It was art that brought them together. Charms and wizarding art. Most of their relatives and friends did not understand. It seemed like a waste to them, spending one's time studying something with such a limited opportunity for future advancement. Why get a High Degree in something if one will never be able to make a living with it?
Louis' parents fretted more that Lysander's. Luna and Rolf were not particularly judgmental people. After all, they made a living on the existence of oddities and the approach they took to their own field of study was not exactly orthodox. But for Louis it was different. His father had a lucrative career, as did most of his aunts and uncles, something serious and stable.
But neither of them cared. Art was simply too beautiful, too fascinating to not engage in. Even muggle art could be entrancing, not to mention what it could become with magic. So they found themselves amongst art and charms books, exchanging wand for brush and brush for wand, between canvases and parchment scrolls. They found each other in the watery sunrises and bleeding sunsets they portrayed, floating in paints and ghosting through the after-light of cast charms.
"I must be the shame of Slytherin," Lysander said once, regarding his new paint pallet. "Not an inkling of ambition in me."
Louis smiled indulgently at him. "Of course there is, it just…takes another form. Besides, if you're the shame of Slytherin, I must be the shame the Ravenclaw."
Lysander snorted. "Please. You even manage to make art into a science with your precise angles and strokes. You measure everything out, plan it, study it. When I paint I just…paint." He gestured vaguely with one arm.
Louis wrapped his arms around his boyfriend's waist and pressed his nose into Lysander's shoulder. "It's best that way. We even each other out. Remember that lecture about contrasting colors? It's like that."
Lysander sank into the embrace, nodding slightly. "Like that," he echoed.
And so they drew and painted and charmed and fell in love among the colors.