Epilogue
The engagement party for Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy was a quiet affair on a balmy July afternoon in Essex. It had taken a quite astounding amount of negotiation to settle on a venue proper enough for one half of the two families and large enough for the other, which in the end had resulted in quite a few rows between various assortments of those individuals involved and finally wound up with a general consensus to rent out a field generally reserved for erecting ad hoc quidditch pitches for local pick-up games and producing a carnival tent, bar, dance floor, and three-course meal from their own wands and handiwork.
The food itself was an adventure in diplomacy. The Malfoys hardly ever cooked for themselves, but openly scoffed as the opening offer for the meal contents was extended. And that was just between the grandparents. In the end, through no small amount of coercing from Scorpius and a great deal of support from Rhysta, they managed to convince Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy that they could indeed stomach the type of cuisine served up in the countryside for at least one meal. That had brought them to the table, at least.
"And they can bloody well starve if they find it unappetizing," Scorpius muttered to Albus shortly after that treaty had been painstakingly negotiated.
The grand surprise of the summer - for Albus, at least - was how well the parents were getting on with the situation. It was difficult to miss the fact that his uncle was devastated; some outcomes were inevitable, after all. But Aunt Hermione, ever the diplomat, made quick work of getting on terms with Scorpius and his mother, and occasionally even Draco Malfoy himself. In turn, and to Rhysta's admitted glee, Scorpius' father quite clearly took a liking to Rose within short order, to the event that when they arrived to collect their children from the Hogwarts Express for the very last time, he brought with him a gift of several legal books from one of his business trips to eastern Europe that Rose had been pestering him about.
"You know," she told them gleefully as she leafed through them hungrily, "just ambitious people things."
Uncle Ron, shortly after he was suspiciously dragged from the room during a family get-together by his wife, eventually came around, as well, although his tolerance of his future son-in-law was clearly that. But all in all, the fact that the two families grew able to occupy the same room as each other quite amicably and basically right away was exactly the relieved serendipity that a healing world required.
The particular afternoon of the engagement party was hot but splendid. A wide array of family and friends turned out, a thoroughly red-and-gold-soaked affair that one may have suspected was targeted. It was just as well that Scorpius' parents had eventually struck up a few loose acquaintance relationships with coworkers at the ministry, so that with a good third of the Ministry in attendance, they at least had someone to socialize with. The Malfoy grandparents, on the other hand, likely wouldn't make it to cake. But Albus doubted anyone particularly minded that fact.
He and Rhysta sat at the head table between Dominique and Evan with the happy couple themselves. Rose and Scorpius were hardly ever there - every two minutes, a new guest would waltz up, re-introduce themselves, and drag them away into conversation which had both of them immediately searching for escape routes - but that was just as well. The festivities were loud, the mood was light, and there were ample distractions to allow Rhysta to hold Albus' hand under the table.
Not that they needed to hide. They'd had to come out with it, eventually. Albus' parents had already observed all the details required themselves, and, to Rhysta's admitted surprise, her parents absorbed the shock with much less violence than they'd directed towards her brother's relationship. Maybe it was because they already knew Albus, or maybe they'd just resigned themselves to their fate by that stage. That hadn't been to say it had been a rockless passage, but at least Albus didn't feel that his significant other's father would one day soon murder him in his sleep. He doubted that Scorpius had the same luxury.
That also wasn't to say that they'd been given free reign over each other. Rhysta's curfews had curiously tightened in the leadup to her final year of Hogwarts schooling - a school year which in effect was halved, because she'd already secured an internship with a wizarding law firm that would afford her the luxury of half of each week back in London. But one fortunate byproduct of the amount of time that the betrothed and their parents had to spend tiptoeing around one another and hastily drawing up peace accords between various branches of the family tree was that there weren't always enough eyes around to catch Rhysta sneaking away at every opportunity.
Where they went didn't matter. They had options. Albus' youth had been filled with travels to all corners of the country, and he knew a number of quiet hideaways where they could relax. The Malfoys had a summer cottage in Scotland that no one cared to check on most of the time. And sometimes they picked random destinations for apparation. Sometimes the city, sometimes the country, an occasional stroll through Godric's Hollow or southern dip into the channel on blistering days. Albus, quite nervously, if he was willing to admit, kept waiting for the joy of the time he spent with her to wear off and leave him bored. Or leave her bored. At least for his part, it never did. Some of the thrill, yes, but never the peace, or the happiness.
It all made Albus quite reluctant to change anything about his life, which was exactly the serious problem he was faced with during his summer days when Rhysta was busy: that he wasn't, for one thing, and he didn't know how to be. And he was both dissatisfied and completely lost in that state, and once the world's summer of good will in the wake of what could have been a much more deadly wizarding war wore off, he would have to face the future. And reality. And then things would most certainly change. Everything would change. Everything and everyone.
