and reality sets in like dried cement.

(15 August 2013)

They arrive a little later than expected because of an incident at work, so Luna and her boys are already outside when they trudge up around the side of the house. Draco can't see the twins, but the sound of shouts and laughter from the gardens is like a spotlight indicating their location.

"How's Astoria?" Luna asks as soon as she sees them, her hands already pouring a second glass of wine. "They're in the rose garden, dear," she adds for Scorpius' benefit, and the ten-year-old runs off to find his cousins.

"Better. The tests came back negative – her heart's fine – so they're checking for alternative explanations now."

"That's a relief. And you?"

"Same. Father's looking healthier, and he's starting to accept things."

"He's accepting that you aren't Lord Malfoy?" Luna asks, eyeing him disbelievingly. Draco's been running the estate alongside her – she has little to no real interest in it, while he was raised for it – but she's still securely Lady Regent Malfoy, something that Draco has confessed he'd rather not revoke. It was a surprise when he first mentioned it to her, but his explanation of how he feels too much like his father when he runs official errands, and can only imagine how much that would increase if he were in charge of it in totality, warmed her. It still does; he constantly struggles with balancing his lifelong habit of idolising his father with his new appreciation for the severity of the man's faults, and every time he chooses the right thing over the Lucius Malfoy thing feels like another small victory in a war she's slowly but surely winning. His father, however, was furious when he found out that his son was being denied his birthright, declaring that it was a travesty and must be rectified. She didn't expect him to ever start capitulating, let alone so soon.

"Oh, no. He's still mad about that. Doesn't suspect you, but mad. It's my stance on it that he's starting to accept. He knows I couldn't have handled the attention and derision, and is starting to warm up to the idea of me playing second fiddle while the family gets back on its feet. He also believes that neither Lorcan nor Lysander have any interest in succeeding you in the role, and so that it will revert back to Scorpius once he's seventeen. Especially given…" His voice cuts off, and he hopes she'll ignore the unfinished sentence. It's been a while since the event, but he knows she's not fully over it yet, even if she won't care what Lucius Malfoy or the Wizengamot think about it.

"Given Rolf's 'indiscretion'?" It doesn't hurt nearly as much anymore. At first it had felt like her idyllic world had been an illusion weaved by pixies and now slowly unpicked by them, but the new world she was faced with isn't feeling so glum anymore. Rolf's job means he's frequently out of the country, so she's well and truly had space to deal with what he did and move on. Yet, despite his wandering everything, her ex-husband is set on still being as present in the boys' lives as his job allows, removing any guilt she might have towards the influence on them. They're smart boys, having inherited her aptitude for mindfulness, and it's not like he'd seen them all that much more frequently before the divorce, imagines that it would have been different if her life weren't so tied down here. Rolf's interest in naturology, something she would have done if she'd had the chance, had been what had drawn her to him, but it was also one of the main forces in tearing them apart. If she had been able to travel with him…

No, she thinks. My being here while he was there gave him the opportunity and conditions to cheat, but they weren't the main or only factors. He might have done it otherwise, or he might have stayed closer to home. It's not my fault, or my responsibilities' fault. I can't keep looking back like this.

"Yeah. He thinks that the Wizengamot would lean towards Scorpius over either of your boys because he'll have been raised with traditional values, or some hogwash like that."

"Hmm."

"So, yeah, he feels that I'll do my time for the family, hiding in the background and regaining respectability, until the innocent child who wasn't even alive back then is of age and can take over directing the estate."

"Do you agree with him?"

"Not in the way that he means, but he's not the only one who thinks that Scorp's going to be fixing the direction our family's gone in."

"You've had a hand in that too, you know."

"I do. It's just… Scorpius is innocent of all of that. He knows a bit about it, enough to know he's not interested in it, but he has no idea of the extent of it, and he probably never will. I might be changing myself, and changing things, but he's the one with the completely blank slate."

"Don't we, in a way, always have a blank slate?"

"Not with other people."

"Well, no. They remember things and have expectations, good or bad. But do they really matter?"

"Some people do," Draco says, watching as the three boys run out of the rose garden, heading for a huge mound of mulch Luna bought to plant fruit trees in. "But I get what you're saying. The people who judge you don't."

"Yes. And each second is new. People change their minds like the wind; they might keep going as they are, but they just as easily might start blowing in the other direction. Sometimes it's hard to change, sometimes it's incredibly easy. I used to bite my nails out of habit and because I didn't see why I shouldn't. Then, one day, I decided I wanted them long. I haven't slipped up since, and if you look at my nails now you can't even tell that I used to bite them." She displays her nails, all poking up above the top of her fingertips, to him as evidence of her point, and he has to admit that you really can't tell. "Things still linger – what you've agreed to, what you've said… Things do still impact. But that doesn't mean you can't start afresh, reinvent yourself, keep inventing yourself. You don't need to be a child for that luxury."

"Thanks, Luna. I know that; it's just hard with Father back at the manor. If I tell him where I stand now, he'll retaliate somehow, but then being around him makes me feel like I'm sixteen again."

He knows his slate will never be completely clean, the faint remnants of past chalk marks displayed like scars. Society will never see him as completely innocent of his actions as a teenager. His father will always see him as a pawn who, while demanding protection, must be moved to the opposite side of the board and made into a queen. His mother will constantly see him as the boy who she didn't have the resources to help. Still, his wife sees him as a man worth marrying, and his son sees him as the hero who can fix anything, and his cousin sees him as a man with the potential to make his own choices. And he knows that he needs to do whatever he has to in order to keep seeing himself as someone who can and must chose his own way.

A/N: So, the original prompt was:

'Characters are best friends as children, then move away (or something) and forget, they reunite become friends then partners - they find out about their childhood friendship in a sentimental way later.'

Probably self-evident now, but I took some liberties in changing the nature of their relationship and loosening the sense in which they 'forget' and 'find out'. Again, if you'd like to write a fill for the prompt, please let me know and I'll link the others to it as well.

Also, in case anyone's interested, the reasons behind this interpretation of Luna are:

- purebloods are known to be interrelated, and Draco and Luna both share some recessive phenotypes, so it's likely that they are especially closely related;

- we have the Black family tree, and if Xenophilius and Lucius were brothers they'd share a last name, so the connection must be between Pandora and Lucius;

- given how recessive Draco's traits are and what we know about the phenotypes of the Blacks, it's incredibly unlikely for him to be Narcissa Malfoy's son;

- looking at the series from this perspective would both explain why the Weasley children don't seem to have met Luna before school and raise the question of why there's no acknowledgement of her heritage;

- a chapter my brother read (Chapter 66 of Odd Ideas by Rorschach's Blot – I haven't read any of it, but it sounds really interesting) had a line about how Malfoys don't have accidents, and the week of Luna's mother's death was a good one for her brother; and

- the aforementioned chapter also explored that, if this were all the case, Luna would be seen as a threat in any house, while the persona of Loony Lovegood would just be dismissed.