Tea Leaves and Dragon Scales (DRACO & LUNA HP)

Draco was not nervous. He was not the kind of man who got nervous. He had spent years perfecting the art of appearing composed, detached, utterly unfazed by anything or anyone. And yet, here he was, standing in the middle of a bloody tea shop, staring at rows and rows of neatly labeled tins and pretending— badly —that he was actually interested in their contents.

In truth, he wasn't browsing.

He was stalling .

More accurately, he was trying to steal glances at Luna Lovegood without making it embarrassingly obvious.

Unfortunately, that strategy was failing spectacularly.

Every time he thought he had successfully made a decision—perhaps an Earl Grey, or maybe something herbal—his attention wavered, drawn back to her . And that was how he found himself standing there, motionless, for far too long, shifting his weight from foot to foot like an indecisive idiot, his eyes flickering between the tea labels and the way Luna moved behind the counter.

She was graceful without trying to be, effortless in a way that made something tighten low in his stomach. She wasn't wearing anything particularly revealing—just a flowing, soft dress, cinched slightly at the waist, the fabric light enough that it swayed with each step she took. But Merlin's bloody balls , she moved like she knew exactly what kind of effect she was having.

She doesn't , he reminded himself. She's just existing. You, however, are losing your mind in a tea shop.

He forced himself to focus, to choose something, anything , lest he stand there like a fool for another five minutes. Finally, he reached for a tin labeled Celestial Calm—A Soothing Nighttime Brew . It was a blend of chamomile, lavender, and something else he couldn't quite place.

Yes. That would do.

You definitely need something calming, you absolute wreck of a man.

Draco inhaled deeply, steadying himself, straightening his shoulders in a futile attempt to regain control of the situation before it spiraled further out of his grasp. Clearing his throat, he forced his voice into something neutral, something indifferent, something that didn't immediately give away the fact that he had spent an absolutely unreasonable amount of time choosing a bloody tea, as if this were the single most important decision of his life. He had been stalling, and he knew it, but for what, he wasn't quite sure—maybe for composure, maybe for logic, maybe for the ability to stand in this shop and not think about things he absolutely shouldn't be thinking about. But now, faced with the reality of speaking to her again, he had no choice but to push forward, to act as though he had spent the last several minutes browsing and not quietly losing his mind.

"I think I have my order ready," he said, keeping his voice as level as possible, hoping she wouldn't notice the absurd amount of time he had wasted just standing there, attempting to look casual, attempting to be normal, attempting to ignore the way his own thoughts were actively working against him.

Luna didn't respond right away, still fussing over a shelf, her fingers brushing lightly over glass jars and ceramic pots, shifting things by the smallest of margins, adjusting and readjusting, as if she were attuned to something no one else could see. He should have been grateful for the brief delay, should have used the extra seconds to prepare himself, to pull together some semblance of composure, to not be a complete mess over a simple interaction. But then—Merlin help him—she moved.

The moment she turned and began walking toward him, his thoughts ceased to function altogether.

She moved unhurriedly, effortlessly, with the kind of grace that wasn't performed but simply existed within her, as natural as breathing, as fluid as water. And he—poor, stupid, doomed fool that he was—watched. Watched the way her hips swayed, watched the way the light from the window caught the pale strands of her hair, watched the way she approached him with the same serene confidence that had always made her seem just slightly untouchable. His stomach twisted, clenched, burned, something slow and devastating curling in his gut as she closed the distance between them, as she turned what should have been an entirely ordinary moment into something unbearable.

He gritted his teeth, bracing himself for the inevitable, for the way his own mind would betray him, for the way he would undoubtedly ruin himself in the span of a single breath. And fuck, he was right.

The image slammed into him so violently he thought he might physically stumble.

Her, sprawled out on one of these tables.

Her, dress pushed up, skin flushed, chest rising and falling in uneven breaths.

Her, legs—

WHAT?????

FUCK.

