Her so-called big girl idea, the master plan she had so smugly named in her own mind, was nothing short of deliberate, exquisite torture. Not for herself, of course, but for Draco Malfoy, who had been holding himself back with a kind of restraint that seemed almost unnatural for a man like him. By some miracle, he had been trying to play the part of a gentleman, to keep his composure, to respect the ridiculous game she insisted on playing. And oh, she was playing. Playing with precision. Playing dirty.
It began innocently enough, or at least in a way that could pass for innocent if one didn't know her well. A shirt that clung a little too transparently to her skin, a skirt that flirted with the limits of decency, a stretch that arched her body in a way that was far too deliberate, a lingering look that lasted just long enough to make him forget whatever he had been saying.
She was measured with it at first, just enough to keep him aware, just enough to test the boundaries of his patience.
But the real cruelty came later, when she decided that clothing was, at best, optional. Which was how she came to be walking past his office one afternoon wearing nothing more than a whisper of lace, a sheer little nightgown that was as insubstantial as it was sinful, the kind of garment that did absolutely nothing to hide the shape of her body. She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew he could see everything. She knew he was watching.
She also knew he was suffering. She could practically feel it, the way his composure was straining to hold. And then she heard it—the sharp, unmistakable sound of glass breaking on the floor, followed by the scrape of his chair, followed by the steady, purposeful steps of a man who had reached his breaking point.
Two seconds later, her chest was pressed to the cold, unyielding surface of the wall, the chill biting into her skin in stark contrast to the heat of the man pinning her from behind.
"You think this is funny?" His voice was a low, dangerous growl, warm breath brushing against her ear as his hands locked around her waist, keeping her exactly where he wanted her. "Parading yourself through my house like the goddess you are, tempting me as if you do not know exactly what that does to me?"
She bit down on her smile, savoring the way his grip tightened with each passing second, the way his breath no longer came evenly, the way his control was slipping right through his fingers. She could feel him unraveling under the weight of her game, and it thrilled her down to her bones.
Luna, however, had no patience for waiting. She shifted closer, her knees brushing against the fine carpet as she looked up at him through her lashes, that infuriatingly serene expression on her face that told him she was in control even when she was pretending not to be.
Her fingers trailed lightly over the outside of his thigh, a soft, teasing touch that had no urgency to it, only the kind of deliberate slowness that could drive a man insane.
He made a sound then, low in his throat, the kind of sound that spoke of both frustration and surrender, as if he already knew he had lost whatever battle he thought he was fighting. His hand twitched at his side, fingers curling like he was restraining himself from reaching for her, from burying them in her hair, from taking over entirely.
"Careful," he said at last, his voice hoarse, each word measured, as if speaking too quickly might break whatever spell she had just cast on him. "You have no idea what you're inviting."
Her lips curved into the smallest, most infuriating smile, her eyes locking onto his as if to say she knew exactly what she was inviting, and she wanted it. Her other hand came to rest against his hip, the heat of her palm bleeding through the fabric between them.
"Maybe I do," she murmured, her voice calm and even, yet somehow threaded with enough quiet challenge to strip the air from his lungs. "Maybe that's the point."
Draco's jaw tightened, a muscle in his cheek flexing as his composure slipped another inch. He could feel his control fraying under the weight of her gaze, under the maddening steadiness in her voice, under the reality of her kneeling there for him as if she belonged in no other position.
And then she shifted again, just slightly, but enough to make his breath catch. The room seemed to shrink around them, the silence stretching taut, until it was filled with nothing but the sound of their breathing and the thick, intoxicating pull that had been building between them for far too long.
He knew, in that moment, that he was finished.
His breath shuddered out of him, uneven and heavy, the kind of sound that made her want to push further just to hear it again. His eyes found hers, dark and molten, the storm in them threatening to break at any moment, and she could feel the weight of his stare as though it were a physical thing pressing down on her.
"Not even a little," he managed, his voice low and ragged, each word pulled from somewhere deep, somewhere raw, somewhere far past the point of civility. His control was slipping, she could see it in the way his jaw clenched, in the way his chest rose and fell with slow, deliberate breaths that failed to steady him.
Her fingers brushed against the waistband, lingering there like she had all the time in the world, and the look she gave him was one of absolute, deliberate provocation. "Good," she whispered, her tone soft but full of intent, her lips curving into something dangerous. "Because I wasn't trying to be."
That was when his restraint cracked. His hand shot forward, tangling in her hair, the pull firm but not painful, just enough to tilt her head back so she had no choice but to meet his gaze. The air between them was electric, heavy with something that made every heartbeat feel like it echoed through the room.
"You're playing with fire, Luna," he said, the warning in his tone at complete odds with the way his thumb brushed against her jaw, almost tender. "And I don't think you understand how quickly I'll let it burn."
She only smiled, the kind of slow, knowing smile that made his grip tighten involuntarily. "Then maybe you should stop me," she said softly, almost sweetly, though they both knew there wasn't a trace of innocence in it.
And Merlin help him, Draco Malfoy had no intention of stopping her.
Draco let out a breath that was far too close to a groan, the kind that came from deep in his chest, his hands flexing at his sides as though he was fighting himself every second. It was as if he wanted to reach for her, as if he wanted to grab hold and stop this madness before it went any further, before the fragile thread of control he was clinging to finally snapped, before he lost himself entirely and forgot every carefully constructed reason why this was such a terrible, dangerous, inevitable idea.
"I never meant—fuck—" The words came out ragged, breaking apart as he sucked in a sharp breath the instant she slid the zipper down with maddening slowness, her fingers brushing over him in a touch that was light enough to tease but deliberate enough to make his pulse jump. She eased the fabric down over his hips, every movement intentional, every second stretched until it was unbearable.
"You never meant what?" she asked softly, her voice featherlight but laced with a teasing heat, the kind that told him she knew exactly what she was doing, exactly how far she was pushing him, exactly how close he was to breaking.
He opened his mouth to answer, but the words died instantly in his throat. It happened the moment she wrapped her fingers around him, the moment she pulled him free from the confines of his trousers, the moment her eyes lifted to meet his with that soft, knowing smile.
