Work Text:
It's not an affair. It never was, and it never will be, despite the furious whispers and the shouts of the tabloids. It wasn't.
It's just . . .
sometimes he needs to get away. There are days when everything added together is just too much, and somehow Luna became his escape when he can't stand it anymore, when he starts to long for the solitude of the Dudley's second bedroom or even the simple company of the spiders under the stairs.
(It's when Ginny's missing the fame and independence of being a pro-Quidditch star. When the boys are screaming and yelling and breaking and blaming, and reminding everyone why they aren't allowed to share a room. When he's uncomfortable at a job he's still not sure he's actually qualified for. It's when he realizes that too much of what he sees nowadays reminds him of a world that could have, should have, changed.)
It's just . . .
Luna is Luna. He doesn't understand why it calms him so much to listen to her, to watch her, to just be with her.
She's quirky, and odd, and doesn't really care what's going on in the world around her. She doesn't pay attention to politics, though she's always quick to offer forward the dastardly plot of a conspiracy theory. It's times like that when he realizes how much of the world she really does see, and that it's only that she sees the tiny details differently than anyone and everyone else.
Sometimes he suspects that she understands him more than anyone else in the world. More than his friends, more than his mentors, more than his wife. She just looks at him, smiles her quiet little smile, and says exactly what he needs to hear, oftentimes without knowing the details of what's wrong.
It's not an affair. He can't bring himself to do that to his wife, to his kids, to her. Sometimes, in the darkest hour of night when he's avoiding sleep because the nightmares that still come despite his scar's numbness, he imagines another life, one with her. He laughs more in that life, smiles more.
He's content with his own life though, happy even, so he settles instead just for his afternoons and evenings with her, because they are the healing balm for the wounds in his soul.
He's never had the courage to ask if Ginny believes the whispers and the papers, because he and Luna know the truth. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, because Harry can't bring himself to give up their clandestine meetings.