His fingers tightened around the tin of tea so harshly that for a brief, horrifying second, he thought he might actually crush it in his grip.

This was bad. This was so fucking bad.

He needed to pull himself together. Immediately.

But then she reached for the tin in his hands, and it was already too late.

Her fingers brushed against his so lightly, so fleetingly, it should have been nothing, it should have meant nothing, but it didn't. It sent something sharp and unbearable through him, something that left him rooted to the floor, locked in place, completely at her mercy. She was close, impossibly close, and the scent of her—something soft and delicate, something floral and dizzying and so uniquely Luna—wrapped around him, burned through his senses, made his entire body tense.

She smiled, reading the label, completely oblivious to the absolute mess she had reduced him to.

"Oh," she murmured, the simple sound doing something wildly inappropriate to his already ruined state. "That's such a good choice."

He had no idea what the fuck he had even picked.

He needed a distraction, needed a way out before he humiliated himself any further, before she figured out exactly what kind of effect she had on him, before he completely fell apart right in front of her. And so, grasping for the first thing he could think of, he spoke.

"Would… would you have time to have tea with me?"

He regretted it immediately.

The hesitation in his voice, the uncertainty, the absolutely pitiful way he sounded like he actually cared about the answer— it was a disaster. He wasn't the kind of man who asked for things, wasn't the kind of man who hesitated, wasn't the kind of man who stood in front of a woman and hoped she would say yes.

And yet, here he was, standing before Luna bloody Lovegood, practically pleading like a lovesick fool.

She blinked up at him, tilting her head slightly, studying him in a way that made his skin prickle, in a way that made him want to run and never look back.

He panicked. Fucking hell, he panicked.

"I mean," he rushed to clarify, grasping at straws, already spiraling, already cursing himself for even opening his mouth, already regretting every decision that had led to this exact moment. "There's no one else here, and I—I didn't mean to offend you, fuck—" He let out a sharp breath, dragging a hand through his hair, feeling entirely too much, entirely too caught, entirely too doomed.

"Maybe we could just… catch up."

It was pathetic, and he knew it, knew she wasn't fooled, knew that his attempt to sound casual was laughable at best.

She stared at him for a long, excruciating moment, and Draco swore he could see the exact second amusement flickered through her expression, the exact second she realized she had the upper hand, the exact second she decided to make him suffer for it.

And then—the final blow.

"What got you so flustered?"

It was a simple question, an innocent question, but it wasn't.

Because she knew. She fucking knew.

The way she asked, the way her lips twitched like she was seconds away from laughing, the way she looked at him like she had just won something he hadn't realized he had been competing for—

This was a game.

And she was winning.

His mind, traitorous, unhelpful, completely out of control, supplied the answer immediately.

You. You, and the way you look, and the way you smell, and the way I currently want to do incredibly indecent things to you against every available surface in this shop.

But he had some semblance of self-preservation left.

He wasn't about to say that. Not here. Not at four in the bloody afternoon, in a shop that smelled like cinnamon and fucking moonlight.

So instead, he forced himself to respond, forced himself to sound normal, forced himself to survive this conversation.

"I had a Ministry examination," he said, forcing a sigh, willing himself to believe that this was the real problem, that this was why he was currently unraveling.

"And it was horrific. I just need to relax."

That, at least, was the truth.

Not the whole truth. Not the real truth.

But enough to make her glance away, hum softly, turn toward the tea.

He exhaled, relieved, convinced he had escaped whatever game she had been playing.

But then, over her shoulder, without even looking at him, she spoke.

"Well, then," she said, her voice light, effortless, deceptively innocent.

"I suppose I'll just have to help you relax, won't I?"

And just like that—Draco Malfoy knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was completely, utterly, irreversibly fucked.

