Warning: This chapter contains swearing and people being made idiots of by feisty Ravenclaw.


It was a dark Friday morning, as befitting the start of October, when Luna woke up unexpectedly, torn from a dream about talking radishes. Luna put a hand to her chest, feeling odd. This was not a normal occurrence for her, and everyone else was asleep, as far as she could tell. Luna closed her eyes, sighed deeply, and tried to settle her mind. There, in the back of her mind, was that dread again, mixed with a bitter grief. Luna's birthday was months away, as was the anniversary of her mother's death, so there was nothing to grieve about, was there? Perhaps Luna needed a new hobby, or something of a similar nature to occupy her time. The Inter-House Committee was still in its infancy and lacked respect from her peers because of Draco's involvement, which was preposterous. But that was for another time; right now Luna needed to prepare herself for the day.

Luna reached for her wand on the bedside table, only to realize that it had disappeared under the bed. Manuvering herself carefully, so as not to wake the others, she levered herself into her elbows, hands grappling blindly beneath the bed until she knocked into something wooden and cylindrical. Bingo. In earnestness, she could have just used wandless magic to retrieve it, but there was nothing more fun than challenging oneself to find a wand under the bed, not roll off or wake anyone else up before eight in the morning, was there?


The Gryffindor table was barely half full. Which wasn't a surprise, given the fact that most of them were late sleepers and liked to shovel food into their mouth without actually tasting anything, Luna thought with a smirk. Luna sat down next to Hermione, who smiled and passed the toast rack. It wasn't that she didn't like sitting with her own house, but it was nice to be around friends, especially after the rude awakening she'd had that had left her rather jittery. Ginny flopped down on the bench in front, hair in disarray and her tie not even done.

Hermione laughed, spearing a piece of egg onto her fork and gesturing at her friend's tie. "Did you suddenly forget that the whole point of a tie is that it's 'tied'?" she inquired.

Luna chuckled at the glare Ginny threw her whilst she combed her hair with her fingers, using her wand to get out the particularly stubborn knots. Dean Thomas, who was sitting next to her, inched closer to Seamus in response.

"No, I didn't. I got up late because I was up all night. Harry's been busy all week and I haven't had a chance to talk to him, but that doesn't mean I'm going to wait by the window for his owl like some lovesick maiden -i still need to study, and McGonagall's latest Transfiguration essay is a bitch."

"Ginny," Hermione admonished.

"What? It's true. Homework doesn't come as naturally to others as it does to you, sweetest bookworm. We mere peasants must toil away for hours, fingers cramped and parchment stained, in order to complete such laborious tasks. Oh, the horror!" Ginny lamented, putting a piece of toast to her forehead in a mock-faint.

"You can cut the sarcasm any time now," Hermione said between bites.

Ginny bit into her toast with a raised eyebrow of challenge. "But then where would you get your morning dose of excitement from. Certainly not from the Charms lesson we have in fifteen minutes, that's for sure."

"I like Charms," Hermione protested.

"I do too, but you must admit that Flitwick's class isn't as fun as it used to be. Gone are the days were all we needed to do for an hour was levitate a feather," supplied Luna.

"True," the brunette Gryffindor conceded. "But any lesson can be fun, when viewed from the right angle."

"Yeah, like the ceiling," quipped Ginny. Luna tried to hide her laugh with a cough while Hermione flicked the crusts of her toast at her, resulting in one getting stuck in Ginny's hair.

"Oh, at least you match with the jam."


Charms was indeed a theory lesson, so everyone sat there mostly bored, especially the eight year students. It had been weird at first, to have the older wizards and witches in their class -few as there were- but now it was just a part of everyday life, like the squid in the lake or the ghosts that cropped up at the dinner table. Luna was paired with Hannah Abbott, a sweet Hufflepuff who Luna has gotten to know better at Hermione's birthday party.

Transfiguration wasn't much better, and McGonagall did indeed set a copious tone of homework after they had only handed in a three foot long essay three days previous. After that it was double Potions with Professor Slughorn, the damp weather outside only exacerbated in the gloomy dungeon setting. Then it was lunch and a trip to the library with Neville, who wanted to see the new books Madame Pince had added to the Herbology and Sentient Plant section. Luna knew that he still harboured some feeling towards her, and he was very sweet and had been nothing but the perfect gentlemen to her after she had refused as gently and painlessly as she could. But Luna wasn't that kind of girl, at least not right now. She wanted to focus on her own life, rather than share it with someone else. Her father was still her top priority when's he wasn't studying, and she didn't want a relationship to get in the way of that.