While he laughed at Dominique's antics and snuck quips into Rhysta's ear at times strategically designed to make her spit out her drink, those thoughts were in the back of his mind on a day like this. Watching Scorpius and Rose standing beside the table - hopelessly, headlessly, helplessly in love with each other but tangled in the niceties required by society - Albus found himself thinking of the world and his place in it. Someday, it would be his destiny to stand in their place, and smile at responsibility, and wish he was somewhere quieter with Rhysta. Someday, he would wish that they could just run away and stay away from it forever.
She would never go for it, of course. That played into his worries.
"We're not having children," Scorpius snarled at Rose as they collapsed back into their seats. He waved a hand at the endless masses. "I refuse to contribute more people to this."
"I'm thinking about calling it all off," Rose agreed, burying herself in the fig pudding.
Scorpius loosened at his necktie, draping his arm over the back of her chair. "It's like Weasleys come out in threes at each birth, and propagate."
"Better than only children," Rose barked.
Scorpius shoved a finger at Rhysta, who dropped her fork and retreated into Albus' side with raised arms. "Oh, no, do not make me a part of this."
Her brother scowled, peering past the cover of Rose's shoulder for their next assailants. "Whose idea was this, anyway?"
"Getting married?" Rose rolled her eyes. "That would be yours."
"Having an engagement party. Between the bridal shower, the rehearsal, the wedding, the honeymoon, and what I'm sure will be a half million thank you cards, I'd just as soon run over to London and have it out at the Ministry office, all done. It'll certainly save us some money."
Rose took a moment to swallow her food. "Aren't your parents paying?"
"Yeah, but imagine how much they're going to have to fork out for their wedding." Rhysta raised an eyebrow at her brother's gesture, but, noticeably, didn't tense in the slightest at Albus' side. Noticing her expression, Scorpius waved it off far too connivingly. "Whenever that happens, of course."
Albus sighed. "I'll pay for the Ministry ceremony, if you're serious about getting it over with."
"With what job?" Rhysta demanded. She answered his glare with an innocent spoonful of pudding.
"Give him a break," Scorpius rebuffed. "He's got a boatland of referrals coming good, Hastings has brought the lot down on him. And his uncle talked him up, too. Four interviews this week, isn't that right?"
Albus shifted uncomfortably, in anticipation of the pointed glare that Rhysta delivered him. "I wasn't aware of that."
"I was just working out a good time to tell you. Not like it's a bad thing, right?"
"No, it's a good thing, that's great." Anticipatory pause. "Was there any reason you hadn't told me yet? A simple 'by-the-way' over breakfast would've worked."
Albus licked his lips. "I was just waiting to see what the healers had to say, this last appointment. See if anything had changed."
That did the job. Her face softened, her hand finding his. She didn't follow up with the obvious questions, because his reaction made the answers equally as obvious. The rest of the table had read the implications, as well, because the mood was absolutely crippled, which was precisely why he had been trying to keep that subject off of the table, knowing exactly how awkwardly empathetic his friends would try to be.
He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'd help talk the family down if you just wanted to elope and be done with it."
"Thanks, mate," Scorpius muttered, "but I think you'd pose an obstacle for about a second before they got through you. And that's just my family." He glared at Rose, who ignored him, and then cursed under his breath. "Merlin, a family of… must be six… just walked in. Just how many relatives do you have?"
"Smile and wave," Evan suggested helpfully. "It'll be over soon."
"This is nothing," Dominique said. "The wedding will be twice as bad."
Scorpius groaned, but went willingly when Rose tugged him back to his feet and launched into the next social with all the poise of a future Minister of Magic. Albus could see the pain stretching across his best mate's face from his seat. He should have been sympathetic, but instead he could only hide a grin behind his palm.
"He's so gone," Rhysta remarked with a little grin of his own.
"He has to be," Dominique commented, directing her fork at the assemblage. "Look at this crowd. This is a nightmare. I'm definitely taking you up on that elopement fee offer, Albus."
"Who said I was offering it to you?" Albus snapped. "That's a shrewd man right there selling his soul for the good of love. Knowing you, you'd just grab some bloke off the street and march him into the Ministry if you thought it'd fetch you a sickle."
Dominique scoffed. "Rude. I've changed, you know. The real world spread for the taking before me has changed my outlook on life."
"But not on men, I'd reckon," Albus replied.
"Hit him, Rhysta."
"Maybe later," Rhysta answered, failing to hide her own grin.
Dominique groaned. "No, you have to be on my side. You're no good, we all know it, and I love that. Don't be the sweet darling our grandma thinks you are, that's boring."
"But sustainable," Evan noted.
Dominique's upper lip curled. "Not you, too." Evan shrugged, smiling.
"When do you ship out?" Albus asked him.
