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In the height of war, it’s difficult to find anything to be happy about, but they make do. Tiny things - a new blooming plant for Neville, a perfected Quidditch move for Cho - bring smiles to faces whenever possible.
For Luna, it’s the memory of a boy she hasn’t seen for almost a full year now. He disappeared at the end of her fifth year, swept away to fight in a war that has seen too many young warriors. But she remembers his sparkling eyes and soft curve of a smile he often reserved just for her.
“Are you thinking about him again?” Ginny asks blandly as she sits on a padded cushion on the floor of the Room of Requirement. “He’s on the wrong side, Luna. He’s never coming back.”
Luna bites back her retort, the one that will cut Ginny to the core - that the man she believes she loves is actually in love with another Weasley and their best female friend. Instead, she hums nonsensically, and brings her knees up to chest to lean her chin on it. Her eyes take on a bit of a vacant look until Ginny huffs and moves to a group with Seamus and Dean.
Neville appears next, but he merely sits behind her on the ground, framing her body with his long legs. His hands tug at her waist and then Luna is leaning back into his body. He runs fingers through her hair, detangling the strands before he gathers them into a fist, tugging gently to one side. “Alright?”
“I’m okay.”
“Thinking of Draco again?”
His name brings a line of tears to her lower eyelid, but she can’t help the smile from forming on her lips. Just his name brings a flood of memories from the years before the world dissolved into hatred and duels and terror. She misses him, the way he would be a gentleman and kiss her knuckles in greeting, how he shielded her from bullies and demanded the return of her lost items. And then she remembers the way he made her promise to stay safe, even when he was gone.
“Yes,” she confesses. “I miss him.”
The last time she saw him, he was running from the castle in a crowd of unsavory people, a crowd he brought in through the Vanishing Cabinet he’d shown her one early morning. She’d been in Ravenclaw Tower, looking out one of the windows, and she could have sworn he looked back, searched for her.
Then he was gone.
One year. No one has heard about or from Draco Malfoy for a year, and Luna worries that he is a prisoner now, that he is known as a traitor amongst his family. She wishes she can be with him, wherever he is, even if only to lace their fingers together so she can offer him strength.
“Tell me about him,” Neville says quietly. Luna looks back at him, surprise evident on her face. Her friend merely smiles. “Anything you want to tell me, just talk about him.”
And so she does. She tells him about the first time they met, in the infirmary after he was scratched by Buckbeak, and then how they bonded after she introduced him to the thestrals. Meetings in-between classes, then a stolen kiss at the beginning of his fourth year. Luna thinks of the way Draco invited her to the Yule Ball, remembers how she wasn’t sure if she should be at his side, but ultimately not caring what anyone else thought. She stops there, thinking of the good times before Draco’s home became a place for hiding a Dark Lord, before he was given an impossible task.
“You’ve always been a good judge of character, Luna.”
Luna eyes Neville. His tone is sincere, his face serene. “Thank you.”
“If you trust him, then so will I.”
Her heart blooms, making her chest feel tight. Neville is the first of her friends to say anything of the sort. Neville presses a kiss into her hair, a comforting move that reminds her of Draco. They settle together in their little corner of the room. Neville continues holding her until Luna finally drifts to sleep.
He hopes she dreams of better times, of that moment she first met Draco and he unknowingly offered her the world. He also hopes he can somehow find a way to bring them back together, if only so there can be at least one happy ending to this gods-forsaken war.
Of all people, he believes Luna is the one who deserves the most happiness.