A.N.: This fic is basically going to be story versions of my headcanons. Most of them will be mine, but some of them will be stuff that I've seen on Facebook etc. They will probably be drabbles/oneshots, I doubt any of them will be more than one chapter. This will be updated sporadically and will probably never be completely finished, as I will most likely keep adding to it as I think up/come across headcanons. They also won't be in chronological order and the rating will probably go up at some point.
A.N.2: This is set in PoA.
Genre(s): Friendship/Drama
Warning: References to bullying
Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter
The Missing Sock
They were everywhere this time. But then, she supposed that the more was missing the wider the area they could be scattered across.
Luna took advantage of the fact that nearly everyone above third year was at Hogsmeade to go around the castle collecting her hidden belongings. Ginny told her that they were stolen, not hidden, but Nargles don't steal things; they hide them.
Then again, she supposed on some level she knew why her belongings went missing so often. It was easier to blame a creature that she knew in the very back of her mind wasn't real than to actually admit that her fellows disliked her to the extent that they would do this to her. She had been trying to learn the Summoning Charm to retrieve her lost belongings, but she had yet to get the hang of it.
So she spent her Saturday morning hanging from the magical staircase, waiting for it to swing round so that she could reach the sock hanging from a painting frame half way up the wall.
She didn't know how long she'd been waiting patiently, not berating the staircase like so many of her worse-tempered classmates would have done, when she heard angry footsteps getting closer to her, accompanied with equally angry grumbles.
"Move!"
Luna jumped as the voice was raised at her. She straightened herself up and looked to see whom it belonged to. Draco Malfoy was standing there with what looked curiously like mud on the back of his head. He looked furious.
"Good morning, Draco," she smiled, hoping to calm him down. She didn't like it when people were angry, for angry wasn't happy and therefore it wasn't good.
Draco merely responded with a growl. Yet his anger soon turned into mild surprise, as though he had only realised that it was in fact Luna standing in front of him.
"What are you doing here, Lovegood?" he asked, the fury still present in his voice but dulled slightly as he looked at her.
"I'm trying to reach my sock," she explained matter-of-factly, and pointed at the pink hosiery hanging from the painting frame on the opposite wall. "I'm waiting for the staircase to move."
"Why don't you use magic?" he asked scornfully, as though it were the most absurd thing to use 'Muggle means' to do anything that could have been achieved by magic.
"Because I haven't mastered the Summoning Charm yet," she explained. "But I have been practicing and I'm sure I'll get better at it."
"Summoning Charm is fourth year spellwork," Draco remarked, and Luna almost detected a slight hint in his voice that indicated that he was impressed with her.
"Yes, that's probably why I can't do it yet." Luna nodded and turned back to the sock, still so far out of reach. "The teachers say that even though I'm intelligent, it doesn't mean that I will be able to do every spell on my first try. It takes time."
"Intelligent?" Draco asked, and for the first time in the two years since Luna had begun Hogwarts he saw the Ravenclaw crest on her chest. "I thought you were in Hufflepuff," he mumbled, almost embarrassed.
"No, Ravenclaw," Luna explained, though she didn't sound boastful like most Ravenclaws did. Her humility was new to the Slytherin; why wouldn't she want to showcase her intellect, like Granger did in every single lesson – and she wasn't even in Ravenclaw. "But I have a very good friend in Hufflepuff. She's excellent at Charms. Much better than me."
She stared at the sock for a while as there was silence between them. The staircase still refused to move to bring her closer to it, so she whipped out her wand and pointed at the sock.
"Accio!" she exclaimed, giving her wand a hopeful flick. Nothing happened, so she decided to change her tactic. "Wingardium Leviosa." The sock was lifted up above the painting frame, and wobbled ominously through the air as the Ravenclaw brought it closer to the staircase. All of a sudden, there was a loud thud, and the staircase began to move. Luna lost her concentration and the sock fell to the ground some fifty feet below. She looked over the edge of the staircase and sighed.
"Accio?" she asked optimistically, though Draco admitted that he was sceptical that it would work. However, he was proved wrong and the sock leaped into the air, soaring the fifty feet up to the staircase and straight into the Ravenclaw's outstretched hand.
"Wow," he breathed, as she gave a triumphant bark of laughter and held the sock high above her head. She turned to him with such a wide grin that it was contagious; he felt the strings pull at the sides of his own mouth and, before he could stop it, he was laughing as well.
"Do you have any Exhorto blood in you?" she asked him, with wide admiring eyes.
"Er…" he mumbled, not knowing what an Exhorto was – though he suspected that it wasn't really a thing at all. "Probably not, no."
"Oh, never mind," she waved her hand to dismiss her comment and through her arms around his neck.
"Oh, er… what's happening?"
Luna sensed his discomfort and slowly drew back. "Uh… a hug?"
Draco opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. The last five minutes had been some of the strangest in his entire life; the whole school pinned Luna Lovegood as some kind of weirdo – and maybe in some ways she was – but the assumption was always that that was a bad thing. He had always agreed with the masses, but he now realised that he had never actually spent any real time with her; he should have done, because she was, in reality, not really a weirdo at all: she was actually pretty amazing.
"You're cool," he told her, smiling.
"Thank you," she grinned. "You too."
A.N.3: Exhorto means encourage in Latin (according to Google Translate, anyway), so my idea behind this is that an Exhorto is someone who can encourage/bring out the magical potential in someone just by being near them. They are, however, completely fictional (even within the Harry Potter-verse).
