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Devil You Know
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2009
Fandom: Harry Potter
Spoilers/Timeframe: Deathly Hallows
Characters/Keywords: Draco, Luna.
Rating: PG
Summary: For Draco, the cellar is the lesser of two evils.
Notes: Written for Book Addict as part of the Support Stacie
author auction.
More fiction: http://fiction.deslea.com
Feedback: Love the stuff. deslea@deslea.com
"Luna," Draco asked one day, "what do people mean when they
say, 'Better the devil you know'?"
Luna was sitting cross-legged, half-turned away from him,
Ollivander's head against her shoulder. She was slow to answer,
and at first Draco thought she was ignoring him. That thought
brought up anger at her nerve, her insolence. She was, after all,
in his home.
But she wasn't ignoring him. She was gently easing Ollivander
off her, laying him down in the straw. The old man was weak, and
he barely stirred. That task done, Luna shifted on her haunches
and turned to face him.
"It's a Muggle expression," she said, and he regretted asking
already. "It means sometimes something bad is happening, but you
know what it looks like, so it's still better than the unknown
bad around the corner. A bit like fighting Nargles instead of
Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," she added helpfully. "The full quote
is, 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."
"I might have known it was a Muggle thing," Draco muttered,
already retreating. He pushed the tray of gruel towards her with
his foot.
"There was a lot to learn from Muggle studies," Luna said. "You
should have listened, Draco. Professor Burbage taught us a lot."
That brought up bad memories, and Draco stiffened. "Old bag,"
he sneered, remembering her hanging above their heads. His sneer
sounded fake, and his stomach felt like lead. "What do I care
about Muggles?"
"Not about them," Luna said gently, "about us. About hate.
About fearing that which isn't like us. No one does it as well as
the Muggles, Draco. Look up the Holocaust sometime."
"The Holocaust?" he asked. The word struck a chord – barest
shadow of trivia half-remembered.
She drew her cloak around her shoulders with a shiver. "Not
now. It's too close. Too close to all this."
He stared at her. Utterly mystified. Luna had always been
strange – but never afraid.
She seemed to notice the silence – she didn't always – and she
softened. "One day," she added kindly. "I'll tell you one day.
Over butterbeer. In a pub, in public. And no one will think
anything of it."
It occurred to Draco that Luna seemed utterly unaware of her
impeccable pureblood credentials. He could clean her up and bring
her home to Lucius and Narcissa, and they would praise his good
taste. At least until she opened her mouth.
"They'd think nothing of it now, if you at least had the sense
to pretend," he snapped. "You with your blonde hair and your pure
blood as far back as anyone can remember. What are you doing
sitting in this dungeon? Don't you want to survive it?"
There was sudden ferocity in his voice, because he wanted her
to survive it. Not because she was particularly special to him
outside of this time and place, although he indulged in the odd
(very odd!) fantasy about her when Bellatrix's darkness became
too much to bear.
No – it was simply because she was right. She was perfectly at
ease with her awkward and ill-fitting self, and he thought that
someone so right with her place in the world should live.
Which raised the interesting, and deeply discomforting question
of what should happen to people who had somehow gone all wrong.
Luna tossed her hair, a defiant gesture, oddly autocratic. Now
she was a dirty, teenaged version of his mother in braver days.
"I don't need to pretend," she snapped, just as ferocious as he.
"I'm happy where I am. I know my devil, and I will live and die
by it if I must. If I live, it is because we won. If I die, I
will be with my mother. Either way, I win. Can you say that of
yours, Draco?"
Draco was not so much stung by this as confused by it. He was
not stupid, but his worldview was one of assumed truths handed
down by others, never tested by his own logic. Even now, he
operated on a simple human horror of the monstrous, not yet
cemented into deep personal conviction. Knowing his demons and
choosing between them on his own terms was not yet within his
reach.
"My mother isn't dead," he answered finally. It was the easiest
answer. It latched onto her words while simultaneously saying
nothing.
Luna, no stranger to non-sequiturs, took it at face value. "But
she's afraid. And that's why you come down here. Because I look
like her, but I'm not afraid."
He stormed out on her then. It wasn't the first time. But he
believed it would be the last.
