hp fic: someday you'll get your happy ending (harry/luna)
Title: someday you’ll get your happy ending
Character(s)/Pairing(s) harry, harry/luna
Rating: pg-13
Word Count: 3,107
Summary: summers were always miserable, but she's teaching him that things can change. Spoilers through book seven, but it's not epilogue compliant.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
-Margaret Bonnano
---
This is ground zero.
Glass still glitters in the grass. Blood stains have been haphazardly removed so that they still stain, just not as brightly. The ground is scarred from bad curses and missed jinx.
It smells of death that victory cannot cover.
He keeps counting backwards. 24 hours ago - broke into Ravenclaw tower. 22 hours ago - the battle began. 20 hours ago - Died, then survived
He stumbles once the Dark Lord fell. There's only static to fill the nineteen hours that have passed since then. Static and white noise.
---
He spends the night sleeping on one of the grounds' benches. It's warm enough outside that no one has an excuse to bother him. They wait in the wings. He can feel their worried eyes as he curls up in a tiny ball. Hermione is staring down from Gryffindor tower, tugging at Ron's arm, begging him to do something. And Ron is convincing her to let it alone. They bicker, and Harry feels it.
Molly Weasley watches from the Great Hall. Her tears not yet dry from her son's death. Andromeda Tonks and Dennis Creevey and every other Weasley is watching him now. Harry feels that too.
He closes his eyes and listens to the rush of wind as it jerks water and branches around him. He knows it sounds insane, but while lying on the bench, he feels nature cradle him in the way his mother never did. It thanks him for his sacrifice, but it doesn't expect anything more. Nature is nothing like humans, he decides. It only takes what you give.
He doesn't feel just relief or sadness or joy. He feels everything at once. A laundry list of emotions that keep him awake.
Luna doesn't watch. She joins him half way through the night. She sits on the ground so that the back of her head brushes against his knees. She hands him a pillow and a blanket and pulls her knees under her chin.
"I'll keep guard," she whispers. He puts his hand on her shoulder and she holds it there until he falls asleep.
Somehow, she keeps the emotions at bay.
---
It's hard to feel happy when everything has fallen apart around your victory.
They cheered over corpses. No one seemed to care, until they remembered. Harry can still see the look in their eyes as it settled in. As each death took its toll and the sacrifice, as the leaders of the new world called it, suddenly was too steep a price to pay.
They're still watching him - still waiting for him to tell them what to feel.
Harry never felt comfortable in the spotlight, so he hides on the shores of the Great Lake and pretends he doesn't hear a word they say.
---
Eventually, he has to leave.
This place is no longer home. The Weasleys want him to stay with them, and the Ministry wants him to give a statement and the Prophet is already looking for quotes. He promises them all that he will do what they want.
He lies, of course.
Instead, he gathers his things from where Hermione had hidden them and apparates far far away.
Before he goes, Luna waves from the sidelines because as always, she anticipates his motives before he's even aware of them himself. He smiles at her - the first smile of a new world.
And never looks back.
---
He sees it as a boxing analogy. A boxer can take blow after blow and still deliver that knockout punch. He'll celebrate his victory, but the injuries will stay with him longer than that satisfying jolt of accomplishment.
Harry feels as though his jaw is dislocated and his ribs are cracked and there are bruises all along his legs. It's discomfort that is evenly distributed. There's nothing really there. No outside marks to cue the ache that is spread all over him. The pain that will not culminate in tears or anger.
It will dull. Someday, he thinks.
He remembers the scar on Uncle Vernon's left knuckle that never faded - how his hand cramped up during bad rain storms or how he made sure Dudley wore twice the padding in the glove on his left hand when he boxed and taught him to lead with the left and deliver with the right.
Scars heal, but they never leave.
And victory is not always worth the price of remembrance.
---
He spends four years on the move. The first two years are spent rebuilding European wizard communities - none in Britain because it's too close to home. The last two years he spends roaming around from wizard world to wizard world, blending in and standing out at the same time. Every time he sees the flecks of recognition in their eyes, he leaves.
He writes to Hermione and Ron every week to tell them he's alive and well. He only sends one letter addressed to both of them. Hermione checks his letters for secret codes that will tell him otherwise. He tells them inane things about his life. Every time Hermione responds (it's always her and never Ron) she asks why he's left, and of course, he ignores her.
