Author's Note: This is a short one, but I hope still enjoyable.
Chapter 8
The Next Day
Draco rubbed his eyes and stared down at the parchment on his desk. He and the other junior clerk had been tasked with labelling all the prophecies that had been made in the months leading up to the battle of Hogwarts, a task that had been shuttled around and ignored for over five years by every member of the Department of Mysteries. And as he stared at the veritable mountain of unlabeled prophecies, the task seemed more and more useless by the second.
For the first part of the day, he'd been able to efficiently label well over one hundred prophecies, although that was but a drop in the ocean. But as the day had worn on they'd gone through a number of coping strategies to continue working, coupled with long bouts of procrastination.
Currently he and the other junior clerk were trying to copy each other's handwriting style. Draco had proved rather adept at Luna's feminine scrawl, though she was having trouble imitating the exact nature of his R's.
" It's more of an upwards curve than a slope," He corrected, " How does this look?"
She glanced at his label, " You really have a knack for this, Draco. Put a star above that 'i'?"
" Oh great, another useless thing I'm good at," He smirked, " Why a star?"
" Just to see if anyone ever looks up a prophecy about Hannah Abbot's Grandmother and complains about it," She sighed.
" If I had a prophecy in this mountain, I'd never find it," He scratched a slanted star over the 'i', Lovegood-style.
" Alright, is this a better try?" She held it up for inspection.
" Too… legible?" He mused.
She laughed and set the label on the pile, " Did you see today's quibbler, Draco?"
" Can't say I did."
" Harry Potter's organizing a protest over the Marriage Law," She said placidly, starting on the next label.
" Potter's organizing?" Draco sneered, " I thought he was already married to the Weaselette."
" Ginny, " Luna corrected dreamily, " And all the more reason. He sent a letter to the press this morning about how he didn't have the choice made for him and that's why it's important that he stand up and fight for the choices of others."
Draco shook his head, " Thought that would be more of Granger's thing."
" I'm sure she'll be there," Luna said cheerfully, " Still meeting her after work? It's almost time."
Draco groaned, " I never should have told you that."
" It wasn't your fault, I distracted you," She quipped.
" That you did. I've never seen that many prophecies spinning on a table at once. It must have been a record."
" I checked on the scoreboard, and I was one shy."
" What's the record?"
" Forty Three, set by Elissandre O'Hare in 1973."
Draco whistled, " A woman who can spin that many untouchable objects has to be something special."
" I'm sure she was," Luna responded smoothly, rounding out the tail on a 'g' with an almost Draco-ish flair.
" Hey, Lovegood," He pretended to be absorbed in his task, " don't go spreading that Granger business around, okay. No quibbler gossip column stuff."
" You mean until you propose?"
He snorted, " When trolls fly will I propose. No, I mean it's… embarrassing, you know."
She pondered that. He could hear the little ravenclaw cogs in her brain working against each other.
" I don't see how it's embarrassing, Draco. Hermione's smart and accomplished," Luna reasoned, " You could do worse, as far as it goes, you know?"
" History trumps personality in this case, Lovegood," He countered, " I'm not about to marry someone who thinks of me as a sniveling coward."
" I don't mean you have to marry anybody, Draco. I just mean Hermione's not an embarrassment," She scratched out a long name.
He refused to answer. It was the whole thing, the whole situation that was embarrassing. He just wanted to live his life in peace. Take care of his mother. Do his job. Stay out of everyone's way. But the past had a way of biting him in the arse every chance it got.
There was a long pause.
" You're not a coward, Draco," Luna said finally.
" You forgive me too easily for my faults, Lovegood."