Draco had never been the kind of man who asked for what he wanted. Asking suggested weakness, suggested that there was a chance the answer could be anything other than yes, and he had built himself out of the certainty that his desires would be met. Always. Without question. Without compromise.
He did not beg. He did not linger on maybes. He did not waste time wondering. He took.
He took with precision, with intent, with the kind of unshakable focus that left no room for chance, and once he wrapped his hands around what he wanted, he never let it go. He would shape it, claim it, make it fit the world as he saw it. And when it became his, truly his, it stayed that way.
Luna had been his from the very start. Long before she ever thought to name it. Long before she looked at him without defiance. Long before she stopped drifting away like smoke and finally stood still long enough for him to catch her. Even when she fought him, especially when she fought him, it had only served as proof. Proof that she was worth every ounce of effort. Proof that she was not just another conquest, not just another possession to set on a shelf and forget. She was the one thing in this fractured, ugly world that he could not live without.
He had known it in the first charged instant his skin met hers, the first time he felt the ripple of her shiver travel through his fingertips. He had heard it in the sound she made when his name fell from her lips, not in fear but in something far more dangerous. Something that felt like recognition. Like inevitability.
From the moment she let herself sink into him, trembling, from the moment her voice shook but still wrapped around his name like it belonged to her just as much as it belonged to him, he had known. There was no turning away from that kind of truth. No rewinding, no pretending it had been imagined.
Now she was here. In his bed. In his arms. Her scent threaded into the linen, her presence carved into the room like it had been waiting for her all along. Every part of her had become part of him, stitched into the fabric of his days so seamlessly that he could not remember where he ended and she began.
And there was no undoing that.
No path back to the man who had existed before her. No version of reality where he let her go. No universe in which her absence was an option he would allow.
Because she was his. And now that she had stopped running, now that she was finally looking at him without the shield of distance or the fog of denial, he would make damn sure she understood exactly what that meant.
So it was never a question of whether she would move in with him. That had been decided the moment she first spent the night and he woke to find her still there, hair tangled across his pillow, breathing slow and even in the early light. The only question had been when, and in Draco's mind, the answer had already settled itself. Now. Immediately. This very day.
The thought of her sleeping anywhere else had started as an irritation, then an ache, and had quickly evolved into something he could no longer tolerate. The idea of her curled up in some quiet flat across the city, her tea cooling beside her while she stared out at nothing in particular, her legs tucked beneath her and her hair spilling down her back, was enough to set his jaw and tighten his chest. He imagined her yawning into her teacup while his own bed lay cold and empty, the sheets untouched where she should have been. It was more than unpleasant. It was wrong. It was a kind of absence that felt like someone was reaching into his chest and pulling him apart thread by thread.
He had grown used to the sound of her breathing at night, the warmth of her weight draped across him, the quiet little hum she sometimes made before she drifted off. Without that, mornings stretched hollow and thin. The silence pressed too close, and he found himself turning toward her side of the bed before his mind caught up with the reality that she was not there. It was not an adjustment he was willing to make.
Which was why, while Luna was spending her morning at the coffee shop she liked so much, probably with her legs folded neatly under her in her favorite corner seat, stirring honey into her tea with that soft, distracted smile she wore when her thoughts wandered somewhere he could not follow, Draco was busy. He was not simply waiting for her to come back. He was orchestrating a plan.
It was not a small plan. It required an extensive amount of magic, the assistance of every capable house elf in the manor, and a level of organization most people would reserve for military operations. Each elf had been given instructions tailored to their task, broken down into categories by room, color scheme, and, in some cases, by the sentimental weight of certain objects. He knew where her books would go. He knew which windows would get the lighter curtains because she liked the way the light filtered through them in the afternoon. He had already chosen the drawer where her teabags would live and had cleared half his wardrobe, not because he lacked the space but because he wanted her to see it empty and waiting for her.
This was not about asking her. This was about ensuring that when she came home, she would find that the question had already been answered. That her life had already been folded neatly into his. That there was no need for discussion because everything she owned now had a place here.
As far as Draco Malfoy was concerned, Luna Lovegood was moving in today.
She simply had not been informed yet.
First came the animals.
Because of course Luna had animals. Not just a pleasant, manageable handful like a kitten or an owl, the way any reasonable witch might. No, she had assembled a full-blown magical menagerie over the years, gathered in that ridiculous little sun-drenched valley of hers like she was some ethereal beast whisperer sent by fate to personally shelter every eccentric, inconvenient creature on the continent.
It was almost concerning, the sheer number and variety she cared for with unwavering dedication and that soft-spoken command of hers. There were Kneazles who looked at him with the calculating suspicion of seasoned goblin bankers, as if they were quietly adding up how much gold he owed them. There was a flock of Mooncalves she insisted were "very polite," a claim Draco still could not verify, considering one had trampled a perfectly good pair of Italian leather boots on his last visit. There were two rescued Diricawls who regarded every living being like disapproving grandmothers, heads tilted in judgment, and who, according to Luna, could follow complex human conversation. And of course there was Dandelion.
Dandelion, the fluffy, horned little hellspawn of a miniature cow who had once lured Draco into lowering his guard by accepting a hand-knit sweater from him, only to promptly declare herself queen of his property. She roamed his land with the entitlement of someone holding a deed and legal title, hooves clicking over imported stone like it had been installed for her benefit alone.
At present, she was standing dead center in the elegant, polished foyer, positioned beneath the crystal chandelier as if she were about to hold court. Around her, a small army of house elves was in motion, packing Luna's life into precisely labeled and magically protected trunks. One group worked on the botanicals, separating the dangerous from the decorative. Another sorted her enchanted teas by emotional potency. Someone else was carefully securing her potions vials with spell-stabilized charms. All of it was being executed with the level of care one might expect for priceless artifacts.
