A/N: Thank you so much to Kermit 304 to their reviews on chapters 1 and 2, the mystery of the preservation spell will be revealed over the course of the next few chapters. Thank you also to Mommyoftwo92 and gjasmine59 for their reviews on chapter 8, your support is greatly appreciated! :)

What can I say about my nearly year long absence? Nothing really as reality really just overtook and in the course of it I lost track of this story. However, the rest is planned out and the next couple of chapters are being written so it will be finished over the course of the summer, at least I am pretty sure that it will be. I do apologise for the long absence though, readers like you do not deserve it. :)

RxExR!

Pictures on a Wall

Chapter 9 - Graduation

"So, let me get this straight. Nobody in school knows that we are actually married." Hermione said, gesturing to herself and Draco in the process. Ginny nodded nervously.

"So we are going to completely and utterly stun the school by appearing together, holding hands and wearing matching wedding bands." Draco continued. Ginny nodded again.

"This is epic." Seamus commented as he walked next to the three of them to the Great Hall.

It was a whole one and a half months later and all of them were finally graduating from Hogwarts, the seventh and eighth years alike. All of the students that hadn't been able to rejoin their year groups due to the preservation spell were invited to attend as special guests, as they had all already graduated from other schools.

"How is this epic?" Hermione quirked an eyebrow at Seamus and it was then that Ginny made her escape, but not before throwing another look at Seamus, as this was the first time that she had seen him in nearly a whole year.

She found that he had grown a lot more handsome and that age had agreed with him. Not that she would tell Harry that she still found her ex attractive though. What he didn't know wouldn't kill him, as the saying went.

"Because you two have just gained the ultimate power of stunning everyone here!" Seamus exclaimed with a grin. They had entered the Great Hall and walked to their seats, where Greg was already sitting next to Diana who had come to watch as well as Greg's 'plus one'. Hermione personally found it quite amusing that such a 'Muggle' concept was being adopted quite readily into the wizarding world while others, much more normal things such as communicating through telephones instead of owl post, were viewed as outlandish and downright 'weird'.

"Another one of his hare-brained schemes?" Greg asked and Draco and Hermione nodded in response with a defeated sigh. Greg looked at them sympathetically while Diana merely looked amused. The antics of Seamus Finnigan never failed to amuse her.

The Great Hall was still pretty empty. They were very early, exactly as planned, as that meant that they were already in their seats when nearly everyone else entered and they could avoid all of the needless chit-chat until after the actual graduation ceremony. And there would be a lot of needless chit-chat considering that this was the first time that they had returned to the school ever since it had 'vanished'.

So far the visit had managed to evoke feelings of nostalgia within all of them. All of them could still see their school days flash by in front of their eyes.

Seamus remembered all the times that something had exploded for him, well nearly everything anyway as that had been a far too common occurrence for him to actually remember each and every instance where it had happened. He remembered each and every time that he had asked someone out, what he and his friends had done in all of the different parts of the school and even the lessons themselves.

Greg could remember Vincent and all of the times that they had spent together here. He remembered the pranks that they had played and felt slightly guilty, as well as amused in some cases, of all the times that they had bullied people from the other houses. He remembered the food fondly and the companionship that he had shared with the rest of his house despite everyone always assuming that Slytherins were a cold-hearted bunch when they actually weren't.

Hermione could still remember all of the times that she had walked into this hall and seen Harry and Ron waiting for her at the Gryffindor table and all of the times that they hadn't been there. She could remember the antagonistic feelings that had always served as a barrier between Gryffindors and Slytherins, the way that the two houses always glared at one another. She felt fond feelings rise within her chest as she thought of the library, the teachers and the lessons. All of it had meant so much to her back then.

Draco had less happy memories than the rest of them, but the ones that he had, he cherished. He remembered Snape, his godfather, and the man that he would always be indebted to. The potions lessons, the homework and all of the other academic stuff. He could recall his petty rivalry with Harry and Ron, and the much more serious academic rivalry with Hermione. The jealousy that he had always felt when he had looked at them, a jealousy that was long gone.

But overshadowing that were the memories of the final battle. They could all see the bodies and the bloodshed in front of their eyes. The injuries that everyone had had, both mental and physical, injuries that had healed in their own cases despite the scars that they had left behind, injuries that still had to heal for most of the student body still present here.

The screams of pain and anguish, the terror at the thought of dying on that day. It was all coming back to them now. It was hard to look somewhere and not remember how dark and dreary it had been back then, how horrible it had been.

