Author's Note: I'm so sorry about how long it took for me to get this epilogue finished! Thanks to all of you who've stuck with the story despite the waits!
Due to length, the epilogue is split into two parts. On the websites that will let me, I'm posting both parts at the same time because I've made you wait long enough for the ending.
Epilogue: Weasleys
(Part One of the Epilogue)
Percy Weasley confidently opened the door to his small, one person flat. Despite it being barely six o'clock on a Monday morning, he was fully awake, already in his work attire—a plain, black cloak with a small Ministry seal on the chest—with a briefcase in hand.
"Laura? What are you doing here?" He stepped back, confused, but allowing me to enter the flat.
The place was clean and practical, but was also inhospitable. The living room had a sofa and a small chair, but the empty coffee table between the two pieces of furniture suggested that the living room received little use. I could barely see into the kitchen, which also was tidy. A few dishes in the sink waited to be washed and looked out of place.
"Is anything the matter?" Percy asked cautiously, shutting the door behind me.
"No." I turned my back on the flat to look at my old friend. It had been several months since I'd seen him. We'd spoken briefly in Diagon Alley a couple of months after I'd started dating Oliver again, but we'd only had enough time to exchange greetings before we both hurried off to work.
"You drop in on friends at six frequently?" Percy asked, smirking and carefully placing his briefcase at his feet.
I smiled at his joke. "It was the only time I was sure you'd be here. Although, it looks like I almost missed you."
Percy looked down at himself. "Oh. I have to stop by the Burrow to drop off some papers for Charlie. He's been trying to get the documentation to go to Brazil to study the dragons in the Amazon rainforest, but Brazil's Ministry of Magic is being a right pain, and—what are you doing here?" he finished, looking at me with curiosity.
"Catching up with a friend," I said, dodging the question.
"At six a.m.?"
"We're both morning people, anyway. And like I said, six a.m. was the only time I knew you'd be here, and not at work."
Percy still looked highly skeptical.
"So things are getting better with your family?" I pressed.
After a moment, he shrugged, resigning himself to the unexpected conversation. "I guess, slightly. More with Charlie than the rest. And Charlie's going to Brazil." Percy smiled thinly.
I wasn't surprised that Percy had made progress with Charlie over the rest of the family. Excepting Percy, Charlie had been the closest to Dan. Charlie was the Weasley most likely to understand exactly how the death had changed Percy.
"Is Charlie still unmarried?" I asked.
Percy nodded. "As single as ever." A more genuine smile started appearing. "Are you interested?"
The joke took me by surprise. I suppose I deserved it for having dropped in on Percy unannounced. Still, even though Percy jokingly had given me a hard time over many things while we were students at Hogwarts, he had never asked about people I might have liked, and he had rarely hinted at the subject. (There had been too great of a chance of it leading to awkward conversations, not unlike the one we were about to begin.) After the one time that Percy and I had spoken about whom I might like to date, he'd given me the silent treatment for weeks.
"No," I said after recovering from his question regarding Charlie. "No, I was just curious. What about you?"
Percy raised an eyebrow so that it appeared above the rim of his thick glasses. "Am I interested in Charlie?"
"No, you git, are you dating anyone?" I said, laughing.
"Oh." Percy laughed good-naturedly. "No, I'm not." He didn't seem upset by this, nor had I expected him to be. His focus was on other matters and always had been. "And you?"
I hadn't wanted to enter that topic of conversation so quickly, but it had been my own fault. Percy was obligated to ask me if I was dating anyone after I'd asked him. He would have appeared conceited if he hadn't. That's not to say that Percy wasn't conceited, but it is to say that his manners were good enough that he could slightly cover it up.
"I am," I said, wondering if Percy would let me leave it at that for the time being.
"Oh?" Percy asked, raising his eyebrows slightly. "I'd have thought that you'd be too busy at the Prophet to bother with a relationship."
I ignored his word choice. "I am busy," I admitted.
"Does he work at the paper, too?" Percy asked.
"No."
"Well, that's good," Percy said. "Coworkers probably shouldn't date, anyway. It's unprofessional and leads to awkwardness in the workplace for everyone."
I laughed and decided that I would probably never tell Percy about Elliot, the sports reporter I'd dated and had neglected to invite to Joan and Adam's wedding.
"Percy, if you don't find a girlfriend at work, where will you find one?" I kidded.
Percy shrugged off my comment, but he smiled, making me suspect that perhaps Percy didn't always follow his own rules. I decided not to accuse him, though, since he probably would have denied an office relationship whether or not there had been one.
