“Eat,” she said. “Please,” Luna requested. She waited and got no response. “You must eat to keep your strength up,” she added.

“Eat just a little bit,” she coaxed him. Luna reached down blindly into the bowl and dug into the lump with her index finger. She concentrated on his breathing and found the location of the Wandmaker’s mouth. She slipped her finger into his mouth leaving behind the morsel.

“Did I ever tell you the story about the House Elf in a maroon jumper that helped Ginny and I escape the Carrows?” she offered.

“No more stories. No more false hope. Just let me die,” his feeble voice failing on the last word.

Luna felt the old man’s despair touch her. She shook her head and thought about Ginny and Neville and the sadness did not take hold. “You can’t die. You promised,” Luna said. “You said you would fight them if they came for me,” she reminded him.

“The flesh is weak,” he answered reaching out through the darkness to gently touch her cheek. Luna reached up and found his hand. The hand felt like a skeleton’s hand cold and bony. “Let me go, it will be more merciful,” he said.

“If you die, he wins. If you go who will remember Professor Burbage or Reg?” she offered.

“You will,” he whispered.

Suddenly, the duo heard cheering followed by arguments and screaming. Luna looked up at the ceiling. Whatever it was could not be good.

Luna was just getting her eyes focused, when she felt her right hand jerk as a weight fell against her side. In the shrouded blue-grey moonlight, she saw that Mr. Ollivander had swooned and fallen against her. Letting go of Dobby’s hand, the thin young woman struggled to catch the older man’s head and gently lowered it onto the patch of enclosed grass that they were standing on. Dean Thomas, who had also seen the Wandmaker’s collapse, came to her aid just as she was laying him on the ground.

After he was finished helping Luna, Dean straightened up and looked toward the cottage. “I’ll get help,” whispered Dean.

“Dean, have you met them before?” she asked. As the half moon fully broke through the clouds, she saw Dean shake his head from side to side. “I have. Please stay here with Mr. Ollivander. Thank you, Dobby,” Luna said caressing his check while looking down into his large moist eyes.

“Dobby must get back and help Harry Potter now, Miss” and with the statement the Elf disappeared back to Malfoy Manor.

The sound of the twin Apparations, and the conversation in their front yard must have alerted the occupants of the small cottage that there were uninvited guests just outside of their home. As Luna approached the cottage, she heard the sound of muffled voices from just behind the closed front door.

Luna took a deep breath, knocked on the oaken front door and in as loud a voice as she could muster, spoke, “My name is Luna Lovegood. I’m a friend of Bill’s sister Ginny. We met in the Hospital Wing of Hogwart’s the night Dumbledore died.”

The sound of whispering came to her through the door and after maybe a minute, the door cautiously opened just wide enough to permit a women’s eye to stare appraisingly out at her. Maybe he was careless or maybe the months living in the dark had made her other senses more acute, but Luna turned to her right and said, “Hello Bill, have you heard from Ginny recently?”

The slight intake of air from right in front of her confirmed the guess of his location. She heard his half whispered questions, “How did you find us? Why did you come here of all places?” Concern flooded his voice.

“Harry Potter and your brother Ron told the House-elf Dobby to bring us here. Dobby just returned to help rescue Harry, Ron, Hermione Granger, and a Goblin,” she explained. “Please you must help us. Mr. Ollivander has collapsed. Help Dean and me get him inside,” she pleaded.

“Ron’s in trouble! Where? Tell me, I’ll go to him,” he said, as if not hearing anything after his little brother’s name.

“No. Dobby will bring them here. If you go, you might get captured. You must help us, Mr. Ollivander may be dying on your doorstep,” she ordered in an imitation of the tone she’d heard Ginny use so often.

Bill stood there in front of her suspended. He desperately wanted to help his little brother and he also desperately wanted to protect his wife and home. Finally, the cottage front door opened all of the way and into the doorway, wearing a flowery house robe, stepped Fleur Weasley. Fluer’s wand was pointed at Luna. “Whom did you escort out of the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts?” she demanded in an authoritarian tone that accentuated her French accent.