There was a hare dancing in the darkened cellar.
He hadn't been down here in weeks. He didn't bring the captives
their food anymore. He sent elves, and sometimes his mother went.
She would emerge, pale, but stronger than when she went down
there.
Sometimes he wondered what Luna said to her. He was afraid to
ask. Afraid to know what part of her mind Luna had penetrated
with her eerie, benign precision. It was a little like being a
prison guard to a well-intentioned scattergun psychic.
But Voldemort was vicious, Bellatrix was insane, and Snape was
terrifyingly closed and cold, and tonight all three of them were
upstairs. Had he been schooled in Muggle religion, he may have
called them the Unholy Trinity in the privacy of his mind.
Unschooled in Catholicism, he settled for the Unholy Trifecta.
Either way, he had to get away.
So he came downstairs. And that was when he saw the hare.
They were facing away from him, Luna sitting upright with
crossed legs, hands gently placed on her knees, meditatively.
Ollivander lay on his side in the straw. He was laughing – a weak
and laboured show of good humour. "How lovely, young lady. Thank
you for bringing an old man joy."
Luna said nothing, only sat there in silence, nodding to show
that she had heard. Ollivander's breathing evened and slowed. He
wasn't conscious much these days.
Luna kept the Patronus going, her head held high above her
slender shoulders. Watching it in concentration. Its yellow glow
cast warm light on her face.
Draco had never seen Luna's Patronus before. Her pure blood
must be strong, he thought, for her to cast one without a wand.
Maybe stronger than his. And it seemed to be everything that life
upstairs was not.
It was lively. Vibrant.
Free.
Crushing waves of simple, childish grief passed through him,
and he dropped down onto the stairs, crouching there, hugging his
knees like a toddler. He wanted things to be the way they were
before. He wanted his parents back. He wanted his home back. He
wanted to be stupidly proud of his blood and his kin and his
school house again. His eyes leaked, just a little, and he hated
them for it, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was
the violent shudders in his chest.
"You came back," she said, without turning around. "I wasn't
sure if you would."
Her voice seemed to warm him. Just enough for him to get
control of himself again.
"You're the devil I know," he said at last. A little
ungraciously.
If she detected his bitterness, she ignored it. "I'd want to be
warm, if it were me."
He was too deadly tired to argue with her. With an air of
resignation, he came and sat down beside her. Her Patronus really
did seem warm.
They sat there in silence for a while. He dreaded to think what
the Unholy Trifecta were cooking up upstairs.
"How do people stop hating?" he asked finally. He wasn't sure
who he meant – Bellatrix or Snape or his mother or maybe the
whole, doomed lot of them. "How do they stop being afraid?"
Luna answered with a question. "Why ask me?" She seemed
genuinely interested.
A myriad of answers occurred to him. Because she didn't hate?
Not even him, her captor? Because she wasn't afraid to die?
At last, he spoke the truth. The only truth that mattered.
"Because I don't have anyone else to ask."
That seemed to touch her. Luna always seemed a little detached
to him – a slightly odd observer of life. A very young, female
version of Dumbledore, perhaps.
But she wasn't detached now. She spoke with passion, and her
Patronus seemed to grow brighter as she spoke.
"By wanting the same things. By sitting here with me when we
both want to be warm. By fighting alongside the people we
disagree with because we both want to keep our families alive.
It's finding other things to have in common, Draco. It's choosing
the right path and looking for things – common things - to hold
us on that path."
His deepest fear tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop
it. "And what if it's too late?"
The ferocity left her face as quickly as it came. It was
replaced by simple, frank curiosity. "Why, it's never too late to
choose a side, Draco. Sometimes it's too late to choose it and
live, but it's never too late to choose."
"I don't want to die," he said in a low voice, with the air of
one sharing a shameful secret. "I don't want my family to die."
"Neither do I," Luna said with equanimity that he believed was
only half forced. "But there are worse things."
"Worse things?"
"Evil is worse," she said with certainty. "And you already know
evil."
You don't know the half of it, he thought. "I thought you said
the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."
Luna shrugged. "Exception proves the rule, Draco."
She took his hand, and the hare danced, and Draco felt better
for a while.
END