Chapter One — The Lunar Calendar


Story Summary: Both of them still affected by the war, Harry and Luna decide to escape Wizarding Britain and to travel around the world for a year, in which they find out more about themselves and the world around them.

Expectations: This story will not feature a Seer or all-knowing Luna. I never liked that characterization, personally. I just write her as an intelligent, wise, perceptive, and open-minded person. This story will also take place a year following the war's end. I am also blatantly ignoring the epilogue here. Harry and Ginny are not a couple, though Hermione and Ron are. It will also not be uploaded as frequently as either Serpentine Advice or Fellowship of the Potters, my two main stories. Each chapter will roughly correspond to a stop in their journeys together. It will also be a romance-focused story, unlike my previous two projects.

Important Note: I have a Discord server! There, you will be able to talk to me, ask questions, and read chapters before they come out. There should always be at least one chapter on Discord that is yet to be published on FFnet. The next chapter of Fellowship of the Potters, A Legacy of Shame, is already available. I expect you there! Link in my profile.

Similarly, I have a P*R*T*N account, where you can gain access to even earlier access chapters, among other rewards. There, you can also see the long-term plans I have regarding the Harry Potter universe to create a world-building effort for other authors. No chapter I ever write will be found behind a paywall, and you are under no obligation to support me, but I will appreciate those who do. Link in my profile.

Serpentine Advice: If you enjoy this story, please consider reading my other main story, Serpentine Advice, which covers a Harry Potter discovering and learning from a portrait of Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets.


"If someone asks for me/ Tell them I will only return/ After I find myself." ~ Angenor "Cartola" de Oliveira, Brazilian songwriter and musician, in "Preciso me Encontrar".


Harry couldn't hear anything. Some manner of spellfire had exploded the stone wall near him, and the sound of the impact had dazed him far more than the heavy stone fragments shooting out of the explosion. He could only hear a constant buzzing sound near his ear, and its high pitch was agonizing. He had been held under the Cruciatus for several minutes on more than one occasion, but he couldn't for the life of him just raise his head and see what was happening in front of him. Well, he knew what was in front of him. The same things that had always been in his wake. Destruction, chaos, and violence, all of which coalesced on and orbited around his existence, as if he was a bad omen for the people closest to him.

Where was he? Ah, Hogwarts. The Courtyard.

Lavender Brown had just died at the hands of Fenrir Greyback. She had trusted Harry to protect her, as did everyone else in this battle. He had trained her in the DA a few years back, but it evidently hadn't been enough. Maybe he should have taught her better spells, instead of focusing so much effort on the Patronus. Or perhaps, someone else was better suited for teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts to the other students than him. He couldn't think of anyone who would have done a messier job than he had at the moment.

In fairness, at that exact moment, he couldn't much think of anything with the damned noise almost deafening him. His hands were over his ears, and he tried to open and close his jaw to make his eardrums pop, but all it did was adjust the level of the pitch tormenting him. He resisted the urge to fall to his knees in frustration, but the noise was so dominating that he couldn't even process what he was seeing.

Hermione cast a Protego, stopping a spell that was headed towards Harry's torso. She knocked into him, sending him out of his daze, though the agonizing noise did not die out.

She cast a spell that felled the Death Eater attacking Harry with a vicious snap of her wand, her hair flying about as it did whenever she was angry and righteous. Harry suspected that she was feeling guilty about not appreciating Lavender enough while the blonde girl had been her Housemate, and blamed herself for her death. Which was silly, really. What did Hermione have to do with the girl's death?

However, when his friend turned to him, he was struck with the realization that Hermione was angry with him. He would have recoiled from the look of anger in her eyes if he had the time, but she was upon him faster than he could track in his addled state.

"Harry, what are you doing?" She shrieked, shaking his shoulders roughly, though her voice seemed distant through the fog settling in his mind. When he did nothing but moan at the effect that her voice was having on the buzzing in his head, her anger and frustration turned to concerned fear. "Harry?"

He couldn't answer her. He tried, but he simply couldn't. Every time he opened his mouth the pitch would rise until it defeated him, leaving him half-stunned and panting with pain. He tried to focus on the things around him, remembering that he was in the middle of a war, that he was a central figure in that battle and had to make it through, for the benefit of those around him, including the frantic girl in front of him, but it just wasn't possible. Anything beyond Hermione was just blurry shapes and bright lights, and even keeping his eyes open had turned into a herculean endeavor.

"Harry!" Hermione yelled, but her voice had faded further. Harry tried to focus on her, but her face had become blurry too, and now he could only vaguely see a pink and brown blob in front of him.

He tried to whisper her name, but his throat closed completely before he could even begin the first syllable, and breathing became far more difficult after that. He had to put so much effort into each breath that his body shook agonizingly with each exhale, and in a short time, his chest ached with every draw of fresh air.

"Harry!" Her voice was even more preoccupied, but it was so distant now that it almost felt like he was drowning in an ocean and she was yelling at him from the beach. It would certainly explain the distortions in his view, and why everything seemed so garbled and surreal.

He didn't even try to respond this time, the analogy with the ocean so real in his mind that he feared that he was actually drowning in sound, something stopping him from doing anything but stand still and suffer as all his senses but one faded away slowly. The only sense he was desperately wishing would go was the hearing, but it only became more and more pronounced as everything else became formless and melted into nothingness.

"Harry!" She sounded, this time barely audible. Just a few seconds now, and he would be beyond her screams, beyond the battle, beyond the reach of the prophecy which had unknowingly commanded his life.

He closed his eyes. He was unsure if he should accept this or not. Most of him remained stubbornly resolute, trying to fight against that horrible noise, urging him on to do his duty and save the people around him, reminding him that this was his fate and no else's. But a small part was just tired, and drowning didn't seem like such a bad idea for that bit of him. He repudiated it but couldn't deny its existence, small though it was against the force of his conviction. But sheer conviction was not enough to ensure that he would prevail, and at that moment, simple willpower seemed like it was only delaying the inevitable.

