Epilogue: Some scenes following the story. I may add more as my creativity allows. Enjoy! Also, the Italian in here is googled, so my apologies if it's off.

The tawny owl flapped off, having delivered a copy of Witch Weekly, with a scrap of parchment on top labelled "XOXO, Pansy." He scowled. Why would he want a copy of that awful magazine? He wondered what he had done recently to tick her off and came up uncharacteristically blank. He must be losing his touch.

Then he saw the headline.

War Hero Begs Brightest-Witch-of-the-Age to Come Back to Him!

Suddenly, he was very, very grateful to have the sneaky, socially connected witch in his corner.

Dread pooled in his stomach. That night, the night she agreed to go on a date with him had only been a week prior. Merlin and their relationship was still so awkward-sorting through what she remembered, what had been real, when had become real… the evenings reading up on old curses and debating the ethics of wartime, it had all seemed so perfect. But from those conversations, he knew that Hermione wrestled with her demons just as he did-her castings of the Imperious, Stan Shunspike, her Obliviation of her parents and herself. She'd even been harboring guilt over the new knowledge she'd set Professor Snape's robes on fire until he'd called his godfather in to talk with her about it and she realized he had found the whole scenario hilarious in retrospect. Well, Snape's version of hilarious, which meant he'd chuckled probably.

How freeing must it seem to have a real bona fide good guy love you? Draco knew from his own experience with Hermione that that was a heady feeling, to be cared for by someone who you saw as wonderful. Would she realize how much better a real good guy could make her feel?

He flipped the cover open in morbid curiosity. He realized he wasn't even sure which war hero had thrown himself at Hermione.

Weasel, if the picture on the first page was anything to go by. Weasel and Hermione at a cafe, deep in conversation. The recently promoted voice in his head told him to put the magazine down; the likelihood anything it said was true was minimal. In fact, he sometimes wondered if the wizarding world's writers got their kicks from printing mistruths once Hermione had explained journalistic ethics and the difference between tablids (or something) and news to him.

But Draco found himself reading anyways.

Miss Hermione Granger-War Heroine and lauded Brightest Witch of her Generation-was spotted in a trendy London coffee shop with Mr. Ronald Weasley-War Hero and Auror-in-Training. The two best friends have been spotted together with Mr. Potter numerous times since the end of the war (see past issues 896, 897, 900, 902, 904, 907-915, 917, 918, and special issue-Hunky War Heros & Hot Heroines for details). Close sources confirm that after her memory was erased by noted terrorist Bellatrix Black (see page 28 of this issue for a comparison of the two witches' fashion tastes in our new 'Light is the New Dark' section!) she is working hard to rekindle the lost friendships.

Draco thought he could feel his brain cells melting and yet his eyes kept absorbing the words, waiting for the proverbial boot to drop.

Miss Granger's Hogwarts roommate Lavender Brown, who has recently opened a popular Divination Shop in Diagon Alley-provided insight. "Hermione is a deep soul who makes profound connections and burns brightly for those she loves. She once stormed out of Divination Class when Professor Trelawney-the Seer who originally predicted the fall of You-Know-Who-warned about Harry's death. I am sure her spirit was calling out to theirs, despite the lack of memory."

When asked whether Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley showed sparks at Hogwarts, Miss Brown declined to comment.

But if our reporter heard correctly, Mr. Weasley has been fanning those sparks for a while. He asked the young war heroine (for an analysis of her outfit and where to find it, see page 45; for a Weasley-fit Workout regime guaranteed to make your man look as fit as our newest hero, see page 75) if she could see him as a romantic partner-

"First, where did you even get that?" Hermione's voice broke through his reading. He quashed the instinct to hide the magazine. She'd clearly already seen it and hiding it just made it seem like he was guilty or embarrassed. Which he wasn't.

"Second, I'll save your brain cells. I told him 'no, I see you as a brother,' which he took quite well and then we talked it over for a while in a drama-free way that that drivel completely misrepresents-"

Draco did not bother to hide the sigh of relief and surprise-she'd said no to Weasley!-before he realized that Hermione's hair was getting poofy in the way that suggested chandeliers and mirrors might start exploding from her ire.

"So you trapped Skeeter in a jar again?" he interrupted. It was amazing that the woman managed to almost single-handedly write for every publication in wizarding Britain.

