Christmas was odd that year, an uncanny mix of sadness and glee, both pungent and stretched to bursting. We all tried to focus on the more positive side of things. Actually, Mum tried to force the cheer down our throats, but we were all eager to go along. And really, there were so many things to be happy about: weddings and pregnancies and the holidays themselves and the simple fact that the war was over and Voldemort defeated.

But the sadness behind everyone's eyes could not be denied. While the Burrow seemed still just as crowded as ever, the people who were missing took up most of the space. Everyone saw them, everyone felt them, everyone knew they were there. Everyone felt responsible for at least one of the deaths.

I suppose Harry felt most responsible of all, for every single person who died in the war, and not just the ones he knew. But no one blamed him. He was our savior; no one would ever blame him. Except himself. Perhaps strangely, perhaps understandably, he was the happiest: he had lost the most, but he had also gained the most. I was glad he was with us, glad of the chance to see his reaction to it all on this occasion.

We all had losses that affected us more personally than others, and we all reacted differently. For the most part, those of us who survived were driven closer together, closer to someone in particular. Ron and Hermione, of course (though they didn't need a loss for that), and Harry and Ginny, who made quite a show of it, and Fred and Angelina, who never could decide what they were or weren't.

Ironically enough, it was that last combination, that loss that wasn't really a loss, that led me to her.

When you're a twin, your entire life is spent as a half. Especially in the case of Fred and myself, I would say. Some twins can achieve individuality—the Patils, for example, even ended up in different houses—but Fred and I never even considered it. Why would we want to be separate when we worked so much better together?

I think some part of us always knew, though, that as much as we were to each other, there would come a time when we would want something the other couldn't provide, someone the other couldn't be. So when Fred and Angelina got serious, well, I couldn't really hold it against him. I knew what it felt like, that desire for contact not only physical but emotional, spiritual, and complete. Fred is a big part of who I am, always will be, but there's a part of each of us that the other could never touch. It took Angelina for him, and I was thankful he had her. At least one of us could be whole, and it helped me to know that he was. It made me happy that they were together, that they could be together, really it did.

But the truth of it was that his gain, our family's gain, was my solitary loss, the loss of a part of myself, and it made me sad, and lonely, and it made me feel the absence of Lee even more sharply, as he'd been the one I'd always hung around when Fred was otherwise occupied. And now that he was gone I found myself tinkering in the shop, or more often wandering around aimlessly, losing myself in the jubilation that was Diagon Alley after the war.

And that, too, led me to her.

I think she was a little lost herself. Of course, there are those who say Luna's always been a little lost, but that's only because they don't know her. When she's herself she always knows exactly where she is, and who she is, more than anyone I've ever known. But in those days she wasn't quite herself. Neither was I, so we ended up meeting somewhere out there in space.

The first meeting I recall with her was at the Leaky Cauldron. This was in October, I think. Fred and Angelina had been holed up in the flat for hours already, and it was only lunchtime. I'd spent the morning organizing things at the shop, but really there wasn't much to be done. The war had affected Verity more than we would have guessed, as she'd had no one to lose in the first place, and she became utterly devoted to her work, cleaning and ordering and balancing and taking care of basically everything. And I was moping about, so she kicked me out, saying my attitude was bad for business (though it's beyond me how anything could have been bad for business right then—the whole world was celebrating, and we had a rather large portion of the celebratory market). But she kicked me out, and since I couldn't go back to the flat I set about my now normal meander.

I must have been in some state, because I didn't even notice the rain until it started to trickle down my pant legs into my boots. There were a lot of things I didn't notice that day.

I looked up to find myself at the end of the Alley, so I went into the Leaky to grab a bite of lunch. I dried myself off with my wand, mumbled something to Tom, who by this time knew my regular order, and slid myself into a dark booth in the corner. I didn't notice her sitting there until she spoke, despite how close I had actually sat beside her.

"Oh, hello George," she said, and I couldn't tell if it was a sigh or just that dreamy quality her voice always carried. "Can I help you?"

"Help me?" I was startled by her presence, and by my lack thereof. And due to our positions in the booth, it was painfully obvious even to me that she had been there first and that I was, in fact, the invader, so there was no way to cover my tracks. "No, I… all the other seats were taken." I looked around the room to discover it half empty.

Luna didn't seem to notice though, or didn't make any note of it if she did. "Oh," was all she said, and she turned her attention back to the latest copy of The Quibbler, on which she was scribbling notes.