His jaw tightened, his whole body going rigid when she stroked him once, slow and deliberate, just lazy enough to make his hips jerk forward involuntarily, just enough to force a sharp curse past his lips before he could stop it.
"You never meant to tell me that?" she asked, her tone deceptively sweet as her fingertips traced lightly over the sensitive head, her smirk growing at the way his breath caught in his chest, at the way he struggled so obviously to keep from reacting, even though every part of him already was.
A deep, broken groan escaped him, and his self-control gave way just enough for his hands to finally move. They tangled into her wild, golden hair, the grip firm and certain, keeping her exactly where she was without any intention of pulling her away. He could never pull her away.
"Luna—" he began, his voice strained to the point of desperation, but whatever warning he thought he might give, whatever last thread of restraint he believed he still had, disintegrated completely when she finally, mercifully, took him into her mouth.
"Fuck."
The word left him like a prayer and a curse all at once, something raw and unguarded, something he had not meant to speak aloud but could not contain, not with her like this, not with his sanity unraveling in her hands.Luna hummed softly in response, the sound low and deliberate, letting the vibration travel through him in a way that made his knees feel unsteady.
Her lips stretched slowly around him as she sank lower with a pace that could only be described as torturous, drawing it out with an almost cruel precision.
Her small hands wrapped firmly around the base of him, steadying him, holding him in place so she could guide the rhythm entirely on her terms, her tongue teasing in slow, unhurried strokes along the underside with a skill that made his breath hitch sharply in his chest.
Draco's grip in her hair tightened as though it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground, his breathing turning rougher with every second. His gray eyes were wide, almost wild, unable to look away from her, helpless against the pull of what she was doing to him.
Every movement, every flick of her tongue, every quiet hum carved itself into his memory with brutal clarity, and he knew without a single doubt that there would be no forgetting this.
And then she looked up at him.
Her lips were wrapped around him, her eyes half-lidded, glassy with heat, and there was something so utterly wrecked in her gaze that it felt like a punch to his chest. In that moment, Draco was undone in a way that felt irreversible.
And he had never, in his entire life, been so grateful to be destroyed.
*
Love, in Draco Malfoy's experience, was a miserable, agonizing, utterly maddening thing. It stripped a man down to his weakest parts, turned him desperate and irrational, made him fixate on details he had never cared about before. It drove him to plot and scheme, to chase after things he would have once considered beneath him, to crave a kind of closeness he had never imagined needing.
Worst of all, it made him dream about a life that should have been impossible for him. And the most humiliating, soul-destroying truth of it all was that he would not change a single moment.
He had been ruined by her. Completely. Irreversibly. She had walked into his life without hesitation, dismantled it piece by piece, turned it inside out, torn it apart, and then, with some strange and infuriating grace, put it back together in a way that made it stronger, sharper, and somehow his.
It had been a year.
A full, excruciating, intoxicating year since the day he had stepped into that ridiculous little coffee shop and decided, before she had even finished her drink, that he was never going to leave her alone.
Now he wanted more. So much more. It was not enough that she slept in his bed every night, that her books had taken over entire shelves in his library, that her blasted cow wandered the manor like a spoiled little princess. It was not enough that she loved him, that she admitted she loved him, that she wore that love openly.
Draco Malfoy wanted forever. He wanted the weight of a ring on her finger, his name spoken like it belonged to her, children with her eyes and her stubbornness running through the halls. He wanted to claim every version of her that had ever existed and keep her for a lifetime, so that whenever he looked across a room he would know she was his, completely and without question.
But instead of planning their inevitable wedding and the obnoxiously large family he already pictured, he was enduring yet another pretentious, suffocating charity gala for a cause he could barely remember. Something about conserving magical wildlife, or perhaps rehabilitating endangered species. The details were irrelevant to him. What mattered was that it mattered to her. Which meant, by default, it mattered to him, no matter how much he disliked the endless parade of socialites and self-congratulating donors who treated the event like another excuse to display their wealth.
So, rather than stand in a corner pretending to care about the plight of creatures he had never once encountered, Draco did the only reasonable thing. He found the bar, ordered the strongest drink available, and claimed a seat where he could keep one eye on the crowd and one on the door. If he was going to suffer through a long and tedious evening, he would at least do it with a glass in hand and a chair that suited him.
His patience was wearing thin, his irritation creeping in like a slow-burning fire, but then—as if the universe itself was throwing him a bone, he caught a glimpse of her. Luna. Floating through the crowd like she was untouchable, otherworldly, something not quite human, something softer, lighter, something that didn't belong in a place as dull as this.
She wasn't wearing anything extravagant, nothing that screamed wealth or excess, nothing that tried too hard to impress. But she didn't have to. She never had to. Luna Lovegood could have shown up in one of her oversized sweaters and a pair of mismatched socks, and she still would have been the most radiant fucking thing in the room.
And Draco? He was helpless against her. Utterly, painfully, pathetically enchanted.
Draco had walked into the gala with the weary patience of a man who had long since accepted his fate. He had prepared himself for the onslaught of speeches that dripped with self-importance, each one a tedious parade of carefully rehearsed righteousness. He had braced for the endless conversations where every exchange was nothing more than an elaborate competition over who owned the rarest artifacts, whose vaults were the deepest, or which ancestral estate had the grandest ballroom.
He had steeled himself for the hollow toasts and the hollower people who gave them, for the sea of smug, champagne-softened faces that smiled without warmth, each one eager to slip their latest acquisition into the conversation as if it mattered.
He had even resigned himself, with the kind of grudging acceptance only she could coax from him, to feigning interest in the evening's cause. If his memory served, it had something to do with the conservation of some endangered magical creatures. Or perhaps it was moss. Or lizards. The details were irrelevant. All of it blurred together in a haze of expensive wine, chandeliers too bright for the eyes, and the endless strain of polite civility.
None of it mattered. Not truly. Because for her, he would endure it.