He writes to Ginny once, and it's only as a postscript to the one letter he sends to the Weasleys. He tells her that traveling abroad has helped him forget and that he loved her - only one of those is a lie and by the time he finishes the letter, he isn't sure which it is.
He never writes Luna, but she writes him anyways. Eight times. Once for every birthday. And once on every anniversary of that day. She doesn't say much, and he never really writes back, but hers are the only ones he carries with him from place to place.
---
When he returns to Britain, it’s not because anything has changed. He merely runs out of hiding spots.
He wishes it were under different circumstances.
His feet have barely touched the pavement outside the Leaky Cauldron when he's ambushed by a tangle of arms. Later, he'll pretend that his hand didn't reach for his wand and his mind didn't scream Experiallamus.
He asks how she knew he was back and she mutters sheepishly about a trace she had put on him, and he can’t find it in his heart to be miffed at her.
Before Harry can say anything else, she grabs his arm and apparates him to the Weasleys house, and he gets lost in a sea of redheads and happy faces and food and laughter and stories.
They don't yet ask why he left, why he was gone so long. They hide their disappointment and worry behind their relief.
This is family, he supposes, and their job is to make you forget how miserable you are.
---
He meets Luna in Diagon Alley. It's not planned. She exits a shop, her arms packed with potion ingredients and she nearly drops them all when she spots him. Her smile is so bright it makes his face reflect it.
They don't say anything at first. Post-war Harry doesn't speak unless spoken to (it's the few signs of childhood innocence he has left), and Luna seems to be considering him too intently to be bothered with small talk. She beckons him forward with a tilt of the head and he follows her into the Leaky Cauldron where she sends her purchases upstairs with a banishing charm before she wraps her arms around him and squeezes tightly.
"You don't look better," she whispers against his neck.
"I know," he whispers back.
---
Ginny comes to him a week after he's back. He's been holed up in Grimauld Place, stripping it down to its bare essentials so that he can rebuild it in a way that won't remind him of Sirius's bark of a laugh or Snape's billowing cloak or Fred's extendable ears. He knows he could start fresh somewhere else, but his own abandonment issues get the better of him.
Ginny stares at him while he tears down the stairwell with a flick of his wand. He's mastered the demolition spells. He still needs work on the construction ones. He finds this applies to his whole life though.
"Mum wanted to know if you'd be joining us for tea tonight," she says, looking him straight in the eye. It's the trait he most admires in her - the intimidation she breathes with just one look.
"No," he says, "I'm having company over tonight."
Ginny bites her lip, "Have you moved on?"
Harry wonders what that really means - if it's just about them or if it's about something much larger. They require two different answers. He guesses Ginny had the tunnel vision of any young lover. "Yes, Ginny."
She smiles and he sees relief there that warms his heart. His intuition is still his strongest attribute.
She takes a deep breath before speaking again. "I met a man named Andrew..."
---
Luna comes over that night after Ginny has told him all about the Muggle accountant she's in love with. She's wrapped in too many scarves and the wind whips at her feet. Summer is supposed to feel warm, but then it always did disappoint.
She teaches him how to build a new kitchen, warm fingers pressed against his wrist as he swishes and flicks. He finds himself addicted to the way she smiles through everything she does, how her laugh carries through the house, louder than the crumbling of walls.
Summers were always miserable, but she's teaching him that things can change. They can get better.
---
He doesn’t mean to stare.
Hermione and Ron come around for tea. Harry makes tea the Muggle way, and Hermione feels obligated to pour it that way as well. Her left hand lingers over his plate for far too long, and he stares at the tiny diamond ring on her ring finger.
He thinks he could have done better - not that he actually wants to marry Hermione. He’s just theorizing. He would have given her a much larger ring. It would have been a sapphire because that was her birthstone and it was different.
Sometimes he thinks that a ring would be the most he could ever give another person, but that is only on dark days.
“We wanted to wait for you,” Hermione whispers, her cheeks turning pink. Harry doesn’t remember Hermione ever blushing. It’s an ugly color on her. Too light and carefree.
Not all romances start the same, Luna says later, when it just them sitting on the front porch watching the storm roll in.
They don’t end the same either, Harry responds.
Sometimes they mistake fairytales with romance.
