Chapitre Cinq

En route à Windhoek

"Well, who are you with?"

Draco closed his eyes, fingers pinching his bridge of his nose. He already knew that this was a lost battle, but he was hoping to stall his defeat for several more hours. "Mother, that is hardly—"

"Draco," chided the soft, but firm voice on the other line.

He sighed. There was no satiating his mother's curiosity but the straightforward truth.

"I'm with Luna Lovegood," he answered defeatedly, casting a sideways glance at the said girl.

At the mention of her name, Luna looked up from the stuffed animal she was inspecting. Smiling, she waved one of its paws and threw him a little wink. It was so unexpectedly endearing that he couldn't help flashing her a small smile in return.

"Luna Lovegood?"

"She's an old schoolmate." He hoped that explained enough. He wished she'd just drop the subject already; she was likely drawing her own assumptions again, and though he frankly did not care for most of them, he was concerned with how she acted on them.

She'd been especially ruthless with the worst of his old flings, and while he couldn't see Luna anywhere near their level of… ugliness, in any sense of the word, to merit a similar reaction from his mother, he was a bit worried that she would blatantly show her dislike or disapproval for some petty reason regardless, and that was especially troublesome because he actually liked Luna.

"From Hogwarts," his mother said, and he could imagine her nodding, "She was quite the equestrian."

"She never—" he stopped abruptly, realizing what she was saying. His eyes narrowed. "How did you know that?"

"Who do you think gave her her horse?"

What?

"Anyway, this is quite unexpected of you. She's a sweet girl. Take care of her. Have fun and stay safe."

"Wait! What di—"

The line cut off.

Draco frustratedly glared at his phone. He was about to redial when the flight attendant announced them to turn off their mobiles, and he had to grudgingly obey.

"How was your mum?" Luna asked blithely, watching him plop on the seat opposite hers.

"Splendid," he drawled sardonically, clipping on his seatbelt. He didn't want to mention what she said about the horse, not while he was in the dark himself. He made a mental note to confront his mother about it the next time they spoke—not that it was difficult to recall, anyway, as his mind reeled with a dozen unanswered, beckoning questions on the matter, plus there was the mild indignation on the possibility that his mother may or may not have gifted another kid with a bloody horse when all he got at the age of nine of was a pair of football shoes.

Granted it was the most coveted pair at the time, and his childish self did ask for it specifically, but still.

Turning his full attention to the girl, he watched as her eyes wandered, surveying the plane. She was holding the bizarre stuffed animal to her chest.

"This is very nice," she commented softly, turning back to him with a bright smile. "Do you always fly like this?"

"Only occasionally," he answered. He leaned back on his seat as he heard the engine hum. "I have no problem taking business class if the flight's less than five hours."

"I'm not fond of long flights myself." She beamed warmly at him. "Thank you for letting me come with you."

"You're the one who invited me," he reminded her, the corner of his lips tugging to a half-smile. "Anyway, I've never seen a meteor shower."

"It'll be beautiful," she assured him.

The conversation stopped there as they felt the plane ascend. Draco turned his head to the window, watching the dimly lit cityscape beneath them zoom out from the view. It was a red-eye flight, but they'll be in Namibia by midday—just enough time to drive to the site and set up camp.

He hadn't told Luna, but her passport wasn't even supposed to be released until after two weeks. He called in favors to expedite the process when she told him she wanted to catch the peak of the Perseids, which she would've missed otherwise. He called in Gringotts, too, doubly making sure her account was as secure as possible. It wasn't until his mother's sudden curiosity in his affairs – requesting to use the family jet was not unusual enough to merit suspicion, but he supposed his call to their contact at the International Federation must have reached her somehow and she put two and two together – that he realized he was going out of his way to make someone else happy.

More disconcertingly, he wanted to.

They were above the clouds now. Free to walk about, Luna unclipped her seatbelt and rose from her seat. "I'm going to change," she told him. He gave her a curt nod in response, eyes following her as she made her way to the restroom.

He rose from his own seat after she closed the door, intent on lounging on the large sofa bed opposite their seats. He quickly changed clothes himself and ordered the both of them a light midnight snack.

It isn't as if I'm unhappy, he thought mildly. It was the opposite, and he was still trying to figure out how that was possible – if this was truly real, if this would last long, and all those other uncertainties. It addled him to near madness, and try as he might to find reason in all of it, it only seemed that he was getting closer to concluding this was a territory reason never and could never be in.

