Draco was not nervous. At least, that was the story he kept repeating in his head as he stood in the middle of the tea shop, spine straight, hands clasped neatly behind his back. He liked to think of himself as the sort of man who never faltered, who could stand in any room without betraying the slightest sign of discomfort. Years of maneuvering through the cutthroat circles of high society, of surviving the suffocating presence of the Dark Lord, had trained him to present a face of cool detachment, to move with deliberate precision no matter what roiled beneath the surface. His expression now was no different, a smooth and practiced mask of indifference.
On the surface, he appeared to be browsing. Every so often he would lift a tin from the shelf, fingers brushing over the cool metal, reading the ornate labels in silence. Names like Dragon's Breath and Moonlit Serenade gleamed under the golden light. To anyone else, it might have looked like genuine interest. In truth, it was nothing of the sort.
He was stalling.
Or, if he was being brutally honest with himself, he was trying to look at Luna Lovegood without making it too obvious. His gaze kept slipping toward her, drawn as if she carried her own gravity. Each time, he forced himself to glance away again, back to the tin in his hand, pretending to weigh its merits. Yet his attention refused to cooperate. He found himself cataloguing the slow, unhurried way she moved behind the counter, the way light caught in the fine strands of her hair, the calm focus on her face as she arranged a row of delicate porcelain cups. There was something about her that unsettled him, though not in a way he could easily name. It was quiet, unintrusive, but persistent.
His attempt at subtlety was failing. He could feel it in the way his neck grew warm, in the steady climb of heat along his cheekbones. He was certain his glances were far from discreet by now. The tin trembled faintly in his hand, and he set it back down with more care than necessary, irritated at himself for the slip. This was not who he was. He had stood before Aurors and kept his voice steady. He had met the Dark Lord's eyes without breaking. And now, for reasons he could not quite fathom, he was fighting to keep his composure in the presence of a woman arranging teacups in a sunlit shop.
Every time Draco thought he had finally chosen a tea, perhaps the sharp reliability of Earl Grey with its rich bergamot bite or the softer comfort of an herbal blend meant to lull the mind into stillness, his focus slipped. His gaze, entirely against his better judgment, kept drifting back to her. It was absurd. He was a grown man, perfectly capable of making a simple decision, yet here he stood, caught between tins of tea and the sight of Luna Lovegood moving behind the counter.
She moved with a grace that felt entirely unstudied, a fluid, unhurried rhythm that seemed to settle into the air around her. Her dress was nothing extravagant, only a soft, flowing thing that cinched at the waist, the light fabric shifting with her every step. It should have been unremarkable, but there was something in the way she wore it, in the quiet assurance of her posture, that drew the eye and refused to let go.
She is not thinking about you, Malfoy. The thought came sharp, almost scolding. She is living her life, running her shop, and you are standing here like an idiot who cannot pick a tea.
Determined to end this ridiculous hesitation, he turned his full attention to the shelves. He would pick something now. His fingers hovered before finally closing around a tin stamped in silver letters, Celestial Calm – A Soothing Nighttime Brew. The description promised chamomile for its gentle sedative warmth, lavender for quieting the mind, and another note he could not quite place but imagined was meant to ease the day's sharp edges.
Yes. This would do. A tea for steadying nerves and restoring composure. Merlin knew he needed both.
You need it, you absolute wreck.
Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, Draco straightened his shoulders, forcing himself to gather what fragments of composure he could before the moment slipped entirely beyond his control. He cleared his throat, aiming for a voice that sounded neutral and unaffected, as though the ridiculous amount of time he had just spent debating over a single tin of tea was nothing more than the natural pace of a casual customer. In truth, he knew exactly what he had been doing. He had been stalling, searching for a pause long enough to rebuild the logic and restraint that had always kept him unshaken in far more dangerous circumstances. Yet the longer he lingered, the more he understood that this delay had nothing to do with tea and everything to do with the woman across the room.
