Luna was beyond livid. It was not one of those rare but fleeting moments where she allowed herself to feel mildly inconvenienced, a little put out, before drifting back into her usual calm.
No, this was different. This was a deep, blistering anger that settled in her bones and refused to be shaken loose. It was the kind of fury that made her magic prickle and hum beneath her skin like a living thing, the kind that turned her veins into threads of lightning and filled her chest with something sharp enough to cut. Her breath came evenly, but there was nothing serene about her stillness now. Her vision seemed to sharpen in a way that was almost unnatural, every detail in the room coming into focus with crystalline clarity, every thought lining up with perfect, dangerous precision.
Draco Malfoy had stolen from her.
And it was not just any theft. This was not a misplaced teacup, not the disappearance of a charm she could easily replace, not the kind of petty incident she could wave away with an arched brow and a quiet sigh. No, this was deliberate. This was personal. The infuriating, arrogant, absolutely unmanageable man had walked straight into her life, disrupted her peace with the most spectacular display of jealous, possessive, utterly feral behavior she had ever seen, and then, in a move so absurd that it defied logic, had taken it a step further.
He had kidnapped her cow.
Her cow!!!!!!!
Her sweet, gentle, entirely innocent cow. The creature who had done nothing to him except exist, chew grass, and look charmingly fluffy in the morning light. The nerve of it. The audacity. It was so far beyond rudeness that it looped back around into a realm of offense she could barely name, the kind that demanded action, retribution, and possibly the creative use of several particularly vindictive spells.
Luna did not often indulge in vengeance, but right now she was already picturing the exact shade of green Draco's hair would turn when she was done with him.
The moment Luna Apparated outside his sprawling estate, she was already a breath away from combusting. Her fists were clenched so tightly that her nails dug into the soft flesh of her palms, leaving little crescents that would sting later, but she did not care. Her jaw ached from the relentless pressure of her teeth grinding together, the muscle ticking as she fought to keep from screaming outright. Magic thrummed hot beneath her skin, simmering and pulsing with every beat of her heart, restless and impatient, whispering to be unleashed in a way that would scorch the earth and take him with it.
The nerve of him. The audacity. The sheer, unfiltered, Draco Malfoy brand of entitlement that seemed to defy all natural laws. It was as though the man had been born to irritate her into an early grave, to push her past reason and then smirk while she burned for it.
She did not slow. She did not plan. She did not breathe in that cool Highland air or take even a single moment to think. She stormed through the front gates like a storm front rolling in from the sea, long cloak snapping at her heels, billowing behind her with a life of its own, an extension of her rage. Each step up the grand stone staircase felt like an escalation, another drumbeat in the steady march toward violence, each footfall carrying the weight of every ounce of fury she had been holding back since the moment she realised her cow was gone.
By the time she reached the top, she had long since discarded the idea of knocking like a reasonable person. There was no polite tap, no gentle announcement of her arrival. She raised her fist and drove it into the heavy wood so hard the entire frame shuddered under the impact, the sound reverberating through the quiet air like a warning bell.
"MALFOY!"
Her voice tore through the stillness, sharp and carrying, bouncing off the stone walls of the estate until it felt like the very grounds were bracing themselves for the explosion to come.
A full thirty seconds passed. Thirty deliberate, infuriating seconds before the door finally swung inward. The delay was its own insult, as if the man inside felt no urgency, no flicker of guilt, not even a hint of self-preservation in the face of what was clearly waiting for him.
And then, there he was.
Draco Malfoy.
Dishevelled in the most offensively attractive way a man could be. Barefoot, as though she had interrupted some leisurely morning. Shirtless, which was hardly fair, the planes of his chest catching the light in a way that made her want to hex him purely on principle. His usual sleek composure was absent, replaced with something careless and unhurried, his silver-blond hair mussed into a chaotic mess that somehow looked intentional. His lips were slightly swollen, his expression unbothered, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough with sleep, a sound that scraped against her temper like flint against steel.
"Lovegood," he said, greeting her like she had not just pounded on his door hard enough to wake the dead and send his ancestors rattling in their ornate coffins. His voice was maddeningly indifferent, the single word dragged out with a lazy carelessness that made it sound more like a passing thought than an acknowledgment. Sleepy. Bored. Completely devoid of any instinct for self-preservation.