And Dandelion? Dandelion was staring at him. Blinking slowly, her tail flicking once, as if she were the only one entitled to any real authority in this house.
"You do realize you do not pay rent, right?" Draco muttered, arms crossed, narrowing his eyes at the infuriatingly placid bovine.
She let out a single, deep moo. Deliberate. Unhurried. Inarguably smug.
That was the moment he knew. His life had gone completely to hell. Not in the grand, tragic sense. Not even in the thrilling, dangerous way he might once have imagined. No, this was the slow, humiliating decline of a man who had fought in a war only to find himself negotiating with livestock about property rights.
With the sigh of someone who knew when he was beaten, he lifted his wand. Dandelion rose into the air with a reluctant sort of grace, her hooves swaying slightly as he guided her—carefully, although he would deny that part—to the custom-built paddock he had commissioned overnight.
It was absurdly over-engineered. A broad swath of land at the far edge of the property, seamlessly blended into the surrounding countryside. Self-regenerating grass rolled across the space like a carpet, kept lush in every season by an intricate web of charms. Climate-controlled shelters stood ready for whatever weather might come. A narrow, babbling stream had been added for "hoof-soaking sessions," because Luna had insisted that Dandelion liked to cool her hooves after "a long day."
Draco still had no idea what could possibly constitute a long day for a miniature cow.
Once Dandelion was settled in her plush bovine paradise, and the rest of the animals had been transported safely, humanely, and with magical escort to the sprawling expanse he had reluctantly dubbed Luna's Absolutely Ridiculous and Completely Necessary Magical Animal Sanctuary (a name he would never say aloud, not even under Veritaserum), Draco turned his attention to the final phase of this operation. The most delicate, the most meaningful, and possibly the most unhinged part of the plan: her house.
Or, more accurately, what remained of it.
Because Draco Malfoy was not the type of man to do anything halfway. He did not hem and haw. He did not ask questions when he already knew the answer. He certainly did not wait for the woman he loved to make up her mind about where she belonged. He simply made it happen. He anticipated the inevitable, prepared the solution, executed the plan with surgical precision, and ensured that by the time she realized what he had done, it would already be finished and far too perfect to resist. That was his style. And this? This was no exception.
So when he stepped into the cozy, cluttered, impossibly whimsical little cottage she had made into a home, he did not pause to admire it, though every corner seemed determined to tempt him into lingering. The walls were lined with floating lanterns that bobbed gently as he passed. Herb bundles hung drying from twine strung across the rafters, their scents mingling into something bright and earthy. Paintings blinked themselves awake as he walked by, casting him curious looks as though they had never seen someone so brazen. A jar of biscuits on the kitchen counter hummed faintly in greeting, and from somewhere in the sitting room, a stack of books shuffled itself into a new order.
It was warm, lived-in, and utterly hers. Which meant it was coming with her.
He didn't hesitate. He didn't waste time deciding which pieces were worth keeping and which could be left behind. He didn't separate essentials from the sentimental. He simply drew his wand, feeling magic coil tight and deliberate through him, and he did what only a lunatic or a man completely, catastrophically in love would do.
He relocated the entire house.
Not just her favorite books.
Not just the trinkets, the clothes, and the teapot that sang lullabies while it brewed chamomile.
Not even the bed they had first made love in, the one that creaked in just the right places and smelled faintly of her hair.
The whole thing. Walls, windows, garden, crooked gate and all.
One moment it stood in her little valley, framed by wildflowers and hedgerows. The next, it shimmered, vanished, and reappeared on the far side of his estate, nestled against the orchard as though it had always been there.
Because she was not just moving in.
She was bringing everything with her.
And he would not have it any other way.
With one expertly executed, dangerously advanced, high-level spell, the kind of magic so intricate and delicately layered that even the most seasoned magical architects would have balked at the attempt, Draco Malfoy did the unthinkable. The absurd. The sort of thing only a man both thoroughly lovesick and quietly unhinged would ever consider. He shifted her entire home. Not just the foundation, not just the structure, but every brick, every charm-woven windowpane, every herb-scented breeze that had been trapped between the walls for years, and transplanted it in its entirety onto the far edge of his estate.
The clearing where it now stood had been chosen with a precision that bordered on obsessive. It was tucked neatly between two ancient, enchanted willow trees whose branches swayed as if in approval, their silver-green leaves shimmering in the fading afternoon light. The soft movement cast dappled shadows over the thatched roof and flower-draped porch, making it seem as though the cottage had always belonged there. He had even gone so far as to design a private pathway of hand-laid cobblestones that wound through the rose garden, passed beneath an arched hedge, and led, without any subtlety whatsoever, directly to his bedroom door.
Because if Luna Lovegood thought she would continue this ridiculous routine of "needing her own space" or "enjoying the solitude of her cottage," if she believed she could spend a single night anywhere other than wrapped up in his arms, tangled in his sheets, breathing softly against his throat while he whispered how much he adored her into the curve of her neck, then she was tragically, beautifully, and utterly mistaken.
By the time the spell had finished its slow, magical settling, by the time the last pulses of shimmering light sank into the soil and fused her cottage with the land as if it had always been part of it, Draco Malfoy already knew what was coming. He could see it as clearly as if it were unfolding in front of him. She would walk up the cobblestone path with that deceptively calm expression she wore when her temper was simmering just under the surface. She would push open the door to his bedroom, her hair catching in the sunlight, her wand already in hand, her voice sharp enough to cut through stone. She would tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he had crossed a line. That he had no right. That she was not some possession to be relocated at his whim.
And she would mean every word of it.
She would accuse him of arrogance, of overreach, of blatant disregard for her autonomy. She would remind him that her life was hers, that her home was hers, that she alone decided where it stood and how it stood. She would demand an explanation, and then she would demand an apology, and then she would wait for him to admit that she was right.
