Chapter Forty of 'Seasons of War'- Epilogue
Chapter Thirty-Nine.
Title: Seasons of War (40/40)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, torture, sex, angst, profanity, ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: The war against Nihil enters its final stages, Harry and Draco train as partners, and they may actually survive to become effective Aurors. Maybe.
Author’s Notes: This is the final part of the Running to Paradise Trilogy, sequel to Ceremonies of Strife, and won’t make much sense if you haven’t read the first two stories. I don’t yet know how long this one will be, but based on the others, I’m guessing 45 to 50 chapters.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews! And thank you for reading to the end of the trilogy. This is it, the ending of both Seasons of War and the Running to Paradise trilogy.
Chapter Forty--Epilogue
"...for unusual and exemplary service in times of trouble, I present you both with the Order of Merlin."
Draco kept his eyes demurely down, but he was listening, and he heard the sour note in Robards's bluster. He smiled at the ground, still a thick carpet of summer grass, although it sometimes seemed to him as though Nihil's war had carried them straight through into another winter. No harm will come to him, doing something generous for someone he dislikes once in his life.
He felt the slippery silk of the ribbon slide past his neck, brushing and catching in his hair for a second, and then the medal settle, flapping, into place on his chest. Draco reached up one hand, unable not to, and caressed the smooth surface of the metal.
He knew that Robards was wincing, above him. Draco ignored that. He finally had an Order of Merlin. It was his, a decoration that the rest of the wizarding world couldn't take away and couldn't ignore. This would be first-page news in the Daily Prophet, after all, especially since they'd already reported on the ending of the war and the way that Nihil's living dead had spontaneously crumbled to dust one afternoon a week ago.
I did it. I achieved something that people will have to honor me for, and that future generations of Malfoys will respect.
Draco paused at the end of that thought. He hadn't thought seriously about future generations of Malfoys in some time, because, being with Harry, he had accepted without lots of consideration that they wouldn't be happening. But now they filled his head, visions of children gazing at his portrait, and he couldn't shake them.
Who knows what I can convince Harry to put up with for my sake, though? he thought, and so was smiling when he rose to his feet and turned around, in front of Robards and next to Harry, to face the exploding flashes of the cameras.
After that, they had to get out of the way so that Weasley, Granger, and Ventus could receive their Orders of Merlin, too. Draco tried to ignore the idea that the honor was a lesser one if shared with Weasel. It probably wasn't, and Harry would kill him if he said it.
Besides, he and Harry were the ones in front and the ones receiving all the attention and praise. Draco could put up with someone getting a good share of both as long as he got the lion's share.
"Vain," Harry breathed into his ear, because apparently Harry could be telepathic when he wanted to be. "And greedy. Always." He flicked his tongue against Draco's earlobe, not caring that the cameras flashed eagerly at that, too.
Draco turned to look at him. Harry's eyes widened in what looked like excitement. He probably expected Draco to yell and start a fight that would end with them flat on their backs in bed, Draco thought, safely out of the public gaze that Harry still hated.
Instead, Draco leaned forwards, hooked his hands in Harry's hair, and gave him a snog so ferocious that Harry was staggering when Draco released him. He licked his lips, blinked, and said, "Er."
The cameras flashed, and someone thought the "Er" would make a clever newspaper headline and promptly wrote it into being. Harry was embarrassed when he saw it, but Draco only smirked at him and tore the article free to keep. He thought he had made his public statement as loudly as could be expected of him.
*
Harry found Ventus sitting on a hill outside camp the day it was due to break up. The Aurors had declared a month's holiday for all trainees. Harry thought they needed the time to put together a reasonable program, decide what to do about interrupted classes, and build new barracks, but if they called it a holiday, he was more than happy to go along with it.
Ventus sat with her knees propped beneath her chin, arms wrapped around them. The posture bothered Harry, but he couldn't say why until he sat down beside her. Ventus had never looked so small before. Harry was used to her spreading out and taking over any space she entered, mostly by not caring about the objections that people might make to her doing so.
"You're mourning Herricks, aren't you?" Harry blinked and touched his lips a moment later. He hadn't known he would say that.
Ventus nodded without taking her gaze off the distant horizon. "No one else will," she said.
