The Draught of New Life

"The only truth of youth is the grown-up consequences."

Miss Luna Lovegood was an inconvenience. And the Potions Master of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, one Mr. Draco Malfoy, hated seeing her. For one thing, she always picked the most asinine of meeting places—this time it was Madame Puddifoot's, the teashop in Hogsmeade—to meet. For another, her perfume, a honeyed mixture of petals and Earth and enchanted newsprint, ticked his nose and agitated the muscle pounding on the left side of his chest. Even worse, she never stopped talking, even when she had nothing to say.

And finally, she always insisted on seeing him. No, not just looking at him, but really seeing him. Ever since The War, he'd become as transparent as an invisibility cloak, a walking shadow that everyone went out of their way to avoid. Anyone else in Luna's shoes would have conducted their business with him and disappeared with a pocket full of galleons and little to no conversation, especially anyone who had spent months locked in the dungeon of Malfoy Manor.

But Luna had never been like anybody else. And until he found someone else who could supply him with a steady stock of BullBeetle horns and Laceye dragon wings and jewel-cave bat talons, she was an inconvenience…but a necessary one.

As he walked from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade, a lonely road on a Sunday morning when all the exhausted students were still abed and the citizens of the sleepy wizarding village hadn't yet fully stirred, her most recent letter weighted heavier than the handful of Galleons clinking alongside it in his pocket. See, whenever he wrote to her, it was a simple, cordial, professional affair.

Dear Miss Lovegood, I require more Bullbeetle horn for my work. Please reply with a meeting time and your price and I shall meet you for the exchange.

-Professor Malfoy.

But her letters? He could barely call them letters. Epistolary novels, more like. This one was no different from the others, but this one…This one he carried with him because as much as it was like the others, it wasn't. This was the letter that changed everything. And he was keen to get rid of it.

Dear Draco—

(She always began that way, despite his always addressing her as Lovegood and addressing himself as Professor Malfoy)

How good to hear from you again! I was wondering when your next owl would arrive. For awhile now, I was away in the wilds of the American swamps, recording a story for the latest edition of the Quibbler, and I was afraid I would miss your next letter. But upon arriving home, this letter was at the top of a small stack of post (Harry sends his regards, by the way!) and I was relieved to see that it had only been dated this morning.

Draco didn't believe for a moment that Harry Potter sent his regards to Draco, but he could imagine the Golden Boy being too polite to tell Luna that she was sharing letters with a monster and should stop doing so immediately.

In order to respond as quickly as possible to your inquiry, I'll save my stories of Louisiana and the strange wonders of the elusive Rugaroo's bayou enclave for our meeting. For now, let us say eight o'clock on Sunday morning in Madame Pudifoot's.

And then, as she always did, she turned the letter on him, as if they were true friends and she really cared to know how he was doing, as if this were a lifelong correspondence instead of a business transaction. She did this during their meetings, too. Always asking him about his day, about his life, about his students. It didn't matter to her that she normally received silence or one-word answers. She always turned her quill or her kind, glittering smile on him anyway.

How have you been since our last visit? And the new crop of First Years? Were they as terrified and obnoxious as we were back then? Not you, of course. You never let on that you were afraid of anything. Though I knew better. You may have been devilishly good at hiding it, but you were as scared as any of us. I can't wait to hear all about them…

Despite promising a quick letter, she went on for another three paragraphs, asking about his work and his mother, about his feelings on her latest exposé in The Quibbler. Chit-chat, really. She asked questions as though she expected him to write back, as though he was going to answer at their next meeting. Which, of course, he never did.

But her pen bled hope anyway. Sweet, poisonous hope.

A hope he fully intended to crush today.

Her sign-offs, though, were the real draw of the letter. If someone asked him why he ever bothered reading the letters to the end, he wouldn't have been able to give them an answer. Maybe he would have lied and given out some excuse or another about wanting a glimpse into the deranged mind, a peek into Loony Luna's firsthand accounts of her odd life.

