Luna's dreamy little smile widened as she let Draco dwell on the thought of her—insane, crazy, Loony Lovegood—wanting to marry him. She'd never admit aloud that she'd liked him since fourth year—regardless of his intentions to murder Professor Dumbledore. He was intriguing, really. Especially since it was her that he'd confided in, her that he'd told he didn't want to be a Death Eater. Luna was always good at keeping secrets. And, anyways, she wanted to fix him, to pick apart all of his lovely little flaws and reveal to him that he wasn't a bad person, but a good person that bad things had happened to. She, of all people, had seen through the silly façade Draco had put up through all of his school years to please his father. She, of all people, knew him better than he knew himself. It was tragically, beautifully scary.
"Then I'm not sure what to say," he said finally with a deep sigh, not daring to look her in the eye. She'd expected this; Draco was always much too terrified of his own feelings. Secretly, he really did remind her of a ferret sometimes.
"Say yes," Luna replied with a simple finality laced in her voice, the corners of her pink lips turning up in the smallest, daintiest smile you could imagine. She knew it would never be love for him. She knew she'd end up getting her heart broken. But she was eighteen and stupid. She'd never done anything for herself, always giving and giving to Dumbledore's Army, to Harry, to Hermione, to Ron, to Neville. And now, finally, after four years, she was doing something for herself, no matter how much pain she might land herself in.
Another long, painfully static silence hung in the air, pressing down on them both until they thought they might suffocate; the crystal vases might explode; the walls might cave in on them if the terrible lack of sound lasted any second longer. Still, neither teenager spoke. It was quite a few minutes before it hit her that he might say no. It had all been an elaborate plot for happiness that he could tear down with a single word. And, for the first time in her life, the simple power of words terrified her. The teasing at school had never bothered her. The words printed in the Daily Prophet, cruelly and harshly black against the yellowed parchment, had never taken away from her hope in The Quibbler. The words spoken at her mother's funeral had never brought even a tear to her thicket of dark lashes because they weren't true; the words that frail, aged wizard had spoken weren't her mother. They were a script. But, now, words had her skin curling and her heart racing and her breath quickening rapidly. Except it wasn't because the bloody silence was so damn suffocating.
She was just beginning to lose hope when Draco, his chapped lower lip bit down in frustration and his eyebrows knitted together over stony grey eyes in worry, finally spoke.
"Yes. Fine, yes."
"Oh, wow. Oh, wow! Lovely, really lovely!" she murmured, flustered, her pink-painted lips pulling back into a smile, revealing whitewhitewhite teeth, her pale, bony hands clasping together in excitement. Her scatter-brained mind was already buzzing with wedding plans and, of course, how to tell her friends that she was marrying Draco Malfoy.
It might not ever be love for the two misfit teenagers spit out from a hell of a war, but in that split-second of pure, buzzing, static elation, Luna Lovegood was truly happy for one of the first times in her short, horribly scarred life.