Luna saw red. Not the soft, harmless kind of irritation, but the full, blinding, white-hot version that made her magic coil and spark beneath her skin, made the air around her taste sharp like ozone before a storm.
"Give. Back. Dandelion. Immediately!" she snapped, each word its own strike, her voice trembling with the sheer effort it took to keep herself from exploding. Fury churned in her chest, mixed with disbelief and something else, something sharper, that came from the gall of this entire situation.
Draco blinked at her, once, slow and deliberate. A beat of silence passed, stretched thin as a bowstring. Then the absolute bastard let the corner of his mouth curl upward into a smirk so unhurried it felt like a slap.
"Who?"
It was not confusion. It was not genuine curiosity. It was mockery, pure and unfiltered, the kind designed to peel back every last layer of her restraint and see what was underneath.
Luna's entire body went rigid. Her breath hitched, and her voice dropped into a low, venomous hiss. "My cow, Malfoy. My fucking cow."
Before he could say another infuriating word, she shoved past him without invitation, the force of her movement sending a sharp, cold gust of air into the space between them. She stormed into his ridiculously extravagant home without a flicker of hesitation, without even pretending to wait for permission.
"Where is she?"
Draco did not stop her. He did not call her back, did not block her path, did not so much as step aside with any real urgency. He simply stood there, leaning his weight against the doorframe, arms crossing over his bare chest as his smirk deepened. His silver eyes tracked her every step, slow and deliberate, like a predator watching prey walk willingly into its territory.
The infuriating part was not just that he was letting her storm through his house without interference. It was the look on his face, that smug, unbearably entertained expression that told her he was enjoying this, that he was drinking in her anger like it was some rare, expensive wine he planned to savour.
She marched forward anyway, each step echoing across the polished floors, the hem of her dress snapping against her calves as her magic crackled in her wake. The air seemed to bend with the heat of it, charged and restless, every breath she took feeding the living, breathing thing her fury had become.
By the time she reached the lavishly decorated living room, she was ready to unleash every hex in her arsenal. Her gaze swept over the space, taking in the insult of his absurd, overindulgent taste. Every surface gleamed, every piece of furniture looked like it had been stolen from a museum exhibit on wealthy arrogance, and the entire room smelled faintly of something expensive and smug.
But then her attention snapped away from all of that, because there she was.
Dandelion.
The miniature Highland cow stood planted in the exact centre of Draco Malfoy's pristine, offensively elegant living room like it was her personal throne room. She was entirely unharmed, entirely unbothered, and, most infuriating of all, entirely comfortable. Her fur looked fluffier than Luna remembered, her stance was one of lazy entitlement, and her big glassy eyes radiated the unshakable confidence of someone who knew she had just upgraded her living conditions.
Luna's breath came out sharp and fast, the air slicing through her throat as she rushed forward. Her hands immediately cupped the soft, ridiculous face she had known since the day Dandelion had been born, the face of the animal she had raised with care, the animal this deranged aristocrat had stolen in a fit of jealous madness. She stroked her, searching for any sign of distress, but all she found was the infuriating truth that Dandelion seemed to be enjoying herself far too much.
"Come now, love," Luna coaxed, forcing her voice into something softer, as if she could charm her wayward companion home with affection alone. "Mummy will take you back where you belong."
The betrayal came in the form of a small, unimpressed moo. Dandelion turned her head away from Luna's touch with the grace of a queen dismissing a servant, then blinked slowly in her direction with the kind of indifference only a cow could pull off. She did not move an inch.
Luna froze, staring in disbelief. Dandelion stared back, calm and utterly unmoved.
Her eye twitched.
The fury that rose inside her was so sudden and so consuming that for a moment it stole her breath entirely. She straightened, her movements deliberate, her head turning toward Draco like a predator sighting the thing it was about to tear apart. Her magic stirred again, sliding through the air toward him, wild and restless.
"What," she began, her voice low and shaking with scandalised outrage, "did you feed her?"
Each word was a weapon, sharp-edged and aimed straight at him.
Draco was leaning casually against the doorway, arms loose at his sides, silver hair dishevelled, a lazy smirk cutting across his face as if he had been waiting for this exact moment. His eyes glittered with unholy amusement.
"Cereal and candy," he said.
