In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter CXLIV: The Third Time

HARRY:

"...what if... she knows something... about me?" Lucy finished.

Her eyes met mine, terrified beyond belief.

"She doesn't," I said quickly with a shake of my head. "I don't think so, anyway. That night of the first detention, she didn't say anything about what happened over summer, and she only looked in your dad's file."

"I don't know anything about the specifics of what's in there," she replied, her voice small and strained. Something dark flickered across her face. Hurt, fear, anger, all in rapid succession.

"Still, it shouldn't have anything about you in there, since—"

"Since he wasn't alive long enough to think twice about where I was or what might have been happening to me, I know," she finished bitterly, "but sometimes Ministry files have more information than they really should, and if a Ministry official deemed my part of the story to be relevant to his, or if Umbridge didn't tell the whole truth and looked at my file too..."

"What's going on?" Hermione interrupted, her voice even more anxious now. "What's this about Umbridge and Ministry files? Do we think she knows Lucy's a—"

"She might." Lucy closed her eyes and sagged against the wall, pressing a hand over her eyes. She inhaled through her nose, then exhaled through her mouth. She lowered her hand and glanced over my shoulder, and I followed her gaze.

Hagrid was looking rather stricken, his mouth hanging slightly open, as if he had suddenly understood something. "Lucy, what happened to you?" he asked. "Yeh've been quieter than usual, but I didn' think— I thought you were jus' tired or somethin'—"

Lucy glanced at me for a long moment, an unspoken question in her eyes.

"It's up to you," I said quietly.

She nodded. "It's a bit of a long story, but... something happened over summer." Then, she drew her wand and muttered silencing charm after silencing charm, the magic pulsing through the room with each incantation.

Hermione's mouth formed an O shape, and Ron's too.

Lucy had decided to tell the story again. The third time, I believed. Once to Professor Lupin and Mr. Weasley and Mad-Eye. Once to me.

And now to Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid. And Tuck and Fang, of course.

Once she was satisfied with the silencing charms, Lucy landed in one of the chairs at the table and drew another shaky breath. I pulled a chair around so I could sit next to her. The other three people in the room sank down into chairs as well. She drew a third shaky breath, then, staring at the table, Lucy began to talk.

"This can't leave these walls," she said, her voice small but firm. "Malfoy knowing is dangerous enough—"

Hermione's hand flew over her mouth. "Malfoy knows?"

"His dad was one of the Death Eaters who kidnapped me, so yeah, he knows."

"Kidnapped?" Hagrid repeated, absolutely horrified.

Lucy nodded, meeting his eyes briefly before looking back down at the patterns she was tracing on the table. Her hand was shaking, and for a moment I panicked, but then I remembered the full moon was only a couple nights away. She always shook before the full moon.

"The details are complicated," she continued after a moment, "but basically, the Daily Prophet covered up what happened to Cedric."

Hagrid's jaw dropped. "They didn'!"

"They did. Not a single mention of it anywhere for an entire month. There... there are still people who don't know, because the only person who said anything about it was my mum. She wrote something about it and pulled strings at the Ministry to get it put in the paper. It wasn't on the front page, by any means, but it apparently got Voldemort's attention regardless. A couple days after the article, someone lured me out of the house while a number of Death Eaters went in and killed my parents. I... I saw the Dark Mark from where I was in the woods." Lucy rolled up her sleeve just enough to reveal the bracelet and started fiddling with one of the charms. The bear charm, I realized. "I had a bad feeling about it all, even before the Dark Mark, so I dropped this just in case. I was glad I had done that when I realized I had been surrounded. I didn't even have time to reach for my wand before they knocked me out."