"So, why are you here?" Percy asked, and his tone surprised me. He was still obviously curious, but there was friendliness in his voice, too.
His kindly voice threw me off even more than the question on its own would have. For almost six years, I'd been imagining Percy in the way that most people saw him. I had thought of Percy as nothing more than a workaholic without a sense of humor who would never be truly happy because work made him neglect all relationships. I'd thought of him as proper to the point of being stiff. Polite to the point of being cold. Proud to the point of being so stubborn that he would never allow himself to learn how things might be better.
For six years, I'd forgotten my friend. Percy was all of those things that I'd remembered during the years after Hogwarts; people weren't being unjust when they saw him that way. No one had the time or the will to see anything more. While we were students, until he'd started dating Penelope, I'd been able to see that sometimes Percy wasn't being completely serious; when he made a joke, he smirked, a facial expression most people mistook for more proof of Percy's arrogance. I'd been able to see that Percy's work ethic carried over into his very few friendships. His relationships didn't fail because he stopped trying; they failed when his friends stopped trying to just like Percy for who he was because Percy sure as hell wasn't going to change.
Nor should he have had to change.
"Laura?" Percy prompted.
I snapped out of my thoughts, suddenly more confident that I wanted to ask Percy to do what I'd come to ask him to do.
"I'm getting married," I said quickly.
Percy blinked. "You're kidding."
I shook my head and then smiled slightly, as I always did when I thought about the subject, as pathetic or sickening as that may sound.
"To anyone I know?" Percy asked, bracing himself for the answer.
I paused. I'd tried to predict how Percy would take the news, but had been unable to decide what his reaction would be. "Oliver."
"Wood?" Percy asked, his eyes widening noticeably and his eyebrows reappearing over the rims of his glasses. He stared at me for several seconds before pressing his lips together. It took him several more seconds before he was able to manage a toothless smile. "I see," he said, trying to sound cheerful.
I laughed a little, nervously. "I thought you'd take it a bit worse than that, actually."
"It's been a long time," Percy said, but he dropped the fake smile.
"Yes, it has," I agreed.
"I thought you'd broken up."
"We started dating again at the beginning of the year."
"And you're already getting married?" Percy asked disapprovingly.
I shrugged. "I've known him most of my life."
"You weren't speaking to him most of your life," Percy corrected me.
"At least I know what it will be like after the honeymoon period," I joked. I'd planned counterarguments for all of the obvious points that Percy would make.
Percy actually laughed slightly, and I joined him out of relief.
"Did you come here just to break the news to me?" Percy asked, smirking a little.
"Not exactly," I said.
Percy raised his eyebrows yet again. He sighed and crossed his arms, looking down at the ground. After a few moments, he lifted his head and nodded at me once. "All right. I'm ready. When's the baby due?"
My mouth dropped open slightly before I started laughing loudly.
"Well, it was rather obvious," Percy said, grossly misinterpreting my laughter.
"I'm not pregnant," I said, still giggling even though I had probably just been insulted. "Believe it or not, Oliver proposed of his own accord."
"I see," he said, uncrossing his arms. He looked at me very carefully for several seconds, and I had to look away from him for one of the only times in our long friendship. "You'll be happy with him," he said, finally, and it wasn't difficult to detect sadness.
I snapped my gaze back to his eyes, but he lowered his look.
"That doesn't mean you lost your fight with him," I said plainly. "It has nothing to do with that."
"I know," Percy said. "I just…." He slowly raised his eyes so that they would meet mine, and he sighed. "It's hard for me to accept that you're going to marry anyone else except…."
I took a step forward and placed my hand on Percy's shoulder, but that didn't feel right. I moved my hand away from his shoulder so that I could hold his hand.
"I don't need you to hold my hand anymore, Laura," he said quietly, smiling with half of his mouth as he glanced down at my smaller hand grasping his.
"I know, but I will anytime it will help," I said, but I let his hand fall to his side and put my own hands in the pockets of my cloak.
The two of us stood in silence for a minute, looking anywhere but at each other. I noticed that there were a few pictures on the fireplace, so I walked over so that I could see what photographs were in the frames sitting on the mantle. There were a couple of rather old, formal pictures of the Weasley family and a copy of the photograph of the Weasleys in Egypt, which had been in the Prophet. I smiled when I saw a candid shot of Percy, Dan and me sitting at the kitchen table, eating and laughing.
"There aren't any other pictures of the three of us. That's the only one," Percy said from the same place near the door.