For a full heartbeat, her mind refused to process what she had just heard. It was too much. Too stupid. Too on brand for him. Her fingers flexed at her sides, magic prickling at her skin.
Draco's gaze flicked to her hands, and his smirk deepened, like he was daring her to lose control.
"Bastard," she muttered, the word vibrating with venom.
He had the audacity to look even more pleased with himself. "Grass," he added lazily, dragging the word out as if it were an afterthought. "Obviously."
Luna's eyes narrowed into sharp, pale slits. "Do not steal my animals ever again, Malfoy."
The amusement vanished instantly. His smirk faded like smoke caught in the wind, and his expression shifted into something heavier. His shoulders squared, his stance straightened, his eyes darkened to steel. The air between them thickened, weighted with an energy that was no longer playful.
Luna felt the change roll over her skin. Her magic tangled with his like the first dangerous crackle of a summer storm, warning her to step back. But she stayed exactly where she was, breathing him in, ignoring the part of herself that whispered she should leave before this turned into something neither of them could undo.
The air between them did not just hum. It roared in silence, a low, primal vibration that seeped into the marrow of her bones. It was heavy with something molten, something dark and electric, something that felt like it had been waiting for years in the shadows, only to finally step forward now and lay claim to them both. Luna could feel it pushing against her skin, sliding into her lungs with every breath, coiling in the pit of her stomach like a serpent roused from its long slumber, stretching slowly before striking.
She had walked through so much of her life untouched, untethered, drifting like a half-forgotten dream between people and places, never fully claimed, never fully willing to claim anyone else. She had been content to wander on the edges, to let the world pass through her without ever truly pressing against her. But here, in the charged stillness of his presence, she was not drifting. She was caught, pulled into a gravity so fierce it made her knees weak. She was a star held fast in the unyielding orbit of a collapsing sun, unable to escape even if she tried, especially if she tried.
Draco was motionless, but there was nothing calm in him. Every line of his body was drawn taut, straining against a leash that looked ready to snap. He was not breathing evenly. He was not speaking. He was only watching her, and that was somehow worse than anything he could have said. His eyes locked on hers as if they were the only anchor keeping him from tearing the room apart. His hands hung in the air close to her waist, fingers twitching like they itched to close around her, to pull her in, to erase the space between them. His jaw was clenched so tightly she could almost hear the faint grind of teeth, and every muscle in his frame seemed frozen by the monumental effort of restraint.
It was useless. She had already taken that restraint from him without even meaning to.
And Merlin help her, because she was done pretending she wanted him to keep it.
He moved first. His hand came up to her face in a sudden, sure motion, catching her chin between his fingers with a grip that was far from gentle. It was not cruel, but it was unyielding, a silent warning that he was not letting her look anywhere but at him. His touch burned, not with heat alone but with the unmistakable weight of possession. He angled her face slightly, just enough to drink her in, to study the exact second her breath changed, the exact second she stopped pretending she was not going to give in to this.
His mouth hovered above hers, close enough for her to feel the shape of it in the air, close enough for her to catch the faint rush of his breath. He was not kissing her. Not yet. He was holding her there in that unbearable place where she could taste the inevitability without having it, where the wanting became a physical ache that wrapped itself around her ribs. Without thinking, she leaned into the pull, her body swaying toward him like it had always known where it belonged.
A smirk curved his mouth then, slow and sharp, a thing of arrogance and victory that lit his eyes with dangerous satisfaction. It lasted all of two seconds, because when she exhaled softly and the warmth of her breath brushed his lips, the smirk vanished, replaced by something far rougher, far more desperate.
One moment they were suspended in that fragile stillness, and the next, the dam broke.
His mouth slammed against hers in a kiss that felt less like a question and more like a storm breaking over the shore. It was force and hunger and inevitability all at once, his hands finally closing on her like they had been aching to for months, gripping and pulling and claiming every inch they could reach. He kissed her as if every second they had ever wasted apart had been a personal insult, as if he could erase them all in this one fierce, unending press of his mouth against hers.
There was no patience, no softness. It was teeth and tongue and fire, a battle and a surrender all tangled together.
