Work Text:
The nightmare comes like it always does: like an old friend.
Her mother torn apart, her mother’s face peeled back, pieces of her mother scattered across the lab, the fires of the explosion still licking at the rafters, corrosive acid sprinkled across the floor like streaks of paint. The girl is pressed against the wall, her fingertips digging into the wood, as objects rattle and tumble and fall around her. Xenophilius comes running at a long-legged lope and enfolds his daughter in his arms, tucking her in like a protective hen and shielding her from the view, but the sight has already carved itself into her retinas. This will never leave, she thinks.
She opens her eyes.
Darkness. Even breathing. A weight beside her. Her hand reaches out, a pale and ghostly thing in the dark (fingertips digging into the wall) and touches his shoulder, then moves to comb unruly black hair back from his forehead. She traces the line of the scar, his own nightmares carved into his skin.
Luna slips out of the bed without waking him — it’s as if she isn’t even here, a spectre padding along silently, tiptoeing its way down the stairs (she lightly sidesteps the one that creaks, she knows how this works) and towards the kitchen. It’s after midnight and Luna starts heating up the kettle with a light flick of her wand, fetching the cup, the saucer, the tea. She’ll sit in the dark for an hour nursing that little mug of warmth, curled up into the armchair with limbs folded in on herself, bare feet tucked under herself like some nesting bird. She will breathe, and listen to the steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock, and she will think of blind mice and blind thestrals and a boy with a shard missing from his soul (or was it the other way around?), and she’ll fall asleep with a book of nursery rhymes balanced against her chin.
She wakes to find herself wrapped in a blanket, a pillow propped under her cheek, the smell of freshly-brewed coffee in the air, and the sound of the front door clicking shut as he leaves for work at the Ministry.