Luna returned with their drinks, gliding across the shop with the kind of unhurried grace that made time itself seem slower in her presence. It wasn't the dreamy, detached way she used to carry herself in school, but something more deliberate, more aware, as though she knew exactly where she belonged in the world now, and it wasn't anywhere near the margins people had once tried to push her into. Draco, on the other hand, felt like a man who had been shoved off balance from the moment he stepped into this place, and watching her settle beside him—not across from him, beside him—only made it worse. He had expected her to sit at the other end of the table, as any proper host might, giving them both a comfortable distance to sip their drinks and make awkward attempts at small talk. Instead, she sat down next to him with absolutely no hesitation, the warmth of her body radiating so close that he could feel it through his clothes.

For a moment, he could do nothing but stare, his brain short-circuiting in real time. Luna Lovegood, sitting next to him. Not across the table, not a polite distance away, but next to him, so close that if he so much as turned slightly, he would find himself brushing against her. Something in his chest tightened. His heartbeat stuttered. He was going to pass out.

He shifted in his seat, fighting the sudden heat creeping up the back of his neck. HIM. Of all people, she had to sit next to HIM? Oh, Lord. Not Voldemort, not Merlin, not Circe—not even Morgana herself. No, this was a crisis for Lord Jesus, because Draco was dangerously close to having a breakdown in a bloody tea shop over the way Luna had just sat next to him like it was nothing.

Luna placed her drink on the table between them with the same ease that she did everything else, a steaming cup of tea for him, and for herself—a tall glass filled with a violently green liquid that looked like something Pansy might have forced down his throat in school as a cruel joke. Draco eyed it with immediate distrust, suspicion flaring in his mind before he even had time to think.

It wasn't normal. It was too green, too unnatural, too Luna.

His frown deepened as he stared at it, completely ignoring the fact that he was holding himself together by the sheer force of will alone because her thigh was still just barely touching his. He was one wrong move away from complete psychological collapse, and now he had to deal with whatever that was.

"What is that?" His voice was rough, slightly hoarse, probably from the sheer effort it was taking not to combust in real time over how dangerously close she was.

"A smoothie," she answered simply, lifting it toward him as if that was an acceptable explanation, as if that didn't immediately make him more suspicious, as if he wasn't already overwhelmed by her existence and now had to process why she was drinking something that looked like the very essence of toxic waste.

And then—because apparently, the universe had decided he had not suffered enough today—she pushed the straw toward his lips.

Draco froze.

His entire body locked up, every muscle going rigid, every rational thought in his brain immediately replaced by the deafening sound of absolute fucking panic.

What the fuck was happening?

Why was this happening?

Why was she doing this?

What was he supposed to do?!

The cold plastic of the straw hovered dangerously close, so close that if he even breathed wrong, he would—Merlin, what was he supposed to do? Every logical part of his brain screamed at him to back away, to make a clever remark, to refuse, to not let Luna bloody Lovegood shove a straw into his mouth as if he were some kind of schoolboy being forced to take a potion by a particularly persistent matron.

But no.

His traitorous instincts had already taken over, had betrayed him, had driven him directly into the arms of certain doom.

Before he even realized what he was doing, his lips had wrapped around the straw, and—oh, sweet mother of Merlin—he was sipping.

The taste hit him immediately, something cold, something minty and slightly sweet, something far too enjoyable for what it was. Damn it all, it was actually good. But that wasn't the issue. The issue was that he had just wrapped his fucking mouth around her straw.

And Luna was still watching him.

Her expression was perfectly unreadable, her lips quirking up ever so slightly, a quiet amusement flickering in her eyes, like she was thoroughly enjoying whatever the fuck was currently happening to his brain.

Draco ripped himself away like he'd been burned.

He wasn't sure if he had actually been burned, wasn't sure if the heat crawling up his spine and twisting low in his stomach was something real or just the crippling weight of his own self-inflicted humiliation.

"What—what just happened?"

Luna tilted her head, blinking up at him as though he had just asked something incredibly stupid.

"You looked curious."

