Of course she had read it. Of course she had. He had known, deep down, that Luna Lovegood was not the type to let something like that sit unopened on a shelf, gathering dust and waiting to be forgotten. She read everything. She noticed everything. She remembered details that no one else thought to notice, stored them somewhere quiet in her mind, and brought them out only when it mattered most.
Still, hearing her bring it up so easily, placing it into the space between them with the kind of unshaken calm that made his stomach twist, felt like a trap he had stepped into with his eyes wide open. She was not mocking him. She was not even being cruel. Yet somehow, the simple acknowledgment was worse than either of those things. It was the kind of thing that stripped a man bare without raising a hand.
He had not expected her to ignore it. Not really. But some foolish part of him had clung to the hope that she might at least choose not to mention it. That she might grant him the small mercy of silence. That she might pretend she had not seen the words he had written in a fit of restless, self-inflicted madness. He should have known better. Luna, for all her softness, for all the distant dreaminess she wore like a veil, had never once turned away from the truth, least of all when it was the kind that could cut.
He could not even remember now why he had written it. At the beginning, he had told himself it was meant to be an apology. Something honest. A gesture that might shift the ground between them in some small, meaningful way. But somewhere between the first paragraph and the twenty-eighth page, it had begun to change. It had stopped being an apology and had become something heavier. It had turned into a confession, into an unfiltered pouring out of thoughts that he had never dared to speak aloud. It was part therapy, part self-destruction, and entirely too much.
He had written about the war. About moments that were never truly choices, not in the way the word implied. He had written about the way his father's shadow had swallowed him whole, and the look in his mother's eyes that had been too close to surrender. He had written about the burden of a name that had once opened every door and now only chained him to what came before. He had written about the blood on his hands, and the silence that had followed long after. About the ache that lived in his bones, and the way guilt had built itself into the walls of his chest until there was no room left for anything else.
And still, not once had he written the words he was meant to. Not to her. Not to anyone.
I'm sorry.
Two words. Nowhere in those pages.
His throat tightened as the truth of it pressed against him. Words felt impossible. Excuses even more so. And Luna simply sat there, speaking in that gentle tone that hid its precision too well, looking at him with eyes that were clear and steady, like she was not only seeing him but cutting through the surface of him to reach something deeper.
"It was fascinating, really," she said, her voice light but with a thread of steel running through it. Her fingers tapped an easy rhythm against the rim of her teacup, as if she were keeping time with the slow unraveling of his patience. "You have quite a way with words when you're not actively trying to insult people. Surprisingly eloquent. Very detailed. Very self-aware. But," she tilted her head slightly, her eyes catching his with that unsettling clarity he could never quite look away from, "for someone who clearly had a great deal to say, you somehow managed to avoid the most important part."
Draco let out a sharp breath, running a hand over his face until his fingers pressed into the corners of his eyes. There was a headache starting at the base of his skull, dull and insistent, and her calm, deliberate tone was only making it worse. He glanced at her, then away again, like even looking too long might shake something loose.
"Yes, well," he muttered, his voice edged with irritation but carrying something thinner, more fragile beneath it, "I was going to apologize. That was the plan. But somewhere around page fourteen, it started to feel like overkill."
Luna laughed. Not the sharp, mocking kind he had braced for, but something softer. It was warm. Genuine. And it landed like a stone in his chest, stirring up an ache he had not felt in years.
"That's one way to see it," she said, lifting her cup and taking a slow sip, her gaze never leaving his. When she set it down, she smiled, but it was not amusement. It was the kind of smile that carried understanding and the faintest trace of disappointment. "Sometimes the simplest words are the ones that matter most."
The truth of it hit him harder than any accusation. She was not attacking him, not demanding anything, just laying it out and leaving it in his lap. She spoke without the games, without the constant need to test each other's footing, and it left him feeling stripped bare.
He had spent years mastering control. Every word measured, every silence chosen, every move in conversation deliberate. He could work a room like a chessboard. But Luna did not play. She didn't even acknowledge that the rules existed. She sat there, quiet and unshaken, cutting through him with the kind of ease that came from already knowing where to look.