"I'm surprised that there are any pictures of the three of us," I said, taking the picture off the mantle to look at it more carefully. My eyes traveled to Dan, who was the closest to the camera. His image smiled before eating a forkful of eggs. He was seventeen in that picture, but he looked young to me; it seemed as if it had been a long time since I'd been seventeen.
It had been a long time since I had seen Dan. Even a picture of him. It struck me that he hadn't been quite as handsome as I remembered him being. He looked very much like Percy did without glasses. Actually, I thought that Percy might have ended up being slightly more handsome than his older brother. Dan waved as I put the picture back on the mantle. I turned my back on the photograph, trying to get the image out of my mind because a lump was forming in my throat.
"OK?" Percy asked.
I nodded and moved across the small room to take my original place.
"You're sure?" he pressed, watching my face carefully to see if I was lying.
"Yeah. I'm fine; it's been a long time."
Percy thought for several moments before responding, "I guess that helps."
Maybe I was kidding myself, but I thought that time had helped him. Hell, Percy was talking about Dan. Willingly. To me.
And, he didn't need me to hold his hand….
"So, you're not pregnant…. Then what is the other thing you came to tell me?" Percy asked, changing the subject.
I paused before deciding that I'd put off my proposition long enough. "I came to ask you to be in the wedding."
Percy wrinkled his brow and frowned slightly.
"As a groomsman," I clarified.
"In your wedding?" he asked.
"Yes. In March. So, in about five months."
"As Wood's groomsman?" Percy asked with dislike.
"Not Wood's groomsman," I said, knowing that it was my only chance of convincing him. "As my groomsman."
Percy laughed a little. "I don't think it works that way, Laura."
"Says who?" I asked juvenilely.
"Says everyone," Percy said definitively. There was no point in arguing the point further. Percy wasn't one to go against tradition, and if everyone said that something was done a certain way, then that was that, in Percy's opinion.
"Please, Percy. I'm not asking. I'm begging. How often have you had the pleasure of seeing me beg for something?"
Percy took a moment to count before shaking his head slightly and shrugging. "Less than a handful," he admitted.
"You should be in my wedding, Perce. You were my best friend for over six years."
To my delight, Percy seemed to be giving in a little. He furrowed his brow for a minute, thinking. "I'm assuming that you have one bridesmaid too many and need another male," he said, almost snappishly.
I nodded, seeing no reason to lie. "You don't want Cedar to walk down the aisle by herself, do you?"
"I see no reason why she couldn't. The flower girl will. Make her the flower girl," Percy said impertinently.
I smirked up at him. "Very funny."
Percy laughed a bit, obviously thinking that what I'd said was true. "Why are you really asking me to be a groomsman, Laura?"
"I told you," I refused to change my story. "You should be in the wedding. You were my best friend for—"
"'Over six years,'" Percy interrupted. "I can still tell when you're lying, by the way."
"So?" I said stubbornly.
"So, you're lying." He raised his hand when I opened my mouth to disagree. "Or, you're leaving out part of the truth."
If Percy could read other people as well as he could read me, the Ministry was in trouble; he'd be Minister of Magic before he was thirty if he could so easily catch people lying.
I took a few moments to test the believability of a few fibs before deciding that it was too early in the morning to try to outsmart Percy. I was a morning person, but I was sure that Percy had been awake for at least one more hour than I had, giving him the advantage of clearer thinking.
"If you're not a groomsman, it'll be Oliver's dad," I muttered.
Percy had a nice laugh over that statement. He stopped chuckling just before I was about to withdraw my invitation altogether. "Troubles with the in-laws already?"
"Only one of them, thanks," I snapped, still bristling a bit from him laughing in my face for a few minutes.
"I never thought badly of Mr. Wood. He's always pleasant enough when we share an elevator at the Ministry," Percy said, still smiling widely.
"Believe me; he hates you. Oliver's told him all about what happened during our second year."
"That was eleven years ago."
I raised one of my eyebrows. "I don't see you or Oliver rushing to forgive one another after eleven years."
Percy rolled his eyes. "That's different."
"Of course," I said sarcastically.
Percy ignored my snide comment. "Clearly Wood's forgiven you. Why should his father care about something stupid that happened over a decade ago?"
"If I knew that," I said as if I were talking to a two-year-old, "then we wouldn't be having this conversation."
Percy stopped humoring me. "I can't be Wood's groomsman."
