Melancholia | Drarry

tumbling into the dark

The hunger for answers burns even more than the heartache. Luna heads for the apartment first, but upon spotting the Lockhart van, stops dead. She's reminded of the equipment Justin and Pansy had carried in only hours before - cold, impersonal technology that had torn her and hundreds of others apart.

She dips into a side road and briskly walks to the Lockhart office instead.

It doesn't take long to reach it, the lettering illegible in the darkness, Luna's keys clinking from her coat pocket and into her hand. The motions are familiar, but the rooms are alien in the darkness, the dark angular shapes of the waiting room hostile in shadow. Luna heads straight for Padma's office, striding past doors that hide beeping machinery.

The records of every erasure Lockhart has ever conducted in the past five years are stacked in boxes in a storage closet, adjoined to the head office. Luna has filed away more records than she can count in those boxes, but never has she needed to take something out.

The names flit by in an ink-on-manila parade. Blackwell. Clearwater. Gomez. Johnson. Ridley-Thomas. Shah. Winters. Hundreds of minds, trillions of memories, washed away in a tide of electric pulses. Luna shoves away the pinpricks of guilt that come at the sight of them. For now, curiosity trumps every other emotion.

Nothing. Luna slams the lid of the last box in frustration. She skimmed everything from the past three years. Perhaps she didn't look hard enough.

Luna's gaze slides to Padma's desk, still and silent, polished wood reflecting the dim light coming in from the window. Twelve hours ago, invading such a space would never have crossed Luna's mind.

I need to know. The thought repeats like a chant through Luna's head as she kneels by the desk, gingerly pulling on all the drawer handles, one by one. The top right drawer doesn't give way; it's locked. With shaking hands, Luna searches her pockets, finding a couple of loose bobby pins in one. She pushes one against the desk, bending it into shape, cursing when she drops it.

It's been years since Luna has picked a lock, and her skills are rusty. Two cars, their engines breaking the early morning silence, pass by before the drawer clicks open. She pauses, eyeing the shadowy gap.

Then Luna pulls, decisively, and spots her own name on a folder, paired with Padma's. A cassette tape sits on top of it.

Luna moves mechanically after that, tamping down her fear and letting her curiosity take over. She finds a player and pushes in the tape.

Soon enough, two voices crackle through the stillness. Luna slumps in Padma's chair, catching a whiff of her chamomile perfume. She sighs, every breath, every recorded word, splintering the cracks in her heart.

"My name is Luna Marie Lovegood, and I..." A tremble, a sniffle. Luna's stomach swoops, her eyes widen in the dark.

"Please continue," Padma says, monotone, but Luna recognizes the guise in her voice, the thin covering of ice that hides rolling waves beneath. It's the voice she uses when dealing with a patient close to her, a family member - they don't come often, but Luna remembers how Padma's demeanor changed, how her stern brow tensed with emotion, her eyes rimmed in red.

"Padma," says the Luna on the tape, and the present version shivers, caught unawares by the warmth, the intimacy in her own voice, even as it threatens to dissolve. "I-I can't..."

"You want this. Don't you?" Kind, breathless, yet achingly sad. Luna can almost see Padma, leaning across the table, wanting endearments to fall from her lips, yet biting them back.