"Harry," the voice changed, coming closer this time. He was confused. It didn't sound like Hermione, but he still felt like he was drowning. And his chest was heavier than before as well, with each breath struggling against what felt like the weight of another person sitting on top of him.

The surroundings changed too. They were brighter but no fuzzier than before. They seemed white, or a very little beige. Was he dead? Dead people weren't supposed to feel things, and he definitely could still hear that buzzing noise, and the pain in his chest was surely not imagined. He tried to move, but his body refused to obey his command, rewarding him instead with a scorching ache in his chest like someone had dropped Fiendfyre straight down his gullet and into his lungs. He gasped painfully but remained paralyzed.

"Harry, you need to breathe," that new voice said gently. "Remember? Breathe deeply."

What was the person talking about? He was drowning. If he breathed deeply, he would die. He couldn't do that. He had to kill Voldemort, or everyone else would die, and he didn't want other people to die as Lavender had. He was responsible for them, and he couldn't die until his part was finished. He could die after that and go see his father, and his mother, and Sirius, and Dumbledore, and Lavender too, if she forgave him.

"Please trust me, Harry," the voice pleaded. "Breathe in deeply and hold your breath for three seconds."

How could he trust someone else? He didn't know that person. They could be a Death Eater trying to coax him into drowning further—the buzzing noise was fading, but Harry was too distraught with pain to notice—and he couldn't die quite yet. Then again, should he trust himself instead? He, who was responsible for Sirius dying? He, who couldn't stop Snape from downing Dumbledore? He, who couldn't protect Lavender and the other students? He, whose parents had died for him, in exchange for a muddled reward and an uncertain legacy? Plus, just a minute before, that voice had been Hermione, and he trusted her. Hermione wouldn't lead him to his death.

He followed the voice's instructions, and with each cycle of controlled breathing, the pain in his lungs lessened, and some part of his senses recovered. The blobs in his eyesight started to clear out, and he slowly regained the ability to move gingerly. He started looking around, still having to work through a haze of confusion and grogginess. The room was small but not cramped, with one wall of exposed bricks, natural light filtering through a series of windows. There were some paintings around the other walls, which were all off-white. He was sitting on a light beige armchair, and there was a large grey sofa right by his side with some colorful throw pillows. To his left, there was a large bookshelf full of titles he couldn't quite make out yet.

In front of him, a blonde, older woman in her fifties was looking at him calmly, though his trained senses could see her nervousness in the tension around her arms, and in the way she leaned forward with her elbows on her legs. Hermione and Ron had looked at him that way enough times for him to know that the woman was concerned.

The same way in which the Fidelius in Grimmauld Place lifted a veil over a part in his mind when he was told the secret, the woman's expression made some memory on his mind click.

"Doctor Thompson?" Harry asked confused and with a raspy voice, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses.

"Hello, Harry," the older woman smiled, relaxing back into the seat. She noted something down on a small spiralized notebook on her lap and looked at him with soft dark brown eyes. When he started coughing roughly as soon as he opened his mouth, she offered him a cup of water.

"What happened?" He managed to let out, reaching out for the plastic cup and drinking the cold water in one smooth motion, sighing quietly with relief.

"We were talking about the war, and you had a panic attack," she said gently, looking at him carefully, seeing if he would react to her statement.

"Ah, right," he mumbled weakly.

"It's perfectly normal to have that reaction, Harry," Dr. Thompson reminded him, as she had done several times already since these weekly sessions started a couple of months ago.

"Yes, yes, I know," he said dutifully, but without any conviction. The woman did not react to his obvious exasperation beyond writing yet another note down.

Six months after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione managed to finally force him to seek help by organizing an intervention through letters to people who could afford to visit Harry in his new home in Grimmauld, as she was stuck in Hogwarts, as well as Ginny, with whom he was in an uncertain relationship at the time and had gained permission to leave the school for the occasion. Though the Black family home did bring painful memories and he had to coexist with Walburga, it was a supremely well-warded property, and he couldn't sleep a minute on the Burrow, constantly being woken up by memories of the attack on Fleur's wedding. Just about every person that Harry trusted enough to allow through the wards that wasn't dead had made the trip to Grimmauld to beg him to look for help. It had taken Andromeda pointing out vehemently that he wouldn't be allowed to raise Teddy unless he fixed himself up to finally break down his reluctance to seek professional help.

Initially, it didn't help. Mind Healers either couldn't disassociate their admiration for the Man-Who-Won or they insisted on using Legilimency on him, both things that made him recoil just from the thought of it. After that failed series of specialists, they tried setting him up with a Muggle psychiatrist that specialized in PTSD, which was a lovely idea, but somewhat made complicated by the fact that he couldn't exactly say he was a war veteran at his age, let alone explore the finer points of his experiences, which would require exposing the man to magic.

So, they scoured through the Hogwarts students' rolls until they found a Muggle-born whose mother was a psychiatrist. She wasn't specialized in trauma but was more than receptive to helping Harry, as she was made well aware of what was happening in Wizarding Britain by her son. He feared that she would also fall into the trap of believing the myth surrounding him, but she was fiercely professional and a good listener.

However, that didn't make things that much easier. The events of the war were mired in things which he was enormously uncomfortable talking about, and he didn't think he would ever be willing to speak about the events on the Forbidden Forest and his brief departure from the living world. Just briefly mentioning the Horcruxes in passing had taken him to his limit, and that was something he was not excited about repeating.

