The Shadow of the Sun

Benedick Lovegood lay on his daughter's bed, weeping into a pillow embroidered with an intricately detailed celestial map of the constellation Cassiopea. In his arms was wrung a stuffed Thestral.

He could hear the guests arriving for the reception--trooping gleefully over from the Burrow, where the wedding had taken place, to his home, for the reception.

His home. No longer his and Luna's. No longer Celestina's.

Benedick Lovegood cried as he had not cried in eleven years, hot breath, snot and tears pouring out of him into his daughter's pillow.

"Hello, Ben," said a warm, quiet voice from the corridor.

Mr. Lovegood wheezed in reply, and attempted to stand.

"No, Ben, no, it's all right. There's no hurry," said Arthur Weasley, the Minister's ceremonial green hat bowed between the top of his head and the doorway. "Everyone's just arriving, and Molly's got a couple of students serving punch. You stay."

Mr. Lovegood wrenched around, and Arthur saw his usually untroubled face, stained and mottled. "It's wrong, Arthur," he moaned. "I shouldn't have let her."

Behind their glasses, Arthur Weasley's eyes sprung wide. "Wrong? Because they're?..."

But Benedick Lovegood was weeping again, sitting on the bed now, with his head propped on his hands.

The newly elevated Minister for Magic knelt beside his friend. "Ben, I... I didn't know you felt..." He rested a freckled hand on Mr. Lovegood's shoulder. "But those girls, they love each other. They make each other so happy. And it's always seemed to me that nothing bad can come from so much love."

The other man shook his head and stood. "No, no, that's not it, Arthur, NO. Your Ginny's a wonderful girl, and she's so good to my Luna..." He choked and moaned, a heaving wail. "But look at her..."

The two men peered out through the window to where two young women in diaphanous robes stood holding hands; one was copper-haired, the other flaxen. Ginny was speaking energetically to her brother Ron and Hermione Granger, to a bemused Harry Potter and his fiancé Susan. They all laughed at whatever joke Ginny was telling. Luna, abstracted, was gazing at the crown of cornflowers perched on Ginny's head, as if it were miraculous, prodigious, the only thing worth considering in the entire garden.

Ben Lovegood sniffled. "It's what happens from here, Arthur, I can't bear to let her go through it, the pain, the loss..." He turned from the window and buried his face in the taller man's shoulder. "No one told me..." he gasped. "No one told me that this much happiness could give you so much pain...."

Stunned, Arthur put his arm around the other man's shoulder. "Merlin, Ben," he said. "I can't even imagine what you've lost, you and the Diggorys too. If Molly had died, don't know how I would have survived. But," he said, embracing his grieving friend with his other arm, "think, Ben. Even knowing what you know, even having lost what you've lost and suffered what you suffered... Would you trade the joy you shared with Celestina for anything? Would you trade the joy of your wonderful daughter?"

Still crying, Ben shook his head. "No, no, of course not. Not for anything." He stood up again, and looked down to see Luna leaning forward, quizzically, to kiss Ginny on the lips, Ginny, whose hands fluttered, then settled on her new wife's face.

"And of course, Ben, after all, you're not losing a daughter," Arthur Weasley joked. "You're gaining a, uh..."

"A daughter," said Benedick Lovegood, and smiled wanly, astonished that such joy and such sorrow could share the confines of a narrow, frail human chest.