Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
a/n: So, I have several things to say for this one. Numero Uno: I apologize if it's crappy-I hurried, because I feel bad for updating so inconsistently. Numero Dos: I'm kind of worried that Draco got a bit out of character in this one, but if you read Numero Uno, you can extrapolate that I don't want to spend too much time editing obsessively because HOMG guilt. Numero Tres: IT'S CHRISTMAS EVE YOU GUYS I CAN'T
He stared at her blankly for a few moments, feeling the warmth of her hand on his arm quite acutely. The sincerity he could see in her face made his gut knot up in some odd mixture of fear and…anticipation, and though she had answered the question he had come here to ask, he found his confusion deepening.
Draco's cheeks and ears flushed red, and the feeling of heat in his face made his ever-present ire rise to the surface with a bubble and a snarl.
"Of course I'm alone," he spat, pulling his arm out of her grasp with a vitriolic flash of his eyes. "When you've been enlisted by the Dark Lord, you're always alone, no matter how hard you or anyone else try."
Luna's eyes widened, her hand dropping to her side as she stared at him, face gone pale. She had guessed as much, certainly—in such a time, it was fairly predictable that a Slytherin with such a family legacy as Draco had would join You-Know-Who—but to have him admit it aloud? He may as well have just confessed to giving Katie Bell that cursed necklace, or putting her under the Imperius Curse.
"That's what I thought," he said darkly after waiting far longer than she deserved for her to say something. "Your idiotic dogma of optimism and compassion is useless here, so just give up, Lovegood. You can't help me."
He climbed the staircase, and was about to turn the corner when she spoke, her voice just loud enough to be heard over his footsteps and the pounding of his heart.
"No, I can't," she said, all traces of dreaminess gone from her voice, "But I can try."
And try she did, much though she had other things to worry about.
The very next day, when he left the Room of Requirement, the first thing he heard—aside from the Sunday morning quietness of the castle—was the crisp crunch of an apple being bitten into.
He prepared to storm past her, ignoring her pleading eyes and sympathetic intentions but, as per usual, she acted before he could do any such thing. There were no pleading eyes, though, and her sympathetic intentions were quite well-masked as she barely glanced at him, preferring to keep her eyes glued to the copy of Intermediate Transfiguration as she held up an unbitten apple quite like the one in her other hand.
Draco fully intended to ignore the offering, but, unfortunately, his stomach leapt at the prospect of sustenance and chose that moment to release a deafening gurgle.
Flushing, he edged towards Luna, coming only near enough to grab the spectacular globe of fruit. He then retreated several feet, turning it over in his hands and glancing at the blonde sitting so innocuously on the floor. It wasn't like her to be so silent. Maybe he had gotten to her after all?
Her quietness, though….It was uncomfortable. Decidedly so.
Holding in a sigh, he took a bite of his apple and sat a bit away from her.
"I never know where they get apples this time of year," he said lamely, attempting for some odd reason to make conversation.
She didn't even blink.
"They're grown in cellars by ill-treated House Elves and slews of incarcerated Muggle botanists, all under the control of Ministry wizards conspiring to earn more pocket money," she said frankly, following her words with another crisp crunch into her own apple.
Draco snorted, leaning his head back against the wall. She seemed almost…tetchy in her curtness, which was definitely new.
"Did your father teach you that? It's a load of bollocks," he said, the mocking sounding a little strained even to him.
"My father is quite intelligent," she riposted quickly, eyes squeezing shut tightly as her shoulders tensed, confirming his suspicion that yes, she was rather testy today. How odd. "I don't know why everyone feels the need to assail his vast intellect simply because he has a fondness for rooting out things people would rather not talk about. It's not his fault that he's paranoid!"
He stared at her, eyes wide, all thoughts of the Vanishing Cabinet gone from his mind. Luna Lovegood had just snapped at him.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said after a moment, voice quieter. Her head fell back against the wall, and she sighed. "I suppose I'm a bit on edge. I didn't mean to take it out on you."
Her words were greeted with further silence from the Slytherin sitting a few steps away, as he was a bit occupied trying to figure out what one does with A) an ill-tempered Lovegood, B) an ill-tempered girl that isn't Pansy, and C) an entirely foreign desire to lend comfort to said ill-tempered person.
He supposed that waiting for her to…talk about it would be a decent option, but she didn't seem too keen on talking of her own volition, and anyway, why did he care?
