Luna appeared one day with a scrapbook.
"Fleur got one for me. I thought you could use one too, since the others are busy all the time, so I duplicated it." She had skipped away back up the stairs, leaving him looking at the way her hair swished behind her.
The first night Bill had stared. "Dean, what on earth are you doing?"
"Sketching."
"My wife?" Bill asked. "That's a bit forward."
Indeed, the hesitant lines on the page did make up the outline of the beautiful slender woman who he could just see as she stood setting the dining room table.
"Sorry," Dean said. "But the light's gorgeous just there. She's so many different colours. Plus she's got a good figure."
Bill snorted and said something along the lines of "You bet she has."
"I'll give it to you afterwards then." Dean said.
There was a pause. "You like drawing?" Bill asked.
Dean grinned. "I do a little. I love colours. When I was small I wanted to be an artist."
"And now?"
Dean sighed. "I did want to work in Gringotts. I love numbers. But now..." he trailed off.
There was pity in Bill's eyes. He clapped Dean on the shoulder. "Pretty soon this'll all be over, and then I'll make sure you get a job there."
He spared the scrapbook another glance. "As long as you don't put any of you artwork up."
"Is it that bad?" Dean protested as Bill got up.
"No," Bill said, walking towards his wife in the next room. "It's that good."
Little details began catching his eye. The sun climbing over the roof of the cottage. The dew clinging to the flowers outside. They all went in. He sketched his housemates at every chance he got. The glow of the fire in Ron's hair, the red fibres in Hermione's jumper turning black, the glint in Harry's green eyes. He shaded the leathery ears of Griphook from behind. In the end, there was only one he hadn't drawn. Fleur asked him to fetch driftwood again one day. It was one of the things he did most often, another way to pass the time.
"Do you mind if I stay down there? I'd like to sketch a bit."
"Pas probleme." Fleur said. "Stay as long as you weesh."
He began to pull his shoes on when a soft voice said "I'll come with you."
He looked up to see Luna. "No, that's alright Luna. I can manage." Although he didn't mind drawing in front of the others, he felt uncomfortable with Luna around. There was something private about the whole thing, something which for some inexplicable reason he didn't want her to see.
She shrugged "I'd like to."
He smiled. "Do you want to tell me more about the Seawater Plimpies?" As ludicrous as these animals were, he found a strange pleasure in the stories Luna told about them.
"If you like." she said. "But I'd like to see you sketching."
It was his turn to shrug, suddenly unable to refuse her. "You can come if you want."
She slipped on the beaten down pumps she wore and took her own scrapbook off the table. "You're right, it would be a nice day to sketch." she said.
They began making their way down the steps to the beach. Dean sat on a rock and took out his pastels.
"Do you mind if I see your drawings?" Luna asked.
Dean opened the book, feeling his face heat slightly. She began flicking through them.
"You do the colours well. But the faces..." she left it open on a picture of Bill, his scarred face reflecting the morning's pale sunshine. "They're too perfect. Bill isn't perfectly in proportion. You're thinking too mathematical."
Dean bit his lip. "I tend to do that. But mostly I do it for the colours."
"They're nice." Luna said. She opened it on the first picture of Fleur and frowned.
"Do you think she's beautiful?" It was a forward, simple question, one he expected no one but Luna could ask.
Dean looked at the picture. "Yes." he said bluntly.
"I can tell." she said. "She looks it." She looked Dean in the face. "Your pictures of her, they're the best. Because you're thinking of beauty, not proportion."
"Thanks." Dean said. He nodded towards her own scrapbook. "Can I see yours?"
Luna handed it over. A few weeks before, Dean would have been a little frightened of finding pictures of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, but recently Harry had told him about the incident in Luna's house. He had described Luna's room, and the picture on the ceiling.
"We looked... beautiful." Harry said. "There's no other way to describe it. We looked like us, only better looking."
"Well mate, anything can improve on you and Ron." Dean had joked, but from that moment he had been intrigued.
He took Luna's book and opened it.
"I duplicated your pastels to do it with," Luna explained. "I hope you don't mind."
Dean shook his head wordlessly. The first picture was one of Ollivander from memory. The old man appeared to be himself, with the wild hair and the moon eyes, but there was something different about him.
"He looks... different. He's definitely Ollivander but..." Dean was at a loss for words. "There's just something."
Luna looked at her work. "I just drew him the way I see him." she said simply.
