Letting her eyes drift shut for a moment, enveloped by his touch and the pleasant sound of his voice. By the time she opened her eyes again he was looking at her. As was often the case with him, when she felt herself unwind, she began to speak before she was even aware that she was giving voice to any little thought that crossed her mind.
"What was it like for you?" she asked softly. "After he died, when the war was all over?"
It was a hard thing to be a hero, especially one who had outlived survived the tasks set before him. Though a certain sort of logic said that one should be happy at the end of the war, Harry had for so long been defined by his relation to a terrible force of darkness, she could only suspect it would be a little jarring. How could it be anything but strange to find yourself without the goals and purpose that had for years coloured so much of his life? Then again, Harry had been unaware of precisely who he was until he'd come to Hogwarts. Maybe that made things different. Perhaps, like for her, it had simply been a return to normal. Her memories of him at Shell Cottage... she had never seen him so grimly determined. Such a heavy burden he'd had to bear. To her, it seemed no reward could ever aptly compensate for the sacrifice heroes made.
"It was..." he mulled it over, biting his lip.
He'd never really had to put it into words before. Once the war was over, he'd spent an entire month in his flat, seeing no one but Ron and Hermione and they just got it, mercifully. They didn't ask, they merely accepted. And of course, they were going through their own issues as well... the death of so many they'd loved, the end of the war they'd been fighting since they were children. And by the time he'd emerged, people were beginning to pick up the pieces... and even they knew better than to ask how he was doing then. So, he'd never bothered putting his feelings at the end of the war into words.
"It was strange. I didn't know what to do. McGonagall had put it in my head fifth year that I'd make a brilliant auror, and so I decided to dive in. But, really, I just felt lost. I still feel that way sometimes... but, who doesn't yeah?" he asked, trying to be as nonchalant as possible, trying not to sound like the lost little boy that he often felt he was.
Eyes drinking in the sight of him, she nodded. She understood what he meant, though she reckoned she couldn't fully appreciate how it must have been. Still, it had to be better to be free than to have one's path hedged with prophecy and destinies that few humans ever really understood correctly anyway.
"I think it is a great vanity that any of us presumes to fully know our way," she admitted, a smile playing at her lips.
The more she thought on it, the more she wanted to live in this house, the place he said he loved. How could anyone not feel lost without a proper home? Sure, there was that saying about home being wherever the heart rested, but from Luna's perspective Harry's last true home was destroyed the night his parents were killed. Her hand wandered over to his chest, coming rest on the broad muscle that covered his heart. She wanted to give him a home where he could feel loved and safe, as he made her feel. It almost struck her as strange, the gifts you wanted to give someone when you loved them. Blue eyes eased over his vibrant green, which still managed to send a small ping in her stomach. Merlin, she did love him.