Only she would not get any of that.
Because Draco had no intention of apologizing. Not for this. Not for taking the thing he wanted most and placing it where it belonged. Not for erasing the empty miles that had ever existed between them. Not for making it impossible for her to wake up anywhere other than within reach of him.
If she hexed him, so be it. If she shouted until her voice gave out, so be it. If she threw the teapot that sang lullabies when she brewed chamomile, he would dodge, catch it, and put it right back on the shelf.
Because she could rage and lecture and throw every curse she knew, and still, when night came, she would be here. In his home. In his bed.
And that was the only victory that mattered.
*
Her breath caught before her mind could even form the question. The familiar hedgerow that had always framed the front gate was gone. The crooked willow whose branches had once tangled with the chimney in winter storms was gone. The lantern she left burning on the porch when she knew she would be home late was gone. Every landmark, every living thing that had stood as proof that this place was hers, had been erased from the world around her.
In its place stretched a quiet meadow that shimmered faintly in the falling dusk, the grass long and unfamiliar, the air carrying none of the scents she knew. No rosemary from the garden. No faint smoke from the old brick hearth. No warmth of the cottage walls holding the day's heat like a secret.
Her heart began to thud in a strange, unsteady rhythm.
She turned in a slow circle, her fingers flexing at her sides as her pulse climbed higher. The horizon was wrong. The shadows were wrong. The angle of the moon against the tree line was wrong. She was standing exactly where her life had been, and yet it was not here.
Her cottage was gone.
The realization settled with a sick, sudden weight, as if the air itself had grown heavy. She took one step forward, then another, her boots sinking slightly into the damp earth, her eyes sweeping the empty space again and again, searching for any sign of it. She half expected it to appear like a mirage, to waver into focus as though this was nothing more than an elaborate glamour.
But the truth stood unshakable before her: the place she had called home, the walls that had cradled her dreams and her grief in equal measure, had been taken.
A sharp, searing heat bloomed behind her ribs, a wild mix of disbelief and outrage tangled with something far more dangerous, something that hummed low and furious in the marrow of her bones. She did not need to waste a single heartbeat wondering who could have done this. There was only one man who carried both the arrogance and the skill to tear her home from its roots as if it were nothing more than an inconvenient ornament in the landscape. Only one man who would look at something so deeply hers and decide it was his to move.
Her fingers curled slowly into fists until her nails bit against her palms, the sting barely enough to ground her. Her breath caught and locked high in her chest, as if a hook had been driven in and yanked tight, as if the air itself refused to move through her lungs. The world in front of her was wrong in a way that made her stomach twist. There was no welcoming glow spilling from her crooked windows, no lazy curl of smoke winding up from her chimney, no silhouette of ivy-laced stone huddled beneath the sky. The gate that had always groaned on its hinges when she pushed it open was gone. The familiar shimmer of wards, soft as a lullaby and steady as a heartbeat, was gone.
There was only space. A wide, gaping, silent space where her world had been. The earth itself looked unsettled, raw around the edges, as if it knew something had been stolen from it. The emptiness was so stark it felt like a physical blow, a hollow punched clean through the center of her chest. And in that breathless, shattering instant, the universe seemed to tip sideways, and Luna Lovegood forgot how to breathe.
Panic did not creep in. It came all at once, a violent rush that tore through her like fire racing along a dry field, hot and consuming, chased by a creeping chill that sank deep into her bones. Two instincts battled for control, fight and flight tangling so tightly that neither could win. Her body moved before her mind caught up, spinning her in place, eyes wide and glassy, searching the horizon for something that should have been there, something she could not accept was gone.
Her gaze swept the field once, twice, over and over, desperate for a glimpse of pale stone or the slant of a familiar roofline. She whispered to herself without knowing what she was saying, nonsense words and half-formed reassurances spilling out as if they could bend reality back into its rightful shape. She told herself she had made a mistake, that she had landed wrong, that the wards had shifted or cloaked her home from view, that if she just turned in the right direction it would be there, waiting, exactly as she had left it.
But it was not. The truth rose slow and heavy in her chest, sinking deeper with every heartbeat until she felt its weight in her bones. Her home was gone.
The realization did not feel like a single, clean cut. It was crushing, relentless, the kind of pressure that grinds stone into dust. It settled over her with the grief of a death she had not been ready for, with the disbelief of a nightmare she could not wake from, with the deeper, more insidious terror that came from knowing this was not just about walls and wood and windows. This was about her.
Her knees buckled beneath her, trembling with the strain of holding herself upright. She dropped hard to the ground, her palms hitting the cool, damp earth first. Her fingers dug in, curling into the dirt like she might root herself there, like she could anchor her soul to the only piece of this place that had not been stolen. The soil pressed against her skin, rough and solid, but it did not help. It could not help.
Her arms shook, her shoulders trembling as her body curled in on itself. The air seemed to thin around her, every breath shallow and jagged, every exhale an effort. Her mind was a storm of confusion, anger, and raw panic, spiraling so fast she could not pull a single coherent thought free. This was not just about losing a house. This was losing the one place in the world that no one had touched, the one space that had been wholly hers. It was losing the last fragile sliver of control she had kept for herself. It was losing the safety she had built from her own hands, her own magic, her own stubborn will.
And now it was gone.
She could not breathe. She could not think. The silence around her felt louder than any scream, pressing in from all sides, smothering her until the only thing she could feel was the absence, vast and unyielding, where her home had been. All she could do was curl closer to the ground, trembling as though the earth itself might hold her together if she stayed low enough, as though stillness might keep her from unraveling completely.