"Tuesday," Evan answered. "Briefly up to Norway, then into Russia. Have to take advantage of mating season, when the scales are shed. There'll be skirmishes, too, between the males, which is where you get the heart-strings. Those fights are a thrill to watch, too."
"Dragon herding," Dominique muttered, scoffing again. "Ridiculous. As if there weren't perfectly good, dangerous jobs to do around England, you've found a way to waltz off to Europe to have your head burned off. You've got seven N.E.W.T.s, you could've turned around and marched into advanced potions research, but no, you decide to go and get a job dragon herding."
Evan glanced down at his plate, smiling. "Thrilling, though."
"Certainly could've gone for something less dangerous," Albus observed, "unless the thrill is worth it."
His friend shrugged. "Lucrative."
"What for?" Albus nodded at the blissfully happy couple seeking escape routes from their conversation. "You looking to marry into the family, too, or something?"
Evan glanced down at his plate, then back up at Albus, licking his lips once. "Unclear."
Next to Albus, Dominique turned beet red and wiped multiple spoonfuls off of her plate in quick succession. Albus blinked, managing only just not to laugh in pleasant surprise, leaning back into a quiet, comfortable moment as the table's other two occupants began a dance of trying not to look at one another too conspicuously to their onlookers.
Another quiet peace fell over their small, partially absent company, the music and livelihood of the rest of the party drowning out their silence. Rhysta leaned into his side and hummed along to the song, something slow and high-pitched that Albus didn't recognize. Her hair, braided and laid over one shoulder of a colorful summer dress, tickled his nose as he made a number of glances over her shoulder to offer himself an excuse to breathe in the scent of her shampoo.
These were his favorite moments. Not the blood-boiling depths of passion - although he'd never decline that option were it on offer - or the animated discussions they got into these days over rune patterns or politics or areas of the countryside in which they could see themselves dwelling. No, it was these moments when one of his hands could trail gently across the smooth skin where her shoulder joined to her back without needing to hide in from the world, feeling her body pressed warmly into his and being able to watch her out of the corner of his eye without her noticing. These were his favorite moments, when the absence of words allowed him to believe that time was standing still and that the future would wait forever to allow him this moment for as long as possible; the kinds of moments that explained a little bit more how stupidly happy were the smiles his mother reserved for his father, how glumly patient his grandfather was with his grandmother, and how it was possible that Scorpius could hover one second from intentionally splinching himself for entire hours greeting a legion of people that he didn't know nor would ever care about.
The song changed, and Dominique muttered something about needing another drink to the silent table before ambling off, smoothing her dress nervously as she went. Evan stared after her for a moment and then sighed. "Fuck," he muttered, and then drained his drink - a drink which, Albus noted, didn't have any alcohol - before briskly pursuing her.
Rhysta chuckled. "It's a wonder there's anyone not dating a Potter or Weasley. There's certainly enough of you."
"In all shapes and sizes," Albus agreed. "And sometimes the wives just transfigure the husbands into shape if the size on display doesn't suit them."
He lasted three seconds under her glare until his straight face cracked. She pinched him in the side and then sighed at the room. "It's a little overwhelming."
"The family?"
She shook her head. "The occasion." Her voice came across as careful. She was treading on what she perceived to be thin ice. "Scorpius is only a year older than me, after all. We grew up one year after the other. They're your age. And now he's off to this stage in his life and it's wonderful… It's also a little scary to see it coming in so close, so fast."
Albus didn't read too much between the lines. She never shied away from these conversations, even provoked them in order to air out the worries as soon as they came up. "You're allowed to be different than your brother, you know. Hell, you're allowed to be different from everybody. You're Rhystara Malfoy, for Merlin's sake. You were born to be different from everybody else. You don't need to do things at the same pace as everyone else." He measured a pause, and then added, "You don't ever need to do things that everybody else does, if you don't want to. You have to do what is best for you."
He had turned his chin to the other side, in part to invite her glance. It worked; he felt her chin turn towards him, and looked back to find their eyes locked from only a few inches apart. "I'm not… saying that's not what I want, Albus. I'm not saying I don't want… that… this..." She indicated the room. "...with you."
"I know."
"I'm just-"
"I know," he repeated softly, brushing his lips against the back of her head. She relaxed into him again.
He was learning slowly that the fewer words he used to sweep away her worries, the easier it was for her to believe him. An expert on the written and spoken words and a healthy consumer of both, the more she had to analyze usually meant she could pick out any number of tangents and loopholes to exacerbate the situation, if he left too much for her to dissect. Short, simple, confident, and resolute was the best way to convince her that she could trust him telling her it was all right.
And, likewise, he could tell that she had gotten better at batting aside his painfully empty concerns. And forcing them into the open so that he had to face them in front of her, where she could crush them, rather than letting them fester in the back of his head until he'd talk himself into making stupid decisions.
"They're curse-breaking interviews?"