"Hi," Luna greeted, pulling him back to reality. She smiled as she walked up to him, donned in the white silk pajamas he surprised her with just before they boarded. He spotted the subtle sheep print in a passing boutique and thought it would suit her perfectly, and it did.

He patted the space beside him, gesturing her to sit. She grabbed her bizarre stuffed animal from her plane seat before complying. He wound his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close into a sort of half-hug. (For warmth, he reasoned, ignoring the rational part of his mind saying he could have just asked the staff to adjust the temperature.)

Her head rested on his chest, and he moved his arm downward to wrap around her waist. She smelled of lavender today, just a little something from the local market, but it was a testament to how well she took care of herself when the fragrance didn't blend with anything unpleasant.

"You smell nice," she mumbled, relaxing onto him with a sigh. Funny, she's been sniffing him too. "You don't smoke, do you?"

"No," he replied simply.

"That's good," she giggled. She raised her head to look at him, a silly little grin on her face. "Do you want to eat something?"

"I already got you pudding," he told her.

Her smile widened. "Really?"

He nodded, and then shifted slightly to get a better look at the stuffed animal she was cuddling. "What is that thing?" he asked curiously. It was such a strange-looking toy, something like a cross-breed between a unicorn and a baby elephant with wings.

"The tag says it's a Crumple-horned Snorkack," She informed him brightly, holding it up so he could see it. "The flight attendant said it was a prototype made by a Belgian toy company. The owner left it here, but never went back for it. Apparently the investor didn't like it very much, and preferred the other designs."

He raised a skeptic brow at it. "I suppose my father flew in the designer." He did mention wanting to explore and expand into the toy industry. "It does look weird," he commented, nose scrunching in distaste.

"I think it looks cute," Luna countered, opening and closing its legs and tilting it left and right.

"Of course you do." He rolled his eyes. "You think vegetable earrings are cute."

"Well, they are," she insisted unabashedly, putting down the Snorkack on her lap. "And this is very imaginative."

"Not necessarily appealing," he smarted.

"You're just old, Draco," she retorted.

"Excuse me?" He pinched her waist, eliciting a laugh from her. "Did you just call me old?"

"Busy old men tend to forget they were once children—hey!" She laughed, squirming under his sudden ticklish hold on her waist. "Draco!"

"You're only four years younger than me, you little brat." He fought the chuckles threatening to escape his lips, putting his efforts into bringing her onto his lap instead and wheezing out more of her bell-like chuckles. Her voice never rang shrill, and he was starting to wonder if he'd ever find a fault in her that he'd actually care about.

"Alright, alright," she began to say, catching the fingers on her waist in an attempt to stop their malevolent tickling.

He paused, then stopped altogether. He kept her on his lap and pulled her back flush against his chest. She nestled her head on the crook of his neck, pink-faced but beaming.

"You're such a baby," she teased, letting out one last chuckle. She tilted her head upward to meet his eyes, asking sweetly, "Can I keep the Snorkack?"

"It's all yours," he snorted. He was pretty sure she was the only person in the world who would want it anyway.

She held the purple thing to her chest, nuzzling it fondly. "Did you ever play with toys like this when you were younger?" she asked randomly.

"Probably," he shrugged. "I don't remember really liking anything before football."

"How did you come to like football then?"

"My father taught me," he confided, recalling the memory. "He used to take two afternoons a week to spend time with me when I was younger. My mother says he started teaching me how to kick a ball ever since I learned how to walk."

"That's nice," she hummed, prying one of his hands off her waist to intertwine their fingers together. "You always did look cool in the field."

He arched a brow, a proud smile tugging at his lips. "You watched?"

"I wanted to see why all the girls were always talking about you—well, half of them, anyway," she shrugged, resting her head on his chest again. "Half of them liked Harry more. Opinions were very divided, but you were all very popular."

"Which side were you on?" he prodded.

"Neither. You do remember you both played for the same team, right?" She pinched his palm lightly. "Besides, Nargles was cuter than the both of you combined."

"I smell better than the both of them combined," he insisted, making her laugh again.

"I suppose you do," she agreed, raising the hand intertwined with hers to just an inch below her nose. She breathed in, taking in his scent, and raised her large, beautiful blue eyes to him curiously. "Have you ever camped out before?"