A sound tore from her before she even knew it was coming, unbidden and raw, so saturated with anguish that she barely recognized it as her own. It did not sound like her voice. It did not sound like something her throat or lungs or heart should have been able to make. It was a choked, jagged sob that clawed its way up from somewhere far deeper than her chest, as if it had been buried there for years, crouched in the dark, waiting for this exact moment when everything she had built for herself would collapse. The sound felt older than she was, older than the years she had lived. It belonged to someone else entirely, someone weak and broken, someone who had just watched the last thread holding them together snap under the weight of loss.
It started small, only a tremor in her breath, but it built with terrifying speed. The pressure inside her chest swelled until it was unbearable, until her throat burned and her lungs ached, until the sob rose up sharp and unstoppable and broke out in uneven, gasping cries that shook her down to the marrow. Her body heaved with it. The sound fractured again and again, spilling from her in helpless bursts that came faster than she could stop them, each one stealing more air, leaving her lightheaded and trembling.
Then the sobbing came in full, not quiet or restrained, but wild, violent, the kind that wracked her whole frame. Every breath caught in her chest and came out broken. Her shoulders hunched and trembled with the force of it. Her knees gave way and the damp grass caught her, cold against the thin skin beneath her clothes. She folded in on herself as though the sheer weight of grief was a physical thing pressing down, crushing her into the earth.
Her forehead pressed into the wet soil, her hands clawing at it, fingers digging into the softness until dirt filled her nails. She wanted to bury herself in it, hide there, vanish along with the home that had been torn from her so carelessly, so cruelly. The smell of grass and earth filled her lungs but it did nothing to steady her, nothing to anchor her to anything solid.
The weight of it was everywhere, thick and merciless, pressing in against her ribs, pushing the breath out of her, suffocating her in its grip. She could barely draw air between sobs, could barely think through the pounding in her head and the hollow ache in her chest. Each breath came shallow and ragged, each attempt to fill her lungs failing as if the air itself was refusing her.
Her home, her world, the one place that had been wholly hers, had been ripped away in a heartbeat. No warning. No conversation. Not even the smallest gesture of respect for what it had meant. The cottage she had shaped with her own hands, with care and intention and bits of her soul woven into every charm, every corner, was gone as if it had never existed.
Every trinket she had chosen because it made her smile, every cracked mug that still held the ghost of tea leaves at the bottom, every pressed flower between glass, every old book with her handwriting curling along the margins, every framed photograph and drawer full of letters she had never sorted. The walls that had absorbed her secrets, the floor that had felt the weight of her steps when she could not sleep, the roof that had sheltered her through storms and sunrises and nights of quiet dreaming. All of it had been lifted away by a force so deliberate and impersonal that it made her feel small and breakable in a way she had not felt in years.
Someone had taken the only place in the world that was untouchable, the one space she had never surrendered to anyone, and stripped it from her without asking. Without hesitation. Without the faintest acknowledgment that in doing so, they had taken more than bricks and wood and charmwork. They had taken something she had built to survive.
She stayed like that for what felt like hours, unmoving, unblinking, her knees pressed into the damp grass and her palms ground into the earth as though she might claw her way back to what had been stolen. Her fingers dug deeper until dirt packed beneath her nails, as if she could tear through the soil and find the foundation still there, hidden just beneath the surface. She tried to imagine the walls rising again from the ground, tried to believe that the memory of them was still rooted here, holding fast in ways the rest of the world could not erase. But the earth stayed cold and unyielding beneath her touch. The air stayed hollow. There was nothing. No warmth. No echo of magic humming under her skin. No trace of the life that had once been here. Only emptiness.
The realization sank into her like ice. For a long moment she could not even move, could not even draw breath without feeling it catch like a hook in her chest. Her body was heavy, but her thoughts spun in frantic circles that led nowhere. And then, without a plan, without even a fully formed thought, something in her broke loose. Her magic rose up all at once, unshaped and raw, too tangled in grief to be tamed.
The spell came before she realized she had cast it. Apparition ripped her from the field, her body moving faster than her mind could follow. She was flung through space on the sheer force of instinct, carried not by logic but by something deeper and more dangerous. It was not reason that guided her, but fury. It was not calculation but a grief so sharp it scraped her hollow from the inside out.
One moment she was on her knees in the grass where her home had stood. The next she was hitting the cold marble of the Manor's entrance hall with enough force to knock the air from her lungs. Pain shot through her ribs as her palms skidded on the polished floor. The shock left her disoriented, her limbs trembling violently as though she had been dragged through a storm. She collapsed where she landed, her hair spilling forward to curtain her face, breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts that scraped at her throat. Her body shook so hard she could not steady herself enough to push up, her hands slipping against the marble every time she tried.
The sound of her arrival split the silence of the manor like a crack of thunder. The air shuddered with the snap of apparition magic, the kind that still hummed in the walls long after the caster had landed. It rang down the corridors, sharp enough to echo off every distant archway.
In the drawing room just beyond the hall, Draco Malfoy froze. The noise was sharp and wrong, too violent for a casual visit, too heavy to be anything but a storm arriving on his doorstep. The glass in his hand slipped before he even realized he had let go. It hit the floor and shattered, crystal fragments scattering in a glinting spray across the rug. He turned sharply toward the sound, his pulse spiking in a way that had nothing to do with surprise and everything to do with the certainty in his bones.
He had expected her. Not like this, but he had known she would come. He had been preparing himself for the fight she would bring with her, for the blaze in her eyes and the pointed precision of her anger, for sharp words that could cut as deep as any curse. He had been ready to meet her in the middle of a storm and see if she could match him in it.
But this was not the woman he had braced himself for.
This was something else entirely.
She was curled in on herself on the marble like her body could no longer hold her upright. Her shoulders heaved in silent sobs that looked like they hurt to breathe through. Her hair hung in tangled waves over her face, hiding her eyes, but he could hear the sound of her gasping for air. She looked breakable in a way that made something in his chest lurch painfully.
