The Tell-tale Art

XI.

It was quiet for days after that. Quiet, for Dean at least, because "their place" was gone, and so, it seemed, was Luna. Later after his run-in with Pince, he'd gone back to the library in hopes that Luna would be there, but no such luck. "Their place" was essentially history, and though he hunted around the shelves and searched every face at every table, but to no avail.

"Who're you looking for, mate?" Seamus had asked as they went to the library and returned some Herbology texts.

Dean didn't answer, wondering if he'd jinxed his chances of finding Luna by coming along with Seamus.

He'd been even more alarmed when he hadn't seen Luna at the Ravenclaw table at dinner. Craning his neck to see past certain Hufflepuffs, he could barely make out Marietta Edgecombe's profile and Cho Chang's hair, a few First- and Second-Years he didn't know.

"Who're you searching for over there?" Seamus had asked through a mouthful of treacle pudding.

Dean didn't answer, wondering if he'd jinxed his chances of finding Luna by listening to Seamus spout nonsense about all the birds he hoped to kiss before they all left Hogwarts next year. And then he felt horrible, because he realised that acting like a git to his best friend wouldn't help matters, either.

After dinner, Dean had even gone down to the lake where she'd fielded her Frog-Quidditch team, but she hadn't been there, either. He'd sat there for a little while, his hopes momentarily raised when heard a frog's croak, but it turned out to be a false alarm. He'd even tried working on his "Fantasy Medieval Castle" drawing, but he'd been too jittery to concentrate, giving it up after only a few minutes.

Arriving back at the common room, he'd nicked a copy of the Prophet and read it cover to cover. There was no news about anything having to do with Luna's father, so he assumed Mr. Lovegood was all right, which was happy news, but ruled out another possible reason for Luna's "disappearance."

Dean lay on his bed that night with a renewed desire to draw. He figured he'd put it to the best use by polishing up his new project, which was nearly complete. Working on it made him think of Luna more and more, but he wasn't certain what it was, exactly, he was thinking. He was worried, of course, but there was something more to it. The day had pretty much dragged without his bit of respite in "their place," but there was more to it than that, even. Maybe it's the candy ...

Dean chuckled a little, but even he was impatient with his attempt at joking about the situation.

The door opened and Harry walked in wearing a dreamy smile that usually came as a result of being snogged within an inch of one's life. Dean looked up and groaned beneath his breath, wishing he'd thought to draw his curtains. Harry glanced over and saw him, hesitated for a second, and then with a thready smile walked over to his bed.

Dean kept his eyes on his work, but he could hear Harry knocking about, trying not to make much noise, and, of course, succeeding in doing just that. Surreptitiously watching the dark-haired boy, Dean noticed Harry was changing into Muggle clothing. He was doing it rather quickly - and rather wrongly, too: the jumper was inside-out and he was hopping into a pair of trousers a bit too short and roomy to be his.

Dean sat up a little, trying to pretend he didn't notice Harry's jerky, rushed movements. At that moment, he had a flash of insight: Harry didn't seem so much of a rush to go back to Ginny as he seemed eager to leave that room, and Dean understood why: He and Harry really hadn't been alone together since it had happened.

They always had Seamus and/or Ron and/or Neville larking about, acting as buffers in a way, keeping the two of them from having to interact much with each other. It kept things nominally civil, but it didn't make for a very convivial atmosphere. Dean thought of Luna's gentle reminder that Harry was his friend, too - or at least he had been, before the whole thing with Ginny.

Dean was startled when the mop of dark hair suddenly emerged from the neck of the jumper and he was caught staring. Only Harry's glasses were visible, and Dean could make out a muffled, "Sorry. I'll be out in a minute."

"Take your time. I'm not fussed," Dean said with a nonchalance he didn't quite feel. "But you might want to check with Nev before you put those trousers on. He says they're Trevor's favourite to sleep in."

"What? Shite. These are Neville's. Reckon Ron was right about Nev having lost weight." Harry flung them across the room and grabbed another pair. He gave those a closer look before putting them on. "So ... are you drawing something?"

Dean paused. Casual question. Too casual. The last time Harry had asked him something like that, they were Third-Years. "Yeah ..."

Harry frowned at his socks and went for another pair. "Uh ... did you ever find that one Seamus said you were looking for?"

With those words, Dean was suddenly aware of that he wasn't doing much breathing at the moment. "Uh ... no. I think it's just ... I've been thinking that I might've left it at home or something."

"Oh. So it wasn't in that pile Ginny has? I know that she went through some the other day."

"Had," Dean said coldly, tilting his hand to do some shading. "She gave 'em back. And no, that one wasn't in there."

"She gave them back?" The unfiltered surprise in Harry's voice made Dean stop drawing for a moment. "All of them?"

Dean nodded grimly. Harry looked contemplative, but didn't say anything else for a long while. Then:

"Hey, is that today's Prophet you've got there? Ginny's been looking all over for one."