Hermione gripped Draco's hand tightly and he returned the pressure that she was applying. He could see the same things that she could when they looked somewhere.

"It's over now." He said softly and she looked up at him, snapping out of the trance that she had been threatening to fall into. He had always been better with dealing with these kinds of things. She was loath to say that it was because of experience, but it was. He was more used to dealing with emotional pain than she was merely because he had been experiencing it longer than she had.

He was smiling down at her, his eyes a soft silver.

She felt warmth flood through her as she lost herself in his eyes. While many things had been horrible back then, many good things had subsequently emerged from it, like their marriage. She didn't know what she would have done without him to heal those wounds. The wounds who had been so deep after finishing at Beauxbatons, that she was sure that she would never be alright again.

It had been one of the reasons as to why she had literally 'escaped' into the Parisian Muggle world. It had been so different from the Wizarding world that she had been able to relax ever so slightly and not see ghosts of the past at every single corner.

By being confronted with the image of the rebuilt school, they were finally able to lay that last piece of the past to rest and bury it. Peace filled all of them as the minutes stretched on into half an hour and knew that no matter what had happened, right now they were happy with where they were and that they truly wouldn't change a thing about their pasts as it would mean that they would have a different present.

"Mister Finnigan?" A squeaky voice asked and they all turned their heads to see Professor Flitwick standing there as he looked at one of his most horrendous students incredulously. Hermione knew that a lot of people would be getting shocked today as all four of them had changed rather significantly.

"And Mister Goyle, Mister Malfoy and Miss Granger too." The small professor looked practically ecstatic at seeing them all again. "It's good to see you all so well."

"Actually it's Mrs Malfoy now." Hermione said with a small smile as she briefly looked her husband in the eye before looking back at their old Charms professor. He was standing there with his mouth agape.

"Oh congratulations!" He grinned broadly. "It's so good to see that you two finally got together. I can collect my winnings from the others then." Professor Flitwick looked as if Christmas had come early.

"Wait, what do you mean, winnings?" Draco asked, his brows slightly furrowed.

"We had a betting pool back in the day, still do actually, about who would end up with who. Me, Professor Snape and Professor Dumbledore were sure that the two of you would end up together." The small charms professor grinned broadly. "And you two got together - so I win! Excuse me, I need to go and tell Minerva about this, she will not believe me." Professor Flitwick crowed and then ran off, leaving them sitting there, feeling ever so slightly blindsided.

"They had a betting pool..." Hermione murmured.

"And they bet that the two of us would end up together back then..." Draco added, looking down at his wife.

"And we never even knew about it..." Greg felt completely surprised that the teachers had managed to keep it quiet with students like Fred and George Weasley around.

"This is amazing!" Seamus grinned. Diana laughed at the clear exuberance present on his face.

"Amazing?!" Hermione turned to Seamus with an incredulous expression on her face. "Our teachers were essentially matchmaking and you're saying that it's 'amazing'?"

"Yeah." Seamus grinned. "Just imagine how often they might have sat at that huge table and said, 'hey, wouldn't he look good with her?'. It's absolutely brilliant."

Draco and Greg burst out laughing while Hermione huffed in indignation. Diana looked amused.

"Looked good? You're lowering our teachers to the level of you?" She asked, but her eyes were dancing.

"My level?" Seamus put on an arrogant expression. "My level is so far above everyone else that no one else can ever hope to reach it." And he looked around the room imperiously. Hermione also began to laugh and that's how Professor McGonagall found them a couple of minutes later when she came rushing in, closely followed by Professor Flitwick and Hagrid.

"Hermione!" The old witch hugged her favourite student tightly, glad beyond belief that she was alive and well.

"Professor." Hermione smiled as she returned the embrace, equally happy to see her again. She had hoped to see her again quite a few times over the past decade but had always quickly squashed the thought as she believed that wishful thinking wouldn't get her anywhere.

"And Mister Malfoy and Mister Finnigan! And Mister Goyle too!" McGonagall smiled at them all softly, and Hermione swore that her eyes were shining ever so slightly from some unshed tears. No more words had to be said as her three boys smiled back at her, acknowledging the sentiment.

It was then that she truly realised just how affected everyone here had been by their absence during the ten weeks they had essentially been trapped here. They hadn't been able to get in or out and the four of them had been MIA with nobody knowing how to reach them.

In many ways it must have been truly terrifying.