For Luna, he would stand through a hundred more of these insufferable evenings, surrounded by people he would gladly hex into oblivion. He would smile when every instinct in him wanted to sneer, nod at conversations that made his teeth ache, and let strangers bore him half to death while imagining the sound of her laugh back at the manor. Because all the while, his attention would be fixed on her. In whatever maddeningly beautiful gown she had chosen for the evening, she would look like something soft and untouchable, something shimmering and unfair to everyone else in the room. And he would be counting down the seconds until he could tell her they had stayed long enough, until he could take her home and strip that gown from her at a pace so deliberate it would feel like cruelty.
That had been the plan.
And then he saw it.
Ronald Weasley.
The name itself was enough to sour his mood, but the sight of the man was worse. The bane of his existence stood in the crowd as if he belonged there. Draco had always thought of Weasley as a kind of magical pestilence, the stubborn infestation of the wizarding world. Ill-fitting dress robes clung to him like a bad decision, his hair was still that impossible shade of orange that made Draco think of cheap fireworks, and his expression was as clueless as ever. The man was a calamity given form, an endless parade of poor choices and even poorer taste.
And yet none of that compared to what Draco saw next.
Weasley's hand. On her.
On Luna.
Draco had never, in all his years, moved so fast in his life. One moment he was standing stiffly at the edge of the ballroom, sipping a drink he did not even like, pretending to care about some pompous arse prattling on about offshore Gringotts vaults or the supposed political ramifications of broomstick regulations. He had been forcing himself to nod at the right times, to hum in that polite, detached way that suggested he was listening when in reality he was cataloguing all the ways he would rather be dead than trapped in that conversation.
He was tolerating the endless monotony of mingling with people he would not waste a breath on if they were choking in front of him. He was behaving, because Luna had asked him to behave.
And then he saw it.
It happened in a heartbeat, something deep and primal snapping loose inside him. All at once the fragile veneer of civility he had been holding together cracked apart, and whatever patience he had left was obliterated. It was not thought, not calculation, not anything that resembled reason. It was pure instinct, raw and sharp, fury surging through him like wildfire and molten steel, every ounce of control replaced by the simple, absolute need to put an end to what he was seeing.
His stride cut through the room with unrelenting precision, the startled glances following him barely registering as the edges of his vision narrowed to one single, infuriating point. Ronald Weasley.
Draco's mind reeled with the sheer audacity. The man was a living testament to mediocrity. A half-baked mess of limbs in dress robes that fit like they had been stolen from a corpse three sizes larger, standing there with that permanently bewildered expression as if the world was just one long, confusing sentence he could never quite finish reading.
His hair looked like it had been styled by a violent crosswind. His posture had all the elegance of a scarecrow mid-collapse. And his voice grated like a second-rate busker's fiddle, every word somehow managing to sound both condescending and painfully dull.
Yet here he was, leaning far too close to Luna, gawky frame bent toward her as though he could charm her with his tragic lack of wit, the corners of his mouth turned up in that smug, oblivious smile that made Draco's teeth clench. And then, as if he had not already committed the cardinal sin of breathing the same air she breathed, the absolute imbecile pressed his lips—his Weasley lips—against her cheek.
Luna's cheek.
His Luna.
Not the Luna who belonged to the world, the Luna who smiled at strangers and made them believe in magic. His Luna. The Luna he had bled for, fought for, loved with a madness so consuming it threatened to unmake him. The Luna who filled the manor with warmth and chaos, who left her socks in the corridor, who painted stars on his mirror, who broke him and healed him in the same breath. And now that weasel-faced, dirt-smeared, nerve-dead ginger plague had the audacity to touch her. To put his chapped, common lips on her cheek as if he had the right, as if she were something he could claim in passing.
Draco did not remember deciding to act. One heartbeat he was watching, the next his body was moving with a force that came from somewhere deeper than thought, somewhere older than reason. It was an unholy cocktail of protectiveness, jealousy, and rage so feral it bordered on possession. He was at Weasley's side before logic could warn him, before decorum could remind him that this was not the sort of scene one caused in public. His hand closed around Weasley's shoulder with bone-grinding force, and then he shoved.
Hard.
Hard enough to send the ginger idiot stumbling several paces, arms windmilling like the graceless, slack-jawed buffoon he was. Hard enough that the low hum of aristocratic chatter in the room broke off into a collective hush, every gaze turning toward the disturbance, champagne flutes hovering in frozen hands. Hard enough that Luna gasped beside him, soft and startled, but he could not focus on that, could not allow himself to be distracted. Something primitive had taken over, something territorial and utterly finished with the pretense of civility.
"Do not touch what is mine, Weasley."
The words came out low and lethal, sharpened into a promise that carried more weight than any spell. There was no bluster in them, no heat of the moment, only certainty. Draco meant every syllable. With his whole soul.
And still the cretin laughed.
"Merlin, Malfoy, calm down," Weasley said, the mocking lilt in his voice sparking a fresh surge of fury. He held his hands up in a parody of surrender, as if that would save him. As if he were not seconds away from being dragged out by his collar. "I was just greeting Seline."
Seline.
The name dropped into the space between them like a live curse. Draco blinked once. The world seemed to blink with him. And then something inside him cracked wide open. It was not a thought, not even a sound he could name, only the sensation of something delicate splintering beyond repair. Fine glass breaking into a thousand shards. A deep fracture in the already precarious wall of his restraint.
Because Weasley had used a nickname for her.
He had a nickname. For his Luna.
Not just her given name, but something familiar. Something claimed. Something said in that grating, smug voice like he had earned the right to it. Like he had the history. Like he had any place in her life beyond being a distant, irrelevant irritation.
And that was not simply unacceptable.
That was unforgivable.
What the actual fuck was this absurd, unthinkable bullshit. Since when had this been allowed to happen. Since when did Weasley, the human embodiment of mediocrity, the poster child for unfortunate genetics and questionable life choices, gain the right, the audacity, the absolute cosmic nerve to speak about his Luna with that kind of casual familiarity. To use a nickname, of all things. A nickname that suggested some level of closeness, of history, of unearned intimacy.