"Take it." Dean gestured toward the paper at the edge of his bed. "I'm done with it."

Harry murmured his thanks and walked over to retrieve it. Dean assumed that Harry would surely leave now, but he stood there, riffling through pages for a minute or more. "Blimey, did you read this about the Dementor attacks?"

"Yeah. Three so far, and the week's not even over yet." Dean focused his attention on his sketch. He didn't want to be reminded of that story. It described the attacks in such graphic detail that Dean had gotten a little sick. "It's depressing reading the bloody thing now, because it seems like everything's only getting worse."

"Yeah." Harry's voice sounded strange, and Dean glanced up. Harry looked unnaturally pale and pensive as he looked out toward the door. It was almost the first time since the Quidditch Cup party that Dean had seen Harry without a smile on his face. Dean wondered what he was thinking, but the expression on his face was so grave that he figured it was better that he didn't know.

Harry pulled himself together and sighed, tucking the paper under his arm. "You sure you don't need it back?"

"Nope."

"Right. Well, cheers."

Dean went back to his drawing, working a little more careful on some of the finer details. It wasn't until he heard a slight shuffling noise that he looked up and saw that Harry was still standing there, staring into his sketchbook.

"Is that another picture of Luna?"

"Er, no." Dean subtly maneuvered the book away from Harry's line of sight. "It's, uh, somebody else ..."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to throw off your concentration."

"You didn't." Dean couldn't look at Harry for a second or two. Shite, can't he just leave already? "But it's not her."

Dean considered asking Harry if he'd seen Luna around that day, but decided against it. He was sure that outside of classes, Harry had been too wrapped up in Ginny to notice anything or anyone else.

"It's nice. Whoever it is." Harry was lost in thought a moment. "Um, I don't know if you know this, but -"

Dean frowned when Harry's voice trailed off. "But what?"

"Uh, nothing. Just ..." He took a deep breath, and when he next spoke, he sounded like he'd been plugged into a toaster or some other electronic device. "Nothing happened, you know. With Luna and me. We were always just friends."

"I know that," Dean said, trying to keep the confusion out of his voice. What the bloody hell does that have to do with anything? "She told me."

"She did?" Harry's face brightened immediately. "Right - I guess that makes sense that she would've by now. Anyway, thanks again for the Prophet, mate."

Mate? Dean looked at Harry askance as puttered around the room a bit more. It had been quite awhile since Harry had called him that. Bringing his drawing back into the light, Dean puzzled over the bizarre conversation, and it wasn't until he started filling in some of the background elements that it hit him. Harry probably still thought that Luna was his new ... his new ... whatever.

Dean's lip curled in annoyance. Git. I wonder if he even remembers that he's the one that she fancied?

This observation was followed by a savage swipe of the pencil. With a growl, Dean furiously erased as Harry called out a sickeningly cheerful "goodbye." What do girls see in him, other than the famous thing? And the scar thing? And the Quidditch thing? Maybe that's the sort of grot that would interest a girl like Lavender or Romilda Vane or even Ginny, but why would Luna give a toss about any of that? Why her?

Alone again, Dean put aside his pencil and looked over the sketch, taking note of what still needed to be done, silently calculating that if he spent another solid hour or two, that would do it.

Running his thumb over the edge of the page, he thought about Potter's robotic avowal that he and Luna had just been friends. If Luna hadn't told him otherwise, Dean wouldn't have believed a word of what Potter had said. But it was true, and from the sound of it, Potter had said the same thing to a bunch of people - as if it were some sort of horrible thing to be linked with Luna at all. And he'd been the one to ask her to that smegging party!

"Git," Dean mumbled, shaking his head. "Bloody git."

XII.

On the afternoon of the second Luna-less day, Dean was in the common room pretending to read a copy of Quaffle Quarterly, but thinking about the library and bloody, meddling Pince.

He reckoned that the problem was that with her little cubby in the library gone, and the library being so full now, Luna might have found another quiet place to study. If that was the case, however, Dean felt disappointed that Luna hadn't come around to tell him. Maybe she was tired of his company and wanted to keep her sweets to herself. Maybe he'd said something to offend her, but didn't know it at the time.

Dean thought about the last chat they'd had in their place. Luna had been as relaxed and cheerful as she'd ever been, though she had seemed a bit tired, but there hadn't even been anything unusual about that, considering the situation with her dad and all. It was a mystery, and Dean was growing to really despise mysteries. It seemed every time he grew comfortable in a situation, something changed and he was the last bloody one to know.

If I acted like a prat, why wouldn't she have just said something, instead of cutting me off just like that? Dean turned the page with more force than necessary. I bloody hate not knowing what the bloody hell I did, and I might never know, because who knows if I'll see her again this term, and who knows what'll happen next year, and what could I have done, anyway? Maybe she thinks because of me, Pince found her out. Or maybe it was something else ...

He flipped another page, and froze when he heard a sigh and an exasperated voice in his ear.

