It was bizarre, Ron reflected, how his life had turned out. He watched her dance along the hilltop, reaching out with her hands as if she were painting the breathtaking sunset herself onto the blank canvas of the sky. Watching her was always fascinating, and it brought a sense of calm upon him that he could never quite explain. Luna just did that to him.
How odd, then, that he had almost ended up in a completely different life. Certainly, at aged seventeen he never would have dreamed that he would be here, ten years on, sitting in a wheelchair on the brow of a hill he never even knew existed, with his eyes following Luna as she bid goodnight to the world. He had been so sure back then that his life would somehow end up entwined with Hermione’s. Permanently.
It had been the war that changed everything. He remembered the night before that last battle, when he and Hermione had been the same, and they had talked long into the night about their hopes and dreams, as though that would be their last chance. It had all happened so naturally; they slept together that very same night, and Ron had been sure that he had achieved perfection.
But after the battle, it was all different. They were strangers to each other “ two pieces of a puzzle that had warped in the damp and no longer quite fitted in the same way. They had tried to pretend for a short while, linking their hands when they walked, sleeping in the same bed at night and staying in just each other’s company for hours every day. But eventually, they both began to understand that their lives couldn’t continue like this, a constant charade.
And so they had parted with just a gentle, prolonged kiss to show for all those years. The years that had held laughter and spirit, lighting the darkness they had slowly been drawn into. Years in which they had gradually fallen in love, when jealousy had become a constant companion, when they took it in turns to adore and be disappointed in each other until finally, they had sealed each other’s hearts within their own. How strange it was, then, that when these emotions had all come together, they themselves had fallen apart.
Ron remembered the sadness. The hollow inside him that was impossible to fill, and despair that came not from the loss of Hermione, but the memory of that time when they were in love. He could recall the days afterwards when he lived just for the sake of proving that all that fighting had been worth it “ trying not to see Harry and Ginny’s happiness whenever he visited them.
That was when Luna arrived.
At first, he had felt nothing. Her return pleased Harry immensely “ he seemed thrilled to see their quaint former companion again, and Ron had wondered why. Now, of course, he could hardly ignore the great magnetism that surrounded Luna, but at the time he had though Harry rather strange for being so attached to her.
Then one night, she found him alone outside, and irrevocably altered his life.
Ron took a swig from the Butterbeer he was clutching in his hand, leaning over the fence at the back of Harry and Ginny’s house in an attempt to see through the almost impermeable darkness. He didn’t hear the soft footsteps as Luna approached him, so he was taken by surprise when she spoke.
“You’re not going to see anything, you know. The sky’s been painted pretty thickly tonight,” she stated matter-of-factly.
Ron turned to face her, his expression incredulous. “You what?”
“Whoever painted the sky tonight did a pretty thorough job,” she rephrased simply.
“Right.” This answer of hers had been just as incomprehensible as the first statement.
“Why do you still think about her all the time?” Luna asked suddenly, after a moment of silence.
“Who?” Ron replied, abruptly defensive.
“Hermione. You spend a lot of your time brooding, Ron.”
Ron twisted uncomfortably. He had clearly forgotten just how perceptive Luna was, and how frank she could be with people. He debated his response for a second, finally deciding to be honest.
“I know I do,” he replied. “But there’s not a lot I can distract myself with nowadays, so I just accept it as inevitable.”
“But I don’t understand. Ginny told me that you and Hermione broke up by mutual agreement,” Luna said, confused.
“We did. And it’s not that I want to be with her again - it’s just...hard to explain.”
“Unless you’re with someone who is actually listening.”
Ron turned to face her, surprised by this reaction. Luna gazed back, her face impassive. He smiled slightly, and she reciprocated. Turning back towards the dark night, Ron began to explain.
“I guess I miss the feeling of being in love with her. I spent most of my teenage life watching her every move and wishing I could touch her without having a reason to. I was jealous whenever any other guy grew close to her, so I tried to make her feel like that too. And there were moments when I thought we were going to finally make that leap, but it didn’t happen until just before the last battle. And then afterwards it was strange.
It just feels like I’ve lost a huge chunk of my life. And it makes me sad to think that after all we’d been through, Hermione and I turned out to be just as ill-fitting as I thought on the very first day I met her.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Luna spoke.
“Come with me.”
“What?”
“Come with me. I want to show you something.” She held out her hand.