The tin of Celestial Calm – A Soothing Nighttime Brew felt cool and solid in his hand, the faint scent of lavender and chamomile rising from the sealed lid. It should have grounded him. Instead, his eyes drifted toward her, drawn by the quiet concentration with which she moved. Luna was arranging jars along the shelf, her fingertips brushing ceramic and glass as though each object mattered, as though there was a harmony here that only she could hear. The care in those small adjustments, the patience in her rhythm, gave the shop a pulse that was entirely her own.
He should have used the moment to steady himself, to take the breath he needed, to return to the armor he had worn so long that it felt like skin. He should have remembered how to inhabit that calm detachment, the shield of indifference that had never failed him in the boardroom or among the vultures of polite society. But instead of finding the safety of that familiar discipline, he found himself unraveling. It was not circumstance or threat that pulled him apart, but the quiet gravity of her presence.
Every movement she made was as delicate as a ripple across still water, yet each one seemed to reach him with deliberate intent, catching on the edges of his restraint and loosening the careful stitches he had kept so tight. Every breath became conscious, each passing second heavier than the last. Somewhere between admiration and unease, curiosity and the slow coil of something more dangerous, he felt himself tipping.
When she turned to face him, it was with the kind of grace that could not be rehearsed. The rest of the shop seemed to fall away, the shelves and candles receding into a muted haze until there was only her. The small sounds of the space faded until the air between them felt almost suspended.
She moved like something untouched by the ordinary mechanics of the world, not with the precision of a dancer or the formality of a queen, but with a symmetry so natural it seemed older than either. The light cotton of her dress shifted with each step, catching on her waist, loosening around her hips, flowing in a way that made the eye follow without permission. It was not a movement meant for him, yet it caught hold of him all the same, stirring something deep and long dormant, something that felt perilously close to hunger.
The scent that followed her was subtle but disarming—a soft floral undercut with something honeyed and elusive, something that bypassed the rational mind entirely and rooted itself in memory and instinct, in want and wonder. His gaze betrayed him, sliding down the curve of her spine, lingering where it shouldn't, caught by the flicker of sunlight turning her pale hair into gossamer gold. And still, she came closer.
With every step she took, there was that same gentle confidence that had always set her apart, the quiet yet undeniable sense of self that had once made her an easy target for mockery and now made her impossible to look away from. It was in the unhurried way she carried herself, the way the air seemed to bend subtly around her presence. There was something almost timeless in the rhythm of her movements, and it was that very ease, that unshakable power beneath the softness, that pulled his stomach into a knot so tight it ached.
The flutter of fabric as she approached, the flicker of candlelight painting shifting warmth across her skin, transformed what should have been an ordinary exchange into something weighted and dangerous. The moment seemed to swell, layered with a heat and gravity neither of them named but both could feel.
He clenched his jaw, bracing himself against the pull of thoughts he had no business entertaining, already aware of the betrayal building in his own mind. The image came unbidden, swift and vivid enough to leave him winded: her body stretched across one of the shop's polished tables, the cool surface a contrast to the heat of her skin, her dress gathered high to reveal the soft curve of her thighs. He could see her chest rising and falling, could imagine her eyes fixed on his with a look that hollowed out the space between them and filled it with something reckless.
The vision's sharpness made his grip tighten on the tin in his hand until the metal threatened to bend under the strain. A wave of panic rose inside him, born of the need to smother the firestorm before it burned through the thin walls of control he had left. There were lines that could not be crossed, thoughts that had to be locked away if he meant to walk out of here with his dignity intact.
Then she reached for the tea, and the world tipped. Her fingers brushed his with a touch so light it could have been nothing at all. It should have been nothing, just the kind of casual contact that happens every day and carries no meaning beyond the moment.
Except it did not feel meaningless. That fleeting touch struck like a spark catching dry tinder, a sudden, unbearable rush that shot through him and left his breath uneven. The sensation crawled under his skin, settling deep enough that he could not move, could not think of anything except the fact that she had touched him, and that he was already far too gone to pretend it had not happened.