"What are you doing?" I asked, and was suddenly afraid that I'd sounded too harsh, or too blunt. But that was before I knew her well.

"I'm correcting these articles. They got it all wrong."

"Wrong? Isn't that The Quibbler?" I didn't know if that meant 'Of course it's wrong!' or 'How could it be wrong if it's your paper?'

"Yes, but without my father to keep them straight, the reporters get all their facts confused." This time it was definitely a sigh. "This one says that he saw Stubby Boardman at a party thrown by one of the Weird Sisters last week, but I saw him die a couple of years ago."

"It could have been his ghost," I said without thinking. It might have been a joke, or at the very least my attempt to humour her.

She didn't think it was funny though. Her face got serious, and she pondered it for a moment, then said, "No, I don't think so. Harry never said anything about his ghost, and I'm sure he would have. I think he misses his godfather very much."

Oh. Right. That Stubby Boardman. "Good point," I answered, nodding.

A moment later Tom brought my lunch, and all of a sudden I felt very awkward at having taken over her table, but also that it would be rude of me to leave abruptly, so I asked if she would like for me to buy her some lunch as well.

"No thank you, George, I've already eaten, but you go ahead. I don't mind that you're sitting here." She looked at me with her wide, silvery eyes, and her honesty and openness were shockingly clear on her face.

"Erm…thanks, Luna." She turned back to her paper and continued taking notes, and I rather self-consciously tucked into my lunch.

When I finished eating I excused myself to pay my bill, not having any idea of what else to say to her, and when I turned around she was standing so close behind me I almost ran into her. "Where are you going, George?" she asked. "Are you going back to your joke shop?"

I hadn't really thought that far ahead, but when it came right down to it I supposed that returning to the shop was as good a course as any. "Yeah, I guess."

"Can I walk with you? It seems so colorful and happy there. I think I would like to be around that right now." Again she locked my eyes with her own, and I could see the grief that she had already accepted lying just below the surface, and felt my own, more tangible, well in my throat.

I nodded and extended my hand toward the door. She tucked her paper inside her robes for safekeeping, then headed outside without another word.

We walked in the rain, neither of us trying to hurry or block the downpour in any way. Luna would occasionally close her eyes and turn her face up to the sky and smile slightly, and while the sight of her made me want to do the very same thing, I didn't feel that it was my place, like I'd be mocking her somehow, and that was not my intent. So I watched, and we walked, and we both got willingly soaked.

I found myself mesmerized by her ability to simply be, and before we got back to the shop I surprised us both by turning her toward me with a hand on her arm, unable to stop the words that spilled out. "How can you do that? How can you smile and enjoy the rain? How can you make it stop?"

Her expression changed to a mixture of pity and curiosity. "You feel stuck, don't you, George?" Her question struck me hard, unsettling in its accuracy, and I could only nod my agreement. I don't think I really expected her to know what I was talking about. I wasn't sure I knew what I was talking about. "It doesn't go away, and you can't make it stop. But the smiling and the enjoying, that's what makes it ok," she answered, and it was the most logical answer I'd heard in a long time.

We continued our walk in silence, and she stopped in front of the shop to watch our window display cycle through its various colours, but I opened the door and ushered her in out of the rain. There were surprisingly few people there, even for such a rainy day, and Verity was behind the counter going over the legers. She looked up when we entered, and I gave her my best attempt at a smile, earning a look of confusion in return. I shook my head at her and proceeded to dry myself off as Luna did the same.

Before I finished I heard her gasp, and turned to find her gazing around in blatant wonder. "Luna, would you like me to show you around?"

"I'd like that very much, George," she answered, never losing her expression of amazement.

I spent the next hour showing her each of the items we had produced, eliciting varying responses (my explanation of the Skiving Snackboxes earned me a "Why would you want to do that?" while the fake wand that turned into a haddock sent her into a fit of raucous laughter). We worked our way around the shop, and when we made it to the back she tilted her head and looked at the black curtain hanging over the entrance to the next room with curiosity. "What's back there, George? Is that where you do all of your business things?"

It wasn't a secret what we had in the back room: our line of defensive products. And I certainly wasn't trying to hide it from her in particular, as I knew she'd not only been in the D.A. back in her Hogwarts' days but also that she'd fought in a number of battles beside Harry and the others, more than I had and at a younger age. But right then I didn't want to show her, didn't want to remind her of the war in any way, especially when she seemed to be having so much fun. "Oh, you don't want to go back there. Maybe some other time, a nicer day than today. We'll likely be shutting it down soon anyway, as I'm sure demand will drop."