Harry winced. It was true that he and the rest of the comitatus hadn't given as much thought to Herricks as they should have. They had attended his funeral, along with most of the other Aurors and trainees, and the ceremony that awarded him a posthumous Order of Merlin. Draco had participated, with Ventus, in packing up his artifacts and shipping them back to his family. But they hadn't spent much time, thought, or attention on him beyond that.
"What was he like?" Harry asked. "Was he your lover?" He never would have dreamed of asking Hermione such a question, but Ventus was different.
Ventus slid a sideways look at him, and then smiled. "No. I don't need someone like him. And I know why he died, too," she added meditatively. "He was still trying to prove himself. He wanted everyone to respect him, to think he was a hero, and he thought that was the best way to do it."
Harry winced. "That's a bit--" Bloody awful was what he wanted to say, but on the other hand, Ventus didn't seem upset about it, so that silenced him. He scratched his head and wondered what he could say that would make things better. Nothing, it seemed. That couldn't make up for ignoring Herricks during his lifetime and making him feel as if he must prove himself, because he wasn't any good otherwise.
"Yes, it is," said Ventus, countenance calm. "It is." She paused, then turned to look at Harry. "I think you inspired him with the desire to be a hero."
Harry winced again. "I didn't mean to," he said.
"Why did you take it in the nature of an accusation?" Ventus widened her eyes to give him a puzzled stare. "I was merely stating a belief. 'I think' warns the listener of that."
Harry paused. He had the feeling he usually did, which was that Ventus was either laughing at them silently behind her serious mask or simply went through life in what she thought was such a sensible manner that she didn't even notice when someone else misunderstood her. He looked at her, and she looked back, blinking at times. Harry didn't think the blink was indicative of anything. If he asked, she would tell him it was to moisten and rest her eyes.
"All right," he said at last. "But I do wish that I had inspired him to do something else. He could have been a hero and lived."
"No," Ventus said. "You can. You have more skill than he did, and more luck, and more friends. His own arrogance caused people to distance themselves from him, so he could not have the last, and the first two must be developed over time. Unless you believe that luck is a blessing of some kind or a matter of pure chance, which I don't," she added, in the kind manner of someone attempting to conciliate a common delusion.
"Well, then," Harry said. "I wish that we hadn't acted like we forgot him right away."
"Why not?" Again, the puzzled stare. "You didn't like him, and he hurt Nihil but didn't show us the way to defeat him. You and Draco came up with the way to do that."
Someone would have to be very comfortable with themselves to be around Ventus for long, Harry reflected. "Well, I wish we'd paid more attention to him," he said. "We could have done that."
"Yes, you could have," Ventus said, and went back to looking into the distance.
"Are you still thinking about him?" Harry had to ask, although he didn't know that he would like the answer. "Did you forget him?"
"No," Ventus said. "I liked him, and I recognize his arrogance in myself. So I am thinking about him, and mourning him. As he was, not as I would have liked him to be."
After that, there seemed to be little that Harry could say. He ended up patting her shoulder awkwardly--she didn't notice--and leaving her alone, though he did think as he went that a lot of people could have worse mourners than Ventus.
*
"My son."
Draco had to close his eyes before he reached out to embrace his mother. They were in private, in the entrance hall of the small house where she had hidden, but she would still disapprove of showing too much.
"Let me look at you," Narcissa murmured, and stepped away from him at last. Draco had to remain still while her fingers traced the rims of his eyes, hovering near the lashes of the magical one. She had always been an expert at keeping her emotions concealed, and he had no idea what she was feeling as she stared at it.
Then she looked back at him and smiled, swiftly, uncomfortably. "You chose a handsome one to replace your natural eye," she said.
"Yes, I did." Draco caught her hand and squeezed it. "I wished for you," he added, because he wanted to say it, and before his self-criticism could silence him.
"Did you, indeed?" Narcissa gave him a small smile, which might be her way of saying that she approved and appreciated the declaration. Might be. She once again looked back at his magical eye, and then away. Draco studied the tight swirls of gold and brass that traveled in circles around her and wondered whether her magic and her emotions were both that calm. He had learned to read the way that Harry's magic reflected his feelings, but it was something that would take more experience for him to master with others.
"I am sorry that I could not be with you," his mother added then, voice low.