"No, I've really tried to put a moratorium on evil or even borderline evil, remember," she huffed. "And I really did feel bad about that right up until I saw that article!"

"And you're mad because you can't retaliate?" he guessed.

"Oh, I have," she smirked, "it's just going slowly and I hate people prying into my private life especially as I'm trying to rebuild everything!"

She handed him a packet of parchment she enlarged from her pocket.

"Your mother kindly submitted a bill to the Wizengamot for me."

He read the title-"Proposed Bill 98,784,092: Modernization of Wizarding Libel & Slander and the Independence of the Wizarding Press"-and quirked an eyebrow at her.

"I've been working on it for a while with a number of experts. The lack of journalistic integrity and lies that came out of Prophet during the war helped fuel the conflict; the lack of a free press definitely contributed to how quickly the Dark Lord took over. After looking at what our American and European counterparts do, these laws should take a big step towards fixing some of those structural issues. It's just icing on the freaking cake it should knock that foul woman down a peg."

Draco nodded happily. Hermione had turned down Weasley and was winning her one-woman battle to fix wizarding Britain, no matter how much it kicked and screamed along the way (although at the moment, wizarding Britain seemed to be following her every step and clothing choice with awe). Life was good. Life was likely to continue past next week. And the most amazing witch wanted to be around him in that life.

She ambled towards the kitchen of his flat and set about making tea.

Which raised the question: how did she get in here? Not that he minded, but she hadn't knocked or come in through the Floo-he was pretty sure he'd have noticed. And, again, since when was she spending so much time with his mother?

*** TR ** TR ** TR ***

The answer to the latter question was, apparently, knitting. Hermione and his mother had taken to getting together with Hermione's mother and knitting. Something about a bonding activity and it was soothing and really, did you know about all the mathematical and arithmetical concepts embedded in knitting?

She'd said it while holding up a pair of socks that had apparently incorporated old Norse defensive runes and proudly declared she'd never stubbed her toes while wearing them.

Still, magically protected toes aside, it sounded fake. Narcissa Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and Hermione's Muggle mother knitting together sounded like a terrible ruse. He wasn't sure for whom it was terrible but he was pretty sure it was terrible. Especially because, apart from the socks, very few knitted items emerged from this supposed knitting group. He was fairly sure-by the amount of legislation that was proposed suspiciously soon after these meetings-that knitting was not the only or primary purpose of these gatherings.

But, try as he might-and he'd disturbed a healthy handful of these meetings by accident-they always did seem to be knitting whenever he appeared.

*** TR ** TR ** TR ***

At the beginning of December of the following year, she gifted him a sweater, with intricate colored patterns-snitches and dragons and roses and hot cocoa and a few basilisk fangs-on top of an interesting textured weave. The morning he'd received the sweater-she'd gifted it him at lunch-sweaters were decidedly not part of the Malfoy wardrobe. That afternoon, sweaters were his favorite clothing item. He vowed to wear his sweater every day he could get away with it and bought several sets of designer Muggle jeans to go with it. Well, and a pair of leather pants that he thought had looked rather debonair but Hermione had vetoed on the grounds that he "wasn't in an 80s hair-metal band." Spoilsport.

But she'd kissed him afterwards and told him his butt looked good in jeans, so he wasn't really complaining.

His opportunities to wear his glorious sweater, admittedly, were rather few since he'd started as a trainee at the International Cooperation office in the Ministry and dress codes were rather formal. In a past life, he'd have argued that as a Malfoy, he set the fashions and the department should let him wear whatever he wanted. In this life, Draco wanted to do better and be better and wore his formal dress robes so as not to offend any visiting dignitaries.

So, the sweater was his go-to item for casual wear. The sweater was wonderful, made more so because he was forbidden from wearing it so often. Soft, warm, made by hand, for him specially, by the witch that he loved. He sometimes imagined he could feel her phantom hands one parts of the sweater as if she were knitting it around him. She'd looked at him strangely when he asked her if she'd add a charm to that effect. Apparently they were imaginary phantom hands. Regardless, there could be no superior item of clothing.

And thus, on December 20th, as he headed to the pub to meet up with Hermione and their friends, he proudly wore his favorite sweater.

"Seriously man, I didn't realize the Malfoy fortunes had fallen so low that you can only afford one sweater," Zabini chuckled as he clapped Draco on the shoulder and air-kissed Hermione's cheeks.