Still, he persisted, and now that Hermione had left Hogwarts with her NEWTs—Harry had spent most of the year after the war studying by himself, as he was unwilling to go into Auror training so soon after the war and incapable of returning to a place that would forever be a battlefield in his mind, and got reasonably good results, though nothing extraordinary—he had her help to deal with things. She was exceedingly busy with Ministry work, but still made time for him whenever she could.

He was not stupid, however. He was perfectly aware of how much her concerns were disrupting her work—both women would probably get at least a bit offended by the comparison, but Hermione often reminded him of Molly—and made the effort to limit the topic in their conversations.

Things were getting better, he reckoned, studiously ignoring the fact that he just had a massive panic attack.

He noticed that the office had been silent for a while now. Dr. Thompson was just looking at him with her typically neutral expression, silently urging him to talk. There was something about people who didn't pressure him to speak that motivated him to share more easily. That had been something that neither Hermione nor Ginny ever understood. Their concern was endearing, but it could also be stifling. Curiously, three people seemed to understand his view on that better than just about everyone else: Ron, who still fell to silent spells whenever thinking about Fred; Neville, who had worked hard to exorcise the demons brought by the year of leading the Hogwarts Resistance and had gained a stoic and broody dimension to his previously affable personality; and Luna, who knew more than anyone else the value of serene silence.

"How long?" He asked, as he always did.

"I don't know," she answered, as she always did.

He nodded and then asked with a slight grimace. "Was the panic attack bad?"

"It was worse than average," the woman said slowly. "But it's an improvement from just a few months back."

He hummed in agreement. Things had gotten quite bad a while back when the pressure building up since Dumbledore's death burst through and made him breakdown heavily. It was the only time in which Hermione actually had to leave Hogwarts, accompanied by Ginny and Luna, to help him recover. He didn't like thinking about it and scratched his neck in a nervous tick as soon as the memory entered his mind.

"Improvement," he said with glib excitement. "That's good. Improvement, I mean."

Dr. Thompson just kept looking at him neutrally, which told him that she didn't fall for it. It had been a poor effort, anyway. He took a deep breath and fiddled a bit with the cuff of his shirt.

"I'm worried," he admitted quietly. "I thought things would have been better by now, but they haven't."

"What exactly is happening that you expect to have changed by now?" She asked gently.

"I mean, I'm not Apparating yet," he commented with a wry smile. "Just thinking about it makes me remember the aftermath of the battle," he said through a sudden lump on his throat. The Death Eaters had used a lot of ribbon-cutters and cutting curses, and he had seen more than one body part as he trekked his way through the school following the victory. After a deep breath and another gulp of water he gracefully accepted from Dr. Thompson, he continued. "And just on my way here, a car backfired and I thought it was a curse and threw myself on the floor. People looked at me like I had lost my mind. It made me feel a lot like I did in Fifth-Year," he grimaced to himself.

"That is a common response for people in high-stress situations, Harry. Our soldiers commonly go through the same thing. It takes time to readjust for everyone, and you were in a very unique situation," she commented.

"You can say that again," he commented bitterly.

People around him generally looked uncomfortable whenever he got moody or bitter about the war, but those who had fought nearest him understood it. Recently, he had gone to visit Ron and Hermione during their lunch breaks in the Ministry and got a bit short with an employee, who admonished him for his attitude. The lunch hall was then treated to a three-minute breathless tirade from Hermione on how some people were thankless and unappreciative and didn't reflect on the fact that the war had to be won by a bunch of students because the rest of the country didn't do anything to stop Voldemort, while Ron looked torn between holding his girlfriend back and cursing the poor employee himself. Harry had a feeling that she wasn't speaking just on his behalf that day.

He didn't agree with her assessment anyway. He didn't blame people for not joining the combat. If he hadn't been thrust into the fight by the workings of fate, he likely wouldn't have fought himself.

'That's a lie,' a voice which sounded shockingly similar to Snape said in his mind. 'You like playing the hero far too much for your own good, Potter.'

"Because your situation is very unique," she continued. "It would be irresponsible of me to give you a timeline for your recovery. It's a process, and it will have bumpy stretches and you will have relapses. Recovering from extended stress is never easy, but your life doesn't have to be the war."

He nodded, looking at the floor and rimming the edges of the plastic cup on his hand with his fingers. It was frustrating not knowing when he was supposed to be feeling cured, but he appreciated the honesty of the admission of ignorance. At least it felt far better than the pointed obscurantism he got from Dumbledore for years.

"Don't give up, Harry," she reassured him. "Work on it," she said before taking a brief pause to ponder something and finally asking. "Have you managed to find something to pique your interest lately?"

"No," he moaned despairingly. They both agreed that after he had taken his NEWTs, he could benefit from finding a hobby to occupy his mind, but everything he tried failed to engage him. Even flying brought bad memories, and he was afraid of falling into a prolonged depression in which nothing caught his attention for more than a couple of minutes. While he wasn't quite there yet, some days it had been hard to leave the bed, and the perspective of losing himself even further scared him more than just a bit.

"As I said, keep at it," she said kindly. "And remember to not isolate yourself."

"I'll try," he assured her, though he likely wouldn't talk to anyone for a while. He still felt guilty for the stress under which he had been putting Hermione, and he knew that both her and Ron wanted to spend more time together than with him. They were a fairly new couple, after all, and things had been going far better than anyone—including them, as they both admitted independently to him with not an insignificant amount of shame—was expecting.

He had gotten fairly close to Neville in the meantime, but he was beginning his apprenticeship under Professor Sprout on Hogwarts and was far too busy for casual conversation, though they still exchanged letters whenever they could. The situation with the Weasleys had soured a bit after his relationship with Ginny didn't flourish much, so he didn't talk with them as often as he could. Well, that was unfair. If he went to the Burrow, everyone, including Ginny, would treat him warmly and with the same high regard as they ever had. But he didn't miss the longing looks that the youngest Weasley sent his way, nor the blatant matchmaking of Molly, and he had no wish to enter into a relationship with Ginny again. The war had changed him too much for that, and she wanted to start a Quidditch career that would send her directly into stardom, a proposition that Harry wasn't too keen on.

