Insight

The door slammed shut and the tiny glimpse of candlelight was gone. The cellar room was plunged into an awful darkness that still after all these days was disconcerting and frightening.

Luna Lovegood made no claim to having the rash Gryffindor courage many of the DA did – but she counted herself amongst the braver sort. But the darkness – more like a lack of light - was enough to drive even the sanest mad.

She wondered idly if the reason why she wasn't too discouraged was because all of them were right, and she was crazy.

Luna doubted that. Raising a pale, thin hand up to where her eyes were she tried to make out even the whiteness of her skin. Nothing. It might as well have not even been there. She carefully – in order to not poke herself in the eye – tilted her hand, and brought it closer, tapping her nose to reassure herself that her hand was still there. Feeling the tweaking of her nose, Luna let herself smile slightly – at least she had all of her limbs. That was always something to be thankful for.

An awful racking cough echoed in the cellar. Or the cell as the owner of the cough often said. But Mr. Ollivander hadn't talked often since she had first arrived, when she had been nabbed from the train lack of a sack of goods across boundary lines.

Carefully, Luna got on her hands and knees, and crawled the one, two, three, four…eighteen crawling paces to the wand maker. The water jug, empty save for dirt – their captors wouldn't rinse it out when they refilled it – sat next to the curled up wizard. Luna frowned at the jug. They had come and given Ollivander the potion and forced it down him. It was too bad they hadn't filled the water jug.

Luna didn't let it discourage her though. They would be back eventually with food, and perhaps if she asked politely like her mother had always said to do, they would refill the jug. It hadn't worked before but then she had brought up the flippering porcitides before. Some people just didn't know what was good for them…

The wandmaker's coughing interrupted Luna's bemusing and she returned to the dark cellar. She reached out to Ollivander's back and patted it as he coughed. At last he stopped, and his hand rested on hers.

"Thank you," he said scratchily.

"It's alright," said Luna. "That was the second visit today, wasn't it?"

She felt Ollivander shrug his thin shoulders wearily. "There's no way to tell. The passing of time…"

"But you have your tally marks!" interjected Luna. She rose and moved down the wall Ollivander had been leaning against. Her hands at last came across the crevasses in the wall. Luna ran her fingers over the etchings – the tally marks that said how long Luna had been there. Ollivander had hopefully started scratching those in the hopes of keeping track of time. Not long after he had given up again, falling into an awful depression. Luna had continued to scratch in the days.

"Your tally marks," the wizard said wearily. "Yours, Luna."

She didn't agree. If anything they were the Malfoys' – it was the Malfoys' wall after all and cellar. But Luna said nothing, sensing that Ollivander didn't want to hear anymore.

Tracing the marks, Luna began to count. She remembered the number – she'd been there sixty seven days – but still it helped to count and it passed the time.

It was perhaps one of the worst things of staying in the cell. Luna wasn't claustrophobic by any means, so the shared small space didn't bother her. The darkness didn't either. But the lack of stimulation…she would never have guessed she would have missed that.

Back at Hogwarts, Luna had often thought it would have been lovely to have days upon days at a time just to herself to dreams and flounce about as she liked. Even to be away from her father at times – for though she loved him dearly and thought him the most fabulous man in the world, she would have liked the time to just herself.

Mr. Ollivander left Luna to herself pretty much here in this cool, dark cellar. He wouldn't speak much, unless she spoke to him, and even then he wouldn't say much. All he did was cough and sleep restlessly. Sometimes he'd be dragged from the cellar in order to be interrogated, and he'd come back in even worse shape. Luna could not do anything, though she did try.

But all in all, it was dark and quiet – and her thoughts went away from her, taking over her mind. And it was pleasant at first, but now she wished for something there – someone to tell her she was being silly, her notions were ridiculous.

Because then maybe she wouldn't think that about herself, doubting her very nature.

A/N: This was written for the Pick a Phobia challenge on HPFC. Please leave a review, saying whether you liked it, loved it, or hated it...