She stood so close that the air between them felt almost charged, her scent wrapping around him in a way that left no room for anything else. It was soft but insistent, a blend of wildflowers and something faintly herbal, grounding and dizzying all at once. It was unmistakably hers, and it sank into him with such force that every muscle in his body drew taut, caught between longing and the need to hold himself back.
Her smile was small, almost unthinking, as she read the label on the tin in his hands. She appeared entirely unaware of the chaos she had set off inside him, her calm at complete odds with the storm he could not seem to quiet.
"Oh," she murmured, and the sound of it landed in him like a pebble dropped into still water, sending ripples he could not control. "That's such a good choice."
He stared at her, mind emptying with a sudden, disorienting sweep. He had no idea what tea he had even picked. The tin felt foreign in his grasp, as if someone had placed it there without his noticing. His attention had been claimed entirely by her—by the way she leaned ever so slightly closer, by the way her voice seemed to brush against his skin.
He needed to pull away from this spiral before it dragged him under. If he stood here much longer, she would see it—would see through the careful mask he had worn for years, would glimpse the raw and entirely unguarded man beneath it. He searched frantically for something to say, something to deflect, and found only one thought that was foolish, reckless, and far too revealing.
"Would… would you have time to have tea with me?"
The question fell between them, and the moment it left his mouth he wished he could take it back. There had been hesitation in his voice, and that alone was damning. He sounded uncertain. Worse, he sounded like he actually cared whether she said yes.
This was not him. He was not a man who asked. He did not put himself in positions where someone could refuse him. He was not the kind of man who allowed hope to slip into his voice like a secret he had failed to guard. Yet here he stood, waiting, feeling the weight of that hope pressing into him with every heartbeat.
In all the years he had spent mastering himself—controlling his temper, perfecting his composure—he had not prepared for this. Not for Luna Lovegood, standing so close he could count the pale lashes around her eyes, looking at him in a way that made the air feel too thin. His heart was a hard, unsteady drum in his chest, and his breath had turned shallow, as though she had stolen half of it away without even trying.
She blinked at him slowly, almost languid in her movements, her head tilting a fraction to the side as if she were settling into the best angle from which to take him apart. It was the same look she had always worn, the one that gave the impression she could see past the words and the expressions and the carefully constructed walls, straight into the thoughts he had not dared to voice. The weight of her gaze pressed into him until his skin prickled and his spine locked rigid, the kind of quiet pressure that roused something deep and primitive inside him, an urge to retreat before she stripped him bare.
He wanted to vanish. To step backward, to walk out into the street and let the shop door close behind him, to pretend this moment had never existed and that he had never been foolish enough to ask her anything at all. If he left now, maybe he could salvage what remained of his pride before it slipped completely through his grasp.
And then the panic hit. Sudden, sharp, and absolute.
"I mean," he started, too fast, his voice tangling over itself as he tried to claw back control, the words tumbling out before he could think better of them. "There's no one else here and I— I didn't mean to offend you, fuck—"
The breath left him hard and uneven, and he raked a hand through his hair, not noticing or not caring how it left him looking. He was too hot under the collar, too aware of how exposed he had made himself, too conscious of the fact that she had caught him exactly where he was weakest.
"Maybe we could just… catch up."
It came out smaller, stripped of any real defense, an offering more than an invitation. Even to his own ears it sounded like a last attempt to make this seem casual, though the effort was paper-thin and pointless. She would hear the pulse in his voice, the thrum of something he could not name, and she would know. She had always known.
She did not answer. She simply watched him in silence, her gaze steady, her posture still, until the seconds stretched into something close to unbearable. And then, so subtly he almost doubted it had happened, the faintest flicker of amusement crossed her face, quick and deliberate as the tightening of a bowstring.
He saw it in the slight lift of her brows, in the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth, in the glint that lit her eyes as though she had just unearthed a secret she had been waiting years to claim. That was when she realized she held the advantage. That was when she understood the power resting in her hands, and chose, with the kind of elegance that could not be taught, to use it.
Then, without raising her voice, without a trace of cruelty, she delivered the final strike.
"What got you so flustered?"
It was a simple question. Far too simple. It floated between them like something harmless, a soft and weightless thing. But he knew better.