Care of Magical Creatures was by far Luna's favourite subject of the day, and most days in general. The weather had cleared up somewhat, but foreboding clouds beckoned on the cusp of the horizon, sweet with the promise of rain. She'd always felt freer outside, with a gentle breeze ruffling her hair and the smell of the earth in her nose. And she liked magical creatures, how their systems worked and their personalities, as differing and complex as any humans. They were learning about Thestrals, and indeed nearly everyone in Luna's class could see them. At the end of the class, Luna saw Hagrid's face, the tears in his eyes streaming down into his beard, and gave him a tight and emotive embrace. He smiled at her in thanks, now odds needing to be said.

Which is how, at eleven twenty seven that night, Luna found herself by the Reflection Pool, perched on the stone lip, dripping rain water onto the stones in rythmic plinks, tears in her eyes. And that is how Blaise Zabini found her, too.


Blaise was surprised, to say the least. He had not expected his night to take such a perculiar turn. Indeed, Blaise was not accustomed to coming across crying Ravenclaw girls at such a late hour, or any hour really. He'd found the Reflection Pool by pure accident, he most certainly had not sought out it's solace intentionally, or overhead any conversations regarding the Inter-House Committee's first pathetic attempt to change their school. Hogwarts had been this way since it's founding, and the day that all four houses gave up on their proud rivalries and inherent prejudices would be the day Hell froze over. Or something. Blaise wasn't one for Muggle phrases.

"Mr Zabini," the girl, Luna, said, turning to face him and braking him from his train of useless thought. "You needn't loiter by the door all night."

Blaise chuckled. "Mr Zabini? Are you that formal with everyone? Or just people who come across you crying in the middle of the night?"

Luna's gaze was hard and unflinching. "I'm formal to anyone who would and has tried to sabotage my friends and their friendship. There is no need to pretend with me."

Blaise smirked and crossed the distance, coming to sit next to Luna, hardly a breathe of space between them. She gave him a looeverk to say yes, she understood he was trying to make her uncomfortable, but she didn't particularly care.

The boys grin turned savage and dark. "Tell me, Miss Lovegood, just what are you doing sitting here crying? Shouldn't you be with your merry band of chivalric idiots and the new ferret traitor?"

"Draco is no traitor," she bit with quiet venom.

"Oh?" Blaise arched a delicate brow.

"He did not betray anyone. To change is not to betray, and the only betrayal he would have made would have occured if he had not grown."

"To who?"

"The wizarding world. After all he did, he owed it to us to be better, to want to be better. Otherwise it was all for nothing, otherwise people -my friends- died for no reason. You can not die for a better world if one does not emerge afterward."

"You seem to speak highly of him," Blaise mused.

It was Luna's turn to lift a brow. "What of it, Mr Zabini?"

"He held you captive."

"That was not Draco's doing," she passionately defended.

Blaise chuckled. "So testy, Miss Lovegood. I'm just saying, you were a prisoner in his home, yet you talk about him as if he's your friend, defend him as such. Why is that?"

"Because he is my friend. Because he is the only Death Eater or Pureblood or Slytherin to try to make amends, to atone. And because Draco has lived his life being judged, lived his life making difficult decisions, and everyone deserves to have a friend to talk to. Because a second chance is possible for anyone; all you have to do is reach out your hand."

"So idealistic, so naive of you, Miss Lovegood. Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater. There is no changing for people like him, people like me. This is the way we were born, and their is the way we shall die. With hatred for Mud bloods in our hearts and superiority in our heads. We are a breed all of our own, and no amount of hand-holding and flower crown weaving is going to change that. You're wasting your time with Draco, Miss Lovegood. No association with a Malfoy ever ends well."

"I don't believe that," Luna replied.

"You don't believe it, or don't want to? That's a fine line, Miss Lovegood."

"You make Draco out into some maniacal villain, Mr Zabini. While he may have been a horrific bully in his adolescent schooldays, may have tormented my friends whenever the opportunity arose, he was just a boy who did the best he could for his family. It is not something to take pride in, and I know Draco feels that way, too. What about you? Are you proud of what you've done, Blaise?"