But that wouldn't have been the truth, would it? If he really felt that way, he would have opened the letter as soon as he got it. He would have ripped the seal—a bright pink wax stamp decorated with the shape of a Snidget—the second he caught sight of her flourishing script in purple ink. Instead—somehow…don't ask him why or how—he always seemed to pocket her letters, only to discover them in his pocket again, later, while sitting before the fireplace in his office with a cup of his mother's famous Moontea blend in one hand. There, he would read her words with care, with eyes that drank in her sentences as hungrily as his lips drank in the tea. She always ended the letter the same way.

Your Friend,

Luna Lovegood.

Every time he read it, he scoffed. He rolled his eyes. They were not friends. And yet, he found himself leaving her letters on his desk—catching sight of one and re-reading a few lines here and there. For a while, longer than he should have, he was content to carry on his unexamined relationship with the letters and their author.

But then…A first year had to go and speak to him.

"Professor Malfoy!" The excitable boy, Terry Thropp, who cared about school entirely too much for a kid his age hugged his way to the front of the Potions classroom, struggling under the weight of the class' required and suggested reading.

"I was wondering about the most recent assignment, and—"

The boy's words and shuffling feet halted, a fact Draco only barely recognized by the sudden silence in the room. Still, he didn't look up from the letter on his desk, from the artist's rendering inked into the margins. A self-portrait of Luna on her first day of Hogwarts. She wasn't much of an artist, but she had gotten those wide, galaxy eyes of hers just right.

"What've you got there, sir?'

Draco was still staring into those drawn eyes, imagining the real ones, when he said without thinking: "A letter from a friend."

His stomach dropped. A friend? The word rang false and hollow in his ears. His every mental alarm bell rang out at the sound of it. He couldn't think of Luna Lovegood as a friend. He couldn't afford to think of anyone as a friend. He didn't deserve them. And no one deserved him as a friend. It was a terrible fate.

As the shops of Hogsmeade came into view, the crooked smokestack of Madame Puddifoot's called to him, beckoning with its thin wisps of pink smoke. Replaying the memory, he basked in his own anger at the words and how easily they slipped out of his mouth. Friend. No. This…Whatever it was…The letters, the conversations, the visits in Hogsmeade, it all had to end today. From this day forward, she would sell him rare ingredients. He would purchase them. And that would be that.

They were both better off that way.

The tea shop gleamed with the light wings of enchanted paper doves that performance feats of origami acrobatics, calling him closer, but he hesitated just outside of the door. Draco cringed at the memory of dates begging him to take them to this place, only to be disappointed when he decided they weren't worth the romance. What a cruel, horrible young man he'd been.

That was, perhaps, part of the reason he'd decided to teach at Hogwarts. It was his way of atoning for the person he'd been the first time around. He'd made the halls miserable and life hell for any student or teacher or ghost who'd crossed him. Now…he wanted to make lives better. He wanted to, in his small way, undo the damage he'd done as a reckless and lost boy.

It also didn't hurt that it removed him as far away from polite wizarding society as it was possible to be.

That, of course, reached right to the heart of why he couldn't even entertain the idea of a friendship with Luna. Whether walking down the streets of Hogsmeade or sitting at a table in the Leaky Cauldron, people sneered as they went past. They hissed insults. Or, they turned and walked in the other direction, clearing the streets until they'd inflicted complete isolation upon him.

He deserved that. He knew. But no one else did. Especially not someone like Luna Lovegood. Being his friend…being anything to him…meant being kicked out from society, forgotten or hated by the entire wizarding world. And he wouldn't allow that to happen to her.

"Draco!"

The sound of her voice—that lyrical, enchanting medley of syllables—was better at freezing him than any curse they taught at Hogwarts. He stopped, collected himself, then turned to face the source.

Luna Lovegood walked down the street towards him, her smile brighter than any fireworks that George Weasley could invent. She was as eccentrically attired and strange as ever. Besides her usual Radish earrings and wild, blonde hair, she sported oversized, mismatched rain boots, too-tall socks that kept slipping down past her knees, a skirt and sweater and several scarves, all with holes in. Only this time, she also carried a satchel over one arm instead of her usual small parcel of his requested ingredients. There was a skip in her step that seemed impossible with the rainboots, but he didn't care.