Also, if there was one person in Britain who was in as deep a hole as he, it was George, who had thrown himself into the joke shop with such fervor that he frequently didn't eat or sleep for days for the first weeks following the war. Angelina and Alicia had beaten some sense into him and were now helping him to manage the shop alongside Lee to the best of their abilities. The surviving twin still had this haunted look about him, as if he was missing a part of his body and didn't quite know how to proceed without it. George and Harry seldom spoke about anything regarding the war whenever they were alone because they didn't have to. Both of them embraced the other's pain quite keenly from the simple fact that neither even tried to understand what the other felt. Harry couldn't even begin to ponder on how it would be like to lose a twin, and George couldn't fathom the weight of so many deaths that bore down on Harry after the battle. So, they shifted between silent companionship and tentative joking.

There were Andromeda and Teddy, who he insisted on visiting at least once a week. The woman wasn't always happy to see him, however. Though he knew that she understood that he hadn't killed her daughter, husband, and son-in-law, her heart didn't always follow the stipulations of her mind, and he caught sight of some grief and anger directed at him in her gaze from time to time. He would have felt offended if he didn't secretly agree with that hateful part of the woman's character. Teddy terrified him. He didn't know how the boy would react when he was old enough to understand the events of the war and Harry's part in it. Would he blame Harry for Tonks and Remus being dead? He loved Teddy, and the idea of the small baby hating him made his chest constrict painfully.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to see them today.

"Our time is up," she pronounced when her alarm beeped. She silenced it with the press of a button and then turned to Harry. "As ever, if something happens or you just need to talk, feel free to send an owl, or if you prefer, you can make a phone call."

"Of course," he agreed easily, despite the fact that he had yet to use the woman's time outside of their scheduled weekly consultations.

They said goodbye and Harry began walking to Grimmauld. It wasn't far away, just a fifteen-minute walk, but the effort of being outdoors in London always exhausted him.

It only happened in London. When he was in Ottery St. Catchpole, he had no issue walking leisurely outside. Once he even went to Hermione's parents' house in Cambridge when they returned from Australia, and had no big problems. But something about the bustling of the capital unnerved him, even if the wards behind Grimmauld brought him relaxation unlike no other place in England. It was a delicate balance, living in a city which made him so uncomfortable, but Kreacher allowed him to limit his trips to London proper, and there was a Floo in the house to take him to the Ministry or elsewhere if he wanted to travel through Wizarding Britain. It wasn't like he had a reason to know more about the Muggle world at the moment, so it was manageable.

An interminable twenty minutes of carefully scanning everything around him, peering over every corner, turning at every loud noise, and firmly meeting the eye of anyone who stared at him oddly later, he finally reached Grimmauld Place, mentally berating himself for acting like an unstable person, but unable to stop the nervous routine. After all, he was an unstable person. He sighed in relief when the wards greeted him warmly, and he relaxed instantly.

"Kreacher," he called out when he entered the place.

"Master calls Kreacher," the old house-elf greeted him with a silent pop. Both of them had regained some form of courtesy towards one another after the Battle of Hogwarts, for which Harry was grateful. Life would have been much harder without the help the elf put around the house, which looked less gloomy after a bit of tidying up, though the effects of the Locket and other cursed objects still lingered inconspicuously.

"Make dinner, please," Harry asked, and the elf set off silently to follow his orders.

Harry walked listlessly towards the living room, sitting heavily on the most comfortable chair he could find and closing his eyes blissfully as it embraced him. Sirius's crystal tumblers of firewhiskey were just within reach of his arm, but he ignored them. Drinking was a habit he didn't trust himself with at the moment, and despite everything else, he still had the enormous willpower that carried him through so much in the previous decade.

"Some tea would be nice, Kreacher," Harry said casually, watching as a mug of steeping tea appeared on the end table by the armchair in which he sat. He embraced the mug's warmth, though he would still have to wait a few minutes to enjoy the beverage.

He drew his wand and started playing with simple charms, animating things this and that way through the room, starting mock battles between the various décor items. Part of him was alarmed that his mind instantly went to mock battles for his entertainment, but he ignored that perceptive part of his mind easily.

Dinner was good. Harry had been having a difficult time tasting things since the war ended, but that effect was slowly receding, and he was able to appreciate a good meal again. Kreacher cooked well, though not to the same level of expertise as the Hogwarts elves, something he would never say out loud in the proud old elf's presence.

He didn't feel tired despite the late hour, so he moved to the library, trying to find a book that would catch his eye. He tried reading about Quidditch, but he had long found out that the sport was very much something that he preferred to play and not follow much beyond quick glances at the sports section of the Daily Prophet. He then grabbed a book on Transfiguration and dutifully retrieved his wand, but the words in the book seemed to pass through his eyes and into the wall behind him, no matter how much effort he put into retaining the knowledge within. Even a book on Dark Magic, one of the things that never failed to grab his attention, either by its repulsive nature or by how wildly creative it could be, couldn't retain his attention for more than a few pages, and he quickly began focusing on nothing again.

Grumbling to himself, Harry made his way to the living room without stopping to think about it. He walked to the Floo and grabbed a fistful of powder. Dr. Thompson had recommended that he talk to someone, so he may as well at least try it.

But then he hesitated. Who could he call? Hermione and Ron were spending time together. He still didn't want to see Andromeda or Teddy in his mental state, plus it was already approaching his godson's bedtime. Neville was busy in Hogwarts, a place he was not ready to visit. It was too late on the day to go to the Burrow, and Bill was taking care of the very pregnant Fleur on Shell Cottage. Harry wanted to sink into the ground and was already lowering his hand back into the powder box when the obvious remaining alternative appeared on his fireplace in a burst of green flames.

