Eighteen months have passed without Draco. You begin to wonder when you'll hear from him again.
~~~
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
You were on the cusp of finishing the first term of your final year at Hogwarts. Despite the war, and your lack of studying subjects you actually wanted and needed the year prior, since you'd been Ravena and all, you had somehow managed to stay on par with where you needed to be to graduate only a year behind. Which was nice, because you still saw familiar faces in the hallways.
You recognized Hermione, and Ron, whose arm she was hardly ever seen off of, though Harry had not returned to the halls of Hogwarts. You also still saw Marin and Silver, and Arlie and the others on your Quidditch team.
You hadn't received a new roommate, which you were both relieved and saddened by. The empty room you had to return to each night only served as a reminder of the friend you had lost, the one who had died to save you. But you knew, deep down, that a new roommate would have been harder for you to deal with. Now, you realized, you knew how Juniper had felt when she believed you were dead, how it would've felt to have your best friend seemingly so callously replaced.
You also hadn't seen Draco since you'd left him at Hogwarts eighteen months prior, directly in the aftermath of the battle. You hadn't heard from him either, at least not directly. His face had been plastered in the newspapers for months, what with both his parents on trial for their crimes against the wizarding world. Lucius was back in Azkaban, for what you assumed was a life sentence. Since Narcissa didn't have a Mark, she had gotten out of more severe punishment, but from what you'd heard she hadn't left the Manor since her trial had ended. You assumed Draco was staying there with her, but you'd be lying if you said his absence didn't create a vacancy in your heart that you had no way of filling.
You were somewhat surprised that you hadn't been called to stand trial. You had your own Mark, you'd been directly responsible for the death of Albus Dumbledore. You supposed that maybe, since Voldemort had been trying to kill you, that people believed you weren't in his ranks, and had let you go. The only people who had seen your Mark had been Draco and other Death Eaters, after all. And Snape. But he'd been killed by Voldemort too.
A knock sounded on your door, bringing you out of your thoughts. You looked up from your Potions homework to call out, "Come in!"
In came Silver, his class robes still on. You gave him a quizzical look, and he smiled slightly in response.
"It's dinner time, dummy," he remarked, and one glance at the clock told you he was right. You'd been studying for your final Potions exam of the term for three hours.
"Oh shit, you're right," you said as you stood up, leaving your desk in exactly the state it was already in. Silver glanced over the parchments and books strewn across your workspace, sighing as he did so. "I can't believe we've only got one term left," he breathed, and you nodded. You couldn't believe it either. It seemed surreal, almost.
So you left your room with Silver, hurrying up the stairs to meet Marin outside the Great Hall. Arlie was right beside her, ready to join the three of you for dinner. You'd grown much closer to Arlie in the months since the Battle of Hogwarts, and you knew it was his way of distracting himself from the grief of losing his girlfriend. The two of them had been together since second year, you couldn't imagine the pain he was in.
"Heard anything from Malfoy?" Marin asked as the four of you dug into your dinner. She did this almost weekly, and you had yet to give her a positive answer.
"Nothing yet," you responded, shoveling mashed potatoes into your mouth. "I honestly don't expect to hear anything from him while I'm still in school. I think everyone assumes we've broken up."
Which, technically, you had. But you hadn't spared another man so much as a glance since you'd bid farewell to your Slytherin Prince, and you weren't sure you could pursue another person even if you wanted to.
Marin sighed. "I think you'll hear from him," she said encouragingly, the way she did every time she asked and you told her no. "Say what you will about Draco Malloy, but you can't say he didn't love you."
You nodded, hoping you wouldn't start crying again. Sometimes you did, sometimes you didn't. It depended on the day. You blinked a few times to guarantee you wouldn't, and then changed the subject to Quidditch, a topic Arlie was happy to jump in on.
Gryffindor had only barely managed to steal the House Cup that year, something none of the Slytherins in your dinner group (or the rest of your House) were happy about. Arlie was convinced it was because you hadn't been Seeker, and you reminded him that that was his fault, because he'd made you co-captain. A reminder he waved off like it wasn't even worth mentioning, to which you rolled your eyes and got yourself a piece of cake from the plate it had materialized on.
Dinner continued that way until you had covered nearly every conversation topic you could think of. Just then, the mail call trumpet sounded across the Hall. It was rare for post to come at dinner, but since the war, parents were writing to their children far more often, and some days you received mail calls at all three meals.
Owls swooped through the Hall, and you watched as they soared through the air, dropping letters and packages off to students before looping around and flying right back out. It hadn't registered that a single envelope had dropped into your empty plate until Marin pointed it out to you.
