An odd sensation ran up his arm as he watched her nimble fingers move over the lines on his hand. She was trying to read his life line, or love line, or something another.
All he knew for certain was one minute he was studying for a test, and the next she had flopped down in front of him grabbing his wrist and pulling his hand up to her face.
She started tracing the lines in his hand and mumbling something, but he couldn't focus because his hand was tingling from the contact and his mind was fuzzy from the soft pattern she kept going over.
She looked up to him when she realized he wasn't listening.
"Did you hear me?" She cocked her head to the side, something she did when she was frustrated.
"What?" He blinked and she made a face.
"Really Draco, I know you don't read your horoscopes, but I wish you would take my concern more seriously." She pouted.
Another habit of hers he was becoming accustomed to.
Wait did she say horoscope?
Ughh
At least once weekly this woman was badgering him about something she had read in the astrology section of the Daily Prophet.
A section of the paper he still didn't understand why they included.
She snapped her fingers in his face.
Draco whipped his hand up grabbing her wrist this time, very gently, and moving it out of his face.
"I can hear you Luna, I'm choosing not to pay attention." He said with a roll of his eyes.
She huffed and jerked her hand away staring him down.
"Are you in love with someone?" There was that charming way of blurting things out that he admired so much about her.
Not.
His cheeks grew warm and he avoided her gaze.
"Where in the bloody hell did that come from?" He was staring down at the book that lay open in front of him.
"If you were listening you would already know." This time she rolled her eyes.
"Venus is approaching the house of Gemini, the paper said that you were to stop avoiding your hearts conquest and be true to the feelings you've been harboring. Holding it back is detrimental to your psyche." She grabbed his hand again flipping it over, tracing the line that started just under his pinky and ended between the index and pointer finger she looked back at him. "Your heart line, it splits at the end." She looked at him with a worried expression.
"Okay?" He tried to recall what that meant, but he had never cared much about divination so he had rarely paid much attention in class.
"If the line is long with splits at the end and curves downwards, it indicates stubborn love. Well that and a few other things, but that is the important part." She looked up at him concerned again.
"Luna I really need to get back to studying, I have a te-"
"You have to own up to it Draco! If you continue to avoid your feelings it could cause you to begin shutting everyone out again, you don't want to be all alone again do you?" She was being a bit eccentric, but it was Luna after all.
He also knew it was coming from a place of caring, she was his closest friend here now after all, and she had seen him in a very dark place before she came prancing into his life, shoving light into every dark crevice he never even knew existed.
It was his turn to take her hand into his.
"Luna, you really can't let a prediction some random person put in the paper rule your life."
"Draco, they're seer's though, they study these things their whole lives, do you really not believe in their abilities?" She looked so sad, he couldn't stand it.
After all, she was the one the stupid fortune, or whatever it was, was referring to. His secret affection, it was for her.
Sometime in the year, he had gone from hating the girl, to tolerating her, to adoring her. He didn't understand it, but he had finally just accepted it.
"I believe that people believe in them," his thumb was rubbing over the back of her hand to placate her. "And I believe if enough people believe something, then there must be a level of truth to it somewhere." When he looked back up she was chewing over his words, mulling them over in her mind.
"Are you going to admit your feelings?" When she looked up at him, his breath caught in the back of his throat. She looked like she knew, like she just needed him to actually open up and just spill the words.
They were stuck in the back of his throat though, as badly as he wanted to admit to her that he thought the sun and stars actually revolved around her, he couldn't do it.
Not yet, he hadn't redeemed himself yet, wasn't good enough for this light to belong to him. He had to have something he could give her in return that was at least half as amazing as she was.
Looking back down at the table, he shook his head. "I can't, she wouldn't refuse my affection, and I don't deserve her, not yet at least."
At this, her shoulder relaxed and she sighed softly.
"You're such a stubborn boy Draco Malfoy, You really should listen to the universe more." She went to stand up, knowing he wouldn't give in.
As she walked by his hand shot out grabbing her cloak.
"I'm going to tell her how much I love her, not yet, but someday. When I can give her everything she deserves, then I'll tell her."
She looked down meeting his eyes that were staring up at her. Silver meeting blue melding like hot metal.
"If it's really love, that's all she needs Draco." With that she skipped off, leaving him to think about everything in the universe besides his test.
Damn astronomy.