"Hello, Harry," Luna said in her usually dreamy voice, though there was a slight rigidity to her Irish accent that caught his attention immediately. "I wasn't expecting you to answer so quickly."

"Hello, Luna," he greeted her with a slightly amused smile. "How can I help you?"

She was silent for a moment, the face on the flames becoming visibly distressed. "Can I pass through?"

"Of course," Harry answered immediately, opening the floo up for her arrival. Quickly the girl stepped in and emerged smoothly on Grimmauld.

The first thing he noticed was the red backpack she was carrying on one shoulder. Even though wizards could have bottomless bags which were quite small, they still had the habit of using backpacks for certain endeavors, and that right there was a large backpack the small blonde was supporting. She was dressed with her usual flamboyance in a yellow sundress, none of the muted colors forced on her by the Hogwarts robes. As during the days of the way, she dressed in bright colors regardless of their tactical disadvantage, keeping to bright blue and yellow, in contrast to Harry's preference for his almost entirely brown and grey ensemble. That particular day, she was also wearing an orange hat that looked like a cross between a beret and a cap that covered some of her expression from Harry's sight, given their height differential. Her dirty-blonde hair was as neat as ever, cascading down to her back in long, smooth waves.

Harry's senses were telling him that something was off about Luna, other than her evident nervousness. He was examining the girl for injuries or anything else that could have bothered her but found nothing. He felt like he was closing in on the cause when she turned and pierced him with her penetrating, silvery gaze, forcing him to stop the examination midway through. Harry felt as though she knew that he suspected something was wrong, but she just greeted him with her trademark calm smile.

"Thank you for letting me in," she said, stepping forwards and hugging him gently. As always, she smelled of trees, herbs, and the spring breeze, and he relished her cautious touch as opposed to the possessive force with which most people in his life hugged him.

"You're always welcome here, you know that," he responded, to which she nodded agreeably. They stood there silently before he guided them to the living room, where they both sat down. "So, what brings you here?"

"I just wanted to visit, so I did," she stated simply, with that tilt in her voice that told Harry she found the question amusing, though her nervousness was still obvious to someone who knew her as well as he did. "I haven't done much recently, and I felt like doing something."

"Oh?" Harry cocked an eyebrow questioningly. "I thought you were thinking of doing an apprenticeship with Hagrid?"

The girl seemed sad for a second before resetting to her normal expression, and Harry focused even more on finding out what could have made Luna so distraught. "Well, Hagrid is a good professor, but I didn't think he was the best alternative for me right now," she explained. Harry hummed unconvinced, but he didn't press the girl for details.

"So, what's going on in your life?" He asked, after summoning Kreacher to serve Luna something to drink—she went with Butterbeer.

"Not a lot," she admitted. "I haven't really talked with anyone these last few weeks."

"What do you mean?" Harry frowned concernedly. He had found out pretty early that Luna wasn't one to enjoy letters very much, as the girl more than once responded to one of his letters by simply popping up in Grimmauld and starting a casual conversation instead of answering with an owl, so he hadn't sent her a letter in a while. He just assumed she was busying herself with her ambition of becoming a magizoologist when she didn't communicate with him and gave her some space.

"Everyone's busy," she said serenely, though the pang of sadness made her voice ebb slightly from her usual tone, and Harry felt guilty immediately, something that the girl immediately noticed. "It's not your responsibility to look after me, Harry Potter," she admonished him lightly. It amused Harry how much different Luna was from Hermione when the two of them said his name and surname together, and he privately admitted that Luna's calm rebukes made far greater an effect on him than Hermione's half-shrieks, something he would never admit to his best friend, ever. "The war hit you harder than just about everyone else. You have to look after yourself first," she then tilted her head slightly to the side and looked at him inquisitively. "Frankly, you look terrible."

Harry chuckled, which quickly turned into a round of open laughter. He washed away tears of mirth, while Luna stood there grinning at his amusement. Harry had long thought that Luna's brutal brand of honesty was her most endearing quality, and the memory of her father telling Hermione that Luna thought his best friend was too closed-minded to be truly intelligent would forever be etched into his mind as one of his favorites for no other reason than for the way in which Hermione had been reduced to a gaping, speechless fish afterward.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of things in his mind that he would never tell Hermione involving Luna.

"Yeah, I've had better days," he admitted easily. For other people, he would lie and say he was fine, but there was no point in lying to Luna. She could read him far too accurately for him to think he could fool her, and was by far the most perceptive person he had ever met. "But I'll be fine."

"I'm glad to hear it," she said sincerely. They then fell into a comfortable silence, with the girl occasionally sipping on her mug. Harry wanted to ask her something, but couldn't find a delicate way to ask it, so he decided to just go for it.

"Why didn't you talk to anyone, Luna? We both know you hate being lonely," he said kindly. When the girl didn't seem inclined to make a further comment, he pressed on gently. "What about Neville?"

Then the girl winced just a bit before regaining her normal expression, which made Harry raise his eyebrows in her direction. She looked down, looking regretful, and quietly put the mug on her lap.

"He's in love with me," she said succinctly, stunning Harry, who had absolutely no idea about that development. But then, he didn't spend a year with the Hogwarts Resistance, so he didn't know what could have happened back then. "No one's ever been in love with me before, and I don't know how to deal with it."

"I'm guessing you don't…"

"No," she denied, shaking her head sadly. "I know I should say something to him about it, but I just do not know how to," she admitted with some frustration bleeding into her tone. "I generally know how to deal with things. It's a new experience and one that I'm not particularly fond of, being this indecisive."

"Is that why you're not going to apprentice under Hagrid?" Harry asked.