---
In the interlude, there is a boy who practiced magic on his younger brothers. He had been asking all sorts of odd questions at school. He got angry and blew up his family’s house. He’s no older than twelve. Bright blue eyes and soft features. He does not look the part of a dark wizard, but then neither did young Tom Riddle if you looked in passing.
The boy swears he was just curious, and when they ask him how he feels about Muggles, he has no answer. He’s too young to comprehend the question. Too young to connect experimental magic with the danger to the unseen world. The powers that be are still deciding his fate.
Dark thoughts Ron warns. Dangerous thoughts, Hermione counters, though they’re both saying the same thing.
We should cherish inquiring minds, Luna argues. Her voice is soft and weak, like she’s still unsure whether she’s allowed to disagree. Harry brings her with him wherever he goes now, and she’s happy to comply. Harry can tell though she’s not sure if her presence is welcome.
Ron shrugs and Hermione lifts an eyebrow. Harry stays quiet, but he pats her hand in a way that’s encouraging.
Harry is the only one not voicing any opinion on the matter. Through interviews and pestering letters, everyone wants to know what he thinks as if he’s the authority on dark lords just because he defeated one by luck.
They ship the boy off to Azkaban for a few months. He comes back empty and bitter and angry. His fist clenched around his wand. The world could tremble at that photo. Harry merely frowns.
Harry shows up at his door the next day, tells him how anger can become misplaced and who suffers as a result. He explains fear and politics and how they’ll always be intertwined. He makes a twelve year old understand the unwritten boundaries of the new world.
Maybe he saves the world again.
“You could have done that before they sent him to Azkaban,” Luna says.
“Fear’s kind of necessary,” Harry argues.
He’s speaking from experience - from years of being called crazy and dangerous and reckless for questioning the status quo. You have to know the consequences to know whether it’s worth breaking them.
“You don’t have to wait until something’s broken to fix it,” Luna whispers.
Harry looks up from his paper, eyes shifting away from hers as soon as they meet. He cannot handle the warmth that’s there. It’s not pity, but it’s a sadness that makes his heart clench.
“It’s tough love,” he mutters, knowing it will only make things worse. He turns back to his paper, hoping it will end the conversation. Luna covers his hand with hers, and he tries to hide how much he’s shaking.
“Tough love,” she repeats, as if the concept is foreign, and maybe to her it is.
For Harry, it’s the only kind of love he’s really known.
---
Their first kiss waits a year.
Harry thinks about doing it before. He thinks about it when she leans over him to grab the mail or she hugs him before she goes. He thinks about it whenever the moon is out. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays and weekends. Maybe it’s all he ever thinks about.
But he used up all his courage in the war. So he hesitates and waits because it’s the safe thing to do. The fear of losing the only person who makes life tolerable is more pressing than the hope that life could become more than tolerable.
Besides, things that build are things that last. At least that’s what Hermione says with that knowing look in her eyes that tells him she’s not actually talking about her and Ron when she says it.
He takes Luna to Ron and Hermione’s wedding. She acts as a buffer to Mrs. Weasley’s repeated attempts to get him and Ginny back together. Mrs. Weasley believes that Ginny is just biding her time with the Muggle accountant while Harry deals with his post-post-traumatic stress. Bringing Luna, having her mingle with Ginny and the accountant, that drives the message home.
He’ll never understand why she would wish a lifetime of chasing away some broken man’s demons on her daughter, but then, he’s never had the courage to ask her.
Mrs. Weasley drags him out onto the dance floor, demanding a dance with every one of her sons, which makes him feel awkward and blessed all at once. He can’t help but laugh out loud watching Luna over Mrs. Weasley’s shoulder as she tries to teach Teddy and Victoire to lure fireflies with some sort of secret call. Mrs. Weasley notices his gaze and smiles unwilling. she’s not as crazy as she used to be, she says - which Harry thinks is the closest thing to a blessing he’ll get from her. He’s tempted to say he’s sorry, but he can’t get the words to form. He can’t be sorry for letting Ginny be happy.
Later when it’s the last dance, Luna and Harry sit together at the table just watching. The couples are all wrapped around each other in tight embraces, silly smiles on their faces. Some show love and others just lust.
"They all look so happy," Harry says, fascinated with how the glow of twilight descends upon the couples and families before them.
