Mistaken Identities

Epilogue-13 years later

Hermione sipped her lemonade enjoying both the coolness of the liquid and the heat of the day. She sat rocking on her front porch doing her best to appreciate the muggy autumn day. Draco would be back any moment from his meeting at the Ministry.
She stroked one hand over her big belly and sighed. She could not wait until this interminable pregnancy was over and she was free to move again. She was due soon but these last weeks had been hard.

She shook her head. Who would have ever thought she\'d be having a baby with Draco? Even she hadn\'t expected it.
The battle with Voldemort had been vicious and they had lost people but nowhere near the number they would have if Hermione and Draco had not come back with those spells. Without them, they may still have won but the cost would have been so much higher. Voldemort had been a devious and vicious fighter but many of his tricks had fallen flat against the anti-magic spells all of Dumbledore\'s Army had carried.

Harry would forever carry the scars of his duel with Voldemort. A swath of skin from shoulder to hip was a rippled and pitted burn mark that even the best Medi-Witches could not heal. He had most of the use of his right arm and hip but even that was a little limited. Harry had come within inches of dying of the wound that fateful day and only Ron\'s intervention had propped him up long enough to fire of the final spell that downed Voldemort. One of the side benefits of a shieldmate was apparently the ability to pour magical energy from one to another, something no one had realized given that the last true shieldmates had been hundreds of years ago during the last of the Goblin Wars. Ron had been in a coma for weeks. They had come perilously close to losing him and Harry had been a wreck, nursing his own wounds but refusing to leave Ron. It was clear to everyone then that Harry and Ron\'s relationship was more than a product of war. Over a decade later they were still together though they\'d had several recent additions. Three years ago the two had married Luna Lovegood of all people. Their eldest child was two years old and they were already expecting a second. Harry and Ron were the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors at Hogwart\'s though their presence as instructors was demanded at Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, and the Ministry. Luna ran the Quibbler like a general and she still had a disturbing habit of seeing things no one else did, sometimes eerily accurate and other times...well, she was still Luna after all.

The Weasley family had not come out unscathed. George Weasley would never see again. The curse-produced acid had hit him full on in the face and there was nothing anyone could do. He\'d lived only because Oliver Wood had risen from dead and stabbed the offending Death Eater to death. Wood had not lived to receive his Order of Merlin. Blindness had not slowed George down much though. Fred and George\'s line of tricks was so popular they\'d started marketing it outside of England. They were rolling in money and had married and begun little Weasley hordes of their own. Between the two of them they had almost a dozen red-headed hellions between six months and seven years old. That included two sets of twins. At the last family gathering she had heard both of their wives put their feet down over the issue of more children and Fred and George had dutifully gone to St. Mungo\'s to be sterilized. Both of their wives were pregnant again. If things continued this way, Weasleys\' would be taking over the earth within a couple of generations.

Charlie and Bill had been a brutal team on the battlefield, managing to come out with only superficial wounds. Charlie had promptly settled down with a nice wizard and continued to raise and study dragons. Bill, on the other hand, continued to vex his mother claiming he never intended to give up his bachelor\'s status or his work as a cursebreaker for Gringott\'s.

Ginny had turned into a hell of a flier and had been an outstanding member of the Flying Phlanx of witches and wizards who had dropped curses on Death Eaters from the air. She had only recently retired from playing professional Quidditch. She had been a flirtatious girl during her flying years, providing fodder for gossip magazines everywhere.

Viktor Krum, when it was all over, had defected and been more than happy to play for Ireland. Ginny and Victor had gotten to know each other through the professional Quidditch network and had often been spotted carousing and raising hell in the earlier years of their friendship. It was only recently that she and Victor had started dating. Hermione was pretty sure Molly Weasley was already planning the wedding and she hoped Ginny and Victor were prepared for the onslaught.

Percy Weasley, whom everyone had thought forever lost to the Dark, had switched sides during the battle. It was a decision that saved dozens of lives, his parents included, but at the cost of his own. His medal was prominently displayed in the kitchen of The Burrow.

Neville Longbottom had survived the final battle. His grandmother had not. University had done wonders for his potions ability and he was currently working at St. Mungo\'s, researching cures for mental and physical damage caused by Unforgivables.

Colin Creevey had lived. Dennis had not. It had been a hard thing, watching Colin and his parents’ greave at his brother\'s funeral. She had overheard him trying to explain to his parents why his little brother had been involved in the war at all but it was clear that they did not understand. The adult Colin was a quiet, sober man who worked as a photographer in the muggle world. His work was actually well known among muggles and though he made good money, he lived a rather quiet life. He\'d married a soft-spoken muggle woman and had no children.

