…

I am so, so sorry! I hate it when people with new stories just disappear for weeks on end, and I did just that. I have excuses… Well, first it was the snow days, and we don't get those where I live, so I had so go out and enjoy the snow. And then there were finals. I CURSETH THEE, FINALS! YOU ARE T3H DEATH! And this week has been the beginning of a new semester, which apparently means time for a huge Spanish project and English paper. That I've of course been putting off. And I SHOULD be writing my English paper right now and researching for my Spanish project, so don't you go complaining, you brats! PLUS, after like two weeks, I'm STILL PMSing and swim team is STILL going on and I'm really, really ready for it to be done. THREE MONTHS IS ENOUGH, DAMN IT!

:Cough:

Yeah, well, I'm sorry that I disappeared. On the bright side, I'm really into my plot line right now, so updates should be pretty frequent.

Still don't own it. :sigh: If I did, Blaise would be… umm… ignore the drool, please.

BLAISE.

Yays.

Read and review!

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Luna had just managed to pile the last of her papers into her bag. She stood up and slung the heaping thing onto her shoulder, marveling at how she managed to do this with an added four pounds of books five days a week. Deeply distracted not only by the fact that Malfoy had her list, but also by the revelation that Pansy was actually a person, Luna paid almost no attention to where she was going. She mostly just relied on her feet to get her to the castle without her guiding them at all. It usually worked, and when it didn't, Luna had come to decide there was a reason.

"Well, did you come to see the little show I put on, Lovegood?"

Luna stopped in her tracks. That was the voice that was not Malfoy's, which meant it was…

"Oh! Hello. I don't believe I've met you," Luna said, doing a good job of keeping her voice steady. Zabini, however, saw right through it and snorted loudly.

"Cut the crap, Lovegood," Zabini said, leaning on a tree with one arm. "I saw you. That's actually, I suppose, why I put on the show. I tend to let Draco learn his lessons on his own. It's less painful for everyone that way. But I couldn't help but notice some of the things you put down on that list… things that Draco didn't fail to notice, either, might I warn you. I wanted to give you a heads up that Draco's not going to throw himself at you or anything," Zabini said with a satisfied smirk on his face, as if he expected Luna to burst into tears and run away. Luna put on a dreamy smile.

"I'm certain I have no idea what you're talking about," she said as she turned around to head to the castle. She had only taken about three steps when Zabini grabbed her bag and forced her to stop walking.

"Come on, Lovegood," Zabini said, frustration hinting in his voice. Luna had a hard time keeping a real smile off of her face.

"What?" she asked.

"I know you wrote that. All of the Slytherin's know you wrote that. Anyone who reads that list will know you wrote that," Zabini said, trying to sound like he didn't care at all and not doing too well.

"I'm sure that any lists I've wrote I've kept safe and sound in my mind, where no prying Trickle-Snouted Hopgies can reach them. That's the only place that's safe from them, you know. They can go anywhere and get anything unless you keep in stored in your mind. That's why I'm very glad they are illegal in England. Un-noble people can't bring them to school that way."

"Enlightening."

"Yes, it was in the July issue of The Quibbler," Luna said. "Do you read Thw Quibbler?" she asked. Zabini frowned.

"No."

"Really? Well, that's too bad. Tell me if you would like a copy. My father is the editor, you know," Luna said.

"I'll remember that."

"Good. Well then, I'll just be on my way," Luna said, turning once again and trying to make her escape. Zabini, instead of reaching for her bag like before, reached for her arm. He grabbed her, turned her around, and pulled her closer to him. Luna took in a sharp breath. From the little of the fight between he and Malfoy she had seen, she could tell that he was not someone to be messed with. He was big, strong, smart, cunning. She did, however, manage to wipe away everything that looked like fear that was plastered on her face and replace it with her calm, dreamy face.

"I know you know what I'm talking about. 101 reasons why you hate Draco Malfoy. We found it. You know. You saw me take it from Draco and read part of it. Why won't you admit it?" Zabini snarled.

"Well, I can't properly tell you anything if I don't know your name," Luna said, not taking her eyes away from Zabini's. He laughed and let go of her arm.

"So I was right. You know more than you let on," Zabini said triumphantly. "I've been told I read people well. And then there's always the Ravenclaw mark on your robe… that sort of mark doesn't go to those with little intelligence, as you would appear to be qualified as. Draco and the rest of Slytherin's miss things like that, I'm afraid. All they know is that Slytherin is the best house… nothing else really matters to them at all, besides blood, of course."

