Summary: The summer the Dursleys were killed. HP/LL

Disaster seemed to be around every corner for the boy with the lightening-shaped scar named Harry Potter. Death and rubble and suspicious eyes seemed to follow him. Even muggles around Number 4 Privet Drive would stare out their windows with glares when he walked down the street. At first, he thought I'm just being paranoid.

Until he returned from the park one day to find a crowd of people staring at him, frightened and accusing and a pile of snapped wood and broken glass where Number 4 had been.

He could barely see them, but he knew his aunt, uncle and cousin were buried in that mess that used to be a house and that it wasn't some random gas-leak kind of explosion that caused the house to fall to rubble as it had. They were following him. They had found him: the Death Eaters. Were they here now? He wasn't sure but he was a little frightened, though not exactly upset that the family who'd treated him so dismally was dead.

He was still more upset about Dumbledore's demise, and that had happened a few weeks before, when the school he went to—a wizarding school named Hogwarts in what seemed like The-Middle-of-Nowhere, England—was still in session.

But at the moment, everyone was looking at him, expecting him to be surprised or at least sad that the family had perished because of him. Of course he was upset that this had been his fault, but other than that, he was just a little angry that they had found him so quickly.

Mrs. Figg emerged from the crowd and murmured that he wasn't safe out in the open and that he should be lucky he'd decided to take a walk when he did as she shuffled him away from the glaring mob and into her house. She shook her head, murmuring to herself about what needed to be done. She knew he had no godparents—not anymore—and that sending him to the Burrow was far to obvious.

She left the room. She needed to contact a few people.

How had this happened, wondered Harry as he lugged his trunk through Ottery St. Catchpole and right past the Burrow. All of the Weasleys were huddled by the window with frowns on their faces, watching him walk right past their home, waving.

Harry made a sour face, his lip curling down, his eyebrow raised, an expression that screamed, 'Why did you let this happen?!' as his the wheels of his trunk clunk-clunked against rocks that were settled quite deep in the dirt of the road he trotted down.

Harry wasn't sure about the why or the how of the whole matter. All he wondered was how he was going to survive the summer as he stopped in front of a quaint little cottage of a house and knocked on the door. What Harry really wanted to know was how he was going to keep his sanity about him as a girl with dreamy silver eyes and blonde hair that had grown past her waist answered the door with a far-away smile.

"Hello, Harry."

However, for some reason, Harry had to smile and tilt his head curiously at the girl with the radish earrings.

"Hello, Luna."

This was the beginning of a very long summer.

"Another attack. Really, are people bloody blind? Voldemort is killing people right in front of their eyes and they're just smiling and going about playing bloody cricket or some such nonsense!" Harry heard Hermione squealing one morning, a few days after arriving. He opened his blinds to see Ron and Hermione making their way down the dirt path that stretched for miles from one end of Ottery St. Catchpole to the other.

Now they were coming up the stone walkway to Luna's home and Harry jumped out of bed and started to get dressed. Knowing he could do nothing with his unruly mop of jet black hair, he just grabbed his shoes and glasses and headed straight for the living room, where he saw Mr. Lovegood dictating his newest article of The Quibbler to a typewriter that seemed to be working of its own accord.

Harry hoped all the strange articles in the magazine weren't due to the typewriter, as he'd seen that objects magicked to write for themselves seemed to write lies. He smirked a little, remembering the little Rita Skeeter bug, stuck in a jar somewhere in Hermione's muggle flat.

Mr. Lovegood stopped and smiled, greeting Harry with a hello and then letting out a little yelp and telling the typewriter not to write that, to which the typewriter responded by typing again, and Harry could vaguely see that it was writing out each word of Mr. Lovegood's griping at it.

Luna came into the living room with a cup of pumpkin juice, dressed in a blue skirt and tank top with horizontal green and red stripes. She wore her trademark radish earrings and her butterbeer-cork necklace, which was just as traditional for her. Part of her hair was pulled into a ponytail, the rest hanging down and she actually looked quite nice despite being mismatched, and wearing quite radical jewelry.

She smiled that far-off smile at Harry. "Good morning, Harry."

He nodded to her in reply before there was a second and third knock on the door and Harry could hear Ron cursing outside about 'bloody Loony Lovegood' and his green eyes traveled to Luna to see if this phased her but she kept smiling that dreamy smile as she answered the door.

"Hello, Ron, Hermione. Please, come in."