“Neville Longbottom,” Luna replied.

“She is definitely the Lovegood girl. Bill, go bring them in before the Death Eaters find them,” she ordered, “I’ll make some hot water for tea or cocoa.” Fleur lowered her wand and stuck it into her robe’s side pocket.

Bill accepted his wife’s urgings like a mental tie-breaker and walked out across to the prone form in his yard. In a couple of minutes, he returned to the doorway with Dean at his side carrying Mr. Ollivander like a small child in his arms. Luna followed Bill as he carried the old man into the cottage’s sitting room. He gently lowered the Wandmaker onto the little couch laying his head on a soft down pillow.

“I’ll take care of him now,” Luna said, “Please, when your wife is ready, could someone bring in some tea for us. And thank you, Bill.”

Luna got down on her knees on the floor in front of the couch and slipped off the filthy slippers that were on the wandmaker’s feet. Luna brushed back his hair and felt his forehead. He was neither feverish nor clammy. The Apparation must have just been too much for his weakened condition. She reached across him and took the colorful comforter that adorned the back of the couch and laid it over his form.

Luna finished tucking in Mr. Ollivander and seated herself on the floor between her friends head and the table. In a couple of minutes, Fleur brought in a tray with two mugs of tea and a plate full of homemade shortbread biscuits into the room. Fleur sat the tray on the little table in front of the Luna. Luna thanked her hostess and sipped the tea to test its heat. After waiting for a couple of minutes for the liquid to cool, she awoke her patient and aided in his drinking of the warm liquid and eating of a small snack.

The tea and the light food seemed to revive him. He sat up, in spite of Luna’s protesting, and gazed around the small room. After about five minutes, Fleur peaked in and smiled at her guests. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he softly spoke to the young housewife. “I hope not be too much of a bother,” he added, after another sip and a bit of biscuit.

“It is no bother. With the world the way it is, any friendly visitor is welcomed here,” said Fleur, smiling at the man on her couch. “Although, if five more are to arrive tonight, it might get a bit crowded in here.”

Suddenly a scream came from the front of the cottage; the anguished cry caused Luna’s heart to skip. She excused herself from Mr. Ollivander and went to the front door. Silhouetted in the front yard, Harry Potter was clutching something. Luna’s heart sank as she realized that he was holding Dobby.

She had just found her fourth constellation when she sensed his arrival. “Are you sure you should be up and outside?” she asked, her eyes still on the night sky.

“The bedroom was closing in on me. I had to escape it and our hostess’ ministrations. I didn’t know which would smother me first,” he said with a slight sense of humor in his voice.

Luna smiled. She thought back and realized it had been since before Reg’s moving that she had heard so such life in his voice.

“I was thinking about what happened to us at Malfoy Manor and what the Sorting Hat told once me. I think they explain something I’ve always wondered about Hermione Granger,” she spoke in an oft-handed way.

What can one learn from months of captivity and torture?” he asked

“We had everything we knew taken away from us. The things we wizards take for granted. Everything we had learned at school was useless. We only had each other, some blankets, a nail, and our minds. A Muggle-born wizard must take everything that they were told by their parents and schools about was possible and impossible and forget it. I think that’s why Hermione reads so much. She’s trying to find the rules of the world she was thrust into. The Sorting Hat told me that, ‘Letting go of what you think you know is where wisdom does start,’” she said. “Either that or she just likes books,” Luna added upon further reflection.

“Luna, you are among the wisest people I’ve ever met,” Ollivander answered, the power in his voice had lessened slightly. Luna noted it and turned her senses to his breathing.

“I can feel you reading me. Your breathing changed,” the Wandmaker said in response to her change of focus. The old man slipped next to her like he had so many times in the basement. He seemed to draw strength from the sense of freedom and joined her in the star gazing.