All he cared about was getting back to the hospital wing as soon as he returned to the castle. Clearly, there was something wrong with his heart. It kept skipping beats.

"Draco," she repeated his name. So bizarre. She was the only person in the world who didn't make it sound like a curse. "It's so good to see you. I'm sorry I'm late. I thought I saw a Trifflid specimen back there in the snow, but it ran away before I could properly observe it." She sighed a wistful sigh and motioned towards the door of the shop. "Madame Puddifoot's tea isn't especially good, but her décor is always spectacular, don't you think?"

He blinked. Already, his plan had gotten away from him. Trying to wrangle his wandering heart into submission, he fought to remember what he was here for. Not to lose himself in her pretty smile and her rippling conversation, but to end this.

"No," he said, his voice as firm as if he was dealing with a student. "I'd like my beetles now."

"Should we have some tea to go, then? A walk around Hogsmeade always makes me feel better and you seem a little flush. Aren't you cold?"

And there it was, that infuriatingly caring stare. She didn't ask the question to roll her eyes at him for leaving his scarf at home the morning after a heavy snowfall. She didn't ask it so she could make some snide remark about the Malfoy family having enough money to buy countless scarves. She didn't even ask it so she could tell him how cold she'd been in his family's dungeon while he was sleeping warmly in his own bed.

No. She asked him if he was cold because she wanted him to be warm. It was such a simple thing, but in a world of people who ignored him at best and wanted him dead at worst…it rattled the very bones holding him together.

She cared about him. And that was something Draco Malfoy simply couldn't abide.

"No. I'm not cold."

"Good. Then we'll go for a walk."

"Lu—Lovegood! I need my beetle horns. I'm here for them. Not for a walk."

"But I haven't even told you about the Rugaroo yet."

She hadn't stopped walking away from him, trusting him to follow, but he could hear the slight notes of hurt in her voice. The wind section of her orchestra of a voice played minor chords. But Draco held firm. He did not move to follow her. This had to end today.

"Lovegood. I need my things."

"Why?"

That's when she turned again, giving him access to the light flashing in her eyes.

"It's for my work," he answered, carefully.

"And what work is that? They're rare, so it can't be for your students." She asked it in that same dreamy voice of hers, the one he heard in his head, narrating, every time he read one of her letters, but the slight tilt of her head gave the whole game away. During their entire tenuous relationship, almost two years of these letters and these Hogsmeade conversations, he'd been loosening up slightly, slowly. And now, she thought she was going to get him to unravel.

"I don't really think that's any of your concern."

"It's not," she shrugged. "But I'd like to know. Just like I think you'd like to know about the Rugaroo. And the present I got you."

His heart tightened, contracting painfully in his chest.

A present? When was the last time someone thought about him enough to buy him a present? Or, better yet, when was the last time anyone had simply thought of him at all? Jogging slightly to catch up with her, he held tight control over his tone, lest she see straight through his frosty exterior to the curious man peering out from behind it.

"I didn't ask for anything," he muttered, defensively.

"Of course not," Luna said, halting on the street corner before the Spintwitches' annex to dig into the hand-stitched patchwork bag hanging at her side. "That's why it's a present."

His every defense mechanism told him to shut her down. To accio the beetles, dump some galleons on the ground and run off before she realized what he'd done. But…he couldn't do that. And more importantly, he wouldn't.

For the moment, he chose to indulge the impulse rather than to examine why he took deeper breaths now that he was close enough to smell that honey-Earth-petal perfume of hers or why he caught himself gazing at her reflection in the fogged window of Spintwitches'. With careful fingers trapped in fingerless gloves, she pulled out a small cloth and unwrapped it, revealing a small token on a chain. When she held it aloft for his inspection, he tried to focus on her face, which was framed by the token's loose twine necklace. She beamed, but he couldn't help a grimace tugging at his lips when he spotted the green, scaley token.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You wear it," she said, motioning for him to bend down so she could place it around his neck. He did not oblige. Instead, he reached out to grab the cord, expecting her to release it to his care.

