A/N: This chapter is ridiculously fluffy, horribly late and shamefully short, but year 11 is a lot more stressful than I anticipated! I know you don't want to hear my excuses, but unfortunately the wait for chapters are probably going to get increasingly later as we enter exam season. This chapter is so short because what I really wanted to happen in this chapter didn't really fit. I'm thinking of splitting this fic into two parts, part one, which is The Half Blood Prince is coming to an end, and I'll probably have a break while I get my exams over with, and then begin on part two! Sorry about the lateness, the shortness of the chapter, and the length of the author's note which is probably now longer than the actual fic! Thanks for sticking with this story and reviewing/favouriting/following ily all. Now let us proceed!

Chapter 14

Draco felt a sickening feeling begin to stir hotly in his stomach as he hurried past the hospital, his feet tapping a nervous melody across the panelled, wooden floor. He had never felt anything other than intense dislike for Weasley, but he would never want him killed. For once, he was glad of Potter's habit of saving people. However, this thought quickly evaporated as he began to hurry down the cascade of steps which led to the looming doors of the bustling Great Hall, where Draco felt a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Don't think I don't know it was you, Malfoy." Harry snarled as Draco turned around to look at him, a look of feigned innocence quickly painted onto his face and a lump buoyed in his throat. "The cursed necklace was very obviously you, and poisoned mead meant for Dumbledore must have been you too. Is this succession of murder attempts ever going to stop, ferret?"

"They're not real murder attempts, I thought Professor Dumbledore would recognize a cursed necklace, and know the antidote to the Moonseed poison." Draco said, he couldn't lose Harry's trust now.

"I doubt Dumbledore would be able to go and fetch a bezoar when he's choking on the floor. If you don't want to succeed, why are you even trying?"

"I've been ordered by the Dark Lord to kill Dumbledore," He suddenly felt like a rock had been lodged in his throat, stopping the words from slipping past. "Or he'll kill my family."

"You do realize Dumbledore is the only thing stopping Voldemort from taking over? If you kill him, the Wizarding World will be plunged into utter destruction. I can't believe I was stupid enough to trust you, stupid enough to believe in anything Luna said."
"Don't bring her into this." Draco said, his teeth gritted and his fists involuntarily clenching.

"It's her fault though, isn't it."
"Luna is your fucking friend. How dare you speak about her like that?"

"She let you use her to get close to us." Harry spat.

Draco raised his wand and pointed it at Harry's throat. "Don't you dare say I'm using her." He whispered, dangerously quiet, seething inside.

"Does she know about your little schemes, then?"
"Yes, actually. And she understands that I'm doing it to protect my family, something you wouldn't because your parents are dead."

Harry began to shake with anger, something Draco had never in five and a half years seen him do. "What have you really done for us?! What happened to giving us information?!" He shouted, his green eyes blazing as if copper where among the flames of his irises, turning them that colour.

"Voldemort hasn't told me anything! He doesn't trust me enough yet! Can you not just wait?"
"It pains me to say so, but I trust you, Malfoy. But I'm not going to pretend we're friends any more. If you have any useful information then tell us and we can make a compromise, but for now, just leave us alone. Me, Ron, Hermione and Ginny. We'll stop with the DA. Now piss off."
"I never wanted to be your friend in the first place, Potter." Draco spat and stormed away, wondering why he'd wanted to help the saintly moron, and thinking how much easier it would have been to have eschewed him instead.

As he walked away, Draco passed Ginny and Dean fighting heatedly. He shook his head in irritation and pushed passed them. Ginny stumbled and as she emerged from behind the hair which had crowded in front of her face, Draco saw a look of piercing fury and her wand clutched in her hand. He flicked his wand casually and it flew out of her hand. He didn't even think to congratulate himself on disarming the illustriously good at hexing Ginny Weasley, and instead stalked away before she could retrieve her wand. He decided to abstain from going into the Great Hall where he would no doubt be forced to participate in human interaction, which was pretty much at the bottom of the list of things he wanted to do right now. He hurried towards the Room of Hidden Things, and knocked over a scared looking second year in the process, who was left recumbent on the floor, her books scattered around her as if she had decided to lie in a patch of sturdy flowers, each page a petal of words.

He needed to take his mind off of things, and although the vanishing cabinet had to do with the task, working on it helped to distract him. When the poor bird had been killed, Draco had found out that the vanishing cabinet worked, but he needed to know things could transit between the two sister cabinets without being harmed. It didn't take long for him to end up in front of the wooden object, a random item clutched in his hand. He hadn't even noticed the light footsteps padding along behind him, the person they belonged to noting what he was doing with mild interest.

