Chapter Text
Draco Malfoy’s Final Lesson
You don’t have to earn peace every damn day.
Sometimes, love just stays.
Three years later.
The thing that shocked Draco the most wasn’t the vows, or the kiss, or even the moment he first saw Hermione walk down the aisle with flowers in her hair and a look on her face like she’d already won.
No.
It was that he wasn’t afraid.
Not anymore.
Not of the crowd. Not of the whispers. Not even of the Weasleys in the second row who still occasionally looked at him like a houseguest who might steal the silver. Because somewhere between her “yes” and his surrender, between mind healer appointments and Sunday lunches and learning how to argue without retreating, he’d stopped bracing for loss.
And started believing in the life they were building.
“You’re doing that thing,” Hermione whispered as they stood beneath a floating canopy of lilies and soft golden starlight. Her fingers were warm in his.
He blinked. “What thing?”
“That thing where you look like you’re bracing for an ambush.”
He smirked, but didn’t deny it. “I’m surrounded by Weasleys and wearing formal robes in thirty-degree heat. An ambush seems entirely plausible.”
She gave a quiet huff of laughter, and leaned in a little. “You’re safe.”
He looked at her, really looked. At the candlelight catching in her curls, the soft, sure set of her shoulders, the curve of her mouth that could undo him with a single word.
“I know,” he said.
The vows were simple. Hermione’s were clear, spoken with that same brilliance that had once terrified him in school and now felt like home. She didn’t promise to love him every second of every day.
She promised to choose him, again and again, especially when he made it difficult. She promised honesty, and stubbornness, and a fierce kind of loyalty that didn’t flinch when things got hard.
She said it like a promise she’d already started keeping.
He swallowed once, twice, and tried in vain not to look like he was about to cry.
His were shorter. Less elegant. But no less true. When his voice caught halfway through, and he had to stop, jaw clenched and eyes shining, she only reached for his hand and held it tighter.
He muttered something about “fucking pollen” and the crowd laughed, and she said, “Language, Malfoy,” with the hint of a smile that told him she’d been waiting to say that in front of a hundred people.
They kissed. People clapped. Molly Weasley cried and tried not to show it. And when Draco glanced out across the crowd and caught Ron watching them with a look that was cautious, but no longer resentful, he felt something in his chest loosen.
The reception was a blur of laughter and floating candles and far too many toasts. Ginny forced them into a group photo that turned into a minor duel when George charmed the confetti to explode and Draco reflexively cast a bubble charm around Hermione to keep her hair untouched. Neville got emotional over the microphone and declared, through wine-shiny eyes, that “love is the bravest kind of magic.” Ron didn’t hex anyone, even when Pansy made a vaguely inappropriate joke during dessert.
And then, just when the night should’ve ended, when they’d danced and eaten and made every single person cry or laugh at least once, Hermione tugged him by the hand away from the crowd and whispered, “Let’s go home.”
Home.
He didn’t ask for another hour or one more song or to linger. He just went.
They slipped away quietly, apparated back to the flat Hermione had filled with books and light, and collapsed into bed still half-dressed and laughing.
Her hand found his chest beneath the buttons of his shirt. “You cried.”
“I did not cry,” Draco said, indignant. “There was—there was pollen.”
“You cried.”
He gave a long, dramatic sigh. “Fine. But only a little.”
Hermione kissed his collarbone. “It was good. It was real.”
He quieted. Looked at her. “So are we.”
She nodded, forehead pressed to his. “Yeah. We are.”
And in the quiet after—when her hands were tangled in his hair and his arms wrapped around her waist, when the vows still echoed in their heads and the future stretched out ahead of them, unwritten but possible—Draco let himself believe.
In the life they’d fought for.
In the softness they’d built.
In the love he’d never expected and nobody could ever fucking make him give back.
Thirteen Years Later
The house was quiet. Suspiciously quiet.
Which, as any former war survivor or current parent would know, was never a good sign.
Draco looked up from the sofa, where he was reading the Prophet with his feet propped on the coffee table, and narrowed his eyes toward the hallway. “Why don’t I hear spellwork?”
Hermione, seated across from him with a half-marked stack of essays and a cup of chamomile tea, didn’t look up. “Because she’s trying to transfigure the cat again, and she knows you told her not to.”
He groaned. “Again?”
“Mhm.”
“But I told her—”
Hermione finally looked up, amused. “Yes, you did. And she smiled and nodded and waited exactly six hours to disobey you.”
“She’s twelve.”
“She’s a Granger-Malfoy.”
“That sounds made-up and dangerous.”
“It is,” Hermione said, smirking faintly. “We made her.”
Draco sighed, folding his paper. “You know, I thought being married to the brightest witch of our age would be the hard part.”
Hermione stood and stretched, setting her mug down. “And instead it’s parenting a child who makes you look emotionally well-adjusted.”
Draco paused. “That’s hurtful.”
“But fair.”
He watched her walk toward the hall, curls pinned loosely atop her head, still barefoot, still effortlessly the most remarkable person he’d ever met. He still didn’t quite understand how they’d gotten here: calm days and paper trails, soft blankets, the distant sound of someone practicing illegal magic in the upstairs study.
“Should I be concerned she’s talking to herself again?” he called after Hermione.
“Only if the cat starts answering.”
A beat.
“…The cat has started answering.”
Hermione poked her head back into the room. “Are you serious?”
Draco raised a brow. “It hissed at me in Mermish this morning.”
Hermione blinked. “Did you put the memory in the pensieve?”
“Of course I did,” he said. “And then I sent it to Harry. He’s convinced we’ve been cursed.”
“Well, he’s not wrong.”
They were both smiling now. That quiet, unguarded kind of smile that still felt like a miracle some days.
She crossed the room and pressed a kiss to the top of his head before curling up beside him.
“I’ll check on her in a minute,” she said, tucking her feet up. “But first, what’s this I hear about you turning down that consulting offer?”
He shrugged, eyes still on her. “They wanted me to help rewrite the Ministry’s security doctrine. I’d rather be hexed.”
“Draco.”
“I’d rather be bitten.”
Hermione reached out and took his hand. He laced their fingers together without hesitation.
“You could do it,” she said softly. “You’d be brilliant at it.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Maybe. But I’ve spent enough of my life trying to prove things to people I don’t respect.”
She watched him for a long moment, something thoughtful and affectionate moving behind her eyes.
Then: “She’s still your second-best student, you know.”
Draco smirked. “Is that what this is about? You’re jealous?”
“I’m just saying, I never transfigured the cat into a bilingual sentient creature.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You turned me into something functional.”
Hermione leaned her head against the back of the sofa. “Functional and sappy.”
“You married me.”
“I’m a known masochist.”
They sat like that for a while with their hands linked, house warm and lived-in around them, the thump of preteen magic humming faintly through the floorboards.
Eventually, there was a small explosion upstairs and a triumphant “Ha!” from their daughter.
Neither of them moved.
“She’s going to rule the world,” Draco said.
Hermione smiled. “She already does.”
And somehow, after all the war and wandering and wreckage, after the guilt and shame and silent rooms, this was what they’d built.
And every bit of it was fucking perfect.