Luna looked incredibly confused at the question. "No. I already told you why I'm not apprenticing under him. Are you okay? Are the.." she cut herself off, before resuming the speech so smoothly that Harry almost didn't catch the hesitation. "Were you not paying attention?"

"What?" Harry was so caught off-guard by the sudden accusation that he mostly forgot that Luna had interrupted herself from asking what he was sure was some variant of 'Are the Nargles buzzing around your head again?' or something of that nature. "No, I was. I just thought that maybe you didn't go because of Neville and didn't want to admit that."

"Why would I not go because of Neville?" Luna frowned, bewildered.

"Because he's in love with you and it would be uncomfortable?" Harry asked back, getting equally confused.

"Well, that's just silly," she waved him off. "I wouldn't stop myself from doing something I want just because of that."

'Of course, you wouldn't', Harry thought, fondly. If he ever got to the level of Luna's ability to not care what people thought about her, he'd be a happy man. But that didn't explain why she hadn't spoken with anyone else. Let alone why she was still nervous.

"Luna, what is it? Why are you really here?" He finally asked, resisting the urge to sigh defeatedly at not finding a way to ask her what was wrong.

The girl looked unexpectedly tired after he asked that, her usual vivacity melting away quickly. "Do you mind if I stay here for a few days?" She asked, not exactly sheepishly, but with some visible anxiety.

Harry blinked, surprised at the request, but as soon as he recovered, he nodded. "Absolutely not. Like I said, you're more than welcome here."

It might even give him something to do with his time, he thought, now that he was having such a hard time with his focus. He had missed Luna, truth be told, and being around her was about as relaxed as Harry got, as the girl had little to no expectations of her friends beyond that they act like themselves around her.

She smiled gratefully, and her usual vivaciousness returned with force. She got up and looked at him excitedly. "Lead me to a guest room, then? I just want to leave my bag there."

Harry nodded and they walked silently to the second floor, with Luna humming a jaunty tune the whole way. As always, the portraits silently looked at him as he passed, and he ignored them as always. Luna, however, occasionally stopped to look at a painting closer, wave hello at a portrait, or curiously stare at a statuette. Harry had the impression that the girl would find the family tapestry one of these days and would catalog exactly how many degrees of separation there were between him and a random 17th Century member of the Black family.

They arrived at a guest room, which Luna quickly analyzed before putting her bag on the bed and looking at Harry expectantly.

"I hope I'm not bothering," she said anxiously, with yet another crack in her usually serene façade.

"I'm sure you won't," he reassured her with a small grin. "It'll be better than being alone every day."

She nodded avidly, her dirty-blonde hair bobbing with the motion, seeming to agree with his assessment.

"What were you doing before I arrived?" She asked curiously as they made their way out of the room.

"I was trying to find things to do," he shrugged. "I was in the library for a bit, but I was struggling to find something interesting."

"That sounds fun," she mused, her eyes brightening at the possibilities for learning in the Black Library. Harry smiled knowingly and led them to the library, where Luna immediately set off in search of books on obscure magical animals, leaving Harry to half pay attention to the books he had previously discarded, and to half keep an eye on his friend. Her nervousness about staying in Grimmauld for a few days still concerned him slightly. Luna was hard to shake up, and whatever left her uncomfortable was something serious for her to act so out of her element.

Her presence settled his nerves slightly, and he managed to focus on the Transfiguration book in front of him, though he didn't truly try to follow the steps for advanced spells that the book was proposing. He was mostly just absorbing things for the sake of absorbing them, and he was certain that he would forget them by tomorrow. He had neither the memory recall of Hermione or the exemplary ability to make connections and abstractions as Luna, and the only way in which he would retain anything was to give it his entire focus, but that would mean he'd have to ignore his suspicions about Luna.

So, he just skimmed over a couple of pages and then looked at her, as she quietly read in her armchair, making humming noises or singing subvocally. Some repetitions into this little cycle, he noticed that the books she was reading would always change every time he looked. She was shifting between three different books. He wondered if she was cross-referencing the books, but quickly noted that they were of completely distinct subjects, and not even she would be able to cycle through them that quickly and get anything constructive out of them.

He stopped paying attention to the book in his lap and studiously kept an eye on the blonde girl. She kept humming excitedly, but then swapped books. Then she swapped then again, and one more time. She wasn't even changing pages, she was just swapping them entirely and then picking up the discarded book on the same page again. Was she bored? No, she was visibly anxious barely a few minutes before, and that level of anxiety didn't evaporate that quickly. Was she idling? Luna occasionally spaced out as she thought about unrelated things and seemed to be daydreaming whenever she was in deep thought, but she was too fidgety to be concentrated on anything. She kept adjusting her sitting position, lightly tapping the arm of the chair in which she read, wrinkling her nose playfully, and pushing her earlobe down.

Harry looked closer and something clicked.

"Luna, what's wrong with your father?" He asked knowingly. Luna froze midway through fidgeting with her earlobe and looked at him with startled, surprised eyes.

"What do you mean?" She asked without stuttering, but her surprise just a second before had been more than enough to reveal to Harry that he had guessed correctly.

"Your earrings," he explained, pointing at her ears. She immediately stopped playing with her earlobe and buried the offending hand beneath her legs, but Harry plowed on. "You always use your dirigible plum earrings unless it's a special occasion, and the only occasion that you didn't use any earring was when you were upset with your father when we were rebuilding the Rookery."

The rebuilding effort of the Lovegood family home had been tense. Xenophilius was freshly returned from Azkaban, and he wasn't in the best mental shape, even by his standards. While the family reunion had been initially emotional on both sides, Luna had quickly soured when she found out the anti-Harry Potter editions of the Quibbler that were buried in the explosion when Harry, Hermione, and Ron escaped the place. By the time that Harry and the others had left Luna with her father in their newly reformed house, they were still awkwardly silent around each other, and it was clear that Luna was furious about the words printed on the magazine, despite her understanding the mitigating circumstances which motivated Xenophilius to act that way.