He felt himself tense, and worked hard to loosen up before she noticed. "Yeah."
"Gringotts?"
He nodded. "Along with a Moroccan outfit. Also a German archaeology firm, Westfurth. And someone Professor Hastings knows from Australia is in town. That's the one he set up. My uncle got me the Moroccan one."
"Not the Gringotts one."
"No, I got that one myself." He poked her in the side. "I do have some non-nepotistic merit, you know."
"Those are good, those are good positions. You'll get a couple of those, for sure."
"We'll see," he answered, glancing away again.
He'd failed to brush it aside well enough, he could feel that. It was just a matter of how long the pause would last. The shorter, the better. This one lasted quite a bit of time, and had him beginning to fidget before she finally said, "You're gonna have to get over this, eventually, because I'm not going to change my mind."
He sighed. "I'm not making up the things I'm saying, I don't have some ulterior motive I'm using this to cover for, I just seriously don't want to be an anchor on you. I don't want to be the reason you can't do what you want to do."
"Like I've asked before, Albus, what makes you think I can't do what I want to do?"
He had never come up with an answer to that question which she respected. All of his voiced concerns about her potential to do anything that she wanted, go anywhere she wanted, be anything she wanted, had always fallen on deaf ears and a quickdrawn wand, if he really pestered her. It wasn't just about the fact that outside of Hogwarts he really didn't measure up to her: she was right about the interviews, he knew that he could probably rack up multiple job offers from the four without breaking a sweat. It wasn't about the destination, or any fear about his place in it, either: he would happily follow her to any corner of the world, if she asked if of him, and do whatever work he had to when he got there.
It was mostly that he still didn't fully trust himself. His back. His head. It didn't matter that the healers had now examined his head a thousand times since the night in the Ministry, that they determined that the incident and the effect of getting hit with a powerful curse had nonetheless left him with no lasting effects. It didn't matter that the headaches were almost completely gone, that the nightmares had never returned, that most nights he slept fitfully and peacefully for the first time in what felt like years.
He still didn't trust it. His back still seized up. That was never going away. For all his hope that his accident on the quidditch pitch had actually been orchestrated by an invisible menace, his failure to recover completely once that menace was vanquished suggested that it had only been the tragedy that everyone else called it.
And just because of that, for all the quiet in his head and the peace of his thoughts, he wondered if one day his back would seize and he would break in half. Or a vengeful migraine would burst a blood vessel in his brain or sever his spine and he would lose his faculties completely.
He still feared that he was nothing but a burden. Which was the last thing that he wanted to give her.
She, of course, had none of that argument, anytime he voiced it. This time was no different, but now that it was brought up, he decided that he might as well finish the thought. "I just don't want you to regret… I don't want to regret being with you because I'm forced to watch you not do something you want to do because of me."
She patted his hand. "You're not going to."
He laid an open palm on the tabletop. "That's the thing, Rhys, how can-"
"Because I'm smart," she barked, and stood up. "I'm going to go see if my parents need rescuing. I haven't seen them in a couple of minutes, I'm worried Rose's dad snuck them out back to murder them." She kissed him on the cheek and wandered off into the mix, leaving him staring after her, his mouth still hanging open, cut off midword.
That was also something she had learned, an infuriating tactic that only worked when she knew he was secretly convinced that she was right: just walking off in the middle of an argument, the both of them knowing exactly which of them had won the fight.
Albus closed his mouth and settled for his own thoughts, abandoned at the table by all parties immersed in distractionary tactics, belated pursuits, and torture. They were the correct ones, after all. It was a thoroughly satisfactory afternoon bleeding into evening, and the occasion itself, much less the pleasantness it had happened upon, demanded much better than glum worries. Fearing the future in some massive blob, some unseeable entity, didn't suit the evening, or even the year. He should have been worried about job interviews and remembering birthdays, not dreading things that hadn't yet come to pass.
That was the moral he had walked away with from all that had chased them for the past year, culminating in one fateful night in the Ministry: pining, avoiding, and dreading were excuses for lost time. It was best just to live.
A few songs came and passed while he settled into a rough comfort, a wall set up to hold back the brunt of the thoughts that didn't deserve daylight today, before his father wandered over from somewhere the other side of the party and eased into the empty seat next to him.
"Rhysta run off somewhere?" Harry Potter greeted, sipping something dark and strong-scented from a low glass.
"To save her parents from Uncle Ron," Albus answered, smirking. "Allegedly."
His father sighed in obvious gratitude. "I thought we'd all settled down with our old animosities, but boy, let me tell you, they flew out the pixie cage plenty fast once his little girl decided to run off with a Malfoy. Apparently, that's an Unforgiveable Curse in the Weasley Family."
"Mum doesn't seem to share that view."