The sight punched the air from his lungs. Every thought he had about how this would go, every line of defense he had built for himself in anticipation, fell apart in an instant. The panic hit him so fast and so sharp it was almost physical, as if someone had aimed a curse straight at his sternum.
He was moving before he had decided to. The crunch of glass under his shoes was loud in the ringing quiet as he crossed the space between them in long, quick strides, the edges of the broken crystal biting faintly at the soles. He did not care. All he could think was that she was here, she was shaking, and there was nothing in the world that mattered more than reaching her.
Draco cursed under his breath, the sound low and harsh, his arms tightening around her without conscious thought. His fingers clenched at the fabric of her clothes, holding on like he could keep her from falling apart through strength alone, as if sheer force could hold together what was unravelling in front of him. It was a useless instinct, and he knew it, but he could not stop.
The helplessness clawed at him in a way he had not felt in years. He had never seen her like this. Luna had always been the calm at the center of the storm, the unshaken point around which everything else spun. She was strange, yes, often to the point of infuriating him, but she was steady in ways that defied reason. She walked into chaos and somehow made it bearable. She was his constant, his axis, his maddening, gentle certainty. And now she was here in his arms, trembling so hard he could feel it in his own bones, gasping for air like the act of breathing itself was slipping from her grasp.
It terrified him. Not the panic, not the way her body shook, but the fact that it wasn't her. Not the Luna he knew, not the Luna he loved with a desperation he could never fully name. This was someone else entirely. Someone pulled apart at the seams. Someone who could barely keep hold of the edges.
He had no idea what to do. Draco Malfoy always knew what to do. This time, he didn't.
"Fuck," he muttered again, the curse nearly swallowed by the tightness in his throat. "Okay. Okay, just… look at me." His voice lost its usual sharpness. It came out quieter, stripped of the steel he used to keep the rest of the world at bay, the words edged instead with something raw and unguarded. He leaned in closer, enough that she would hear him no matter how far away her mind had gone. "With me now, love. Deep breaths. In, and out. That's it."
He exaggerated the motion for her, inhaling slowly through his nose, holding the breath for a count, and then letting it out just as slowly. He kept his eyes fixed on hers, even if they were glassy and unfocused, willing her to mirror him. "You're here," he said, steady and certain, as if he could plant those words inside her and have them grow roots. "You're safe. I've got you. Just breathe for me. Please, baby. Just breathe."
It took time. Too much time. The kind of time that dragged like an eternity measured in seconds. He felt every one of them. But gradually, painfully, he began to feel her respond. The frantic rhythm of her chest began to slow, the air no longer scraping through her throat in ragged, gasping bursts. She was still shaking, still clinging to him, but the grip that had cut into his arms loosened just enough for his hands to move freely again. He felt the smallest shift in her breathing, enough that the pounding in his own chest eased fractionally.
He let out a breath of his own, unaware until that moment that he had been holding it. Relief flickered through him, fragile and uncertain, but it was there. For a heartbeat he thought maybe the worst had passed.
Then she spoke.
"…My home."
Two words. Barely more than a whisper, but they cut through him with the force of a curse. They were shaky and uneven, yet still recognizably hers. And he understood immediately. That was the wound. That was the thing that had broken her open. The house. The place she had built, guarded, loved. The one thing that had been entirely hers.
Draco's expression softened, the tension in his shoulders loosening as if the worst had already passed. Relief flickered across his face, brief but unmistakable, because now he thought he understood. Now he had context. And if he knew the cause, he could solve it. In his mind, everything could be fixed with the right application of will. Everything.
"Oh, do not worry, love," he said, his voice gentler now, almost coaxing, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He had no idea what he was stepping into, no idea that the next words he spoke would ignite something in her that might never be put out. "Your home is here already. Everything is perfect."
It was as if the air stopped moving.
Luna went still, not with hesitation, not with slow comprehension, but with the total, absolute halt of a creature that has just scented a predator. Every muscle in her body locked into place. Her breath, caught mid-exhale, stayed trapped in her chest. Her hands, still resting against the fabric of his sleeves, curled inward until her knuckles pressed hard into her palms. Her shoulders squared without thought. Her spine straightened in the smallest, sharpest increments.
When she turned her head toward him, it was not fluid. It was deliberate, mechanical, each motion straining against the invisible weight pressing down on her. Her eyes found his, and though they were red-rimmed and shining with fresh tears, there was something inside them that stripped the warmth from the room. Something cold. Something sharp. Something he could not read, and for that reason alone, it unsettled him more than anything she had said or done before.
She did not speak. She moved.
She shoved herself upright so suddenly that the force sent her stumbling sideways, her legs clumsy under the rush of movement, but she caught herself on instinct and kept going. She crossed the room with a kind of single-minded purpose that did not allow for hesitation or thought. Her breath was ragged, her chest rising and falling in quick, uneven bursts. Her heart pounded with such ferocity she could feel it hammering in her ears, drowning out everything else.
The window was her only destination.
She reached it and braced her palms against the frame, leaning forward as her gaze cut through the glass. The moment her eyes landed on what lay beyond, every fragile hope she had clung to shattered cleanly, without ceremony.
There it was.
Her cottage. Perfectly intact. Perfectly preserved. Every wall, every window, every inch of ivy clinging to the stone exactly as she had left it. Only it no longer stood on its wild patch of land. It no longer looked out over her valley. It had been placed here, at the edge of his estate, as if it were nothing more than another part of his curated, manicured grounds.
Something inside her shifted. Not broke—shifted, tilting into a place she did not recognize, a place colder and quieter than fury.
Draco Malfoy had taken her home.
And Draco Malfoy was going to die.
Right. Now.
