First, notes on the last few chapters. As I mentioned in some other asides, Astoria is only seen in the epilogue and mentioned in the Cursed Child. There is what is basically a blog post from JKR with more information about her that I don't really like, primarily that Lucius and Narcissa didn't like her because she was a tolerant person, despite also being from a "good" pure-blooded family. That rolls into one of my other qualms with the information we have about what happens after the books - the Malfoys are not punished for their crimes because of Narcissa's last minute change of heart. If that's canon, that's great for me since I love the Malfoys! But I don't really think it makes a ton of sense when they were trying to turn Harry in to Voldemort like a month before that, and had done many other objectively horrible things over the years. Obviously, in this fic I decided to add in some amount of punishment that seemed accurate to me without going overboard. But for that all to be true, I have to believe they admitted to some fault in their worldview and relented a bit on the fanaticism, and I can't believe they would treat their daughter-in-law badly because she was a…nice person? Like she didn't even do anything radical as far as we know, she wasn't in Dumbledore's Army or anything canonically. Idk, the wanting it both ways of it all is a weak spot to me so I've decided to go with "better Malfoys" instead of "society that will forgive anything".

Going on from that, I don't understand how it is possible that the Weasley/Potter/Grangers have not seen Scorpius before the first day of school. I believe that Draco became very withdrawn after school, and I like that characterization as you can see, but there is no way (I guess in my personal reality) that the intermingling of at least Teddy and Scorpius never happened, which would then lead to Harry knowing Scorpius or at LEAST hearing about him regularly (to be fair it is Ron who seems to have no familiarity with Scorpius, but stillll), and beyond all that there are only like 25 people living in the wizarding world at any one time anyway lol, surely they went to the same Quidditch match or SOMETHING over the years. So yeah we're going light on the respect for the epilogue canon. I believe that what I changed about Astoria growing up as an expat at least covers a multitude of sins her being described as "Draco's wife" and not someone the trio have ever seen before when they were supposedly at Hogwarts with, again, very small class sizes, with both her and her sister.

I resisted going into any real conversations with Astoria even though I imagined a few very good ones between her and Draco – ultimately this story is about Lucius and Narcissa, and Draco as a natural extension of them. But I'm not saying never to a oneshot, because I do really like the idea of their early relationship that I came up with.

I decided I wanted to end this story on a pretty slow roll, no big death of anyone or some huge revelation – the Malfoys lives will go on as they always have. Maybe they will never quite get it right, or maybe Scorpius will change everything – but he is still going to grow up as his father did, and his father before him, and…

Moving on to overarching thoughts:

This has been an epic endeavor on my part, and seeing as how I had just graduated college when I started posting it and am now 30, obviously there are a lot of things in retrospect I would do differently, and some that I still like. I thought I would share them for the more devoted readers in case it's interesting or it can help you consider pitfalls in writing if you're working on your own story.

The earlier chapters are really "fanfiction-y" with some of the flowery language and things like Lucius and Narcissa immediately falling for one another with no adjustment period. I do think it's not out of character for Lucius to write her a letter proclaiming he loves her right away (after all, he was secretly gunning for the marriage and is known for being a suck up), but even the idea of the 100% arranged marriage doesn't appeal to me as much as it once did. Beyond that, I would honestly probably adjust the voice of the first 20 or so chapters if I was doing it all over again. I wish the tension between them had built a little more naturally and maybe they had both played the game - which is something I imagined in my oneshot Would You Hold it Against Me?