She knew. She knew exactly what she was doing. The precision in the phrasing, the tilt of her head that made her seem both guileless and unbearably smug, the teasing note hidden in the quiet lilt of her voice as it sank just low enough to graze the edges of his composure. Her lips curved, holding back a smile that was almost wicked, as though she was savoring every second, taking pleasure in the power she held without lifting so much as a finger. And her eyes—clear, bright, merciless in their focus—never left his, locking on with the kind of intent that could strip a man bare.
This was not small talk. It was not casual teasing. It was a calculated move, an ambush dressed in the silk of familiarity and the heat of something far more dangerous.
This was war.
And she was winning.
His mind, ever the saboteur and constant betrayer, supplied the truth in vivid, damning detail. You. You, and the way you look right now, like something torn straight from the pages of a fantasy I did not know I had. You, and the way you smell, like vanilla and moonlit gardens and something far too close to temptation. You, and the way you move, and speak, and breathe, and smile like you already know how completely you are undoing me. You, and the way I want to press you against every available surface in this cursed shop, starting with the counter and ending with that neatly stacked pile of folded linens behind you.
Some stubborn fragment of dignity clung to life inside him, holding fast to the wreckage of his composure like a man gripping driftwood in the aftermath of a shipwreck. He still had a shred of self-preservation, no matter how tattered, and he was not about to speak that truth aloud. Not here. Not now. Not at four in the afternoon in a tea shop that smelled like cinnamon and moonlight, with sunlight filtering through lace curtains and a cat purring softly in the corner, as though they were not standing in the middle of a slow-burn catastrophe.
He forced himself to answer with something safe, something ordinary. "I had a Ministry examination," he said, pushing the words through the knot in his throat and letting out a sigh that he hoped sounded convincing. He willed himself to believe, just for the space of a breath, that this bureaucratic ordeal was the reason for his unraveling. "It was horrific. I just need to relax."
That part, at least, was true. A fragment of the truth. Not the whole of it, not the undignified truth roaring inside his head, but enough to make her glance away. She hummed softly and turned toward the counter, as though she had accepted his answer. Relief slipped into his lungs and he convinced himself that he had sidestepped whatever trap she had set.
Then, over her shoulder, without looking at him, in that light and breezy tone that could mean everything or nothing, she said, "Well, then. I suppose I will just have to help you relax."
And in that moment Draco knew, without the faintest shadow of doubt, that he was completely, utterly, irreversibly doomed.
Luna returned with their drinks, gliding across the shop as if she had more time than anyone else in the world. The air seemed to shift around her, the rhythm of the room bending to match the unhurried cadence of her steps. It was not the drifting, distracted walk she'd had at school, the one that made people mistake her for someone detached from reality. This was different. There was an ease in her movements now, but also a certainty. She looked like someone who had found herself in the years between then and now, someone who moved through life knowing exactly where she belonged.
She did not belong to any one person, and perhaps not even to any one place. She belonged entirely to herself.
And Draco, still trying to convince himself that he belonged anywhere at all, felt that difference as if it had opened a fault line right through his chest.
She did not take the seat across from him. She did not leave the polite cushion of distance one might expect from an afternoon chat between acquaintances who had not seen each other in years. Instead, she set the cups down and took the spot beside him. Right beside him. As though it had been hers all along.
For a moment, he could not move. He could not think. He could barely draw in breath. Luna Lovegood was sitting close enough that the space between them felt like something alive, some shimmering heat that seemed to creep across the narrow gap until it reached him. Close enough that if he turned his head, he would be close enough to taste the faint sweetness of her tea on her breath. Close enough that his pulse, which had been erratic before, now forgot entirely how to keep time.
Something in his chest pulled tight, a knot made of tension and awe and something far less innocent. He shifted slightly, his fingertips pressing into his trousers, trying to ground himself before he made a complete fool of himself.
Her leg was there. Right there. The warmth of it was almost unbearable. Static prickled against his skin as if some invisible current had begun running between them.
