cobwebs
"Are you all right?"
Draco whipped around at the sound of a girl's voice, wand already out of his pocket. He lifted a hand up to his face, ready to scrub away his tears, but paused in shock as he recognised the intruder.
Luna Lovegood stood in the doorway, her pale face, framed by dirty blonde hair and dangling radish earrings, a mask of surprise and - Draco's heart skipped a beat - pity. "Draco?" she asked, her wide blue eyes boring into his with a perception that was almost frightening.
"Get out," he murmured, his voice teetering on the verge between razor-sharp and explosive. Luna's eyebrows rose even higher into her yellow curls.
"Will you make me?" Luna didn't sound furious, or even bitter; on the contrary, she was positively curious.
"I-" Draco swallowed, trying to get over the odd obstruction in his throat. There was something about this Lovegood girl that got under his skin and made him strangely and undeniably warm on the inside.
"You don't have to do this alone, you know," Luna said conversationally. "Whatever it is you're trying to do. You're not alone."
"You have no idea what I am," Draco spat, stuffing his wand back into his pocket. "And you never will, Loony." He called her this to get a rise from her, to patronise and show her that he was not someone she wanted to be nice to. But when she took a step backwards, her smile crinkling down at the corners, all Draco felt was guilt.
"Luna-" he began, reaching out, but she was already gone, her radish earrings swinging madly to and fro as the last strands of her dirty blonde hair and hem of her black cloak whipped around the corner.
The next time Draco saw Luna, she was bleeding from a cut lip and he was running for his life. They paused for a single second that seemed to draw out for eons, suspended like flies in amber, eye contact making a cobweb of complications between them. Luna reached out wordlessly and their fingertips brushed; he felt an electric shock run up his arm and shoot in a straight line to his heart. Draco's lips parted; to say what, he didn't know - perhaps an apology, or just a quick thank you - but before he could get anything out, there was a shove in his back from Snape and he was wrenched away to a life of shadows and secrets, where the only ray of sunshine would be provided by a single memory of a girl with hair the colour of sunlight and eyes like the summer sky.