Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Harry glanced over the food on the 8th year table to Malfoy. He couldn’t help it. The stunning white blond hair called out to him, and Harry couldn’t exactly deny that Malfoy had grown into his pointy looks swiftly and beautifully. He looked ethereal in the morning light, and his graceful hands danced in front of him as he tried to explain something to Luna.

Malfoy had been spending a lot of time with Luna lately. Not that Harry knew exactly how much time; he just looked at the map every once in a while to check up on where he was, looked for him in all of his classes, and made sure he sat within view of him in the Great Hall. Okay, so maybe he was a tiny bit obsessed. But the fact that Hermione and Ron hadn’t said anything meant that he wasn’t over obsessing, right?

“Harry, mate, normally I wouldn’t say anything, but you are being a bit obvious right now,” Ron said, sharing a side glance with Hermione.

Harry’s face slipped from the hand that was holding it up, and nearly fell onto the table as he whipped around, overturning a glass of pumpkin juice. “What–what do you mean?” Harry asked, frazzled.

Ron sighed and shook his head a little, and Hermione waved her wand with a muttered spell to clean up the mess.

Hermione glanced around them subtly to make sure they were relatively alone at their end of the table, and cast a Muffilato. “Harry,” she said, quite placatingly. “Don’t worry. Ron and I talked about it, and we think it would be great.”

Ron went to hold Hermione’s hand with a small smile, and turned back to Harry. “Yeah, plus he’s changed now. I mean, you saw the handwritten apologies that he sent out to everyone. He sent them out to literally everyone. And if Luna can stand to be around him this much, he must be good for something. Plus you were the one to speak up at his trial, you have to know he was innocent.”

Harry was shocked. Were his own friends implying what he thought they were implying? Did they… did they really think that Harry wanted that with Malfoy? “I–I don’t… he’s just…” Harry looked over at Malfoy again, getting up to leave with Luna. He looked a little harder when he saw Luna grab his hand, laughing. Why was she suddenly so close to Malfoy? Did Luna… did Luna like Malfoy? No. Harry dismissed the idea as soon as it came. Luna, as far as he knew, had been all over Ginny lately. Then what–

“Harry,” Ron said, waving a hand in front of his face. “You’re doing it again, mate.”

Harry shook his head to clear it and turned to Ron and Hermione’s knowing gaze and raised eyebrows. He was in trouble, wasn’t he? Harry groaned and sunk onto his table. It was going to be a long year.

~-~-~-~-~

Draco was positively sure that he didn’t deserve Luna. She was kind, good. And just because he had given her company and extra food while she was held prisoner in his home did not mean that he deserved her friendship.

But he was grateful. Pansy and Blaise had fucked off to France to join Beauxbatons, and though he had made peace with the students at Hogwarts, he still felt unease oozing off of them. Luna was always there for him. She was there when he needed to talk about his nightmares and when he didn’t. She was there when the occasional hex came his way, and when partner time in classes had all eyes turning away from him (all eyes except for one infuriatingly green set, that is. Merlin, what was Potter’s problem? Here Draco was just trying to have a quiet last year, escaping the Manor in its entirety and trying to build a life for himself, when–dammit. Draco needed to stop thinking about stupid Potter and his stupidly heroic actions. Damn it). Luna was rapidly becoming his best friend. And Draco was elated about it.

They had been spending quite a lot of time in the Ravenclaw Tower recently, and he had never found himself so at home. The books piled in every conceivable surface, shoved between sofa cushions and stacked on the middle of the floor, the fresh sunlight, and the murals of famous potioneers and inventors, both magical and muggle, spanning the wall felt right, like he was finally choosing himself. He had always liked the color blue, anyways. He was told it made his face pop.

“Draco,” Luna said, twirling her wand between her fingers. “Do you want to come up to my room? I have a whole nest of Wrackspurts that I want to show you! They are so cute at this stage.”

Draco smiled. Yes. He was happy here, content. He finally had a true friend and had found the house he had so desperately wanted to belong to even though his pride and family said another. Draco could spend ages here, learning and exploring, never fearing that the books would get grumpy and start to snap at him.

So it was no wonder when Luna tugged him up by the hand to her dorm room that he forgot all about the curse on boys entering the girls’ rooms. As the black fog encompassed his vision, Draco knew that he was fucked. Fuck, this was going to be a long year.

Chapter Text

The storm swirled up to the heavens, the wind billowing out as navy haze of clouds swarmed the tower. The lawn in front of the Ravenclaw tower was littered with Hufflepuffs holding their Ravenclaw friends, Gryffindors trying to get past the line of teachers to see if they could make it to the base of the building, and Slytherins worryingly wringing their hands and pretending to be aloof. The only thing that could be seen through the clouds was a vague shine of golden locks, flowing all the way down and pooling at the bottom of the stairs.

Harry was running. He had been ever since he heard the screams from the Gryffindor common room. Screaming still got to him, even all this time after the war. The Mind Healer had told him this was normal, but Harry didn’t quite think he understood what Harry felt when he heard anguished cries. Pain. Terror. Protectiveness. Guilt. Harry ran straight out of the large, oak doors, down onto the lawn, and out to the tower. McGonagall stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, just as the wind started to pick up and scratch at his face.

“What– is anyone– is everyone alright?” Harry’s heart was beating out of his chest. McGonagall pursed her lips and turned him gently around, hands firm and strong on his shoulders, where he couldn’t be. Luna was waiting for him, it seemed.

“Hello, Harry,” she said. “It’s been a while. Why don’t we catch up by the lake?”

Harry glanced back at the tower, and saw the cloud lighting up with a splash of purple as it rumbled. “I….” His hands trembled, but he saw no physical damage anywhere, and everyone else seemed fine, if a little shocked. Harry glanced down as the flowing blond locks of hair settled calmly and simply on the rocks. The hair shined against the old stone of the tower. “Luna, what happened?”