Draco recognized her own offering to strong feeling, and took her hand. They walked on in silence, further into the house, into a room set up partially as a sitting room and partially as a library, with comfortable chairs sprawled in front of a large fireplace. It was the sort of place that Draco remembered his mother having in Malfoy Manor, the sort of place that he thought she would create wherever she was. Narcissa took the chair nearest the fire, and Draco the one further, half-ducking his head so that she wouldn't have to watch the way the light dazzled off his silver eye.
His mother called, and one of the house-elves appeared with a tray that held two glasses. Draco smiled, knowing what it would be before he tasted it. Apparently the Black house-elves had had a recipe for a warmed mix of brandy, milk, and pumpkin juice that ought to have tasted disgusting, but didn't. His mother had made sure the Malfoy elves learned it shortly after her marriage.
They drank in silence for a moment, and Draco enjoyed the spice sliding down his throat and watched his mother. She had her head half-ducked, too, and frowned into her glass. Draco knew she would say something neither of them would enjoy debating, so he waited.
Narcissa looked up at last and said, "Of course you are not going to become an Auror, after everything that has happened."
Draco felt the stillness that invaded his body. He was glad it hadn't stiffened his hand so that he dropped or crushed his glass. He shook his head. "I am going to become a full Auror," he said calmly. "If I achieved an Order of Merlin as a trainee, who knows what else I can do once I have the full training?"
His mother spent a few moments drinking and doing nothing else. Then she said, "You were in danger all the months you were a trainee, Draco, which is supposed to be the one relatively safe time during an Auror's life. What would happen if you became a full Auror and went into battle against Dark wizards regularly?"
Draco smiled at her. "I would be one of them, and the most dangerous one on the battlefield, having training from both sides. Besides, with Harry and the comitatus around me, I don't anticipate having to face them alone."
Narcissa frowned. "I admit," she said, "that I thought this was a fancy that would pass off. I understand your wanting to see the war through, but now that it is done..." She shook her head. "The future, children, your heritage. All those are important, Draco. How are you going to integrate them with the life you want?"
"I don't know yet," Draco said. "I also know that it doesn't matter as much as you seem to think it does, Mother. I know that I can have both the things I want and the things I need. It all depends on willingness to take certain risks and having the support of the people who matter." He caught her eye firmly.
Her brows puckered. "That sounds like a threat."
"Not so much a threat as a declaration," Draco said. "I won't listen to you if you try to talk me out of this. I'll mourn my father, but I won't listen to him used as blackmail on me because of what he would have wanted, either. I'll accept your criticism, but not treat it as the only thing that matters. I have Harry, now, and I'm slowly making friends with the rest of the comitatus. I can exist on my own outside the narrow box with 'Malfoy' printed on the side."
Silence fell again. His mother turned slightly in her chair to look into the fire. Draco remained quiet, knowing it was the best thing he could do right now, and perhaps the only one that would convince his mother to accept his decision.
"I saw you always as someone with a whole heart," Narcissa murmured at last, "unlike your father, who could care about both his family and about the politics that might destroy them. I know myself divided, as well, and pulled in different directions. I had thought you would pass from interest to interest, but give yourself completely to them while you cared about them."
Draco smiled at that. "I take after you, then. I can imagine worse ways to exist."
His mother didn't smile back. "And what will happen when you long for children?" she whispered. "The fantasies of some experimental brewers aside, that is the one thing your lover cannot give you."
"I don't know yet," Draco said calmly. "Perhaps that's the greatest difference, Mother: I can put up with the uncertainty. You had your fate settled early on by your family and your marriage to Father. I don't know what will happen in ten years. Perhaps I won't be an Auror. Perhaps I'll be married." To Harry, he thought, but he didn't really know why he was so quietly certain of that, either. "But I take comfort in knowing that if I find myself split in different ways, I follow in the best family tradition."
Reluctantly, then, it seemed, his mother did smile, and move on to other subjects. They spent the rest of the evening talking about the war and Harry, or at least the parts that Draco felt able to reveal to her.
When he left, Draco stooped down to kiss her cheek, and felt her raise her hands to cradle his head. He pulled back to see her staring him hard in the eyes.
"You have become an adult," his mother murmured. "I value that. I succeeded at least that much."
"You did," Draco said, and kissed her on the mouth this time, before he prepared to Apparate back to the Auror camp.
*
"Trainee Potter."
Harry jumped and turned around. He'd been proceeding down a corridor in the Ministry, called in by Robards to settle some kind of other honor on him. Harry had been mentally preparing himself to argue that he wouldn't accept any honor unless Draco received it, too, because he had done just as much to win the war as Harry had. It was hard to go from one set of thoughts to another.