I clenched my fists in my pockets, trying to release some irritation. "I talked to Oliver first, you know. He said that if you said yes—"
"He said that because he knew I wouldn't agree to it."
"Prove him wrong!"
Percy shook his head. "Just talk to Mr. Wood. I'm sure that things aren't as bad between the two of you as you claim."
I took my hands out of my pockets and crossed my arms, showing him that I disagreed instead of yelling at him.
"Talk to Mr. Wood," Percy said more insistently, yet with a calmness with which I couldn't argue.
I had to accept it; Percy would dance naked in front of the Wizengamot before he agreed to be one of Oliver Wood's groomsman. I'd known he'd disappoint me before I'd even knocked on the door, but I'd had to ask.
"Thanks anyway," I muttered insincerely.
Percy laughed a little. "Do you have any other news to break?"
I shook my head.
"OK." Percy checked his watch. "It's getting close to seven. I guess I'll drop off these papers during lunch. Or I'll just have Dad bring them home for me."
"Work at the Ministry doesn't start until nine. Go to the Burrow and visit with your family, Percy," I said, trying to sound as stern as he had when telling me to talk to Mr. Wood.
Percy looked at me before nodding. "I will."
"You'll at least come to the wedding? As a guest?" I asked.
"What day?"
"March second."
"If I'm not working," Percy said.
"If you're not working?" I repeated, calmly at the beginning of the sentence, but quickly losing control of my voice. "Are you serious? You have five months to clear the date with the Ministry! A Saturday, by the—"
"I wasn't serious," Percy interrupted, talking quickly. He bent down and picked up the briefcase resting by his feet. "I'll go."
"You're damned right you'll go," I snapped. "Six years—"
"Yes, six years, but that was six years ago, Laura," Percy retorted. "We've hardly spoken for six years, and you come making demands."
"I put in more than enough effort six years ago for you to go to a damned wedding twenty years later," I said bitterly and much more harshly than I'd meant to.
"I'm coming!"
"Don't, if you don't want to go to your friend's—"
He interrupted, "If you weren't marrying—"
"Oh, will you get over that?"
"No, I won't!" Percy dropped the suitcase so that he could use both of his hands while speaking…or yelling. "Will you ever accept that? I bet you don't give Wood hell for that damned fight anymore," he said while motioning threateningly in the direction I assumed was north, the direction in which he would assume Oliver was.
"No, I don't give Oliver hell over it. We have better things to talk about."
"Like wedding plans," Percy said, rolling his eyes.
"Just because they're not plans you ever plan on making—"
"That's untrue."
I laughed cruelly. "And when are you planning on meeting this woman? At your desk?"
"Plenty of women work at the Ministry," Percy said defensively.
"So, dating coworkers makes the workplace awkward, but marrying coworkers is perfectly acceptable?"
"If you came here to insult me, you shouldn't have come at all," Percy used his coldest, calmest voice.
"I came here to ask you to be in my wedding, you git. If I'd have known you'd attack my fiancé—"
"You brought him up!"
"He's an important part of the wedding!"
"And I'll be there! Now…it's getting late—"
"It's not even seven," I said, checking my watch just to be sure.
"And I'm going to work—"
"The Burrow, you mean."
"Whatever," Percy said impatiently. "Now, if there's anything else you'd like to say—"
"We've said enough," I replied angrily.
Percy didn't acknowledge the interruption. "If there's anything else you'd like to say, then we can get together at a better time." He leaned down to pick up his briefcase for the final time.
Before I knew what I was saying, I retorted, "Clearly we don't have anything to talk about anymore."
Percy froze briefly, briefcase in hand. Then he stared at me as he slowly straightened his legs. I didn't break my eye contact, but my look became less cold.
I'd said it. We didn't have anything to talk about anymore. We'd gone in separate directions and had barely looked back. I'd tried to turn to an old friend out of the bitterness I felt towards Mr. Wood for complicating my relationship with Oliver. Perhaps if I'd gone back to Percy because of a problem he could have helped me with, he would have helped. Instead, I'd come to him because of the wedding: the issue most likely to result in a fight.
That was my fault, but I couldn't undo it. Apologizing wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't give Percy and me something to have in common again. We no longer had Hogwarts or Gryffindor to bring us together. We no longer needed each other for companionship, and the two of us had long ago turned to other sources to help us deal with Dan's death: he'd turned to work and responsibility, and I'd turned to Oliver.
