Lost Image | dramione

51 | Epilogue

A/N:

This is the end! I hope you all enjoyed the story! I think it's never possible to please everyone with endings, and I really, REALLY hate writing them. I tried to tie up loose ends and still leave things a little bit "aww." Honestly, I probably went a little overboard, since this is as long as a regular chapter, anyways! Longer, even! XD

A few things to clear up from reviewers.

As far as the baby goes, I never imagined it was an actual ghost. They were both just manifestations of the horcrux meant to catch Hermione's attention. The horcrux wanted to be found so it could try and kill Narcissa. It was a much less covert-I wanna-live-forever kind of horcrux. Living forever is very nice if you're as powerful as Voldemort, but if you're stuck in Azkaban with a bunch of dementors for decades it's not very nice, is it?

Which brings me to another thing pointed out to me: That Voldemort's body was destroyed, and so if Fortune died her body would still be gone, but the Horcrux would act as a second part of her. For this story, we're operating on the premise that as long as the Horcrux survives, her body cannot die. At least, not by the dementors in Azkaban. I feel like horcruxes can work in unique, (timey wimey?) ways, and for this story dementors just can't kill her as long as the Horcrux lives.

"Whoa," Ginny said, reaching up and pulling a card down from the wall without bothering to ask. Draco managed to hide his twinge of annoyance- he shouldn't be annoyed or surprised at the red-head's rudeness at this point... especially since he didn't really want the cards up on the wall in the first place.

It had been Hermione's idea, and while he really couldn't comprehend why she found such joy in displaying each holiday card carefully on the wall above the sofa, he knew better than to try and stop her. If it made her happy, he'd suffer all the holiday cheer and tacky decorations she could muster. As it was, their house already looked like a freaking gingerbread house- green and red décor filling the place both inside and out. She'd even charmed the wallpaper to display little reindeer, the images flying around at super-slow speeds back and forth on a cheery candy-floss colored backdrop.

When the first Christmas card had been delivered- by a postman, mind you, not by a proper owl- his overly-festive wife had absolutely squealed with delight. It was like she had never seen a Christmas greeting before in her life, and she had turned to him with eyes twinkling like a Grindylow spying dinner.

"Look!" she had exclaimed, hopping from foot to foot. "Look at what it says, Draco!"

It said, "Merry Christmas." Not very surprising. It also had a short message from her parents, whom they would be visiting Christmas morning. Christmas evening was reserved for a party at Malfoy Manor, which was probably going to be very grand... and very boring. Draco hoped his father and Hermione would stay at opposite ends of the room, since he doubted the cheerful holiday spirit had exactly infected his stubborn father.

No, the reason Hermione was so damn excited was that the card had been addressed to them both. Just their first names, but used in succession.

The next card, a rather formal-looking thing from Pansy, had listed their last names. Well, being the properly-raised witch that she was, Pansy had addressed it "To Mr. and Mrs. Draco Malfoy," which Draco thought would irritate his modern-thinking wife but instead just seemed to encourage her holiday spirit. She had stuck it on the wall right next to the one from her parents, looking rather proud.

It had only grown from there.

And now, on Christmas Eve, Draco sat in a room that was filled with assorted Gryffindors. And it was only going to get worse- Hermione had invited quite a few stragglers to her little Christmas Eve party, much to Draco's chagrin. He would have preferred a night alone with Hermione.