Dean turned the page. Each one was of someone different. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Bill, Fleur and Griphook were all there, but there was also Neville, Ginny, Colin, Lupin, Dumbledore and a man who Dean guessed was her father.
"These are amazing." Dean said. "Where did you learn to draw like this?"
"My mum," Luna said softly. "She used to illustrate the magazine. She wanted me to take over when I was of age. Of course, when she died, Daddy had to get an illustrator in. But I still remember the lessons she gave me."
Dean suddenly felt very awkward. "My dad was an artist," he said suddenly. "At least, that's what he told Mum."
There was silence, apart from the ebbing tide. Luna had taken her shoes off, burrowing her feet in the pebbly sand.
To break the silence, Dean said abruptly. "You haven't drawn me. Why?"
Luna smiled at him. "You haven't drawn me."
He realised this wasn't really an explanation, but in spite of this he asked "Would you like me to?"
"That would be nice." she answered. "No one's ever drawn me before."
Out of the bag at her hip, she took her box of pastels, identical to the ones from the bottom of the wardrobe.
He rolled his sleeves up and opened his scrapbook on the first blank page.
Luna looked at him, her head cocked slightly to one side. Her hair was windblown, hanging down over the side of her face. Her pale blue eyes bore into his.
Tenatively, he began to draw the curve of her face, her crystal eyes, the blue and lilac of the sea behind her, the wet spots on her sleeve from the spray, the way her hand rested on her crossed ankles and her hair brushing off her knee.
He noticed how flawless he skin was, how her lips were always drawn into a slight dreamy smile, how her eyes were the same shade as the sky on a December morning. He began to smudge orange and blue into her cheeks as the colours of the day shone off them.
He opened his mouth a few times to speak, but every time he looked up at her he lost the words on his tongue again.
Finally he blew the last of the dust off the page and looked at it. Luna leant over the page. Her smile widened.
"It's good." she said.
"Better than my others?" he asked.
She nodded. "You've seen how I look, not how I'm supposed to." He gulped. "Better than Fleur, do you think?"
Luna looked at him. "I think so."
She paused, hovering over the page like that for a few seconds. He looked up, surprised to see how close she was. Luna seemed unperturbed. He could see anticipation glinting in her eyes and realised, the reason the drawing was better than his one's on Fleur was because Luna was more beautiful. He thought back over the weeks at Shell Cottage, and before at Hogwarts, the way he loved to listen to her soft, dreamy voice, the way her eyes twinkled when she was excited, the way she wasn't afraid to be fully herself.
He moved in a little closer and her eyes lit up as her lids began to close over them... But just then, a flurry of wind came. It whipped Luna's hair around both their heads. Dean could smell shampoo and sea salt and mystery on it.
But at that moment, Luna cried out "My scrapbook!" Abandoned on the rock, the book had made an escape, somersaulting across the shore to the sea. Luna jumped up and ran barefoot across the stony beach after it. Dean bounded after her.
The book had made a break for the sea. Not wanting the beautiful pictures to ruined, Dean sprinted right into the breaking waves.
He was waist-deep in the water before he noticed Luna had stopped. She was on her hands and knees at the tideline, the water crashing up around her. He waded back.
"I thought I saw Warbling Anemone," she said. "This coastline is perfect for them, and they sometimes get washed onto the shore."
Dean looked at the seabed below her.
"There's nothing there." he said, a little sad, wishing that there was something, just to make her happy.
"I think it might have got washed back with that last wave." She got up and waded further into the water.
"Luna, what about the book?"
"They're only drawings. Saving a life is much more important."
He followed her, watching the pebbles beneath the clear water.
"What colour is it?" he called.
"Indigo." she said. "This one was anyway."
Dean looked at his feet for a splash of purple or blue on the brown. His shoes were soaked through, he suddenly wished he had done what Luna had done and taken them off.
"Oh." Luna said quietly, a few feet in front of him. She bent down and cupped her hands around something.
"Ssh, it's alright, you're okay." Dean made his way over to her. In her hands, what looked like a ball of blue fluff was mewing slightly.
"You'll be okay, I'm going to put you out further from the shore. You just need to swim as fast as you can, alright?"
"Luna-" Dean began, but she ducked below the water and was swimming away.
"Luna!" he said, sighed, and followed suit. The water was freezing cold and sea salt burnt his eyes and nose, but he kept his sight trained on the pale shape that was Luna.