"I know how to set up a tent and do basic first aid."

"So you haven't," she concluded.

"I'll survive," he reassured her, slightly tightening his hold on her waist.

"I was just thinking that you might prefer we borrow a minivan. It's more comfortable and secure." Her eyes snapped back to the hand she was holding, looking at it thoughtfully. "Your hands are very pretty."

With anyone else, he would've taken it as an insult, but this was Luna, and she was just a little worried.

"I'm fine with whatever setup you want to do," he told her, letting her open his palm and gently rub her thumb across it the lines. "I can handle a night in a sleeping bag."

She hummed pensively for a little while, likely thinking it over. Draco took the silence as an opportunity to draw her closer, resting his chin on her shoulder. He was thankful that the pajamas covered the skin, else he might have been unable to help himself.

He tried not to think about it – how attracted he was to her, that is. His thoughts might linger, and become actions that would push her away. He didn't want that to happen, but he didn't want to be so distant from her either: he'd get as close as he could, but he wouldn't cross the line.

He closed his eyes, breathing her in and thinking that things were fine just like this.

"Draco?" Luna called. He grunted in response, and she continued softly, "Can I ask you something personal?"

"Hmm?"

"Where did this come from?"

He opened his eyes just as he felt her fingers gently tracing the ghost of an old scar on his forearm.

"My aunt," he answered with a grimace. The discoloration was nearly unnoticeable now, but it was not unlike her to see it and realize it wasn't just another one of those weird spots on the skin. "She tried to kill my mum once."

He said it so casually, but the mere fact that he had a scar from that day meant it was anything but a casual memory.

"How old were you?" Luna asked quietly, her voice more curious than anything else.

"Sixteen." It had been over thirteen years now, he realized, since that dark, ugly summer.

Luna's eyes were trained on the scar, looking at it with a sad expression. He turned his arm over to hide it, wrapping it back around her waist and holding her closer.

"You don't have to tell me the rest if you don't want to," she murmured softly, turning her head so that it leaned sideways against his chest, her ear pressed near his heart. He shifted so that his chin rested atop her head, and for a beat they stayed just like that.

The engine hummed quietly, and Draco thought that the peace was rather surprising – he used to feel resentment, and anger, even fury, when he recalled what happened that day. It used to make him feel nothing else but hate, and he'd only forced himself not to think of it for his mum. He ignored the scar for years, and to think it would resurface now and he'd feel – he'd feel nothing, as if it was just an inane old memory.

He didn't know if it had something to do with the passage of time or the calming effect Luna had on him. He trusted her, he realized — he trusted her more than he thought it was possible to trust a person.

Somehow that was terrifying and relieving all at once.

"She was delirious, my aunt," he began to say, voice slightly hushed. "She had a failed marriage she couldn't get out of, and her feelings for the younger man she was having an affair with turned out to be unrequited. My mum was worried she'd do something dangerous when the nurses said she was skipping her antidepressants for… other substances."

He cleared his throat, a bit uncomfortable going on a monologue, but Luna placed her hand above his as a quiet gesture of support.

"She invited her for tea," he continued, "My mum thought she could use a proper holiday, so she offered her one of our vacation homes. She was only trying to help, but… my aunt mistook her sympathy for pity, I guess. It turned ugly from there."

His lips curled to a frown at the memory. He remembered rushing to the veranda to see what had his aunt screaming louder than a group of banshees. He thought she just lost a game of chess or cards – she always went into a screeching fit with the pettiest things – and he was mildly peeved at the noise (he was trying to watch a game!) but when he got there, he wished that was all there was to it: a lost round, a sour defeat.

"If I hadn't walked in when I did, that knife would have sliced my mother's throat instead of my arm," he mumbled, brows drawn in a half-sort of scowl. He had shoved her down at the time, and he kind of wished he hadn't been so rough, but it saved her life and he wasn't going to apologize for it.

"Thank goodness you did, then," she replied, raising her head to show him a smile. It was the kind that was happy and warm and proud, and he couldn't help the almost reflexive upward curl of his lips in response.

Nobody ever looked at him like that.

Breaking their eye-lock but keeping the smile on her face, she leaned her head back on his chest. "Thanks for telling me," she giggled, "You're a very honorable dragon, Draco."

