They managed to find each other after the battle. After they had been on opposite sides. After one had failed and the other was safe.
“Granger, what do you think happens after love?” His heart felt like it was breaking even as he held her in his arms. His grief for everything becoming a singularity for this moment.
“Draco...” she started sobbing, clinging onto him like it was the last time.
“I think we’ll find solace in the familiar, I think our old arguments will surface in our minds with clear solutions that we will regret.”
He could feel her lips wobbling against his chest and his tears tracked into her hair like summer rain.
“I think it will be so hard to be happy and every time we meet we will revert to this moment when we were young and foolish and thought we knew better.”
He squeezed her closer and he wanted her to know. “I think I’ll feel you in my dreams and wish you were with me. I think each time the wind feels like your touch I will curse it.”
Her nails dug into his back. Her words were interrupted by glottal cries. “When you walk away from here, don’t turn around. Pretend you don’t hear me begging you to come back. Because you know I will.”
It physically pained him to remove her arms from his body knowing his family was waiting and beyond that, the Aurors.
“I wish I could have loved you the right way, Granger.”
He pretended to ignore her like she’d asked, but even as his feet kept moving, his heart was jumping backwards, trying to reunite with her piece by piece.
Their children go off to school. They are standing on the platform. Alone. One spouse gone forever, one nearby with a new wife and new baby.
“Do you still think we were young and foolish and thought we knew better, Granger?”
She hugged herself and sighed tremulously.
“I never stopped looking for what we had. Every time I close my eyes, I see us as we were.”
She hesitated, looking up at him and he felt that sense of home he hadn’t in so long.
“I think we were foolish for not trusting ourselves, for thinking we were too young and someday we would know better.”
He stepped a little closer and their arms brushed, hidden by his cloak.
“I cursed the wind every day.”
He looked deep into her eyes.
“I won’t scream it like you did, but I’ll still beg. But I hope you stay and hear it.”
She looked at him with searching eyes, waiting. The platform now nearly empty around them.
“Please, Granger. Please, please stay. Don’t leave me.”
She smiled and took his hand.
“Of course not. There was never any ‘after love’ Draco. There was only ever love, it stayed even after you left.”
The pieces of his heart slotted back together.
He brought her close, lips millimetres apart.
And they once again managed to find each other.