She studied my face for a moment, then said, "I'm not sure there could be a nicer day than today, but you can show me when you're ready."

Suddenly I felt very foolish. "Oh, no, Luna," I stammered. "That's not what I meant. I just… the sun should be shining for such things, and the world not quite as dark."

"Oh," was her only reply.

Just then Fred bounded into the shop. "Ho, brother, what have we got here?"

Before I could open my mouth, Luna turned and answered him. "George was just showing me around your shop. It's very nice. The two of you must have a lot of interesting days here."

"Yeah, I guess you could say that," he said. He looked like he was about to continue the conversation, but Luna cut him off.

"I think I should probably go now," she announced. Turning back to me, she smiled and said, "Thank you for keeping me company this afternoon, George. I've had a nice time. Let me know when you're ready to show me what's in the back room." Then she wafted away, back into the rain.

I watched after her, caught in a sort of daze, recognizing that it had been a strangely comfortable few hours, relaxed and unassuming.

"What was that about?" Fred asked, pulling me back to my strained present.

"Oh, nothing. I ran into her at the Leaky Cauldron and she said she'd like to see the shop, so I brought her. That's all."

"Why couldn't you show her the defense stuff?"

"I don't know," I answered, pondering that very thing. "She came here to be happy, and I think I just didn't want to ruin it for her by dragging up bad memories."

"We've all got our bad memories, George," Verity added softly from her place beside the counter. "They hardly need dragging up."

I could think of no suitable reply to that.

But Fred said, "You may be right, but that doesn't mean we should mope about all day. What have you got for us to do, Verity my sweet?"

Though I wouldn't have guessed had I been asked, Verity had a list of things for us to do around the shop for the rest of the day. Mostly it was mindless tasks, and I ended up thinking about the time I had spent with Luna and what I had known about her. It didn't amount to much in either case.

But I felt some odd connection to her now, like she saw me as an individual rather than part of a set, and like she understood my grief in relation to, or perhaps because of her own. More importantly, I felt a little less lonely than I had in a good while.

That night I found myself lying awake, and my thoughts weren't quite as positive as they had been by the light of day. The thing running through my head was how I had denied Luna access to our defensive section. She had every right to see those products, as did everyone else. Any other day she could have simply wandered in and gone directly there, but the fact that I had just had lunch with her, spent some amount of time with her, however small, paying attention to how she felt and caring about how she would react… well, it changed how I felt about the situation. Obviously. She'd done so much for my mood just by being there, even if her presence was somewhat of an accident, that I felt it would have been in very bad fashion to end our visit on such a depressing note.

But the truth was that I felt guilty about denying her anything when she had been nothing but kind, welcoming, and somewhat helpful to me, even when I had done so for what I thought to be a good reason, and my brain would not let me sleep with that on my conscience. After tossing and turning well into the morning, I made up my mind that I would look for her at the Leaky Cauldron again the next day, and if I did not find her there, I would owl her and invite her to explore the rest of the shop. She could even see our office and our experimenting room if she wanted, just so there would be no hard feelings.

Again, this was before I knew her well.

But I was up unnecessarily early the next morning, and in the shop before even Verity arrived. When she came in I was whistling and manually gift-wrapping one of the fake wands to take to Luna as a peace offering. "What's got you in such a good mood?" she asked almost as soon as she saw me.

"Must there be a reason? Am I not allowed to be cheerful?" I replied with false affront.

But she didn't press the issue, merely raised an eyebrow and gave me a look of disbelief, then changed the subject. "Don't forget to mark whatever's in that box down in the inventory register. I just reconciled it last night."

"Already done, love." I flashed her a smile just as I finished tying the bow around the package. Once upon a time she had grimaced each and every time Fred or I had used this sort of endearment with her—and that's exactly why we did it—but she was so used to it now that she just rolled her eyes and went into the back to hang up her cloak.

I busied myself all morning with more menial tasks, straightening items around the shop, helping customers, whatever I could find to do. The truth was I was getting a bit nervous as the lunch hour drew nearer, and I needed to stay occupied. I couldn't have told you then what I was nervous about, specifically. Luna was just a new friend when I had lost my old ones, the gift was simply to show her I hadn't meant any offense, and I was going to show her the rest of the shop because I had been foolish for wanting to hide it from her in the first place. Why should I be nervous about that, much less excited?