"The fact that you will never trust happiness is a burden that you will have to carry for the rest of your life,” Luna says offhandedly before turning away from the tender scene to face Harry. Her attitude sobers, “but I promise you, Harry, none of us envy it."
"What happened to you?" he asks because the Luna from earlier tonight would have told him that leprechauns had probably spiked the punch with gold dust so they could take advantage of the guests’ cheery dispositions and rob them blind.
There’s a sadness that passes in Luna’s eyes, and he realizes that they have all suffered. They all lost their innocence. Even Luna with her bright disposition has scars. She’s just stronger than him, better at hiding it. “Everything and nothing at all."
She looks away then and he can see her push the bad memories away, just a flicker of struggle on her face before they fade. It will always be something to be envied.
"Why'd you come back?" she asks.
Everyone had been curious as to why he went away that no one ever stopped to consider why he would return - only Luna who knew better. She always knows better when it comes to Harry. She’ll continue to be the only person who can tell what he’s thinking before he’s even aware of it himself.
Harry will never take for granted that luxury of not having to explain himself. Everyone else has no clue what’s going on inside of his head. So when she asks him a question, he knows she knows the answer already. She’s just hoping he will have the courage to face the answer himself.
He thinks of those last few days in Campania, Italy. He stared into his suitcase, tattered postcards taped to the bottom, unsure how they got there. The loopy, slanted handwriting was like a signal fire, and odd reminder of home.
“I liked your letters.” Harry says simply. And maybe it’s I-love-you for the emotionally handicap.
Luna smiles, grabs the sides of his face and kisses him, just as the fireworks go off overhead, sealing the evening.
It was the right answer.
---
When it happens, it’s a quiet affair.
Luna wears a gown made of peacock feathers and a bottle cap necklace (the latter Harry insists upon). Harry splurges on a new pair of dress robes because the world is watching. The photographers snap a plethora of shots as they leave the Ministry.
In every newspaper photo, he’s smiling.
“Well that’s a surprise,” Luna says, amused.
“Indeed,” he replies, tossing the latest paper into the bin. (She'll fish it out later for the scrapbook).
He doesn’t trust it, but he does trust her.
Maybe that’s enough for a happy ending.
Character(s)/Pairing(s) harry, harry/luna
Rating: pg-13
Word Count: 3,107
Summary: summers were always miserable, but she's teaching him that things can change. Spoilers through book seven, but it's not epilogue compliant.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
-Margaret Bonnano
---
This is ground zero.
Glass still glitters in the grass. Blood stains have been haphazardly removed so that they still stain, just not as brightly. The ground is scarred from bad curses and missed jinx.
It smells of death that victory cannot cover.
He keeps counting backwards. 24 hours ago - broke into Ravenclaw tower. 22 hours ago - the battle began. 20 hours ago - Died, then survived
He stumbles once the Dark Lord fell. There's only static to fill the nineteen hours that have passed since then. Static and white noise.
---
He spends the night sleeping on one of the grounds' benches. It's warm enough outside that no one has an excuse to bother him. They wait in the wings. He can feel their worried eyes as he curls up in a tiny ball. Hermione is staring down from Gryffindor tower, tugging at Ron's arm, begging him to do something. And Ron is convincing her to let it alone. They bicker, and Harry feels it.
Molly Weasley watches from the Great Hall. Her tears not yet dry from her son's death. Andromeda Tonks and Dennis Creevey and every other Weasley is watching him now. Harry feels that too.
He closes his eyes and listens to the rush of wind as it jerks water and branches around him. He knows it sounds insane, but while lying on the bench, he feels nature cradle him in the way his mother never did. It thanks him for his sacrifice, but it doesn't expect anything more. Nature is nothing like humans, he decides. It only takes what you give.
He doesn't feel just relief or sadness or joy. He feels everything at once. A laundry list of emotions that keep him awake.
Luna doesn't watch. She joins him half way through the night. She sits on the ground so that the back of her head brushes against his knees. She hands him a pillow and a blanket and pulls her knees under her chin.
"I'll keep guard," she whispers. He puts his hand on her shoulder and she holds it there until he falls asleep.
Somehow, she keeps the emotions at bay.
---
It's hard to feel happy when everything has fallen apart around your victory.