You didn't do anything, Dean. It's just not working anymore, that's all. You know it, too, I know you do ...

Dean nearly fell off his chair, and he looked around fearfully for Ginny, because it was her voice he'd heard, not Luna's. When he realized that he was still quite alone, he sat very still, trembling. He'd been hallucinating - no - he'd been daydreaming - no -

No. It was a memory. Dean's eyes went huge when it dawned on him that he'd been replaying the night he and Ginny broke up in his mind. He'd pleaded with her to just tell him what he'd done to turn her off so that he'd at least know where he'd ballsed up, and she'd just kept shaking her head and telling him that he hadn't done anything ... hadn't done anything ... hadn't. done. anything. Like a bleeding echo, over and over again. Dean had given it up when he realized that he wasn't going to get a more concrete answer.

He couldn't imagine why he was thinking of that now. What did it have to do with Luna except that ... it was almost the same situation. They'd been getting close - er, becoming friends - er, friendly, that is. And now it had all just stopped, and he didn't have the faintest idea why.

"Bugger this," Dean mumbled, standing and tossing the magazine on the couch. There was entirely too much going on in his head at the moment, and not all of it was welcome. He needed to get out, he decided. A bit of a walk in the evening air might do him some good. He wasn't quite successful in convincing himself that his sudden need to go outdoors had nothing to do with Luna, and in the two or three seconds that it took for him to realize that he didn't bloody need to make excuses about what he was doing to anyone, least of all himself, the portrait hole opened.

"Oh!" Ginny fell back in surprise, and then her face darkened. "Oh. Hello, Dean."

Dean grit his teeth. Right. Of course, he'd have to run into her right now, yeah? Poetic justice, or some other rot like that. He hadn't really seen Ginny in the past few days, but he hadn't given it much thought. The realization of that made him feel ... a little strange, but he didn't have much time to study it. He wanted to get on with it before curfew came, after all.

"You're on your way out?"

"Uh ... yeah. Mind moving over a little?"

Ginny looked him over for a moment or two, but didn't move. "But you can't -"

"I've got somewhere to be," he said. "I don't really have time for any sort of talk with you, Ginny."

"Dean, will you stop being a git long enough to let me talk?" she huffed in exasperation. "All I was going to say was that it's too late for you to see her now."

Dean started to step around her, and then stopped. His whole body seemed to have gone completely numb. "Too late to see who?"

"You're going to see Luna, aren't you?"

Luna? "Luna!" He nearly twisted his neck off as he whirled to face her. "You know where she is?"

"Of course I do." She gave him a strange look that made him nervous for reasons he couldn't quite decipher. "Don't you?"

"No! I've been looking -" He cut himself off, not wishing to waste any more time. "Right, well, where -" His eyes grew large. "What d'you mean it's too late? W-what happened to her?"

"Oh, it's nothing very serious. She's been the Infirmary for a few days. Madam Pomfrey said she had an allergic reaction to something she ate."

"Shite ..." Dean breathed. Ron Weasley's poisoning scare flashed into his brain, and he shuddered. It wasn't really the same thing, but Dean couldn't help but wonder if the same bastards who'd threatened her father had found some way to get to Luna.

"But she's all right, isn't she?"

"Yes. She'll be released tomorrow, I think. Harry and I have looked in on her." Ginny looked a little confused. "We thought everyone knew that. If I knew you hadn't, I would have said something before now."

"No, I didn't know! Cor, I've been going spare looking for her. I -" He stopped talking when he noticed the look on Ginny's face. "What?"

"Nothing." The corners of Ginny's mouth twitched. "It's just ..."

"It's just what?" Dean could tell that she was fighting the impulse to laugh, which confused the hell out of him, because, really, there was nothing funny about any of this, in his view.

But then something lit the brown eyes and Dean could only stare as he hit upon what it was. He did know that look, after all. Ginny looked ... pleased. Pleased and a little proud - the way she'd looked at him when he'd managed to get the Quaffle past Hufflepuff's lumpen Keeper. It had been his best showing as a Chaser.

He couldn't think that Ginny was thinking about Quidditch now, though. He could hardly believe he was thinking about it, but that game had been about the last time he'd seen that look. Everything between the two of them had gone pear-shaped almost from that day forward.

"You know, Luna's quite ... lovely. I always thought it would take a special sort to realize that." Ginny's lips twitched again. "She's a really wonderful girl."

"I reckon I know that," Dean said, wondering what the hell Ginny was on about. She really did look like the Kneazle who got the cream, and it was beginning to scare the hell out of him.

"Yeah, I reckon you do," she returned, biting her lower lip. "I'd try to get there tomorrow before lunch, if I were you. Madam Pomfrey's usually had a nip of something strong, and she's much more ... relaxed about visitors."

"Oh ... yeah. Good thinking. Thanks." Dean moved toward the door, suddenly eager to be away from there. He remembered his and Ginny's last time alone in the common room, and he flushed a little. He'd been something of a prat, but then again, so had she. Maybe she'd decided to be cordial to him for Luna's sake.

