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Love at an Improbability Factor of three million eight hundred forty-two thousand nine hundred fifty-seven to one against
Harry picked up his teacup and took a sip while a golden, oven-fresh pumpkin pastie waited patiently on his plate for a chance to tantalize his taste buds. He was hiding in an inauspicious corner of the universe that blended quantum uncertainty with magic—or, as some people called it, The Three Broomsticks, pondering the ultimate question of life: What should I do?
Through the years, he had survived encounters with the Dark Lord on multiple occasions. He had defeated some of the most sinister and dangerous of creatures. In truth, he had saved the Magical World on more than one occasion. Yet, here he was, contemplating the nature of existence and pondering ways to overcome his boredom.
The thing about quiet afternoons like this, as Harry was quick to consider, was that they were distinctly out of place in his life. Normally, occurrences like this would be promptly interrupted by a dragon, Malfoy, or at least a rogue house elf–or perhaps a mildly annoying one named Dobby. Today was different. It was like the universe was preoccupied with some other kind of galactic or celestial calamity. He felt like he had been told to hold his butterbeer. I’ll get back to you shortly.
It was then, in this rare moment of tranquility, that Luna Lovegood appeared. She was, perhaps, summoned by improbability itself. It didn't matter. To many, including Harry, she was like an ethereal presence that drifted in and out of his life, not certain as to the concept of gravity and therefore unwilling to fully commit to its power.
“Hello, Harry Potter,” she said, her voice flowing through the air like a subtle announcement of bacon frying, bread baking, or coffee brewing. Are you puzzled over the meaning of life, or just wondering what the singular versions of scissors, pants, or pyjamas would look like?”
Harry, who had actually been pondering the meaning of life---at least he was between thoughts about lunch–gave her a distracted smile. “A little of both, actually. What about you?”
Luna tilted her head like a blonde cocker spaniel that was trying to determine what you were saying. However, unlike Buddy or Bella, who only knew their names, sit, lie down, come here, and the sound of the can opener, Luna absorbed every word and processed them from a variety of angles.
“I was thinking about socks,” she said after a moment. “I love a nice pair of them. But one of them is always getting lost. They are like twins—one of them is always more mischievous than the other and wanders off. But they eventually find their way back to us. The universe works in curious ways.
Harry was no longer surprised by Luna’s off-the-wall comments and conversations. They seldom follow a straight line. More likely, they meandered through a field of wonder and absurdity like a butterfly seeking nectar from an unlimited supply of wildflowers. Fortunately, Harry found her frequent divergences and non-sequiturs revitalizing. They cooled his overheated mind like a refreshing zephyr on a hot day. Life always felt a bit lighter after talking with her.
After lunch, Harry and Luna went walking. Soon, they were conversing and strolling about the infinitesimal speck in the universe called The Grounds of Hogwarts. Tiny as it was in the grand scheme of things, Harry and Luna found it particularly important and interesting. They were, as was to be expected of any conversation involving Luna, discussing how to identify the different species of plimpies, possible subjects that clouds might chat about with each other, and the finer points of life. To Harry, their time together always seemed brighter and more magical than time spent with others—as if fairies were following them along and sprinkling them with sparkle dust.
Time, at least in the limited understanding currently popular among the inhabitants of Earth, passed. One day, as they were exploring, Harry was suddenly struck upside the head with the notion that his feelings for Luna had crossed some kind of invisible threshold between a BBFC-12 friendship and something more. He was experiencing a warmth when he was around her that he had never before felt in his life. It made him want to spend more than just his quiet afternoons with her. It was causing him to contemplate an involving scenario of spending all of his days with her. At the same time, Luna’s thoughts on this subject were unclear. Her mind was temporarily unavailable for comment while she was determining whether the crumple-horned snorkack track she had just discovered belonged to a buck or a doe.
One afternoon, as autumn was finishing up its annual tour of duty by expending its last couple of days of warmth and unimpeded sunshine, Harry and Luna were sitting on the edge of the Black Lake with their feet in the water. As a school of indeterminate plimpies was nibbling on their toes, causing the occasional outburst of giggles, Luna turned and asked, “Harry, do you think Nargles fall in love?”
Harry had come to take all of Luna’s questions seriously—even one about creatures that may not exist. This sometimes tested the elasticity of his mental faculties and the restraint of his sense of humour. After an acceptable amount of pondering, he smiled as he looked into her big, curious eyes. “Something must occur,” he said. “If it didn’t, there would be no baby Nargles to grow into adults who like to steal your shoes and socks.”
“But do they fall in love?” Luna asked a second time.
“You always talk about anything being possible. I suppose they will find a way, even though it seems improbable.”
A smile exploded and lit up Luna’s face like a supernova. “You’re right, of course,” said Luna. “Love is rather like that. It’s exceptionally persistent. It can find someone, even in the most unexpected places.”
