A/N: Ok, here we go! This is the last chapter, but there is an epilogue coming that should give some closure to the whole thing (which will be seriously big). Honestly, I hate ending stories, so I had a lot of trouble with it. I'll probably need some time to edit and make it perfect. Thanks everyone for your reviews!

PS: It's my birthday, too, btw. I want reviews for my birthday.

Chapter 50: The Only Son

Draco was almost feeling dizzy from how rapidly the scenes seemed to change. Everything was happening too fast, speeding towards some point he knew he didn't really want to reach. But he had to know. He had to understand why, why his mother felt justified keeping that Horcrux around. Maybe he would finally know why the rough copy of the fake "Secrets of the Darkest Art" was in his attic, too.

"Crash!"

Narcissa sat bolt upright in bed. Lucius wasn't there, and no one said the reason why out loud so Draco had no idea where he was. The noise had come from inside the Manor. "Elf!" Narcissa called out, and with a "Pop!" a house elf arrived, looking nervous.

The elf looked vaguely familiar to Draco, and it occurred to him after a moment that it was likely a younger version of Yugo, a little less grey to its skin and a little more perk to its long ears.

"Did you hear that noise?"

"What noise mistress?"

"Oh, never mind! I'll check on it myself," Narcissa muttered. "Useless creatures."

She slipped out of bed, pulling on some slippers and a thick robe. For a moment, Draco was worried she would leave her wand sitting on the nightstand, but she doubled back and grabbed it before marching out of the room.

Draco followed behind her silently. She had her wand lit, and was walking straight towards what Draco assumed was the baby's room. The same room with the storage chamber in the ceiling, Draco realized now that he recognized where they were in the Manor. She pushed the door open, hurriedly making her way over to the crib and cooing.

"Did someone wake up in the middle of the night before our big day?" She asked, peering over the side of the crib. Draco couldn't see anything but his mother's back from where he was standing, but something seemed wrong with her body language as she reached into the crib. Slowly, she pulled out the blue blanket, staring at it in her hand. She clutched it to her chest, swirling around, eyes flicking to all corners of the room.

"Elf..." she whispered, then yelled, "ELF!"

The same house elf from before popped into view, bowing low.

"Every elf in this house is to search. NOW!" Narcissa screamed, waving the blanket in the creature's face. Draco didn't think he had ever seen a house elf look quite as terrified as this one did. Yugo's eyes grew to the size of saucers as he stared, mouth gaping, at the empty blanket being shoved in his face.

"Mistress... it is impossible! No one is coming in Malfoy Manor without permissions..."

"He didn't get up and walk away himself! You find my baby, now! It's your job to take care of our family, and if my son makes it out of this building then you've failed," she hissed, drawing back her hand. For a moment Draco thought she would strike the creature. She seemed to think better of wasting time like that, though, and instead waved it away.

She began lighting every room, jogging through the halls of the Manor. She didn't bother calling- Draco was pretty sure she knew exactly who had broken into her home.

Then, she paused, looking to a hall to her left. The one that led to the Potion's lab. "That bitch..." she whispered, then broke into a run towards the room where she had been storing the photo album.

Draco followed reluctantly. He wished he could just speed through this- it was obvious what was coming next.

He heard sounds ahead- a crash, a scream, the flashing lights of spells being flung around the room. Against his better judgment, he ran forward, knowing that he needed to know for sure, to see what his mother had kept secret for so many years.

Narcissa was lying on the floor at a strange angle, one leg trapped beneath her as if she had just been shoved hard backwards- her wand had been thrown from her hands, flung across the room. She was breathing hard, teeth bared and hair wild as she stared wide-eyed at the woman looming above her. Franny Fortune.

But Fortune didn't look like herself, exactly. There was something... off, about her. Something inhuman. Her skin was sunken and sallow, her hair dull, her lips cracked. She looked much closer to the vision Draco had seen in his dream so long ago- a dream which was most likely sent from the Horcrux she had made. The piece of her soul trapped in the cursed photo album.

