A Pound of Flesh

Epilogue – The Happily Ever After

In the gardens behind Malfoy Manor, roses bloomed alongside gardenias, hyacinths, lilies and orchids. The blooms spilled out onto the cobbled paths and filled the air with their sweet perfume. Heavy clumps of ivy hung from the trees, dancing in the light, late-afternoon breeze.

Hermione walked along the path to the gazebo overlooking the lake, a bouquet of fresh flowers in her hands. Harry walked beside her, and she linked her arm through his elbow.

“It really is beautiful here,” he said in a hushed voice.

She agreed. In the years the manor had gone unoccupied, the gardens had grown wild. When Draco had come home to the manor two years before, he’d left the flowers alone, deciding it was prettier that way.

“No offense, Hermione, but this is one of the more surreal experiences of my life.”

Hermione laughed then, squeezing Harry’s arm. “It takes a bit of getting used to,” she said. “It took me a while, too.”

They rounded the gentle curve in the path, and they passed the koi pond, which was resplendent with a fountain and a small series of trickling waterfalls. The gazebo came into view, the white roof dappled with sunlight breaking through the trees. Draco waited for them in the gazebo, a brilliant smile lighting his face.

“I’m going to marry him,” Hermione whispered, the idea so glorious that for a moment, her breath hitched in her chest.

“Yes,” Harry agreed bravely. “You are.”

On either side of the path, friends and family stood from their seats and turned to watch their approach. Their faces were all a blur; she had eyes only for her groom, who seemed so puffed up with happiness, Hermione thought he might burst.

Gentle music drifted on the breeze, a harp and a flute weaving together a delicate harmony that carried her forward. Harry escorted her the rest of the way to the gazebo, and Draco stepped down to meet them.

She knew Harry said something to Draco, something that made his lips curl up in amusement, but her brain could not comprehend the words. Her thought processes were tangled up in the shimmer of sunlight on his cheek, his grey eyes so wide and deep it was like falling forward into the ocean, the way the soft breeze danced in his hair.

Then he brought her hand to his lips and kissed her palm, those ocean eyes drinking her in. “Hello, my bride,” he whispered. “You look ethereal.”

Her brain registered the compliment and she blushed. She felt ethereal in the dress, which was made of some sort of rare, imported silk. Draco had hired the dressmaker and insisted that cost was of no consequence, though after she protested that such extravagance was wasteful, he had conceded that she could spend as little as she wanted, though, he pointed out, she was only getting married once, so why not splurge a bit?

In the end, she compromised, and allowed the dressmaker to use the gossamer silk, but had insisted against the diamonds the seamstress had wanted to sew into the delicate beading. The dress fell in soft layers around her, highlighting her slender curves and pooling behind her in a waterfall train. If the bridesmaid dress she’d worn to Harry and Ginny’s wedding was a work of art, this dress was nothing short of a masterpiece.

Harry had declared she looked like an angel, but Hermione thought that compliment should be reserved for Draco, who wore open-fronted white robes elaborately trimmed with silver over a pair of pale grey trousers and an ornate white dress shirt. He took her breath away.

“Shall we?” Draco said, offering her his arm. He guided her to the center of the gazebo, which dripped with trails of white blossoms. Ginny was waiting there, as was Draco’s friend Tom, who had long ago grown accustomed to Draco’s new, unusual life.

As they said their vows, Hermione felt the magic behind them, a shining golden light that filled her veins with joyful anticipation as she thought of sharing every day of her life with Draco. It was the most powerful thing she’d ever felt, and it sang between them like a radiant, pure note of music. When Draco promised to love her and be true to her all the days of his life, it was like he was filled with the light, too. It shone out of his eyes and the pores of his skin.

Draco leaned in, luminous; as she fell into his eyes, she heard a voice say, “Mr. Malfoy, you may kiss your wife.”

No other kiss would ever compare.

Later, Draco spun her in sweeping circles on the dance floor. Overhead, the canopy of trees shimmered with fairy lights, and higher still, the stars sparkled like diamonds against the indigo sky. Like the diamonds on her finger.

“Happy, my love?” Draco asked, drawing her back into his arms.

“I’m with you,” she responded. “Happy? Yes.”

“It would have been nice if more of your friends had come,” Draco offered.

“Small weddings are nice, too,” Hermione responded, draping her arms around Draco’s neck.