She didn't. Instead, she used it to pull him into her, close enough to count the lines of her lips and the flecks of silver in her wide, wondering eyes.

"It's not got any magic. It's not even a real alligator claw. Muggles believe that it can keep you safe from all sorts of things. Some even think it can protect you from fear itself."

Too close. Her excited breath danced on his lips. Scoffing, Draco released the talisman with a roll of his eyes. "I don't need that. I'm not afraid of anything."

"Well, it doesn't actually work, obviously. It's just a superstition that muggles believe in. But still. I thought the sentiment would—"

That was the problem. He didn't want her sentiment. He didn't want her to think of him or feel for him at all. Reaching up, he adjusted his collar to protect his neck from a punishingly cold wind as it whipped through Hogsmeade's streets. "I won't need it once I have those Beetle horns, that is. So…if you don't mind?"

He extended his hand—a hand he'd made callous after the war with all of the back-breaking labor he could find and a dedication to erasing every last part of his privileged past—and tried to ignore the twinge of pain in his rib cage as her smile fell.

"Oh. Right. Of course."

With one easy motion, she slipped the token around her own neck and dug into her back once more, withdrawing a parcel. This time, when she offered him something, he took it.

"Thank you," he said, handing over the Galleons she'd asked for plus a few extra. He'd long suspected she was undercharging him for the goods she brought, and that ended now. "In future, let's do this exchange via the post."

The snow crunched under his boots as he started his journey back to the castle, throbbing in time with his heart. It's better this way, he reminded himself. It's better this way.

She was the one brightness in his life, and he had to give her up. It's better this way.

But then she spoke, stopping him dead. "Why would I do that?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why would I do any business with you in the post when you won't even write me back? We're friends, Draco—"

"We're not friends."

But when the declaration, the hiss, hung in the air, snapping between them like the cracking blow of a whip, it came out more like a plea. As if he was begging her for help rather than telling her how things would be.

"No. You're right." She offered a weak smile as she fingered the talisman around her neck, a smile that, Draco noted, looked even weaker in her window reflection. "And you were right not to take this. It doesn't even work." His breath chafed against his windpipe. Luna's smiles were so easy, so free. It wasn't hard to tell when one was fake. And this one was as fake as they came. He didn't even want to think about why she thought the talisman didn't work; he didn't want to think about what fears or harm it failed to protect her from. Not when he was certain he'd caused them. "Well, I hope the beetles help, Draco. Whatever you're doing with them. Good day."

Good day. Not goodbye. Even now, she still held out hope. Before he knew it, she was walking away, growing smaller and smaller until Draco couldn't bear the distance between them anymore.

She deserved to know.

"I need the Beetle horn for a potion I've been working with!"

She spun on her heel, blonde hair whipping around her face like a halo. Draco didn't realize how much he'd missed the light in her eyes until it returned after being gone for some time. Worse, her sudden smile lightened the stone tied around his heart.

"What's that? What are you trying to create?"

"A memory potion. I want to erase memories more safely than the Obliviate charm."

"Why would you want to create something like that?"

"Because I want to forget."

"Forget what?"

"…Everything."

And he meant it.

"But Draco—"

He held up a hand, effectively silencing her. For a moment, he stood there, trying to memorize everything about her. The dimple on the left side of her face. The perfect curl one of her locks of hair made on her chest. The blinding brightness in her eyes. In a few days, she would be gone from his memory forever, erased like a chalkboard under a stream of water. But for now, he wanted to singe her into his memory, wanted to hold onto her for as long as possible. If he was going to lose her tomorrow, he wanted nothing more than to cling to her today. He'd never burden her with his friendship or his love, but at least he could dream of what might have been. "Thank you for the beetles, Miss Lovegood. You have helped me more than you could know."