She wasn't human. She was only a fragment of a human, now, split in two by her own evil deed. Draco saw the limp little bundle on the floor, under one of the tables at the far side of the room. He didn't want to look at it, didn't want his brain to make sense of what it was seeing, but at the same time he couldn't look away. His mind started to put the lump together- it was the shape of a little body. He could see the arm extended over it's head, which was covered by a sheet.

He knew it shouldn't be possible to get sick in a pensieve, but all the same his stomach churned. He was certain that if he had had breakfast, it would have left his stomach by now.

It was dead. It was his brother.

The scene continued to unfold.

"You conniving mudblood bitch! You... I'll kill you!" Narcissa screamed, and wand or no wand she lunged for the woman, her fingers curled like claws that could tear off the offending face of her former friend.

Fortune just laughed, flipping her wand lightly and sending Narcissa flying toward the back wall. She smacked into one of the glass light fixtures, and broken glass tinkled to the floor when she dropped. "Cissa, come now. You can't just steal what belongs to someone else and expect to get away with it! Glad I learned so much about the Manor's defenses while I was still welcome- I had a feeling things might turn out this way."

"My son..." Narcissa wailed, curling in on herself. There was a good deal of blood soaking through her robe in places where the glass had cut her. It was sprinkled through her hair, and spots of bright red stained her fair color.

Fortune paced a little, tapping her wand in her palm. "It didn't have to be this way, you know. But then, we did say we would pick someone who was already dying. I thought you'd be proud- I kept my promise." She walked over to a table with a book-stand resting on it. She had placed the photo album up there, and now began to palm through the pages. She looked down at the pictures with emotionless eyes. The pictures of Narcissa smiling, of their fun times at Hogwarts together. Nothing. Franny Fortune couldn't conjure up the slightest hint of remorse, because Franny Fortune just wasn't capable anymore. She had seen to that with one inhuman act.

"Sadly," she continued, her eyes no longer in focus as she stared down at the album, "I can't have you around anymore either. I see that now. You know too much- I can't let you destroy everything I've worked so hard for." She ran a hand lovingly over the smooth cover of the album as she closed it. She didn't care about it in the same way she had before- it had another significance now.

There was a crack in the air by Fortune's head, and a house elf descended on her. Yugo grabbed her head, holding on tightly with gnarled hands as Franny shook herself to throw the creature off. Narcissa took advantage of the distraction and dove for her wand. She was making the most horrible sounds- like sobbing, but cut off, wild and desperate. Just as she was about to wrap her hand around the smooth wood Fortune threw the elf off and across the room, snapping another attack Narcissa's way. There was a flash of red, and suddenly Draco's mother was screaming.

Cruciatus Curse. Draco instinctively moved forward, wanting to help but knowing that he couldn't change something that had already happened. He couldn't say that this vision was worse than some of the things he had seen during the war- but this time it was his own family being tortured and hurt, and that made it all more personal and painful to watch.

Just when it seemed like there was no hope, the door burst open. Literally. A spell was flung at the outside of the door frame, blowing it to splinters, preceding the entrance of its caster. Lucius. He didn't stop to so much as survey the situation- it was obvious that even at a young age, Lucius had the mentality of a soldier- he was good at dueling, but more than that he was good at thinking quickly when faced with danger. Hesitation could mean death in such a situation, and Lucius rarely hesitated.

He hit Fortune with something red that made her spin wildly, crashing her like a tornado into a potions cabinet. Vials burst, pouring over her face and hair as the cabinet tipped slowly forward over her limp form. Mixing ingredients hissed against the unconscious woman's skin, boiling in some spots and freezing her in others. Even though the spell had knocked her out, Fortune's body twitched, her muscles reacting to the pain of the various liquids.

It was over in an instant, and again Draco wondered where his father had been just a few minutes prior. If he had been home, maybe everything would have happened differently.

Probably at a Death Eater meeting. An early one, when it was all misled ideals and dreams and not screaming and dying. He was too busy dealing with his hatred of muggle-borns to take care of his own family, a lesson he clearly had not learned by the time Draco was born, either.

