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It's early June, two months to the day since a brave house elf took their hands and apparated them both away from a nightmare. Dean sits with his sketchbook open by Dobby's grave and watches as Luna moves around the endlessly blowing coastal grass and gathers flowers: small white ones that look like stars, translucent pink mallow, sweet-scented sea lavender, and many-coloured columbines from Fleur's garden. They're alone here; Bill and Fleur have gone to France for holidays. It's peaceful and warm, sunshine flowing from a wide, blue sky onto the wide, blue sea. The air smells of wind and salt and saltspray roses; the world is bright and fresh and full of song.
Dean sketches Luna moving as though she's weightless, a constellation of a girl traipsing among stars. April had offered Dean a four-week crash course in all things Luna, right here on the shores around Shell Cottage, and when she'd slipped into his bed and into his arms, the night after Harry and the gang left, she'd stepped as lightly and gently into his heart as she's treading now in the grass. There are moments when Dean wonders if he's really equipped to be the boyfriend of a girl as quirky and fey as Luna, but then she'll invariably say or do something so brilliant and beautiful that he'll know the point is moot; he's completely bonkers about her, equipped or not.
Luna pauses, and gives him that little smile that is somehow distracted yet utterly perceptive, both at once. "When you look at me like that, you give my stomach butterflies," she confides.
Dean puts the sketch of star-Luna away, gets up and moves over to the real girl. She's got her hand full of golden yellow poppies, and he takes one and threads the green stem of it into her hair. He arranges the flower near her temple, then takes a step back and tilts his head to consider the result, his hands framing her face as for a portrait. "Just ordinary, boring, mundane butterflies?" he teases her. "Not Giant-Winged Whatsits?"
"Well, they may in fact be Giant-Winged Whatsits," she says, and laughs, delight sparking in her silvery eyes. "That's exactly what they feel like, now that I think of it."
He follows her back to the grave and watches her add the poppies to the other flowers, arranging them all in a rainbow of sunlit colours. She takes out her wand and casts a watering charm to ensure that the flowers will last, and then she kneels down and gazes out at the sea and sky. The breeze tugs at her long hair. Her voice is soft and clear. "Did you ever wonder, before they took you, whether summer would come around and you'd still be on the run?"
Dean sits down next to her and puts an arm around her shoulder. "Yeah," he admits, squinting at the open, bright horizon, and thinks of Ted, who ran and ran and never made it to summer. "And worse. You know the sort of thoughts one gets. It seemed endless. You thought of it too, didn't you? How long you might stay locked up in that place? And whether—"
"I used to dream of a blue sky," says Luna. "And wake up and wonder if I'd ever see it again. And thanks to Dobby, I did. We did. We have summer, and colours, and air to breathe, and—"
"—and Giant-Winged Whatsits," says Dean, grinning, and tugs her into his lap. Her lips are sweet and warm, parting under his, and somewhere far above them, a lark is singing of freedom in dizzying climbs on the clear sky, singing as though its tiny heart would break from joy in every note.
It may not be strictly appropriate, to be kissing your girl breathless on someone's grave, but Dean feels assured that the little elf who saved them all would understand the frivolous impulse, and approve.
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