"She still feels that she has a little bit of time to screw it up for you." Albus raised an eyebrow and his father tilted his glass in acknowledgment. "I'm just kidding." Albus nodded and eyed the festivities again. He could feel his father's gaze lingering on him. "You have your appointment yesterday?"
"Yeah." He didn't elaborate, and Harry Potter didn't ask further. The silence was the answer required for any questions that would follow. They both knew it. "I'm going to stop going."
"For checkups?"
"Nothing's going to change," Albus said. "They said last time that the scarring might have been brought on by the possession, in part, and the absence might allow the tissue to get reabsorbed, but that wasn't the case. You remember the initial diagnosis, it was a freak injury even to magical healing. They don't know what they're looking at. I've got my mind back and my sleep back, and nothing else is changing, so nothing's going to change. One bad whack to the wrong part of my brain and that could be it. So that's it and done with."
His father set his glass down. "I'm sorry, Al."
"It's not that big a deal," he said, ignoring the crushing, sinking feeling that had softly been reduced to a dull ache by months and months. In some small part, it wasn't a lie. There was something to be said of finally coming to grips with it after that large number of months, that any dreams that he could pick up a quaffle again were truly washed away by life. Being able to let go of what was impossible at least turned him towards the rest of his life, which was suddenly full in ways he'd never thought he could substituted for quidditch. It wasn't enough to make it painless; but it did a great job of filling in the hole, and filling up a whole lot of other gaps in his life, instead.
"You all right?"
"Yeah."
"There's something else."
Albus glared. His mother's stories made his father seem like a hapless moron when it came to empathy, but a fair number of actions in the past year seemed to throw that description into doubt. "Nah."
"Want to talk about it?"
"No. It's stupid."
Harry Potter waited.
Albus sighed eventually, and ran one hand through his hair. I should be worried about Gringotts, not this… "I don't have nightmares anymore. But I have nightmares about nightmares. Not when I'm sleeping. I keep seeing my hand holding this dagger, and it going up without my control. It flashes behind my eyes. Not like it's actually happening, just the memory that it happened. It's not like I think I'm a danger anymore, it just… it haunts me. Not being able to control myself for that time, it was horrible. And it haunts me."
His father watched him carefully. "Something tells me that's not the end of it."
Albus sighed and glanced away. "I keep asking myself. What if it's not really gone?" He left the door open for his father to insist that wasn't the case, but Harry Potter held silent, watching him, irking him until he had to continue for himself. "I know that every healer that's examined me says there's no additional aftereffects. The charms even show a much better outlook than right after the accident, now that the headaches and everything. I know all that. I know they insist that I've made a great recovery, and that there's no chance I'm still being affected." He swallowed. "But I can't help it. I remember what it felt like to hold that dagger. What if it could happen again? What if I'm putting people I love in danger again?"
To his surprise, Harry Potter softly grinned and indicated the crowd. "So that's why Rhysta looked irritated as she walked off a while back."
Albus scowled. "I'm serious."
"I know."
"But you're not. Neither is she. And she was there, one of the times that I wasn't in control of myself."
He was grateful his father didn't press him for details of that time. Instead, the man leaned against the table with his forearms, concentrating on the tablecloth. "There was a time, as you know - a long time - when Voldemort was in my head, and I couldn't do much about it. I didn't have occlumens skills yet, and he was terrorizing the world, besides. And during that time and for a while after that time, I was quite afraid that at any moment, really, I would just turn into him. And everyone around me would be in danger."
"That's different, though," Albus insisted. "Voldemort was dead, he died."
"Was he?" his father pressed, his eyes gleaming. "Did he?"
"Of course he did. It's the most recognized moment in wizarding history, Dad, only a thousand people have given their written account about what they saw. They had the body. Done."
"Okay," Harry Potter nodded, "but was he really dead? He escaped it once before. And who knows the things about magic that he knew, that he had discovered that the rest of the world still doesn't know about? What if he survived somehow? What if he's still out there?"
"He would've done something by now, surely. He only waited a decade the first time."
"Maybe," his father answered. "But how can we be sure?"
Albus could've come up with answers, but he could see where this was going. "So we can't be, so what?"
"So we'll never know. We'll never really fully understand why he was in my head, or if any part of him is still there. Maybe that part of him was both of us." His father shrugged innocently. "We'll never know. And that's what I was staring at, needing to learn to live with it, after everything was over. I'm not sure it's too different with what you're looking at right now. You survived something completely terrible. But you survived, and the thing that was hurting you didn't. And do we know it's fully gone? No. But if the mandrake isn't squealing, is it worth worrying about how well it's potted, or are you going to run off and buy bread and eggs, anyway?"
"That is a really weird analogy."
Harry Potter smirked. "You get my point."