“But still – ”

“I don’t care,” she told him. “I mean it. They’ll come around eventually.”

“You keep saying that, but it’s been over two years. When are you expecting this miraculous change of heart to take place?”

“Wizards live a long time. It could take a while, but I have faith in your ability to charm everyone else as much as you have me.”

“Everyone else thinks I’ve got you under some sort of Love Potion.”

“They do not,” she laughed, exasperated. “How many Daily Prophet articles do you need to be in before you realize not everyone thinks you’re some horrible, soulless person?”

“A few more, it seems, seeing as half of your friends refused to come today.”

“The important friends all know better. Harry and Ginny and Luna and Dean. I think Ron’s even coming around. You’ve done such wonderful things for Muggleborns and the wizarding world as a whole with your business. Even Ron can’t deny that.”

Draco muttered something that sounded like ‘Weasley git’, and Hermione smacked his shoulder, trying and failing to fix him with a stern look. Her face was incapable of doing ‘stern’ on a day like this.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that. He’s my friend.”

Draco appeared to consider that for a moment, and Hermione braced herself, thinking of all the creative and clever ways he could turn that around on her. Instead, he said, “Fine, but only if you stop referring to Pansy as ‘that money-grubbing bitch’.”

Hermione mulled over that for a moment and then said, “Well.” Draco’s left eyebrow arched in surprise. “Just don’t call him that around me.”

Draco sniggered. “Deal.”

True to his word, when Ron approached them soon after and asked to cut in, Draco was so gracious that Ron looked stunned. Draco bowed out with a Cheshire grin and Ron hesitated as the groom headed toward the bar for a drink.

“He’s going to kill me if I touch you, isn’t he?” Ron asked, uncertain.

“No, Ron,” Hermione laughed, stepping into his arms.

Ron wasn’t a gifted dancer like Draco, but he managed not to step on her feet as he waltzed her in a tight circle.

“I’m really glad your family came, your parents, especially,” Hermione said. “It meant a lot to me to see them here. I know they still don’t completely trust Draco.”

Ron grunted in response, and Hermione knew that was because he didn’t completely trust Draco either, but wasn’t going to say so on her wedding day. Instead, he said, “I was glad to see your parents here, too. Your dad, especially. He’s looking a lot better these days.”

“Well, I’ve been modifying some healing spells and creating others to try to repair the damage I did to his brain when I reversed his Memory Charm. It seems like it’s working.”

“Looks like he’s going to be able to walk soon,” Ron commented.

“He’s able to say short sentences again. That’s a big accomplishment.”

“Too bad they couldn’t stay longer.”

“Well, Mum hasn’t quite forgiven me yet. It was a big step for her to even show up.”

Luna and Dean tangoed past just then, though the band was still playing a waltz, and Ron pulled Hermione out of their path. Luna was giggling, eyes alight with mischief, and Dean winked at Hermione as they sashayed through.

“Now there’s a pair,” Ron said, watching them part the crowd.

“Dancing to the beat of their own drummer.”

“Yeah.”

“Imagine what their kids are going to look like.”

“Imagine what your kids are going to look like,” Ron retorted.

“I do, all the time.”

Ron grimaced and shook his head. “Yeah, I walked myself right into that one. Hermione Malfoy. It’s like I’ve walked into a parallel dimension.”

“An alternate universe?”

“Exactly.”

Draco returned soon after and reclaimed his bride, taking great pains to unnerve Ron with politeness. Flustered, Ron vanished to the other side of the party, but later, Hermione saw him dancing cheek to cheek with Susan, who had taken a shine to Ron in spite of what she called his git-like tendencies.

She was looking down at the garden from the balcony of their master suite when she saw Ron and Susan dancing. From where she stood, the fairy lights looked like stars against the darkened garden. Hermione wondered for a moment if she’d found heaven and was looking down at the night sky.

She and Draco were leaving for their honeymoon in Spain early the next morning, and they’d retreated to their suite to relax and enjoy each other. Draco had gone to the wine cellar to procure a celebratory bottle of champagne, and Hermione was drawn to the lights and noise of the party below.

She had never been so happy.

“Hermione, my wife,” Draco called from inside.

“Here, my husband,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder into their suite. Draco shed his outer robes as he crossed the room, tossing them onto a chair.