Of all the people in this city, in this country, in the whole bloody world, she had to sit beside him. Not across the table where he could cling to the fragile illusion of safety, not even at an angle where he could pretend this was nothing more than polite company. No, she had chosen the space next to him, with the kind of quiet certainty that made it feel like a choice that had been decided long before either of them walked into the shop.
And now every nerve in his body was on high alert.
Not Voldemort, not Merlin, not Circe, not even Morgana could help him. This was beyond magic, beyond reason, beyond the reach of anything except divine intervention. It was the sort of crisis for which only Lord Jesus himself might have an answer. Because Draco Malfoy, former Death Eater, frequent subject of Ministry suspicion, and longtime practitioner of ironclad self-control, was currently on the brink of losing his composure entirely over the simple fact that Luna Lovegood had sat beside him as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Luna placed her drink on the table between them with the same effortless grace she seemed to apply to everything. His was a steaming cup of tea, mercifully ordinary and blessedly familiar. Hers was… not.
In front of her sat a tall glass filled with a violently green liquid, the kind of unsettling shade that looked as though it had been brewed at the bottom of some toxic cauldron or coaxed from the belly of a sickly frog. The light caught it in a way that made it seem to glow faintly, an ominous neon radiance that brought to mind every ill-advised thing Pansy Parkinson had ever dared him to drink at school. He could almost hear her laugh, sharp and delighted, as she'd lean over to watch for signs of poisoning.
His eyes narrowed at once. Suspicion flared before he had even fully formed the thought. It was not normal. It was far too green. Far too vibrant. Far too… Luna. This was not a beverage. This was a declaration of chaos.
He kept staring at it, frown deepening, trying to will his attention away from the fact that her thigh was still brushing ever so slightly against his own. The warmth of it, maddening in its simplicity, kept slicing through every attempt at composure he made. He could feel his self-control balancing on the edge of a knife. One wrong move, one stray thought, and he was going to unravel completely. And now there was this drink. This aggressively green monstrosity.
"What is that?" The question came out rough, his voice catching in his throat, the words almost hoarse. He told himself it was from suspicion, but the truth was obvious enough.
"A smoothie," she replied, lifting the glass slightly, her tone as casual as if that explained anything. The smile she wore only made him more suspicious. She acted as if he were not already overwhelmed by her presence, as if she had not just set down a drink that looked like the distilled essence of a potion gone wrong, and as if this were all perfectly normal.
Then, with the serene certainty of someone entirely unaware of the chaos she was unleashing, she tipped the straw toward him.
He froze. Not just paused, but stopped entirely, like every gear in his mind had seized up at once. His spine locked. His lungs seemed to forget their purpose. Every trace of rational thought evaporated, leaving only the jagged thrum of panic in its place.
What in the name of every saint and god in the wizarding world was happening?
Why was she doing this?
Why was he still sitting here instead of finding the nearest exit and leaving before this became something he could never take back?
The straw hovered close enough that he could feel the faint displacement of air as she moved it toward him. All it would take was one small misstep, one errant breath, and he would find his mouth around it. And then what? What was the appropriate response when a woman you could barely stand to look at without losing your sanity decided to feed you some glowing, suspicious liquid in the middle of a tea shop?
His mind scrambled for options. He could lean back. He could refuse politely. He could make a joke about health drinks or about not accepting strange potions from women whose entire existence was a beautiful sort of hazard. But none of that happened. None of that even came close to happening.
Instead, every last ounce of self-preservation abandoned him, leaving him to the kind of doom a man deserved when he ignored the very instincts meant to save him.
Before his mind had a chance to catch up, before reason could scream at him to stop, his lips were already around the straw she was holding out, and he was drinking.
The taste hit him at once. It was cold, startlingly so, with a sharp mint that melted into a subtle sweetness. By all logic, by the violent green of it alone, it should have been unpleasant. Yet it wasn't. Against all expectation, it was good. Worse than that, it was better than good. It was crisp and fresh, oddly calming, and that made him despise it even more. He hated that it was delicious. Hated that his treacherous tongue had dared to enjoy it. Because that was not the problem here, not even remotely.