He ran right for Narcissa after the threat was down, muttering soft words to his wife too quiet for Draco to hear as she sobbed against him. Then he looked around the room, trying to figure out what happened. When he spotted the bundle under the table, the scene changed abruptly. It was obvious that Draco wasn't meant to see their reactions, only to observe the situation.

He was glad for that, at least.

There were Aurors at the house, now. They were in the foyer, talking to Narcissa and Lucius. Presumably, Fortune had already been hauled away.

"We'll need you to testify at the trial," a large, square-shaped man was telling Narcissa. She wasn't really listening- just sitting on the old stiff bench that sat by the door, staring blankly at the floor. She was wrapped in a thick comforter- Draco recognized it as the one that had been on the bed before. Lucius assured them they would, then asked them in a stiff voice if they could leave now. The Aurors, seemingly unable to come up with the right words to comfort the catatonic woman and the robotic-voiced man, agreed to leave.

Once the room was cleared and quiet, Lucius sat down next to his wife. Not touching her, just... sitting.

"I hit her with a fatal curse," he said, but it was obviously meant to be a quarry. Why wasn't she dead? That was the question.

"She can't," Narcissa answered. Her voice was automated and dull. She didn't really sound like a person- more like an old Victrola. "She can't die." The corner of Narcissa's mouth, quite inexplicably, rose shakily. There was a something extremely unbalanced about her- her tinny voice, her red, puffy eyes, her gleeful smirk- it painted a very unhinged picture. "That's why she'll suffer."

From under the big blanket, Narcissa withdrew the photo album that had been sitting on her lap. She had had it stacked on top of another book. "Secrets of the Darkest Art." She held both books in front of her, like she was appraising fine art. "This will be my instrument of revenge. Against her. Against all of her damn greedy muggle-born kind..."

Lucius was taking everything his wife said with a grain of salt. He seemed to be lost in his own little word, nodding to her insane statements as if they were the most natural responses in the world.

Suddenly, everything went inky black. Draco was plunged into nothingness, and with a sucking sound popped back into the real world, staring at the seemingly mundane bowl in front of him. The memories were still swirling, waiting, at the very bottom of the bowl... Draco wished he could just dump them into the fire. It wouldn't make his parents forget them, but it would make him feel better.

His mother had written the book. They had blamed his father without a thought, but never did they think that Narcissa Malfoy would have targeted muggle-borns that way.

They hadn't known anything.

He didn't think his mother knew the part the book had played in the attack on Hermione, or the motivations of the now defunct Post-Voldemort Death Eaters. However... she had definitely meant for muggle-borns to get hurt. She probably wanted to avoid any more people like Fortune utilizing Horcuxes, too, which was why she bothered rewriting the book in the first place.

Suddenly, Draco was aware of a couple things.

First, the high-pitched wail of a Caterwauling charm was piercing through the Manor.

second, Draco was now completely alone in his mother's study.

He was fairly certain that the last point was related to the previous, so he started moving towards the door. Had someone broken into the Manor? Again? Who would bother?

At the last minute, he remembered: He wasn't, technically, alone in the room. There was the photo album to deal with. He stared at it.

He still had questions. The memories were so fresh in his mind, and so many things just didn't make sense.

He still didn't really get it. Why his mother kept the Horcrux instead of seeking a way to destroy it. Wouldn't killing a part of her enemy's soul be the best revenge? That's what Draco would have done- what he would do, if he could find out how. Hermione had mentioned using the Sword of Gryffindor to kill the Dark Lord's Horcrux- fat chance Draco would be whipping that out of a hat anytime soon.

For now, he couldn't just leave the room without the photo album, and he really wasn't thrilled at the prospect of touching the thing. It was sitting right where they had left it early that morning, on the floor beside the fireplace where it had failed to burn.

He walked closer, eyeing the cursed thing warily. Could it sense him, somehow? How much of it was a curse, and how much of it was a real and thinking part of Fortune's soul? Could it plan, feel, act?

Was it alone, or could it somehow communicate with the real Franny Fortune, rotting away in a cell in Azkaban?