"Dean?"

He turned around. Ginny was still smiling, but there was a faraway look in her eyes.

"Yeah?"

"This was nice," she said quietly.

"Uh ..." Dean looked around, bewildered. "What was?"

"This." She gestured at the space between them. "The two of us just now, not screaming at each other. It was nice."

She walked away and Dean stared after her in silence for awhile. Wondering.

***

"Bloody hell!"

"Young man, watch your language!"

"Bug-" Dean closed his mouth with a snap when Madam Pomfrey started to rise from her seat. "Er, sorry. When did she leave?"

"Very early this morning. An ... interesting girl, that one," she said, with something that Dean supposed was a smile. "I suggested that she rest for another day so that she'll be in fine shape for her exams."

Shite! "But she's all right, isn't she?"

"She'll be fine if she stays away from those disgusting candies." The older woman's eyes rolled skyward. "When I was a student here, the most 'exotic' candies were sugar quills and cauldron cakes. Now you have all sort of rubbish - things that burn holes in a child's tongue ... chocolates with the most dangerous ingredients ..."

It was a good ten minutes before Dean was able to escape, and by the end of it, Madam Pomfrey's diatribe on the "evils of 'modern' sweets" had put him off Jelly Slugs and Two-Ton Toffee for good. Making his way back to Gryffindor Tower, Dean swore freely and often, scaring quite a few First-Years who jumped aside as he thundered past them.

He'd missed Luna by three bloody hours! She'd been in the Infirmary for nearly three days with her throat swollen the size of a man's forearm, and his useless larking about had caused him to miss her completely. O.W.L.s were in two days: If Luna stayed in her room until exams, Dean knew he likely wouldn't see her until the Express home. And while that was all right, the train was going to be packed, he reckoned, and he'd wanted a bit of privacy to give her the things he had for her.

Lavender, Parvati and Romilda Vane were in the common room having a whispered, giggly conversation when he came in, and he walked by with barely a word, hardly noticing Parvati's sidelong glance as he passed. He wasn't cognizant of anything, really, as he made his way to his room.

He thought maybe a quick kip would set him to rights, especially since the others were probably out of the room but not even the prospect of uninterrupted rest lessened his disappointment and impatience. Sighing, he opened his door and stopped dead when Seamus bounded up out of nowhere, like a great, ruddy puppy

"Oi, there you are! Have you heard the news?"

Dean paused in the doorway, taken aback by the note of excitement in his voice. Looking around, he saw that they were alone and Dean felt his stomach drop to his toes. He couldn't say why, but he just knew it was bad news. Someone else they knew had been hurt by the war. Another person's parent or aunt or friend. Dead or disappeared, maybe forever ...

He braced himself in the doorjamb and took a deep breath. "W-what happened?"

"Remember how we couldn't figure out why Weasley threw over a bird like Lavender?" Seamus asked. "Well, he didn't! Nev said he heard Parvati telling Padma that Lavender got sick of Weasley putting her off for Granger. What'd I tell you? I told you those two were going to get off together before year's end! I wish we'd put a few Galleons on it."

Dean had been holding himself still as if waiting for a physical blow, but upon processing Seamus's "news," he nearly slumped to the floor in relief. He didn't think he would be able to completely relax until he'd seen Luna or at least was told where she was, but maybe for now, things being what they were in the Wizarding world, no news was good news.

"That's it? It's not a big surprise to me. Ginny had told me a long time ago that Ron really didn't fancy Lavender that much."

"Crikey, he's barking," said Seamus, shaking his head in disgust. "When Granger does something with her hair, she's not bad, but Lavender's one of the fittest birds in this school! Guess Weasley's following his sister, yeah? Hang about with someone for a bit until they get tired and then jump onto the next one."

Dean bristled. "I don't know about Weasley and Lavender, but Ginny did fancy me. And trust me, mate, I'd know more about that than you would."

He hadn't meant to sound so cross, especially since he knew that Seamus was just trying to be a good friend and all. Dean opened his mouth to apologize, but Seamus's hearty laugh stopped him cold.

"Yeah, I guess that's true enough. Can't win 'em all, I guess. There's something going on with the birds in this house, but I couldn't start to tell you what it is."

He walked over to Dean and dropped a book onto his bed. "'Ere, thanks for letting me borrow it, but I'm not gonna have a chance to read it before summer. Slughorn's gone completely mad with that bloody essay we have to turn in."

Dean glanced down at the book and recognized a rare graphic novel his mum and dad had gotten him for Christmas that year. Though it was one of his favorites, he'd forgotten all about it and he noticed with some annoyance that it looked a little worse for the wear.

"You've had it all this time?"

"Eh, sorry." Seamus shrugged. "I didn't want you to think I nicked it or anything. I was gonna give it back."

