Bond (Drarry)

Epilogue

Epilogue

May 22

Day 236, Saturday

Hufflepuff: 380
Ravenclaw: 370
Gryffindor: 210
Slytherin: 60

Harry gave the large scoreboard at the edge of the pitch one last glance before shaking hands with Carmichael and beginning the last Quidditch game of the year, starring the two last-placed teams.

He looked at his team-mates and raised his eyebrows, seeing if they were still in accord, and they nodded back as one. The Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff game had ended in a surprising 160/30 win for Ravenclaw, which meant that Gryffindor had a – very slim – chance of winning the Quidditch Cup. Had Hufflepuff won the last game, it would have been almost impossible to beat them, but today Gryffindor needed 180 points to reach the top spot. And his team-mates had voted to let him try to just keep the Snitch away from Slytherin until they had scored three goals.

Which wouldn't be easy. The Slytherin Keeper had vastly improved, and looked good to block just about anything, and Gryffindor's Chasers were not up to speed for this game. Ginny, Dean and Demelza Robins had been great together, but then Dean and Demelza had both been turned into newts during a Duelling Club practice, and their replacements were not of the same calibre. It would not be easy to keep the Snitch from being caught until Gryffindor got three goals. Then again, it was a rather dark, windy day for late May; maybe he'd get lucky and neither Seeker would be able to spot the Snitch for a while.

He looked up at Draco, getting into Seeker position above him, and grinned despite the dismal day. It was wonderful having him up here, considering all that had happened in the last few months. Draco had had to fight tooth and nail to not be replaced on the team as Slytherin house ripped itself apart after their re-bonding, especially since he hadn't gone back to live in his dorm. But in the end, he'd prevailed. And now here he was.

And here they were. Come full circle and playing a Seeker's Game.

And there was the Snitch, right over Slytherin's goal. Draco dove for it, Harry right behind, and they fought in the air, one overtaking the other, whirling around each other, and Draco almost had it – and then it turned on its wing and Draco cursed and almost crashed into a Gryffindor Chaser, and Harry swerved to avoid them both, and the Snitch was lost again.

Damn it.

Harry flew a little higher, looping around. Thank god the bond had subsided again, after two months, and they were able to do this without discomfort. It had been incredibly frustrating, for the first few weeks after the bond, to have to be together all the time again. Though it hadn't taken as long as they'd thought it would to be able to be apart again. Shagging regularly had gone a long way towards appeasing the bond's demand for closeness and, paradoxically, loosening it a bit. Not a bad deal, that.

The proximity hadn't been the worst problem, not by a long shot. It had not been an easy couple of months. The worst part, of course, had been that Lucius had indeed called Draco with his pseudo-Dark Mark, and Draco had refused his summons. For five hideous days that still gave both of them nightmares, Harry had held Draco while he suffered from the pain of the mark and Healers tried everything in their power to counteract it, with varying degrees of success.

And then the pain had stopped.

For reasons known only to himself, Lucius Malfoy had stopped his torment of Draco and left Voldemort's side. And with his top lieutenant gone, his grand gesture of killing The Boy Who Lived once again in shambles, several of his Death Eaters defecting, and his support dwindling, Voldemort had disappeared once more.

Which did not make anyone think for a moment that there was no more danger from him. One had only to look at the Aurors ringing the pitch today to see that. The Quidditch game was warded strongly, more strongly than anybody had ever seen it, on the assumption that having the Boy Who Lived or the Boy Who Bonded (the Ravenclaw who'd called him the Boy Who Loved in April had only just stopped mooing last week) killed in mid-air would really be a bit of a downer for the end of the school year.