"You're not going to hurt anyone else," Draco said to it. Or to the empty air, depending on the answers to his questions. "You picked the wrong girl to imperius. She has a lot of friends, and we're going to find a way to take you out," Draco continued. Really, he was trying to get a reaction from it, to see what it could do. It was just lying there innocently, like it was just a regular bunch of paper and photos.

Draco shook his head, wondering if he was crazy, talking to a book. He looked around the room, and found a doily draped over a small side table. He grabbed it, using it to pick up the book without actually touching the thing. It might have been a futile gesture, but it made him feel better about it.

The cursed object in hand, Draco made his way out the door, heading towards the sound of the alarm.

...

Hermione felt more than a little foolish, hidden behind the door of the kitchen. The Manor's kitchens were beautiful- clean and well stocked with every food and device imaginable. Of course, the Malfoys never really cared to even look at it. It was house elf territory. Probably where they slept, too, if the small blanket bundles at the corners were any indication.

For a time, she had called the Manor home. Now she was hiding, waiting for the approaching heavy footfalls of Lucius Malfoy, and the lighter tapping heels of Narcissa Malfoy, to pass by her and her friends. Now that she remembered all that had happened when she was imperiused, she wasn't entirely sure how Lucius would react to her, once again, acting against his wishes. He might start a duel, which they just didn't have time for. Not until after their mission was complete.

It seemed a little crazy- what was the rush? The Horcux had sat in an attic for what... thirty years? And yet now it felt to Hermione as if a clock was ticking. The Horcrux was angry. It was trying to defend itself.

It was trying to attack Narcissa, though Hermione wasn't clear on why. It needed to die, and soon.

Once the couple had passed by, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny left the kitchen quietly, running in the opposite direction towards the room where Hermione had last seen the Horcrux. If Lucius had it on his person... well, then they would just have to make the time to deal with him. Hermione had a feeling neither of the older Malfoys would want to touch the book, though. They seemed to understand that it was dangerous, especially since it had managed to cast a successful imperious curse on someone as well-versed in magic as Hermione.

They rounded a bend in the hallway, and Hermione saw someone else come into view from the hall at the end, moving towards them: Draco.

And he had the Horcrux.

She felt almost as relieved to see him as she had at Nott's mansion.

"Draco!" she called, happily waving the little silver box above her head.

Draco saw the group and moved speedily towards them. He was holding the Horcrux out in front of him by just two fingers, wrapped in lace, as if it would burn him. Maybe it could.

Harry laughed.

"Something funny, Potter?" Draco snarled defensively.

Harry shook his head, making a visible effort to kill his grin. "It's just... we walked around wearing a damn Horcrux for months in the frozen woods, and here you come with..." he couldn't seem to finish his sentence without risking further laughter, so he just held his hand out in front of him daintily, mimicking Draco.

Draco glared as he joined up with them, the Horcrux still held awkwardly away from his body. "And were you all completely fine, touching the thing for that long?"

"Er, no," Hermione answered. She shot Harry a look. "We were not. It almost drowned Harry, and it made me... irritable."

"More than usual?" Ginny pipped up, and gave Hermione a smile to let her know she was kidding. Hermione still frowned back at her.

"So, how does holding it like this make me look silly or cowardly, when the alternative would mean I was an idiot?"

"Hey, we had to, well, move around a lot..." Harry said defensively.

"Can we just agree that Draco looked rather funny running like that, and Harry is an idiot, and we're all absolutely childish to be so easily distracted?" Ginny said, indicating the doily-covered book held gingerly between Draco's fingers.

"Oh, yes, right," Hermione said, holding up the box. "I think this can kill it," she informed Draco.

Draco stared at her, then shrugged. "Whatever you say, Hermione," he answered, not questioning her logic. Hermione appreciated the confidence, and when Draco set the book on the ground she set the box on top of it.

The four of them stayed back a few paces, silently watching. Hermione was even holding her breath, not wanting to be the one to break the silence, anticipation filling them all.

Nothing happened.

"How do we get the book to lie?" Harry asked into the quiet, and Hermione had to admit it was a pretty good question.