As Hagrid greeted them all heartily (even Draco, who looked ever so slightly mystified by that), Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick whispered something to each other before nodding in agreement.

"Hermione, Mister- no, Draco," McGonagall eyes crinkled at the corners as they looked upon them in warmth, "I know that this might be sudden and that you yourselves have already graduated, but it would be a great honour if you could say a few words too."

"I mean no disrespect Professor, but why?" Draco enqired and Hermione could hear the underlying confusion.

"Originally, you two were meant to become our Head Boy and Head Girl but because of the circumstances, you were unable to. I believe that it would be good for you to speak to everyone present here today, not only because you deserved those positions and therefore should also have the honour of the 'final speech', but because you both...show the ability to look past old prejudices and move on from them. And that is something that quite a few of the students still need to internalise." The headmistress said seriously, without losing any of her warmth.

Hermione's eyes stung a little and she nodded. "I believe I speak for both of us when I say that it would be an honour." She looked over at her husband who nodded back at her, conveying his agreement.

"Thank you." McGonagall inclined her head ever so slightly. "If you will excuse me, I believe that I need to get a graduation started." Her eyes twinkled in a way that was so familiar that it made Hermione choke up. "I shall see you four later." And with that she was gone, Professor Flitwick and Hagrid following soon afterwards as the parents and other relatives and friends of those graduating began to slowly trickle in.

Draco's hand entwined with her own and Hermione squeezed her husband's hand gently, knowing that he knew what was going through her mind.

Wistful, that was how she was feeling. Not only had they lost the opportunity to finish their education with the rest of their friends, but they had also been cheated of opportunities that they had been looking forward to, in many ways, for their whole lives. All throughout her time at Hogwarts, she had dreamed of becoming Headgirl one day and she knew that her husband and fostered a similar hope within his own heart. The decade that the others had lost had created a chasm between them and Hermione was pretty sure that no matter how hard they tried, they would never be able to completely breach it.

She was a mother now, married for nearly eight years with four children. She was co-owner of one of the best potions companies in the world and two of her closest friends were also tying the knot soon. The other had just come from a messy divorce with two kids of his own while the last was a perpetually single and independent young woman who was oh-so career-driven. They had a whole decade between them and the war and while they might still bear the scars of that war, they had healed.

On the other side there were Harry, Ron, Ginny and the rest of those two years, finally graduating after, what was for them, a very recent end to the turbulent life of the last few years of their schooling. Their wounds were still open and bleeding and she knew that while they were getting along with them, the people that had once been her closest friends now no longer saw her as being part of their generation.

It was cruel but it was the reality of things and if there was one thing that Hermione had learnt from the war and had subsequently become quite good at, then it was at accepting the harsh truth of a situation and making do with it.

~.~.~.~.~

"And now I call Mister and Missus Malfoy to the stage to say a few words." Murmurs and whispers erupted and rippled through the crowd and Hermione smiled in amusement as she and Draco got up. They had been garnering strange looks ever since the graduation had started but nobody had actually dared to speak to them. She knew that in many ways, she and Draco had changed physically too over the last decade so therefore the others had obviously not been that sure as to whether it really was them.

"I think they're expecting my parents." Draco murmured to her as they walked down the aisle to the podium at the front of the Great Hall.

"Well, we'll have to disappoint them then, won't we?" Hermione replied, her eyes sparkling with uncontained mirth.

Draco shot her an amused look as they walked up the steps. He was pretty sure that disappointment would be one of the last emotions that the students in front of them would be feeling once they were on stage.

"Hi everyone," Hermione greeted them all with a smile as she and Draco took their places behind the podium, "I'm pretty sure that a lot of you are confused right now and let me just reassure you that we are not Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy in disguise, although Malfoy is our last name."

"I'm Draco and this is Hermione and I'm pretty sure a lot of you do actually remember us as something more than just a fleeting image of your imagination." A titter went through the crowd as Draco began to speak. "Although a lot of you are probably surprised, Hermione is right, as always, in saying that our last name is Malfoy." He turned to look back at her. The silence that met them was deafening.

"It might be strange, but we are married, as outlandish as the concept may be." Hermione smiled as a couple of people chuckled in the audience. "Neither Draco nor I were in Hogwarts when the preservation spell hit the school due to differing reasons, so you can imagine our surprise when we suddenly found ourselves unable to return here afterwards."