Albus did. He didn't know if he agreed too much with it - he could think of a handful of reasons to worry about the mandrake even if it wasn't squealing - but it had its merits. Life went on, he was aware of that, and he wasn't looking to shove everything around him out of his life. Quite the contrary, in fact, he didn't want to put on a show and suggest that he was entirely fearless as to what had happened and what might yet come, and that meant being honest with those around him. But it also meant that the people he was closest to were in the most danger…
"So back to this and Rhysta," his father prompted, on cue.
Albus leveled another scowl at the man. "It goes beyond just this, but yeah, that's there."
"What else?"
"I don't know. Coming back out of that appointment. It's not getting worse, but it's stopping getting better, too. I've still got knots back there that are never going to come out. I've still got a seizure waiting to happen, every now and again. Take all of that and put it on her, and then look back again and say that there's that uncertainty you're talking about, always lurking around in the back of my mind. Is it fair to her, that she has to live with me being like this all the time? And add in that she's Scorpius' sister, and we're all three of us still working to get used to that, and hoping that that new dynamic doesn't blow anything up in our first summer of real life… This just seems like an awful lot that she's going to have to deal with, with me. I can't help it, like the other worries, I just wonder sometimes if it would be easier, or safer, for her if she wasn't with me."
Harry Potter listened silently, and waited until Albus had been finished for awhile before he made his reply. "You know, there was a time in my life when I was in love with my best mate's sister, too."
Albus rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah, and how'd that work out?"
"So far, so good. There was also a time in my life when I broke up with her because I thought she'd be safer that way."
Albus shot his father a glance. "Really? You've never told us that. Her, neither."
"Surprising, that," Harry Potter agreed. "It's the kind of thing she would bring out in arguments to lord over me. Merlin knows she did used it to guilt me into taking out the trash plenty in the early days."
"I tried that, anyway." Albus shook his head. "Didn't work. She wouldn't let me."
"Wouldn't let you break up with her?"
"Yeah."
His father nodded, impressed. "I'll have to use that one on your mother. Seems she didn't like me enough to say no. Well, maybe I can't be too hard on her. There was a war on, after all."
"What do you call this thing that just happened here?"
"My point being," the auror course-corrected, "if you want to look at it from a position of someone who thought they were doing the right thing by trying to push someone very important to them away, it ended up having the opposite effect in the end. And, yes, you can say that the war ended and so everything was fine, and all that, but with people like your mother… and with Rhysta, I would bet… there's a bit of a connection when you two decide you're happy with it. Not unlike its own priori incantatem, with feelings instead of wands. You can shove and slap and hit and all that, but if it's the feelings themselves that decide they don't want to let go, then trying to budge them is something of a futile exercise."
"So you're saying that I can't get rid of her if I tried?" Albus summarized, not unhappily.
His father shrugged. "Sounds like you already tried, and it didn't work out too well." He picked up his glass again and sipped from it, swirling the contents with a grimace. "Not that you should try harder. That could probably send the wrong signals. But, yeah, my point is that I think you shouldn't worry too much about the wrong things when you clearly want to be together despite them."
"And I just have to live with the fact that she could be in danger because of me?"
Harry Potter took a deep breath as he thought about it. "She's an adult, Al, or just about. She knows what she's doing, too. Trust her for being with you. Trust yourself enough to trust her."
Albus absorbed that advice and let his thoughts drift for a few moments. He remembered words from what felt partially like a different life sandwiched between stressful episodes, words he hadn't repeated to anyone since reemerging from death. He didn't know exactly what made them come to his mind now. He didn't know what gave him the sudden urge to let it spill out of him, like a confession, but he remembered what had been said in that fugue world about his father. So he thought, if anyone could relate to the confusion he was still dealing with, about everything, maybe that person was Harry Potter.
He faced his father. His father, clearly noticing the context switch, sobered and faced him back. "That night. Before I… came back…" He didn't know what he was saying, how he could explain it. "I was somewhere else."
Harry Potter didn't react adversely - not yet - but actually leaned forward in intrigue. "Somewhere else? Where?"
Albus licked his lips. "I don't know. Somewhere in-between." He paused for his father to demand what that meant. Contrarily, the elder Potter leaned back in his seat, his face going slightly blank. "I know how that sounds. I guess maybe it was just a dream."
"Why do you think so?" Harry Potter murmured, running his fingers over his chin thoughtfully.
"There was someone there. Someone I've never met before."
To his somewhat surprise, a massive grin broke across his father's face, utterly gleeful. "Oh?"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
His father tried and failed to collect himself, waving off the question. "Go on."
Albus narrowed his eyes in suspicion but acquiesced. "We had a conversation. It felt very real." He tried to remember the exact words. "It was so strange, such a strange place. I thought I was dead. But he told me that I wasn't, and I always had to go back. He told me that it was different for you, that you were in a similar situation, but you had a choice. Of whether to go back or not."
He gave his father ample time to respond, but having fallen silent and watchful, the Head Auror said nothing and let him continue.