"I suppose I should just be glad that the front cover's not completely torn off." Dean took up the book and flipped through it. As he reached the end, a stiff piece of white paper fell out and floated to his feet. He looked down and his heart leapt into his mouth.

No ... it couldn't be ...

Hardly aware that he was holding his breath, Dean bent and picked the paper up, doing a silent count to three before he flipped it over.

Bloody hell ... it is!

"Uh, Seamus?" Dean fought hard to keep his voice from trembling. "You, um ... you never opened this book?"

"Nah. I told my mam I'd make up for my O.W.L. marks by studying harder," Seamus said. "I just threw it in my trunk and forgot about it. Why?"

"Nothing." Dean hunkered down beside his bed, holding the paper tight against his chest. "Uh ... thanks. I, um, I'm glad you remembered."

"Eh, no problem, mate." Seamus stretched and went to the door. "I'm going to try to get Potions sorted. You feel like a game of Exploding Snap, come down to the common room."

Dean just nodded and let out a great, whooping breath when Seamus closed the door behind him. His trembling hands clasped the paper and he looked everywhere but at it for several seconds. He remembered now; he'd wanted to show Ginny that book because one of the heroines was a tall redheaded woman with big brown eyes. He was going to give her the painting that day and had shoved it into the book so he'd remember. But she got busy with Quidditch and then with schoolwork, and then ...

He shook his head and his brain and eyes cleared at the same time as he looked down at his work.

The young woman in the portrait was smiling in a confident, offhanded way. She was on her side, her head resting near a bright-red Quidditch ball, one arm curved over her hip. Aside from a pair of red-and-gold knee socks, she was nude, her breasts partially covered by her hair and a hand curved casually around her womanhood. Creamy skin was liberally dotted with freckles, though Dean wondered if he'd not been a little haphazard with them. Nonetheless it was, he reckoned, about as tasteful as could be expected from a bloke who was drawing not from memory but from fantasy.

In his mind, he could see himself alone in the Common Room hunched over the sheet of paper, his right hand tracing out the supple, lithe lines of Ginny's body and his left shielding the page from view.

He could remember how he'd pestered his mother for watercolours that were just so, and he'd still not been completely satisfied, though the socks had come out all right. In fact, looking at the thing now, he reckoned it was just about the best drawing of Ginny that he'd done, even if it weren't true to every detail.

Dean rested on his haunches, aware that his hands were shaking a little. He'd found it. Seamus had it all along. It had been around all along. All that searching, all that worry and it literally had dropped into his lap. He could barely believe it.

Dean shuddered to think how close a call he'd had. If Seamus had decided to take a look in that book, it would've been all up. Dean supposed that he could find a better hiding spot, but then, it was possible that at the time, he'd thought that the book was a good hiding spot. What if he did something similarly foolish again and forget where he put it? He might not be so lucky next time. Getting rid of the thing was the best answer. Just rip it up and be done with for good and all.

Dean wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers and grasped the edge of the paper to begin the first tear. But Luna's quiet tale of her father ran through his mind, and he stopped just before the paper ripped. Dean knew that it wasn't the same thing. He and Ginny hadn't been married. They'd barely even been together a year.

But looking at the picture, Dean could admit that when he'd drawn it, he had been happy, and so had Ginny. That was evident in her smile -

and in the artwork itself. Dean heard Luna's voice again, and her opinion that perhaps Ginny had wanted to return his art in part to remind him of the good times.

He understood now what Luna must have meant, because looking at the drawing, his mind didn't take him back to the common room on the night of the Quidditch Cup victory; it took him back much further, when Ginny had teased him about exaggerating and had sighed that she had an "amazing boyfriend." He'd almost forgotten that she'd said that, but she had - and then they snogged for hours.

Things had happened since he'd conceived of the drawing, but before all that - in those months that he'd turned faint pencil lines into a full-scale, recognizable piece of art - he and Ginny had been happy together. In that drawing was the tale of that stretch of happiness and contentment between them. As long as it existed, he could know that some of it hadn't been a complete waste. He held the proof in his hands.

And maybe one day all of the hurt feelings and the questions of what he'd done or hadn't done or what he'd been or hadn't been, would fall away completely and he'd be able to remember only the Ginny of his sketches, the Ginny who had fancied him, who snogged him, whom he had fun with - who had fun with him. Because that had existed, too.

Quietly, he rose and went over to his trunk. Muttering the unlocking charm, Dean gave the picture a long, last glance before placing it under the stack of drawings Ginny had returned to him.

Shutting the chest again, Dean took a deep breath, and recalled their last talk in the common room. Ginny's This is nice ... comment seeped through the jumbled filters in his brain and he paused. Had it been nice? For him, anyway?

After a second of thought, Dean finally answered that it really hadn't been ... bad. Though there was still something that twinged in his gut every time he saw Ginny aim that sweet, lopsided smile at Potter, it was twinging less and less these days. He supposed that's how it went, getting over a broken heart.

