It was deceptively uneventful in Shell Cottage; the spring weather was mild enough for a picnic, and the residents of the house were usually quiet. If he didn't know better, Dean wouldn't have guessed there was a war on. It was easy to miss, but it was there in the whispered conversations that Bill and Fleur would have when they thought no one could hear, in the way Hermione hissed at Harry and Ron (the words "Gringotts" and "sword" stuck out more than anything), in the nightmares that made Luna toss and turn every night until he stroked her forehead.
For the first few weeks, there wasn't much to do except recover. There had been plenty of that to go around.
Dean and Luna spent days at a time doing nothing but listening to the Wizarding Wireless and making art, sometimes making small talk but often enough working in silence. Dean would draw, and Luna would paint. He marveled at the way she could paint from scratch, with minimal or no sketches to guide her. Her art was strange, but he liked it.
On a pleasant April morning, Luna gave Dean a small portrait of him on thick paper, sketched out in light charcoal marks and enchanted to smile out of its dainty frame. He waved at the tiny version of himself, and it waved back, beaming. His heart started to beat faster, and he recognized the feeling - he really liked Luna.
At lunch, he asked her if she'd ever read Loony Nonby, but it turned out the only comic she'd ever read was Martin Miggs. It had turned her off to the whole idea, but she said she was willing to give the medium a second chance if he liked it that much. The butterflies in his stomach fluttered helplessly.
That night, he stayed up late poring over some Loony Nonby issues that Bill had brought back from the Burrow. By the time that Ollivander had whispered, Nox, Dean had decided that Loony Nonby v.s. Cornish Pixie was probably the most representative of the series and a good place for Luna to start.
Since he didn't have a wand of his own, Dean couldn't enchant any of his pictures for her, but he didn't really mind. He grew up without magical art, and he could work without it. In the second half of April, he found himself doing strange art - Luna Lovegood as a fish, Voldemort as Darth Vader but reimagined as an insect king - and he liked that she didn't tilt her head and squint like most people did. (Like Hermione did, if he was telling the truth, and usually she followed it up with "Oh, isn't that interesting.")
Luna wasn't afraid to ask what he meant if she didn't know, but often enough, she did know.
This became painfully clear one night in late April, when he showed her a piece he'd begun of a bright-haired mermaid lounging face-up on a sandbar, smirking and drinking deeply from a vial. She'd made some comments on the shading - he could always count on her to point out the shading - and then did the unspeakable, tilting her head and squinting.
"Why is she drinking a love potion?" Luna asked.
Dean flushed.