"I didn't get a choice. But I felt like I didn't deserve one. I felt like it was cruel to get to live when so many other people die cruelly. The answer to that was that we don't choose whether we live or die, but we choose how to love. Which makes sense, I guess, because you came back to be with Mum, to have friends, to have family. But I don't understand why that choice was already made." He hesitated long and hard, and then faced up to the last confession. "If I had the choice, I wonder what I would have chosen. What if I chose to go on? That right there… by itself… means I don't deserve any of it. Friends, family. Rhysta."
Harry Potter glanced down at his lap and smiled. "Maybe you did choose. Maybe that was the choice that had already been made for you. Maybe you didn't have a choice because you'd already made the choice long before that."
"That sounds great, righteous, sure, but what if it's wrong?"
"Then you've got this whole life to spend worrying that you don't deserve it," his father answered. "But it sounds like you were told in no uncertain terms that you do deserve it. And you seem to have a very happy young woman who agrees with that." Albus glanced away, almost embarrassed, and Harry Potter chuckled. "Albus, let me give you some advice that I didn't realize until it couldn't do me much good anymore. Listen to the man in the half-moon spectacles. It'll save you a lot of time, and worry."
HIs father clapped him on the shoulder, picked up the glass, and stood up. Albus shook his head. It was still somewhat strange that his father had never questioned the veracity of his claims. As if to save face, he lobbed up, "It was probably just a dream."
His father's grin widened. "What was he like?"
"Batshit crazy."
Harry Potter nodded. "Seems real enough." He fished in his pocket and produced a coat check ticket frantically attempting to rewrite its number, and slid it across the table. "Here. Check me out, will you, when you take Rhysta home."
Albus took the ticket uncertainly. "Thinking I'm going to be cold?"
His father shook the glass in his hand. "I've been drinking. Flying could be a hazard…"
A while later, Rhysta reemerged from the crowd looking slightly flustered but quite grateful to see him. She sank down into the chair next to him, threading her fingers through his and collapsing against his shoulder.
"Were they actually being murdered?" he asked.
"No, but I got sucked into an argument about the ministry budget," she drawled, grabbing what was left of her earlier cherry juice and killing it. "Investment in charms research really isn't enough of a controversy to require the expert opinion of a seventh-year, is it?"
"You're not just any seventh-year. You're hardly even a seventh-year."
She hummed. "Don't remind me. It's going to be rough enough having already passed half the N.E.W.T.s and having to prepare for the extra-curriculars, but between traveling to London and back every week and you not being there with me…" She trailed off, in a fashion not embarrassed but perhaps having offered a little more anxiety in her voice than she had intended.
He squeezed her hand in quiet reassurance, earning a small smile back. "I doubt there's anything you can't do. I can help you study when you're in town, if you like."
"Yeah, because we got so much studying done those last few weeks," she giggled, nodding at the empty seats around the table. "Where are they?"
Albus pointed to the dance floor, where Rose was snuggled into Scorpius' arms. Rhysta's brother looked exhausted but content, the two of them swaying carelessly to the music in the background. "Been out there for an hour. Escaping. Having a moment to themselves. That's what this whole party is for, after all."
"Weddings aren't for the people getting married," Rhysta replied. "They're for everyone else."
Albus took a long moment to measure the words before he said them out loud. "Eloping's good."
Rhysta glanced at him suspiciously. He grinned innocently. She poked him and then returned her eyes to her brother and his cousin. "Cozy and adorable, them. I swear I heard her barking at him just as I was running off, but now here look at them."
"That's how they are. Constantly hot and cold."
"Exhausting," she complained.
His smile became whimsical. "It works for them. They're that kind of people. Quiet just wouldn't do for them. They need to constantly be at their throats to know that they're perfect for one another."
"Like us?" she asked him, a little quietly.
He shook his head. "Nah, we don't argue too much. Not about important things, anyway."
"We did for a long time."
"Things changed."
"Oh, yeah? Like what?"
"Why did we even fight in the first place?"
She clearly thought about it. Her wrinkled nose suggested she had as poor of an answer as he. "I don't know, you were a Gryffindor, and a boy, and my brother's friend. When I was eleven, those were three great reasons to hate you."
"Seems like those first two reasons are a great way to adore me, now," he teased.
She sighed and eased comfortably into his side, peering around the party. "Do you think they're enjoying any part of it?"
"Rose and Scorp?"
She nodded.
He considered it. "They're enjoying each other."
"Then what's the point of all of this?" She twirled a finger at the lights and the crowd, still boisterous despite the fastly falling dusk.
"You said it yourself, weddings and engagement parties aren't for the couple." He tapped their joined hands against her thigh. "They're for everybody else, saying goodbye to the people they were before. Marking the beginning of the new life. Rose and Scorp get each other forever after, I guess. That's their prize."
She turned her eyes up to his, almost shyly. "So it's worth it?"