And for the first time, he wished he had written just one more page. Just one sentence that said, I'm sorry.
She was still watching him, her fingertips tracing slow circles around the lip of her cup. Her gaze was steady and patient, the kind that made him feel both seen and unbearably exposed. Then she dropped it, without preamble.
"Hermione is my best friend."
Draco blinked.
What?
Granger?
Where the fuck was this going?
His mind scrambled for footing, trying to find the link between his letter and her sudden mention of Hermione. The shift left him off balance, a strange jolt of unease crawling down his spine. The tea shop, once warm and comfortable, suddenly felt too close.
Oh, Goody Two-Shoes Granger. The Golden Girl. The insufferable, know-it-all, rule-abiding nightmare of his Hogwarts years. The bane of his existence. The girl who had consistently bested him, challenged him, called him out, and made his blood boil with a ferocity that had, disturbingly, carried into the realm of adolescent fantasies. The one girl who had unwittingly become his teenage symbol of angry, confused, utterly shame-filled shower wank material .
Draco exhaled sharply through his nose, his jaw tightening as he tried to force his thoughts into some semblance of order. That had been years ago. Another lifetime. A relic from a time when hatred blurred into frustration, and frustration tangled with something darker he had never dared to name. He was not that man anymore. Granger was not the same woman either. It should not matter.
But the words slipped out before he could stop them, his voice measured, each syllable chosen with care. "I didn't know that."
Luna's smile was small but sharp, a curve of her lips that felt both gentle and devastating. "Most people don't. We weren't close in school. Not really. We only became friends after the war."
He didn't answer, but the shift inside him was immediate. His pulse picked up, his chest tightening with that slow, poisonous coil of unease he had learned to recognise too well.
Luna leaned forward, the candlelight throwing shifting shadows over her features. "You actually apologized to her," she said, softer now, as if speaking a memory aloud rather than delivering a point.
His shoulders went rigid. His fingers curled into his thigh, knuckles whitening as if holding on for impact.
"She was so happy," Luna went on, her voice threaded with something like reverence. "She told me she never thought she would hear those words from you. And when you did, it was like something inside her finally eased. She was at peace."
He swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat stayed lodged where it was.
Guilt never came politely. It didn't send warnings, didn't arrive on schedule. It slid in quiet and cold, like fog curling through the corners of his mind. It hit in waves, sudden and merciless, knocking him sideways just when he thought he had found his footing. He had told himself—had almost believed—that he had done enough. That each careful step forward, each quiet effort to make things right, each act of reparation might chip away at the weight pressing on him. He had convinced himself that if he worked hard enough, if he stayed quiet and deliberate and kept his head down, then peace might find him in the end.
But hearing this now, from Luna of all people, from the girl who saw too much and said too little, made something sharp twist deep inside his chest. It was not recognition he had sought. It was not redemption. It certainly was not to be seen as some reformed man, polished and clean in the eyes of the world. He had done it because there had been no other choice. Because it had been the only thing left to do. Because he had owed her that much, owed her more than words could carry, more than any letter could contain, more than any apology could possibly hold.
Luna's voice broke through the weight of the thought, quiet but precise, each word landing with surgical accuracy. "She was the reason I went to your trial."
The words cut through him. His head snapped up before he could stop himself, breath catching halfway in.
She did not look away. Her gaze held steady, unshaken, calm in a way that unsettled him more than anger ever could. "She was the reason I stood in front of the Wizengamot and voted for your innocence."
Something inside him froze completely.
He had known that people had spoken for him, that there had been voices in those cold, echoing chambers insisting he was not beyond saving. He had known there were testimonies, arguments, carefully measured words straining against the tide of public condemnation. He had known some had believed he was just a boy, that his worst choices had been forged in coercion, in fear, in a childhood swallowed by ideology and war. But he had never known who had stood there. He had never asked.
He had told himself it did not matter, that the outcome was all that counted, that the details were irrelevant. He had told himself that digging into the names and faces would only keep him tethered to a time he had worked to bury.
But it mattered now.