And Luna… Luna met him with equal force. She gave him nothing delicate, nothing measured. Her kiss was wild and demanding, her fingers curling tight in the fabric of his shirt until the seams strained under her grip. Her nails dug into the solid muscle of his arms, urging him closer, daring him to try and hold something back when she would not. She could feel him shaking from the effort of restraint, could feel the raw need radiating from every inch of him, and still it was not enough.
She wanted more. She wanted all of it.
Draco growled against her mouth, the sound low and guttural, the kind of noise that came from somewhere far deeper than frustration. It was hunger in its purest form, unrestrained and unrepentant. His teeth caught her bottom lip, biting just enough to make her gasp, just enough to send heat flashing through every nerve in her body. He did not stop there. He sucked, he pulled, he devoured her like he meant to leave his claim etched into her skin, a memory she would feel every time she dared touch her mouth again.
His hands were everywhere at once, tangled in her hair, dragging the strands tight between his fingers, wrapping them around his fist as if anchoring her in place. One slid down, catching at her waist, curling over her hip with a grip that promised bruises by morning, pulling her closer, closer, until there was no space left for either of them to breathe. It was not enough. He wanted more. He wanted every line of her pressed to him until she had no choice but to remember exactly where she belonged.
And Luna… Luna gave him no resistance. She let him take. She let him strip the air from her lungs, tear apart her composure, rattle the bones of her self-control until she was left with nothing but the heat of his mouth and the dizzying rush of his touch. She gave him her breath, her composure, and whatever scraps of sanity she might have been clinging to. She gave him the dangerous, unspoken thing that had been burning between them for far too long. She gave him everything and did not think to take any of it back.
Then, without warning, it ended.
He tore himself away, not gently, but like a man dragging himself back from the edge of something that could not be undone. His forehead dropped against hers, his breath hot and ragged, his hands still on her like he could not bear to loosen them even an inch. Every muscle in him was pulled taut, trembling with the effort to resist the pull of her. His pupils were blown wide, swallowing the pale grey of his irises until his eyes looked almost black. His lips were flushed and swollen, his chest rising and falling too quickly, each inhale sounding like it was pulled through clenched teeth.
He did not release her. If anything, his grip tightened, the fingers at her waist digging deeper, as though the act of letting her go would cost him more than he could afford. He stayed there, suspended in the thin space between control and surrender, until the quiet became unbearable.
When he finally moved, it was not to step back.
His hand came up suddenly, a sharp, decisive motion that was all heat and possession. His fingers found the line of her jaw, curling around it with a grip that was not gentle but not careless either. It was a hold that demanded she stay right where she was, that demanded her attention, her eyes, her acknowledgment. His thumb pressed against the softness of her bottom lip, the pad dragging lightly over it in a slow, deliberate sweep that was more intimate than any kiss.
He tilted her head up until there was nowhere left for her gaze to go but into his. The air between them seemed to thicken, heavy with the weight of everything he had not said, with everything he could not stop himself from feeling.
His breath came unevenly, drawn in shallow, ragged pulls that scraped at the back of his throat, each one harder to control than the last. His body was taut with restraint, every muscle locked in place, the strain visible in the sharp lines of his jaw and the way his shoulders refused to loosen. He was holding himself together through sheer willpower, fighting the urge to shake the truth out of her, to strip away every wordless wall she built between them until there was nothing left but her voice, raw and unguarded, giving him what he needed.
"Who was there yesterday with you, love?"
The question was not casual. It was not simple curiosity. It was a blade slipped into the quiet, honed on jealousy and sharpened by the steady erosion of his patience. His voice carried weight, not just in the words themselves but in the way they trembled on the edge between demand and something dangerously close to pleading. The sound was rough and unsteady, as if speaking them had cost him more than he could admit. It was not the tone of a man who was used to being denied. It was the tone of a man who would not accept denial now.
Luna did not flinch. She did not look away. Her gaze met his with an unnerving steadiness, her pale eyes calm, unreadable, almost soft in their stillness. It was the kind of composure that did not soothe, but provoked, that forced him to feel every second stretch out between them like a taut wire. She let the silence draw longer and longer, the weight of it pressing against his chest until the air felt too thick to breathe. She was testing him. Taunting him. Watching to see if he would break first. And the worst part, the part that made his pulse pound in his ears, was that he let her. He stood there and endured it because the thought of losing her gaze felt even worse than the burn of waiting.
And then she said it.
"Rolf."