"Both Hermione and I went on to Beauxbatons and finished our education there, graduating from it a good nine years ago." Draco continued on with the narrative. "Afterwards we both found ourselves in Muggle Paris where we met up again. To be completely and utterly honest we didn't actually find ourselves getting along at the start." Seamus coughed loudly from where he was sitting and Draco sent a look in his general direction.

"Which isn't really a surprise considering that we'd insisted on calling each other by nothing but our last names all throughout our time at school." Hermione smiled warmly as a couple of other people also laughed. Their hatred for one another had been well-known throughout the entire school. In fact, it had been one of the first things that Adele, a good friend of hers from Beauxbatons, had commented on the first time that she and Draco had taken a class together at the school.

"But then, about a year after the war had ended, on its anniversary in fact, we found ourselves together in a pub," they entwined their hands and smiled at each other before turning back to the audience which was now staring at them, completely enraptured, "Drinking what could only be our fifth or sixth glass of beer. It was then that we realised that hating each other just wasn't worth it. We'd fought on opposite sides of the war but both of us had lost so much during the course of it and afterwards."

"We realised that we were holding onto our hatred of one another merely to honour the memory of you guys." Hermione looked at them all, a sad look in her eyes. "We wanted to believe that by continuing to hate one another, to essentially treat each other as before, would return that sense of normalcy to us."

"One can get awfully insightful if one has a beer too many." Draco quipped and laughter rippled through the crowd.

"But it wasn't doing that." Hermione sent her husband a fond look. "Instead, we were limiting ourselves and passing up opportunities that would not only broaden our horizons on a professional level but on a personal one as well."

"And that night I said the one thing I'd never thought I'd ever say to Hermione Granger," Draco was grinning now, "And it was, 'If we manage to found a company together and not kill each other, will you go out on a date with me?'"

George and Bill were in tears in the crowd because they knew this story so well. In fact, once, when they had all had a glass of wine too many, Hermione and Draco had reenacted it to perfection. The two of them found it absolutely hilarious that this was essentially how their romantic relationship had started.

"And I said yes." Hermione shook her head as she let out a small laugh. "The next morning, after waking up, I remembered the whole promise and I set out to find Draco."

"And she did, waking me up from my much desired beauty sleep." Draco added with humour. "So there I was, with a massive headache from the night before, not really awake yet and she asks me when we want to start that company."

"Mind that this was after already spending three hours just trying to find his place." Hermione interjected.

"Yeah, so there was only one thing I could do and that was to ask her to give me ten minutes to get ready and then join me for breakfast."

"Best idea I'd heard all day." Hermione nodded emphatically.

"And it just went from there." Draco smiled at his wife. "Two months later we went on our first date and we've been together since." The look that he sent Hermione made Harry swallow heavily from his place in the sea of graduates. He'd never heard this story before and to be honest, it was completely blindsiding him. The love that was present between them was so tangible that it actually hurt to look at them.

He wondered whether he would ever have that with anyone. Whether he would ever be able to have it with Ginny.

"And I know that the original point of getting us up here was to talk about moving on after the war and dealing with it as most of you listening to us talk are still a decade 'behind' so to speak." Draco had never been one for beating around the bush, that much was obvious even to the most oblivious in the crowd by now.

"But the truth of the matter is, we can't help you with that as it's different for everybody we know. For us, it helped to go into the Muggle world and really take some time off and spend our time and energy in healing. It was finding someone else who understood us on a level that we often didn't even understand ourselves on." Hermione shrugged her shoulders delicately.

"Nothing we will say or do will be that one thing that will help all of you so we're not going to even try and do that." Draco spoke next, his voice reaching even the furthest corners of the hall.

"But what we will say is 'thank you'. Thank you for allowing us to speak today although we aren't part of this graduating class anymore. Thank you for still thinking of us as such even though we have already moved on with our lives." Hermione's eyes looked slightly teary and her smile was bright.

"So all we can say is 'good luck' to all of you in all that you do. And that we want you to remember that no matter how hard it might seem, you will be able to master the challenges." Draco concluded.

"And to stop my husband from sounding uncharacteristically soppy because he will hate it if he does," Draco chuckled slightly as Hermione decided that she was going to have the last word, "Thank you for being such an amazing two year groups and well done in all that you have achieved so far. Not many can boast of the feats that you have accomplished and that you will be sure to accomplish. We hope to see you all around. Thank you." Hermione and Draco both gave a slight bow and walked down from the stage.

Applause followed them all the way back to their seats.