Work Text:
Love of My Life
Theodore Nott never returned to Hogwarts for his eighth year. He couldn’t bring himself to walk the halls. Couldn’t bear to stroll past the many corridors he had ducked into with her when they were just learning one another, nor the many alcoves he’d kissed her senseless in, his hands trailing along her barely-there curves. He didn’t relish the idea of hearing the ghost of her tinkling laughter around every corridor, the way he knew his heart would leap and then crash down into the pit of his stomach again when he inevitably realised she wasn’t there.
She would never be there again. The pain brought on by that revelation was unbearable and he coped by shoving it and the tears back into the metaphorical box he’d placed everything about her in.
Theo had heard all the consolations more times than he had ever asked to. So many times, in fact, that he could probably repeat them by rote if pressed to do so.
They were just so sorry for his loss. If only they’d known he’d been involved with the blood-trai—that nice girl, they might have been able to do something. She mustn’t have suffered if she hadn’t lingered on afterward.
They were all the same. Transparent in their disdain for the girl and her family, though they tried to hide their disgust behind jagged smiles and sharp words. It was always involved with and never bloody over the moon for her. They all stepped daintily edgewise around the word love , sealing their false consolations with china-smiles and avoiding the sincerity of his emotion as though it was contagious.
Who dared to love a blood-traitor in the midst of Voldemort’s war? Who dared to love at all?
Draco had been the one solace he had sought in the midst of it all, his best and longest friend. Shortly after the war, Draco visited Theo at Nott Manor, throwing himself into Theo’s arms and begging forgiveness. He’d weeped, something Theo had never seen Draco do before, but Theo’d been unable to respond, captivated as he was by the other boy’s hair.
It was just a shade too light, but the roaring of blood pounding in his ears drowned out all rational thought as he’d plunged backward into memories of familiar blonde hair streaming behind a wisp of a girl, her bubbly laughter following behind her as she ran through the fields of wildflowers that were so uncharacteristic of the fields of the Scottish highlands in the late fall. But she’d looked so at home in the tumbling flora that he’d had to stop and the breath that had been stolen from him at her sheer, unadulterated beauty and joy at the simplicity of life.
She’d turned around, a brilliant smile playing about her lips as she’d reached back for his hands, tangling her fingers in the space between his own before she’d whispered something about coming upon a blibbering humdinger’s nest.
Luna Lovegood.
He’d have followed her to the ends of the Earth, but she’d gone beyond the Veil, the one place he couldn’t reach her.
Theo would give anything to go back to that moment of innocent frivolity, to wrap her curls around his finger one last time, to tease her for the starry-eyed twinkle she fostered when she peered up at him.
If he had a time turner, everything would be different. He would rush back to the last moment they were together. He’d change it all. He’d take back the stupid argument and say something, anything, else. He wouldn’t have covered the fear in his shaking voice with a sneer as he wrenched away from her and spat at her to go back to the filthy Muggle-born she’d taken up as a friend.
Draco’s hands clutching his had woken him from the memory. He’d recoiled at the touch, his mind veering forcefully away at the small spark of warmth that travelled the length of his arm and coiled painfully around his lungs. He was far too broken, his heart still in minuscule shards lodged in his chest cavity, to pay it any mind now.
Draco knew. Everyone knew. Theo was in love with Luna Lovegood—and still Draco had done nothing to stop her from wasting away in the bowels of the Manor.
Theo left Draco standing in the foyer of Nott Manor and sequestered himself in his chambers, warding himself alone with his memories.
Love of my life, you've hurt me
You've broken my heart and now you leave me
Love of my life, can't you see?
Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me, because you don't know
What it means to me
Theo supposed his love story with her began the way any other adolescent love story began: steeped in misunderstandings, hallmarked by embarrassing amounts of angst, and sparked by some insignificant situation that encouraged the veritable landslide of emotions he’d been buried in by the sorrowful end of their ill-begotten time together.
He’d seen her about the castle—who hadn’t? Barefoot more often than not, even in the dead of winter, and an absent-minded smile always curled her lips upward.
Looney Luna Lovegood. What a character to behold.