“Thought I’d lost you already.

“Nope, you’re stuck with me now.”

Draco came to a halt behind her, brushing her hair away from her shoulder. He kissed her cheek. “Good.” Then he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back against him. He looked over her shoulder at the twinkling garden, and the dancers that remained on the terrace below them.

“Today was perfect,” he commented.

“Like a fairy tale.”

“Like the happily ever after kind?”

“Every happily ever after needs a wedding,” Hermione agreed.

“What else does it need?”

Hermione didn’t believe in Divination, but at that moment as her eyes unfocused and the twinkling lights blended into a sea of shimmering radiance, she swore she could see their future unfolding in front of her.

She saw herself announcing to Draco that she was pregnant, saw his over-the-moon smile as he touched her stomach and vowed to be a better father than the one he’d had.

Saw Draco rubbing her back and holding her hand as she waddled through the hallways in St. Mungo’s, waiting for their first child, a son, to arrive.

Draco – holding the baby in his arms and looking overwhelmed and deliriously happy as he brushed his hand over the boy’s fine, wispy blond hair. She saw herself go to stand beside him, saw him tighten his hold on their son before wrapping his free arm around her waist and pulling her against him so the baby was sheltered by both their bodies.

Later, he would gallop through the manor with the boy sitting astride his shoulders, pretending his son was a giant. They would make roaring noises that would rouse Hermione from her spot in the library, where she would be building a new spell for healing permanent spell damage and rubbing a hand over the gentle swell of her belly where their daughter waited to be born.

She saw herself and Draco leaning against the railing of their balcony, looking out onto the gardens where their daughter was on her broom, flying circles around her brother, who preferred to read but would concede to play one-on-one Quidditch with her.

Then, once the children were away at Hogwarts, she saw Draco chasing her through the house, trying to pinch her bottom as she ran from him, gales of laughter and then cries of delight when he caught her filling the hallways of the manor.

She saw finding her first grey hair, saw Draco plucking it from where she held it between two fingers and telling her she was more lovely now than she had been the day he’d married her.

Saw them rolled up in the sheets, making love every night like they had when they’d first married, getting lost in each other and falling asleep in a tangle of rubbery limbs, sated.

Draco made a quiet sound in her ear, and she blinked her eyes, drawing them back into focus. Once more, she was gazing down at the manor’s sprawling back gardens, at their remaining guests as they spun and twirled to the music in the final rollicking dance of the night.

What else does happily ever after need?

She turned her face to nuzzle his cheek. “We’ve got all the time in the world to figure that out,” she said.

Draco’s fingers marched up her back, undoing the laces holding her bodice together. “Let’s start now,” he suggested.

He turned her in his arms so she faced him, and she rose on the balls of her feet to meet his kiss. She wondered if she had been transported to a fairy tale after all, or lost in a dream, but she knew better. No dream could be as good as this.

The kiss grew in urgency until Draco swept Hermione up into his arms and started toward the doors to their suite. She threw her arms around his neck, laughing with delight as she thought of the life they would have together, and he carried her in, away from the music, and the chaos, and the dark.

~fin~

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Author's Notes:
I don't even know where to start. Thank you to all of my wonderful readers. Thank you to my faithful reviewers. Thank you to you, and you and you.

If you've been reading since the beginning, congratulations on having the patience to wait over 2 1/2 years for the story's ending. If you've been reviewing since the beginning, thank you, because you inspired me to take a 5000 word one-shot and extend it into a story with 30 chapters and 180,000+ words.

If you aren't a fan of fluffy endings, there is an angsty alternate Chapter 30 and alternate epilogue, which are posted on my Livejournal: http://pennilyn-novus.livejournal.com/21733.html. Eventually, I'll also be posting the soundtrack listing, and a smattering of outtakes from Chapter 30 that didn't make the cut.

I don't know what my next project will be yet, but if you want to know what it is when it happens, you can follow me on Livejournal or at my yahoo! group.

Finally, thank you. Again, thank you. You've been wonderful, patient, enthusiastic readers. You have made writing this story a really rewarding experience for me.

Update 5/20/2010: It humbles me and gives me great pleasure to announce that this story is now an award-winner, taking first place in Round 6 of the Dramione Awards in Best Romance and Best Mystery. Thank you to everyone who supported this story, and me!!