Stuck with Me [Harry Potter]

Chapter 17 - A Heart-to-Heart with Dad

Setting: Lovegood residence, summer, 1998.

Luna heard the shriek again.

She jumped in her bed when the noise filled the vast fields around her newly constructed house. Admittedly, she liked the new version when she was with Draco, but this version was doable as well. She went and looked out the window over the fields and to the forest just beyond. It was out there. She knew it was. She saw it for the first time in the clearing once before the snake arrived, and that same one chased her and Draco, and he fought it bravely until it went back into the forest.

Draco...

Oh, how she missed him. She hadn't seen him or heard from him once in three months, it being July. He said back when they spoke in the corridor outside of the Great Hall that his family had to take care of some things—figure out what their next step was—because Lord Voldemort was destroyed... but that was the last time she had heard from him.

Did he even still care about her?

She recalled a conversation she had with Hermione just two weeks after the war when she, Harry and Ron came to visit her house. The girls were up in Luna's room on the third floor sitting on her bed as the men were downstairs in the living room—

"I think he's just really busy, as well as his family," Hermione said.

"Yes, I'm sure he is, but I hoped that he would at least send an owl."

Hermione sat silently, pursing her lips together and looking off to the side, saying nothing.

"Maybe what you and everyone said about all this was true," Luna said sadly. "Why would a person like him want to be with a person like me? I have accepted the fact that others think I'm not the normalest of people."

Hermione scooted closer to her sullen friend and put an arm around her shoulders. "Hey," she said softly, "don't talk like that. All of us could see that he cares about you. I mean, sure we didn't believe it at first, but after all of us saw the way he looked at you, and the way he followed after you when you left the Great Hall... well, we knew something changed in him. And you did that. I think you made him see something in himself that was hidden under all that haughtiness and arrogance." She paused. "And as for what other people think—the hell with it! You are you, and Draco fell in love with that. And us as well. You're our best friend."

Luna smiled weakly and looked at Hermione's brown eyes. "Thank you, Hermione. I guess I was too hard on myself."

"We all are sometimes."

Luna looked down at her hands, which were playing with the strings of the blue blouse she was wearing. "Hermione, you said 'Draco fell in love with that.' You meant my personality, right?"

Hermione smiled. "Yes. And I meant with you as well."

"Me?"

"Yes, Luna. Draco fell in love with you, and you with him."

Luna spun that conversation in her head a dozen times before her father called her name from downstairs.

"Yes, Dad! Coming!"

Luna hopped off her bed and went down the small spiral staircase. She saw her father standing near the fireplace with a few papers in his hand. He looked up at his daughter, his wispy blonde hair framing his face.

"Yes, Dad?" she said.

"Luna, I just don't understand."

"What?"

He held out the papers. "All my manuscripts have notes written all over them, notes not in my handwriting."

Luna's father Xenophilius had been released from Azkaban shortly after the war ended. All the prisoners in Azkaban that were wrongfully put there were released. Xenophilius had told her when the war ended that he didn't want to touch or have anything to do with The Ministry or his writing job for The Quibbler. It was only two days ago that he was begged by The Ministry to come back, and he procrastinated and only started looking at old manuscripts at this moment.

"Yes, Dad, I told you that Draco Malfoy was here for a few days. He looked at your manuscripts and probably took notes on them."

He nodded and looked over the papers, reading some of the notes. "Luna," he said, his brow creasing, "the notes that are here are exemplary. If it was him who wrote them, then he should write for The Ministry. They would love the ideas he has written here."

"Maybe you can tell him so the next time you see him... after he's done with his family matters."

Xenophilius eyed the sad look on his daughter's face. "You miss him, don't you, Luna?"

She nodded. She had never lied to her father. "I do. But he's still busy."

Luna sat on the sofa backwards and looked out the window at the ongoing fields. She felt her father's hand on her shoulder. "Go to him if you miss him. You know where Malfoy Manor is."

"Yes, but I don't want to go uninvited or if they're in the middle of something."

Her father stayed silent for a moment, and she looked up at him and saw a deep crease in his brow. "Is something wrong?" she asked him.

He sat next to her on the sofa and looked at her eyes, the color identical to his. His light-blonde hair framed his face. "Luna... since you told me about the Malfoy boy staying here for a few days, and the relationship that developed between the two of you... I couldn't help but feel uneasy."

Luna stared at her father, and he continued.

"You know that the Malfoys and Lovegoods do not have a friendly relationship with one another, especially after I published that article about Malfoy Manor. I'm just saying... what if... Draco's parents are intentionally keeping him away from you?"

Luna gulped some emotion away. "That... would make sense..."

He grabbed her shoulders and said in a firm voice, "I'm telling you to go to him because they won't let him come to you. Luna, it hurts me to see you gaze out that window, your bedroom window, and the kitchen window - any window - with a sad expression on your face. I don't want your heart to continue hurting."

Luna smiled softly, touching her father's cheek. "I'm alright, Dad. And I don't want to go to Malfoy Manor because I know you'll worry about me. I was there for three months confined in their dungeon."

"I know. But if Draco really cares about you, he won't let that happen again."

Luna thought for a moment and turned to face out the window again. She imagined Draco walking out of the forest with a large wild cat trailing him like a puppy. She imagined running to him and seeing his smile, his blue eyes.

"Okay," she said. "I'll go."