"What if someone said a lie nearby?" Ginny asked.

Hermione shook her head. "No. First, none of us should be anywhere near the thing if it spits out fiendfyre. And second, you need to be touching the metal of the box. That's how it directs the fire and keeps it under control. No one wants out of control fiendfyre."

"No. No one wants that," Draco muttered, no doubt remembering the Battle of Hogwarts. As they all were.

Everyone was silent for a moment, thinking. Hermione had expected, once she realized what the box did, that this would be an easy and elegant solution to destroy the Horcrux. She hadn't anticipated that their main issue would be with triggering the thing.

Hermione stepped forward, crouching down beside the box. "I'm going to make the book talk," she said simply, and if her friends were anything other than Hogwarts-graduate wizards and witches it would have sounded completely ludicrous. As it was, the answer to their problem seemed so stupidly obvious that Hermione felt embarrassed for not thinking of it immediately.

If she could make a teacup dance across a table, she could make a book tell a lie.

She thought of how to word the spell, and what combination of common spells to use, and then with a few turns and slashes of her wand, the book began to twitch.

Hermione stepped back, arms splayed to force her friends back, too. Not that they needed the nudge.

The pages of the book lifted and closed, but not so much as to throw off the metal box. "I..." said the book, voice straining. It almost sounded like... like the book was trying to fight the spell. Like it was fighting against what Hermione was making it say.

The Horcrux was trying to save itself.

"...am not... a Horcrux," it finished, and without even missing a beat the top of the little silver box popped open with a grinding mechanical whir, a hurricane of flames bursting forth and consuming the green-bound album. The fire took shape, and various kinds of horrific monstrous creatures of all-consuming heat went to work on the liar. There was a horrific shriek as the booked was burned by the organic forms of pure flame. They were eating her, the soul of Franny Fortune, devouring the book and the curse placed on it. The light and heat were enough that Hermione had to turn away, and when she did she found that everyone else had already done the same.

When it was finished, and nothing but black ash was left staining the floor, the control magics on the box activated, pulling the deadly animals back into their prison. The last flicks of flame vanished as the top closed, and the box once again looked plain and harmless.

Hermione didn't want to test her theory quite yet, but she guessed that the box would be cool to the touch, even.

"No!" cried a voice from behind them, and once again everyone turned.

There was Narcissa Malfoy, Lucius not far behind her, running to catch up. She must have realized who had broken into the house and was returning for the book.

"No..." she said again, her skin a pallid shade and her voice shaky. "... now she will die. It's not enough."

Draco sighed, giving his mother a sympathetic look. "It is enough. That thing could have killed you, mother! It could have killed Hermione, or me, too. It was dangerous, and should have been destroyed a long time ago."

"But..." Narcissa looked a little confused, her eyes drifting to the ceiling as she worked through her thoughts. "Without the Horcux, she'll die in Azkaban. That isn't enough." She looked back down at her son, and something seemed to click. Her eyes widened with her realization, and instantly she retracted her statement. "No, you're right. If I lost you... then what would be the point?" she finished so quietly, it was very nearly a whisper.

Hermione had the feeling she was missing something. However, none of it mattered. They were all tired, the Horcrux was dead, and Lucius looked more than a little murderous at this point. He was standing beside his wife, arms crossed, glowering at Hermione as if, once again, everything was her fault.

It wasn't time to argue about why they had destroyed the Horcrux. It was time to get the hell out of there.

"Hermione found the book in Dumbledore's office," Draco said, ignoring Hermione as she tugged at his sleeve, hinting that they should go. "How did it get back there, mother? You copied it, right? You made the fake version that the Death Eaters were using."

His mother looked so taken aback by the seeming randomness of the question, she seemed to have forgotten her voice.

"She did write it, then?" Hermione asked, finally feeling like everything had come together. "Secrets of the Darkest Art?"

Draco nodded. "Yeah, but I don't think she realized it had anything to do with what happened to us. She wrote it when she was in... well, when she was grieving. A long time ago. Isn't that right, mother?"