There are characters I included I feel like I could have just left out or treated very differently. The side plot of Lucius's parents moving away is…random, and I never really knew how to bring them back or mention if they had died or anything (fwiw, I think his father died some time in Draco's late pre-Hogwarts childhood, as he tells Slughorn at one point that his grandfather spoke highly of him, which even if it was a lie would sound really stupid if everyone knew Draco never knew him. He could have been alive during the books, but it seems like it would have been mentioned, idk why. Wouldn't both Draco's father and grandfather need to "hear about this"? lol). I also still like the idea of my OC Felicity being included the way she was, but her parents definitely should have been mentioned in earlier chapters so we knew they and she existed. I have been "close" with Felicity so to speak for way longer than I have been writing this story, so there's really no excuse for not blending that better if that was something I wanted to do, otherwise when it was too late I should have just left it out. I toyed with bringing her back at the end, but decided to let sleeping dogs lie since I already felt the entire thing was kind of messy. I also completely lost track of any of the Parkinson family, who presumably would have been around during Voldemort's return. I guess they all died, whoops.

There are a few Death Eater related things I feel I left under-discussed or completely forgot about, frankly, like earlier relevance of Peter Pettigrew or the fact that Kreacher was helping the Malfoys in Order of the Phoenix. Not huge holes or anything but as I wanted this to be a pretty deep retelling of all those years, I regret missing out some interesting bits - like how the Blacks and Malfoys ended up feeling about Sirius when the world thought he had betrayed the Potters.

I don't like writing about the final battle. It's hard, and no matter how many times I reread the relevant chapters and check wikis, the timeline is confusing, about what the Death Eaters are supposed to be doing in particular. Like they're…in the forest?...casting spells? Lucius has to go get Snape…from somewhere? Obviously it's such a pivotal moment that you want to write about it when it's relevant, but then I feel like I'm somehow both dragging it out and rushing it. It's come up in both versions of my story Cosmic Love and it just feels stupid every time I muddle through it.

This story was always intended to be a soft side of the Malfoys, which I think in the books obviously exists as they are shown to love one another deeply, but in the books they are also…really bad guys lol. Like in the Half Blood Prince Narcissa basically tells Harry she hopes he dies before Lucius comes back from prison! Idk how well I reconciled that undeniable reality with all the doubts I showed Narcissa specifically having in her private moments. They are certainly a challenge to write sympathetically if you want to acknowledge their canon words, so maybe this story veered into OOC portrayals - but that is how I wanted to show them, and this is fanfiction after all.

I have thought about rewriting, whether in this existing story or in a re-released version, chapters or storylines that I don't like as much now, but I think I need to accept it as it is and move on, especially since I do thankfully already have many great readers who have been supportive of it as it is. I could never commit to really properly redoing it, I don't think, especially not in a timely manner, as this existing story proves lol. Normally I don't recommend pointing out flaws in your work yourself, since you never know if anyone saw them to begin with, but I'm willing to treat this story and journey as a learning experience for everyone who was here.

This is neither good nor bad but merely interesting (to me at least) - no matter what story I'm writing, the Malfoy's master bedroom remains modeled around my own childhood bedroom that I was still using when I started writing fic. Of course theirs exists on a much grander scale, but the placement of the furniture is immovable to me. The armchair, the vanity, the window and closet, are all where mine were. The doors to the hall and bathroom are in the same places. I've written about plenty of other locations over and over again but none of them have ever been so firmly patterned on something. And this isn't even something that's necessarily obvious to the reader, it's just one of those little writing things that exists for the author

Overall, writing something this long and doing it pretty well is something I am proud of either way, and I really like this general idea of events as canon. One of my favorite things is including their long relationship with Severus, which is certainly referenced in the books (Lucius welcoming him as a prefect, Severus's sincere happiness at seeing Narcissa at Spinner's End). It is very hard for me to write stories where Severus actually dies and this one was probably the worst ever!

If you have actually read down to these words you are very committed indeed, so thank you for supporting my story and being here as I finally can mark this chapter 46/46!

Last thing: don't forget you can follow me on Tumblr if you want to keep up with my random thoughts, and definitely be sure to follow me here for future stories about the Malfoys, or check out the ones I already have posted. There are several Lucissa fics in a series with this story so you can just keep going ahead!

(double last thing: since you are reading this on , please be aware that I will no longer be posting any updates or new stories here. I use the same username on Archive of Our Own so I really hope you will join me there, and thank you for reading this here for so many years!)