They cheered over corpses. No one seemed to care, until they remembered. Harry can still see the look in their eyes as it settled in. As each death took its toll and the sacrifice, as the leaders of the new world called it, suddenly was too steep a price to pay.
They're still watching him - still waiting for him to tell them what to feel.
Harry never felt comfortable in the spotlight, so he hides on the shores of the Great Lake and pretends he doesn't hear a word they say.
---
Eventually, he has to leave.
This place is no longer home. The Weasleys want him to stay with them, and the Ministry wants him to give a statement and the Prophet is already looking for quotes. He promises them all that he will do what they want.
He lies, of course.
Instead, he gathers his things from where Hermione had hidden them and apparates far far away.
Before he goes, Luna waves from the sidelines because as always, she anticipates his motives before he's even aware of them himself. He smiles at her - the first smile of a new world.
And never looks back.
---
He sees it as a boxing analogy. A boxer can take blow after blow and still deliver that knockout punch. He'll celebrate his victory, but the injuries will stay with him longer than that satisfying jolt of accomplishment.
Harry feels as though his jaw is dislocated and his ribs are cracked and there are bruises all along his legs. It's discomfort that is evenly distributed. There's nothing really there. No outside marks to cue the ache that is spread all over him. The pain that will not culminate in tears or anger.
It will dull. Someday, he thinks.
He remembers the scar on Uncle Vernon's left knuckle that never faded - how his hand cramped up during bad rain storms or how he made sure Dudley wore twice the padding in the glove on his left hand when he boxed and taught him to lead with the left and deliver with the right.
Scars heal, but they never leave.
And victory is not always worth the price of remembrance.
---
He spends four years on the move. The first two years are spent rebuilding European wizard communities - none in Britain because it's too close to home. The last two years he spends roaming around from wizard world to wizard world, blending in and standing out at the same time. Every time he sees the flecks of recognition in their eyes, he leaves.
He writes to Hermione and Ron every week to tell them he's alive and well. He only sends one letter addressed to both of them. Hermione checks his letters for secret codes that will tell him otherwise. He tells them inane things about his life. Every time Hermione responds (it's always her and never Ron) she asks why he's left, and of course, he ignores her.
He writes to Ginny once, and it's only as a postscript to the one letter he sends to the Weasleys. He tells her that traveling abroad has helped him forget and that he loved her - only one of those is a lie and by the time he finishes the letter, he isn't sure which it is.
He never writes Luna, but she writes him anyways. Eight times. Once for every birthday. And once on every anniversary of that day. She doesn't say much, and he never really writes back, but hers are the only ones he carries with him from place to place.
---
When he returns to Britain, it’s not because anything has changed. He merely runs out of hiding spots.
He wishes it were under different circumstances.
His feet have barely touched the pavement outside the Leaky Cauldron when he's ambushed by a tangle of arms. Later, he'll pretend that his hand didn't reach for his wand and his mind didn't scream Experiallamus.
He asks how she knew he was back and she mutters sheepishly about a trace she had put on him, and he can’t find it in his heart to be miffed at her.
Before Harry can say anything else, she grabs his arm and apparates him to the Weasleys house, and he gets lost in a sea of redheads and happy faces and food and laughter and stories.
They don't yet ask why he left, why he was gone so long. They hide their disappointment and worry behind their relief.
This is family, he supposes, and their job is to make you forget how miserable you are.
---
He meets Luna in Diagon Alley. It's not planned. She exits a shop, her arms packed with potion ingredients and she nearly drops them all when she spots him. Her smile is so bright it makes his face reflect it.
They don't say anything at first. Post-war Harry doesn't speak unless spoken to (it's the few signs of childhood innocence he has left), and Luna seems to be considering him too intently to be bothered with small talk. She beckons him forward with a tilt of the head and he follows her into the Leaky Cauldron where she sends her purchases upstairs with a banishing charm before she wraps her arms around him and squeezes tightly.
"You don't look better," she whispers against his neck.
"I know," he whispers back.
---
Ginny comes to him a week after he's back. He's been holed up in Grimauld Place, stripping it down to its bare essentials so that he can rebuild it in a way that won't remind him of Sirius's bark of a laugh or Snape's billowing cloak or Fred's extendable ears. He knows he could start fresh somewhere else, but his own abandonment issues get the better of him.