All of the small things that had made our friendship work were gone. We couldn't share the Daily Prophet over breakfast in the Great Hall. We couldn't walk to class together, talking about homework, current events and the normal gossip that flowed through the castle. We didn't have any more inside jokes that we could crack, which used to result in my laughter and a telling half-smirk from him. We didn't talk enough to sit in comfortable silence. Our work was too different for us to compete good-naturedly with each other, as we had over grades. (Yes, I'll admit that I almost always lost those competitions.)
I could no longer ask him how his family was because he couldn't bring himself to shrug and say 'Alive' anymore, not after two of his family members had died.
He could no longer listen to one of my simplest statements and know exactly what I meant because he didn't know enough about what was going on in my life (even if he could still tell when I was blatantly lying).
And, holding his hand didn't work anymore.
We had changed too much and our relationship had changed too little for anything to be how it was when we were kids; we didn't have the will to start over.
I looked down and Percy sighed deeply. I guessed that he had just come to the same realization.
"If you ever need anything…" he said slowly.
"Yes. You, too." I looked up into his face again, and he smiled a bit. "I mean, if you ever want to talk or…anything."
Percy nodded, almost imperceptivity.
I laughed a little, trying to relieve some of the awkwardness, only to feel more awkward afterwards. "I'll let you get back to work. I mean, the Burrow."
"And I'll see you on your wedding day." Percy gave me one of his half-smirks, and it took a lot of effort for me not to cry as I said goodbye quickly and left the flat.
Ian had requested that I tell him how my visit with Percy went, and I strongly desired to see a friend, so I Apparated directly in front of the Daily Prophet office. I made my way through the almost empty building to the basement, which held the darkrooms. Ian and I still developed photos at the same time at least once a week so that we could keep in touch, but I knew that some mornings Ian came in early to develop stock photos.
"Nox," I said right before entering the darkroom the two of us preferred.
"Guess what!" Ian said before I'd even completely shut the door. He was in the corner of the room, brewing a cauldron full of Developing Potion. He didn't turn to see who had entered the room. From the tone of his voice, I suspected that even if it hadn't been me, he'd still want to share the information he had.
"No idea," I said, not in a mood to make a real guess or to try to make a joke.
"Brandon sneezed and the salt shaker disappeared!" He turned his head so that I could see his proud, fatherly grin.
I laughed at the image of the strange event his son's involuntary reflex had caused, and at what his father must have looked like when he realized his son had shown signs of magic at an early age. "That's great, Ian," I said genuinely, keeping a real smile on my face.
"Isn't it? I didn't show signs of magic until I was eight and a half. He does take after his mother, though. She made her own umbilical cord disappear."
I laughed again, even more heartily than before. "You're such a liar."
"I'm not! Sarah's mother swears to the fact. Of course, she's a horrible liar." Ian reached a point where the potion could brew itself for a few minutes, and he stood and faced me. "So…how was the meeting with Percy?"
"Horrible," I said, sitting on top of the table in the center of the room, which showed Ian how horribly it had gone because there was an unwritten rule in that room not to take up space that pictures could be using.
"That bad?" he asked.
"Worse than that bad." I didn't feel as if I was exaggerating. "I think we broke up."
Ian laughed at my attempt at humor, as a good friend should in such a situation. While he worked on the potion, I recounted what had happened. He nodded and agreed at the appropriate times, which probably resulted in a bit of exaggeration on my part. I stayed almost perfectly true to what had happened at Percy's flat; the only part I completely left out was Dan's photograph.
After I finished, Ian took a minute to piece together my ramblings. "Well," he said, and his tone warned me that optimism was about to follow, "at least Mr. Wood won't be the Best Man. Just a normal groomsman."
"That's the best you can come up with?"
Ian stood up straight and spun around, turning his back on the cauldrons in the corner. "What do you mean?"
"I thought you were going to look on the bright side."
"That was the bright side," Ian said.
I sighed miserably and slid off the table. "I think I might feel even worse."
"You do have an excellent Best Man."
"Yeah," I said. "He's a really humble bloke."
"I'm humble."
I smiled.
"OK," Ian conceded. "I am trying to make you feel better, though."
"You're failing."
"What can I do?" Ian asked.
"Will you walk down the aisle twice? Once with Joan, once with Cedar?"
Ian laughed and shook his head slightly. "Something tells me that that's not the best way to improve your relationship with Frank Wood."
After a brief scare from the potion, which made a few rather threatening pops that we feared might result in a boom, Ian was able to continue the conversation.
"Have you ever tried to talk to Oliver's dad about everything?"