He felt the question deep in his soul, from her eyes to his, from her heart to his, and what passed between their eyes after that meant that he didn't need to voice his answer. He squeezed her hand and her shoulder and her heart and from her soft smile, hardly there, he knew that she understood. He knew that she felt the same way. And he knew that his father, and the man in the half-moon spectacles, were right after all.
But what he said out loud was, "Eloping's good."
She scoffed, and yawned.
"You want to get out of here?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Think we can slip away?"
"We're not the center of attention. Nobody'll notice."
She smiled smarmily. "Where to, then? Think we can sneak back to your room without that gossip of a sister of yours sniffs us out?"
The idea was certainly tempting, but he had other ideas. "Not quite."
Rhysta eyed him curiously, but didn't resist when he drew her to her feet with him and sank to the massive tent's wall before they crept through the shadows on the way towards their exit. They got caught a couple of times on the way out, but managed to wriggle out of them with soft salutations and avoid getting roped into any further conversations on their way.
At the coat check at the tent's lip, Albus stopped and handed his father's ticket to a bearded house-elf, who snapped his fingers and sent the ticket whizzing into the largest trunk Albus had ever seen. Rhysta eyed him curiously as a commotion of fabric sounded from within the trunk's open lid, but he just grinned innocently back at her. A moment later, the ticket returned, carrying with it not a coat but his father's vintage Firebolt, with it.
He ignored the glare he received peripherally as he accepted the broom from the house-elf. "Thank you."
Outside the tent, Rhysta started on him before the dying orange light of sunset crossed her hair. "Albus…"
"Just flying," he promised, crossing his heart in front of her with an innocent grin. "There's not a quaffle within a mile of here, and I know better than to try something like that with you around. Just a flight, I swear."
She eyed the Firebolt skeptically, sighing. "I don't think there's room for two."
His grin widened. "Well, that's by design, isn't it?"
Without waiting for her reply, he mounted the broom and kicked off the ground.
He'd taken to a broom twice since the summer began, once when he was sure no one was around and once with his father, which explained the craftily disseminated coat ticket. Both times had come after the healers had been reassured that a simple flying didn't risk any harm to him or his condition, but plenty before he knew that any of his mother, Rose, or Rhysta would have let him anywhere near a broomstick. Velocities had been taken slowly, his balance carefully attenuated to the instinct of getting his bearings back after so long with two feet on the ground, and absolutely no risks had been taken whatsoever.
But this night, he flew. He flew because he wanted her to chase him. He flew because he knew she wanted to chase him. Because she wanted to push herself, to see what she was capable of, to see how far she could go, to share the sky with him.
He vaulted towards the sunset in the west and she pursued, a gorgeous collection of golden and silver feathers, sleek against the dusk painted behind her. His laughter burst forth without conscious effort; a searing, elated cry was her response. As he tucked to roll in one direction, she rolled with him, agile and beautiful in the sky. As he tumbled over the wind, riding it as if he'd been born in the sky, she twirled through it as though to remove any suggestion she hadn't been. They didn't fly, they soared, and they soared through a twilit sky until the last gasps of orange vanished into the distance and they were left with a sparkling, cloudless sky over their heads.
When at last he skidded to a midair standstill high enough to touch the clouds, he had to wipe windswept tears from his eyes as his chuckles died. The hawk pursuing him rounded him twice in midair and then alighted at the head of the broomstick, talons gripping the wood and surveying him proudly, as he leaned back.
She rendered like that, legs hanging either side of the broom, a foot away from him, her cheeks flushed, her chest rising and falling ever so slightly in exertion, a beaming smile on her face, her eyes and hair glittering by the light of stars.
He raised a hand and brushed his fingertips across her cheek, watching her smile widen and then soften and then settle as his did the same. Laughing, hands twirling around each other, they leaned their foreheads together as a casual breeze spun strands of her hair around their faces, and settled into each other against the backdrop of a phenomenal world laid before them.
The sky was theirs, and theirs together. The hawk and her hero roamed it long into the night.
A while later, while the festivities continued in the background far later than he enjoyed, Ron Weasley sauntered over to the bar and grabbed a stool next to its only other occupant, who was tendering a bottle of firewhiskey and staring straight off into the distance.
Once he was settled, Ron sighed and turned to his companion. "Harry?"
His lifelong best friend glanced over at him. "Yeah?"
"I just realized," Ron stated, in quite possibly the most dejected tone he had ever used in his life. "You and I both have children who are going to marry Malfoys."
Harry stared at him for a moment, and then silently proffered the bottle.
Ron accepted it with a resigned nod. "That's exactly how I feel."
And that, if ever there was a tale worth telling, is where our story completes.
Thank you to all of you who followed Rhysta and Albus to the end of their journey. This story was for you, and it belongs to you.
Peace, and long life.
Collier World