Luna smiled into the darkness and wondered how long this increased sensitivity would last. She took one of the blankets that she had been sitting on, laid it across their laps and went back to the hunting for constellations.

In the morning, a panicked Bill Weasley came crashing out of the cottage’s front door and found the two of them leaning with their backs against the cottage wall with a blankets tucked across their laps as they soundly slept. The scarred man looked at the odd couple and wondered what in the world the two of them had been doing outside at night.

Fleur Weasley hugged Mr. Ollivander. The old man was strong enough to be moved now and he would be leaving the cottage after lunch. The Wandmaker shook Bill’s hand and looked into Luna’s eyes. Luna, who had refused to leave him until he was healthy, had helped pack his bags for the trip to join the Weasleys.

“Before I leave, I must have some time with Luna,” he said, as he looked at his host and hostess, “Can we use the sitting room? Can the doors be closed? And may I borrow your wand?” Ollivander reached out his left hand toward Bill.

Fleur gave her husband a confused look. Bill shrugged at her, nodded his acquiescence, and pulled his wand out of his vest pocket.

Ollivander took Bill’s wand and with it motioned for Luna to enter the other room. The old man examined the stick, slowly rolled it between his fingers and commented, “Excellent wand, you’ve kept it well maintained.” After the comment, he joined the young blonde in the other room and he shut the door behind them.

Ollivander, without saying a word, took Luna by the arm and spun on the spot. She felt a slight squeezing and when her eyes focused she found herself inside a sealed dimly lit room. Inside the room, Luna turned to find mountains of little boxes. She realized she was in a room full of wands.

Ollivander moved over to an empty spot on the floor. The Wandmaker closed his eyes and waved the borrowed stick. Suddenly, in the middle of the empty place in the floor, a waist high old fashioned combination safe appeared. He took Bill’s wand and tapped the door three times. The door of the safe opened and Ollivander reached into the safe and took out a wand. “An Ollivander’s wand cannot be taken from him. If seized or lost they always return to this vault,” he explained.

The old man, invigorated by being ‘home’, hopped from pile to pile picking up the little boxes and contemplating. “No, it must be a new wand. A wand made especially for you,” said the old man with a twinkle in his eye.

“Can I have one made from the horn of a Crumple-horned Snorkack?” she eagerly requested.

The old man’s left eye brow rose. He paused and then answered, “Do you remember what the sorting hat told you?” She nodded. “There is no such creature Luna,” he asserted.

“You’re wrong. Daddy’s got a horn at home. He wrote and told me so,” Luna added with absolute certainty.

Ollivander sighed and with a slight wave of the wand, he conjured a vase of daisies out of thin air. “Luna, what you’ve seen here must be a secret. I only brought you here to show how much I trust you,” the old man said with an obvious sense of pride. Luna thanked the Wandmaker and they Apparated back to the cottage.

The sitting room door opened and out walked Luna and Mr. Ollivander. Luna handed the vase of daisies to Fleur as Ollivander handed the borrowed wand back to Bill. Bill Weasley noticed that just visible from the Wandmaker’s robe pocket was the brown handle of a wand. Bill looked at his wife and she smiled back at him each understanding what had just happened.

Mr. Ollivander hugged Luna. A small tear swelled up in his left eye but it refused to fall down his cheek. As he released the hug, the palm of his left hand came to rest on her right cheek and he said, “Keep in touch, my dear. I will be very disappointed if I do not hear from you. In fact, I might come looking for you.” The ancient Wandmaker pointed his wand up the stairway and floating down into the kitchen came his packed bags.

Luna looked out the door and just beyond the little gate leading into the lane; she saw Bill and Mr. Ollivander disappear. She was reminded how she had felt on that first trip on the Hogwart’s Express as she watched her Father slide away from the train window. She wondered if she would ever be over what happened in Malfoy Manor. She wondered if maybe it would be best if she was never over it.