What in the name of Merlin's saggy boxers was happening here. Draco felt his entire mind grind to a halt, every thought short-circuiting in a blaze of incandescent disbelief. He did not even have a nickname for her like that. Not like Seline. And he was her husband. Her partner. Her everything.
Yes, he had pet names for her. Affectionate ones. Words that were meant to be breathed into her skin when the world was shut out, when it was only them in the dark. Murmured into her hair when she was drifting off in his arms, growled against her lips when he was half out of his mind with wanting her. Love. Darling. My moon. Baby. Doll. Goddess. My goddess. Always mine. Fine, maybe he had more than a few. But none of them were that. None of them were some airy, easy thing like Seline. None of them were born from casual proximity and lazy conversation. His names for her were sacred. They were born from reverence, from obsession, from a kind of devotion that edged toward worship.
Seline, though. Seline sounded like the name you used when you handed your coworker a coffee. It sounded like something you called the woman you flirted with over a bar counter while you waited for your drink. Light. Familiar. Idiotically personal.
And the fact that Weasley, that grimy, ginger rodent with the social grace of a troll and the face of a man who thought Axe body spray counted as cologne, thought he had the right to use it.
Unacceptable.
Unforgivable.
Un-fucking-real.
The gall. The brazen nerve. The rank insolence of this commoner, this walking embarrassment of a man who had somehow blundered his way into a respectable event dressed like a hungover house elf, now daring to speak to Draco's wife like they shared some kind of secret, like they were in on some joke he was not a part of.
Weasley was not allowed to have thoughts about her. He was not allowed to say her name in passing without permission. He was not allowed to exist in her orbit unless Draco had explicitly decided it was acceptable. If Draco had his way, Weasley would not even be alive to offend him in the first place, but unfortunately there were laws. Irritating, restrictive, ridiculous laws.
Draco's hands curled into fists so tight his nails bit into his palms, sharp crescents marking his skin. The sting barely grounded him. His whole body was drawn taut with a kind of lethal tension that came just before a spell was unleashed, before blood was spilled, before the Prophet printed headlines and the Ministry sent people to knock on his door. Every muscle ached with the need to act. Every part of him screamed for violence, for the satisfaction of ending this insult in a single, decisive blow.
But he forced himself to breathe. One long, slow exhale, dragging the rage from his chest as if he could pull it into something he could hold. He tamed it, shaped it, smoothed it into something sharp and deliberate. Because if he struck now, it would be over too quickly. And Draco Malfoy wanted this to last.
So he did not hit Weasley. Not yet.
Instead, he made a promise.
A dark one, quiet and sure. A promise forged with the precision of a blade and the weight of a man who never spoke idly. It curled in the back of his mind like smoke, steady and patient, because when the moment came, it would not be rage that drove him. It would be certainty. And when he moved, there would be no mercy, no hesitation, no chance for the ginger bastard to run.
"If you ever touch her again," Draco said, his voice low and crystalline, each word honed to a lethal edge. It was cold enough to drop the temperature of the entire ballroom, sharp enough to cut through glass. The words fell into the silence like lead, like prophecy, like the opening lines of an execution order. "I will make sure you never touch anything again. Not with your hands. Not with your magic. Not with your soul."
Weasley blinked, startled in a way that was almost satisfying, and Luna drew in a quick, sharp breath beside him. Good. Let her hear it. Let the whole damn room hear it. But Draco was not finished. Not even close.
"She is not Seline to you," he said, the words slow, deliberate, and enunciated with a calm that made them all the more dangerous. "She is Mrs. Malfoy to you. Nothing more. Nothing ever more."
The sound of his voice carried, striking across the stillness like thunder in a church. He felt it land, felt the weight of it settle over the crowd, heavy and immovable. This was not the heat of temper. This was a verdict.
"If you ever touch her again," he repeated, softer now, but with a smile that was nothing like warmth. It was cold and thin, the smile of a man who had already decided how the body would fall, already dug the grave, already written the alibi. "I will kill you. Slowly. And it will hurt."
The pause that followed was long enough to become a presence of its own. It was the kind of pause that made people forget to breathe, the kind that stretched until every eye in the room was fixed on them, the kind that made it impossible to pretend this was theatre. It was not a performance. It was a promise. And Weasley, finally, finally, was beginning to understand.
Draco took a single step closer, the air between them tightening, his magic crackling just under the surface of his skin. It moved through the space like the static before a lightning strike, like the low tremor in the ground before the earth splits apart. Alive. Unstoppable. Barely restrained.
"Do. Not." His voice dropped to a whisper, soft enough to force everyone to lean in, yet so full of power that the chandeliers above them trembled. "Touch what is mine."
And for once in his life, Weasley did not laugh.
Luna immediately disapparated them.
The instant Luna's heels struck the marble floor of their manor, the second the world steadied beneath her and the quiet of home closed in, she tore her hand from Draco's arm with a force that was not just rejection but deliberate punishment. Her sleeve-wrenching grip sent him stumbling a step back, his polished shoes skidding on the smooth surface before he caught himself. She did not look to see it. Her arms fell to her sides, hands curling into fists so tight the skin over her knuckles blanched white, her entire body shaking in a way that could not be hidden. It was not the subtle tremor of someone flustered or startled. It was the full-bodied quake of a woman holding herself together by the thinnest of threads. Her spine was rigid, her jaw locked, her gaze burning with something that was not merely anger but something heavier, deeper, and far more dangerous.
She could not yet name it. She did not want to. She only knew it lived in the pit of her chest like a storm, churning and endless, threatening to split her open.
What she did know, with absolute clarity, was that she was livid. Not annoyed. Not wounded. Livid in the way that stripped the air from her lungs and replaced it with heat, livid in the way that turned her heartbeat into a war drum. This was not a mood that would pass, not something that could be soothed with a soft apology. This was fury in its rawest, most unfiltered form. It surged through her blood like wildfire, fierce and indiscriminate, burning down every shred of reason she reached for. There was no space for logic, no space for temperance, only the urge to strike back, to make herself heard.