He hadn’t truly seen her until he’d helped Draco root out Dumbledore’s Army for Umbridge. He’d wrestled her into submission, and for someone he’d deemed so flighty, she’d put up one helluva fight, nearly disarming him and landing several mean right hooks when he got too close.
After that, he started watching her. The way she nearly skipped to the Great Hall for meals, her absolutely ridiculous get-ups for Quidditch matches, all of it caught his eye.
It was, perhaps, the unflinchingly kind way she treated the Slytherins, even those that ridiculed her and had been instrumental in handing her over to Umbridge, that drew him to her. Luna treated everyone with the same graceful acceptance no matter who they were, and for the life of him, he couldn’t fathom how she was able to accept them so readily. Theo was curious, and he supposed that was the beginning of his undoing.
One late night in the library, he approached her, just before curfew, as she sat curled in a chair near the large windows. While he might have mocked her before, instead he observed the way her eyes danced over the brittle old pages, the small furrow between her brows that was begging to be smoothed out. His fingers itched with the desire to touch her, and something in that desire must have been palpable because her eyes darted upward and landed on his still figure.
Air lodged in his throat, Theo had forgotten how to breathe in the space of that moment, and if anyone had asked him later, he would have sworn she was able to stop time with her gaze. But then she’d tipped her head to the side toward the empty armchair adjacent to hers, and his stomach somersaulted, sending words tumbling forth unbidden.
“I just—I wanted to say sorry. For last year,” he stammered on, all suavity locked away with all the Play Wizard magazines he hoarded under his bed as he stumbled over his words like a firstie. “What I mean to say is that I'm sorry for allowing Umbridge to—”
“Did you know that philanged farskips often make us susceptible to the whims of others? I’ve suspicions that the Slytherin common room has an infestation.” She had leaned over the arm of the rickety old chair and whispered the bit of information conspiratorially.
His head spun at the shift in conversation, but she continued speaking to him, telling him about one imaginary creature after another. He sank into the chair, listening to the quiet lilt to her words, the way her voice seemed to caress each word, carefully considering their weight before floating through the air toward him.
He could have listened to her talk all evening, watching firelight flirt with the tips of her hair, casting them in a crimson glow. It was fitting, he’d thought, that the witch with such an incandescent glow of good about her would have a little fire in her soul. He wondered whether her magic would spark just so when riled up.
“Don’t you think?” Her question startled him, forcing him to tear his lingering gaze from the way her hair caressed the delicate length of her neck, and he swallowed, raising his eyebrows at her. “Oh, it seems as though you might have a Nargle infestation as well. There are ways to help that, you know?”
He smiled at her, his heartbeat a dull roar in his ear, and he asked her how for no reason other than to spend just a few more minutes in her presence.
“It’s quite simple, really.” She fingered the dull necklace she wore around her neck. “Butterbeer cork often does the trick. I just wear mine like this, and I haven’t had any trouble since.” She stared down at it thoughtfully for a few moments, and Theo studied her. He’d not been in her presence long, but he soon come to realise that the quiet moments tended to be more significant than the spoken moments. She finally looked back up and caught his gaze.
When she swung her legs down from the arm of the chair, he wasn’t sure what to make of it. His palms were sweaty, and he was sure everyone in the library had heard the way the air stuck in his throat. She approached him slowly, like he was an animal ready to run, and stopped just in front of his chair. “May I?” The question appeared to be a mere formality, as the witch had already swept the necklace over her head and leaned forward to drape it around his neck.
He locked gazes with her and swore he fell into her eyes. They were a cool blue, not icy though—he couldn’t imagine ever comparing someone so caring to something so cold. No, her gaze was the sky on a warm spring day, the expanse of an ocean on the horizon, fresh linen hung on a line. He could have gazed into her eyes for days had the harsh catch of his breath not embarrassed him, and he looked away.
Her fingers finally released the necklace, but his pulse jumped when she trailed her fingertips over his cheek, a barely there flash of electricity following in its wake. When he looked up again, she was folding herself into the worn chair again, peering back at him owlishly.
She blinked. “You’re much more than you let on, Theodore.”