The problem was that he had just wrapped his mouth around her straw.
And Luna was still watching him.
Her face gave away nothing, as placid as still water, yet her eyes gleamed with quiet amusement. That spark was enough to betray her, to tell him she knew exactly what she had done. Her lips twitched ever so slightly, just enough to confirm the suspicion already coiling in his gut. She was enjoying this. Every last moment of it. And he, somehow, had become the show.
Draco tore himself back like he had touched a live wire, like the plastic straw had scorched his lips, like the taste on his tongue had set off an identity crisis he was in no way prepared to handle. He could not tell if the heat crawling up his spine and coiling in his stomach was real or if it was only the crushing weight of his own humiliation.
"What… what just happened?" His voice came out strangled, touched with disbelief, as though he needed her to confirm this was reality and not some elaborate fever dream brought on by stress and far too many unhelpful thoughts.
Luna tilted her head, looking at him with wide-eyed curiosity, as if he had just asked her whether the moon existed. "You looked curious."
"That does not mean you should force me to drink from your straw," he snapped, incredulous, grasping for whatever scraps of dignity he had left.
"It was not forced," she said lightly, as though they were discussing the weather.
"You shoved it in my mouth."
"Well, you drank it, didn't you?"
That was not the point. It was so far from the point that the point itself was a speck somewhere far away on the horizon of reason.
Draco opened his mouth, ready to launch into a long list of rebuttals, but the words caught. His jaw tightened as the truth settled in, heavy and merciless. He had, in fact, sipped from her straw like a lovesick fool with no sense of self-preservation. There was no changing that now.
Desperate to wrench the conversation away before his entire being collapsed under the weight of embarrassment, he shifted in his seat with the subtle panic of a man trying to physically escape his own feelings. He cleared his throat, the sound far too loud in the stillness of the tea shop, then leaned back in an exaggerated attempt at ease that no one alive would have believed. He tried to convince himself this had not just become one of the most defining, most humiliating, most soul-crushing moments of his life.
"Are you always this close with people?" he asked, reaching for disinterest, for detachment, for the icy Malfoy aloofness that had once kept entire rooms at a distance. Instead he landed somewhere between strangled and mildly hysterical. He aimed for bored, for unimpressed, for coolly indifferent, but he knew he still sounded like a man teetering on the edge of a complete collapse.
Luna, unshaken as always, actually seemed to give the question serious thought. She sat humming softly, her fingers idly tracing a pattern along the rim of her cup, blinking up at the ceiling as though she might need to consult the constellations for an answer. It was the kind of deliberate pause that made it impossible to forget she had just taken his composure apart with alarming precision.
"Oh… yes, actually," she said at last, her voice light and her expression thoughtful. Then, with the sort of clarity that should never sound so innocent, she added, "But I forgot."
Without a single hint that she understood the chaos she had caused, she rose from her seat, crossed the small distance to the opposite chair, and settled there with a quiet ease that made him feel absurdly abandoned.
Draco stared at her as though she had plucked out his soul and placed it gently in a teacup.
Luna met his gaze without flinching. Serene. Amused in a way that was too subtle to be called mockery but far too present to be missed.
The silence between them thickened, charged with something that felt heavier than air, something unspoken that pressed down on him with the weight of inevitability. It was the kind of quiet that carried a warning.
She lifted her smoothie, and with no trace of performance, no obvious attempt to provoke him, took another slow sip from that same cursed straw.
It was too much.
It was nothing.
It was somehow the most devastating thing that had happened to him in recent memory.
He could not explain why it hit him the way it did. Why a simple, unremarkable act could twist molten heat through his chest and coil low in his stomach. Why it set off warning signals in every nerve, as though his body understood something he did not want to name.
But it did.
And she knew.
He could see it in the slight curve at the corner of her mouth, in the glimmer in her eyes that carried something wicked and far too knowing. She was looking at him like he was a riddle she had already solved, like she had taken him apart piece by piece, and was now simply waiting to see how long it would take for him to surrender to the truth.