And then she did.
"DO NOT PUT ME IN AN UNCOMFORTABLE SITUATION EVER AGAIN!"
The words ripped from her throat with the force of a curse meant to shatter stone. They rang through the vast entryway, bouncing off the marble, shooting upward into the vaulted ceiling until the sound seemed to shake the air itself. The enchanted portraits along the walls recoiled, their painted eyes wide, the frames trembling in their sconces as if jarred from centuries of watchful silence.
Her body moved before her mind could catch up. There was no thought, no warning, no measured choice. Her palm met his cheek in a crack so sharp it cleaved the stillness in two. The sound was clean and merciless, like lightning splitting the sky. The impact was felt as much as heard, the shock of it lingering in the space between them, heavy and unyielding.
It was not just a slap. It was a culmination, the violent distillation of every disappointment, every time he had dismissed her, every moment he had made her feel smaller than she was, trapped in a gilded cage, owned rather than loved. It was the answer to every instance where his possessiveness had tightened around her throat like a noose. The sound of it cracked through the air and lingered between them, more than a physical act. It was emotional. It was spiritual. It was a kind of sacred retribution.
Her palm stung immediately, the skin hot from the impact, but she did not care. She did not flinch. She did not regret it for even a heartbeat. Because all she could see was his face, that maddeningly composed face, the arrogant mask of control he wore as if nothing could touch him. That same mask that had never cracked for anyone but her, and even then, only in flashes, never for long enough to prove he was truly human. That face made her want to burn the world down just to watch him stand in the ashes.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she spat. The words came out like venom, sharp and acidic, carrying every drop of her fury. Her voice trembled with the force of it, but not from weakness. Her chest heaved with each breath, her heart pounding so hard she could barely hear her own voice. "Why do you keep doing this? Why do you insist on treating me like some fucking possession? Like I belong to you and you alone? How fucking dare you?"
Draco stood where she had struck him, the faint redness blooming along his cheekbone. He straightened, not quickly, but with a slow, deliberate precision that was almost mechanical, like a predator uncurling itself after being struck. His jaw flexed once, then again, rolling as though he was testing whether she had truly hurt him and trying to decide if the pain was worse in the flesh or somewhere far deeper. His eyes locked onto hers, unblinking, and what burned there was not just anger. It was darker. It was dangerous. It was the kind of emotion that did not dissipate, the kind that simmered until it boiled over into something irreversible. The space between them seemed to tighten under the weight of it.
His breath came shallow, nostrils flaring, fists twitching once at his sides as though the effort to keep them still was costing him. "How dare I?" he said at last. His voice was low, quiet enough to force her to listen, but sharp enough to cut the air between them. It was the kind of quiet that did not cool a storm but heralded one. "You let that little bitch kiss you."
Luna let out a sound that was part laugh, part snarl, a jagged, incredulous noise that seemed to cut straight through his composure. It was the sound of someone who could not decide whether to find him absurd or infuriating. She shook her head slowly, as if she could not believe those words had been spoken aloud, as if she were restraining herself from striking him again purely out of restraint, because she knew the next one might not stop at just a slap.
Her fury did not burn out. It fed on itself, devouring the absurdity of his accusation until it grew hotter, brighter, more dangerous. "And what?" she hissed, each word dripping with venom as she stepped forward. Her heels struck the marble in sharp, deliberate beats that rang out in the silence like gunfire, each one a challenge, each one a promise that she was not backing down. She closed the distance between them until the heat of her body was pressed into the air between theirs, until he could feel the tremor of her breath against his lips. Her eyes were wild, blazing with something untamed and unyielding. "What if I did? What if I let him kiss me? What if I let anyone I want kiss me, Draco? You think you own me? You think you can glare at a man across a room and mark your territory like some rabid animal?" Her voice cracked with the strain, but it only sharpened her words, making them cut deeper. "I am not a thing. I do not belong to you. I can do whatever the fuck I want."
Draco's eyes darkened, the grey of them turning to something closer to storm clouds just before they split open. It was not only anger that filled them. It was something far more volatile, something so raw and feral it seemed to pull the light out of the room and crush it. Every line of his body locked into place with the precision of a weapon primed to fire. His fists were clenched so tightly that the joints cracked, the sound sharp in the charged air, and the veins along his forearms swelled with the pulse of magic that was no longer fully contained. It gathered and coiled around him, invisible yet suffocating, saturating the air with static until it hummed against her skin.
The temperature shifted, heat and cold mixing in a way that made it hard to breathe. The air thickened between them, the weight of it pressing down on her chest. His jaw flexed once, then again, the twitch of the muscle almost violent in its effort to hold something back. His lips parted as if the words were already formed, as if he was seconds from unleashing a storm of brutal truths and possessive declarations sharp enough to shatter whatever was left standing between them.
But she struck first.
"You are absolutely disgusting."
The words left her mouth with surgical precision, cold and clean, designed to cut without hesitation. She saw them land. She saw the flicker in his eyes change in an instant, rage giving way to something else, something unguarded that he had not meant to show her. His breath stalled, caught somewhere between his chest and his throat. For the briefest second he was unarmoured, and in that second she felt the twist of guilt curl low in her stomach. But the fire in her veins did not die, and neither of them moved.
It was hurt, yes, but not the shallow kind that came from wounded pride. This went deeper, far beyond the surface bruising of a clever insult or a shift in power during an argument. This was soul-deep, marrow-deep, the sort of hurt that stripped a man bare and left him exposed. It was the kind that unmade something essential inside him, something he had never let anyone see, something she doubted anyone had ever seen before. Not pain. Not shame. Devastation. The devastation that comes when you are truly known in all your raw and unguarded humanity, only to be struck down in the same breath.
She had never seen him like that.
And she should not have looked.
She should not have let herself see it, should not have let herself feel it, because the truth was now burning between them in a way that could not be denied. She had hurt him in a place he could not joke about, could not control, could not twist into a weapon.
But she did not stop.
She could not stop.