Ginny stares at him while he tears down the stairwell with a flick of his wand. He's mastered the demolition spells. He still needs work on the construction ones. He finds this applies to his whole life though.
"Mum wanted to know if you'd be joining us for tea tonight," she says, looking him straight in the eye. It's the trait he most admires in her - the intimidation she breathes with just one look.
"No," he says, "I'm having company over tonight."
Ginny bites her lip, "Have you moved on?"
Harry wonders what that really means - if it's just about them or if it's about something much larger. They require two different answers. He guesses Ginny had the tunnel vision of any young lover. "Yes, Ginny."
She smiles and he sees relief there that warms his heart. His intuition is still his strongest attribute.
She takes a deep breath before speaking again. "I met a man named Andrew..."
---
Luna comes over that night after Ginny has told him all about the Muggle accountant she's in love with. She's wrapped in too many scarves and the wind whips at her feet. Summer is supposed to feel warm, but then it always did disappoint.
She teaches him how to build a new kitchen, warm fingers pressed against his wrist as he swishes and flicks. He finds himself addicted to the way she smiles through everything she does, how her laugh carries through the house, louder than the crumbling of walls.
Summers were always miserable, but she's teaching him that things can change. They can get better.
---
He doesn’t mean to stare.
Hermione and Ron come around for tea. Harry makes tea the Muggle way, and Hermione feels obligated to pour it that way as well. Her left hand lingers over his plate for far too long, and he stares at the tiny diamond ring on her ring finger.
He thinks he could have done better - not that he actually wants to marry Hermione. He’s just theorizing. He would have given her a much larger ring. It would have been a sapphire because that was her birthstone and it was different.
Sometimes he thinks that a ring would be the most he could ever give another person, but that is only on dark days.
“We wanted to wait for you,” Hermione whispers, her cheeks turning pink. Harry doesn’t remember Hermione ever blushing. It’s an ugly color on her. Too light and carefree.
Not all romances start the same, Luna says later, when it just them sitting on the front porch watching the storm roll in.
They don’t end the same either, Harry responds.
Sometimes they mistake fairytales with romance.
---
In the interlude, there is a boy who practiced magic on his younger brothers. He had been asking all sorts of odd questions at school. He got angry and blew up his family’s house. He’s no older than twelve. Bright blue eyes and soft features. He does not look the part of a dark wizard, but then neither did young Tom Riddle if you looked in passing.
The boy swears he was just curious, and when they ask him how he feels about Muggles, he has no answer. He’s too young to comprehend the question. Too young to connect experimental magic with the danger to the unseen world. The powers that be are still deciding his fate.
Dark thoughts Ron warns. Dangerous thoughts, Hermione counters, though they’re both saying the same thing.
We should cherish inquiring minds, Luna argues. Her voice is soft and weak, like she’s still unsure whether she’s allowed to disagree. Harry brings her with him wherever he goes now, and she’s happy to comply. Harry can tell though she’s not sure if her presence is welcome.
Ron shrugs and Hermione lifts an eyebrow. Harry stays quiet, but he pats her hand in a way that’s encouraging.
Harry is the only one not voicing any opinion on the matter. Through interviews and pestering letters, everyone wants to know what he thinks as if he’s the authority on dark lords just because he defeated one by luck.
They ship the boy off to Azkaban for a few months. He comes back empty and bitter and angry. His fist clenched around his wand. The world could tremble at that photo. Harry merely frowns.
Harry shows up at his door the next day, tells him how anger can become misplaced and who suffers as a result. He explains fear and politics and how they’ll always be intertwined. He makes a twelve year old understand the unwritten boundaries of the new world.
Maybe he saves the world again.
“You could have done that before they sent him to Azkaban,” Luna says.
“Fear’s kind of necessary,” Harry argues.
He’s speaking from experience - from years of being called crazy and dangerous and reckless for questioning the status quo. You have to know the consequences to know whether it’s worth breaking them.
“You don’t have to wait until something’s broken to fix it,” Luna whispers.
Harry looks up from his paper, eyes shifting away from hers as soon as they meet. He cannot handle the warmth that’s there. It’s not pity, but it’s a sadness that makes his heart clench.
“It’s tough love,” he mutters, knowing it will only make things worse. He turns back to his paper, hoping it will end the conversation. Luna covers his hand with hers, and he tries to hide how much he’s shaking.