She leaned back in her chair, relaxed and unhurried, her posture so loose it was almost insolent. There was no mistaking the way she held herself. She was entirely in control, watching him from across the table with the poise of someone who already knew she had won, who understood exactly how far gone he was and had no intention of letting him recover.
And then, because apparently his misery was not enough, because she clearly intended to dismantle him piece by piece until there was nothing left to salvage, she said, in a voice so casual it might as well have been a weather report, "It is sad that you still believe in blood supremacy."
Draco choked on air. His lungs refused to work, his heart lurched painfully in his chest, and every thought in his head dissolved into a white, hissing static. For a single, awful moment, he was convinced he had died where he sat. "I—what? I do not!" he stammered, his voice climbing embarrassingly high, the pitch betraying something close to panic.
Luna only blinked at him, slow and deliberate, as if she were weighing whether or not to repeat herself. She tilted her head a fraction, her face calm, her expression serene, her composure so steady it made him want to throw something. "You just nearly fell apart because we shared a straw," she said, her tone maddeningly soft, as if she were simply stating a fact.
There was no dignified way to answer that. Anything he said would make him sound either unhinged or deeply guilty. She had already stripped him of control with a single line and a sip from her violently green drink, and he could feel himself unraveling faster with each passing second. Her gaze pinned him in place, sharp enough to slice him open without ever losing its dreamy clarity.
The conversation had tipped into some kind of surreal nightmare, wrapped in the scent of tea leaves and the faint warmth of her perfume. She sipped from that cursed drink, her eyes tracking the smallest flickers of his expression, the way one might watch an animal fight against a snare. He felt cornered. Flayed open. Utterly without defense.
Something inside him finally gave way. He dragged a hand down his face, forcing himself to breathe, forcing his voice into something resembling control. "That is not the same thing," he said through clenched teeth, each word cut clean and low, the frustration threaded through every syllable. "It had nothing to do with blood status. It had everything to do with the fact that you practically sat on my lap, and then you made me drink"—he gestured sharply toward the offending glass—"that nuclear waste smoothie of yours. And now you are sitting there, looking at me like that, and you have not even changed the bloody straw."
Luna only lifted the cup again, the movement slow, unhurried, deliberate. She took a long sip, her lips closing around the exact same straw, her eyes never leaving his face. When she set it down, she waited a beat before asking, in the calmest voice he had ever heard, "And?"
Just one word. One syllable. And it went through him like a detonation, leaving the air between them smoking.
Draco's hands curled into fists on the table, every nerve ending in his body alive with the kind of frustration only she could summon. She was playing with him. She knew it, and she was enjoying herself. That faint, infuriating smirk pulling at her lips, the quiet confidence in her posture, the bright, unshakable glint in her eyes… she was enjoying every moment. And the worst part, the part he could not bury no matter how hard he tried, was the truth sitting like a stone in his chest.
This was never about the straw. Or the smoothie. Or even the accusation she had thrown at him so casually. It was about Luna Lovegood. Always her.
He could see it now, clear as day. She had been teasing him from the moment he walked in, amused by every twitch of his expression, every small crack in the facade he had worked so hard to maintain. She had dismantled him without raising her voice, without breaking her calm. And the truth was that she could, because she was right.
It was not about blood status. It was about her. About the way she had reentered his life as though she had never been gone, like a quiet storm wearing the skin of a summer breeze. About the way she had claimed the space beside him without hesitation, her presence breaking down walls he had thought were impenetrable. About the way she tilted her head when she looked at him, as if the gesture might shake loose his most carefully guarded thoughts, as if she could reach into his mind and touch the places he did not dare name. About the way her gaze lingered on him, seeing more than he wanted to give, knowing more than he would ever willingly say.
His jaw locked. The ache in his spine spread, a tight coil of tension wound so sharp it felt as though his bones might splinter. His voice, when it came, was low and rough, the edge in it pulled straight from the strain of holding himself together. "Stop. Just stop it."