His mother, fighting through her shock, nodded. "I didn't think that would be something you would get from the memories... but yes, I copied the book to throw people off the trail. After Fortune... I didn't want anyone to make a Horcrux again, and I didn't want anyone else to die..."

"Any pure-bloods, that is," Hermione amended, and no one contradicted her.

"Dumbledore..." Narcissa said, taking her husband's proffered arm and leaning heavily on him. She looked close to passing out from the day's events. "I sent the book back to him anonymously. I expect he took much better care of it from then on."

Hermione didn't bother telling her that actually, he made it quite easy for her to get it when the trio needed it. "Why not destroy it?"

"I didn't... I thought someone may need it, some day. And it's not in my nature to destroy precious artifacts, anyways! I thought Dumbledore would keep it safe..."

Well, it was destroyed now.

"I think it's time you all left my house." Lucius said with barely-concealed rage. "None of you are welcome here at the moment." He looked right at Draco as he said it, and Hermione tightened her grip on his arm.

"Draco didn't have anything to do with us breaking in," Hermione answered quickly. "I didn't know if you'd go along with our plan, and I wanted that thing dead." She indicated the soot under the box with a flick of her eyes. "I suppose I'm sorry. I should have asked-"

"And I would have refused any request from you, you worthless, meddling, mud-"

"Careful," Harry interrupted, hand on his hip by his wand as he stared down his former enemy.

"That's enough Lucius! We agreed they could both come back-" Narcissa tried to argue, but was cut off.

"I think this changes things. I knew someone had snooped around my office before..."

"That was mostly me," Draco said between grit teeth. "And don't worry about it- we finished what we came back here to do, so we'll just be on our way."

Hermione didn't like the idea of leaving things like this. She could see the way Narcissa was looking between her son and her husband, and she could feel how tense Draco was through the sleeve of his robes. This wasn't right- it just couldn't stay this way forever.

"Draco..." Hermione started. She had no idea what she wanted to say. She just knew that while they had fixed one problem today, they still were nowhere near fixing things with his parents. "...I don't want-"

"Hermione," Harry said suddenly, interrupting. There was a lot of that going around. "Why don't you side-along Ginny back to Grimmauld Place. Draco can bring me."

Hermione blinked, her mouth falling open slightly. Was this Harry's not-so-subtle way of telling her to leave?

Draco probably did need to talk to his parents on his own. There was nothing she could do to help- she only ever made everyone angry, it seemed.

"Sure..." she muttered, and Draco reached up and gave the hand on his arm a light squeeze before she let go.

"You boys play nice!" Ginny said, pointing from Draco to Harry. She glanced up at the angry Lucius, but didn't take her playing quite far enough to point at him. "I don't want to hear any, 'Oh, my wand slipped!' and someone comes back a rat, or a ferret, or a Gucci handbag. Although, hint hint for Christmas, Harry."

...

Once the girls were gone, Hermione somewhat reluctantly agreeing to apparate away, everything was suddenly very quiet. At a calm and composed request from his mother, who seemed to be working hard to pull herself back together after her outburst, the four of them went to his mother's parlor... for the third time that day. Draco found himself hating the floral sofa pattern more than ever as he sat down on it again, the scent of rose water drifting up from the stiff uncomfortable cushions.

Lucius Malfoy was standing with his back to the room, an imposing figure at the now-repaired window, surveying the garden. There was a time that Draco would have admired and even wanted to emulate his father's stoic, yet dangerous, nature. He was everything a dignified pure blood should be: stubborn, steadfast, opportunistic, calculating, and powerful.

One thing he was not was forgiving. Or understanding. Not even for his own family.

That, too, was part of being a proud member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, wasn't it? To never relent, never let the bloodline break. His father thought he was doing his duty, and who could fault him for doing what he had always been taught was right? Draco, too, used to think the same way, afterall.

Of all the women he could have fallen for, he had chosen the one that broke all the rules he had been raised with. How could he ever expect his father to understand?

"I understand," Draco said, finally ending the long train of polite chit-chat from him mother. The "Let's have a house elf bring some tea" and "Mr. Potter, would you care for some cream? Sugar?"