The name landed like a curse. He felt it pierce straight through his ribs and lodge deep, a sharp, cold thing that spread its poison through him in an instant. The sound of it made something inside him coil tight and violent. His hand tightened against her jaw, not enough to bruise, but enough to remind her that his self-control was hanging by threads that could snap at the slightest provocation. He felt the shift inside himself, felt the flare of heat that was not warmth but possession, the deep and ugly kind that rooted itself in the gut and refused to be reasoned with.
Her voice was quiet when she continued, and it only made it worse. "He was the one who helped me get my coffee shop."
A muscle ticked in his jaw. His nostrils flared. His fingers twitched where they held her face, and he still said nothing. He could not. He knew that if he opened his mouth now, the words that came out would not be ones he could take back. The silence was not mercy, it was survival. It was the only way to keep from turning this moment into something they could never recover from.
She did not stop.
"But the bank is going to foreclose it because I did not have any revenue."
The change in him was instant. It was not visible at first, but it was so abrupt and so deep that he could feel it in the rhythm of his own heartbeat. Jealousy was still there, the sharp bite of possessiveness still burning at the edges, but something else rose up to swallow it whole. The sound of her loss, the quiet resignation tucked into those words, pushed the fury aside in an instant.
The battle inside him shifted. This was not about another man anymore.
This was not about the suffocating, all-consuming rage that had been winding itself tighter and tighter inside him since the moment she had spoken that name.
This was about her. This was about Luna standing in front of him with something fragile and important slipping out of her hands, something she loved being pulled away from her, and for once it had nothing to do with him at all.
Draco's grip loosened, just barely, the smallest change in pressure, but enough for her to feel it. Enough for her to know that something inside him had turned. The storm had not passed. It had simply found a new horizon to break against, a new target to rip apart. The sharp edge of his jealousy was still there, simmering hot beneath the surface, but it had been swallowed by something colder, steadier, and far more dangerous than raw temper.
Because no one took from Luna Lovegood. Not the Ministry with its choking bureaucracy, not some faceless bank clerk counting galleons in a dusty ledger, not even the slow, creeping cruelty of fate itself.
A muscle jumped in his jaw, the faintest twitch at the edge of his cheekbone, and the heat in his blood began to shift, cooling into a blade's edge clarity. The look in his eyes changed as if a line had been crossed, as if she had just watched him walk into a place in himself from which there was no retreat. This was no longer about the argument at her door, or the phantom of another man's name on her lips. This was something final, something that had already decided its own outcome before she even realized the battle had started.
Magic stirred in him, restless and alive, pressing against his skin like a living creature with its own will. It gathered and coiled as if scenting prey, a dark, steady hum that spoke of intention and inevitability. It was not the wild heat of a moment's fury, but the cold, deliberate pulse of a man who had chosen his course and would not be moved from it. His entire frame seemed to vibrate with the promise of action, not reckless, not desperate, but precise and devastating, the kind of energy that only existed at the opening note of a war.
And in the silence that followed, something unspoken threaded itself into the air between them, a silent vow wrapped in steel and fire. If the world tried to take from him again, it would not matter who stood in the way. He would burn it all before he let it happen.
Then, softly, deliberately, as if the words themselves were an unshakable truth rather than a promise, he said, "You are not losing that shop."
Luna drew in a slow breath, her eyes fixed on his, searching for the limits she already suspected were not there. She studied the set of his shoulders, the quiet certainty in his voice, the dangerous stillness that wrapped around him like a second skin. She was measuring the distance between who he appeared to be in this moment and what he would become if the world forced his hand.
Before she could speak, before she could shape the words that hovered on her tongue, the ones that would tell him she did not need rescuing, that this was her fight to win or lose, that she was not his to shield from the storm, he had already moved past her silence. She saw it in the shift of his posture, in the narrowing of his gaze, in the way his magic seemed to lean forward like a predator scenting blood.
He was already calculating. Already building the scaffolding of some ruthless solution. Already deciding who would suffer for daring to put her in this position. His mind was not circling the problem, it was cutting straight through it, stripping it down to whatever obstacle needed to be removed.
Draco Malfoy had made up his mind. And when Draco Malfoy made up his mind, the world did not negotiate. It did not reason with him. It bent, or it broke.