Well, obviously because it's interesting to see her so bothered, some inner voice said, and he was about to agree when a less sadistic voice added, And she looks upset. Which raised the question of why he cared if she looked upset, which he gave up on very quickly, not wanting to dig too deep into something as obviously not good as that.
"I don't care who you take it out on," he started, sounding almost as awkward as he felt, "I mean, I don't really care at all, but—all right, what's wrong?"
And then she looked at him for the first time in a whole five minutes, something resembling discomfort living in the slight downward curl of her lips, the crease forming between her pale eyebrows.
"You're going to laugh," she said, and for a moment it sounded as though she cared what he thought, which couldn't possibly be true. Then again, he was a Malfoy—everyone cared what he thought.
"I'm not sure if I know how to laugh anymore," he replied with a strong hint of dark humor, some echo of his old signature smirk twisting his lips.
She didn't respond to the bitterness with more than an indistinct, cursory smile. Looking down at the book in her lap, she sighed again, and then said, "I'm failing Transfiguration," with a heavy tone of voice, as though failing a class was the worst possible thing that could happen to a person.
"Oh God, your Ravenclaw is showing," he said, biting back the laughter that he had sort of promised not to give voice to.
"I told you you'd laugh."
"I'm not laughing!"
"Not out loud, but your eyes don't look tired anymore, and you're holding your shoulders more like you did last year. You were always laughing at someone back then," she said, peering at him with an expression that was probably her version of glumness, vague as it was.
"Fine," he scoffed, rolling his eyes despite the truth in her words. He did feel a bit lighter, which made it easy to arch an eyebrow at her and ask, "Aren't you supposed to be the intellectual cream of the crop? Whoever heard of a Ravenclaw failing a class!"
Far from snapping at him as most students would do, Luna's eyes quite abruptly misted over, and she hung her head, long blonde hair hiding her face as she sniffled loudly.
Great going, Draco, he said to himself, feeling truly horrified. He hadn't made a girl cry that wasn't Pansy in months, and it wasn't even deliberate this time! No wonder he was having no luck with the Vanishing Cabinet—obviously he lacked common sense on an alarming scale.
"Oh, Merlin, don't do that," he hissed, running a hand through his hair as he watched her shoulders shake. He heard her take a shuddering breath, struggling through hiccoughs to gather enough solidarity to speak.
"That's exactly it," she said, sounding truly miserable. "Whoever heard of a Ravenclaw failing class? It's ridiculous, and I've done everything I can think of." She hiccoughed several times, her hands disappearing behind the curtain of her hair, presumably to wipe her face. She tucked most of the curls back behind her ear, uncovering tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes that looked all the bluer for her brief bout of weeping. "I've read the book four times, and my water goblet still has tail feathers."
Were Draco a wittier or kinder man, he would attempt to console her with a comment along the lines of "Well, that gives the goblet character, doesn't it?" Unfortunately, he tended to be a bit of a bastard, and consequently knew little of the worlds of comforting humor and compassion. He found himself wishing he had learned about those worlds, though, as he looked at her sitting so disconsolately in a drafty corridor, with a book she obviously felt no love for, and only him to talk to.
It took him a moment, but he found a set of semi-sensitive, though mostly ingrained words to give her.
"I'm sorry," he said, the phrase attempting to edge upwards and make itself a question. He stopped the reflex, though, and it just came out slightly gruffer than he had intended.
She shook her head, glancing at him marginally as she said, "It's not your fault. I don't really think it's my fault either, though. Sometimes people just aren't good at things."
Draco snorted, turning his gaze to the apple in his hand, the bit of white flesh showing beneath its skin already gone brown from the air.
"Tell me about it," he said, turning the fruit a few times between his thumb and middle finger before snapping another bite out of it. He chewed broodingly, eyes on the floor.
"I suppose you're under a bit more pressure to be good at things than I am, though," Luna murmured, her voice coming from much closer than before.
He jumped, glancing to his right to find that she had scooted towards him, narrowing the gap between them to a mere foot of space. He noticed that she had left her textbook, and had her attention focused on her half-eaten apple, knees curled to her chest.
"That's an understatement," he said after he recovered from his proximity-induced shock, his moroseness slightly undermined by the faint tone of distraction in his voice. She really did have quite nice bone structure—he had never noticed before.