Because now, sitting in a room scented with lavender and chamomile, with sunlight pouring in like liquid gold, he realized he had been given something he had never truly allowed himself to hold.
Mercy.
Hermione Granger, the girl he had once mocked and resented, the girl whose presence had challenged everything he had believed, had been the reason he was not in Azkaban.
And Luna had followed her.
The air felt heavier in his lungs, his pulse uneven beneath the sudden weight of understanding. His tongue felt useless, too clumsy to form words that would not sound like an insult to what she had just told him. He sat there in the silence, unable to do anything but stare at her, knowing there was no adequate response, no way to fold this revelation neatly into his already fractured sense of self.
Luna tilted her head just slightly, the barest shift, her gaze soft but unyielding. Her expression was unreadable, like moonlight on water, yet Draco had the strange, unshakable sense that she could hear the storm moving inside him. That she already knew the words he could not force out, the shame he had never spoken, the grief he still had no language for.
She let the silence stand. She did not try to soften it with easy reassurances, did not push the moment forward before it was ready. Instead, she lifted her glass, took a slow sip of her smoothie, and kept her eyes on him, waiting with the kind of infinite patience that made him want to look away and hold her gaze at the same time.
Draco swallowed hard, the motion dragging against his throat like he was trying to choke down something far heavier than air. The tea in front of him had gone cold, untouched. The quiet pressed in, thick and unmoving, until it felt like a weight on his chest. He breathed out through his nose, slow and deliberate, as though bracing himself for a blow, and forced the words past his lips before they could die there.
He looked up at her, unwilling and afraid but set on the need to meet her gaze. It felt like standing on the edge of something vast, like leaning over a drop that had no bottom, like staring into a truth so deep it might take him whole.
"I remember Granger…" he began, but the name landed wrong the moment it left his mouth. It was too sharp, too impersonal, a name that belonged to another time entirely. It sounded like a shield, a habit, a way to keep her at arm's length, and he hated the distance it put between them even as he said it.
Luna did not look away. Her voice came quiet, almost tender, like a wave easing something brittle onto the shore. "Hermione."
He hesitated, pulse pounding in his throat, then gave a slow nod. The correction was not a reprimand. It was a reminder. A reminder that this was not a courtroom. This was not the war. This was not a school corridor lined with jeers and hexes. This was something real.
"I remember Hermione standing on the stand… and changing my life."
The words came out rough, almost frayed, and barely louder than the hum of the shop around them. Yet the weight inside them was enough to crush. It was not simply a memory. It was a confession. One he had never given voice to before, not to her, not to anyone, not even to himself when the nights were long and his mind unguarded. He had carried it for years like a wound he would not touch. Speaking it now felt like opening an old scar, one that had never healed cleanly and still bled when the air hit it.
He could still see it with brutal clarity. Hermione standing before the Wizengamot, her back unyielding, her voice like steel wrapped in silk as she defended the boy who had once called her names, who had sneered at the sound of her voice and mocked the very ground she stood on. He remembered the weight of the chains around his wrists, the hollow space in the gallery where his mother should have been, the cold that settled deep into his gut as he waited for the punishment he thought was inevitable. And then, against every reasonable expectation, Hermione Granger had looked the world in the eye and told them he was worth saving. That he was not beyond redemption. That he was not, at his core, rotten.
And somehow, impossibly, that had been enough.
"She really wanted to," Luna said, her voice softer now, though there was nothing light in the sound. It carried something heavier, something that settled between them like a stone dropped into still water.
Draco's grip on the teacup tightened until his knuckles whitened. "I know she did," he said quietly, the words rough, almost breaking. "That's what makes it worse."
He let out a breath that shuddered through him, dragging a hand through his hair as if the motion could shake loose the thoughts grinding against his skull. "Thank you," he added after a pause, and though the words were low, they were sincere. "For your help too. That mercy…" He gave a short, bitter laugh. "It was unexpected."
He shook his head, as if trying to free himself from the memory pressing on him. "Hermione was always kind," he murmured. "Even when she had every damn reason not to be. But you—" His gaze found Luna's, his brow furrowing as disbelief edged into his voice. "I never expected you to speak for me."
