you cannot pretend that there will be . 

He wanted to believe that, he really did.

It had been so long since he had really cared for anyone, so, so very long. He had almost forgotten what it felt like, but it was all coming rushing back to him now, threatening to overwhelm him. For years, he had told himself that he would never care like that again. He would be strong, and he would prevent those feelings from ever forming, because they only caused you pain in the end.

He wondered how he had ever fooled himself into believing that. Luna had made him care, ever since he had first met her in the Hog’s Head. He should have known it was coming, but her words had sliced him open as effectively as if she had cast Eviscerus on him, making wounds he had thought would never bleed again run afresh.

All of those thoughts spun through his head before he even had a chance to process them, and in a split-second whatever resolve he had built up in all those years was broken. 

He reached out for Luna, as he had once reached out for someone else, a long, long time ago. She seemed to have some inkling as to what was going on, as she allowed herself to be pulled into Lorcan’s arms, when she should have surely resisted.

It wasn’t the same as it had been, not really. Lorcan had been a lot smaller then, not the skeletal lamppost of a young man he had grown into, and the person he had reached out to had almost been the same size as him, rather than a head and a half shorter. Yet, it felt exactly the same, as though they were meeting again after a decade apart.

She settled naturally into his embrace, as though this was something she had been waiting for as long as he had been. Perhaps it was; Lorcan had no way of telling. What he could tell was that the way her head was tucked under his chin, how his arms enveloped her slight frame, how her hands grasped tightly onto his skeletal shoulder-blades as though he might fly away, was all exactly how it should have been. This was right, he could feel it. It was what he had been missing for so long, and he wasn’t going to let it go again for all the world.

He had been trying to pull away for too long, and the closer he had gotten, the more fiercely he had resisted. Subconsciously, he had known this was coming, and had been trying to protest it in all the ways he knew how. Doubt the DA, which had been the reason for his meeting Luna in the first place. Push away from the change by diving headfirst into routine, make it a ritual.

He did all this to stop what he knew was coming, but he had never resisted Luna herself, because he knew he could not. It was what was right, and his protesting could only delay it for so long. It was here now, and if he had his way it would be here to stay.

“The things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect,” Luna whispered, her voice so quiet that Lorcan would have been the only one to hear it even if they were surrounded by a crowd. “My mum told me that. I think she was right.”

Lorcan let out a hum of assent, still clutching Luna close to him. He was vaguely aware that this was the first time that Luna had referred to her mother as ‘mum’ rather than ‘mummy,’ but that wasn’t on the forefront of his mind. Instead, he was thinking about how that adage was eerily similar to one he had heard before, which he had suppressed deep within his mind. 

“The ones that loved us may be gone, but they never truly leave us,” Lorcan recited, his breath hitching slightly. Dumbledore had told him that, during his first year. He had buried it within his mind because he didn’t like to think about Dumbledore, knowing what the man had done, but he could hardly avoid it with what Luna had just said.

With a cold shiver, he realised that Luna had lost someone, too, and that he had just filled their place for her. He wondered who it was, but in his heart of hearts, he already knew, he just didn’t want to face it. However, Luna had other ideas.

“My mum died when I was nine, you know,” she said. Her voice was airy, but not as it usually was. It sounded forced, as though she was holding back her true emotions. Lorcan gave her a gentle squeeze to let her know that it was okay, even though it wasn’t.

“She liked to experiment, and one day it- it went badly wrong. I saw it all. Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for her to come back, like she said she would. You weren’t the way I expected her to come back, but you’re very much like her. She used to hold me like this, you know,” she ploughed on, every word clawing at Lorcan’s heart.

He didn’t even consider how bloody weird it was that he, bloody Lorcan O’Leary of all people, reminded Luna of her mother. If anyone else had told him that, he would have laughed at them, but it was Luna, so he didn’t doubt it for a second. Instead, he just held her tighter still, gently rubbing a circle into her back with one hand and kneading his fingers through her hair with the other.

He didn’t know what to say - he hadn’t been old enough to say much of worth last time he was in this situation - but he remembered well enough what you were supposed to do. Be there, be gentle, and be still. Let them know that you weren’t going anywhere, and that it’s going to be okay.

But you weren’t there, were you? A nasty little voice in the back of his head told him. It wasn’t okay last time, what makes you think it’ll be any different this time?