I snorted. "Of course not. Both of us pretend that everything's just fine when we're around each other."
"Maybe everything is just fine," Ian offered. The potion was finished, and he turned his attention to preparing the film.
I picked up a stack of trays and walked over to the cauldron. "It's not. We're just pretending for Oliver's sake." I ladled a couple cups into a tray and placed it on the table.
Ian thanked me for helping, and I told him that it was no problem. I continued filling trays with potion, and Ian started putting the photographs in the potion to develop.
After a few minutes, Ian said, "It sounds like Oliver is the problem."
"What?"
"Now, don't get upset," Ian hurried. "I meant that if Mr. Wood and you want to pretend while Oliver's around, talk to him when Oliver's not around."
Ian's suggestion was too logical to argue with, but it still didn't seem like a good idea. "I wouldn't know what to say."
"What would you like to say?"
I had been walking around the table to find an empty spot for the tray I was carrying, but I stopped to answer Ian's question. "I'd like to tell him that I think he's a bastard for trying to keep me away from his son for no reason."
Ian laughed. "Well, take the name-calling out, and you've got a start."
I laughed, too. "I'm not stupid. Not that stupid, anyway."
"I wonder sometimes," Ian kidded. At least, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was only joking.
"Laura, I know that Frank Wood has never gone out of his way to welcome you—"
My look clearly said I thought Ian's statement hadn't been strong enough.
Ian eased a piece of photography paper into a tray I'd filled. As if I hadn't interrupted, he continued, "But, has he done anything unforgivable?"
Begrudgingly, I admitted that he had not, but I stopped filling trays for Ian. Not that he noticed my revenge—I'd filled enough already.
"Talk to him before Oliver asks him to be a groomsman, if you can. What you say will come across more genuinely. If you wait, Oliver's dad might think you're talking to him only because you want the wedding to go well."
"That is why I'm going to talk to him," I lied.
"Well, just don't tell him that," Ian replied. "And, if you come back from that little kid—"
"Bernard."
"Bernard. If you come back from Bernard's birthday party without talking to Frank, I'll kick your—"
"You couldn't kick my arse if you tried," I said, laughing at him. "We both know I could take you in any duel."
We argued over who would come out ahead in a duel between us for several minutes while Ian finished putting his photographs into the trays of Developing Potion. During the few minutes Ian had to wait before he could begin hanging the pictures to dry, we went into the hallway to talk, both because I was going to leave the room soon anyway and because it was slightly cooler in the corridor, away from the cauldrons.
"Bernard's birthday party is tonight," I said in a lull in our conversation.
"Not much time to figure out what you're going to say to Frank Wood, then," Ian replied seriously.
I looked at him for a few seconds. "You won't really start a duel if I come back without having spoken to Mr. Wood, will you?"
"Oh, yes, I will! Merlin, Laura, don't be a coward—"
"I'm not a coward!" There are a few words you never call a fellow Gryffindor, and 'coward' is one of them. "I was only kidding," I said under my breath, glaring at the floor because if I glared at Ian, he'd say something worse.
I walked away from Ian, muttering. "As if I'm afraid of Mr. Wood. I don't have anything to be afraid of; after all, I'm right and he's wrong."
"Laura!" Ian called when I reached the staircase.
I turned after completing my last spoken thought to myself. Ian had one hand on the door handle to the darkroom, and he raised the other hand, which was holding his wand, to wave goodbye.
"Good luck," he said.
"If this goes badly, you'll get your duel after all," I threatened, only half-jokingly.
"It will go fine, but I'm more than willing to prove to you that I would win the duel."
I laughed and shook my head. "I'll see you in a few days, Ian."
"Wouldn't miss it for the Philosopher's Stone." Ian pointed his wand at the light nearest to him and extinguished it.
I spent my day trying to come up with excuses not to attend the Wood's family gathering that was to occur that evening. I knew that I would never use any of the excuses I came up with; Bernard was the one member of the family (excepting Oliver, maybe) that I wouldn't disappoint if I could help it. Forming the excuses served its purpose, though. I was too busy plotting to think much about what had happened with Percy that morning, and I prevented myself from worrying too much over the conversation I knew I had to have with Oliver's father. (Although I am still too proud to admit it to Ian, I knew that he probably could beat me in a duel, and I was certain that he would start a duel if I didn't speak to Mr. Wood.)
Author's Note: Due to the length of the epilogue, I had to split it into two chapters because some sites limit submission lengths.
Part 2 should already be available on most sites. If it's not up, it should be shortly.