Author's Note: I figure this is as good a place as any to announce my next project, a sequel to my Harry/Luna story Ready to Stay titled Ready for More. It's already completely outlined which is always the longest part of my writing process, which means that the story is already there and I just need to get the words on the page. Expect it sometime over the summer, (if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, Winter if you're in the south).

That said, I would never have gotten even this far if it were not for the support of many people over on the Harry/Fleur Discord server, the link to which will be at the end along with a fanfic recommendation. Thanks to DaveAthenai, Charlennette, and x102reddragon in particular for inspiring me and encouraging me to write these stories. If you enjoy the story please leave a comment telling me what you think worked and what didn't, your feedback is crucial in helping me to improve as an author.

Opus:

Epilogue

Six months later…

Draco smiled as he felt the sea breeze blow gently across his face through the open porthole.

He opened his eyes, feeling a slight sense of loss as he looked at Britain's distant shore shrinking on the horizon. The feel of the ship rocking slightly beneath him was a surprising comfort, the passage to India reminding him vaguely of that first momentous journey he had taken on the Hogwarts Express, or perhaps the second journey he had undergone on the nameless muggle train which took him from London to Dover a little more than three years ago.

'I must be getting sentimental.'

He sighed, turning his eyes back down to the leatherbound tome which sat on his lap. It had once belonged to Rada's father, then to Rada herself, and now it belonged to him. He had begun to write in it last month, taking to the empty pages with a passion and clarity which took even him by surprise.

He wrote of healing, mostly. Of a new frontier of alchemy which concerned itself with life rather than dead metals. It wasn't Organic Transmutation he was imagining, not quite, but rather something at once more spiritual and more mundane. Organic Transmutation concerned itself with the mastery of life, almost its domination. It was the craft of Prometheus, a sculptor's tool rather than that of a healer.

And he was a healer.

He was an alchemist too, of course, and a potioneer but, after long reflection, he had realised that out of all the things he had done with his life it was healing that brought him the most joy. Even so…

He looked back out the porthole once more, staring back toward the land that had been his home for so long, and he felt the flicker of uncertainty waver in his heart once more.

There was a musical chirp from beside him, the sound somehow at once exasperated and also reassuring.

"How can you be so sure, Rada? Am I not just running away once again?"

He turned in his seat, looking away from the window out onto the world and instead at the wonder sitting beside him. He had never been all that impressed with Professor Dumbledore's pet phoenix as a child, but now, looking at what Rada had become, she took his breath away.

Her head was like a peacock's, her neck like a swan's, her body and long taloned legs like those of a waterbird, a heron maybe? Her wings were like an eagle's and her tail flowed out behind when she moved like the trail of a falling star. But more than the physical marvel, he was struck by her spirit.

That it was indeed Rada's spirit within the Phoenix he was certain.

It was as if Rada had been liberated, the worries and weight and flaws she had carried all her life falling away as she underwent a sort of apotheosis. He could feel her in the creature, too. The same life, the same warmth, the same passion and drive that had ignited her spirit in mortal life had been purified and refined, manifested in this new being until Draco felt when he looked at her as if he had barely known her at all until now when he saw what she could truly be.

She felt free.

And he felt a bond with her, one at once similar and dissimilar to the one they had shared previously. Before, their connection had been one of peers, of equals, of close friends. They had trusted each other, but at the same time it was always understood that though they would do much for one another, there would always be limits. They were only human, after all.

But now… now he felt unconditional love. He felt the perfect love that can only be given when one knows and fully understands the flaws in the subjects of one's affection, and chooses to love them anyway.

He didn't deserve this kind of love. No one did.

It wasn't the kind of thing that could be bought or even earned, nothing anyone could ever do in any of the countless lives of the earth would ever come close to deserving the kind of unconditional love he now received. So no, he didn't deserve it.

But Rada gave it to him all the same.

He had felt it, from the moment he vanished from the collapsing chamber under Wicklow Abbey in a burst of phoenix fire and song to appear on a secluded rooftop nearby overlooking the water, he had felt it. He felt it every day since then as well, in every minute of every hour. A deep, abiding love that he knew he would never deserve and which accepted this fact and gave it to him anyway.

It was perfect.

And so he resolved to give back. Not to Rada, not to the immortal phoenix, for what did he have that he could ever offer to her? No, he gave to others. He had gone to Knockturn Alley, found the muggleborn woman and her daughter who had drunk his potion all those years ago, and he healed them leaving nothing but a single feather behind.

The little girl would be turning eleven soon, after all.

Rada chirped again, and he looked up to find her looking at him sidelong knowingly, and he felt a sudden stab of pain in his heart as he pictured exactly how she had once looked at him that way. Head tilted slightly down, a single eyebrow raised, a half smirk lifting one corner of her mouth as if to say, "Really, it's taken you this long to figure it out?"

Rada fluttered into the air suddenly, swooping gracefully across the small space to land on his shoulder as she let out a high clear note of song.

Immediately his spirits lifted, but more than that the music guided his thoughts and he looked back through time to remember something that had been said to him more than three years ago.

"You need not build your house on your father's shores."

He nodded, chuckling as he reached one hand up to scritch the six-month-old phoenix behind the beak.

"You're right Rada, and so was he."

He smiled.

"It's time to let it go."

AN: Thank you for reading. If you liked the story then please leave a comment telling me what you think worked and what didn't, your feedback is crucial to helping me improve as an author and is always appreciated.

Harry/Fleur Discord Server: Link in my bio.

Fanfic Recommendation: I am a strong believer in making a clean break with stories and fandoms to give them time to settle in the mind and heart, so to that end this final recommendation will have nothing to do with Harry Potter at all. This chapter's recommendation is the Truth in Legends series by 425599167 on AO3. It's a non-crossover Star Wars story exploring what happens to Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee after Order 66 and moving on into the early days of the Rebellion, and it is one of my favourite stories of all time.