About ten metres further out, she came up for air. Dean came above the water, spluttering, only to see her dive below again, swim right to the floor and lay the creature down. From there, she smiled at him, and turned back up for the surface, before splashing over.
"We're all wet." she said simply. "But the water's nice."
Dean paused. "I guess it is." he said. Luna smiled and bent forwards slightly.
Just then, something caught his eye.
"Luna, the scrapbook!" Dean said, seeing the colourful rectangle leave a trail of pastel dust floating on the water as it headed for open sea.
"It's alright." Luna said."They're only pictures. I can draw them again."
"But-" he paused, realising how ridiculous he must sound. "You haven't drawn me." He said it anyway.
Luna simply smiled and said "Come on. We should go back up. Fleur wants wood."
Dean followed her back up to the beach, ready to collect the wood. But Luna simply took her wand out, and called "Accio driftwood!"
"You-you had your wand." Dean said, feeling like an idiot for rushing into the water when she could have done everything by magic anyway.
The driftwood sailed gently into their arms.
"Yes." she said. "But Mum always used to say don't use magic when it's more fun without it." Dean grinned. It was typical Luna to say that.
They made their way back up to the cottage. Fleur saw them out the window and opened the door, her face questioning.
"We had to save a warbling anemone," Dean explained.
Fleur's face broke into a smile and she said "You may use Bill's and my room to change." She took out her wand and blasted him dry again.
"I knew there was a spell for that." said Luna thoughtfully.
He went up to the little room and pulled down a jumper and a pair of jeans that Fleur had bought in Tesco for him.
He was pulling his shirt over his head when a small voice said "Oh, sorry." He turned round to see Luna.
"Fleur said I could borrow one of her tops." she said. "I didn't know you were in here."
"That's alright," he said, putting the jumper on as quickly as possible.
"It's here somewhere." Luna said, looking up.
"What does it look like?" said Dean, eager to help.
"There." said Luna, pointing to the top rail. It was a plain, bright electric blue tank top.
He reached up and grabbed it off its hanger.
With no embarrassment, Luna unbuttoned her blouse, to reveal a pale blue bra and sticking out ribs, and pulled it on.
"I used to have one like this," she explained. "perfect for Clumpy hunting, they love bright colours."
Dean stared at her and thought that there were a hundred different things to love about her at that moment, not just bright colours. Her head was slightly bent, her hair settling in a halo around her, her eyes full of some cloudy expression he could not name. It was something that came with Luna, some eccentricity, lovely and exciting and adorable and beautiful and interesting at the same time.
"Why are you staring at me?" she said with a tiny frown.
Dean shook his head and wildly looked around for a change is subject. The first thing that came out of his mouth was "Luna why didn't you draw me? Why draw everyone else but not me?"
She looked at him and said softly. "That was a book with pictures of my friends."
Dean was surprised how much this hurt him. "Right. Okay then. Well, yeah, um, I'm just going to go set the fire for Fleur."
But before he could a pale hand slipped into his. She led him to the bedroom she shared with Hermione.
From under the bed she drew a scrapbook identical to the other two, the same gaudy cover and cheap coloured pages. She handed it to him.
"Open it." she said.
He did so, and gasped. Inside, on every page, was a picture of him. Sitting on the sofa, looking out the window, even pictures of him sketching others. But there was something different about them to all the others. Whereas the other drawings seemed to show something different about the people, Dean could see nothing but himself in these.
"How come I look the same?" he asked. "Why didn't you make me beautiful, like you did with the others?"
Luna smiled. "I didn't need to. You were beautiful enough already to me. The other book was for friends, but this one was just for you."
Dean met her eyes. The expression in them seemed so much stronger than before.
Unable to contain himself any longer, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. She responded warmly.
"That was nice." she said.
Dean could have cringed, he was so embarrassed. What would Seamus have said? He could hear him now.
You kissed Loony! Loony Lovegood? Here's the guy that was with Ginny Weasley a few months ago! Out of all the girls to pick, you chose Loony? Lord Almighty Dean, what are we going to do with you?
But Seamus wasn't here right now, Dean decided, and if Luna was loony, then Seamus would just have to deal with it.
Excitement seeping into the cloudy blue eyes, Luna looked fit to have her portrait painted all over again.
And Dean would have been happy to, if the overwhelming urge to kiss her again did not get in his way.