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"Hey Draco, doesn't she look pretty?" Blaise whispered quietly to his newfound friend who looked down his nose rather imperiously to see the new first years huddle nervously next to the teachers' table as they waited to be sorted into their new houses. One however, did not look interested at all by pretty much everything going on around her.
"I suppose she does." Draco replied after several seconds of careful scrutiny. She did look rather pretty with her flyaway blonde hair and if Draco really squinted, grey eyes. She reminded him of a fairy that had somehow gotten lost.
"I'm going to marry her one day." Blaise murmured as a dreamy look entered his eyes and he sighed in what Draco knew was a far too melodramatic fashion for any respectable twelve-year-old to have.
"You don't even know what house she's going to be in yet." Draco pointed out as he figured that might wake his newfound friend up. He did not know him yet as well as he knew Crabbe and Goyle, point there being that he also did not want to know them that well as they had been chosen by his father, so Blaise was his first proper friend and thus he simply had to share the same beliefs that he did.
"Oh posh. I couldn't care if she was in Hufflepuff." Blaise waved his hand rather absently. "Since I'm going to marry her one day."
The scandalous look Draco sent Blaise was completely and utterly lost on him. Looking over to the main table, Draco saw the girl looking their way and she smiled blindingly at them as their eyes met. Draco blinked a couple of times, looked down at the reddening face of Blaise and then back over to the new girl. He was about to smile back when he saw a red-haired girl from further down the line wave rather frantically at the new girl and whisper something to her. He grimaced. He would recognise that Weasley hair anywhere and if this new girl was going to befriend the Weasley girl -what did one call a female Weasley anyway, Weaslette perhaps? - then the chances of Blaise marrying this girl were going to be slim.
They hated Slytherins as much as he hated Gryffindors.
Draco huffed and turned his head away.
If she was going to befriend the Weaslette then he wanted nothing to do with her and therefore Blaise would have nothing to do with her either.
Ignorant of the younger Malfoy's thoughts next to him, Blaise sighed once more as he took in the beautiful appearance of this other girl. She reminded him of the tales of princesses and kingdoms far away that his mother had always told him and he felt his heart beat faster as he continued to look at her.
Dubiously he looked down at his stomach. Maybe those twenty chocolate frogs had not become him after all.
~.~.~.~.~
"Here you go." Blaise held out the books as Luna looked up in surprise at the person who was helping her.
"You're Blaise Zabini." She stated simply as she took them, smiling as she saw that they were all still in one piece.
Blaise laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I am."
"I'm Luna Lovegood. I saw you at the sorting ceremony." She got up, not realising that he had held out his hand to help her. Blaise let it drop to his side awkwardly.
"This year?" He had seen her at the Ravenclaw table but had been pretty sure that she didn't even know who he was was - which was obviously not the case.
"My own." She clarified and smiled at him. "Thank you for the books." And with that she walked off, leaving Blaise to stare after her with an unconscious smile on his face and confusion written all over it.
How did she know who he was?
~.~.~.~.~
"Her name is Luna." Draco looked up at Blaise as his friend strutted into the room and his forehead wrinkled briefly as he thought about as to who 'she' might be before he remembered that Blaise only ever talked about one girl and one girl alone.
"The Ravenclaw?" He asked and was rewarded with one of Blaise's most dopey smiles.
"Yes, isn't it simply lovely?" He sighed as he flopped down on the couch next to him. "Her name means the moon. Because she is as beautiful and ethereal as the moon."
Draco looked over at Blaise and hoped to all the gods above and demons below that he would never, ever behave in such a horribly infatuated fashion. It was embarrassing to watch the thirteen year-old behave as such. He had given up by now in regards to Blaise sharing the exact same beliefs as he did, he simply didn't. He was loathe to admit it but it made discussions with the other Slytherin more interesting.
"It only took you a year to build up the courage and ask for her name." He stated bluntly as he turned back to the book. Really, he didn't know why that idiot of a half-giant was teaching them their Care of Magical Creatures classes but he wasn't going to fail a class just because the teacher was incompetent. He wasn't going to try and get out of it either, he was a Malfoy and Malfoys simply did not quit. And anyway, it was far too much fun railing up that hapless 'Golden Trio' as people had started calling them in secret. They made it so easy for him.
"That is because.....because....." Blaise blustered as he took in his friend's rather unimpressed look.
"By Merlin's beard Blaise, don't start hyperventilating!" Draco put down his book and sat his friend down, quickly checking that nobody was coming into their bedroom and locking the door. "Seriously, breathe."
Blaise looked up rather sourly at him. "You try dealing with a crush." He muttered.
