Please Be There If I Remember

Chapter Forty-Three: Feelings

~*"*~

Harry would not stop glancing and smiling at him all day, and Draco was having an internal war with himself to not smile back. He knew he had definitely failed a few times.

He had tried to take Blaise's words into account, forcing himself to lesson the stupid grin on his face to something more normal and Malfoy-looking. It was tough though.

Draco was sure a few people had noticed the strange air around him—Pansy and Theo, for one—but it wasn't enough for whispers to start, just random side comments.

And for once, Draco actually found himself looking forward to Defence.

He ate with Luna again at her table, if only to get away from his friend's searching stares, and he had a brief moment of relief mixed with disappointment when he realised that they were facing away from the Gryffindor table.

"You seem particularly chipper this morning," Luna had said when she saw him.

Draco plopped down on the table and bit into a piece of toast happily. "I guess I just woke up on the right side of the bed today."

Luna hummed, and she too continued to eat her food with an air of indifference to everyone around them. "You know that's all superstition, right? It's actually the left side that is more prone to making you happy and carefree."

Draco had learned over the past few weeks to just roll with the things Luna said and had given up asking a long time ago what she meant about certain things. When his curiosity got the best of him, and he did ask back, he found the explanations very...interesting. One of his favourites was when he asked Luna what a Heliopath was when she had mentioned it in passing, and he was thinking about fire-breathing spirits for the rest of the day.

"Really? I didn't know that. Tonight I'll make sure to sleep on the left."

Luna hummed, as she always did when she agreed with something—Draco found that he had also started to pick up the same habit—and clamped her teeth down on an egg.

The two ended up waking to their classes together, Draco totally not doing it just to avoid his increasingly curious friends. Not in the least...

Anyway, he thought to himself, shaking his head. It's not like it's any of their business—the only reason Blaise knows is because he figured it out on his own. Although, at the same time, Draco had no doubt that Theo definitely had some idea of who it was too.

He turned to Luna to take his mind off of things but halted in his tracks when he noticed that they had already made it to the Ancient Runes classroom where Luna's next class was.

"We're here already," he stated—quite obviously.

Luna smiled at him. "Thanks for walking me, Draco. Although I only ask that you pay attention on your way back so you don't accidentally bump into a wall, you seemed very out of it on our way here." And with that, the girl skipped off into the classroom, her bag and hair swinging with her.

"Sure thing, Luna," he said to the empty air. The girl always seemed to know his everyday whims—it would have been slightly terrifying if not for her easy nature. Draco was turning around to make his way to the dreaded Defence classroom when he spotted someone hanging out in the hallway, a conflicted look on his face as he stared at Draco.

Once he met his eyes, though, the boy glanced down at the floor with an almost inaudible squeak and was clearly trying, and failing, to subtly run away.

Draco thought that he recognized him from something that had happened a little while ago, but his brain was unable to put a proper name to a face—as it had always malfunctioned in that department. He sighed to himself, knowing that the look the kid was giving him was definitely with some hatred over things he had clearly done in the past, and he wanted to smooth it over as quickly as possible.