She spun so quickly the air shifted around her, the room blurring at the edges until there was only him. Draco stood there, the last trace of smug satisfaction still fading from his face, still believing he had done something good, still so certain he had given her a gift instead of stealing something from her. The sheer audacity of it struck her like a physical blow, knocking the breath from her lungs and replacing it with a rush of white-hot fury.
Her eyes scanned for something, anything she could use, her vision narrowing, her pulse pounding so hard in her ears that she almost did not hear the scrape of wood against her boots as she moved. Her fingers found the cold, perfect weight of a crystal ashtray on the nearest table. She did not pause to think. She did not even look at it. She simply wrapped her hand around it, felt the solid heft of it in her palm, and hurled it across the room with every ounce of fury, grief, and betrayal she had inside her.
The ashtray cut through the air like a curse and struck him square in the chest with a thud that reverberated in her bones.
Draco stumbled back a step, the breath leaving him in a startled grunt. The impact sent a sharp shock through his ribs before the ashtray clattered to the floor, bouncing once before skidding against the polished wood. He looked up at her, wide-eyed, his mouth parting in disbelief, the expression of a man who could not quite comprehend that she had just done that.
"Luna!" His voice cracked with both shock and outrage, his hand flying to his chest as though to protect it from further assault. His glare was sharp, accusatory, as if she were the one who had crossed some unforgivable line.
She did not give him the chance to recover. She was already moving, her footsteps fast and deliberate, her body taut with the kind of controlled rage that burned hotter than fire.
The slap landed with a precision that could have been honed through centuries of witchcraft, a motion so clean and unhesitating that the sound of it seemed to split the manor in two.
The crack rang out through the cavernous hall, sharp and merciless, echoing off the walls like the aftermath of a gunshot. His head snapped to the side from the force, pale hair falling out of place, the outline of her hand blooming in red across his cheek. For a moment, neither of them moved. The air between them pulsed with something dangerous, something alive, and he simply stared at her, frozen, as though she had upended the laws of his world.
"What have you done?" The words tore from her throat in a scream that was raw and trembling, ragged from crying, weighted with betrayal so deep it lodged in her bones.
Draco exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair in a futile attempt to ground himself. His voice rose in return, defensive and infuriatingly sure of itself, completely out of sync with the severity of what he had done. "I made sure you live here now," he shot back, the words loud, unyielding, as if this was self-evident, as if he had just committed an act of devotion instead of stripping her of the one piece of the world that was truly hers.
Luna gasped, the sound ripping out of her like it had been wrenched from deep inside her chest without warning, sharp and ragged and unwilling. Her eyes flew wide, shock and fury flooding in so quickly that she could taste the bitterness of it on her tongue. It was the kind of horror that came only when someone stepped into the most private part of you, the place no one else was meant to touch, the place that was supposed to be yours and yours alone. It felt like a blow straight to her soul.
Her entire body went rigid. The muscles in her back locked, her shoulders drawn so tight that they ached, and her jaw clenched until the pressure rang through her skull. Her hands curled into fists, nails pressing into her palms until they bit at the skin, as if gripping herself was the only thing keeping her from detonating. She stared at him without blinking, her gaze hard and unflinching, like she was trying to see the exact shape of the man in front of her, as if she had never truly looked before and was only now realising what she was seeing.
When she finally managed to speak, the words came out torn and uneven, her voice hoarse from screaming earlier, heavy with disbelief and rage. The single question broke from her like a whip crack, carrying every ounce of venom she had left.
"Since when?"
Draco, infuriatingly composed, stood there as if her fury was nothing more than an entertaining shift in the weather. The corner of his mouth tilted upward in that deliberate, familiar way that once had the power to make her knees weaken and her breath falter. Now, it sparked something darker, sharper, more dangerous inside her.
"Since today," he said. The words slid out low, deliberate, and unbearably smug. His voice was smooth but laced with pride, thick with the kind of satisfaction that came from claiming something he had no right to. "Since you moaned my given name. Since you came on my cock."
That was the moment the last thread inside her snapped.
Her vision narrowed, the edges going hot and hazy until the world around him was nothing but a deep, pounding red. The sound that tore from her chest was low and vicious, primal in a way that startled even her. Her magic surged without her calling it, the air around her snapping like lightning before a storm, the pressure in the room building with every furious step she took.
She turned sharply, her movements cutting through the air with purpose, her shoulders squared and her chin high even though her entire body was vibrating with rage. Each step toward the door was heavy and deliberate, the sound of her boots striking the floor echoing in the space between them.
"I fucking hate you," she spat, her voice shaking but clear, each word carved from the fury that had been building since the moment she saw what he had done.
Draco's lips curved into something that was not quite a smirk but not far from it. There was no mockery in it, but no apology either. It was dangerous, intimate, and filled with a certainty that made her want to turn on her heel and hurl a curse straight at his chest.
"No, you don't," he murmured. His voice was calm in a way that cut through her anger, slow and confident, the kind of tone that came from knowing a truth the other person was still fighting to admit. He did not move to stop her, did not reach for her arm, did not step in front of her. He only watched, his eyes tracking every step she took, every flicker of magic in the air, every sharp inhale as she moved farther away from him.
She walked toward the house she had built with her own hands, the house that now sat neatly on the edge of his estate, framed by his gardens, tied to his land. No matter how many spells she threw, no matter how far she tried to run, it would be there, waiting.
She could scream herself hoarse. She could curse him until the walls cracked. She could slam the door so hard it rattled the glass.
It would not change a single thing.
She was not leaving.
Not now.
Not ever.