"One day I will probably have to." Draco responded pragmatically, "However, it's not happening yet so I get to observe you going through it first."
"Why is it so difficult to talk to her?" Blaise moaned as he slumped back onto the bed.
"If I knew that, I'd tell you now, wouldn't I?" Draco murmured as he watched his friend.
He hoped this whole 'crush' business was still far away down the road, it looked painful and not at all fun.
~.~.~.~.~
"What do you mean, the dadderblimp told you everything?" Ginny exclaimed as she dipped her feet into the lake, taking another strawberry from the basket that she had managed to get Fred and George to get her from the kitchens.
"It showed me what I needed to know." Luna replied serenely and smiled as she watched the squid play in the shallows on the other side of the lake.
"And?" Ginny prompted.
"The blibbering humdingers are having a lot of fun with the squid today." Luna simply replied.
Ginny squinted and swore that the only thing having fun on the other side of the lake was the squid. The students currently trying to salvage their food from it certainly weren't.
"What did the dadderblimp show you?" Ginny tried once more, once it became clear that her new friend was obviously preoccupied with something else. "Wait a minute," She turned to Luna, "What actually is a dadderblimp?"
Luna merely smiled and began humming a tune softly as she watched the humdingers on the other side of the lake.
Her life would be a good one. The dadderblimp had shown her after all.
~.~.~.~.~
"If you tell me one more time that you and Luna are destined to be then I'm exiling you. Excommunicating you. Period." Draco was still pissed. He couldn't even walk down a corridor anymore without shouts of 'amazing bouncing ferret' echoing after him and he hated it. He absolutely loathed it. And that arse of a professor who had done that to him in the first place. And the blasted boy-who-lived and his friends for exacerbating the situation even more. He was in no mood to deal with Blaise and his ill-fated crush on top of that too.
"I know, which is why I wanted to tell you about what the fortune-teller said about you." Blaise responded, remembering to give him at least a metre of space because the magic was positively sparking around his friend in anger. The number that Professor Moody had pulled had been cruel and the twitching was only now starting to go away. Transfiguring people into animals was forbidden for a reason after all.
"Well, what did she say?" Draco muttered eventually, realising that Blaise wouldn't continue unless prompted.
"That, and I quote, 'Happiness will come from the most unexpected of places, forgiveness'." Blaise shrugged his shoulders at Draco's incredulous look.
"She was batty."
"As you have said many times."
"But now it's certain. She's as mad as Merlin was towards the end."
"Merlin was a great wizard, known for his prophetic skills. Therefore you are admitting that she could be right."
"He still went mad in the end."
"That's because anyone who lost the love of their life would lost it eventually."
"You're not still going on about Merlin and that Muggle king Arthur, are you?"
"It is confirmed, those grimoires Mafalda and Florence found confirm it."
"Until someone can go back and confirm it, I'm not buying it."
"That's because you deny the concept of true love."
"I do not."
"You do."
"Not."
"You are positively allergic to it." Blaise and Draco stopped as they waited for the staircase to arrive back.
"That's because the concept of true love is bullshit." Draco muttered, his eyes landing on Granger who was standing with Potter and the Weasel, also waiting for a staircase to reach them. He averted his eyes quickly, angry that they seemed to be everywhere these days. The past three years he had still been able to avoid them somewhat but this year, with those damn games taking place, they were everywhere because of Potter's participation in them.
"It's not." Blaise shook his head, also having spotted the trio. There seemed to be some sort of tension there as he saw Weasley keeping a slightly bigger distance than usual. These games were putting a strain on everyone. Hadn't they not been talking at some point? He was sure that there had been some sort of fight according to the grapevine at least but since Draco wanted to hear nothing of them he didn't really listen much to news of them. Or have the opportunity to gossip to his heart's content about them.
He sighed. Sometimes, it was hard being Draco's friend.
"Yeah, yeah, you knew the moment that you met Luna, excetera, excetera." Draco's voice was filled with more spite than usual.
"Yeah, I did. It's like lightning hitting you. Chorus singing from the skies above. All the stuff they say in books." Blaise nodded sagely.
"What sort of books do you read?" Draco looked at him sceptically.
"The good kind." Blaise retorted.
"Muggle books?" Draco's face held that tell-tale sneer it always did when the non-magic members of the human race were mentioned but Blaise was interested to note that there was also a spark of interest in his eyes. Maybe not all hope was lost.....
"Yes." Blaise nodded sagely. "And you should know that they hold more information on interpersonal relationships than any wizarding books ever have. Prude lot, us wizards are."
"Stop quoting Yoda at me." Draco muttered, distracted as the staircase nearly took off his leg when it swung back to them.
