All Hail the Dark Lord, Or Something Idiotic Like That

A New Friend pt3

A/N: Not my story! Original available on ao3

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"Good...so we arrested the bastards," Ron growled, impressed that Neville ended up in the aurors but sick at the thought of what his friend must have gone through.

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Percy shrugged but with a dark look. "No one was alive to go to trial," he remarked with no feeling or judgement. "This is pure conjecture on my part, but while the official word was that Harry killed them all in his escape, in self-defense clearly...I have a feeling there might have been a few that weren't quite dead when you two arrived based on how future Ron insisted I not ask questions and what I know from recent experience about what Longbottom was willing to do for Harry." The last comment got a tiny little tug up of Harry's lips in almost a smirk.

"Good," Hermione growled lowly, surprising Ron but not Percy or Harry who knew exactly what she would be willing to do very well at this point.

"Ron also told me to not ask Harry about what happened during those three days," Percy told them, his hold on Harry tightening some. "Normally, I wouldn't approve of avoiding something like that, but Harry left for Amsterdam immediately when he got out of hospital and didn't return to England for a year. Teddy, Andy, and you two would go visit him, but he didn't return until after he finished his mastery. When he did finally return, he'd just go blank and disassociate if anyone ever brought up Luna. By that time, he never left the house without glamours to change his appearance, never went to any location on a regular schedule, burned all correspondence, and had started in on his collection of tattooed runes. It seemed like good advice at the time to give him as much space as he needed..."

"Until we came back in time, and I had to face it," Harry sighed, rejoining the conversation, and putting down his knife. "Look...I promise I'm going to be ok. It's just the backlash of my Occlumency walls failing makes everything crash in here," he pointed at his head with sad eyes.

"So, do we keep you away from Luna or should we try to reach out to her?" Hermione asked with a frown, not knowing what would be best. She resolved to look for some psychology books in the library or even owl her parents to send her some muggle ones if there weren't any.

Percy shook his head firmly at that, Harry mirroring him. "Merlin, no! That would be terrible!" Harry emphatically said with wide eyes.

"You have to keep them apart for a while at least," Percy said just as emphatically. "Have you ever noticed that Luna is a little special?"

Ron snorted while Hermione shot him a glare. "Luna is...different," Hermione eventually said in agreement.

"She's an empath," Harry explained, putting the potion back into stasis with his wand and replacing the notice-me-not ward. "Luna feels what those in close contact with her feel. It's why she always seems to know more than she should. The creatures she's always talking about are code-words her parents used with her as a child so she could tell them about what she was feeling while out in public. Empaths are highly sought after by both sides of the war and the ministry. They wanted her to be able to decide what she wanted to do with her life instead of it being decided for her."