EPILOGUE
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
He shook his head as he looked around his drawing room. Only a sofa remained outside; the rest had been packed into his trunk with the help of a Non-Detectable Extension Charm. After having lived there for nearly two years, he was moving back to the Manor.
“You will miss it, won’t you?”
He was sitting on the sofa with his fiancée beside him.
“It’s the only place which has held happiness for me,” he answered.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. Then, climbing on to the sofa and facing him, her legs on either side of his, she told him, “The Manor was where you saw me first. That has got to count for something.”
It would be heartless of him to tell her that the Manor was also where he had had some of the worst times. He said nothing but smiled at her.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered, pressing her forehead against his and pushing his chin up with her hands, “and I want you to stop thinking like that.”
When he didn’t answer, she continued. “I like you because you broke away from all that. You started afresh. You took a huge risk. That’s something I respect. Now, I love you. I can’t let that change because of things you did years ago, things you regret this night. Neither should you.”
“It’s just …” he began. “There are certain horrors “”
“Let them be,” she whispered, kissing the tip of his nose. “I’ll be there with you.”
“Always?” he asked her.
“Mmm. We just need to give it a facelift, and it would be like a new home.”
Draco brightened up. “You can change our part of the house however you like,” he said. “You can even have piglets flying around the ceiling, I don’t care.”
“That’s an idea.”
“I know.”
Pulling her closer towards him, he said, “I’ll never warm up to Delaney, but if it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have met you.”
“Too true.”
“If you want him to do the designs, I won’t mind.”
She laughed. “Nah, it’s our house. I think I’d like to do it myself.”
They kissed.
Even now, after having been so intimately acquainted with her body that he could anticipate every move, pinpoint every tiny mole without looking, and tell exactly where she needed him to touch her, he couldn’t have his fill of it. Nothing made him feel more alive, more rewarded than to be able to hold her, smell her, and just … revel in the softness of her body, the taste of her skin.
And it wasn’t only that. What mattered the most was the fact that she was there in spite of everything. He was no longer alone.
For more than two years, it had been a constant chase. Even when she had told him she was his, he hadn’t stopped pursuing her. Even now, when she was so close she couldn’t be possibly closer, he still couldn’t stop wanting her.
Perhaps, she had got it right that first time she said it; she was an ideal. She was what made him better. She was what drove him to face a world determined to wrong-foot him. It wasn’t just the companionship, the trust, the reliability, the laughter that she provided him; it was also the whole of her, from the person and the body, to their combined presence.
In no time at all, he was standing at a raised platform at the back of the Manor, dressed in dark navy robes, which she had personally created for him. When she arrived, wearing the plain white dress that he knew so well, he felt a lump in his throat. Once, he had pleaded with her to put them on, and she had refused, claiming that they’d gone out of style. At that moment, it was as though only she existed; his parents, her parents, their friends and family, none of them mattered.
The golden sunlight flashed on her silver hoops, sending him back to the first time they had met.
Did he, Draco Malfoy, accept this woman who had caused him to do a few of the most insane things in life, as his lawfully wedded wife? Did he promise to love and cherish her till death did them apart?
The celebrant must be a spectacular moron to even pose those questions.
“I do,” he said.
Because You Came by hestiajones
Chapter Endnotes: Huge, huge thanks to Carole/Croll/Equinox Chick for beta-reading this fic, helping with basically everything, and giving me tips to bring a better resolution to the story.