Remembrance

Remembrance

Harry knew where he would find her. Up the sere slopes of Stoatshead Hill he stumbled, his dress shoes sliding through the muddy, dead grass, to the spot where he had come across her twice before, right at the top of the hill.

There she was, sitting wrapped in her scuffed black robes, weaving a garland of dried flowers. "Rosemary," she said, "that's for remembrance..."

"Hey, Luna," said Harry.

"No," she said, shaking her tangled locks. "It's not hay. It's straw."

"It's... What?"

She held up a length of dried grass. "Straw," she said.

"Ah," said Harry, peering not at the brown grass, but at Luna's otherwhere eyes. He knelt next to her, moisture chilling his knee. "How are you?"

"Pansies, that's for thoughts," murmured Luna, pulling up a withered blue flower from her skirts and threading it into the garland. "Doesn't look much like Pansy Parkinson, though...."

"No," Harry agreed, and put his hand on her arm to still it. "Luna, how are you?"

More a startled woodland creature than a girl, she jerked her head back and looked at him. Then tears came to her large eyes, and with them, a touch of humanity. "He's gone," she said. Her face, usually so serene, crumbled, sorrow distorting it and her voice until they were almost unrecognizable.

"I'm so sorry," Harry sighed, and wrapped his arms around her.

She sobbed into his shoulder, and he could feel the wet blast of her breath gusting against his neck. After several minutes of unrestrained weeping, she howled into Harry's shoulder, "He said he'd never leave me!"

Harry felt as if his lungs were being ripped out. "I know he didn't want to."

Luna wept.

There are times when people cry and you feel uncomfortable because you know you're supposed to do something for them. This was not one of those times. Harry knew there was nothing he could do beyond what he was doing already, letting her tears and snot dampen his own robes and holding her as tightly and as gently as he could.

After some time--ten minutes? A half hour?--she began to subside, slowly losing steam. When she had calmed to merely gasping every few breaths, he kissed her on the top of the head--nothing romantic, just caring. Then he had tried to back up, but she had held him fiercely.

"What will I do?" she said into his collar. "Where will I go? I'm so alone."

"You've still got your home, Luna."

For the very first time since he had met her, hesitancy crept into the blonde girl's voice. "I... I don't think I could go back there."

He nodded. He had avoided going back to Godric's Hollow all these years. He could certainly understand. "Ginny and Ron's mum was really worried about you when you left the service," he said, wiping her wet chin with his sleeve. "I know she'd love to have you stay at the Burrrow for as long as you want..."

Her eyes drifted north, to the horizon. She shrugged. "I don't know that Ronald and that curly haired girl would be terribly happy for me to be there."

Harry hugged her close again, and he could feel tears rumbling up inside her once more. "Trust me, they wouldn't mind at all. They'd want you there. Luna, listen to me. You saved their lives last year. Ron and Hermione are good people, and Ginny loves you like a sister. I know. We've talked about it. You will never be alone so long as one of us is alive."

Harry was ready for her to weep again, and would have understood if she had. But Luna didn't. She looked at him for a long moment, her pale blue eyes washed almost silver by her tears and the overcast winter sky. Then she looped the bedraggled garland around the crown of her head and stood. "No," she said, "I suppose I won't."

Together they walked down the hill towards Ottery St. Catchpole and the Burrow.