Written for Assignment 1 for Flying Lessons, over at Hogwarts. The prompt for this chapter was 'beginnings', and I also used the prompt: people are watching the stars in the story.

Words: 1157

Recovery

Luna would never forget the first time they had kissed. It was only a month ago, but she knew even then that she would remember it in her old age as fresh as yesterday.

Crowds had gathered in the park to watch the shower of shooting stars, each one a wish yet to be made, a dream yet to be realised. Luna was not watching the stars. She'd done her fair share of wishing, on shooting stars and dandelion seeds, birthday candles and pennies thrown into wells. She couldn't count the wishes she had made. She could count the ones that had come true on one hand. People had still died; love had still been lost; she had still been afraid.

Instead, she watched the candlelight as it danced in his eyes, and smiled. He was the boy who had lost everything in the fire, time and time again, and she was here to save him. It felt like exactly what she'd been put here to do when his fingers wrapped themselves around hers. When they kissed, there were no fireworks, no dancing lights. Instead, the world around them faded to nothingness, black and cold beside their warmth. There was nothing but the two of them, their lungs, their hearts, their lips. Barty and Luna.

It had taken them many long weeks to get to that kiss, but they could finally say now that they were at the beginning of something. A month later, it still felt like they were. They were still getting to know themselves as much as each other. It was as though they were each two people, in many ways. Before The War them, and After The War them. It was no secret that it was Barty who had changed the most.

He had been threatened with the Dementor's Kiss - the Daily Prophet had even announced that he had suffered its touch - but the Healers of St Mungo's had carried out a psychological analysis and ruled that course of action out of the question. Instead, he'd been treated in a private ward for various mental illnesses. Narcissistic Personality Disorder was chief amongst them, alongside episodes of deep psychosis. But he was on the mend, and they released him. Then he met Luna.

Her light met his dark; her vivacity met his listlessness. Both calmed and excited the other. Both were scared of the unknown, and drawn towards it. It took them six months to get to that kiss.

A month later, on a Saturday morning, the fear was still there.

"The news on a Saturday is always different to the news during the week," Luna mused after swallowing a mouthful of her cereal.

"That's because the office drones read the news at weekend. Wouldn't want to scare the ones with the money too much. The poor, unfortunate souls without jobs are attracted to the horror of the darker stories. Keeps 'em buying," Barty commented, smirking.

"You don't always have to be so melodramatic," Luna reminded him.

"They've corrupted you, too. I hear enough of that from those blasted Healers. I thought I could be myself in my own home," he sneered. Luna froze, for just a moment, before she settled.

"I'm only trying to help, dear. There are more ways of thinking than yours," she told him.

"Rich, coming from you. The girl who condemns men she has never met as evil. My old friends, as a matter of fact. What makes them the evil ones, and you the saint?" he asked, taking a slow sip of his coffee.

"Nothing," Luna said. "Nothing but the fact of which side won." She looked away from him, staring out of the window as she thought. "That's how history works, isn't it?"

Barty looked shocked for a moment, her reaction not being what he expected. He could no longer find his voice.

"Have you taken your potions yet, dear?" Luna asked, smiling a little.

He looked away. "Not yet."

"I'll go and get them for you."

That was how things had settled between them, what comfort began to mean. At that kitchen table, over breakfast, they were safe. The outside world did not agree.

Luna wouldn't tell him, but her job at The Quibbler was at risk. People condemned her choice of bedfellow, and with that came questions about her very integrity, her reliability, her allegiances. They did not care for the long nights she had spent alone, staring at her own ceiling, feeling nothing. They did not care what the war had done to her, and how much she needed him. They only cared for the war itself - not what had come after.

Barty wouldn't tell her, but he was terrified of leaving the house. He had attempted to go outside for a smoke, and was overwhelmed with such panic and dread, shaking and unable to catch a breath, that he'd locked the door tight and had to sit down. The worst of it was that the fear wasn't irrational. He was hated and vilified by the majority of the Wizarding community, and they did not hesitate to let him know.

The first time he had experienced it was on a trip to the local shop to buy milk. He thought the area of London he lived in was perfectly muggle, exactly the kind of area he wanted to recover in. But that was before he saw them. A perfectly ordinary family, by any accounts, stood at the till. The father was struggling with his coins as Barty walked by; an oblivious onlooker might have mistaken him for a foreigner. His wife caught sight of Barty first, gasping as she grasped her husband's sleeve. Barty froze in fear, trying to remember what the Healers had taught him about breathing and controlling his thoughts - it all went out the window when the man rounded on him.

"You. Murder, torture, manipulation. The horrors you have inflicted! And they let you walk free," he said, spitting on Barty's jacket with venom in his words. Barty tried to back away, but he felt his shoulders against the cold glass of the shop window. The son started it, with a tomato. But once the first item was thrown, they all joined in. It briefly crossed Barty's mind that they would have done worse if not surrounded by muggles.

When he'd got home, he hadn't said a word. Luna still didn't know. He'd sat awake all night, wondering what had become of him. The great Barty Crouch Junior, reduced to a quivering wreck.

They both knew that the other kept secrets, as well as they knew they kept them themselves. But that was okay. Their secrets made them feel safe, secure. They couldn't speak of them. But that meant neither of them could speak of their fear that their secrets would prove to be the death of them.

They supposed that nothing would tell but time.