The sudden rush of moisture in his gaze startled him. Theodore. No one had called him that since his mother—
He pushed the thought away and cleared his throat painfully before standing and tucking the bit of cork into the open neck of his oxford. He needed to get away, to think, but—
“You can stay for a while, you know? I don’t mind.” She peered up at him, and her brow furrowed. “Oh, I’ve interrupted a deep thought, haven’t I?” With that, Luna settled back into the chair and hummed to herself, getting lost in her book once more.
It was unnerving at first, how easily he sank into a friendship with the witch. She made him feel at ease in a way no one else had before. Beginning with her easy acceptance of his apology, it was remarkable how quickly and deeply their relationship grew.
She kissed him first.
On a dreary day in October, they were making a slow route around the Black Lake, and her eyes kept flitting over the swath of his lips as he explained something he had learned about in Arithmancy. She’d stopped and swooped in, raising onto her tiptoes and swiftly pressing her lips to his before she ducked away. They were both quiet for a moment before he lifted her chin upward with a single finger to peer down into her eyes.
“You had a—” Her words stalled as she searched for a creature, any creature, to name.
She hadn’t been able to come up with one and smiled, uncertainty in her eyes for the first time he could recall. A few moments of silence passed between them before he answered, his voice slightly gruffer than moments before. “Well, you should be sure that you got it—whatever it is.”
She’d wasted no time in sealing her lips to his once more.
The last words he’d spoken to her had been wrenched from his throat in anger. They were lounging against a tree— their tree, as he’d come to think of it, the one she’d kissed him beneath—with her head in his lap while she braided a crown of flowers together.
Luna was off on a tangent about some magical beast again, totally oblivious to the slipping lynchpin of inevitable war around them, and Theo lost his patience. The one time in their year of sneaking moments together, and this was the first time he’d ever even come close to frustration with her, but anxiety burned in his chest. Theo couldn’t keep watching the way she slipped into some faraway land to escape everything that was going on around them.
It scared him more than he liked to admit, so he snapped.
“And when they’re scared, the moon frog makes this—”
“Luna, enough . Why do you always do that? This is real . This war is happening. You can’t keep running away from everything just because it’s unpleasant. You don’t know the things they’re planning for— Merlin , for everyone that’s ever even entertained the thought of helping Scarhead and his pet Mudblood. You’re not safe .” He ran out of steam halfway through the speech, no real venom in the poisonous words he lobbed at her. His heart sank low in his chest when she deflated into herself.
She was silent, picking at the frayed edges of the sweater she so loved, the striped one that was soft under his fingertips, so well-loved that it was nearly falling apart at the seams. He’d tried to get her to replace it, but she’d refused as it was one of the last things she had of her mother’s, and—having lost his mother too—he’d dropped the fight. He instantly regretted his words.
When she finally looked up at him, pain lanced through him at the dejection etched so clearly in her expression. Tears pooled in her eyes. “They’re my friends. Harry. Hermione. The lot of them.” She straightened her shoulders. “I think we ought to say goodnight.”
The quiet strength in her words belied the tears in her eyes, but Theo knew she was serious. For as much as his friends mocked the girl, she was full of resolve and fiercely protective of her friends to the point of self-sacrifice. If it wasn’t for the breadth of her knowledge, he would have expected her to be in Gryffindor.
When she sat upright and placed the crown of grass next to him on the ground, he quickly rose, his heart speeding in double-time at the resignation in her expression. He reached for her hand with a quiet plea of her name, already regretting his harsh tone, but she stepped out of reach while turning her cheek to serenely face Hogwarts.
She stepped out from the cover of the tree, deliberately putting herself in sight should anyone look their way. She blinked, letting one tear escape before she looked back at him. “No, Theo. You’ve hurt me; perhaps it’s time you were honest with yourself.”
His jaw dropped open. Honest with himself? “Luna, what do you—”
She smiled at him, a half-hearted lilt of her lips, as she backed away. “Can’t you see? You’re scared for you, but this... you don’t know what all this means for me.” She gestured around with a wave of her hands. “They’re my friends. They need me.”
He reached for her hand once again, a terrible feeling of finality washing over him as she gripped his fingertips and squeezed once before whispering a quiet, “it’s okay—I still love you all the same.” He froze as still more tears slid down her cheeks, and she escaped into the night.
He never got a chance to say it back to her.