Luna did not move. She did not flinch or glance away. She only watched him, her gaze steady and unhurried, as though she could sit there all day and wait for him to break. Her stillness was unbearable. Those pale, ancient eyes stayed on him, unwavering, strange in a way that felt almost sacred, and he hated how small it made him feel.
It was the look of someone who could see him completely, who might understand more than he wanted to be understood. It left him feeling like a boy again, standing in the ruins of a world he had helped destroy, desperate for someone to tell him he was not beyond repair.
And somewhere beneath all that tension, his chest began to ache.
This was something else entirely. Something older, quieter, insidious in the way it crept past his defenses and rooted itself in the hollow spaces he tried to ignore. It twisted in his ribs, spread through his lungs like the cold bite of winter air, and threatened to pull him apart with every unsteady beat of his traitorous heart.
His voice betrayed him before he could stop it. It cracked faintly around the edges, softened in a way that gave him away completely, exposing something he had spent years burying under layers of carefully cultivated indifference and brittle pride. "I am not that person anymore."
For the first time in the entire conversation, he meant it.
For the first time in his life, he wanted someone to believe it. Not someone who judged him by the weight of his past, not someone who watched for his failure with quiet certainty, but someone who could see the man he was trying to become rather than the boy he had once been forced to be.
Luna did not speak right away. She did not rush in with easy words or meaningless comfort. She did not try to smooth over the moment with sympathy that would ring hollow. She simply watched him, still and unflinching, the pale light in her gaze shifting to something gentler, something heavier. It was not pity. It was not indulgence. It was something that lived closer to truth, to recognition, to the rare, dangerous intimacy of being truly seen.
She was not looking at him the way others did.
She was not searching for cracks in his composure, not waiting to catch him in a moment that would prove their worst assumptions right. She was not studying him like a man balanced on a tightrope, destined to fall. She looked at him as though she had already known, perhaps for longer than he had himself, that he was not the same boy who had once stood in front of a frightened girl and chosen wrong.
The weight of it settled between them, unmoving, undeniable.
And then she spoke. No hesitation. No mockery. No doubt. "Good."
Just one word. Simple and unadorned.
It landed with the quiet power of something rare. It felt like a lifeline thrown into deep water. It lodged itself between his ribs and stayed there, warm against the cold, steady in a place he had long thought beyond repair.
For the first time in years, Draco let himself exhale.
And believed.
Draco barely had time to register it, barely had time to feel the weight of that single word before she kept going. He had no chance to understand why it mattered so much or why it had cracked something open in him before her voice shifted, light and almost playful, the way someone might toy with a coin between their fingers. It would have been easy to mistake it for teasing, but he knew better. Beneath that softness was something sharp and deliberate. She was peeling him open with the kind of precision only possible when someone saw all the way through.
"You know," she said, tilting her head slightly, her tone carrying that maddening mix of innocence and implication that made his pulse thud against his ribs, "I did receive your letter."
His heart stopped.
The letter.
Every inch of him went cold.
She kept talking, still calm, still unbearably serene, as though she had no idea she was pressing directly on the most dangerous nerve he had. "The one that was supposed to be an apology," she said, voice drifting with a faint, dreamlike quality, her eyes flicking to the side as though she were replaying it in her mind, even though he knew she remembered every single word. "But somehow it became a twenty-eight page confession of every wrong you have ever committed. Every mistake, every moral failure, every regret you could dredge up, strung together like you were compiling evidence against yourself. A letter so unnecessarily long that I am convinced it could have been trimmed by at least ten pages."
His jaw tightened.
"And yet," she went on, letting the pause stretch until it became something intentional, something that landed like the press of a blade against bare skin, "there was not a single actual apology anywhere in it."
The words hit him like a hex.
His stomach dropped. His pulse stumbled. His lungs forgot their rhythm. For one endless moment, he was certain his very soul had been dragged out of him and left gasping on the floor between them. He stared at her, frozen, stripped bare in a way he had not thought possible, and watched every last fragment of his carefully maintained composure crumble into ruin.
Oh, Merlin.
He was fucked.
He was so thoroughly, hopelessly fucked.