"That does not mean you should force me to drink from your straw!"

"It wasn't forced."

"You shoved it in my mouth!"

"Well, you drank it, didn't you?"

That was—that was not the point. That was not the point at all.

Draco opened his mouth to argue, then promptly shut it again, his jaw clenching as the realization settled in, as the weight of what had just happened fully dawned on him, as he came to terms with the simple, undeniable, completely devastating truth.

There was no way to win this.

He had, in fact, sipped from her straw like a complete idiot.

There was no undoing it.

Desperate to steer the conversation elsewhere before his entire existence crumbled beneath him, he shifted in his seat, cleared his throat, leaned back with as much forced indifference as he could manage, and tried to pretend like this hadn't just become one of the most defining moments of his life.

"Are you always this close with people?" He aimed for bored, for uninterested, for casual, but he was certain he still sounded like a man on the verge of an existential crisis.

Luna actually considered the question. She sat there, humming softly, blinking up at the ceiling as if she needed to think about it, as if she had not just put him through the single most mentally exhausting experience of his adult life.

"Oh… yeah, actually," she admitted, before blinking as if something had only just occurred to her. "But I forgot."

And then—as if it was the most normal thing in the world, as if she hadn't just shattered his entire psyche, as if this wasn't the single strangest conversation of his existence—she stood up, took exactly two steps away, and sat herself down across from him.

Draco stared.

Luna stared back.

The silence stretched between them, something heavy, something dangerous, something he could not name but was certain would kill him.

Then—as if to drive the final nail into the coffin, as if she hadn't already made him suffer enough—she took another sip from the same straw.

It was too much.

It was nothing.

It was the most devastating thing that had ever happened to him.

He didn't know why it made him feel the way it did. Didn't know why that specific action, that completely mundane, completely meaningless act of drinking her own damn smoothie, sent something sharp and hot curling through him, something dangerous, something unmistakable.

But it did.

And the worst part?

She knew it.

He could see it in the way her lips twitched, in the way her eyes flickered over him like she was taking notes, like she was studying his every reaction, like she was pulling him apart with nothing but a glance.

She leaned back in her chair, completely at ease, completely in control, as if waiting to see how long it would take for him to crack, as if this was some kind of test, as if he wasn't already ruined.

And then, because apparently his suffering was not enough, because apparently she had to destroy him completely, she said, in the most casual tone imaginable—

"It's sad that you still believe in blood supremacy."

Draco choked on nothing.

His entire body seized up, his brain white-screened, his soul briefly left his body.

"I—what?! I do not!"

Luna's expression remained eerily calm, unshaken, unreadable, as if she had simply stated an undeniable fact, as if she had just dropped a casual remark about the weather, as if she wasn't actively sending him into cardiac arrest.

"You just practically fell apart because we shared a straw."

He didn't know what to say to that.

Didn't know how to respond.

Didn't know how to recover from this moment, from her words, from her presence, from the absolute, unrelenting destruction she had just inflicted upon him with nothing more than a fucking smoothie.

This entire conversation was a disaster. A waking nightmare. A slow, torturous descent into some kind of Luna-inflicted madness, and Draco had no idea how to stop it, no idea how to pull himself free before he was completely consumed. His patience was hanging by a thread, unraveling rapidly with every second she spent staring at him like that, sipping from that damn straw, tilting her head in that infuriatingly knowing way that made him feel like an insect pinned beneath a magnifying glass.

His temper snapped, his frustration bursting forth like a tidal wave as he dragged a hand down his face, as if physically trying to wipe the insanity of this entire exchange from existence. "That is NOT the same thing," he snapped, his voice sharp, clipped, each syllable laced with a desperate attempt to reclaim some semblance of dignity. "That had nothing to do with blood status, and everything to do with the fact that you—you practically sat on my lap, and then you made me drink—" He gestured wildly at her cup, his movements erratic, his entire body buzzing with a tension he didn't know what to do with, "—your whatever that was, and look at you right now, you didn't even change the bloody straw!"

