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Luna Lovegood had liked Blaise Zabini since first year.
She remembered it perfectly — the way the Sorting Hat had barely touched his head before crying out *Slytherin*, the way he'd walked to the table with the kind of easy confidence that most eleven-year-olds spent the rest of their lives trying to learn. She'd watched from the Ravenclaw bench and thought, quite simply, *oh, that's interesting.*
She hadn't thought much of it since. There were Nargles to track, and her father needed help with the Quibbler's autumn edition, and she had theories about the Rotfang Conspiracy that simply could not wait. Feelings, Luna had decided long ago, were not things to be buried or fought or anxiously prodded at three in the morning. They were things to let exist, like weather, like light through a window. They were alive whether you acknowledged them or not, so she let this one live.
It sat quietly in her chest like a small warm stone.
She never told anyone. Not because she was ashamed — she didn't really do shame — but because it simply hadn't come up.
Until tonight.
---
Professor Slughorn's party was loud and golden and smelled of crystallised pineapple and old ambition. Luna walked in on Harry's arm — not romantically, she was clear on that, Harry was simply her friend and her escort and his bow tie was slightly crooked — and immediately began cataloguing the room for interesting things.
There was a very good harp in the corner. There were at least four people wearing expressions that suggested they'd rather be elsewhere. And there, near the fireplace, stood Blaise Zabini.
He was with Draco Malfoy, as he usually was. Both of them tall, both of them watchful. Draco's gaze found Harry within approximately four seconds of their arrival. Luna noticed the way his jaw tightened, the quick controlled blink of someone recalibrating their expression. *Interesting,* she thought. *He's done something to his feelings too. But not the same way I have.*
Blaise wasn't looking at Harry.
Blaise was looking at her.
---
"Who's that?" Blaise said, low, barely moving his mouth. The strange pale girl on Potter's arm was walking slightly too slowly for the room, looking at everything as though she owned it, silver radish earrings catching the candlelight.
"'Loony' Lovegood," Draco said flatly, barely glancing over.
Blaise nearly smirked. *Loony Lovegood.* He supposed some wizarding families went in for that sort of thing.
He crossed the room toward her before he'd consciously decided to.
Up close she was even stranger — she was looking at a portrait on the wall as though it had said something particularly clever, her head tilted at an angle that suggested she heard music no one else could.
"Hey, Loony," he said.
She turned.
For one half-second, something crossed her face — the only flicker of anything less than total serenity he'd see from her all night — before her expression smoothed itself into something so politely, devastatingly composed that it made him feel as though he'd stepped in something.
"It's *Luna*," she said. Her voice was soft and perfectly even. "My name is Luna."
Then she walked away. Not stormed. Not huffed. Simply removed herself, the way a cat leaves a room, with the quiet certainty that it was her choice entirely and she'd made it.
Blaise stood very still.
---
Luna found Hermione Granger in approximately forty-five seconds. Hermione was with a tall boy whose name Luna didn't know, and he was leaning over her in a way that made Hermione look like she was solving a very irritating equation in her head.
"Luna," Hermione said, with the specific relief of someone being thrown a rope. "You're here."
"I need to borrow you," Luna said.
"Yes. Please. Immediately. Cormac, I'll be —" She was already moving.
In the corridor outside, standing between a suit of armour and a tapestry depicting something involving a wizard and several frightened geese, Luna said: "I think I need to tell someone about something."
Hermione turned, properly attentive. "What's happened?"
"Nothing bad. Blaise Zabini called me 'Loony' just now."
"Oh, Luna, I'm sorry, people are awful —"
"I corrected him and left," Luna said, mildly. "That part's fine. I just — I realised I should tell someone, because I've never told anyone, and it seems like the right time." She paused, thoughtful. "I've liked him since first year."
Hermione stared at her. "Blaise Zabini."
"Yes."
"The Slytherin."
"Yes."
"Who just called you 'Loony.'"
"I know," Luna said, serenely. "Feelings are complicated, aren't they."
Hermione opened and closed her mouth twice. Then, because she was ultimately practical above all things, she said: "How long have you been carrying this by yourself?"
"Five years, approximately." Luna considered. "I didn't think of it as carrying. More like having a small companion. It never bothered me. I just thought you should know, given recent events."
Hermione looked at her for a long moment — the kind of look people sometimes gave Luna, half wonder and half something that took a while to identify as envy.
"You're genuinely extraordinary," Hermione said at last. "In case nobody's told you today."
Luna smiled at her. "They haven't. Thank you."
---
Blaise made his way back to Draco.
"Her name's Luna," he said.
Draco blinked. "What?"
"The girl. Her name's Luna. Not Loony."
"Well obviously everyone calls her —"
"Draco." Blaise gave him a long, flat look. "Her name is Luna."
Draco opened his mouth, closed it, then was thankfully dragged away by Professor Snape before whatever he'd been about to say could make things worse.
Blaise stood there for a moment, doing something he rarely did: wondering about someone.
Luna Lovegood. She'd walked in with Potter looking at the whole party like she was humouring it. She'd worn whatever she was wearing with the confidence of someone who had never once considered whether other people approved. And when he'd got her name wrong, she hadn't made a scene. She'd simply corrected him, quietly, completely, and walked away.
He didn't know why that felt like a verdict.
---
He found Potter ten minutes later near a table of canapés, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else on earth.
"Potter."
Harry turned, already wary. "Zabini."
"You came with someone."
Harry waited.
"Luna Lovegood," Blaise said, carefully casual. "Ravenclaw. Blonde."
"I know who I came with."
"Are you — is there something between you two."
Harry stared at him with the expression of someone encountering a question they genuinely hadn't anticipated. "Luna's my friend. That's it." A pause. "Why?"
"No reason. Is she seeing anyone."
Harry's expression moved through several phases, settling somewhere between amused and suspicious. "Not that I know of. Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Seeing anyone."
Blaise gave him a look usually reserved for particularly tedious Potions partners. "I'm going to get a drink."
"That's not a no," Harry called after him.
---
He got his drink. He was halfway through it when a girl he vaguely knew appeared at his elbow, touching his arm, saying his name with that particular warmth he'd always found easy to return.
He stepped back. Gentle, but deliberate.
He looked at her — actually looked — and thought, with startling clarity: *this is exhausting. When did this become exhausting.*
He extracted himself and moved away through the crowd, ending up near a window. Outside, the grounds were dark. In here there was candlelight and canapés and a lot of people performing enthusiasm at each other.
And somewhere in this room was a girl who had corrected him like he'd gotten the most basic thing wrong — which he had — and then walked away without waiting to see if he felt bad about it.
Which he did.
*Luna Lovegood.* Not Loony. Luna. Like the moon. Like something that moved in its own orbit, entirely unconcerned with whether you were watching.
*Her name is Luna,* he thought.
And then, more quietly, in the place where he kept things he wasn't ready to say aloud yet:
*and I'd very much like to know what else I've got wrong.*