Luna hummed, and took Harry by the hand, leading him through his stumbles down the path away from the gathered people.

She sat him down under a tree at the edge of the water. “Draco’s in that tower.”

“What–” Harry made an abortive movement to jump to his feet, but Luna softly grabbed his ankle and forced him down.

“Don’t worry, Harry. Draco’s ok. Just a little sad maybe, and a little lonely.”

Harry stared dumbly at her. “Luna, what?”

Luna brushed her hair aside, revealing her turnip earrings, and sighed. “It was my fault, really,” she began, and Harry furrowed his brows. “I didn’t know that the spell would work on Draco, and I just never thought to check it.”

“Luna,” Harry asked, turning towards the tower once more. “What spell?”

“The spell on the girls’ dormitories, of course!” Luna said with a smile. “They each work differently, you know. I hear that the Gryffindor spell turns the stairs into a slide, which must be quite fun. Ravenclaw’s turns you into fairytales.”

Harry blinked. He remembered when Ron had tried to get into Hermione’s dorm, and slipped all the way back to the common room. He had laughed at that, along with the rest of the Gryffindors, but turning you into a fairytale? The storm cloud certainly seemed like an extreme reaction. “Ok,” he said slowly, unsure if he understood her clearly. Not that he ever quite understood Luna. “Um, what fairytale is this one, Luna?”

Luna smiled at him. “Why, it’s Rapunzel of course!”

Harry’s eyebrows rose. Unsure of what to make of that, Harry once again wished he could have had a normal childhood, if only to have had someone to read him fairytales as bedtime stories. For lack of knowing what to do about this new information, Harry looked at the pebble by his foot, before picking it up and turning it over in his hands. “Has anyone been able to talk to Draco so far?”

Luna smiled sadly. “No. There are no entrances into the room through the castle, and the storm is too wild to fly to his room. I tried climbing his hair first, like in the story, but I knew it wouldn’t work. You could try it though, Harry.”

Harry was a little bit dumbstruck and a lot bit concerned. Why would it work for Harry if not for Luna?

The silence stretched between them as he thought some more. Harry was relieved that Luna was the one beside him, as silences with her were not uncommon, and never awkward. Harry threw the pebble. It made three growing puddles on the surface of the lake before sinking into the water.

Harry wanted to try it. He wanted to know for himself that people would try everything they could to save Draco, and while he trusted McGonagall, Harry also had found himself with a bit of a protective streak after the war. If he couldn’t save them from the horrors of the Battle of Hogwarts, he would be trying his damnedest to make sure that 8th year would provide the home and security that the students wanted. It was another problem that the Mind Healer seemed to want to fix, but Harry didn’t think it was a problem. He liked helping people.

Harry tore up some grass beside him. They would never let Harry try to climb the hair. The professors were already trying to herd the lingering students inside.

“Luna,” Harry started. “Do you know how to make a distraction?”

Luna beamed. “I believe I do.”

~-~-~-~-~

Draco was miserable. He had woken up with a splitting headache to winds and thunder that did not help at all. Draco looked around for Luna, softly groaning and rolling over stiffly on the soft bed he was currently lying in, only to find he was completely alone in a completely new room. Is this what the dorm rooms looked like in the Ravenclaw tower? Did everyone get their own, private room? It was so different from the glass walls of the Slytherin dorm showing underneath the great lake. Draco rather liked the security of having privacy in the four stone clad walls.

Draco quickly figured out, however, that this was a very special type of room. It held exactly one window, large and frightening with a storm raging outside and no glass paneling but instead a shield spell to prevent the weather from encroaching into the room, and exactly one inconspicuous door. A door which led, much to Draco’s dismay, to a small bathroom, also without an exist.

Draco scoured the room, looked under the bed, the desk, behind the armoire (which, he had been surprised to find, somehow was filled with his clothes already), under the rug, and even hesitantly out the window. He couldn’t find a way out. He couldn't even see the floor. Draco spun in the middle of the room, around and around.

“Ok, ok, ok, ok,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck.”

Draco sat heavily on the floor, hands on his head and breathing with short, staccato breaths.

His head.

Which was now starting to feel surprisingly heavy. Draco sat up again and looked above himself to find… nothing. Something tickled at the nape of his neck, and Draco swatted at it. He felt a brush of soft strings against his arm, and Draco whipped around only to have a significant amount of hair hit him in the face.

“Mmmph!” Draco spat out the hair and tugged at it only to find a sharp pain on his head. It was his hair. Merlin, how was this possible? His hair had reached past his shoulders, and it definitely hadn’t been that long before. His head grew heavier, and he watched with mounting horror as his hair grew with ferocious speed out of his head and onto the floor. It piled up, and Draco ran to the bed, albeit a little slower than normal, and hopped up on top of it to watch the hair slowly fill the room. At this point, the hair was just getting longer and longer by the tips, no longer hurting his head but expanding nonetheless. Draco was on the verge of panicking.

Merlin! It was going to fill the entire room! It was going to suffocate him in the tower! Ok, maybe Draco was already panicking. A little. Draco glanced around frantically, a flash of bronze catching his eye. Draco leaped to the curtains by the window, tripping slightly over his hair. Merlin, Draco thought, this better work. He undid the curtain from the bronze hook on the wall, gathered just enough hair that could, he thought, strained, travel the length of the room and bathroom, and wrapped the longer bits of hair around the curtain hook so his hair would not drag him down. He threw the rest of his hair out the window and into the storm, watching with wide eyes as it continued to grow and grow and grow past the point of sight down into the clouds.

Draco stared down in horror.