Luna sagged slightly, looking even smaller than usual before she wrung her dress with closed fists and then looked at him with her usual serenity restored. "I never understood why people thought you were stupid. You get things that they miss all the time."

He smiled sadly at her, and she stared at a faraway point through the wall without blinking. After a while, she finally spoke with a low voice, with none of her usual dreaminess. "I can't forgive Dad."

"Luna…" Harry sighed.

"No, Harry," she said more firmly. "I can't. I tried, for all these months, but I just can't. He didn't just betray you. He spent his entire career dealing with people thinking he was loony but kept defending what he believed. Mum grew up teaching me to never bow down to what was wrong and do what was right in life. He didn't just betray you, he betrayed himself, and he betrayed mum," she finished before recoiling into a ball on her seat, hugging her legs on the chair and putting her chin on her knees. "I can forgive everything else, but I don't think I can forgive that."

Harry didn't know what to say to that, because he understood how she felt. They had both lost their mothers, him to self-sacrifice and her in an accident, but Luna had known her mother, had been close to her, had memories of her, had stories to tell, and had heard stories first-hand. Even with the Resurrection Stone, there was far more for her to mourn of Pandora than he had of Lily, so how could he object to her anger if she felt like her father had betrayed her memory? Instead, he just got up and squeezed her hand in silent support, which she gratefully absorbed for a few calming minutes. After that, she looked at him, and he was surprised to see that she was on the verge of tears. Briefly, he panicked, thinking that he had somehow made her more upset, but the fear flashing through his face was enough to make the girl laugh hysterically, reminding him of the whole incident with the baboon's backside a few years back on the Hogwarts Express. After gaping at her for a few seconds, he too cracked and started belly laughing.

Some minutes after that, they were both still quietly chuckling. Luna turned to Harry with her eyes still sad, though at least no longer tearful, and said with a quiet voice.

"Thank you."

"For what?" Harry asked kindly.

"For noticing," she summed up.

"That's what friends do, Luna," Harry grinned at her, making the girl beam at him for a brief second. But then her somewhat heavy airs returned, her smile died out quickly and she again looked mournful, the contrast with the brief flash of happiness making her condition all the more lamentable.

"I felt very lonely," she admitted, making Harry wince guiltily. "It's not your fault, Harry."

"Still, I should have been there," he lamented with a self-deprecating tone.

"You were," she reassured him. "I didn't want to tell anyone, but when I called, you were always there."

"You know that you can always count on us, right?" Harry asked, looking at her sad grey eyes fully. "Me, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny. We'll always be here for you."

"I know that here," she pointed to her head. "But here," she pointed to her chest. "I hesitate a bit sometimes. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, Luna," he reassured her. "I know exactly what you mean," he said wryly, remembering that he had the exact thought process whenever he thought he was going to disrupt Hermione or Ron but wanted to talk to someone. Merlin, it had happened the moment her face appeared on the fireplace. He hesitated slightly but eventually decided to ask directly. "You're also not fully recovered from the war, are you?"

"How can we be? It was a war, and we were all minors. We had no business fighting for our lives. Things like that are not supposed to be forgotten or overcome ever, let alone in a year, but what choice did we have? Stepping aside and letting Voldemort win wasn't an option. It wasn't the right thing to do," she said quietly, smoothing out her dress with her palms, despite it being neat already. "After my graduation, everyone went their own way in life, trying to follow with their career, but I'm still trying to find a place to take my Mastery in Care of Magical Creatures. So, I stayed reading in my house with only Dad for company, and things hadn't been the same with him since that day," she frowned slightly, remembering how she felt when she found those magazines covered in lies in her house. "It felt a lot like… before, but with worse memories."

Harry knew what she was talking about. The days before she made friends, in which she developed a fear of loneliness that was almost crippling, while at the same time being completely intolerant of the little lies that people tell to each other to function in polite society. Luna didn't believe in polite society as Wizarding Britain understood it, knowing that the pleasantries were forced, and thinking that it wasn't polite to be lying, so there could be nothing polite about their society. Eventually, the loneliness had become part of her. It got a lot more manageable for her when she actually made friends with Harry and the others, but it didn't make her fear of losing friends any better.

Harry immediately understood that she was afraid that reaching out to her friends about her loneliness would make them abandon her. He admonished himself again for not thinking about her as often as he should and made a note to keep an eye on the girl, even after she left Grimmauld.

They stayed in compassionate silence for a while longer before Luna asked him something, without taking her gaze away from the floor.

"Harry, why isn't the future what it used to be?"

Harry looked at her, silently pressing her for more information. She continued to look emptily at the floor, but she understood what he wanted, so she began speaking again.

"Things were supposed to be better after the war. I understand that it takes time for things to improve," she said mournfully. "But the future seems dimmer now than it did a year ago. How could they steal our futures after they already took our pasts?"

"I don't know," he admitted sadly. He too felt as if the potential of his life had diminished greatly in the interceding year since the end of the war. As Luna said, he understood that reconstruction would take years if not decades, but on those days following Voldemort's definitive death, Harry felt a great potential for his life personally, and for Britain generally. Now, it looked like they were walking towards business-as-usual, sans Voldemort. At one time, that might have satisfied him, but he lost so much and been through so much, and getting back to the status quo after all of that death seemed like a disappointment.

They stayed in contemplative silence again, until Luna clapped, startling Harry out of his brooding.

"We should leave England," Luna said brightly, in such a reverse from her previous sorrow that Harry just stared at her in astonishment, which she took as an opening to continue enthusiastically. "We have nothing to tie ourselves here, so let's travel."

"Luna, we can't just travel like that," Harry argued.