"You-" Blaise gawped, "You know Star Wars?"
"Oh bloody hell." And like a bat out of hell, Draco took off up the winding stairs.
Blaise picked up his robes and ran after his friend.
"You can't drop a nugget like that and then run off! Malfoy!"
~.~.~.~.~
"Are you looking for something Luna?" Blaise asked, his nerves nearly getting the best of him as he approached her. No matter how often she had confused him with conversations that were so brief that he was never quite sure that they had happened at all, he remained as nervous as ever when it came to talking to her.
Draco would be laughing himself silly somewhere if he knew but Blaise wasn't really talking to him right now. His friend was taking it too far, helping Umbridge the way he did, joining the Inquisitorial Squad and all that.
There was disliking someone or something and then there was outright hatred of it. Blaise had to say that he was not fond of the second of those. He had more than enough of that with all of the stepfathers in his life, he didn't need it with his best friend too.
"Just my books. They are usually up in the archway over there." Luna pointed up and sure enough, there they were.
"Why are your books up there?" Blaise questioned, confused as he summoned them back down and handed them over to her.
"Oh. Well, people like to put them up there." Luna stated so matter-of-factly that Blaise was unsure as to what to do with it. On one hand he was quite angry as nobody should be doing that to anyone, especially not one as kind as Luna (from what he had observed over the years anyway) but on the other hand, Luna seemed so nonchalant about it, as if it were nothing of importance.
"That's not very good." Blaise remarked eventually, before it became too late to say anything at all. He winced after the words had left his mouth, so much for his famed quick wit.
"I suppose it's not." Luna agreed sagely. "However it is what people do and I can't stop them from doing what they want to. Nobody can, really."
"It's still cruel." Blaise muttered and Luna shot him a blinding smile.
"Thank you for thinking so." She said and walked over to him. "You're kinder than you let people think." And she smiled softly then and Blaise felt his breath knocked clean out of him.
Lost for words, he watched her walk away. At the end of the corridor, she turned around briefly and looked over her shoulder at him.
"See you around Blaise Zabini the Kind." And she rounded the corner and Blaise felt the blush spread across his face and he turned to walk back down to the dungeons himself.
Luna was something else entirely.
~.~.~.~.~
Draco stared in confusion up at the pair of shoes hanging in the archway. Why would anyone leave or put their shoes up there? Suddenly he realised whose they were and sighed heavily. Looking up and down the corridor, confirming that nobody else was around, he took out his wand and levitated them back down towards him. Hearing voices coming near, he quickly stuffed them underneath his robes and started wandering towards the Ravenclaw common room.
The corridors were largely dark by the time he finished his trek and he sighed once more as he pulled the shoes out and positioned them in front of the entrance, spelling them clean after he noticed the mud on them. Taking out a piece of parchment, he wrote her name down on it and put it on top of the shoes.
Hopefully she would find them on time before someone else hid them once again.
Coldness clawed at him as he walked back to the dungeons and he pulled his robes tighter around him as he felt it seep into his bones.
The robes made hiding how thin he had become easy and he felt every scar on his body throb the colder it got.
It wasn't glorious, being forced to work for the man that his father still idolised and wiled away in prison for. It had done him nothing but harm and had alienated from the one true friend he'd probably had.
Slipping back into the dungeon, he hoped that he would be able to catch at least some sleep that night before the next day started again. He couldn't fail, he simply couldn't. Malfoys simply didn't fail.
Maybe if he repeated the mantra often enough, he would start to believe it again, as he once had.
One last thing had to be done though before he did what he had to tomorrow. Taking out the rest of the parchment, he wrote one simple note;
Just ask her out already, you deserve the happy-ever-after. -DM
He didn't know that that would be the last thing he would say to his friend for the next ten years of his life.
~.~.~.~.~
Blaise was still reeling from the news that he was now going to be Head Boy in the absence of his best friend. He wasn't sure what had happened to Draco since he'd fled into exile with his mother but from what he'd heard, Draco had been in the midst of things for a long time, dating all the way back to when they had been at school.
His haggard appearance during their sixth year made so much more sense now.
He rounded the corner and bumped into someone, his arms immediately shooting out to stop them from toppling over.
Looking down, his heart sped up. He would recognise this girl anywhere.
"Sorry Luna." He said and his hands lingered briefly on her arms, not quite ready to give up the feeling of actually holding her before he pulled back.
"It's quite alright Blaise." She smiled up at him and Blaise frowned slightly as he saw the lines around her eyes and her much thinner appearance. He wondered what had happened to her but knew he could not ask; they were nowhere near close enough for him to do so.