"I suppose, but you still haven't informed me of your name. If I don't know your name, I'm afraid I won't be able to get you any copies of The Quibbler, and I'd hate to know that you can't read it. It really is a wonderful newspaper," Luna said with a smile. Zabini, despite trying to hold it in, chuckled.

"My name is Blaise Zabini," he said, lowering his head so that he was eye-level with Luna. "Nice to meet you, Miss Lovegood."

"Well, very nice to meet you, too, Mr. Zabini. Now, would you like a subscription or just a few of my extra copies? If you just want a few copies, and if you read one you'll want to read them all, I assure you, then I can just give you the two in my bag right now—" Zabini held up his hand with a big laugh. It threw Luna off. Everything else that Zabini had done up until this point was calculated, cool, and in-control. That laugh was loud, it was happy, it was one of the most un-Slytherin like things she had ever heard. For once, she was unable to keep her emotions off of her face. It registered shock.

"I knew this would be amusing, I didn't know you would be this amusing. Wow. Are you never going to admit that it was your list?" Luna bit her bottom lip. She was already showing that she was surprised by his outburst, she didn't see why she couldn't just act the way she wanted to act now. She backed away from Zabini a little bit.

"If you already knew, then why did you seek me out?" she finally asked him, pulling back a loose strand of her hair. Zabini seemed confused by this. He looked at her oddly and then settled back in against the tree.

"I told you, I just wanted to warn you that Draco's not going to throw himself at you, or anything," Zabini said. This time, it was Luna's turn to scoff.

"I would never think that. I don't even remember half of the stuff I put on that bloody list. He said something stupid, and I wrote down all the reasons I could think of as to why I hated him. It wasn't until the very end that I realized what I was doing—apparently listing a bunch of reasons why I don't really hate him. I came out to the tree to sort things out, and lo and behold, I found that he had the first 70 reasons why I hated him—"

"The first 70?" Zabini interrupted.

"Yes. Did you not notice that it ended after 69? I have 70-101, I think the rest of the pages fell out of my hand when I tried to stuff them into my bag earlier."

"There's more?" Zabini asked.

"Yes, but none that you're seeing," Luna said swiftly, once again taking a step away from him. He smiled and mimicked her.

"Look, Lovegood, you're not Draco's type. I simply—"

"I know I'm not Malfoy's bloody type. He's not exactly my type either. If you think that I live in some delusional world where Malfoy and I could ever be anything other than enemies, you seriously need to re-assess your people-reading skills. I'm not always living in the world that you guys are, but my world doesn't, and never has, included Draco Malfoy. If you think it's weird or if he thinks it's weird, it's a thousand times weirder to me. If the only reason you truly wanted to talk to me was because I'm not Malfoy's type, then you're wasting your time. I know," Luna growled, clutching her bag close to her side and turning around quickly.

She half expected Zabini's hand to grab her bag or her arm, but when it didn't, she whipped around.

"I'm giving you a copy of The Quibbler tomorrow during breakfast."

"You'll make a fool of yourself," Zabini said.

"I do that every day. I don't notice anymore."

"I don't really need a copy of The Quibbler."

"I didn't really need your 'help' today," Luna said. Zabini smiled and shrugged.

"Fair enough."

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After wandering around random corridors for nearly an hour, Luna finally found a spot she felt was secluded enough. She had never been in this hallway before, and it didn't look like anyone else had, at least not for a long time.

There was only one window in the hall, and it was an unusual one for Hogwarts. So many students sat on the ledges of wide-ledged windows that most of them were magically altered—permanently. This one, however, no one had even bothered to change. Luna perched herself on the ledge and put her bag by her feet, her hands running over her butterbeer necklace. It was almost as if the ledge was made for her, and something about it made her feel oddly at ease.

Luna smiled and sank down. As she fiddled with her favorite bottlecap, she let her eyes wander out the window. To her surprise, the Quidditch Pitch was right there. This would be a wonderful place to watch the games, if she wasn't the commentator. She still wasn't sure how she got that job.

Taking a deep breath, Luna felt the tiniest bit of disappointment. She knew that she didn't stand a chance with Draco, but it was one thing to know it and an entirely different thing to hear it from someone who she assumed it was a friend. If she hadn't run into him, (or rather, if he hadn't run into her), she could at least try to pretend that she had some sort of chance with him. Now, though, she just resigned herself to the fact that she didn't like Ron, didn't like Harry, didn't like Neville or Collin, no, she fancied herself in love with Draco bloody Malfoy.