She had gone too far already, lost too much ground to turn back now. She was standing at the very edge, the wind howling in her ears, her hands already wrapped around the hilt of the blade as she drove it deeper.
"This was a mistake."
The words left her mouth like a curse, slow and deliberate, each syllable as sharp as the edge of glass. The air itself seemed to recoil, the sound hanging suspended and poisonous, echoing in the silence like the tolling of a funeral bell. It was not an outburst. It was a verdict. The moment they left her tongue, she felt the weight of them crash down upon her shoulders, heavy enough to crush the air from her lungs. There was no taking them back, no walking them in reverse, no pulling the dagger free without leaving the wound torn wider than before.
Draco did not move.
He did not blink.
He did not breathe.
He stood as if the world had stopped around him, as if time itself had frozen to witness his undoing. She saw the colour drain from his face, saw the fire that had been burning behind his eyes flicker once before going out entirely, leaving only a hollow void in its place. Whatever words had been rising in his chest a moment ago, whatever heat had been building, they were gone now. Extinguished. All that remained was silence.
And then he spoke, barely. Just one word, soft and broken, yet laced with something that made her skin tighten.
"What?"
It came like the sound of a man losing his grip on the one thing that kept him human. Beneath the quiet there was a sharpness, something lethal, coiled so tight it hummed in the air. It slid into her like a knife made of ice, and she shivered despite herself. This was not rage, not yet. This was the moment before the first crack of thunder, the stillness in the heart of a storm, the breathless pause before the world broke open.
And still she did not stop.
Still she pushed.
Still she twisted the blade.
She drew in a breath, sharp and shaking, tearing through her chest like splintered glass. Her lips trembled and her lungs ached. Every part of her screamed to take it back, to reach for him, to close the distance and undo what she had just done. But if she left it unfinished now, it would fester. It would rot in the space between them until it consumed everything.
"This," she said, her voice quieter now, stripped of fire and venom, hoarse and fragile, barely holding itself together. "This was supposed to be a mediocre shag."
The silence that followed did not simply fall. It spread, filling every corner, settling over them like a weight neither of them could bear.
A silence so heavy, so thick, so violent in its stillness that it felt as if the entire world had collapsed inward. She had thought she understood silence before. She had felt awkward pauses, tense lulls, the hush of cold nights and the emptiness of long hallways. She had known the kind that came with holding back words you should not say, and the kind that followed truths spoken too late. But this was not any of those. This was the silence of destruction. Of endings. It hung between them like smoke from a fire that had already burned everything to ash. It seeped into the walls, settled into their skin, filling the air with something alive and suffocating, something that pressed against their lungs and stole whatever breath they had left. It was not simply a gap between words. It was a change. It was the sound of two people becoming something they had not been a moment ago.
And Draco did not move.
He did not speak.
He did not breathe.
He stood there with his arms heavy at his sides, lips parted as though he was still searching for the shape of her words, still trying to fit them into a meaning that would not break him. His eyes were wide and dark, shadowed with something raw and unfamiliar. They no longer looked like his, no longer carried the arrogance or the precision of control that had always defined him. They looked emptied. Stripped. Hollow. As if she had reached into him and taken something vital, something he had never given to anyone else, and left nothing in its place.
His breathing was wrong. Too shallow. Too fast. Uneven in a way that made the muscles in his chest strain and twitch. He drew air like a man bleeding out, like every inhale cost him more than he could afford to lose. It was the kind of breathing that belonged to someone fighting to remain in a world that was already sliding away beneath their feet. A man who had just been stabbed straight through the ribs by the only person who had ever held the blade that could truly cut him.
And gods, it hurt.
It hurt like nothing he had known before.
It was not only the words themselves, though they would have been enough to gut him on their own. It was everything that came with them. It was the way she had delivered them in that unnervingly steady voice, the way her eyes had been too calm, too cold, too finished. Eyes that had once seen every fractured part of him and loved him anyway now stared straight through him as if he were nothing more than empty air, as if he had never been there at all, as if nothing they had shared had carried any weight or meaning or substance. It was the complete dismissal in her expression, the small but deliberate tilt of her chin, the casual, almost offhand way she had tossed everything they were into the fire without even flinching. As if he had not bled for her. As if he had not lived for her. As if he had not breathed her name in the middle of the night just to remind himself that she was real.
For the first time in his life, in all the years he had spent building himself into a man who controlled every variable, who calculated every move, who kept a tight grip on every weakness, Draco Malfoy did not know what to do. He did not know how to rebuild the ruins she had left him in. He could not summon a clever retort or a biting defense, could not reach for a manipulative gesture to claw his way out of the wreckage. He did not know how to survive this. He did not know how to be without her.
Luna could feel every beat of it, the way her breath dragged in and out like each inhale cost too much, like each exhale might be her last. Her heartbeat pounded against her ribs, deafening and relentless, refusing to slow, refusing to let her rest, refusing to let her pretend she had not just done something that could never be undone. Her hands trembled at her sides, shaking in a way that was part restrained magic, part adrenaline, part grief. And she had never seen him like this. Not stripped bare in a way that removed all anger, all pride, all sharp-edged control. Not reduced to an empty-eyed, statue-still figure who looked more like a ghost than a man.
She had seen him angry, had seen his temper rip through a room like a storm. She had seen him cold and cruel, had watched possessiveness flash across his face like lightning when he felt threatened. She had seen him desperate and demanding, disarmed in moments when the world refused to bend to him. But she had never seen him shattered.
And that was the worst part. The devastation in his eyes was not his alone. It lived in her too, twisting something deep inside her until it made her sick. It cracked through her chest in a way she did not know how to stop. It was not only him who was breaking. It was both of them. It was everything they had built, everything she had once thought might somehow endure.
She had meant for the words to wound. She had wanted him to bleed, had wanted to burn him down the way his possessiveness made her feel caged, unseen, used. What she had not realised until now was that those words would carve into her as well, that speaking them would feel like driving a knife through her own ribs with a hand she could not still.