"Are you back at school to help rebuild as well?" Luna broke his reverie and he nodded, his mind flying away from the thoughts about absentee Malfoys and back to the girl in front of him.
"Yeah." He swallowed and then smiled. "My mother finally decided that we could come back and I wanted to actually help." He shrugged. "I didn't get the chance to do much else before."
"I noticed that you were gone the last year." Luna nodded as well.
"Luna!" The shout from Ginny Weasley at the end of the corridor, who was now regarding Blaise with suspicion, broke them out of their bubble.
"I will see you later, Blaise the Kind." Blaise blushed a bright red as Luna walked over to her friend, her hand held up in farewell. He raised his own and as he turned around to walk away he heard the youngest Weasley begin to pepper Luna with questions.
"What did he want?"
"Oh nothing much. We were just discussing whether Crumplehorned Snorkacks were more likely to nest in trees or near lakes. My father has seen them nest near lakes, there are so many of them in Sweden so it is their natural habitat however Blaise swears that he saw them nest in some trees so....." Her voice trailed off as they moved outside of his hearing range and Blaise grinned brightly.
He knew what he was going to be reading up on tonight.
~.~.~.~.~
"-and that's why they nest near lakes and not in trees." Blaise grinned as Luna finished her argument with a surprising amount of vigor, he was sure that he had never seen her so excited over anything else before.
To be fair, he hadn't thought that he would ever go over all of the old editions of the Quibbler that he could come across and try to learn more about all of the creatures that Luna talked about on a near-daily basis.
"The two aren't mutually exclusive though." He pointed out as they continued towards the Great Hall for lunch. "Just because they may also prefer locations near lakes, does not mean that they would never nest up on trees. I mean, the Crumplehorned Snorkacks cannot fly however logically speaking, a creature that has the features that it does, would have the ability to climb trees. And it is much safer up trees so why wouldn't they nest there?"
The look that Potter, Weasley and the youngest Weasley gave him and Luna as they walked past them to get to lunch was a mixture of confusion and suspicion. Internally he sighed; the suspicion would probably never go away.
As Luna continued to expound on the many reasons as to why Crumplehorned Snorkacks would never live on trees, Blaise's eyes briefly drifted over to the Slytherin table and he saw the space where Draco had once sat left completely empty. Suddenly he remembered a note from so long ago and he stopped in the middle of his tracks.
Once Luna noticed that he wasn't next to her anymore, she turned around and faced him.
"Blaise?"
"Can you come with me a sec?" He asked and her brows furrowed before she nodded, following him out of the Great Hall and to a side corridor.
"Okay, this is going to sound completely crazy and insane and please forget this ever happened if you think that this is the case, but I just remembered something that I got told a while back and-"
"Blaise?" She looked even more confused now.
Blaise swallowed briefly, looked down to the floor and then looked back up at her.
"I like you Luna. A lot. I really like you. And if this war has taught me anything, it's that I hate having regrets, especially when it comes to people. So," He swallowed again nervously, "Do you want to go out with me on a date this weekend?"
A smile stretched across the whole of Luna's face and she nodded. "I thought you would never ask."
"Wait- what?" Blaise felt surprised. "You do? You want to- you want to go out with me?"
"Yes." Luna nodded.
"On a date?"
"Yes."
"On a date."
"Yes."
"With me."
"I believe so. That's what you were asking, right?"
"Yes. No. No, I mean. Really?"
"You really are surprised." Luna noted.
"Well," Blaise took a deep breath, "I didn't think that you would say yes." I pointed out and Luna laughed.
"Why would I say no?"
"Because you might not like me that way?" Blaise pointed out.
"Are you trying to talk me out of the date now?" Luna asked, now thoroughly amused.
"No!" Blaise shook his head and waved his arms about in a rather dramatic fashion.
"Okay." She nodded, the smile still present on her face. "I'll see you tomorrow then?"
"Yeah. Does seven sound alright?" Blaise asked, still not believing that Luna had actually said yes.
"Sounds perfect." Luna walked over and hugged him and after a second's hesitation, Blaise hugged her back.
"See you tomorrow." Blaise smiled as they parted ways in the Great Hall to go to each of their tables.
Orla shot her a strange look as she sat down at her table, still smiling serenely. "Are you alright there Luna?"
Luna turned to the younger girl and nodded. "Quite alright, thank you Orla. Everything happened just as the Didderblamp said it would."
Orla looked at her in confusion and then smiled and shook her head in amusement.
"Of course it did Luna, of course it did."
Luna simply smiled and turned back to the food spread out in front of her. It was going to be a good year, she couldn't wait to tell her father about this once they could contact the outside world again.