Luna, completely unbothered by his outburst, took another slow, deliberate sip, her movements measured, unhurried, her lips wrapping around the same straw that had just sent his entire world crashing into chaos. She watched him, that serene, detached patience never wavering, the patience of a cat observing a particularly pathetic, cornered mouse.

"And?"

It was just one word, just a single syllable, yet it managed to dig beneath his skin, lodge itself deep in his bones, light his nerves on fire.

Draco's hands curled into fists at his sides, every muscle in his body coiling so tightly he thought he might snap in half.

And that tone. That fucking tone.

He knew what she was doing. He knew.

She was teasing him. Toying with him. Amused by his obvious distress, by the way he had been unraveling ever since he stepped into this damn shop, by the way she had managed to systematically dismantle every last bit of composure he had. But the worst part? She wasn't wrong.

This had nothing to do with blood status, and everything to do with her.

Everything to do with the way she had walked back into his life like a hurricane wearing a soft-spoken smile, everything to do with the way she sat too close and tilted her head like she could hear every single thought running rampant in his skull. Everything to do with the way she looked at him like she could see straight through him, like she knew exactly what he was fighting not to say, exactly how much control he was losing.

His jaw tightened, his voice dropping to something low, something dangerous, something barely restrained. "Stop. Just stop it."

But Luna didn't flinch. Didn't waver. Didn't even blink.

She just kept looking at him, kept studying him with those impossibly knowing, otherworldly eyes, the ones that made him feel like a boy again, like a child standing in the wreckage of a crumbling world, waiting for someone to tell him he wasn't too broken to fix.

And suddenly, his chest ached.

It was an unfamiliar kind of ache, something deep and insidious, something that had nothing to do with anger or frustration or even the tension coiled so violently in his gut. This was something else entirely, something old and weary and terrifyingly fragile.

His voice betrayed him before he could stop it, softened just enough to expose something he had spent years trying to bury beneath layers of carefully constructed apathy.

"I am not that person anymore."

For the first time in this entire conversation, he meant it.

For the first time in his entire life, he wanted—needed—someone to believe it.

Luna didn't speak immediately, didn't rush to fill the silence with meaningless reassurances, didn't offer him empty words or fragile sympathies. Instead, she just watched him, the intensity in her gaze shifting, something softer, something weightier, something that made his skin prickle—not with discomfort, but with the unbearable sensation of being seen.

She wasn't looking at him like everyone else did.

She wasn't searching for the cracks, waiting for him to prove her suspicions right, waiting for him to fail.

She was looking at him like she already knew—like she had always known— that he was not the same boy who had once stood in front of a trembling girl and made the wrong choice.

The weight of it settled between them, heavy, thick, impossible to ignore.

Then, without hesitation, without mockery, without even the faintest trace of doubt, she simply said—

"Good."

It was just one word, just a breath, just a single, uncomplicated syllable, but it lodged itself somewhere deep in his chest, curled up between his ribs, settled into the spaces he had long since deemed irreparable.

Draco barely had time to process it, barely had time to understand why it mattered so much, before she continued, her voice light, almost teasing, but edged with something far sharper, something far more perceptive.

"You know," she mused, tilting her head, as if she were about to say something completely ordinary, something not at all life-ruining, something that wouldn't immediately send his stomach plummeting into the floor. "I did receive your letter. The one that was supposed to be an apology but somehow turned into a twenty-eight-page account of all your wrongdoings, every single mistake you've ever made, a thorough self-examination of your past failures, and yet—"

She exhaled a soft, amused breath, shaking her head, lips curling ever so slightly, her tone so infuriatingly calm, as if this wasn't the absolute worst thing she could have possibly said to him in this moment.

"Not a single actual apology in sight."

His stomach plummeted.

His pulse stuttered.

His entire soul left his fucking body.

Oh, fuck.