Draco closed the door with the desultory object inside, and waited for the familiar light thud which announced the return of it. When it came, he nervously opened the door, his previous exasperation steadily evaporating, and saw with relief that the object was sat there unharmed. He plucked it from the confines of the walls and inspected it meticulously. Upon deciding it was satisfactory, he threw it carelessly onto the pile of junk which dwelled beside where he had been standing.

Success. It had worked. All he needed to do now was move the cabinet to a safe location, something that would be hard now that he had lost Harry's already unstable friendship.

Suddenly he heard the door of the room slam. Somebody had been watching him. Hopefully it was someone that wouldn't know what a Vanishing Cabinet looked like, but anyone in fifth year or above would have had a lesson about it in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and Draco couldn't imagine why anyone below that year would be following him. Nobody could ever guess what he was doing, could they? He sighed, antagonized by the stressful situation.

He briskly paced out of the room and bumped into Luna; he breathed a sigh of relief. "Were you just in the Room of Hidden Things?" He asked, though he felt he didn't need to, it was fairly obvious that it had been her.

Or not.
A look of surprise swept over her face; a gust of puzzlement there one moment, and breezing away the next. "No, I can't say I have. I was on my way to Ravenclaw Tower, which is also on the seventh floor. Some people find it rather vexatious having to go right up to the seventh floor, however I think it's simply wonderful getting lost on all the moving staircases. Did you know that Rowena…"

For once Draco didn't stop to think of how endearing Luna's habit of going off the subject was, and took a deep breath, trying not to get annoyed. He didn't even stop to think of how he hadn't seen her in almost a week, the number of days he had been hidden away from the rest of the school after Ron's near-miss. "Look, Luna, I don't really have time for you going off on a tangent right now. Did you see anyone leaving the room?"
"I really enjoy going off the subject, exploring all the possibilities of a conversation, and where the stream of words will take you. And, no. Was there anyone in particular you were looking for?"

"Not exactly. Look, I've really got to go, I'm sorry Luna." Draco said, offered her an apologetic smile, and rushed away in a random direction in the hopes of finding his enigmatic watcher.

After almost twenty minutes of aimlessly wandering around the castle in the hopes of finding whoever had witnessed the occurrence in the Room of Hidden Things, Draco decided to give up. He stamped down on the ground in frustration and a rippling dilation of vibrations echoed across the wooden floor. The person did not want to be found, which mean they were probably detrimental for his plans. Nothing seemed to want to go right for him at the moment.

"Haven't found who you were looking for then?" Luna asked, gliding past him without stopping.

"No, unfortunately. How did you find me so easily?" Draco replied.
"You've ended up only a few metres away from where we were stood before."

"Oh." Draco said. "Look, sorry for kind of ignoring you earlier. The stress is getting to me again."
"You're still suffering from that awful wrackspurt infestation? It's worse than I thought, they usually leave by now. Dad said he'd publish an article on how to get rid of them in next week's issue of The Quibbler. I always find that reading it cheers me up, would you like to read one now?"
"I'm not really in the mood, I'm sorry."
"I'm sure you just haven't found the right copy. Have you read the one which came with spectrespecs? It's my favourite. In fact, I'll go and get it right now. Meet me in the library!"

And she fluttered away, leaving him with not much choice, her stripy knee-high socks quite making up for the lack of shoes.

As Draco strolled into the library, he caught sight of Pansy sitting alone, furiously scribbling something on a piece of parchment. "Hi Pansy." He said, walking up to her with a smile on his face. She visibly jumped in her seat and suddenly crumpled the paper up and set fire to it with her wand. "Hi! Um, actually I have to go." She said frantically, and shot out of her seat like an unbridled explosion in the process of accidental detonation. He watched in shock as she scurried out of the library then exhaled deeply and sat down in the seat she had just left, still far away from the table where she'd thrown in her haste; a wooden island stranded in a sea of lacquered flooring. He soon forgot about Pansy when Luna walked into the room, a couple of brightly coloured magazines clutched to her chest. She spotted him quickly and the grin anchored to her face grew even larger.

As she sat down she thrust a pair of cerise glasses at him. "Put these on." She said excitedly.

"Seriously? Luna, I'm not sure these glasses match my robes." Draco said facetiously, holding them between his thumb and forefinger whilst looking at them in disdain.
"Well green and pink isn't the nicest combination, but it's important." Luna said, shrugging.