Luna remained silent, eating her apple thoughtfully. She looked to have cheered up a bit, though she still lacked a certain bit of her characteristic flightiness.
He distracted himself from his distracting—and very not good—thoughts by likewise munching on his apple, throwing her occasional glances.
After a good three minutes of ruminating, he shifted, stretching his legs in front of him.
"Why do you care about Transfiguration, anyway? I mean, aside from the whole…intelligence stigma imposed by your House. It's a rubbish subject, honestly. Who needs to know how to turn toucans into water goblets?"
"Well, Daddy and I have been getting a bit ahead of ourselves lately," she said, tilting her head slightly as she fiddled with the stem of her apple, "and we've started looking at internships for after I graduate, and all of the ones I'm considering require a N.E.W.T. in Advanced Transfiguration. At the rate I'm going, I'm not even going to qualify for the O.W.L. course."
Draco pondered it for a moment, watching as she twisted the stem around and around, blinking when it snapped away.
Eventually, he turned to examine her profile, and said quite directly, "I'm sure you could find someone to help you. You know…Granger or someone. Bet she'd tutor you until you cried."
He snickered at the thought, and then stopped himself when he realized that Luna was looking at him, an odd expression on her face.
"She already has, actually. It was quite embarrassing," she said, and the way her breath puffed out, it almost sounded like she was laughing. She stopped though, leaning her head back against the wall to gaze at the ceiling. "Furthermore, she didn't help at all. Hermione tends to approach teaching with the sensitivity of a brick wall. A very easily aggravated brick wall."
"Well," he said, biting back more laughter at the image Luna had just spun, "I suppose…"
And then he did something that he would curse himself for doing for the rest of the week.
"I suppose I could help you," he said, and then paled in horror at the realization that he had just offered someone help voluntarily, despite the already overwhelming mess he was in with trying to manage classes, schoolwork, and fixing the Vanishing Cabinet, not to mention the fact that he had just set himself up for being seen with Luna in public, which would really only lead to more pain, and honestly, why was he persisting in caring?
Luna looked surprised, and more than a bit bemused as she studied his increasingly mortified expression.
"I'm only hypothesizing," she started, eyebrows lifted at him, "but judging by the fact that you just called it a rubbish subject, I'm not sure that your help would be beneficial."
"Also," she added when he didn't reply immediately, "I'm gathering that you're coming to regret offering your services. You look rather pale."
"I got an E on my Transfiguration O.W.L.," he muttered after a bit, attempting to protect his sorely damaged dignity belatedly. "You should be thanking me on bent knee."
She considered this.
"I'm going to assume that was an attempt to restore your sense of loftiness and not dignify it with a proper response, considering that kneeling in this situation would make me taller than you, which would only damage the airs you're attempting to affect."
"Oh shut up," he growled, avoiding looking at her as he attempted to figure out why exactly he had done that, and if it had any notable merit.
On the one hand, he did, technically, owe her for feeding him. On the other hand, he had never really given a damn when he owed people favors, and anyway, she twisted him around in so many ridiculous circles whenever she attempted to help him, it was all really more of a hindrance than anything.
But she looked so pathetic!
"Okay, okay," he said, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, "I'll help you, but only on the condition that you don't talk to me in public."
"I can't say that I imagine you'll be a very good teacher," she mused aloud, "but the sentiment is appreciated, and I'm not going to turn down readily offered help."
She paused.
"Thank you, Draco."
He grunted noncommittally in response, trying to pretend that he wasn't turning into some pitiful mess of…love for his fellow wizard, or something equally ridiculous. Honestly, Draco Malfoy, lending his help to eccentric damsels in distress? The world really was going to shit.
"Oh," Luna said abruptly, interrupting his thoughts. "I suppose I'll be expected to continue to remind you to take care of yourself as an unspoken part of the agreement, yes?"
"It's hardly unspoken if you bloody talk about it," he replied, moving his hands to shoot her a glare.
"All right. I'll leave it up to you to find a time and place," she said, standing as she spoke. "In the meantime, I'll bother you if you don't show up at dinner, though I don't suppose I'll do it in person. That would violate your half of the bargain. I'm sure I can convince Peeves to pelt ink pots at you, or something of the sort."
And with that, she was gone, and him frowning after her as she picked up her textbook and padded off around the corner, humming "Odo the Hero."
At least she was smiling again, his suddenly traitorous brain said, making him groan and knock his head against the wall rather harder than he had meant to do.