The Patil twins had actually turned out to have something of a gift for Divination and long distance communication. They had been integral in insuring that troops arrived in the correct locations during the battle. Parvati had caught a misaimed curse in the back and she had died instantly. Her sister, Padma, had managed to keep feeding images and information to the members of Dumbledore\'s army despite being almost sick with grief. She\'d married a sharp tongued singer from Beauxbatons several years after the final battle and the two lived a quiet life in France. They currently had no children.

Seamus Finnegan had flown in the battle against Voldemort in the Flying Phlanx. In a dive to take out Lucius Malfoy, he had been one of the Fliers rare casualties.

Lavendar Brown acquitted herself well on the battlefield though she proclaimed herself a pacifist at heart before and after. She began a line of beauty products several years after graduation that had taken off and remained popular to this day. She and Dean Thomas married seven or eight years ago and had two children: a boy named Seamus and a girl named Parvati.

Dumbledore had not lived through the battle. It was a loss that still ached sometimes. He had taken out an incredible number of Death Eaters before he died, Lucius Malfoy included. Dumbledore was hailed a hero and an entire branch had been created within the Ministry of Magic in his honor. The members of Dumbledore\'s Order were jacks-of-all-trades dedicated to insuring peace and honesty within the Ministry and the Wizarding world of England. It meant that they often functioned as diplomats, aurors, and therapists. They were affectionately called the Lemon Drops, though usually not to their faces since it made most of them grumpy.
Minerva McGonagall had taken over as Hogwart\'s Headmistress and was beginning to twinkle alarmingly. She had helped rebuild the school and had played a pivotal role in assisting Arthur Weasley, the new Minister of Magic, clean house. She was an honorary Lemon Drop and was often called in as an impartial judge for conflicts.

Snape was still the scariest teacher at Hogwart\'s though he\'d mellowed a great deal over the past decade or so. Much of that had to do with the birth of his son, Saeval. The...arrangement...between Trelawney and Snape had become slightly more public though they maintained separate quarters and refused to marry. Saeval Snape had his mother\'s features and his father\'s coloring. He was a serious faced boy who would begin schooling at Hogwart\'s the next fall. Hermione rather liked him. As far as she could tell, Saeval had all of his parent\'s strengths and none of their weaknesses.

All told, they\'d lost 103 wizards in the battle against Voldemort. 23 of those had been Hogwart\'s students. Voldemort had lost close to five hundred. No one had expected his forces to be so large or the loss the wizarding community so deep. So many bloodlines had been lost forever. The names of all those lost in the battle, Light and Dark, were inscribed at the base of the statue of Dumbledore in the center of Hogsmeade.

Draco had managed to live through the battle as well and they\'d been an intense couple through her first year of University until they\'d quarreled over House-Elf rights, of all things. Her desire to free the house elves had matured with the assistance of time and a few useful books but had not vanished. Wizards could be snotty about muggles all they want but nobody did social movements better or more effectively. Finally, it had occurred to her that she might want to ask the house elves what they wanted. This had been a far more useful tactic that had actually been successful. So now house elves had a basic code of ethics that granted them the possibility of reporting when their Masters plotted to kill people and, most importantly, one day a year off. They\'d had to move their annual convention out into the woods since the convention centers around London now refused to host the little hooligans. It seemed that on their day off house elves liked to run completely wild- loud music, exploding light bulbs, mountains of dirty dishes, elf dancing that always seemed to involve the ceiling, and an astronomical quantity of alcohol.
Draco had refused outright to assist her in any way, claiming that she was mucking up the way wizards had done things for thousands of years and that this could very well sink his political career before it began. There had been angry words and then an angry silence.

It was an angry silence that had lasted several years. Long enough for her to graduate from University with flying colors and secure a position as a field Auror. It was a job she had been happy in for almost eight years. Somewhere in there she had run into Draco and a fragile friendship had been re-established. Friendship had grown into a love that was far more adult though it retained hints of that wild passion born in a time of war. They\'d married almost a year and a half ago and their first child would be arriving sometime in early September. Hermione had gotten tired of the long nights and dangers of fieldwork and was now working on training up a new generation of Aurors. On occasion, she popped into Hogwart\'s to keep Ron and Harry honest. She was also toying with the idea of becoming a Lemon Drop. Draco had a solid career in politics though somewhere along the line, taking over the world had become less important.

Oddly enough, Ron and Draco were the best of friends. It had taken her by surprise but the two went out drinking on a regular basis, joking that they need time away from \"the old ball and chains\". This always made Hermione and Luna laugh and Harry grumble. Harry and Draco had reached a kind of a truce. They respected one another and Hermione thought they might even like each other a little, though she was sure neither of them would admit it.

All in all, her life was good. Now, if only Draco would get home and rub her feet.

A/N This was my first long fan fiction and I must admit to struggling here and there with the story line. I hope people enjoyed reading it. If you did, check out \"Snippets of Desire\" in the male/male section. It isn\'t going to be very long but it will cover some highlights of how Harry and Ron ended up a couple.