Not quite sure what the hell he was doing, Ron took it, and found himself running along behind Luna, desperately clinging on to her hand as she tore through the night. Trees and the occasional car flashed past them as they ran along the quiet country road, eventually turning into an empty field and following a small footpath that lead upwards towards a wood.
They didn’t even stop for breath as they broke through the first trees of the wood and continued to pelt along the path, until at last they came to a stop at the top of a hill overlooking the little town where Harry and Ginny lived. Ron was wheezing heavily, but Luna seemed unaffected by the intensive run as she twirled around in the cold night air. She grabbed for Ron’s hand after a minute, and led him to a point where they could see the entire town spread out before them.
Lights winked at Ron as he looked out, his breath not quite recovered enough for speech.
“Isn’t it just amazing?” Luna said dreamily, glancing at his face.
“I “ yes. Yes it is,” Ron replied, realising as he said it that he wasn’t lying. She was right. It really was.
“Life goes on, Ron. Your teenage dreams have turned out all wrong, but that doesn’t mean you can’t follow new ones.”
He looked round at her, and she smiled slightly, still surveying the town before her.
“You know, that actually makes a lot of sense,” he said, a little surprised at himself.
Luna shrugged and turned to face him too. “Clearly you just needed someone to help you realise that it’s that simple.” She was still smiling.
He grinned back, understanding for the first time why Luna was so easy to like, as they melted into the darkness again and started to head home.
From then on, Ron had spent every day of Luna’s stay in her company “ whether it was just a matter of lounging around talking, or going out to search for creatures that Ron was pretty sure did not exist. It was true that Luna had changed his perspective on a lot of things in life, but he still wasn’t quite able to convince himself of all the things she so adamantly believed in. He’d quickly learnt to keep his scepticism to himself, though; perfectly content to simply let Luna’s enthusiasm saturate his senses as she avidly explored.
When she left Harry and Ginny, Ron found himself going with her “ sharing flats as they travelled around the country, finding himself bits of work here and there to keep them afloat. They ended up by the coast most of the time - he noticed she had a preference for the towering cliffs “ and he liked it that way. The sea made him think of freedom, and indeed he had never felt so free in his entire life. Luna’s energy pumped through his body, and sometimes he even joined her on her investigations, which were now not only surrounding extraordinary creatures, but undiscovered plants and natural remedies.
Nowadays, he would see her name appear at the top of articles printed in Herbology and Potions journals around the country, and he couldn’t help feeling an explosion of pride whenever he did.
Thinking back, Ron saw that it was only natural for him to fall in love with Luna. He supposed he should have seen it coming, yet it still took him by surprise that very first time she had pulled him in to kiss her. He had discovered that she was soft and warm, smelling like pears and bracken and musk all at once. And she fitted so impossibly seamlessly by his side, like she had always been there; a silhouette that had somehow called its real self to take its place.
There was that time “ that horrible, painful time “ when he thought he’d fallen out of her reach, because that van had moved at just the wrong time, trapping his legs underneath its great weight. He had lain in hospital, fighting his way back to her world and wondering why he felt as though half his body was no longer there. When he’d managed to open his eyes, she was there, and she was crying with relief as he squeezed her hand. He was still wondering why he could no longer feel the legs that he could see were attached to his torso.
She had been there when he was told he would never walk again, and had pushed him around in his wheelchair ever since, making sure that he missed nothing of the life she had brought to him.
And just a few years ago, when the celebrant had asked her if she took him in sickness and in health, she had said yes without hesitation, knowing that sickness was the only way she would ever have him.
Now, as he watched her paint the sunset in, he marvelled at how lucky he had been. And his mind wandered back to Hermione, noting with some sadness that he hadn’t spoken to her for ten years. It was a long time, really. And although he was happier with Luna than he could ever have been with anyone else, he still missed those days in his childhood, when he had two such unshakeable friendships. It was without pain that he remembered his and Hermione’s parting “ for how could it be painful if it led him to Luna? “ yet he knew that he would carry the burden of that lost friendship for as long as he lived.
Maybe it wasn’t too late, though. He was sure that Harry could tell him where to find her. And, who knew, perhaps she would welcome her best friend back without a moment’s hesitation? Maybe, after all this time, they would find each other in a strange setting, and remember why they had even become friends in the first place.
Ron watched his wife dance back towards him blissfully, and wondered if, in fact, he would end up finding his childhood friend again. As she knelt down beside him, he kissed Luna on the lips first, and then moved to plant a kiss on the smooth, round bump just below her stomach.
The world worked in odd ways, after all.