Love of my life, don't leave me
You've stolen my love, you now desert me
Love of my life, can't you see?
Bring it back, bring it back (back)
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know
What it means to me
Draco had been his solace during the early days of the war, when Luna had disappeared from the castle and no one could find her. He’d hidden in their dormitory and cried for hours over his lost love, at the ache in his chest that carried the sickening premonition that he’d never see her again.
And still, Draco had sat silently by his side for as long as he could, his quiet strength in the face of his own fear soothing Theo’s frayed nerves and aching heart until he could bear to breathe again. When he’d woken to Draco sleeping across from him and his hand still resting on his shoulder in comfort, a small piece of Theo’s shattered soul mended itself with the spark of magic that radiated outward from their brief contact.
And then the crest of the war had hit, slamming into their world like a tidal wave. Death Eaters swarmed all around them and deaths smattered on the front page of the Prophet every morning. Theo’s fear grew, and he cowered in dark corners whenever possible, chasing away her lingering laughter in his memories as he fought to survive.
Late one night, Draco had rushed into their dorm and reality shattered for Theo. Draco stumbled through the doorway, pale and covered in a sheen of sweat, and he collapsed at Theo’s feet, muttering feverishly that someone was in Hogwarts and that he’d be punished for disappointing them yet again. When Theo saw the small puddle of blood collecting beneath Draco’s prone form, he leapt into action.
Unable to comprehend his friend’s babble and frantic to help, Theo had rolled him over and cast a severing charm to get Draco’s shirt off of him as quickly as possible. He had pulled away the fabric while searching desperately for the wound that he was sure would mark the end of his friend’s life.
What he saw instead struck horror in his very core, and he shrank away from Draco as dread settled deep in the pit of his belly.
There, on Draco’s forearm, was the Mark. Black and inky, it stood out in harsh relief against Draco’s skin, and angry red gashes littered the sides of it, deep enough to draw dark blood to the surface.
Scratch marks where it looked like Draco had tried to claw the mark off. A quick glance at his bloodied fingers confirmed it.
When his gaze lifted to his friend’s barely conscious face, fear and grief mingled in their shared gaze. Draco’s whispered apologies, pleas for Theo not to leave him, and silent tears filled the tense silence between them as Theo cleaned and bandaged the bloody wounds.
Tucking Draco into bed, he thrashed fitfully, and Theo had stood at the dormitory window and allowed his anger and confusion to wash over him. He’d always thought Draco had been better than that, the more level-headed of the admittedly irrational pair, but Lucius’ influence on the young Malfoy heir was greater than Theo had imagined.
He couldn’t bear to witness losing someone else he loved to the war.
After quickly gathering his belongings into his trunk and scrawling a quick apology to Draco, Theo snuck into the headmaster’s office and Flooed to his family home in France.
For months, Theo wasted away within the manor. He only emerged long enough to find food. He refused to take the newspaper. It wasn’t until the crackle of spellwork over the countryside and the distance strains of music reached him that he realised the war was over.
He hadn’t been able to muster the energy for relief and had fallen back into the fitful slumber he had been woken from.
When his wards warned him of someone’s approach, he wasn’t surprised to find a haggard Draco Malfoy, hands shoved deep in his pockets, standing just outside the bedroom door. Swallowing the emotions that roiled within him, he accepted the wizard into his room with a hug, a wobbly smile on his face. All of the Death Eaters had been cast into Azkaban or presumed dead. Despite his misgivings, relief bloomed in his chest that his friend had somehow survived his stint in Azkaban while regret for turning away from his friend so suddenly settled like a stone in his chest.
His face drawn and wary, Draco pulled away. He said there was something he needed to do, that it was urgent and Theo needed to come as soon as possible. Theo’d known, then, what would await him.
They Apparated away from Nott Manor together, his hand clasped in Draco’s and landed with a thud outside the gilded gates of Nott Manor. Theo’s every step to the front door felt like a death sentence, dread rising up in his gut at the horrors he thought he might witness.
Nothing his mind conjured compared to what met him when he descended into the old cellar beneath the kitchens.
She looked so beautiful in death, so serene and peaceful that he’d have thought she was alive before him. The choked sob in his throat at seeing her so close to him, yet so very far from his reach.