She turned away before she could watch him any longer, storming into the bedroom like a force of nature, her eyes wild and her magic snapping off her skin in bright, uncontrolled bursts. Her whole body vibrated with an energy that came not only from rage but from heartbreak, from helplessness, from an ache too big to contain. She did not pause, did not look around, did not stop to think or feel. Her hands moved without thought, yanking open drawers, ripping clothes from hangers, shoving anything and everything into the first bag she could grab. The air around her crackled, thick with the scream of magic gone unstable, with the violence of a grief she could not name.
Objects lifted and hurled themselves across the room. Clothes flew into boxes with none of the careful precision she normally brought to anything. Nothing was folded. Nothing was sorted. Nothing was cared for. Everything was simply gone, vanishing from the bedroom that had once been filled with laughter, with tangled sheets, with whispered confessions in the dark. It was cold now. Hollow. Foreign.
With a sharp flick of her wrist, another drawer slammed shut. Her wand sent the rest of her belongings into the air, sweeping them away without care for where they landed or whether she would ever come back for them. A picture frame slipped from the chaos, struck the floor, and split apart, glass scattering across the boards like the splintered remnants of what they had been. She did not pick it up. She did not even glance at it. This was not just a house, not just walls and rooms and furniture. It had been theirs. Now it felt like a graveyard, something haunted and desecrated, too full of memories to ever feel safe again.
Her jaw clenched so hard it sent pain radiating into her temples. The sob rising in her throat burned like acid, clawing at her from the inside, but she forced it down. Not here. Not now. Not while he was still in the house. She would not cry in front of him. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her crumble beneath the weight of what they had become.
When the last of her things had vanished into her bags, the room felt stripped bare. The silence was wrong. The bed looked wrong without her place beside him. She turned on her heel, spine rigid, shoulders drawn tight, and walked toward the stairs. Each step was impossibly heavy, weighted with the truth of what she had just done. She did not look back. She could not. If she looked back, she might stop. She might run to him. She might let herself fall apart.
And then she saw him.
He had not moved. Not even an inch. He stood in the hallway like a figure carved from grief, frozen in place as if time itself had stopped. His eyes were fixed on the spot where she had last stood, but they were not the same eyes. Whatever had burned there before was gone. They were dulled now, emptied, shattered glass where there had once been fire. Tears streaked silently down his face. His shoulders were pulled so tight that his body looked as though it might break under the strain. His fists were clenched hard enough to blanch the skin, like if he loosened them even slightly, he would fall to his knees, would reach for her, would beg her to stay. And that, she thought, was the worst of it. That he looked like he wanted to. That he looked like he needed to. But he did not.
Her heart twisted so hard she could barely breathe. The air caught in her throat like a noose, pulling tight, urging her back toward him. She did not give in. She did not stop. She did not reach for him. She kept walking.
Out the door.
Across the garden where they had once danced.
Down the long path that had always led her home.
When she reached her cottage and closed the door behind her, the familiar scent and silence of the place hit her like a physical blow. That was when she broke.
It was not a quiet cry or a single tear that could be brushed away. It was a sound torn from somewhere deep, something raw and body-wracking, the kind of sob that came when grief finally forced itself into the open. It was ugly. It was primal. It was the sound of someone losing something that could never be retrieved. Her knees gave out and she pressed her back to the door, sliding down until she curled on the floor, her arms wrapping around herself as if she could hold together what was left.
But there was nothing left to hold.
What she had done, what she had said, what she had shattered was not a bruise that could fade. It was not a wound that could be healed with time or tenderness. It was final. It was permanent. It was irreparable. It was unforgivable. It was unfixable.
*
After too many sleepless nights, after too many failed attempts at knocking on her door, after standing outside her cottage in the cold with his fists clenched at his sides, staring at the closed door that never opened, Draco finally gave in. He had never been a man of letters. Words had never been his chosen weapon when it came to matters of the heart. He was the kind of man who acted, who controlled, who moved pieces into place until the board looked the way he wanted. Sitting down to spill himself onto parchment felt foreign, humiliating even, but for her he would endure anything.
So he wrote.
He sat at his desk with the blank sheet before him, the quill balanced in his hand like it might burn him if he hesitated too long. His heart thudded heavily against his ribs, his throat tight. How could he even start? How could he possibly turn the chaos inside him into something coherent, when everything in him wanted to cross the distance between them and speak the words into her skin instead? How could ink carry the truth when the truth felt like it could drown him?
He breathed in sharply, swallowed the stubborn pride that had kept him silent until now, and let the ink begin to flow.
'*•.¸♡ ♡¸.•*'
My love,
I know I have no right to call you that now. But I need you to know that I still do. That I always will.
I was wrong. In more ways than I can count, in more ways than I have the courage to write. Wrong in ways that cut you, in ways that I can never take back. And I know that no apology could touch the damage I have done. I do not expect you to forgive me just because I have finally understood the shape of what I have destroyed. I let my fear of losing you twist into something ugly. I let it become control. I let it become something that is not love. That is not the man I ever wanted to be for you.
You are not mine to own. You are not mine to keep. You are not something I get to claim like a victory. But gods, Luna, I want to be yours.
Not because I deserve you. I do not. Not because I believe you will take me back. I will never demand that. But because I love you more than I have ever loved anything, and I would give anything to prove that to you.
I miss you. I miss your laugh spilling into my kitchen. I miss your books scattered across my rooms as if they were meant to be there, as if you were meant to be there. I miss the way you make the world make sense simply by breathing in it. I miss waking with your hair spread across my pillow, tangled and warm. I miss the way you curl against me in your sleep as if you know without doubt that I will keep you safe. I miss every piece of you.
And I am so sorry.
If you want space, I will give it. If you want me gone, I will go. If you believe we were a mistake, if you truly believe that, then I will walk away, even if it kills me to do it.
But if you are willing to speak to me, if you are willing to try, I am here.
Always.