It was the closest he'd ever come to telling another person he loved them.

Draco didn't waste a moment. That night, he went back to the castle and began his work. The final stages of his experimentation took longer than he would have liked, but a few silent, letter-less weeks later, he'd finally perfected it. The Draught of New Life. One sip of the swirling silver liquid in his cauldron and it would all be gone. His past. His betrayals. His mistakes. Luna.

This had been his dream since he'd first gotten the Dark Mark—a way to start over. A way to forget. A way to become somebody else. But still, he put it off.

After the last day of winter lectures and exams, he would drink it. That was the promise he made to himself. It would make everything cleaner, easier. The students would return after the holiday to a new professor and he…well, he probably still wouldn't be welcome in polite wizarding society. He still wouldn't be worth anybody's forgiveness. But at least he wouldn't have to carry his sixteen-year-old self around his neck like a stone. At least he could forget, even if nobody else would.

Instead of hosting a lecture for the student's last day of class, he gave them a written examination. Their next professor could use these papers as a benchmark of their progress, could better gauge how to teach them. As he strolled around the room, checking in on the progress of the seventh years as they scribbled anxiously with their quills, he took in this room. The scent of cauldron smoke and the old wood of the desks filled his nose and—

Tap! Tap! Tap! Thirty heads snapped in the direction of the Potions classroom's one and only window. There, an owl waited, its bright, black eyes staring at Draco impatiently, as if he were causing him a great inconvenience by making him wait.

"Back to your work, students," he commanded. But still, a few eyes followed him to the window. He unlatched it, and the owl presented its goods—a thick letter with a familiar pink Snidget wax stamp and his name written in sprawling purple-inked cursive. His vision tunneled.

She'd written to him. After everything…she'd still written to him.

Draco pocketed the letter, determined to burn it once the day was done, in a final farewell to his old life. He tried to put it out of his mind until then.

Impossible. Because in his second class of the day, he received another. And another. An another. And another, another, another, until his desk was more sealed parchment envelope than it was desk.

His students, either too exhausted from the strain of the essays or too afraid of him to ask after the frilly letters, simply turned in their papers and left the room without complaint, turning the class over and over again until the final bell of the day had tolled and he was left alone—with his thoughts, with his Draught of New Life, and with all of the letters Luna Lovegood had addressed to him.

He knew he should toss him into the fire. He knew he would be better off drinking his potion and slipping into a new, clean oblivion. But then…then…as his hands hovered over the fire, the heat from the flames licking at his knuckles, he couldn't force his fingers to release them. Instead, he rescued them from the fire and, swallowing his pride, opened the first letter.

Dear Draco,

I do hope you're still calling yourself Draco. And I do still hope you're at Hogwarts or that someone has managed to get these letters to you. You may not remember me now, but my name is Luna Lovegood. We're friends. And we used to go to school together. We weren't friends in school, but now that we've grown up, I'm glad that that's changed. I'm writing to you—all of these letters to you—because…If you've gone through with your plan, then you've erased your memory. You've forgotten everything.

And I wanted to agree with that decision. But…just in case you change your mind…Just in case you want to know…I wanted to give you back the memories. Just the important ones.

And then, she wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And he read. And read. And read. And read.

The pages overflowed with memories of their days together. Stories he couldn't have remembered even without a memory-erasing potion. Brief encounters during their time at Hogwarts. Times he'd dealt her small kindnesses during her captivity. Recollections of their strolls through Diagon Alley. She never spoke of the Dark Lord or the Death Eaters or Dumbledore or The War. Instead, she smoke of hidden smiles and sly jokes and getting caught in a snowstorm.

Her words sparked with passion and life, humor and sincere reflection. She painted a picture so far from the man he saw looking back at him in the mirror, that sometimes, he checked the front of the envelope just to ensure that she was actually talking about him.

But she was. The one person in the world who had every reason to hate him—his family had kept her in a dungeon—looked at him and saw good.

She saw a friend.

"Professor?"