Her ethereal form floated in front of him, and he almost didn’t dare to breathe lest she float away into the night. “Luna?” The word came out strangled around the knot in his throat, the unbelievable sorrow and hope so irrevocably intertwined that he thought he might asphyxiate on their immovability. He swallowed several times when the ghostly form whirled around and blinked at him.
“Oh, hello Theo. I’m quite sorry to have missed you. Death is terribly disorienting.” Her voice held the same lilting musicality to it that had drawn him to her in the beginning.
The pounding of his heart nearly drowned out her words, but he could have wept at stomach-dropping relief, sadness, anger, and a hundred other emotions that swept through him. It wasn’t fair for her to be here, to be trapped on this plane, but he was a selfish bastard for being glad to see her, to tell her he was sorry, to tell her he loved her.
Her head canted to the side as she observed him. “Oh, you’ve got quite the nargle infestation.”
His disbelieving laugh echoed around the cellar, and only the incorporeality of her form stopped him from sweeping her into his arms, from pressing a fevered kiss to her lips and apologizing again and again for his stupidity.
“Luna, I—”
But the spectre interrupted him again. “It’s quite alright, dear. I know.” And with that, her form faded away into the night.
Theo slumped to his knees, the bite of the rock beneath him all but forgotten as his breath left him in a huff, tears raining down his cheeks. Draco stood silent vigil behind him, and it was his friend’s silent presence that kept him anchored in place, kept him from falling deep into the chasm that his grief had opened in his chest.
When Draco’s hand landed on his shoulder, he turned his tear-filled eyes up to those of his best friend. Distantly, he realised he should have been shocked at the grief deep in his friend’s gaze, the desolation that radiated from him, but Theo was a selfish bastard and couldn’t face another’s pain in the wake of his own.
Instead, he simply whispered, “I loved her.”
Draco’s hand tightened on his shoulder; a tether, a promise: “I know. I’ve got you.”
Draco was taken away to Azkaban for his actions during the war before long. His last act as a free man was to change the wards on the manor to allow Theo in.
You will remember
When this is blown over
Everything's all by the way
When I grow older
I will be there at your side to remind you
How I still love you (I still love you)
When Draco returned to the Manor months later, he was a changed man. Volatile. A little distant. He didn’t say a word when he discovered that Theo had moved most of his belongings into the east wing, the room closest to the kitchens and the entry to the cellar. The Manor was, after all, the only place Theo could communicate with Luna.
And still Luna floated within the ghostly realm, her joy radiant every time Theo descended the stairs.
“Theo! I’ve just told Malfoy this morning; the nargle infestation seems to be clearing.” She beamed at him from where she hovered cross-legged just inches above the ground.
He ignored the fist winding itself in his chest with a forced grimace that he hoped landed somewhere in the passable smile range. “Draco has spent quite a lot of time on renovations, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”
The girl hummed, an absent look crossing her face as Theo studied her. Not for the first time, he marvelled at her beauty. Her innocence and the thrall she held him in. So many had underestimated her, but Theo knew she was worth far more than her weight in gold.
When she looked up at him, Theo startled at the longing on her face, the lines etched into her forehead. Luna held her hand up to the small slant of light streaming through a dingy window, one of the few parts of the Manor that Narcissa hadn’t kept ridiculously clean. “I miss it, you know.”
Theo frowned at her. “Miss what?”
“The sunlight, the warmth of it on my skin. It always kept away the Wrackspurts.” Her blue eyes peered wistfully into the light, squinting in memory of the brightness. “It’s always so cold here.”
Theo’s heart clenched painfully in his chest. “Why are you here, Luna?”
All traces of the girl’s sorrow drained from her face, and his breath caught in his throat at the expression in her gaze. “I would think it’s rather obvious, wouldn’t you?”
As he fought around the sudden knot in his throat, he tried to find the right words. “Luna, I’ll be okay. You can go.”
Her wistful smile turned teary, and she began to fade away again, going wherever it was she went when she wasn’t lurking in the cellars of the Manor. “I know, dear. It'll all blow over; not much longer now.”
