~Written for the QLFC, Season 5, Round 9~

Team: Wigtown Wanderers

Position: Seeker

Prompt: Goggles

Title: Only Human

Word Count:

Beta(s): DinoDina; CUtopia

Chapter 9: Only Human

"Bloody weirdo."

"Merlin, why do you do that?"

"What's your problem? Why do you have to read it upside down like a bloody loser?"

She ignored them. She would always ignore them. Such was what Luna had learned in her years of schooling; it did no one any good to relate, to bite back, to squirm and squeal and protest because they were wrong and she wasn't weird. That just because she wasn't everyone else's version of normal she was 'a problem'.

Besides, they were probably misguided souls. That was what her father always told her. "Bullies," he'd once said, "target those they perceive as weaker than themselves to feel better about their own circumstances. They are trying to… compensate, as it were." He'd shaken his head, smiling gently, and there had been nostalgia in that smile. He knew, Luna suspected. He knew what it was like to be called weird, and wrong, and problematic. "Do not hate them, my Luna. Feel sorry for them. The people who matter will see the light in you, after all."

Luna believed that. She truly did. So she didn't hate the bullies. When her shoes disappeared, she blamed it on the nargles – which, if she was being honest with herself, she blamed at least half the incidents on anyway. When she somehow collected a sea of spitballs in her hair by the end of the day, she didn't glare and complain. The classmates around her were likely just bored.

When she tripped over a leg it was an accident. When her homework went missing, it was most likely misplaced. And when the common room door refused to open that one time… well, Luna didn't much mind sleeping in the corridor. Hogwarts was warm enough, heated by the magic that thrummed through its walls, that she didn't need a blanket.

She never blamed, not once, because Luna thought she understood the bullies. She thought they had their reasons, were hiding something, and lashed out at her because the perceived her as weaker. They simply didn't know; Luna wasn't weaker. She was just different. Her father always told her that such difference made her strong.

There was one, though, that she suspected of cruelty. How could she not when her friends – her actual friends, her real friends – believed it of him? When Harry glared across the Great Hall at them, and Ron muttered imprecations under his breath that he didn't even seem to realise he spoke? Even Hermione's lips thinned when she spared that particular bully a glance, and Neville shrunk from his sight.

"He's a right foul git," Ginny had told Luna on more than one occasion. "He is. He's absolutely horrible. He calls Hermione a Mudblood, and he always picks fights with Harry and Ron. He picks on the little kids, and not just Gryffindors, too; I've heard he even scares the hell out of the Slytherins!"

Scaring someone was a horrible thing. Luna didn't like to be scared, and she didn't like it when others were scared, either. Teasing was one thing. Joking and not realising that such jokes hurt the target of amusement was another. But scaring?

Despite what her father had told her, Luna had to consider that Draco Malfoy was a right nasty piece of work. She didn't like to think as much, but all evidence pointed in that direction. He was cruel, mean, picked fights, hurt her friends – he must be a 'bad egg', as Luna's mother had once termed the less favourable members of society.

That was what Luna had truly grown to believe – until she stumbled into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

The ghost was miserable. She cried all the time, and moaned as though to live up to her namesake. She drifted around with heavy eyes and pouting lips, glaring as much as she wailed. She was a wholly sad person – so Luna kept her company. Sometimes. When she had the time, and wasn't racing about the school in search of her lost shoes filched by nargles and pranksters.

A particularly loud splatter and crash resounded from Myrtle's bathroom as Luna skipped her way down the corridor one afternoon. She had both shoes that day, which was a good thing. Her father had just owled her the latest copy of the Quibbler, too, which was also good. Luna was happy, and though Myrtle always grumbled and complained, blaming her for her brightness because, "What is there to be happy about?" Luna suspected she enjoyed her merry company. Most people did and didn't even realise it. Like bullies. Luna suspected such was another reason they teased her so.

She paused outside the doorway, however. Another clatter, the slam of a door, and a pronounced sob echoed from the tiles within. Luna blinked. She felt her eyebrows rise. That didn't sound like Myrtle. Over the years – for they'd shared a longstanding friendship, Luna and Myrtle – she'd grown to know the tone of her voice. She knew the pitch of Myrtle's sobs, those feigned and real, and just how loudly she could wail.

The sob from within wasn't Myrtle-loud. It wasn't high-pitched and demanding of attention, nor whimpering and blubbering in self-pity. It was that more than anything, that it sounded real, pained, that it hurt, that Luna crept tentatively forward to peer within.

The bathroom was bare. It was boringly white, the stalls untouched by modernity as even the castle's renovators seemed to have forsaken updating its furnishings. The grime of years of flooding painted blackness between the floor tiles that even the house elves couldn't seem to wipe clean, and the sinks were a permanent shade of off-white just a little concerning for the school's hygiene standards.

Luna liked it. It felt homey, in a strange kind of way. Lived in.

But she barely saw it as she peered inside. The bathroom was usually empty, but not today. Myrtle hung above the faucets, her transparent hands waving and fluttering in concern, and though she moaned it was of a different kind.

"Tell me where it hurts," she said, all but sobbing her sympathy. "I understand what it feels like to be shunned. You can tell me. Confide in me?"

She said it like a question, but Luna barely heard the almost hopeful note to her tone. Her attention was trained on the bowed shoulders of the boy – a boy? In a girl's bathroom? How odd – as he leaned heavily before the mirror. Those shoulders shook. His whole back trembled and his knees seemed to knock.

"It won't help," the boy said. "What would telling anyone do? You can't help me."

"Draco," Myrtle moaned. "Don't say that. I can help you. Just tell me."

Luna blinked. She stared. She cocked her head, curious, and then -

She turned. She left the bathroom. She paused only long enough to pull the door closed behind her and cast a simple locking spell that would only be accessible from the inside. Then, hitching her bag higher onto her shoulder, she set off skipping down the corridor once more.

Draco Malfoy was a bully. Luna's friends thought he was a horrible person, and maybe he was. Mostly. Maybe he was a hateful bully, and cruel, and deserved to be glared at and spoken of in whispers. But Luna realised, much as she did for every other bully she'd encountered, that maybe there was more to the story than met the eye.

No one bullied for no reason, after all. Draco just had his, and for Luna… that was enough. He was only human.