*
Luna lay in her bed. Not her bed, not truly, because this place was not her home, not anymore, not in the way it had once been. She stared at the ceiling without blinking, her body locked in a state that was somewhere between paralysis and defiance, her lungs refusing to draw more than shallow breaths as though her chest could no longer bear the strain of pulling in air. The weight pressing down on her felt like a living thing, relentless and suffocating, a creature made of stone and shadow crouched over her ribs. Her mind refused to rest. Thought was no longer a neat line she could follow, but a swarm, a hurricane of anger and disbelief and the sharp, metallic edge of betrayal, circling without order, without mercy, loud enough that she could not hear herself think.
She lay still, because moving would mean breaking the thin, brittle layer of control that kept her from exploding. Every part of her felt heavy, not with the satisfying ache of physical exhaustion but with the bone-deep fatigue that seeped out from the soul. She could feel the heat of her own fury like an ember buried deep in her chest, glowing, waiting, feeding on itself.
Somehow, in a way she could not begin to explain or justify, she had been dragged into the orbit of a man who was not simply difficult but dangerous in the way that only obsession could be. Not the charming madness of a poet or an eccentric mind, but the consuming, territorial, insatiable madness of someone who believed the entire world bent to his will. A madness that made her want to scream until her throat was raw and the walls themselves recoiled.
How dare he? How could Draco Malfoy—pureblood royalty, self-obsessed aristocrat, emotionally stunted paradox of a man—believe for even a moment that what he had done was acceptable? That he could uproot her life without so much as a warning, without a flicker of permission, without even the courtesy of a conversation, and then place it here, perfectly positioned like a chess piece in his manicured domain? Nestled into his polished, curated world as though it had always belonged to him.
Who the hell did he think he was?
And, far more pressing, what exactly was wrong with him?
If she had the time, the stability, and the morbid patience to catalogue the mess that was Draco Malfoy, she could write a series of volumes and still not cover every flaw. Volume One: The Unbearable Arrogance of Being Malfoy. Volume Two: How to Love Without Treating It Like a Hostage Situation. Volume Three: Possession Is Not Nine-Tenths of the Law When the Subject Is a Human Being. He was not a puzzle to be solved, because puzzles had answers, and Draco Malfoy was nothing but contradictions tied in silk knots. A problem with a heartbeat. A paradox wrapped in expensive waistcoats who said her name as though it was both a prayer and a claim.
Draco Malfoy was a problem.
An unsolvable, irrational, devastatingly handsome, infuriatingly magnetic, entirely unhinged problem.
And she hated him for it. She hated him with a purity that felt almost alchemical, the way metal hates rust, the way a wound hates salt. She hated the way he moved through every space as though it already belonged to him. Hated the way his decisions never seemed to require another opinion. Hated the way he shaped reality to suit himself and called it love. She hated the sharp, effortless way he wielded his magic, his influence, his name, turning each into a blade only he could carry. She hated the way his gaze followed her, heavy and certain, as if she were the most precious object he had ever acquired. She hated the sound of her own name in his mouth, soft and reverent and ruinous all at once. She hated his touch, not because it was cold, but because it was warm enough to burn.
She hated him. She hated him. She hated him.
And yet she was here. In his bed that was not hers, in her house that was no longer her home, on his land, beneath his reach. The thought made her stomach twist, but she did not move. She did not scream. She simply lay there, eyes open in the dark, and felt the truth wrap around her like a second skin.
She was not leaving.
Not now. Not tomorrow. Not until something much stronger than hate could make her walk away.
Lying in the bed of the house he had stolen. The house he had moved without asking, without warning, without so much as a flicker of hesitation. The house he had planted on his land like it was just another ornamental hedge in his suffocating version of perfection, tucked neatly into the endless green of his curated, claustrophobic paradise. This house had been more than walls and wards. It had been the place she had poured herself into, the place her magic had soaked into the stone and wood until it felt like it breathed with her. It had been a space that knew her in ways people never could, a space that had listened to her silences, kept her secrets, absorbed her worst nights without judgment. It had been hers. Entirely hers.
And now it wasn't.
She had not even finished unpacking the ache from the Astoria incident, had not yet managed to scrape away the deep, raw sting of walking into his rooms and finding that woman there. That woman, standing in his space as though she belonged, as though she had ever belonged, her presence curling like smoke into corners Luna had thought were hers alone. The sight had been a shock that felt like swallowing glass. The memory of it still made her skin prickle. She had believed they had buried that part of his life together, that ghosts like Astoria would stay in the ground where they belonged. But then this.
This was worse. So much worse.
It was not the loud, petty cruelty of seeing another woman in his arms. It was something colder, deeper, an act carried out with the kind of precision only Draco Malfoy could manage. It was outrageously bold, absurdly invasive, and so staggeringly, cosmically insane that the Astoria debacle now seemed like an awkward social misunderstanding by comparison.
She shut her eyes hard, trying to trap the fury behind her eyelids and starve it of oxygen. She told herself to breathe, to let the air fill her lungs, to release it slowly. She told herself to loosen her hands before her nails cut into her palms. She told herself to calm down, to think. But the anger refused to be quiet. It curled and snapped like fire caught in a wind, burning low and steady beneath her skin, heating her blood until it was all she could feel.
The betrayal was a stone lodged in her chest, heavy and immovable. A reminder that even after everything, even after every night she had spent proving she was still here, Draco Malfoy still had not learned how to let go. He was incapable of leaving something—someone—untouched. He was incapable of trusting that anything precious could stay without his hand around it. And because he could not bear the idea of losing her again, he had done the one thing she could never forgive. He had taken her choice. He had stolen her freedom.
For what?
So he could sleep more soundly knowing she was here, knowing she could not vanish, knowing that no matter how angry she became, no matter how hard she fought, she would still be within reach?
It was delusional. It was infuriating. It was the kind of thing only a man like him could think was reasonable. And in some twisted, exhausted corner of her mind, she almost admired it. The sheer audacity. The obsessive, single-minded certainty. The quiet, calculated way he had committed an act of magical grand larceny and dressed it up as devotion. It was insane. It was wrong. But it was also pure Draco.