"It's not your fault, father," Draco continued, earning him a rather confused glance from Harry. Who was sitting next to him. How weird was that? "You don't owe me anything. I was so used to expecting this house, the money, the status, that I forgot it wasn't really mine. I'm going to find things that are mine. So, I want you to know that I'm not... not really angry with you for this." He was speaking both lies and truths to his father's back. It was true that he understood that he shouldn't be angry- not about the chance of disinheritance, not about being kicked out of the house... but in fact, he was angry with his father. For talking so cruelly to Hermione. For wishing her dead, just so things could go his own way.

His father was the kind of man who could wish someone dead because it was easier.

Draco decided that that was neither here nor there, though. If they were lucky, his father and Hermione would never have to see each other again. That, of course, was up to his father. Still, it was something of a comfort to accept as a possibility.

"Draco..." his mother said, eyes flicking nervously up to his father's still form, "that's just... just madness! You are our son. What is the point of all of this," she waved her hands around, indicating the room, the mansion, everything, "if not for you?"

Draco shook his head. He made a conscious effort not to look at Harry- he didn't want to know what the other boy was making of this. He suspected he was pretty uncomfortable. "That's not true. This is all here for the good son who plays the part and does what he's told. It's not a given, it's a reward. And I suppose I didn't earn it. I just... I don't want this to stress you out, mother. And I don't want you to be so angry, father." Draco wasn't sure if anything he said could assuage the latter problem, but he decided to wing it. "So I'm leaving, but you're welcome to come see me. You're welcome to keep sending an unreasonable amount of letters, too," he added, and to his surprise the corners of his mother's lips turned up into a real and actual smile. He felt like it had been too long since he had seen that.

Lucius sighed, clasping his hands behind his back. It was hard enough to tell what his father was thinking when facing him, but it was impossible with only a view of his back silhouetted against the window.

"Do what you want," he said finally, a sentence which could either be construed as conceding defeat... or a dismissal of his son forever. It was annoying to Draco, now, not being able to tell what his father was feeling and thinking. Seeing only his stupid broad back instead of his eyes, the eyes that were exactly like Draco's own.

"I will," Draco agreed, standing up from the sofa. Harry stood up quickly too, probably only too excited to leave. Before he turned to the door, Draco looked to his mother one more time. He had to reiterate his point. He had to make her understand... especially after all he had seen that day. "You're not going to lose me, mother. Even if I'm disinherited, even if father can never forgive me, and even if you decide you can't stand my choices in life. I'm still your son, no matter what."

His mother's eyes were looking a little too wet yet again, but this time Draco had a feeling she was genuinely happy with him and his words. He decided it was probably best to get out of there before things got any more sappy than they already had, and so he turned on his heel and walked away with a quick goodbye, Harry keeping close.

It seemed a little rude to apparate just then, and Draco felt like he needed to clear his head before returning to his wife. The boys walked out of the Manor the traditional way, heading for the front gates.

"That was... unexpected," Harry said.

"Stop talking," Draco immediately countered.

"No, it was good, Draco."

"Yeah, I've gone through a miraculous transformation. I'm the reformed hero, a poet, a misunderstood bad-boy, a poor disinherited rich kid. I know. I'm pretty great. Now stop talking Harry."

Harry did stop talking, thankfully, but every once in a while Draco caught him flashing him an admiring look of approval, like he was a new kind of chocolate frog card. He did his best to ignore it, walking dutifully out and away from the Manor.

...

A/N: The end, but there will be an epilogue! Lots of loose ends cleared up, hopefully!

A/N Part 3: If anyone is interested in my attempt at a dating sim, just check my profile. I'll update on there every once in a while. I'll probably be looking for betas at some point, mostly because it's written in first person and I am like wicked bad at that. If you want to be personally notified when it is finished, send me a PM and I'll respond when it's done! I expect to be working on it for the next year or so, honestly. It's a lot of work, like writing the same fanfic from a billion different perspectives. I'm already getting burnt out on drawing the characters... there's only so many times you can shade the exact same black school robes before you start to go crazy!