Dean ruminated on that for awhile and had a sudden thought that he needed a bit of air. Seeing that drawing again had sucked some of it out the room, and anyway, he had a good bit to think about, now.

XIV.

Dean found himself near the lake again, and, after checking cursorily for snogging redheads, he sat down and just stared at the water for awhile. Everything was so quiet and still, and he thought that maybe he should try take advantage of the silence and try to work on his "Fantasy Medieval Castle." There was no way that he'd be able to finish in time for the deadline, but he could keep plugging away at it anyway. If he did a decent job on it, maybe he could include it in his next portfolio.

For lack of anything else to do, he flipped to the page where he'd started the castle, and he looked at his progress, not really feeling that spark of inspiration. The turrets were uneven and the moat looked like a lumpy snake. He thought it might look better when he went over the outline in ink, but the sight of it was a little depressing, in a way. Dean heard a noise and looked around expectantly, but there was no one there. He strained his ears for any sound at all, exhaling loudly when he heard nothing.

Grimacing a little, he flipped through more pages in the book, frowning at some sketches and smiling at some others. When he got to his completed sketch of Luna, he stopped, wondering if he should keep it after all, for his portfolio, and just give her the other thing. He'd gotten rather attached to the drawing. Besides it being about the nicest portrait work he'd done in some time, there was just something about it that made him smile every time he saw it.

"Hello."

Dean jumped and looked around, his heart going like mad. Luna was standing right next to him, staring at him placidly. He glanced up and his mouth fell open. A quite large frog was tangled in the blonde strands, looking a bit bored and bloated.

"Hey!" It took him a moment to realise that he wasn't hallucinating or dreaming. It really was her - right there in front of him, at last.

And with another bloody frog! How does she get them to stay like that?

"You're here! I've ..." been searching everywhere for you - He paused and racked his brain for something to say that wouldn't make him appear so mental. "I heard you were sick -"

"Yes. Madam Pomfrey said something in the Cockroach Clusters made my throat close to the size of a pin!" She sounded impressed. "I think it's just as well. I was getting rather sick of them anyway."

"Right, but um, why're you out here?" he asked. "I thought Madam Pomfrey told you to get some more rest so you'd be in good nick for O.W.L.s, and that."

"Madam Pomfrey also told me that she didn't believe the studies that show valerian root is a prime cause of scalp canker in wizards over 50. So I don't really think that taking her advice on anything would be advisable, though she was quite nice while I sick." Luna stared at him. "You saw Madam Pomfrey? When?"

"Today. To see you. I ... I didn't know you were there at first, but Ginny told me," he mumbled, staring at the ground. "But by the time I got down there, you'd already gone."

"Ginny visited yesterday," she said musingly. "And Harry was with her. It was very nice, though I would have liked to have seen you, too."

"Well, I'm glad they were there for you. You deserved at least that." Dean lifted his head a little. "Are you sure you're feeling better? Maybe we should go inside somewhere and sit down -"

"No thank you. This is very nice," she said. "I think I've been indoors quite enough lately. Though I was in the library a little while ago. I thought I might see you there."

"What? You were looking for me there?" Dean nearly bent over laughing. "Cor, you're kidding me! I was looking round for you just a minute ago!"

"You were?"

"Yeah!" Dean's laughter died away when he thought of the library and what they'd lost. "Uh ... I guess you know that Pince found 'the place.'"

He frowned, feeling a bit ashamed that he'd substituted 'the' for 'their.' It wasn't as if it was something ... weird. It was kind of cool, actually, to have something that was just ... theirs.

"I know. I supposed she would, but I'd hoped for a little while longer," Luna said with a lingering sigh. "It was fun while it lasted."

"Yeah ... it was. I missed the canary creams," Dean said with a smile, grinning wider when Luna raised an eyebrow at him. "Um ... how's everything else? Is your dad, uh, y'know ... okay? I've been watching for news of him, but nothing."

"Oh yes, he's fine. The howler was traced. It was sent by someone in the Department of Magical Sports and Games who's angry that Dad hasn't run a retraction on the story that the Holyhead Harpies have been sneaking male players onto its team by using an untraceable form of Polyjuice."

Dean grinned. Of course. "Well, I'm glad to hear that it was just some wanker with too much time on his hands and not some bloodthirsty maniac."

"Oh. You don't know very many people in the Department of Magical Sports and Games, I see." Luna smiled a bit when Dean started laughing loudly. "You seem very happy today."

"I am! You're feeling better, which is great, and I found it - the thing I was looking for." He laughed again. "Would you believe that it was under my nose all this time?" Well, under Seamus's nose, really, but Dean chose not to think about that.

"Things usually are. Unless they're above your head, of course. Which can happen." Luna glanced at the sky and then looked anxiously at the water. "Did you throw it in the lake, whatever it was?"

"No, I decided not to." He looked over at her. "I thought about what you said a couple of days ago. I think you were right; if I'd gotten rid of it, I probably would have really regretted it later on."