Theo retired to his suite, his body weary from the exhaustion of sitting on the concrete floor of the drafty manor. It seemed no matter how the Malfoys had tried, the belly of the house still carried the foreboding chill within it that marked the gruesome events that occurred there. He flopped down on his four-poster bed and stared up at the ceiling.
There was so much he wished to tell her, but every time he was near her, the words tangled into a ball in his mouth and he couldn’t force them out. And yet still he was content to sit in her presence as closely as could allow himself to without shattering the allusion that she was still there.
He wanted to tell her— needed to tell her—that he still loved her. Had always loved her but had been too prideful, too stupid to tell her, and his fear had taken his mouth hostage and forced terrible words out at her lest he slip into vulnerability.
At the height of the war tensions, he couldn’t have handled what she might have said, the rejection he was sure that he would have faced at the time.
He couldn’t bring himself to admit that she might have loved him too.
That she might still love him and that is what kept her tethered to this realm.
He was so lost in thought, his pain leaking from the corners of his eyes in the privacy of his shadow-cast room that he didn’t hear the quiet crack of Apparition or the pitter patter of tiny elven feet until Mipsy hovered over him.
“Master Theo, Master Draco has summoned you for dinner.” The little elf looked warily down at him, likely remembering the fits of rage he’d flown into throughout his tenure at the Manor.
Theo kept his gaze on the ceiling, tracing the crown moulding in an attempt to stave off the wave of emotion still threatening to crest and take him under. “Mipsy, will you please tell Master Draco to piss off?”
The squeaking hinges of his door sounded, along with an arrogant drawl. “Master Draco has heard your request and gallantly declines.”
Theo scoffed, rolling to his side lest his friend saw the puffy skin that was his perpetual adornment now.
Draco crossed the room and sat at the edge of the bed, silent for a moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was sharp, and Theo fought the urge to yell at his friend. “It’s time, Theo. You’ve got to let her go.”
Anger coiled around Theo’s spine, igniting deep in his gut as he forced a calming breath in, holding it for a moment before exhaling out his mouth. Just like Luna had taught him. “I believe that I am capable of judging when to end my mourning period. Or have you become an expert in my grief as well as your own?”
Draco swore under his breath, and for the first time in months, Theo allowed himself a small grin in victory. “Mate, you’re wasting away. I don’t have to be an expert in grief or Lovegood to know that this isn’t what she would want for you.”
Theo’s tentative hold on his anger snapped, and he shot up in bed and faced his friend. “You don’t get to fucking speak for her. Not when it’s your house she fucking died in. Not when you watched and didn’t do anything.” A sob caught in his chest. “And she was taken away from me in an instant.”
Sorrow settled in Draco’s gaze, and his shoulders curled inward. With a defeated sigh, Draco knit his fingers together. “I’ve said that I’m sorry countless times. You know as well as I do that He—”
Theo’s humourless laugh interrupted him as he stood from the bed and rounded the end to tower over Draco. “Yes, that Voldemort would have killed your mother had you intervened.” Draco flinched at the usage of the wizard’s name. “And yet you didn’t think to step in when your father murdered your own mother for daring to disobey him at the Battle of Hogwarts.”
Draco was up like a shot, his hands wrapping around Theo’s wrists and shoving him back against the chest of drawers beside the bed. Light bloomed behind Theo’s eyelids when his head cracked against the oak, and Draco’s breath gusted against his cheek in angry pants. Tears welled in the other man’s eyes as he snarled at Theo. “You don’t get to fucking talk about my mother like you have any idea what it was like. Like you didn’t go hide in France like a fucking coward.”
Thrashing against Draco’s hold on his wrists, Theo snarled, “At least I fucking came back. I tried. I fought for weeks trying to find Luna, and you—she was here , and you could have helped her. She was the love of my life. And you knew. But all you did was hide in daddy’s fortress, behind mommy’s ankles, and even that couldn’t protect you.”
Tears spilled down Draco’s cheeks. “Fuck you, mate.”
That same energy, the one he’d felt only twice before, roiled through Theo, and without a second thought for the repercussions, his lips crashed into Draco’s.
It was so different than kissing Luna. Where she was playful and exploratory, kissing Draco was what Theo imagined taming a dragon felt like: hot, feral, and dangerous. Their teeth clacked against one another, and soon Draco’s hands left his wrists to travel along the length of Theo’s torso. With their new freedom, his hands delved into Draco’s fine hair, deepening the kiss.