Before Draco could even part his lips to argue, to insist, to swear on every last unbroken piece of himself that he would fix this, that he would not let her lose something she had built with her own hands, Luna was already tilting her head, already offering him that infuriatingly soft, knowing smile. It was not the kind of smile that belonged in a moment like this. It was the kind of quiet, maddening look that curled around him like smoke, that made his stomach tighten in ways he despised, that slowed his pulse for reasons he refused to name.
She was calm. Too calm. It was the sort of calm that left him unsteady, as if she had already decided the outcome while he was still pacing the edges of war. She had just told him that her shop, the place where she had undone him completely, the place where she had pulled him into whatever this dangerous, consuming thing between them was, was about to be taken from her, and she stood there looking at him as though none of it mattered. As though she could not see the truth pressing in on him, that he was already prepared to burn down the entire financial system in her name.
"Thank you, but it will be okay," she murmured, and her voice was so maddeningly steady, so unwavering in its certainty, so impossibly serene that it carved something sharp into the center of his chest. His jaw locked hard enough to ache at the absurdity of her words. "I will be okay, darling."
She said it like she was quoting a universal law, like the world had already sworn to her that things would work out, as though she had not just admitted that the one thing she had built from nothing was slipping toward a cliff's edge. That was not something he could allow.
Draco's jaw tightened further, the muscle ticking in sharp, angry pulses. His fingers curled into fists at his sides until his knuckles strained white. His magic rose against his skin in restless waves, demanding action, demanding retaliation, demanding war.
"It will be more than okay, love," he said, his voice dropping lower, heavier, threaded with something unshakable, the kind of finality that left no oxygen for argument. His hands ached with the urge to reach for her, to close around her wrist and hold her steady, to anchor her to something that could not be taken from her. But he stayed still, his restraint as sharp as it was fragile. "Let me take care of you."
She exhaled softly, shaking her head, her expression unreadable. There was something in her gaze that sat somewhere between quiet amusement and gentle exasperation, something so distinctly and stubbornly her that it stole his breath for a moment before it burned.
"It is not necessary, Draco. Thank you."
The words were light, almost offhand, but they landed like a dismissal. She waved her hands as though she could brush the entire moment aside, as though she could sweep away the force of his promise, as though she could not feel the way his magic had already begun to wrap around her like an unbreakable chain, binding itself to her fate whether she welcomed it or not.
Then she delivered the final blow.
"We have only known each other for a few days."
The words landed between them with the kind of weight that was meant to create distance, to remind him of some imaginary boundary she thought still existed. Draco exhaled through his nose, slow and measured, the kind of breath taken by a man who was choosing not to laugh in disbelief, choosing not to snap, choosing not to call her a liar outright. He tilted his head slightly, the movement deliberate, his gaze narrowing until it sharpened like a blade. His lips curved, not into a full smirk, but into something more dangerous, something that spoke of knowledge older than whatever polite fiction she was trying to maintain.
"We have known each other for years."
It was not a correction. It was not even an argument. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the quiet certainty of a man who had decided reality would bend to his memory rather than the other way around.
Luna gave a small huff, soft and amused, though the sound carried more curiosity than dismissal. She shook her head again, pale hair shifting like spun silver in the light, but this time she did not pull back, did not pivot the conversation away, did not shut the door he had just cracked open. Instead, she lingered there in the moment, studying him as though she was trying to determine whether his truth was more dangerous than her own.
The scrutiny settled low in his gut, winding itself into a knot of dark satisfaction. It was not victory exactly, but it was close.
"Not like this," she said at last. Her voice had dropped into something quieter, more deliberate, each word wrapped in silk but carrying an honesty she could not have hidden even if she wanted to.
And then, because she was Luna Lovegood, because she could never let a moment stand without reshaping it into something entirely her own, her lips curved into the faintest of smiles, her eyes brightening with a spark that was equal parts mischief and challenge.
"And you are most definitely crazy."
Draco grinned then, slow and cutting, the kind of expression that revealed both teeth and intent. Merlin, but wasn't that the truth.
"When it comes to you?" His voice was lower now, rougher, the sound of it a slow drag of velvet over stone. It was not a question, not even close.
He leaned in, not enough to touch her, but enough to feel the subtle hitch of her breath, enough to watch the way her body attuned to his presence without her conscious permission, enough to make it very clear that her words had not insulted him in the slightest.