At around 11:15 I could stand it no longer, so I told Verity I was off to lunch and grabbed my dragon hide jacket and the gift I had wrapped for Luna and headed off. It really was a much nicer day than the one before; the sun was at least trying to shine, and the rain had stopped for the moment, and there were people in the streets en masse. This time I didn't meander, I simply headed straight for the Leaky Cauldron.

When I arrived I told Tom to hold my order off for a bit, then looked around the room carefully for a blond head curled over a newspaper, but she wasn't there. I sat myself in a booth facing the door so I'd be sure to see when she came in, and sat the package on the table in front of me.

I sat there for about an hour before I ordered my lunch, and perhaps another 30 minutes after I finished eating with no sign of Luna. And judging from the amount of people out and about, Verity was probably cursing me for being gone so long. So, with a sigh and the decision to owl her the gift and a note as soon as I returned to the joke shop, I threw some coins onto the table and left.

While I had walked with purpose and direction on my way to lunch, my return trip was a definite wander. I was more crestfallen than I would have expected at not seeing her again, and the disappointment threatened to send me back into the previous morning's melancholy.

But then there she was, sitting at a table outside of Florian Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, which had only recently been reopened by a nephew of the former proprietor, licking a very large ice cream cone and holding The Quibbler up in front of her so she could read at the same time.

As I approached her, I saw even more red markings on the paper than there had been the day before, and as I watched her she dropped it back to the table to make more corrections. I hadn't thought about it before, but it occurred to me then that editing The Quibbler on her own was perhaps her way of dealing with her father's death, another reason she was able to smile.

"Hello, Luna," I said from behind her, hoping to surprise her. Again I say, this was before I knew her well.

"Hi, George," she replied without looking up. "Did you come looking for me?"

"Well, uh, yeah," I said, moving around the table to see her more directly. "I thought I'd show you the rest of the joke shop today. It is a bit brighter out, after all."

She finally stopped writing and looked up at me with a wide smile. "Yes, it is at that."

"And I brought you something." I flourished the slender box in front of me, then sat it down on top of her paper. "To apologise."

She looked at the box quizzically. "For what?"

I had more wits about me this time, and I gestured to the chair across from her and waited for her to nod before I sat. "I'm very sorry I didn't show you the rest of the shop yesterday. It was rude of me, and there was no reason for me to keep it from you." She just stared at me, so I rambled on, unable to stop. "I know that you're a very talented witch, and you have every right, more right than most, actually, to see our line of defensive products. You've done more to protect us than almost anyone, really, and it wasn't right of me to keep you out. So I'm sorry, and I want to take you there and show you everything this afternoon, if that's alright with you."

"Your defensive products?" she asked without changing her expression.

"That's what behind the black curtain in our shop. I just thought that showing you yesterday might, you know, bring up bad memories or something, and I was having such a nice time I didn't want to ruin it. But it's not like either one of us is bound to forget, so there's no reason to try to hide it, right?" I knew I was rambling, but I couldn't help it.

"You had a nice time?" Somehow I managed to notice that her voice was ever so slightly higher than normal, her eyes slightly wider, and I realised that this is what Luna Lovegood looks like when she is surprised.

"Yes, Luna, I did," I replied, looking her straight in the eye. "And I'd like the chance to do it again."

Over the course of the next two months, Luna and I "ran into" each other more often than one could reasonably attribute to coincidence. There were times when I would go looking specifically for her and I'd find her somewhere random, the bookstore or Madam Malkin's or the Owl Emporium. But there were more times when I wasn't looking but she was there anyway. Once I even saw her at Gringotts. Sometimes I wonder if those were the days that she was looking for me.

But it doesn't really matter, because, in the end, I think we were looking for each other the whole time.

So we spent more time together, got to know each other a little better, had someone just to talk to whenever we needed without being judged. I learned to navigate her peculiar sense of humour, and somehow altered mine to suit hers better. Fred and I had always been jokesters, always done anything for a laugh, always loved the very sound of it, but her laughter was simply intoxicating, loud and unabashed and just a little mad around the edges. As the days went on, I found myself craving that laughter, and I'd do anything to hear it.

Of course I didn't admit any of that to myself at the time. At the time she was a friend, a flicker of light in my dismal days, an escape from my grief and my loneliness, and I hoped I was the same for her. She was someone to talk to and a source of peculiarity.

And then it was Christmas, and things changed.