The kiss grew fevered, frantic, and Theo lost himself in it, taking as much as he could whilst giving in return. Fueled by anger and sorrow, he allowed himself just one moment to escape the web of despondency his mind had become.
When their tongues tangled once more and Draco ground his hips into Theo’s with a fevered moan, thought suddenly slammed back into Theo’s mind and he wrenched himself away.
His eyes blinked open, and the first thing he saw was the hair. For just a moment, joy exploded in his chest like a whizbang had been let loose within.
But the hair—
It was the wrong shade of blond.
In his panic, he locked eyes with Draco, and he saw a passion burning there that he was afraid to address. When he darted away from the man, he missed the lingering heat of the connection, the rough lines of Draco’s body, and, perhaps most shamefully, the heated warmth of Draco’s erection pressed against him.
Silence lingered in the air for a moment, and Draco cleared his throat. “Theo, I’m—”
“Don’t.” Emotion tightened the man’s throat, and he fled through the adjacent bathroom door, the bang of its closing punctuating his statement.
For days, Theo avoided the other man as much as he could. Guilt bloomed in his stomach every time he saw the flash of the blond hair down a hallway, on the terrace, weaving through the rose garden. He took his meals in his bedroom, ordering Mipsy to have his tray delivered at six on the dot every evening.
But still he visited Luna each night, basking in her presence and trying to find the words to apologise to her adequately.
She was floating in her usual spot, within the last rays of the day’s sunshine, when she spoke. “You’re awfully quiet today. Kneazle got your tongue?” A trace of her laughter coloured the words.
Theo thought before he spoke. “Last week… you said soon when I asked why you were still here. What did you mean?”
A wistful sigh met his question. “Isn’t that always one of life’s questions? When will we go?”
Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Theo looked at her. “That’s not what I mean. You said that you wouldn't be here much longer now. What did you mean?”
“I think you know what I meant.” Luna pulled at an ethereal thread hanging from her jeans, the same jeans that were splotched with the paint he’d teased her over endlessly. The jeans she’d said were her favourite. He wondered if she had died in them or just chosen them as her afterlife attire. “I needed you to see that you aren’t as alone as you think you are.”
Sweat leapt to life on his hands and his mind raced. She couldn’t know... could she? He opened his mouth to speak, but the lilting melody of his voice washed over him before he.
“He’s loved you for quite some time. I always wondered how you couldn’t see it.”
Love ? “Luna, who are you—”
An airy giggle escaped her as she stretched her hand into the sunlight once more. “Draco, dear. He’s quite the eloquent man when he speaks of his affections for you.”
Theo was stunned into silence. His affections ? Theo wasn’t aware that Draco had affections for anything other than the face he saw in the mirror when he primped each morning. But he could—
No, Theo wouldn’t allow himself the thought, forcing his mind away from remembering the searing kiss the two had shared, the electricity that he could still feel the ghost of wrapping around his bones. When he looked back up at Luna, an absent smile was spread across her face.
“We spoke at great length when he was supposed to torture me.” A beat of silence. “It’s okay. I want you to be happy.” She glanced around the cellar. “If he makes you happy, then you should be with him. I don’t want you to waste away down here.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The philanged farskips are getting to you again.”
After a moment, she continued. “It’s strange to be able to see you and not touch you. It hurts a bit, if I’m honest. Or, I imagine it would hurt.” Her smile was contemplative, but he allowed her the time to think. He didn’t care to think about how little time he had left with her, didn’t care that his minutes passed far faster than hers would—the minutes that would never pass. He was content to rest in her presence for the remaining time.
The words slipped out of his mouth unbidden, his back to the wall and her half-presence floating next to him. Tears rose in the corners of his eyes, and he looked anywhere but at her as he tried to blink them away. When he finally met her gaze, taking in her soft smile and soulful eyes, he hiccuped on a sob. Forcing the emotion away, he spoke. “But I still love you.”
Ghostly tears of her own slid down her cheeks, and it took everything in his power not to reach out and wipe them away. In a quiet whisper, she said “The way you made me feel… it was like a fresh cup of butterbeer on a cold day. Walking barefoot in my father’s fields.” She sniffled. “I love you too, Theo. I always will. Even from here. Even beyond the Veil.”
