wings, shared fears
"How are you not afraid?" He asks her. He can't imagine not being afraid of something, or a whole lot of somethings: of pain, torture, death, losing those he cares about. He's afraid that by the time the war is over, he'll be all alone.
Her smile is sweet, innocent, breathtaking. "I know if it gets too terrible, I can fly away."
"You don't have wings," he says scornfully.
"Everyone has wings, deep inside them." She draws wings with her fingers in the air, unbothered by his derision. He likes that about her. And he likes it when she teaches him another way to fly that night, with hands and lips and their whole bodies, a way that makes his body sing in flight.
But the night she stands on the astronomy tower, backed against the edge by Death Eaters, he is again afraid.
"Tell is where Potter is, or we'll torture it out of you, to death if we have to," his aunt snarls.
Bellatrix has been torturing her - Luna is already trembling from repeated uses of the Cruciatus. But her smile is just as beautiful, just as breathtaking.
And when she jumps to the edge of the railing, balances for a moment with her arms outspread, when she leaps out - he expects to see wings miraculously unfurl. Despite the impossibility, he trusts her when she says she can fly.
But then she falls.
She falls, and later, she is buried. Draco mourns her death, then hardens his heart. He tells himself that she lied, that people don't have wings and therefore can't possibly fly. He carries this hurt, this betrayal inside him for years, because the hurt is easier.
He watches his friends marry and grow old and die, leaving him behind one by one. Until one day he understands, leaning over the railing of a bridge and watching the water run underneath. He is old and weary, but he finally understands what she meant
Everyone has wings deep inside, and that day Draco stands on the railing of the bridge, unfurls his own wings, and leaps.
He knows she will catch him, when he sees her again. And then they will fly forever, on wings of light.