"Absolutely."
His fingers moved then, almost idly, skimming over the fabric at the edge of her sleeve. The contact was feather-light, an almost-absence of touch, yet it pinned her still. Her eyes followed the movement, guarded but unwilling to pull away.
"When it comes to something you care about," he went on, his voice shifting into something softer but no less certain, "I am not just determined. I am unhinged."
It was not a boast, not an offer. It was a truth, one she could either accept or walk away from, but it would remain true regardless.
Luna's gaze deepened, her attention narrowing until it felt like she could see straight through him, and Draco let her. He did not hide from it, did not temper the rawness of what she might find there. If she wanted to look into the teeth of the wolf, he would bare them without hesitation.
And then, as if the past fourteen years had somehow stepped quietly back into the space between them, he spoke before he could stop himself, before he could remind himself that it no longer mattered, before reason could catch up with the impulse.
"I signed your petition when we were at school."
The words seemed to hang in the air, heavier than they had any right to be. Luna blinked, the smallest flicker of surprise breaking through her usual composure. Her lips parted just slightly, as if the thought that he, of all people, might have done something so unexpected had never once crossed her mind.
"It was not silly. Thestral lives are important," she corrected without hesitation, her voice steady and sure, carrying that same quiet certainty she had always possessed, the kind of conviction that had once made others roll their eyes or turn away.
And Merlin help him, he had been one of them.
Her head tilted, her gaze sharpening just enough to feel like a quiet challenge. "Only two people signed it," she said after a pause, watching him closely, as if she were testing the truth of his claim, searching for any sign that this was just another line, another distraction.
"And one of them was me."
Draco did not look away. His eyes stayed on hers, steady and unflinching, letting the silence spool out between them, letting her feel every ounce of the weight he had put behind that simple admission.
And then, because apparently his brain had decided to take a holiday and leave his mouth in charge, because she had already dismantled whatever threadbare logic he had left, because instinct had completely overthrown common sense, Draco Malfoy asked the one question he had never dared to voice before.
"Did you like me in school?"
The words were barely out before regret started to creep in, slow and persistent. He could almost feel his dignity preparing to pack its bags. Almost.
Luna, however, to his growing horror, simply hummed.
A small, thoughtful, maddeningly calm hum, as if he had asked her opinion on the weather instead of something that had the potential to bruise his ego for the rest of the century.
"No."
Draco blinked, a fraction of a second too slow to hide his reaction.
"I fancied Theodore."
It hit him like a Bludger to the chest. His head jerked back, his eyes narrowing, his expression twisting into something caught between disbelief and personal offense.
"You wound me, princess. Absolutely crush my ego."
Luna's smirk deepened, her teeth catching on her lower lip like the very idea of his injury was a treat she intended to savour.
Before he could retaliate, before the air could settle, the moment was destroyed by a loud, deliberate rustling. It was followed almost immediately by the sickening sound of paper tearing in a way that promised financial and emotional ruin.
Luna's smirk vanished. "Dandelion, do not eat that book!"
Draco turned slowly, bracing himself, and there it was. His stolen miniature Highland cow, standing in the middle of his pristine living room like it was her personal kingdom, blissfully chewing on what was clearly a very expensive, probably one-of-a-kind, leather-bound tome. The gold-leaf edges were already fraying.
He closed his eyes and dragged a hand down his face. "Perfect. Just perfect."
"She had so much fun," he muttered to himself, rubbing at his temples like the headache might disappear if he pressed hard enough. "The elves were not particularly charmed by my new pet."
"My pet," Luna shot back instantly, her glare sharp enough to cut glass.
Draco's lips curved into a slow, unapologetic grin. He took a step closer, his voice lowering as his gaze caught on the faint shimmer of her magic, the shift in her breathing, the subtle hitch in the air between them.
"She can stay."
Luna narrowed her eyes. "She can have sleepovers sometimes," she corrected, each word deliberate, her mouth trying and failing to hide the faint twitch of amusement.
Draco's chuckle was low and deliberate, the kind of sound that carried equal parts challenge and promise. "You will let her stay," he murmured, leaning just enough for his breath to skim across her lips.
And they both knew, without a single doubt, that he was no longer talking about the cow.