Wrong question. He knows it from the way she holds herself, her posture tightening. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I got old. Got sick. Got useless.” Her voice raises to reach the table across from them, a heap of redheads all intend on ignoring her presence. “Got shut up in my house so this lot didn’t have to deal with me.”
It must be a bitter life that she leads. Draco would have almost thought that this war was a blessing for her, if only for the fact that it drove people into her house. Everyone, even the mean ones, starve for a little bit of human contact. It’s the one thing that draws them together.
“I’ve heard it was a large house,” he says fairly, mostly to draw the attention back into calmer waters and also because he felt bad for her, just a bit.
“Yes. Yes, it is. You used to have a large house, too.” Her wands is resting in her fist and she flicks it upward so a glass of champagne lifts from the hands of one of her many nephews and finds its way there, never mind that her nearly full glass was right in front of her. “And now you have a cottage.”
“I like it better there.”
“So I’ve been told.” She tilts her head. “You’re not like them, you know.”
He’s caught off guard. The entire conversation was giving him whip lash. “Who?”
“Your parents, your aunt, all the rest. They walk through a room like they’re carved from stone and expect everyone to pay homage. And a lot of people did. But not you.” She sticks her tongue between her teeth, biting down. “You’re softer.”
“Is that a good thing?” He didn’t know why he was looking for absolution with Aunt Muriel, of all places. “To be soft?”
“It’s better to bend than break, don’t you think? When they lost, that’s what your parents found out.” She drains the glass in one go, and out of the corner of his eye, Draco can see George at the edge of the row of table watching them, clearly weighing the benefit of saving Draco in return of being called the wrong name, probably on purpose. “They broke.”
“And I surrendered.”
“You bent. And let yourself be shaped anew.” She raises her empty, withered hands out around her. “The world is changing, Draco Malfoy. Best to change with it.” Startling advice, from the woman who was being left behind and seemed to know it. “Now get. I need that seat empty for a red head who might actually listen to me for a change.”
Draco leaves. The power of a good influence, he thinks, when he sees Harry bending a bit so Mrs. Weasley can speak to him, and finds his path cut off by George. “She alright to you?” He nods his head at his aunt, and there was none of the kind exasperation that he used to be known for, just a dull, shimmering hatred. “We can sneak a puking pasty into her food”
“Nah, she was fine. And your mother would kill you. It’s alright, George.” Draco puts a hand on his shoulder and drags him forward a bit, away from all these relatives who only see Fred’s ghost when they should see him, away from the people who could only stare at the knot of scar tissue on his face instead of look at the person. There’s not enough time in life to waste on the people who bring you pain. “We’re all alright.”
Harry
Ginny dances with her father, and her mother, and then with each other her brothers. And then, just when Harry thought that it would be okay for him to stop watching and tuck into the cake, she’s standing in front of him, her skirt gathered up over her arm and one hand held out to him.
“I don’t dance,” is what he says, when he realizes what she wants and takes into account everyone staring at him, giving him an uncomfortable flashback from the yule ball.
“And I thought you knew.” She laughs at him, pulling him up. “Today, Harry, is not about you.”
It’s not. It’s about her, and this is what she wants, so Harry lets her lead him out to the floor and tries not to pay attention to the way that everyone is staring at him, letting his hands find their way to her waist. “I didn’t think I’d be worthy of a dance.”
He is trying for a joke, but her face bites down in a frown, just for a moment, and he feels bad. “Don’t be stupid, Harry.” Everyone keeps telling him that. Her, Ron, Hermione, Draco. You would have thought, after all this time, he would have managed to get smarter. “You’re one of the most important people in my life. Just as important as those idiots.” She jerks her head towards her brothers, who are all roaring with laughter at something that Hermione had said, who was bright red and probably spouting off about the rights of some obscure magical animal. “I love you, Harry Potter.”
“Ginny.” He wants her to stop. He wants to hear this when he is not standing in front of so many people. He wants, for a moment, to go back to fifteen year old Harry Potter sitting at the Dursleys on the first day of summer reeling from the fresh cut of Sirius’ death and promise him that yes, it does get better. “Don’t.”
“I need to say it. I love you, and for as long as we are on this earth, we’re always going to be fighting for each other. Because that’s what people who mean something to each other do.” She is fighting back tears, and it seems impossible, that she could make it through her vows but is now crying over him. “I know you have Ron, and Hermione, but I don’t—didn’t —have many people to count on outside of my family. You were a first for me, Harry Potter.”
“I think friend love is better, sometimes.” Harry does not want to say that he loves her. Cannot make himself say it. He’d said it before, and then it had changed right in front of his eyes, like water through his palms, and he hadn’t even missed it. “Can break your heart just as bad.”
“It’s the same.” Her eyes are blazing again. “But different.”
It shouldn’t make sense. It shouldn’t make sense, but it does, because this is Ginny, and above all things he has always been able to understand what Ginny means. It makes him sad for a moment, because this is the last time it will be like this, his one last chance of being part of the Harry-and-Ginny show until they go off on their separate ways. That’s the price of getting older. So often moving on tends to look like letting go.
(Though maybe that’s the whole point of this. Maybe that’s what she’s trying to tell him, that they won’t let themselves fade away from each other, because she will reach for him and he will reach for her and they’ll never let go, not really.)