Luna only gave a small shrug, her face unreadable. "You didn't have to expect it for it to happen."
His lips parted, but he had no answer. He sat back slightly, feeling the weight of her words in his chest. "What I did," he said slowly, voice raw, "was soulless. I wouldn't have blamed either of you if you'd turned away. If you'd left me there to rot."
"You were just a scared child," Luna said. She didn't dress it in pity, didn't offer it as comfort. She said it as if it were nothing more than the truth.
Draco's laugh was short and sharp. "No. I was a coward." The word didn't cut him—it settled over him like a name he had already learned to answer to. "A coward who made every choice out of fear. Who stood there and let people suffer because he was too fucking afraid to be brave." His throat tightened, but he forced himself to keep going. "At least I let you out. That's the one thing I can hold onto. I did something."
Luna's gaze lost its usual dreamlike quality, the soft haze that so often cloaked her expression vanishing in an instant. What replaced it was something clear and cutting, a look that seemed to strip away the air between them until it felt sharp enough to draw blood. Her fingers, normally loose and unhurried, tightened around the smooth glass in her hand, and the subtle shift carried an intent that was impossible to mistake. The warmth that had lingered in the space between them only moments before drained away, leaving behind a silence so dense it seemed to press down on both of them, holding them still.
"I'm not going to say thank you for that." Her voice was no more than a whisper, but it was firm enough to slice through the quiet like steel through cloth.
The ache in Draco's chest deepened. Her words landed with the exact precision he had known they would, sliding between his ribs like a knife. He did not flinch. He had not expected softness from her, not when it came to this. "I would never expect you to," he said, the words rough, worn thin from the truth that lay inside them. "I would never ask you to forgive me. I would never forgive myself for what I did that day."
Luna exhaled slowly through her nose, the sound deliberate and steady. She set her smoothie back on the table with a kind of care that made the gesture feel almost ceremonial, her fingers resting against the cool glass for a moment before pulling away. Her eyes found his again, and she let the silence stand between them, letting it speak for her until she chose to break it.
"You keep carrying it," she said at last, her tone low and even, but threaded with something that cut deep. "Like it is the only thing that defines you."
Draco's eyes closed briefly, his breath leaving him in a slow, unsteady sigh. Beneath the table, his hands curled into fists, his nails digging into the skin of his palms until it bit and stung, the pain a small anchor in the current of her words. "Maybe it is," he said quietly. There was no challenge in his voice, only a tired resignation that tasted of old bitterness and ash.
Luna's head tilted slightly, her expression softening in a way that brought with it no comfort. There was no anger in her face, no judgment, only a sadness that reached out and settled between them, filling the air with a heaviness that seemed to linger in her very breath.
"It's not," she said simply, her tone so impossibly gentle it made the words hit harder. "But I don't think you'll believe that until you decide to let yourself."
Draco turned his head away, letting his gaze drift toward the far wall where the shadows stretched long in the fading light. His jaw tightened, the muscles locking against the rush of words that wanted to break free but had nowhere to go. What could he possibly say? That she was wrong? That she didn't understand? That he wasn't walking around with the weight of a thousand bloody regrets chained to his back every waking moment? He couldn't say that. He couldn't lie. Not to her. Not when she could see through him as if his skin were glass.
Because she was right.
"It's almost six," she said, her voice soft and even, the sound pulling him back into the moment. She stretched lazily, arms lifting above her head in a motion so fluid it caught the light, turning her hair into molten gold. When she stood, it was with the same unhurried grace she carried everywhere, as if time bent itself to accommodate her. "I'm getting ready to close the shop."
The words cut through the tangle in his mind like a pin to a balloon. That was his cue. The signal to leave. To stand, gather what little dignity he had left, and step back into the life he pretended he preferred—quiet, controlled, empty. He had been here too long, far past the point of a polite visit. He didn't linger in places. He didn't talk to people. And yet here he was, rooted to his chair in this strange little tea shop, with the unsettling sense that something inside him had shifted without his consent.