If she had been in another mood, she might have laughed at the absurdity of it, at the inevitability of this man finding the most unhinged way possible to say he loved her. But she was not in another mood. She was too tired. Too furious. Too utterly finished with him to find even the smallest flicker of amusement.
Because this was not love.
This was madness.
Because that was what this was, wasn't it? Not love. Not romance. Not some grand, sweeping fairy-tale gesture meant to sweep her off her feet and convince her, with aching poetry and impossible beauty, that he was worth the chaos. No. This was delusion, pure and unfiltered. This was a man so hopelessly trapped inside the fortress of his own mind, so drunk on the taste of possession, so convinced that wanting something—wanting her—was the same as deserving her, that he had severed himself completely from what love was meant to be. This wasn't passion. It wasn't devotion. It was control. It was Draco Malfoy's refusal to loosen his grip on something that had never truly belonged to him, his refusal to accept that she was not a prize to be claimed, not an artifact to be locked away in glass, not a rare creature to be displayed inside the borders of his estate like part of his collection.
This was obsession, stripped bare of its disguises. Compulsion dressed in the language of romance. A man rewriting the laws of reality so she could never drift beyond the orbit of his reach. In his mind, the thought of her existing anywhere beyond his influence, beyond his land, beyond him, was not just uncomfortable. It was wrong. Wrong in a way that carved at the very core of him, so wrong that he had reached into the roots of her life and dragged them across the world, reshaping her landscape until it bent to his will.
Her hands curled into fists against the sheets, nails carving tiny half-moons into her palms until the sting forced its way into her awareness, an anchor holding her in place when she felt like she might fly apart. The frustration was hot, restless, crawling under her skin with nowhere to go. Every breath pulled it higher, sharper, until she could almost taste it in the back of her throat. She wanted to cross the lawn, cut across the precision-cut hedges and the smug stone pathways, and tear her way into the heart of his manor. She wanted to throw those arrogant doors open, to stand there in the echo of his halls and slap him with such force that every generation of Malfoy past and future would feel the sting. She wanted to hex him until his perfect face lit up like a cursed lantern. She wanted to pull his ego apart until there was nothing left of it but dust. She wanted to scream until the walls split and the floors trembled.
She wanted to grab him by the collar, shove him against the nearest wall, and shake him until reason—real, human reason—found its way past all that arrogance and pride. She wanted him to feel it, to truly feel it. The cold violation. The suffocating helplessness. The betrayal that sat heavy in her chest like a stone. She wanted him to live in the ruins of her trust and choke on it.
And yet, beneath it all, there was something else. Something quieter. Something sharper in its own way. More than the fury, more than the heartbreak, more than the bone-deep sense of being invaded, she wanted to understand.
Because if she could understand, maybe she could decide. Decide whether this was something she could burn out of him, or whether it was too much, too deep, too built into his bones to ever change. Decide whether there was a future where she could breathe next to him without feeling like every breath cost her a piece of herself. Decide whether this was still a man she could love, or whether the truth was far simpler—Draco Malfoy would rather chain her to him than risk watching her walk away.
Why?
Why did he do it?
Why was he like this?
Why couldn't he just be normal, like other people, like other men who loved without destroying, who gave space without building cages? Why did everything have to be so extreme, so dramatic, so utterly unhinged with him? Was it arrogance, some grand, inherited conviction that the world existed to bend to his will? Was it the echo of a childhood warped by cruelty, the kind of old wound that dressed itself in fine tailoring and came out sideways as obsession? Was it something nameless in the mind, a fracture so deep he had stopped trying to see where it began?
Or was it something darker.
Something sadder.
Because beneath the posturing, beneath the possessiveness, beneath the suffocating dominance that clung to him like a second skin, there was something else. Something quiet. Something aching. She had always felt it, a pulse under the noise, a sharp undercurrent she had never been able to name. It was there in the way his gaze lingered too long, in the way his touch sometimes trembled even when his voice stayed steady. And now she saw it for what it was.
Desperation.
Not the sweet kind, not the sort sung about in ballads, but the kind that made people reckless. The kind that made them selfish. The kind that stripped them bare and left them with nothing but the need to hold on, no matter the cost. Desperation could hollow a person out, could turn them cruel, could push them toward acts they could never take back. And Draco Malfoy—gods help her—was desperate. Desperate to keep her. Desperate to bind her so tightly to him that no spell, no force, no measure of time could pull her free. Desperate to prove something not just to her, but to himself, to the ghosts that stalked him, to a world that had once taken everything and dared to imply he did not deserve the one thing he could still claim.
That was what frightened her most.
Because desperate people set fire to everything they touched. They burned bridges, they burned rules, they burned whole kingdoms to ash just to keep from feeling powerless. And Draco Malfoy would burn the entire world if it meant she would still be inside it.
She rolled onto her side, her breath sharp in her chest, her gaze fixed on the wall as though it too had betrayed her. Every muscle in her body ached with tension. Her magic sat restless beneath her skin, too hot and too wild to ignore. She was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the body—soul-tired, worn down by the push and pull of loving him and resenting him with equal ferocity. She did not know how to keep doing this. How to keep loving someone who refused to learn, who refused to listen, who refused to loosen his grip even when it hurt her.
She hated him.
She hated him with every breath, with every heartbeat, with every corner of herself that had been reshaped to survive the force of him.
And yet.
Even with the fire in her veins, even with the voice in her mind telling her to run, to cut herself free and rebuild something entirely her own, she stayed. She stayed because deep down, in the part of herself she kept locked away, the part she never dared to examine for too long, she knew the truth.
No matter how loudly she fought for freedom, Draco Malfoy would never let her go.
And the worst part was the one she would never speak aloud.
She was not entirely sure she wanted him to.