"Hermione knit it. Do you have any idea how valuable her time is? This thing probably costs more money than all of us have combined! You know how slowly she knits," Weasel piped in as Draco and Hermione slid onto the bench next to him.

"She's improved a lot since SPEW," Potter added.

"Sitting right here, with functional ears," Hermione said sweetly.

Draco grinned at her. He'd originally been nervous how he, well, how he and Hermione would settle in with her friends, but after several months of awkward getting-to-know you (and several more awkward months of Weasel's rebound girlfriends) and far too much heart to heart conversation with the Gryffindors, he enjoyed the warm, friendly banter they shared.

"Hermione, caro mio, you have strengths and weaknesses, one strength is being able to identify your weaknesses, e la moda non è la tua forza," Zabini calmly stated.

"Va' in malora," she quipped back, turning in her seat to face the handsome Italian.

Draco sighed, as she and Zabini started their usual-and if his own limited mastery of the language was correct, rather insulting-Italian practice. Both of them embraced the large hand gestures of the language and frequently burst into laughter, which was distracting; more importantly, it left the rest of the non-Italian speaking plebeians among them (all of them) out. Then again, it made Hermione happy and she had had enough unhappiness that still dogged her to last a lifetime.

"Ugh, I hate it when they do this," Weaslette groaned. "I'll grab us more beer. Takers?"

Longbottom, Pansy, Potter, and the twins put in their orders to the youngest Weasley.

The rest of them had descended into a fascinating discussion of Quidditch that had-to the pub owner's displeasure-resulted in most of the flatware and napkins and pepper shakers' being transfigured into tiny players and balls so they could illustrate their discussion. Weaselette had been taking classes from Jane Pandroma-arguably the world's best Quidditch tactician-as part of her training on the Harpies, and the rest of them essentially threw scenarios and questions at the professional in their midst.

A burst of cold heralded Luna Lovegood's arrival but the chill soon passed and she nestled herself among the crowd, alternately chiming into the Italian conversation (her additions always got a hearty laugh from all three of them) and the Quidditch conversation (her additions rarely made much sense but once caused Ginny to gasp and pull out a notebook and scribble furiously).

Suddenly, Luna turned to face Draco.

"Are those Ogham characters in the knit of your sweater? It's a very interesting fashion choice," she mused in a tone that suggested that it was a choice she necessarily approved of. Given that she was currently wearing a vintage 1920s velvet flapper gown, thick blue stockings with cats on them, a shawl woven with thick, glossy black feathers and had (what Draco assumed were real) butterfly wings dangling from her ears he wasn't sure she was one to judge.

He was about to defend his sweater when he noticed that Hermione had gone still and was clearly listening, rather than loudly describing who-knows-what with Blaise.

Oh Merlin! Had Hermione really woven a code into his sweater? And he hadn't even noticed for weeks? How much of a dunderhead did she think he was now?

"Malfoy, if you vomit on me, it will be the last thing you do," Longbottom warned jokingly. Apparently his panic had shown. Lovely. He really was losing his touch.

"Luna, thank you. Everyone, I have realized that Hermione has likely woven some secret message into my sweater and I find myself needing to be elsewhere immediately," Draco said with as much decorum as he could muster. He stood up and bowed dramatically to laughs from the crowd.

Hermione kissed him warmly, to the catcalls of their friends, and said she'd see him tomorrow.

Her cackle of laughter as he left the pub fueled his determination to crack the message.

*** TR ** TR ** TR ***

At 6am he finally cracked it. Well, he and Bill Weasley who had kindly agreed to come help him after he'd nearly peed himself after laughing so hard upon hearing about Draco's plight. It had been good to hear Bill laugh, even at his expense. The loss of Charlie had hit him harder than anyone except Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.

Together, they'd determined that she'd used ancient Irish characters to encode English words within a cipher that changed every line, whose key words were given by the image atop that line.

Draco, will you marry me? Hugs, Hermione.

Bill had ruffled his hair, said congrats, and yawned before stepping back through the Floo. Draco could only hope that a Howler from Bill's wife was not in his future from having absconded with her husband most of Friday night.

He'd worry about that later.

Right now, he had bigger things to worry about. Like how to respond to the witch of his dreams proposing via secret sweater messages.