"Why not?" She tilted her head curiously. "If you said you were looking for things to do before I arrived, then you shouldn't have anything serious to do. You wouldn't postpone anything important."

"I don't have anything to do, no…" Harry trailed off, trying to explain to Luna the absurdity of leaving things as they were and just leaving the country on a whim, but not finding the words.

"So, why shouldn't we be able to go?" She pressed on.

"Luna, I have therapy!"

"And is it working?" She asked neutrally, not skeptically, but merely curious. "You were never a lot into self-reflection, Harry. For good or worse, you've always been more of a doer, not a thinker. I don't think you want to get back into dangerous situations again, and that is why you're hesitant about joining the Aurors, but that doesn't mean that staying in a small room talking to someone will help you."

"Therapy is important, you know," he asserted.

"What's important is that you feel better, that you improve," she shook her head. "How you get there is irrelevant. Is therapy the way forward for you? It didn't help me."

"You tried it?" He asked, surprised.

"A lot of us did," she nodded. "After Hermione and Professor McGonagall found a Muggle in-the-know to help you, they went to the Ministry and recommended that the same be offered to certain people."

"I didn't know that," he admitted.

"I'm fairly certain that I'm the only one you know well to receive the indication for therapy," she mused thoughtfully. "Which goes to show how much the Ministry underestimates the impact of the war on the students."

"Still, I don't know if leaving now it would be a good idea," he said weakly.

"Are you saying that because you believe it, or because it feels more convenient to blame your lack of progress on something outside of your control?" She asked, fully facing Harry.

For a brief second, he felt furious that she was commenting so directly on his mental health so briefly after he had so cautiously talked to her about hers, but when he was about to snap at her, he took note of how her silver eyes were filled with nothing but understanding and concern for him, and the anger inside him died. He deflated, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses with his thumbs.

"I don't know," he admitted feebly. "I feel like it's not really working, but Hermione told me it was the only reliable way to move on from these things."

"Hermione has a very narrow understanding of what should be done in any given situation," Luna said bluntly. "If therapy is working for you, then stay on it. You've been at it for a few months now; you should be able to tell."

"You saw that day how bad it got," Harry said. "You, Ginny, and Hermione saw how I was. I'm not like that anymore."

"And is it because of therapy? Or just because of time passing?" She asked him. "I'm not pressing you to abandon it, I'm asking you if it's worth it. You may even be improving one day a week, but I'm guessing that the other six you spend around here," she said, gesturing to the house around them, "you get progressively more secluded and feel less and less will to do things. And that leaving your home to wander around Wizarding Britain in those six days would only cause you more stress."

Harry didn't answer, but what he would have said was clear to both of them.

"I know these things because they are very similar to what has happened with me lately," Luna said kindly. "I thought that being with a good friend might help me, and knowing that you're also going through the same thing, I'm sure that I'll help you too. But maybe staying in Britain isn't the right thing to do for either of us," she contemplated. "Maybe there's too many memories and expectations here. If it's too much for me, I can't imagine how it is for you."

"You just told me I'm bad at self-reflection, and now you're asking me to self-reflect," he grouched good-naturedly, which made Luna smile widely at him, and he couldn't avoid but grin back. He then turned more solemn and asked her. "What would we do, then?"

"We discover new things," she said, pausing for a bit before continuing with obvious enthusiasm bursting through her usual calm. "We explore things that we wouldn't get the chance to see otherwise. We can stay on the Muggle or the Wizarding side of the divide wherever we go. We eat new foods, play new games, meet new people, and do new things. I always like changing what's the newest new thing I've been through in life, and I think you'd like to do that too."

"It would be better than staying at Grimmauld all the time," Harry mumbled, looking around the library. Comfortable though the wards made him, the place never felt like home. It wasn't who he was, and it hadn't been who Sirius was either. It was this odd mixture of bland and terrible which he could only remedy slightly but never would be able to fix entirely, leaving him permanently in an odd footing within his own home. "Where would you want to go?"

"Wherever," Luna answered sagely. "There are wonders to be discovered everywhere in the world."

Harry hummed agreeably. "I don't know a lot about the world outside London, to be honest."

"I traveled a lot with Dad in the summers," Luna said with a tinge of sadness, either at missing the travels or mourning the innocence of those excursions, Harry was not sure. "I know a lot about travel on both sides of the divide of the Statute of Secrecy."

Harry wondered. He didn't like living in Grimmauld, but he didn't feel safe anywhere else. Could the same be true of Britain itself? He couldn't imagine living elsewhere. Everything he knew was here. But that statement also brought forth the reality that everything he feared and was anxious about was also here. A place he called home for years had been marked so decisively in his mind as a battleground that he couldn't even ponder the possibility of visiting it. He hadn't even gone to Hogsmeade, so scared he was of reliving those terrible final hours of the war, with so much needless pain and death.

He remembered his panic attack from earlier, idly rubbing his chest where he felt his lungs almost catch fire on Dr Thompson's office. Would it be better to stay and recover here? He knew he was a symbol for a lot of people, and that his permanence in England made things hopeful and stable for a lot of wizards up and down the country. But what did he owe them? He already had given them all he had to win a war. Must he stay behind to win them the peace as well? He shouldn't stay behind for the sake of strangers, should he?

A part of him said it was his duty to not be self-effacing and to guide Britain along from this moment of crisis. That had been what Dumbledore had done after he defeated Grindelwald. Did Harry wish for the same fate? Had Dumbledore ever been truly happy, carrying the burdens of an entire country on his back for half a century?

But what good could he be for others as a man constantly on the edge of breaking?

Hermione would be furious with him. But then again, that hadn't stopped him before. Plus, travelling with Luna seemed like the furthest thing from monotonous he could think of. He certainly wouldn't struggle with constantly losing his interest about everything in his life around her.

"Fuck it, I'm in."