“Tough love,” she repeats, as if the concept is foreign, and maybe to her it is.
For Harry, it’s the only kind of love he’s really known.
---
Their first kiss waits a year.
Harry thinks about doing it before. He thinks about it when she leans over him to grab the mail or she hugs him before she goes. He thinks about it whenever the moon is out. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays and weekends. Maybe it’s all he ever thinks about.
But he used up all his courage in the war. So he hesitates and waits because it’s the safe thing to do. The fear of losing the only person who makes life tolerable is more pressing than the hope that life could become more than tolerable.
Besides, things that build are things that last. At least that’s what Hermione says with that knowing look in her eyes that tells him she’s not actually talking about her and Ron when she says it.
He takes Luna to Ron and Hermione’s wedding. She acts as a buffer to Mrs. Weasley’s repeated attempts to get him and Ginny back together. Mrs. Weasley believes that Ginny is just biding her time with the Muggle accountant while Harry deals with his post-post-traumatic stress. Bringing Luna, having her mingle with Ginny and the accountant, that drives the message home.
He’ll never understand why she would wish a lifetime of chasing away some broken man’s demons on her daughter, but then, he’s never had the courage to ask her.
Mrs. Weasley drags him out onto the dance floor, demanding a dance with every one of her sons, which makes him feel awkward and blessed all at once. He can’t help but laugh out loud watching Luna over Mrs. Weasley’s shoulder as she tries to teach Teddy and Victoire to lure fireflies with some sort of secret call. Mrs. Weasley notices his gaze and smiles unwilling. she’s not as crazy as she used to be, she says - which Harry thinks is the closest thing to a blessing he’ll get from her. He’s tempted to say he’s sorry, but he can’t get the words to form. He can’t be sorry for letting Ginny be happy.
Later when it’s the last dance, Luna and Harry sit together at the table just watching. The couples are all wrapped around each other in tight embraces, silly smiles on their faces. Some show love and others just lust.
"They all look so happy," Harry says, fascinated with how the glow of twilight descends upon the couples and families before them.
"The fact that you will never trust happiness is a burden that you will have to carry for the rest of your life,” Luna says offhandedly before turning away from the tender scene to face Harry. Her attitude sobers, “but I promise you, Harry, none of us envy it."
"What happened to you?" he asks because the Luna from earlier tonight would have told him that leprechauns had probably spiked the punch with gold dust so they could take advantage of the guests’ cheery dispositions and rob them blind.
There’s a sadness that passes in Luna’s eyes, and he realizes that they have all suffered. They all lost their innocence. Even Luna with her bright disposition has scars. She’s just stronger than him, better at hiding it. “Everything and nothing at all."
She looks away then and he can see her push the bad memories away, just a flicker of struggle on her face before they fade. It will always be something to be envied.
"Why'd you come back?" she asks.
Everyone had been curious as to why he went away that no one ever stopped to consider why he would return - only Luna who knew better. She always knows better when it comes to Harry. She’ll continue to be the only person who can tell what he’s thinking before he’s even aware of it himself.
Harry will never take for granted that luxury of not having to explain himself. Everyone else has no clue what’s going on inside of his head. So when she asks him a question, he knows she knows the answer already. She’s just hoping he will have the courage to face the answer himself.
He thinks of those last few days in Campania, Italy. He stared into his suitcase, tattered postcards taped to the bottom, unsure how they got there. The loopy, slanted handwriting was like a signal fire, and odd reminder of home.
“I liked your letters.” Harry says simply. And maybe it’s I-love-you for the emotionally handicap.
Luna smiles, grabs the sides of his face and kisses him, just as the fireworks go off overhead, sealing the evening.
It was the right answer.
---
When it happens, it’s a quiet affair.
Luna wears a gown made of peacock feathers and a bottle cap necklace (the latter Harry insists upon). Harry splurges on a new pair of dress robes because the world is watching. The photographers snap a plethora of shots as they leave the Ministry.
In every newspaper photo, he’s smiling.
“Well that’s a surprise,” Luna says, amused.
“Indeed,” he replies, tossing the latest paper into the bin. (She'll fish it out later for the scrapbook).
He doesn’t trust it, but he does trust her.
Maybe that’s enough for a happy ending.