"Sometimes losing something can be all right - when it's not your choice, that is," she intoned. "But losing something on purpose is probably the worst thing in the world. I hope you're never sad enough to want to lose something important on purpose."

"Yeah, I hope so, too." But even as Dean said it, he reflected on how funny it all was, in a way. All those days of running himself spare over the drawing, and the minute that it had ceased to be the primary worry in his brain, he found it. He wondered if that's how other aspects of life worked, in general.

"Well, it was very nice seeing you," she said, beginning to turn away. "I'm sorry I disturbed you."

"What?" Dean immediately moved to block her path. "You didn't disturb me! Blimey, I've haven't seen you in three days. I want to talk to you."

"Well, you seemed busy a few moments ago. I was watching you draw. You always seem so serious when you draw. You're quite nice to watch, actually. You really should be an artist. There are things you can do to keep the Ministry from grabbing you, precautions and such, but it would take a long time to explain and newt brains are in rather short supply right now." Luna pulled at her necklace again. "I should try to revise a bit more, anyway. Goodbye."

"Wait! Don't go - yet." He grabbed her arm and turned her gently around. "I have something for you. A couple of things, actually."

Dean's gaze dropped to the grass at her stunned look, and he opened his sketchbook and passed it to her. "I drew this last week ... uh, it just came out of nowhere. Well, not really - I felt really bad about Lancelot, uh, dying and everything." He smiled weakly. "I think I owe you an apology. Frogs are pretty bloody hard to draw. I wanted to draw your whole Frog-Quidditch team, but I kept rubbishing up the lines."

He forced himself not to look at her, but after several long seconds, her silence became unsettling and he darted a look sideways. Luna's head was tilted gently down so as not to upset her visitor, and her hair shaded the side of her face like a curtain.

"Is this me?"

"Yeah. Uh, you and Lancelot." Dean gripped his pencil. "I want to put in all your other frogs, too, eventually. You know, your old Frog-Quidditch team. I think it might make a nice picture. And you'd have something to remember them by."

"I think it already is nice," she said, looking at him with wide, unblinking eyes. "You've made me pretty."

"Um ..." Dean knew that Luna would never make the "fanciable birds" list that was floating among the Gryffindor boys. She was just too ... different for most of them. The frogs alone, in fact, put her in a different category altogether. But then, most of the blokes in that school lacked a good imagination, Dean reckoned. There was something about Luna that made the protuberant eyes and lank blonde hair very appealing. Her eyes especially, were lovely. There was a dreamy intelligence there that was very reassuring. Soothing, too.

"I always draw people the way I see them," he said, motioning toward the page. This is how I see you, and if you think that I've made you pretty it's because I think that you are."

Dean coughed a little at her slight smile. "Uh, and I have something else for you."

Hesitating for just a second, he took the sketchbook back, took a fortifying breath as he flipped forward a few pages, and held it as Luna looked down. When he saw he already large eyes go huge as an owl's, Dean very seriously considered running. Maybe he'd gone a bit far - after all, he wasn't very sure that Luna, for all her talk of happiness and contentment would appreciate his having done something like that. Maybe he should have asked her first, or at least dropped a few hints.

He was just about to stammer out an explanation when Luna fixed him with an unreadable gaze.

"It's Mummy," she said in a soft voice.

Encouraged, Dean went to her side and peered over her shoulder at his special project. A slender witch with a round face and a long braid of hair stared out from the page, a faraway look in her large eyes. She was sitting in a chair that looked like an upturned cauldron and in one hand she clutched a length of unrolled parchment that draped over her dress and tapered down to the edge of the page.

"Yeah, I ... um, saw a picture of her in an old Prophet." Dean decided not to elaborate on just what the article was about, but he was sure that Luna knew exactly what it was. "That scroll in her hand? That's your Dad's poem. You, uh, said that she'd read it once." He tugged at the sleeves of his robes. "I sort of bodged the scroll, but I wanted to make the point that it was pretty long."

He shifted from one foot to the other as the silence spun out between them. "Do you ... like it? If you don't, I understand. It might be -"

"- It's beautiful," she said in as quiet a voice as Dean had ever heard her use - even when they'd been in "their place" in the library. "But why would you do something like this?"

As soon as she asked it, Dean was aware that he'd expected the question - but he hadn't any bloody idea how to answer it. Because if he answered it honestly, that might open the door to a conversation that he'd been putting off with himself since Luna had gone "missing." It was a conversation he knew he needed to have, and wanted to have, but there was the question of what it would all mean and was he even supposed to notice how comfortable he was with another girl? Especially so soon after Ginny? Especially when that girl was Luna Lovegood? And what would it mean if, when he thought about it really hard, he would realise that he'd stopped giving a damn about all that quite a while ago?

"Well, you said you don't have any picture of your mum here at Hogwarts, and I thought that might work, though it's not perfect. I did it the Muggle way, after all. I wish I had more time to add more to it, but I wanted you to have it before O.W.L.s." He looked out toward the lake and tried to compose himself.

