AN: Hi guys! Wow I received so many reviews to last week's chapter, it was fantastic! So a big thank you to Guest, that red head girl 14 (glad you like it!), Guest (another one), helenbrits74 (thank you so much for your lovely review! And you're absolutely right about the Killing Curse part of course, I've changed it!) and JustAFangirl (thank you!). Apart from wanting to thank the people that reviewed last week's chapter, I just want to thank everyone in general that helped me write this story. That's of course everyone who has ever reviewed any of the chapters, but also all those of you who have favourited, followed or simply just read the story. You made this possible. Now, for the very last time, on with the story!
Epilogue - part two
'Oh...' she broke the silence at last. Somewhere in the last few minutes, she had dropped the dish cloth and had turned to face the young man that still stood by the bar – her bar, in her café, in her new life where she had absolutely no need or wish for him to walk into. Daisy quickly turned back to the table, picking up the cloth. 'I'm sorry.' It sounded mechanical, meaningless. It was the 'I'm sorry' you offer when someone misses their Tube only to get another connection three minutes later; the 'I'm sorry' you offer because it's the polite thing to say, not because you really mean it.
'Yes well, that still doesn't tell me why you're here, though.'
Daisy turned around so fast that her auburn dyed hair hit her in the face and she once again dropped the dish cloth, this time throwing it down on the table. She opened her mouth to tell him off, perhaps threaten with calling the police if he did not move immediately, but was for a moment distracted by the man that stood before her. Man, for he was a boy no longer.
In the last few years, he had managed to fully grow into the person that he was supposed to be. Taller, with a lean figure and the smallest bit of stubble forming on his jawline, yet it was not just age that had changed him. At the Battle of Hogwarts – but even long before that in the time she had known him at school – his face had looked gaunt, his haunted eyes rimmed with red, as if he had not seen a good night's rest in years. Now, although he certainly looked a lot less immaculate, he (for what might be the first time in his life) looked free. And she knew that she could not sent this young man away. 'Not here,' she sighed 'Give me a moment to finish up and we'll go back to my apartment. I've spent ten hours on my feet serving drunk customers and I'm dying to slip into some slippers. Besides, I'll need a glass of wine if I'm going to survive this conversation.'
Fortunately, he did not speak any more whilst she cleaned the remainder of the tables and swiped the floor. In fact, even when they traversed the three streets that would take them to her apartment, he left her to her own thoughts.
When they reached her building, Daisy checked her mailbox out of habit before guiding him up four narrow sets of stairs. She did not apologize for the mess, did not tell him that she could barely drag herself out of bed in the mornings, let alone clean her house. Instead, she dropped her keys and coat on the overloaded old chair by the door, vaguely gesturing for him to do the same. As she'd told him earlier she would do, she kicked of her flats and stepped into her woolen slippers before she moved off into the kitchen area. By the time she had fixed herself a big glass of much deserved red wine, Draco had found himself a seat on her couch, sandwiched between a laundry basket and a pile of books. She did not bother to tell him he could help himself to something to drink if he liked, instead seating herself on the sill of the sole window in her living and kitchen area. 'I know you have a lot of questions,' she spoke slowly, staring down into the red liquid in her glass 'And I suppose it would only be fair of me to answer some of them, given..' She trailed of there, not quite sure how to finish. Given their past? Given everything that had happened? 'I just don't know if I'm ready to tell you.'
He snorted at that and she looked up to see him staring at her in disbelief. 'Not ready? You've been hiding out in the Muggle world for nearly a year, running away from your past. Don't you think it's time you do something?'
'I'm not running away.'
'Not? Then what do you call this?' He gestured around himself.
'Living, I call this living! Look, you have no right to judge me or my life. I've lost so much that you can't even begin to..-'
'And I haven't? You think you're the only one who has lost people?'
'No, but..-'
'But my parents and I were on the wrong side of the war, so we don't count?'
She slammed her glass down on the sill, the red liquid that suddenly reminded her so much of something else sloshing over the edges. 'At least you still have your parents. Mine are dead. And so is my uncle. My aunt is hallway across the country thinking I never existed. My best friend was viciously killed in a battle she should never have been a part of. I have nothing there, nothing to go back to.' Tears were now brimming in the corners of her eyes and she turned her head away from him. 'Magic has cost me everything I held dear in life. It's better if I just keep away from it.'
It was silent for a moment and she feared that she had scared him off – again. 'I thought that too,' he admitted softly, his voice sounding a lot closer than before. She turned to see him standing behind her, his gaze fixed on the city outside her window. 'When I got over the initial reaction to being dropped in this strange world, I thought of how easy it was, how easy it could be. No one in the Muggle world blinks an eye when hearing my last name.. no one knows what I've done. They treat me just like any other man. But I would be running away if I stayed in the Muggle world for the rest of my life; I would stay not because it's nice, but because it's easier than facing my past.'
'What made you change your mind?'
'I am not sure,' he shoved a hand through his hair and turned to look her straight in the eye 'Seeing you tonight, I don't know. I just know that I came to that pub to forget about everything for a while and now I find myself standing in the living room of the girl who might have been my only real friend at Hogwarts, until she told me I was a mistake and then vanished off the face of the earth for a few years, and I realise that it would be wrong to hide from my past.'
'I'm sorry,' She echoed the words she'd said earlier that night, thinking of that moment years ago, though it sounded nothing like the last time. 'I'm was foolish and rash and..'
'A Gryffindor?'
She returned his smile, the first genuine one she'd smiled in almost a year. Then her face turned serious again and she returned her gaze to the city outside. 'After the Battle, I tried..' She tried swallowing back the lump in her throat 'I thought that I could do it. I went to see Amanda's parents, like she'd asked me to, and I just.. It was just too much. Their pain, their grief for their daughter.. I told them how brave she had been – even up to her death. And when I had nothing more to tell, I thanked them for the tea, got my coat and never looked back.' She watched as an owl flew by. 'I thought that it would get easier as time went on. But the wounds never seem to heal and the emptiness inside of me seems to grow every day. Some days I'm not even sure if it makes a difference whether I come out of bed anymore, no one cares anyway.. How do you do it, Draco? How do you hold on?'
Daisy felt the soft touch of a hand on her shoulder, before she was gently pulled into a warm, familiar body smelling of green apples and something spicy, something unquestionably his. He kept her there for a moment, not saying a word but nevertheless comforting her with his presence. Then, at last he spoke, taking her smaller hand in his. 'I guess I try to think of my Mom, who's all alone now that my father is in Azkaban and I'm here. I try to think of my father, who is everything that I hope never to become. But mostly, I try to think of myself, because this was never what I've wanted to be. I never had a choice, but now I do. And I wish to become someone I'll be proud of being.'
She had closed her eyes somewhere during his speech, drinking in the sweet quality of his voice. But there was something else, something she had not felt for a very long time. Hope. Without giving herself a chance to rethink, to double back, she squeezed his hand back. 'Teach me.'
And he would.