"People are going to look at me as if I'm crazy."
"It's better to be crazy than boring."

Draco couldn't argue with that so he tentatively put the ridiculous glasses on, feeling as though everyone was staring at him even though most people were obliviously getting on with their work.

"Do you see anything?" Luna said, leaning in close to him, her nose almost touching his.
"Well right now I can only see you due to the fact that you're right in front of my face, and are these glasses meant to make your vision all fuzzy?"
Luna gasped and put a hand to her mouth, drawing back from him. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Wrackspurts. All around the room. HIDE!" The last word erupted into a shout as Luna dived under the table. Draco hastily did the same. Once he was down there, Luna started laughing manically. "I can't believe you actually came under the table! You can't hide from wrackspurts, silly." She giggled, and crawled out from under the table, Draco crawling out after her.
"Well, thanks for making me make a bloody fool of myself." Draco said sulkily, wrenching the glasses off his face and putting them on top of the Quibblers on the table.

"Cheer up! Due to the increasing wrackspurt concentration in the room, I think we should leave, no time to read the Quibbler I'm afraid." Luna said, sweeping up the magazines in one arm and taking Draco's hand with her own free one.

They swept out of the library, and Luna looked out of one of the vast windows. "Let's go outside." She said simply. So they did, because why not?

Despite the fact it was mid-March, snow had once again begun to fall; there was already a thick layer of it drowning the grass below. Draco and Luna were nearing Hagrid's hut, and it was almost curfew. "Luna, maybe we should go back inside." He said, a shiver of biting cold dancing across his skin. He remembered Luna's lack of shoes and realised how the snow must be melting and seeping into her socks. He looked down at her beside him, but she was running off, her long blonde hair waving in the wind, and from her energetic twirls. She hid behind a tree and as Draco began to walk towards her, he felt something freezing cold hit his face: a snowball. He shook his head, a smile growing on his face. He scooped up a handful of snow, another snowball hitting his neck and sending a chill through him in the process, and moulded it into a snowball in his bare hands. The skin on his hands was developing a tint of blue, as if his blood were sapphire paint. His eyed darted around for a sign of Luna, and he spotted her sitting on a branch in a tree. How did she move so fast? He took no time in throwing the snowball at her. As it made impact, Luna wobbled, and began to fall, her snowflake-threaded hair up in the air. Draco immediately ran towards her and slipped on some ice, sliding under the tree just in time for her to fall on top of him.

He exhaled painfully from the impact, as Luna looked at him with protuberant eyes. "Sorry." She giggled.

"I'm the one who forced you out the bloody tree. I should be the one saying sorry." He said, and gently began to stand up, taking Luna's hand to pull her up as she slid off him. He let go of her and began to brush himself down of snow, and felt a foot kick his foot out from under him so that he fell forwards, and he instinctively reached out his hand to steady himself against the tree. He looked down to see Luna leant against the tree, grinning mischievously, an expression he hadn't seen from her before. "Did you know that tree nymphs sometimes turn the people who annoy them into branches?" Luna said, tilting her head to one side. Draco's response was muffled by her lips on his, her hand on the back of his neck. His eyes fell shut and he leant his lithe frame so that he was closer to her, his hand still on the tree to the side of her head. She parted his lips with her tongue and he started, surprised that she would know to do such a thing. However, because of this she began to pull away, and he didn't want that either, so he kissed her more firmly. Suddenly a branch hit him on the head, sending a bolt of pain through it, and he abruptly pulled away so that he could see what had happened. "Did I do something wrong?" Luna asked, not nervous, only curious as per usual.

"No, I just felt something hit me on the head." Draco said, rubbing the crown of his skull.

Suddenly a mass of leaves flowed from the trees like tiny birds and assembled themselves into the shape of a girl. "Go and find somewhere else for your illicit activities. The girl is right; I will turn you into a branch." And with that the leaves swirled into a graceful tornado and rose upwards, back to their respective branches.
"I didn't even know tree nymphs even existed." Was all Draco said.

"I told you they were. I'm not as crazy as everyone thinks." Luna said affably, her eyes wide in wonder as she scanned the leaves and ran her index finger along the branches.

"I don't think you're crazy."
"That's ridiculous, everyone's a little bit crazy, including me; perhaps especially me." Luna smiled. Draco smiled back and decided that maybe losing Potter's 'friendship' wasn't so bad, as long as he didn't lose this.