It was then, with no witnesses except the sun, a whimbrel that paused from its search for shoreline insects, and the giant squid who had gotten tired of looking into the Slytherin Common Room and poked his huge eye up out of the water to stave off boredom, that Harry and Luna realized they had fallen in love.
Their love was not the sort that blazed with a blinding light that dazzled all who stared into it. It did not demand grand gestures on the part of the other party to sustain it. It was a pure love that blossomed quietly like the most perfect and fragrant of wildflowers in a distant, rarely-visited meadow. The fact that it was virtually unobserved added to its beauty and simplicity.
Their love endeavored and persevered through war and the defeat of the Dark Lord—the Magical World’s equivalent of Darth Vader. One day, the sound of inevitability called together an unconventional mixture of magical creatures, friends, a wayward werewolf with impeccable grooming and fashion sense, and some misguided time travelers who missed their destination by 42 years to witness the wedding of Harry and Luna inadvertently. The celebrant was a centaur with a penchant for tap dancing.
George, Ron, and Ginny Weasley provided the fireworks for the kiss and recessional. When Luna tossed her bouquet of sapphire blue and scarlet red roses, it landed in Hagrid’s beard. This prompted a heated skirmish between a pair of pixies and a screech owl, all of whom lived in there. The reception poet, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings from Greenbridge, Essex, was the victim of a train delay caused by a cat sleeping on the lap of the conductor, thus rendering him unable to get up and tend to his job. It caused Ms. Jennings to miss the ceremony entirely—a mishap later deemed the affair's high point.
The years continued passing as they are wont to do—at least for the time being, for lack of an improbable quantum leap of technology. Harry and Luna settled into a charming cottage at the boundaries of the wizarding world, where the lines between magic and Muggle reality blurred like a child's watercolor picture left out in the rain.
One afternoon while Harry was carrying in some wood for the stove Luna announced that she was pregnant. This caused him to drop the firewood, startling their resident pixies. That resulted in the chaotic pealing of little bells, causing it to seem like a festive occasion. Once things calmed down, Harry said he suspected that Nargles were to blame for her condition. Luna accused him of being silly and said it was because of the Vitex, Dong Quai, and Ashwagandha she was growing in her garden, as well as the fertility runes she had painted on their headboard.
Seven months later, they were blessed with a son they named James Xenophilius. He had his father’s unruly hair and, by his first birthday, green eyes. The birth set in motion a series of similar events that only ended after three more children and Harry digging up the plants in Luna’s garden and scorching the runes off the headboard. It is reported that he said: “Four is enough. We’re not in competition with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, thank you very much.”
Their second child was born 11 months after James. Pandora Lily grew to look like someone had pointed a wand at Luna and said, “Diminuendo”. While James was an explorer who needed a constant eye on him lest he disappear or get into something above his age grade, Pandy was a pointer and asker. Her one-day record of 347 ‘What’s that?’s' has never been seriously approached.
Child number three came 13 months after Pandy. Ginny Moonflower grew into her mother’s wide-open eyes; however, they had a mix of colors in them, bordering on hazel. As soon as she could walk, she started following Pandy everywhere. They became the “What’s That?” twins.
Their final child, Ronald Neville, took on the classic youngest child role of being mischievous and an instigator who got his older brother and sisters into trouble. His blonde hair was unruly like his father’s. His silvery-blue eyes were all Luna.
One could say, upon fair observation, that each of the children was more delightfully quirky than their predecessor—except for James, who was the beta version. It was as if they had downloaded all of the older sibling’s most unique and peculiar characteristics. Then, in a burst of that devilishness that Peeves would envy, they added in their own personal upgrades.
It therefore goes without saying, although it is being said here, that the Potter home was a joyous and happy place. It was filled with frequent laughter, a never-ending sense of wonder, and the sound of tinkling bells provided by a group of particularly enthusiastic pixies, Luna said, who were chasing away the Nargles and Brownies.
A good, satisfying life, as they discovered, was not about great battles, legendary quests, and grand adventures. It was about the quiet moments—morning cups of tea on the porch, late-night conversations after the children were in bed, lying on the ground looking up at the stars and wondering if they were looking back, the joy of being with someone who loved and understood you in all of the weird and spectacular majesty.
As they grew older in the sense of mortal witches and wizards, their love grew stronger with each day. They reveled in the sounds of their children’s laughter and play, and the shared awe of watching the sunlight coming through the trees on a breezy day. They felt secure in the knowledge that through it all, no matter what, they had each other.
With their days nearing their end, it was not magic or logic that had defined them, but the improbability of having found each other among an infinite number of other pieces in a jigsaw puzzle the size of the universe. They were two pieces that fit perfectly together.
So, as they sat cuddled together on their porch swing watching their twenty-nine thousand two hundred forty-second edition of the sun painting the sky, Harry and Luna could not help but smile. It seemed, in the grand scheme of things, the universe had seen fit to make its ultimate purpose seeing to it that they had a happy life after all.
—THE END—