"Battle Healer," he said, when he realized it was Portillo Lopez behind him, her headscarf wrapped tightly around her hair. He bowed to her. "Was there something you needed to speak with me about? About the war?"
"I wanted merely to say farewell, as I will not be one of your instructors when you return from the holiday," she said, and held out her hand.
Harry blinked and grasped her wrist. "Er, thanks for telling me," he said. "Have you already said good-bye to other people?"
"Yes," Portillo Lopez said. "In various ways. Your partner will receive an owl from me." She nodded to him, added, after a moment's pause, "You were good in battle," and then turned around to go.
"Wait!" Harry called after her. "Why are you leaving?"
Portillo Lopez blinked at him over her shoulder, looking like an owl. "We've received reports of another necromancer working in the distance," she said. "We need to track down the reports and see how much substance there actually is to them, then close in."
Harry blinked. "In the distance? In Britain? Is it likely to threaten the Aurors?"
"Oh, excuse me," Portillo Lopez said. "In the distance is a frequent phrase that my Order uses when discussing other dimensions and universes. It makes more sense than treating one point as the center." She nodded to him once more and was gone around the corner before he could think to ask questions.
For a moment, Harry had a vision of a silent, endless war, carried out across multiple worlds, with only your vows and your Order for company...
Then he dismissed it with a shudder. Two wars is enough for me, thanks.
*
"Yeah, fuck..."
Draco arched beneath Harry, digging his fingers into Harry's back as Harry moved inside him. Harry was panting, his hair flattened for the first time in Draco's memory. He lowered his head down and bit and kissed and licked the side of Draco's neck.
Draco half-barked, his body seizing up in a familiar way. It usually took him longer than that, though, and he writhed in place, spreading his legs further and driving himself down. Harry bit his shoulder, then moved his head to the side and blew on Draco's ear.
Draco came embarrassingly fast, splashing all over Harry's belly. At least it was followed by Harry swallowing a cry and spurting in return, coming with such a shocked look on his face that Draco was still laughing about it after he pulled out and flopped down on the bed beside him.
"Oh, so my best efforts are pathetic now?" Harry grumbled. His face was flushed red and stupidly contented, though, so Draco doubted that he was as angry as he pretended. He rolled over and combed his fingers through Harry's hair, sighing as the strands curled around his knuckles and then sprang away.
"Not at all," Draco said. "You just should have seen your face."
"I wouldn't trade that for seeing yours," Harry said.
Draco had to close his eyes for a moment, the way he had with his mother, but he did manage to turn the statement that would have liquefied him to good account. "Yes, I like the way I look without the scars," he murmured, turning his head so that he could see the mirror he'd put up in his bedroom in the Manor. His face still shone unnaturally around the silver eye, but the scars were gone except for some faint, thin lines that Draco thought would also fade in time. He stroked them with an admiring finger, watching as Harry's darker arm looped around his waist and Harry's darker head came to rest on his shoulder.
"I like the way you look all the time," Harry said, and nuzzled his face into Draco's shoulder.
"You have a month to prove that," Draco said, and rolled him over. Harry went with him, laughing, and grinned up at him from the pillow.
"Less than a month, technically, since this is the second day of our holiday," he said.
"Excuses, excuses," Draco said, and lowered his head to nip at Harry's clavicle, well-pleased with himself and the world for the choices he had made.
*
Harry reached up and locked his hands together in Draco's hair, forcing him to mouth more strongly. Pleasure raced through his body, and he rolled on his side so that he could bring his own mouth into alignment and give Draco half the pleasure he gave Harry. From the way Draco started and all-but-leaped when Harry bit his arm, Harry thought he was succeeding.
Nearly a month off from Auror training. And then back to it.
It could never be the same as it would have been without Nihil and the war, but then again, without Nihil and the war, Harry wouldn't have Draco or the comitatus.
For a moment--as he had done often lately--he entertained a fleeing vision of Draco becoming better friends with Ron and Hermione and the Aurors such as Robards and Holder allowing the comitatus to work together in the way that only partners were ordinarily allowed to do...
Draco gasped, trembling, and Harry smiled and closed his teeth down. Whatever the future held, this moment was enough for him.
The End.
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