Luna took a moment to go over her options. How logical I'm being lately… she mused. It took her a second to consider, but she finally decided that logic really wasn't the enemy… at least not when it came to things like Draco Malfoy.

Draco—damn it, Malfoy!—wasn't someone that she ever thought of as a good or loyal person. In fact, she had always fancied him an arrogant, conceited person. And even when she was sitting here, musing over whether or not she loved him, she still thought that he was. So how in God's name did she think she loved him if she didn't even like him?

Yes, she supposed that much was true. She didn't like Malfoy—she never had. He was much too narrow-minded, much too unkind. And though it was true that Luna had never been particularly good at logic—never even tried to be very good at logic—loving Malfoy was simply the most illogical thing she had ever heard of. With this is mind, Luna leaned harder into the sill, sliding farther down into her makeshift seat.

What did she even know about love, anyways? Little, to say the least. She supposed her father… yes, her father must have loved her at some point. Perhaps he loved her when he had her mother to love, too. But now? If he ever looked up from his ever-piling stories, from his love now, from his life now, he might just love her like he had loved her all those years ago. If. Might. That was how much she knew about love. Nothing more. Love was nothing but a fleeting memory, bits and pieces of remembrances coming in and out like the tides. Again, Luna shifted rather uncomfortably in her perch. Hoping to find something besides the nearly non-existent love from her father, she delved deeper into herself.

Her mother had loved her, (she had, Luna reminded herself firmly, but even that love was forgotten most of the time. When she first came to Hogwarts, just two years after her mother's death, she could clearly remember her Mum's sweet, loving eyes and her comforting smile… but after 7 years, even those sharp memories were starting to fade into an increasingly thick fog. Luna knew—even if she sometimes doubted—that her mother had loved her. It was remembering it that was hard. If there was an unrequited love in Luna's life, it was the love she had for her mother, not the alleged and confused 'love' she had for Malfoy.

When it came down to it, she knew that no sort of rejection or un-returned or ill-fated love could be more painful than waking up in the morning with an ache somewhere deep inside of her tired bones, an ache that after all these years hurt just as bad as the day after, an ache that she had recently realized would never go away. That sort of constant pain could never be upstaged by something as petty as a teenage crush—or even a teenage love.

But even those loves—the increasingly faint love from her father, the unrequited love of her mother—were nothing but family love. Family love was something that was practically unknown to Luna. Her father's family had stopped contact long ago—very shortly after he had begun dating her mum. Her mum's family stayed close for a while, sending Luna birthday cards and offering to take her for a few scattered weekends. But not long after her mother's death, they disappeared into the big muggle world without so much as one last note. Before she knew that she and her father and her mum's family were growing apart, they had split in two. Muggles and magic, when it came down to it, didn't mix.

But if she felt she knew close to nothing about family love, she knew even less about romantic love. In the past, she knew that her father had loved her mum more than anything in the world. The promise of her smile, of her laugh, of her approval made him work—and made him work hard. He pumped out volume after volume of The Quibbler in attempts to impress her when they were dating, and even before that. After their marriage, his pace slowed, but only slightly. Instead of trying to put out as many issues as possible, he put out fewer, but added a new section. At first, it was called 'Marie's Page.' Her mum loved it, taking extra time to read it when the paper came out. Marie's Page changed with her mum's interests, and was filled with intense, undying love. But that undying love brought about undying pain when her mum died.

Likewise, her mum had loved her father with everything she had. It was true that she was impressed by how often he could put out The Quibbler. It was also true that she loved Marie's Page and it was one of the highlights of her life. But when it came down to it, her mum loved her father. She loved him and all of his strange quarks, all of his odd habits, all of his outlandish ideas. That example of romantic love, though, had almost completely died along with her mother. Her father's feverish love of Marie Lovegood hadn't diminished in the slightest—but it had changed. It had gone from the source of his greatest joy to the cause of his deepest pain. And though Luna knew that this was love—true love, unshakeable love—it told her little about relationships. All it had ever really told her was that love hurt. And that was something she already knew.

Besides her parents, her 'great examples' of romantic love were Ron and Hermione (they had yet to do anything but bicker and, in a joint effort, try to save Harry's butt), and Ginny and Harry. Ginny's undying crush on Harry was still unreciprocated, no matter how much Luna fancied them a good couple. How could she judge if she really loved Malfoy if she had nothing to compare love to?

Yes, Luna mused, pulling her legs up tighter against her body and hugging them, logic really does get a bad rap…

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I'm a review whore. Just thought you should know, incase that will sway whether you review or not. I'll love you forever.

Lunaaaaaaaaa! Poor Luna. So confused.