"What a clever act of subterfuge, Miss Lovegood. But your Ravenclaw ways won't work on me. I'm not some puzzle you can easily solve. I'm a Slytherin, and we have sharp fangs, and you'd do well to remember that."

"I'm not afraid of your empty threats."

"Oh, but Miss Lovegood, you really should be."

"And why is that? Because you would do well to remember that I fought with Harry and my friends at the Department of Mysteries, I held my own in this very castle. I will not go running at your presumed aggression."

Blaise laughed, a sound devoid of humor. "Feisty, feisty little eagle. You should have been a Slytherin."

"Who says Ravenclaw cannot also show backbone?"

"Me."

"Well, you certainly shouldn't have been in Ravenclaw, then, if that is how you truly feel."

"As if blue would ever be my colour. It's too honest, to pure, for my liking. Not nearly as exciting."

"Not all of life boils down to whether or not something is exciting, Mr Zabini."

"True," he lamented. "It boils down to whether or not something will either amuse me, entertain me, or get me inebriated. Anything else isn't worth doing."

"Why are you sitting here then?" Luna asked.

"Because watching you defend Draco and talk about peace and goodwill and whatnot amuses me, and it's entertaining to rile. It takes a rare person to challenge me."

"You mean call you out on your bullshit behavior?"

That laugh again, as brittle as a snapping bone. "How scandalous of you, little eagle. Whatever would your pious Gryffindor friends say?"

"They'd probably clap me on the back and give me a medal, or at least the last Chocolate Frog."

"How quaint."

There was a beat of silence, the sort of silence that comes from two people trying to come up with clever insults for the other.

"You haven't called me out, Miss Lovegood," Blaise murmured.

"Haven't I? Everything I said about Draco could be applied to your situation. You were raised a Pureblood, by a mother who was more interested in her next husband than she was about you. You obviously..."

Blaise was on her in an instant, his forehead a hair's breadth from her own. "Don't you," he began, "ever, say a word against my mother. Since you don't have one, you don't get to judge."

And just like that, House lines were re-drawn. He was a snake, a viper, and there was no good left in him, if my had ever existed in the first place, in some dark, misbegotten part of his soul.

"You're right, my mother is not alive, but I still have her, and what she taught me. How she raised me. Your day will come, Mr Zabini, where you must choose who you are going to be, who you want the world to remember when you are no longer in it. You're cruel and deceitful and manipulative, but I think you're also jealous. Jealous if Draco."

"Jealous? Of the blond ferett mummy's boy who everyone seems to now love? What does he have that I haven't got?" he scoffed.

"You see, you just admitted it. Draco has friends now, people who care about him. You don't. It's a Friday night, and you're sitting in here, talking to Loony Lovegood, the wacko with the dead mum and the Nargles. This room is only open to you if you're in pain, did you know that? Did you learn that in your snooping? Because I can assure you, if you had, you would not be trying to act all high and mighty now. It's how I know your threats don't hold any water. You're in pain, and you're lashing out at whatever you can."

"Do not," Blaise ground out from gritted teeth, chest heaving like mighty bellows, "think that you know me, Luna Lovegood."

"I don't need to know you to see that you're hurting. I don't need to know you to warn you not to go near Draco or Hermione, or anyone else. Or you will suffer the consequences."

"Oh, yeah? What could you possibly do to me, little eagle? I'm far more experienced than you, have done things with my magic you couldn't possibly comprehend."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself," Luna breathed next to him. "After all, what's a snake without it's fangs? Or dry clothes?"

With a flick of her wand, Blaise was suddenly rocketed into the pool, completely submerged and bobbing like an apple at Halloween. Blaise submerged, dark hair gleaming and eyes spewing fire. "I'm not afraid of you, little eagle. I'm not afraid of your words or your mediocre parlour tricks."

Luna leaned in close, hands braced against the rim of the Reflection Pool. Quick as lightning, she elbowed him in shoulder, causing him to flail about. "Aren't you?"


Author's Note: Hello, everyone! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I had such a fun time writing it, and I really love the Blaise/Luna dynamic, so be prepared to see more in upcoming chapters. I just wanted to say thank you for all the support you've shown me and my story and I can't wait to write more for you guys. Is anyone here a Shadow and Bone fan? Are you excited for season 2? Let me know! Also, I have a Lucifer (TV show) fic in the works, so if you're a fan, let me know, too! The next chapter will be a lighter one, with plenty of Dramione. Bring your pumpkin tools!

All my love, Temperance Cain