"And I wanted some way to thank you, too," he went on, gnawing his bottom lip. "That ... thing I thought I lost? I probably would've given up on it, and that - it would've been bad. But you wouldn't let me. Just like you won't let your dad give up looking for the poem he wrote for your mum." Dean nodded at the pages she held. "And that drawing was the one thing I could do that had a chance of meaning something to you."

"It means a great deal to me. This is the loveliest thing anyone has ever done for me," she said, pressing the parchment to her chest. "You're really going to let me keep both of these?"

"'Course I am!" He pulled a mock-anxious face. "Well, as long as you promise not to throw 'em back in my face later if you ever get hacked-off at me."

"I would never do that," Luna said softly. Dean wondered if she meant that she'd never throw them at him or she'd never get hacked-off at him. But soon he wasn't thinking about it anymore because after a short pause, she stood on tiptoe and gently kissed his forehead.

"You are quite wonderful, Dean."

Dean's skin buzzed where her lips had touched it and he kept quiet, sure that if he spoke at that moment he wouldn't be able to hear himself above his own heartbeat. Then something occurred to him.

"You just called me Dean."

Luna looked at him quizzically. "Yes ... that's your name."

"Yeah, I know that," he said with a grin. "But you've been calling me 'Dean Thomas,' remember? Not just Dean."

"Oh." She closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she next looked at him, she was blushing slightly.

"I think I would like to call you just Dean now."

His own cheeks growing warmer, he nodded slowly. "I think ... I'd like that. A lot."

The frog in Luna's hair suddenly began to tremble. Luna held her head very still and tugged on a few strands of hair, which seemed to settle the thing down.

"Er, got another one I see," Dean said, nodding toward the frog. "Seems nice."

"Oh yes. This is Grupert. He's a bit heavy, but quite friendly." Luna's eyes rolled up toward the creature. "I'll never forget Lancelot now, thanks to you." She tapped Dean's sketch. "So I suppose it was past time for me to try another frog."

Dean nodded thoughtfully. "Where'd you find it?"

"He found me," Luna said, pointing toward the lake. "Over there, just a few minutes ago. It happens that way sometimes, you know."

She stopped talking again, and they held each other's gaze for what seemed like years. Dean cleared his throat again, wondering how it'd gotten so bloody dry suddenly.

"Y'know, it's sort of shame there aren't any more Hogsmeade weekends this year," he said finally. "We could've gotten a Butterbeer or ... something."

"Oh. Yes. That would have been very nice." Her blush was growing more pronounced, and interestingly, Dean thought that it made her even prettier.

"I reckon there's always next year," he said casually, then brightened. "Or - maybe when we get the Express back at the end of term. Maybe we could, ah, sit together? Y'know, only if you wanted to."

"I would like that very much." She looked vaguely concerned. "But your friends might not."

He frowned for a moment, wondering what she could be on about. The only person he sat with on regular basis was Seamus and whatever bit of fluff he was trying to chat up. But once Seamus got a few cauldron cakes in him, he fell fast asleep until the Express pulled into King's Cross.

"I don't think that'll be a worry," he said with a lopsided smile. "And if it is, well, there're other places they can sit."

Her response was that was quite satisfactory: another smile and another kiss - on the tip of his nose, this time. Dean wished he had something else to say that might provoke a similar reaction, because as it was, she seemed to be working her way down his face and that really left only one other place for her to kiss.

"Hey, there's something else I'd wondered, and, uh, you can say no, if you want, but I could use another drawing for my Muggle portfolio. I'm going to turn it in after exams." He paused. "Do you suppose you'd have time to sit for me?"

Luna's eyebrows shot up. "You would draw me again? On purpose?"

"Sure. I've never really had someone pose for me before. It'd be good practice." Dean ducked his head a little. "It'd be quick, since you're just getting better, and there are O.W.L.s day after tomorrow."

She looked at him in silence for a moment and then gestured toward the nearest greenhouse. "Can we go there? If you don't mind, I think I'd like to pose standing on my head, and the aroma of Gurdyroot helps me keep my balance. It also helps Grupert sleep, since it reminds him so much of the water."

Dean stared. "Standing ... on your head? Are you sure you're, uh, feeling all right enough to do that?"

"Of course. Besides, standing on your head rouses the creative elements in the blood and they all rush to the brain. Which is where they're needed, of course."

"Uh ... I suppose. But I'm the one who's going to be doing the sketching."

"I know. But I don't think you'd be able to stand on your head and hold the book in place and draw at the same time." She gave him a searching look. "So I suppose I'll have to stir up the creative juices on your behalf."

She walked off in the direction of the greenhouses, murmuring endearments to Grupert as she went. With a slow shake of his head and a grin, Dean followed, certain that with Luna stirring up the creative juices "on his behalf," he had a good chance of producing a masterpiece.

END

Author's note: Thank you to everyone who read and commented on this story. It meant a lot! Long live Dean/Luna!