Hermione rushed in, right past Luna and made a beeline for Harry, shoving the Daily Prophet in his face. "Look at this, Harry. Doesn't anyone understand the magnitude? I mean, everyone on your street was affected by the attack but it seems like no one else is! This is a bloody murderer, for cripes sake!"

"Calm down, 'Mione," Ron replied, rolling his eyes as he snatched the paper from her, folding it up. "I'm sure he doesn't want to hear about how his relatives kicked the bucket. He was there."

Harry watched them argue for a moment more and then cleared his throat and both heads swiveled to look at him, two pairs of eyes blinking at him.

"I'd really just like to get out of this house, if you don't mind. And I'd like to talk to whoever," he paused and looked at Luna before pushing both of his friends outside, his voice dropping to a whisper, "decided on this arrangement where I have to stay with someone I'm good friends with but haven't spent more than a few hours with at a time over staying with your family, Ron."

Ron blushed all the way to his ears, as he usually did in these awkward, embarrassing situations and shrugged. "Sorry, mate, I don't know who that is. But Mum might. If you want, I could ask her for you?"

"Ronald, if they wanted him to know that, they would've told him," reprimanded Hermione, before turning to Harry with a tiny smile. "Harry, I'm sure there's a good reason for you staying with Luna over the Weasleys. I'm not really sure what it is, but whoever made the decision made it in your best interest and perhaps we'd better not question it, especially since this attack was aimed at you."

She waved the newspaper at him and Harry scowled and grabbed it, ripping it in two and dumping it in the Lovegoods' garbage. "I don't really care who the attack was aimed at. If I have to stay the summer holiday at someone's home other than the Dursleys, I'd really like to stay somewhere where I'm not bored out of my mind, and kept awake at night by Mr. Lovegood dictacting an emergency article to his magicked typewriter, which tap, tap, taps rather loudly all night long!"

Hermione shushed him rather fiercely, as the door to the Lovegoods' home was still open and Luna was still standing in the exact spot she had been standing in. Really, sometimes that girl really was rather loony, but again, that smile that Harry couldn't keep down bubbled up at how she just stood there, smiling, drinking her pumpking juice, so very far from eavesdropping, even with the door swung wide open and the three friends standing only a few feet away.

Harry actually thought it was…

…cute? No. Luna was Luna. She wasn't cute, she was just…a little eccentric and that made her enjoyable company. Of course, Harry didn't know if he could take a whole summer of eccentricities. But the way her dreamy smile seemed only to be directed at him, for some reason, made him want to try.

He took a step back from his friends and waved his hand, murmuring a quick nevermind as he made his way back to the little cottage and went inside. It was then he finally noticed Luna had been holding two glasses of pumpkin juice and he took the second when it was offered to him. She waved to Hermione and Ron and then closed the door.

Ron stood there, blinking. "Is it just me or was that Harry's subtle way of rejecting me?"

"Shut up, Ron."

Hermione pulled him back down the path toward the Burrow.

Later that day, Harry almost regretted saying he didn't want to stay with the Lovegoods. Almost.

He was having fun. Mr. Lovegood had shown him his article, and then made him and Luna sundaes, covered in chocolate fudge and Berty Botts Every Flavored Beans. He'd told them both how putting the beans in ice cream kept the nargles from trying to take it. Then, he and Luna had gone for a walk in the Lovegoods expansive backyard, which had it's own Quidditch pitch and a pool the size of the Black lake.

But none of these wonderful things made him stop wishing he could be with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, their six children—because Percy had basically been disowned—and Hermione. These were his best friends—and his ex-girlfriend, Ginny, who he still felt deeply for—so of course he had every reason to want to be around him. Who had decided he had to stay with Luna and for what reason? It all puzzled him, greatly.

That night, he sat in the living room of the Lovegoods' home, staring at the fireplace, and trying to work all of these quizzical facts out in his head. He heard footsteps behind him suddenly and turned, and Luna was smiling at him, but this smile was not far-away. It was right there, in that moment and she held out a cup of cocoa to him and sat down next to him.

She did not ask him questions, or pester him. She just smiled and sat there, watching the fire with him, and Harry didn't mind her company at all.

A warm, comfortable silence settled over them as they each sipped their cocoa, they knew that this summer, though probably still long and full of tension, wouldn't be so bad after all.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine

Authoress notes: No, this is not the end, all though this could totally stand on it's own, I think. But this is not the end. I just have to formulate more plot in my noggin, because right now, there isn't really one. So yeah, love it? Hate it? Lemme know!