"And you're quite the nosy princess, aren't you?" he retorted, pinching her waist. Her light laughter reverberated across the room, warm as daylight.

"Is she alright now?" Luna asked meekly when her giggles died down, "—your aunt, I mean."

He paused for a while, pondering over how he should answer that, before eventually settling for honesty. "I don't know," he admitted. "She was jailed for aggravated assault, but only for a few days. They took her to rehab after that. I haven't heard of her since."

He'd never bothered to, and that was the unsaid and rather obvious truth of it. He cared very little of his aunt before, and her stunt, to put it mildly, diminished any sort of solicitude completely.

"I see," Luna said understandingly. The subject closed there, and they returned to a short, comfortable silence that ended with the arrival of pudding, much to the younger blonde's ecstatic delight.

The stewardess handed her a tall glass of vanilla pudding with strawberries and caramel; it seemed scrumptious, to say the least, if Luna's reaction to her first bite was any indication. Draco kept her on his lap as she giddily devoured the dessert, quietly watching her with bemused affection.

"I do love flying with you," she commented offhandedly as she spooned another bite. "This," she raised the glass – she was holding it with just her thumb and index finger – and made circular motions with both her hands, gesturing to the plane (meaning the entire flight, he supposed), "is heaven."

The witty retort that rested at the tip of his tongue disappeared in the same second she surprised him with a kiss on his cheek. Luna beamed at him, and then nonchalantly went back to her pudding while he mentally scrambled for composure.

Leave it to her to undo all his efforts of suppression and restraint and remind him of his worsening, unbidden feelings toward her. It wasn't just lust anymore if wanting to make her happy, cuddling with her like this (he never cuddled with anyone else before, never!) a kiss on the cheek (which was just an expression of her gratitude, he knew, but bloody hell, if he had turned his head then as he intended to, then—oh, gods), and just seeing her smile all made his heart soar like a goddamn moron.

Was this really how it felt like? To be in—? Wasn't it happening too fast? What if he's just imagining the whole thing—what if he's delirious?

He told her about his aunt. Even Zabini doesn't know – or at least, he never heard it from him directly – and he's the nosiest prat in his closest group of friends. The incident incurred rumors before, but he never confirmed nor denied the public suspicions.

He even told her about his father, and it was just so easy to share it with her that he didn't even realize until now how intimate that memory was. He'd never told that to anyone, and if somebody else asked him about how he came to like football, he would've just said something about playing it as a kid.

But he told her. He let her know.

Does this mean she was—that to him, she's—

"Draco," Luna called tentatively. He snapped out of his thoughts long enough to notice that she appeared to be making an inspection of his feet, continuing, "Do you think my feet could snuggle with yours under your socks?"

Different. She's determinedly, undeniably different.

"They'll rip," he replied. Thank gods she wasn't looking at him, else she'd be seeing how his eyes were softening at the conclusion he arrived at in his mind.

"My feet are really small compared to yours," she reasoned, tilting her head this way and that to see if another angle proved otherwise. Her feet were in between his – dangling by an inch, as she was sitting on his lap and he was much taller than she was – and they looked just about three-fifths of his size. "Just before my ankle, I think?" she mumbled, proceeding to assess the durability of his socks by sight alone.

Draco sighed and took the now-empty glass from her hand, placing it on the nearby table. He grabbed the blanket beside it before completely withdrawing his hand back to his side. Wordlessly he unfolded the woolen fabric, placing it on her lap so that it covered their legs, all the way to their toes.

"Oh!" exclaimed Luna, attention completely shifted to the eclectic patterns on the blanket. It was designed by some supposedly renowned artist, he remembered as much.

He smiled in satisfaction when he observed that she was no longer shivering. He wrapped his arms back around her waist, and, thinking there was no harm in doing it because she did the same, planted a light kiss at her temple, lips barely shielded by her hair.

It was the most affection he could show, at least for the time being. He remembered she said that it might be dangerous for them to fall for each other, and he thought that she might have taken it as a precaution on her part. He used girls before, after all, and he nearly treated her the same. But she was different even before that, and now more than ever.

She was the only flight risk he'd ever been willing to take.

I'll win her over, he thought resolutely, resting his chin back atop her head, I'll make her look at me.

(Too absorbed in his thoughts, Draco never noticed the furious blush and starry eyes and pounding heart hiding behind the Crumple-horned Snorkack.)