in the end ~ d. malfoy

Chapter Thirty - One

𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟓

Diana Malfoy has a tendency to live inside her own head.

There's never really been anywhere else to go, if she's being honest. Her childhood was one of many obligations -- until she went off to Beauxbatons, Diana endured 8-hour schooldays from private tutoring at home, often staying up way past the hours of the decency to get her homework done. She was never allowed to go out and play with her friends like her brother, or rather, she's never had many friends in the first place. People were nice to her on the basis that she was Draco's sister, but that was about it. There's was no one who genuinely liked her as a person; she once overheard Pansy call her "annoyingly cheerful" and "childish". They seldom went on vacations, and if they did, it was mostly for Lucius's business trips. Draco would undoubtedly find an excuse to escape for the day, considering that their father only came back to the hotel at night, and Diana would be forced to accompany her mother on various shopping trips, seething internally while Narcissa oohed and aahed at various couture gowns.

In short, her life has been one long, boring drag, and she's never expected for it to change.

Diana's never been the type to fixate on one single person. She's barely ever had a crush on anyone until now (unless you count that weird-ass moment with Maya's annoying guy friend - wasn't his name Jason or something??). It's not like she's rejected the idea of romance completely in the pretense of pursuing her education. Her grades are fine, satisfactory enough to get her a decent job after graduation, but she doesn't really have a passion for school in that sense. There's always been a part of her that's kept Diana from venturing out into the ever-changing world of adolescent romance. She's been fine with it for as long as she can remember.

But now something has changed, and she doesn't know what it is.

What fourteen-year-old Diana Malfoy does know is that she's getting awfully close to a certain odd Ravenclaw, much more soon than originally intended. It started as a simple evening in the library; Diana couldn't map out her star chart and Maya was too busy finishing Potions equations to help her. She had wandered around the shelves for hours, her fingers tracing along the worn spines of calligraphied of books, hoping that maybe, somewhere maybe, an answer would reveal itself and she could go to bed in peace.

But one keyword turned into two, two turned into four, and soon Diana was once more buried in a sea of language that didn't make sense. She sulked the entire time on the walk past the black lake, fearing Professor Sinistra's wrath towards those who didn't turn in their assigned work. Then suddenly, crash! Tiny glass bottles hit the ground, shattering on impact. Luna Lovegood simply stood there, inquisitive, as Diana rambled on, scrambling to fix the mess she'd made while reparing the broken bottles that had dropped once they'd bumped into each other. The Ravenclaw had simply said that it was no bother, simply siphoning the liquid back into the bottles and asking if she was alright.

Granted, she had been very frustrated, and granted, it was very late at night, but Diana still doesn't know what made her explode and burst into sobs. She doesn't remember much of anything, actually; there's the faint touches of Luna serenely patting her on the head, tucking the both of them into a far-off alcove away from patrolling prefects and meddling professors, the faint scent of lavender surrounding her completely.

After many tears, "it's okay"s and insistance that she was "perfectly bloody fine!", Diana finally mustered up the desperation to ask Luna for help, knowing that she was one of the best students in Sinistra's class. The other girl had readily accepted, an owlish grin on her face, and after a good half an hour of work, Diana had proudly marched up to her professor's desk and slid the completed paper onto the rich mahogany the next morning. Luna Lovegood had simply laughed when the younger Malfoy had thanked her, brushing it off with a "you did half of it yourself" and "don't go thanking me for nothing".