A pounding on the door, frantic and excitable, alerted him to the presence of Terry Thropp. The boy never learned how to knock like a normal human being, nor did he know how to enter a room like one. In a whirling dervish haze of study notes and texts, the boy spun into the classroom, landing in front of Draco's desk with a thud of dropped books.

"Professor, I want to see you about—Oh. More letters from your friend?"

Draco didn't look up from his desk and the letter. He let the boy wait. Because, as always, it was her sign-offs that held his attention. And this farewell…They were no different.

Draco, I don't know if you will remember these things right now. I can only hope that, one day, you will let yourself remember them again. But even if you don't, I will never forget them. No matter what has happened with your memory, no matter what you remember, I hope you have gotten the fresh start you wanted. I hope you will enjoy your new life, take chances with it. I hope it's as beautiful as you always dreamed it could be. I hope you aren't afraid anymore. And I hope that you will remember that I will always be here, just a letter away, ready to tell you the stories of the Draco Malfoy I once knew. And loved.

Yours Always,

Luna Lovegood.

The words blurred in Draco's vision and he furiously blinked away tears. He couldn't ignore the truth of them, but still… he hoped the boy hadn't seen them. Or that he had the heart not to mention it out loud. And then, he saw it. The alligator claw and its twine necklace, pouring out of the letter's envelope. I hope you aren't afraid anymore. Without a second thought, Draco slipped it around his neck. It was ridiculous. Silly. And he didn't think he'd ever be taking it off again.

"Professor?"

"No. Not a letter from a friend," he said, carefully folding the letter and returning it to its envelope. Now, the stupid, stupid potions master realized why the word had sounded so false to his heart the first time he'd spoken it. Not because it was too much to describe Luna. But because it wasn't enough. "It's from someone a great deal more important than that."

As soon as Terry Thropp left, he picked up a pen and wrote back.

Luna,

Please meet me in Hogsmeade. 8 o'clock. Tonight.

-Draco.

He didn't think she would come. In fact, as the eighth clock chime rang out over Hogsmeade, he was certain she wouldn't come. And he deserved that, he realized. But still, he stared out at the field where she usually apparated, waiting for any sign of her. From their time together and their letters, he knew that she liked to wander through that field in search of all manner of impossible creatures to catalogue for her magazine. And he also knew that he wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to see her glittering, universe-containing eyes meet his as she crossed that field, the gentle snowdrift landing on her eyelashes and in her hair like bits of stardust.

But when he did see her, it wasn't in the field. Like always, she caught him by surprise.

"Draco?" Her voice wasn't a stunning spell this time. It was a magnet. And no sooner had the words tumbled out of her mouth than he spun to meet her. "Draco, it's me, Luna—"

The stories of the Draco Malfoy I once knew. And loved.

Someone loved him. Really loved him. And not just anyone. This warm, beautiful, intelligent, life-loving, open-hearted, sparkling magic show of a woman. Luna Lovegood had every reason to despise him, but instead…She loved him.

And for the first time, he gave himself permission to actually love someone back.

Reaching out for her, he placed one hand on either of her cheeks, relishing the warm, pink flush of them for the briefest of moments before capturing her full lips with his own.

If she was surprised by his sudden, wordless declaration of his soul, she didn't let it show. Instead, she greeted him with her touch, welcoming him and embracing him as if she'd been waiting for him, as if she'd known this was their future all along.

How he ever thought he could have lived without his memories of her…he didn't know. But now, he was so, so, so grateful he didn't have to find out.

When she finally pulled away—too soon—she tipped her head in recognition. She knew he hadn't taken the potion and the pride of that decision glimmered in her eyes. "I see you got my letter."

"I'm just trying to live my new life," he said, holding fast to her cheeks, tilting his forehead against hers. He'd only just reached her. He didn't want to let her go.

Luna blinked. Grabbed his lapel. Pulled him, impossibly, closer. "And how is it so far?"

He didn't have to think twice before answering. "More beautiful than I ever could have imagined."

My first Druna story! I haven't ever written them before and I wanted to share this one with y'all. Let me know what you think!