Tears ran unchecked down his cheeks, and he wished more than anything that he could gather her into his arms, kiss away her tears, and never let her go, but when he leaned forward, the cold brush of her incorporeal form swept through him and he shuddered. With a sad smile, he pulled away from her.
She spoke again. “You could love him, too, if you let yourself.”
Theo sniffled. “And if I don’t?”
Indignation flashed across her face, and Luna sniffed haughtily. Theo might have laughed if his chest didn’t feel as though it was rent with a great fissure. “Theodore Nott, I refuse to allow you to wallow in this cellar for the rest of your life.”
When he opened his mouth to protest, she continued. “Go, Theo. Learn what it means to love Draco. I’ll always be here.” She reached forward, and Theo braced himself for the cold touch of her ghostly palm.
Instead, warmth bloomed through his chest, and he felt the tiniest flicker of contact. He gasped, and his gaze shot to her face.
Luna beamed at him. “I’ll always be here,” she repeated. “Look for me in the sunlight and in the early morning fog. I’ll be there, waiting for you. And when you’ve loved enough, when you’ve seen enough and your soul has found its peace, come home to me.”
Theo nodded, unable to speak for the rush of blood in his ears, the sobs that tore from his throat as his hand snatched hers in what he knew to be his last contact with her in this life. “I will. For you, I’ll try.”
“Good.” She leaned away, already fading from his sight. With one last smile, she said, “I love you, Theodore Nott. Be kind to the pixies. They’ll show you the way.”
And then she was gone.
I still love you
Theo held another service for her. Not the same stuffy funeral that he had held before; he should have known that wasn’t what she would have wanted. No, this service was full of music, laughter, and light. Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had come, each thanking him for the proper celebration of their friend.
Neville Longbottom shook his hand, offering his condolences.
When Theo got up to speak, thanking everyone for their attendance, he’d looked out over the crowd and felt the familiar ache in his chest at the too-light blond hair that his eyes immediately snagged on.
But this time, that ache felt something like hope.
He started a charity in her name. The Lovegood Conservation. With the help of Rolf Scamander, renowned magizoologist, he worked to find the creatures that Luna had been so adamant existed.
And he found them. Every last one of them.
Nargles were near impossible to see, but he worked with the surviving Weasley twin to perfect Luna’s glasses that allowed him to see at microscopic levels. The blibbering humdingers liked to congregate around flowers, so like hummingbirds were they. And he was always kind to the pixies.
All of them and more he found, and he dedicated his mission to Luna’s memory. To the radiant smile he could still remember as he proved each of her theories correct.
And he loved again.
His start with Draco was rocky. It was complicated. They fought each other every step of the way, but Theo loved him harder.
When Draco finally broke down and confessed to Theo that he had loved him from the start, Theo had simply responded with a smile and “I know.”
Draco knew that there was no replacing Luna in Theo’s life, but he encouraged Theo’s love for the lost woman, Draco’s friend, while cultivating their own.
When they’d wed in the rose garden at Malfoy Manor, he felt the rays of the sun smiling down on him, and he knew that wherever she might be, Luna still smiled down on them. The shattered pieces of his soul knit back together piece by piece, and he sealed his marriage to Draco with a new hope in his heart.
Hope that this love, this life, was everything he wanted and more.
And while he couldn’t see her anymore, Theo knew that she waited for him beyond the Veil. He heard her voice in the wind through the willows and the soft trickle of the stream behind his and Draco’s cottage. He saw her in the subtle morning glow just before the sun crested the hills. He felt her touch in the gentle sunshine smiling down on his face, and he felt her quiet joy in the softly falling rain of a tranquil spring morning.
He taught his and Draco’s daughter her love for all creatures, her passion for finding them. And she lived on in their Luna Lyanna.
Luna had taught him what it meant to her, the absurdity of this life, and he’d loved her through it. She taught him to love again. To hope. To heal. And when it was time, he’d hurry back to her.
Oh, hurry back, hurry back
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know what it means to me
Love of my life
Love of my life
Ooh, eh (alright)