"Oh… right," he said, the syllables escaping on a short breath as he pushed himself up, maybe a little too fast. His fingers brushed the edge of the table, steadying himself. "I'm sorry for taking up so much of your time." The words came out clipped, polite, the kind of tone he used when he needed to keep the walls up, but underneath it there was something thin and breakable.
Luna glanced at him, her face calm as ever, as if the apology had barely registered. She reached behind the counter for a cloth. "You can make yourself useful," she said, as casually as if she were commenting on the weather.
He froze. "Sorry?"
The cloth sailed toward him, light as air, and he caught it without thinking, his reflexes sharper than his comprehension.
"Wipe the tables for me."
He stared at the square of fabric in his hand, his mind lagging several beats behind the reality of what she had just asked. Malfoys did not wipe tables. Malfoys didn't do chores. They didn't mop floors or clear dishes. They didn't clean anything that couldn't be handled with a flick of a wand or the swipe of a quill across a cheque.
And yet here he stood, in the warm golden glow of a shop that smelled like cinnamon and lavender and some indefinable thing that felt dangerously close to hope, holding a cleaning cloth like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Of course," he heard himself say, the words slipping out before he could summon the pride to stop them.
And then he moved. No protest, no conditions. Just a Malfoy wiping tables in a tea shop, because Luna bloody Lovegood had asked him to.
He stared down at the cloth in his hand like it had personally insulted him, caught somewhere between disbelief and the creeping horror that his own reflexes had betrayed him. Then, with the heavy gait of a man being marched to the gallows, he stepped toward the nearest table. This wasn't right. This wasn't normal. Nothing about this was normal. Draco Malfoy did not wipe tables. He didn't hum under his breath while he worked. He didn't exist in this kind of reality.
But Luna was already moving behind the counter, her sleeves pushed up, rearranging jars, polishing the glass until it gleamed. She worked with a calm efficiency that made the entire shop feel smaller, quieter, as if the air itself had decided to settle around her. The soft tune she hummed floated across the space, low and unhurried, and before he knew it he had matched her pace. His hands moved without him deciding they should, the rhythm of cloth against wood syncing with the rhythm of her voice.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, a voice—his father's or maybe just the ghost of his own pride—was snarling in disgust. Malfoys do not do this.
But he ignored it.
Because Luna had asked him to help.
And he had wanted to.
That thought landed heavier than it should have. He didn't like the way it made his chest feel tight, the way it opened a door to something he couldn't name.
At first his movements were tentative, every swipe of the cloth deliberate, but the hesitation bled out of him with each table. One, then another, then the next. It was mechanical at first, but somewhere between the streak of water on the wood and the scent of lavender rising from the grain, it began to feel… different. Not good, exactly. But grounding. Like the act itself was dragging him back into his body after weeks, months, maybe years of not quite living in it.
He had just finished the last table when she turned, glancing over her shoulder. Her eyes met his, and she smiled.
Not mockingly. Not like she had won something over him. Not with the smug tilt of someone who knew she could have him dancing like a puppet if she wanted to.
Just a smile. Warm and unguarded, soft around the edges, the kind of smile that crept under his ribs before he had a chance to fortify himself.
It made his breath catch. It made something low in his chest twist.
And, God help him, it felt good.
Merlin, he was fucked.
He had known danger. Real danger. The kind that wrapped cold fingers around his throat and whispered death in every breath. He had stood before the Dark Lord and accepted orders that carved fractures into his soul. He had walked the blood-soaked corridors of Hogwarts with a wand clenched in his hand, his ears full of screams and the sure knowledge that any step could be his last. That had been survival. Brutal, unrelenting survival.
And yet somehow, impossibly, this—standing in a tea shop with a girl who smiled too easily and saw too much—felt worse.
Finishing the last table was like dragging himself across a finish line he had not known he was racing toward. Draco exhaled slowly, his palm sweeping over the polished surface one last time before straightening with a stiff roll of his shoulders. His muscles ached in ways that had nothing to do with scrubbing wood. Luna was behind the counter, sliding the final jar onto a shelf with unhurried precision, her focus elsewhere.
"There," he muttered, tossing the cloth onto the counter harder than he needed to. "Happy?"
