Luna was in her room re-charting the possible alignments of Saturn and Halley's Comet when a large eagle owl flew in and landed on her desk. It stuck its leg out haughtily and waited for her to remove the letter attached there. She wondered who could be writing to her - no one she knew owned an eagle owl. Hastily detaching the letter she offered the owl some owl treats, but the owl took one glance at them and gave her such a look of disdain that if she had noticed she would probably be waiting on it hand and foot. Unfortunately for the owl, Luna didn't. The eagle owl shook its wings, as if it were eager to be off, but settled down to wait with what looked like a scowl on its face as Luna opened the letter curiously.


It was from Malfoy. Malfoy. And he was asking her to dinner.

Tonight.

Luna blinked as she read the letter for the third time. It seemed genuine enough, and unless it was Malfoy playing a trick on her*... On the other hand, he had seemed quite nice when she encountered him on Harry's 'bloog'-thing, and indeed he seemed to be quite genuinely concerned about Harry's well-being, so she supposed he might have changed from the time he was in school. She shrugged, and pushing aside her calculations and star-charts, scribbled on a fresh sheet of parchment -

Dear Malfoy,

Sure, why not?

Yours,

Luna Lovegood

Looking pensively at the small amount of space her reply took, she decided to add a few curlicues to her signature that spanned the entire sheet of parchment, and, satisfied, she tied it to the waiting owl's foot.

As she watched the bird fly off into the distance, a thought floated across her brain. Was Malfoy asking her on a date?



*She didn't really think it was Malfoy playing a trick on her - he didn't seem the type. Outright jinx someone, yes. But Malfoy did not play tricks. Now Fred and George on the other hand...