He didn’t have an answer for that, and so he just ignored it, pushing it to the side for later. Instead, he focused on what was in front of him, which, at present, was Luna. Her shaky breathing had calmed slightly now, but he sensed there was still something on her mind. He didn’t press her for it, though. That never worked with Luna. If she wasn’t allowed to say something on her own terms then she would never say it all. They could have been there for a minute, or they could have been there for a year. Lorcan wouldn’t have known the difference; the silence just seemed to extend on into infinity, and he let himself get lost in it, just him and Luna.

“Who came back to you today?” was the question she finally asked. Lorcan blinked, taking a moment to process that. It hadn’t been what he was expecting, but it never was with Luna. He always felt like he was on the back foot when he spoke with her, but that was something he liked about her. It was rather boring to always be a step ahead in a conversation, which he almost always was with other people. 

“Was it your sister?” she pressed, causing Lorcan’s breath to hitch. Of course, people knew about his sister, but they didn’t know about his sister. No-one did, as far as he knew, except for himself, and he had always planned to keep that to himself. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure.

“People always seem to forget about her,” he replied, not answering the question, which was as good as a confirmation. He heard a sharp intake of breath frome Luna, and wondered what had prompted that. Of course, Luna was already a step ahead of him.

“People- people forget about mummy, too. Daddy’s the only one who ever really mentions her, but it’s- I don’t think he realises, sometimes, that she isn’t here anymore,” she stammered, her voice finally losing the cool composure which Lorcan had always known it to have. Lorcan swallowed, feeling his Adam's apple bob in his throat and press against Luna’s forehead.

“Oh, Luna,” he whispered, still kneading his fingers through her hair. He had no idea what to say, but it didn’t seem like Luna was expecting him to say anything at all. She just nuzzled further into the space under Lorcan’s chin, sniffling as she did so.

There was silence for quite some time, as Luna let out the occasional, stifled sob. Lorcan just let her get it all out, remaining as he was while occasionally whispering meaningless assurances, like they sometimes did in books.

Eventually, she stopped crying, being reduced to the occasional hiccup as she still clung to Lorcan desperately like a lifeline. However, even as she was winding down, Lorcan could still sense there was something unsaid hanging in the air. He waited, and waited some more, and then it finally came.

“Draco said some very unkind things about my family yesterday. That boy who you’re friends with - Nat, is it? Nit-”

“Nott,” Lorcan interrupted. “Theo Nott. Sorry, carry on.”

“Yes, Theo, that’s what you call him. He introduced himself as Nott. He told me that Draco didn’t mean it, and he’d been acting strange all day after getting a letter from his father, but I still think that's a bad excuse, don’t you? Being upset is no reason to be unkind.”

Lorcan was going to gut Malfoy like a pig when he got back to the Slytherin common room. Whatever he had said, it was obviously something vile. Luna never spoke badly about anyone if she could help it - she sometimes complained about her ‘Nargles,’ but she never had anything negative to say about one person in particular. 

He’d have to read that letter, as well. Malfoy usually had enough sense not to provoke people who hadn’t committed some direct slight upon him, such as being a Gryffindor or a muggle-born. Lorcan wondered what the older Malfoy could have said to turn his son against Luna, but he doubted it was anything he was going to be very pleased to read.

“Yes, it is a bad excuse,” he affirmed, ignoring that it was one that he used often. “Do you want me to find out why he was acting like that for you? Family is very important to Draco, I can’t imagine him treating you like that for no reason, even if it’s not a very good one.”

Luna made a hum of affirmation, so Lorcan began to plan out how his interrogation was going to go in his head. Well, that was what he was going to do before the bell in the clock-tower rang, letting them know that they’d spent three quarters of an hour out there, sitting on a rock.

The sun was now much higher in the sky, and lessons were much closer to starting. Reluctantly, Lorcan relinquished his hold on Luna, bidding her goodbye and telling her that he would meet up with her again after lessons. In truth, he was rather glad to have escaped when he did, because Luna still hadn’t asked him about his sister, which was a very good thing in his books.

He still wasn’t sure what he was willing to tell Luna, or what he even thought about it himself. That memory had been under lock for quite some time, as it was just so painful to think about, and it was currently stinging him just the same as it had done when it was freshly formed. 

Therefore, he pushed it aside in favour of thinking about what he was going to do with Malfoy in Potions. Some sort of sabotage was in order, he thought, and it would do just as well if he could catch Blaise in the crossfire. 

With some half-baked idea about getting Malfoy to pair up with Blaise before adding something into their cauldron, his body set off to the dungeons, while his heart remained with Luna on that rock by the Black Lake. 

He really had gone soft, but perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing.