That there would be a world in which she had casual teas with the former Luna Lovegood was something that she never would have imagined at any point in time in her previous life - not as a dreaming, ambitious child and not as a would be authoress who had all but begged for interviews from people who had no reason to ever give her the time of day. Yet, here she was - still getting used to preventing the wedding band on her finger from clinking against the china that the older woman had handed her.
She and Luna had chats now - had been for almost a year. It was still (in many ways) every bit as surreal as it had been on that first occasion. The conversation had been flowing as well as it ever did (Luna had conversational quirks that one navigated better with experience), but Sadie was afraid that she was about to send it crashing to a halt. It was not that she had never wondered about it before. She had wondered off and on ever since she had watched the memories of the man in question asking Luna to perform that charm what felt like an entirely different lifetime ago. She thought maybe that they were friends enough now for her to ask the potentially uncomfortable question even if that did not mean that Luna was obliged in any way to answer.
"Did you ever go looking for him?" She blurts out before she loses her nerve as Luna finishes a story about the weeks spent in hiding with the Weasley relatives. Luna looks at her with that expression that she gets at times - as if she has to focus on what has just been said to her from a distance. She does not, however, ask Sadie to clarify to whom she was referring.
"There would be no need - I know exactly where he is." Her voice is matter of fact (and maybe a little caught off guard as if there would be no reason to expect her to provide any other answer).
Sadie is surprised all the same. Not once in all of her conversations and research and finding further sources for her citation pages in her books has anyone given her any indication that anyone knew where it was that Dean Thomas was.
She recognizes the trust for what it is when Luna provides her with a location. There was a time that she likely should not have been trusted with such information (although she likes to believe that even at her most confused and angriest in the course of the process that she would have had better sense than to go stir something up with someone who literally had no memory of the wizarding world left to him).
All of the mentions of Dean Thomas seemed to include some sort of a reference to his artistic abilities. That the place to which Luna directed her is a showroom where the man has pieces available for purchase is, therefore, not particularly surprising. She goes because she is still as curious as she was as a frustrated young adult with too many pieces missing from her family's story, but her curiosity is now a more gentle thing. It is a wonder and a whimsical notion that still resides in the depths of her soul that, despite everything, stories should have tidy endings (preferably happy ones) no matter how much to the contrary has been served to her in her life.
She isn't sure whether or not she is sorry that she had gone. The gallery itself was magnificent. There was no doubt that Dean Thomas was an artistically gifted man. Sadie wasn't always a big fan of watercolors - something about her grandmother Creevey's prints had always seemed too washed out to convey anything deeper than an imitation of life that could never by anything but an imitation or a bit of whimsy, but Dean (and she couldn't help but refer to him as Dean inside her head after everything she had seen and heard) had proven her incorrect on that score.
There were pieces to which the word whimsy could be applied, but there was mostly a sense of mystery to his pieces - the utter conviction that there was something hiding just beyond the edges of the frame that was waiting for the onlooker to find it. She was nothing short of nauseous when she realized why they had that quality to them. She had no doubt that Luna was a skilled witch who had known exactly what she was doing, but memory charms are tricky theories that get no less complicated when placed into practice. Things are not simply gone in the aftermath - the human brain is too whatever it is for that. They are merely hidden, locked, and often ultimately irretrievable without doing actual physical damage. And, in Dean Thomas, it was clear that something lingered - perhaps teasing him with visions he only interpreted as an artist's creativity, but it was there and he couldn't grasp it and he didn't even understand that there was something there to grasp. It was as painful to see as the artwork was beautiful.
The paintings hurt her all the way down to her soul. She aches for Dean Thomas. He appears to be a successful man. The gallery is obviously a thriving business. There is a brochure with a few personal details that thanks a wife and a daughter (a very young daughter in her opinion in comparison to the man's classmates). That does nothing to hide that there is something in the majority of the pictures (the ones that are not specific commissions) that is nothing short of unfulfilled longing.
"The two of you could have been happy." She found herself saying to her friend on the next occasion where they are drinking tea (and she is staring at the wedding band that still clinks against the china in unexpected ways and feeling the full weight of how easily it could have not been on her finger).
"Of course," she sounded surprised as if it hadn't occurred to her that anything else could have occurred to Sadie. Again, she has not had to explain to Luna what it was she was talking about. Luna had known that she would go well before their previous conversation had ended.
"But you were happy with Rolf."
It was a statement - they both knew the truth. Luna did not find it necessary to answer. She merely waited as if mildly curious as to what conclusion Sadie was attempting to draw.
"And Neville . . . ."
Luna smiles softly and shakes her head.
The topic turns and their tea concludes, and Sadie remembers that that is the one question that Luna never answers.