Draco
'*•.¸♡ ♡¸.•*'
Draco had been drowning in silence. Not the peaceful kind that came with solitude or the quiet hum of reflection, but the kind that pressed in on his lungs until every breath felt like a battle. It was the kind of silence that made the walls feel closer, that made the air taste stale, that echoed through the vast and empty halls of their home until even the sound of his own footsteps felt wrong. At first, he told himself it was fine. That she only needed time. That if he stayed patient, if he respected her need for space, she would walk back in with that familiar fire in her eyes and something softer hidden beneath it.
He convinced himself of it every night. Told himself that if he endured the cold emptiness of their bed, the bare quiet of mornings without her voice, the ache of rooms stripped of her presence, she would remember what they were. If he suffered in stillness, she would come back.
But the days stretched into weeks, and the weeks curdled into something heavier, something sharp that sank into his bones. Luna stayed gone.
He was not proud of what he became in her absence. Sleep abandoned him first. Then his appetite. Then the ability to go through the motions of a life without her. He would wake in the dead of night and reach for her out of instinct, only to find cold sheets and colder air. He knocked on her door more times than he could count. Stood outside her cottage with his hands clenched at his sides, staring at the wood until his vision blurred. He wrote letters, each one a little less guarded than the last, his pride crumbling with every word he committed to paper. She never opened the door. She never wrote back.
Eventually, the truth began to creep in, quiet and cruel. Maybe this was the end. Maybe he had finally done it—broken the one thing he swore he would protect. Maybe she was never coming back.
And then, without warning, she did.
She came back like a storm breaking over the sea.
The door to his study slammed open so violently that the chandelier rattled and a thin veil of dust drifted down from the ceiling beams. His quill snapped between his fingers, ink splattering across the unfinished letter on his desk as he jerked his head up. His heart went still for a beat before it began to pound again, hard enough to hurt.
She stood framed in the doorway, every line of her body alive with fury. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven bursts. Her fists were tight at her sides. Her magic curled and sparked across her skin, a restless current that wanted somewhere to land. She looked like she had been walking through fire just to get to him.
She looked like she had not slept in days. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair wild, her whole body carrying the disheveled weight of someone who had been walking on nothing but anger. And her eyes—Merlin, her eyes. He did not even have time to breathe her in before she was moving, coming at him with the unstoppable force of a wave about to break.
"You absolute, possessive, infuriating bastard."
He was on his feet before the last word left her mouth, his chair clattering to the floor behind him without a second thought. His heart slammed hard against his ribs. His skin burned hot, his muscles tight with tension and disbelief, and underneath it all, a flash of something far more dangerous—relief. She was here. She was shouting. She was speaking to him.
And maybe he should have let her speak. Maybe he should have stood there and taken every word she had been holding back since the night she left. Maybe he should have let her strip him down with her fury until there was nothing left. But she was acting as if she had been the only one bleeding since that night.
After weeks of living in hell, after clawing his way through the aftermath alone, after begging shadows for mercy in the silence of their empty bed—no.
"No," Draco bit out, his voice cutting the air between them. "I do not think everything is fine. I do not think you are here to forgive me. But you will not stand there and act as if I have not been fucking dying without you. You will not pretend you were not in love with me before the fighting. You will not come back here just to scream at me as if you have not been missing me just as much."
Luna froze. Her eyes flickered, her lips parted, and she said nothing. She did not deny it.
That silence told him what he already knew. She had missed him. And knowing it seemed to make her even angrier.
"That is not the point," she hissed, shoving both hands hard into his chest. "I was trying, Draco. I was trying so fucking hard to make this work. I ignored every red flag, every time you treated me like something to be owned, every single one of your possessive habits that you refuse to control because I thought—" Her voice broke, sharp and unsteady. "I thought you loved me enough to at least try."
Draco's laugh cut through the air, a brittle sound that held no warmth at all.
"You thought I would change?" His lip curled, his fingers twitching at his sides. His body shook. She shook. The whole room seemed to vibrate with it. "No, love. You hoped I would change. You knew exactly what I was when you let me have you. And you loved it. You loved that I was obsessed. You loved that I would kill for you, that I would burn the world to keep you. But now you stand here acting as if you are so far above it. Acting as if you are innocent."
Her nostrils flared, her breath coming faster. His matched it, ragged and heavy. Their magic crackled in the space between them, restless and sparking, charged with rage and the unbearable weight of what had been starved for weeks.
"You think I loved it?" she whispered, stepping forward until there was no space left to steal between them.
Too close. Breathless close. The kind of close where every word felt like it could tip them into something that could never be undone.
Draco did not fucking hesitate. He stepped into her space with deliberate force, driving her back until her shoulders met the nearest wall. He stayed there, close enough that her escape would have meant pushing through him, close enough that her breath mingled with his in quick, shallow bursts. His own came hot and sharp, brushing her lips as if daring her to close the distance. His hands twitched at his sides with the unbearable need to touch her, to keep her in place, to make her admit that she had missed him with the same ferocity that had been eating him alive.
His voice dropped low, almost a growl, dangerous and taunting all at once. "You want to tell me you don't love me? Go ahead, baby. Say it." He watched the flicker in her eyes, saw the way her body tensed as if she was about to shove him off her. But she did not. He knew she would not. He could feel it, could see it in the way her pulse jumped in her throat, in the way her chest rose too fast, in the way she was as trapped in this as he was.
Her gaze burned into his with pure defiance, but her breath gave her away. It hitched and trembled, catching in her throat as though the truth was clawing its way up and she was fighting to hold it back. He could almost hear it inside her, the vicious pull of pride against the brutal, unrelenting truth that she still wanted him. That she still needed him. That she had never truly left him at all.
Her lips parted, her throat moved around words that stayed locked inside, her whole body drawn tight with restraint. And maybe he should have let her speak. Maybe he should have stood still and let her lie to him, let her keep the mask in place. But he was too far gone for that. Too desperate. Too fucking in love with her to watch her pretend she was not about to break.
A slow, deliberate curl touched his mouth, a smirk that carried more challenge than humor. That tiny push was all it took.
She let out a sound that was part snarl, part gasp, her voice shaking with fury and something far more dangerous. "Fuck you, Malfoy."