Magic? || Years 5-7

Protect Your Heart First: Captured

It wasn't surprising when Amisty was tossed back into her cell. Very unceremoniously, with a sneer and snide comment to boot! What was surprising, however, was how no one had touched her. For months. Nothing.

Even the other prisoners, still shuffling in the darkness through the hole in the wall, were left alone. Amisty kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Strained her ears when footsteps came too close, twitched at every creak of the floorboards and watered down shout.

"Have they left you alone, then?" Luna asked, their backs only separated by the crumbling stone pressed to their spines.

Amisty pursed her lips, not daring to hope. "I guess so."

"I think so," Luna replied, and Amisty can picture the dreamy smile on her face as her voice petered out. "My cousin always had a soft spot for you."

What?

Maybe Luna had another cousin just as weird as her who blessed witches, or something? Amisty wouldn't be all that shocked. Luna's father was a tad more than. . . eccentric.

"Oh!" Luna said. "Draco and I are cousins, I thought you knew?"

What?

Luna and Draco. . . but they weren't on the—?

Well, Sirius had been burned off with little preamble, and with how strange the Lovegoods were, it wouldn't be particularly surprising? Perhaps? Amisty didn't know enough about the whole pureblood. . . mess of bloodlines and alliances and Merlin knows whatever else to be sure of anything.

Baffled, it took Amisty a moment to get the words out. A little jerkier than normal. "He never? Mentioned it?"

That was definitely a squeak at the end.

"First cousins," Luna said, and if she were sitting on a chair and not the floor of a cellar she'd definitely be kicking her feet. "On my mother's side. She was supposed to marry someone else, it didn't go very well."

"So they. . ." Amisty could barely fathom the thought. "They kicked her out of the family? Just like that?"

"Well, Mum didn't really want to stay in the first place," Luna said. "They're very old-fashioned, the purebloods."

"Tell me about it," Amisty muttered, louder than intended.

Luna giggled. Airy, light, a drop of sunshine in a very grim world. "Yes. Mum didn't quite agree, and she didn't care much about her reputation. She wasn't the heir," she added, as an afterthought.

"Yeah," Amisty said, flicking a stray pebble and listening to it skitter across the floor. She squirmed, her stomach aching. Just because they weren't touching her didn't mean they always remembered to feed her. "That makes it easier."

"Mmm." There was shuffling on Luna's side of the wall, a pause, then more shuffling. "I suppose."

"Your Mum seemed lovely," Amisty said, wincing at the awkwardness. "I'm sorry you lost her."

"Ah, it's alright," Luna said, a tad farther away than before. "Besides, she didn't die unhappy, so I can't complain."

"That's good," Amisty said, closing her eyes for a moment, listening to the sound of someone passing overhead. A faint trail of dust showered down across the bridge of her nose, and she fought back a sneeze.

It was sometime in early March, though Amisty couldn't be entirely sure unless she saw a calendar. Or the sun. What she'd give to see the sun.

"I think she was trying to do something similar to what you're doing," Luna said, suddenly back to where she had been before. The gleaming skin of an apple shone through the hole of the wall. "With the magic."