“We never were right for each other,” Ginny said, the two of them revolving in a circle one last time as the song dies down, the faces of the people who loved them flashing by as they make their circle. “But I think we’ve finally got it figured out don’t you?”
Yes, he thinks, but cannot say, because there are so many people staring and he is too busy going into a mock bow for Ron and Charlie’s benefit, pressing a kiss to her temple before leading her back to Luna. I think we have.
Draco
He’s standing with George. Again. It’s become such a common occurrence that he’s actually starting to believe he’s some type of babysitter, like the Weasleys had decided that every time George was going into one of his slumps they would just push him towards Draco and hope that he was able to deal with it, because he doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that they keep finding each other and George looks like he’s in no shape to be actively seeking someone out, friend or not.
George has spent the whole day swiveling between perfectly okay and standing right at the edge of a cliff, and this time, it had been Draco who edged him a little bit closer, having suggested a walk and then found himself standing right in front of the empty chair that Ginny had insisted needed to be there in memory of Fred, just to keep her from feeling like she had forgotten him.
“That’s all he gets. He dies, and life goes on, and they don’t even say anything about him.” He is glaring at the chair. Draco is looking for Ron or Ginny or the brother with the dragon tooth earring, someone to help him calm the storm before it boils over. “They just give him a chair.”
“She probably didn’t want to make people sad,” Draco finds himself saying, floundering, so out of his depth it’s almost laughable. “On her wedding day, you know.”
“Still. He deserves better. More,” And he kicks out, hard, hard enough that one of the legs of the chair snap. Draco repairs it, but that does not stop the scarlet ribbon that had been wrapped around it from floating into the air and out of reach, taking away the only sign that it was a place reserved for someone special. “Than a stupid.” Another kick. “Chair.”
Draco just watched him as the fury rolls over him and then fades back into nothing, leaving George standing there looking like a little kid who had just thrown a tantrum and didn’t get the response he wanted. “You need to move on.” He says, hardly daring the words are leaving his mouth but knowing that they must be said by someone, because Merlin knows none of his family are going to do it. You need to be a special kind of heartless to say what Draco is saying. “It’s the only way you’re ever going to get a life of your own.”
“Why should I get to move on?” He kicks out at the chair again, but lighter this time, so it’s more of a nudge. “Why should I deserve to have a life when he doesn’t?”
“Because you’re the one whose still here, and that sucks, but you’ve got people who love you, who so desperately want you to be okay again.” Draco reaches out to him and George does not shrug him away. “Isn’t that enough? The fact that you still have them, even when he’s gone?”
“It would be better if he were here,” George mutters, so quiet that they can both pretend Draco did not here, but then he straightens and forces out a laugh, shifting in the blink of an eye to the George who was okay. “Speaking of people who loved you. I was supposed to tell you earlier. Harry needs you in the garden.”
“What?” The word need throws him off a bit, this one thing that he had not been able to shake from the war, where you must be at the right time and right place or you find yourself losing the battle, where people needing you was not something to take lightly, because only merlin knows what the problem was. “What does he want?”
“Don’t know that, do I?” But he does, probably, he’s just angry and doesn’t know what to do with it. “Just go find him.”
Draco goes, faster than he probably needs to, weaving through the crowd and ignoring the people who are calling out happy greetings, ducking around the half empty glasses of champagne that the guests had left floating in midair so they could come back to it later. It only takes him seconds until he gets to the garden, but that’s long enough to let the panic set in, so when he catches sight of Harry, it’s the only thing that lets him really breathe again.
The garden was beautiful. Harry had said that it used to be a great big tangle of things, but that was before Luna got her hands on it. Now, everything was in its rightful place and there was even a walkway to the center of the garden, a little clearing with a stone bench right in the middle. You have to pass under an ivy covered arch way to get it, another one of her installments.
“Sorry I’m late.” He walks through the pathway and the flowers reach out to him like they know he is there. “George forgot.”
“It’s alright. You’re not late.” Harry takes his hand and leads him over to the bench. “I just wanted to talk.”
“You could talk to me out there.”
“Really talk. Without people listening.” Despite everything, Draco is hit with the niggling little thought that he might be about to be broken up with, which he really hopes is wrong, because Merlin would that be annoying. “Because I have something I want to tell you.”
“Me first.” The words jump out of Draco’s mouth just like they had the night before, without reason, without warning, with nothing except for a wanting, a need for Harry to know this, because he’s done with wasting time. “About last night. I love you. Without maybes or probablys or any type of percentages. I completely, totally, definitely love you.” Harry sort of looks like he’s been slapped, he’s that surprised. But in a good way. Thunderstruck, the snide little voice in his head that sounds like Pansy piped up. “I love you forever, Harry James Potter.”
“Good. That’s really, really good, Draco. Because,” And he slips down off the bench onto one knee, kneeling in the damp grass. His hands are trembling so bad that he can barely get the box out of the pocket of his jacket, and that’s when Draco realizes that it had been so long since his own hands were anything but steady. “Because I care about you more than I care about anything in my life, and I want to keep feeling this way for the rest of my life. I want to marry you, Draco Malfoy. All you have to do is say yes.”