Luna's smile bloomed like sunlight breaking through cloud.
"Very."
His mind stalled. That smile was a curse in its own right, a spell with no counter, disarming him in ways no duel could.
Absolutely not. No. He was not doing this. Not here. Not with her.
He reached for his coat with a quick, almost frantic motion, clearing his throat in a thin disguise for the mess of his thoughts. "Right. Well. I should… go. Since you're closing and all."
"Yes," Luna said lightly, her voice the same steady calm it always was. "You should."
But she didn't move. She didn't walk him to the door. She didn't offer a goodbye. She just stayed where she was, watching him.
He stood there, coat in hand, his instincts tearing him in two. One voice told him to leave, to cut his losses and salvage what remained of his dignity. The other whispered for him to stay, to see what would happen if he crossed that last invisible line. Her gaze was steady, open, without urgency. It made leaving feel like a kind of defeat.
The shop was warm, the air thick with the scent of tea and something older, something that seemed soaked into the walls. The light caught in her hair. She was still watching him with those wide, unblinking eyes. Maybe she didn't notice the chaos running riot through his chest. Or maybe she noticed every flicker of it and simply didn't mind.
Before he could stop himself, he moved. One step. Then another. Slow and deliberate, the air thinning with every inch. His breath grew shallow. His heart pounded like it was trying to fight its way out of his ribs.
She didn't retreat. Her posture didn't shift. If anything, she seemed to be waiting for him, as though she had been waiting far longer than he could guess. There was no surprise in her expression, only a patience so unshakable it felt almost like invitation.
He leaned in, close enough to see the freckles scattered faintly across her cheek, close enough to feel the whisper of her breath against his skin. His hands twitched at his sides, caught between restraint and want, and then—
He kissed her cheek.
It was quick, almost nothing, the lightest brush of his lips against warm skin. Over in an instant. But it was still everything. He barely had time to convince himself it was harmless, that it was gratitude and nothing else, before she moved. A small shift, almost imperceptible, a tilt of her head, a lean in his direction—
And she kissed him back.
It wasn't a mouth-on-mouth, shattering, world-ending kiss. It was the barest press of her lips to his cheek. But it might as well have been a lightning strike.
His breath caught and held, his body going rigid from head to toe.
Holy fucking hell.
He was going to come in his trousers.
What the actual fuck was wrong with him?
He had kissed before. He had gone far beyond kissing. He had lived in lust, worn it like armor, let it burn through him in nights far less innocent than this. He had known sin in every shade. None of it had prepared him for Luna Lovegood's lips on his cheek.
It was unbearable. And exquisite.
Every muscle in him locked down, trying to keep him from doing the most reckless thing imaginable—pulling her against him and kissing her until she forgot the rest of the world.
And she knew.
God help him, she absolutely fucking knew.
When she pulled back, her face was unreadable for the briefest heartbeat. Neutral. Composed. Infuriatingly calm. Then something shifted. A spark lit behind her eyes, quick as flint to steel, bright and smug and wickedly amused. She had felt the tremor in his breath. She had seen the panic flicker through his gaze. She had heard the sharp hitch in his chest when her lips touched his skin.
Luna. Fucking. Lovegood.
She was going to kill him.
And then, as if she had not just dismantled the very ground beneath him, she tilted her head and smiled. Not the soft, gentle thing she had given him before, but something smaller, quieter, all the more lethal for how casual it seemed.
"See you tomorrow?" she asked, her tone as calm as if they were talking about the weather, as if they were not standing in the wreckage of whatever invisible line they had just crossed.
He could only look at her, jaw tight, lungs locked, heartbeat pounding so hard he could feel it in his fingertips. His mind was a battlefield of jagged, useless thoughts: what the fuck just happened, and how in Merlin's name was he supposed to survive it?
Somehowhis mouth formed words.
"See you tomorrow," he said, the sound rough, uneven, more breath than voice.
And then he turned away before he could make the worst decision of his life. Before he could reach for her. Before he could kiss her until the world fell apart.
The door closed behind him with a muted click, and the night swallowed him whole.