"Y/N, you got a letter!"
You looked down to see that you had. You wondered who it was from. You'd received a letter from your parents already that day, you'd read all about your mother's new gardening habit at lunch. You picked it up and turned it over, your heart lurching in your chest as you saw the familiar handwriting that had scrawled your name across the envelope.
"Y/N?" Silver questioned, noticing your expression. "Who's it from?"
You swallowed, knowing what reaction you'd receive when you told them. "I think it's from Draco."
Marin gasped, and Silver's eyes shot wide open. "Open it, then!" he said, nudging your shoulder.
You hurried to tear it open, pulling out the single piece of paper from inside.
Y/N, it read,
I know I've kept you waiting. And I'm sorry for that.
If you've got a little time after curfew this evening, I'm sure you know where I'll be. Come find me. We've got some catching up to do.
- D
Your hands trembled slightly as you folded the paper back up and placed it back in your envelope.
"What did it say? What did it say?" Arlie demanded excitedly, and you were surprised by the boy's eagerness to know. He'd never been Draco's biggest fan.
"I—that he's okay," you stuttered out. You'd always been an awful liar. "Just a short update on his life and whatnot. Very—formal. For Draco, anyway."
You inwardly cringed at yourself. Nobody would buy that.
But nobody said anything. Marin's shoulders slumped. "Well, at least you heard something," she said, trying to sound encouraging. "Write him back, maybe he'll respond to that."
You nodded, trying to hide your building excitement at seeing Draco later that night. "That's a good idea," you said with a smile. "I'm sure he'd like to hear from me too."
Dinner finished soon after that, and you excused yourself, citing your Potions homework as the reason you couldn't play a Quidditch pickup game with your friends that evening. And while it was technically true, since you still had a lot of studying to do, you weren't going to be doing any of it.
You hadn't seen Draco in a year and a half. The fact that you were going to see him in just a few hours almost seemed too good to be true.
But you refused to let yourself believe it was too good to be true, so instead you locked yourself in the bathroom, attempting to clean yourself up before you went to find your Slytherin Prince.
You washed, conditioned, and magically styled your hair, making sure it was absolutely perfect before picking out an outfit.
You took almost half an hour to do that, unable to decide on a sweater, then on pants, then on shoes. It was supposed to be awfully cold that night, but you knew Draco would come prepared if he was going to be where you expected to find him.
The hours ticked by incredibly slowly, and you knew you had to wait at least a full half hour after curfew before starting your attempt to get outside. Not that it would be hard, and it wasn't like Headmistress McGonagall was going to do anything beyond give you detention, but even if you could avoid detention, you wanted to.
So when you finally managed to creep out of the castle, it was nearly midnight. You swept across the courtyard, careful to move as quickly and as quietly as possible.
You made it to the entrance of the forest, sliding under the branch that covered your secret path. You hadn't been on this path since before you'd been Ravena, which had been nearly two years prior. You couldn't believe it had been that long since the Battle of Hogwarts, since you'd lost your brother and Juniper to the wrath and army of the Dark Lord.
Before you knew it, you could see your old hideout. You half-wondered how dusty and gross it would be inside. You hoped that if Draco was already in there, that it wasn't too bad.
You waved your wand over the trunk of the tree, whispering the password Draco had set so many moons before. "Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus," you said quietly, watching as the magic blanketing your hideout shimmered and disappeared.
"Y/N?" came a voice from inside, and your heart skipped a beat. Dropping down and crawling in, you saw him. Draco was sitting there, the hideout far cleaner than you expected. He'd set up lit candles, brought blankets and pillows, and had even brought food. You didn't know where he'd gotten it from, and you didn't bother to ask. That didn't matter. What mattered was that he was here.
"Draco!" you breathed, launching forward into his arms. He quickly wrapped his arms around you in response, pulling you so close you could only breathe in his scent. It hadn't changed in the eighteen months since you'd seen him, and your heart felt fuller than it had in a year and a half at the realization.
"Gods, y/n, I missed you so much," Draco breathed as you pulled away from his embrace. "I'm sorry it took me so long to come back to you."
"It's okay," you responded, cupping his beautiful face in your hands. "I would've waited a lifetime for you."
Draco's eyes softened immediately, and he put his hands on your face to pull you in for a kiss. Your entire body lit up at his touch, and you fell into the kiss as it deepened, completely drowning in Draco's presence as he pulled you farther into him, his hands moving up into your hair. You had spent so long styling it, but now you couldn't care less about it. Draco didn't, clearly.
It didn't take Draco long to fall back onto the ground, pulling you with him. His lips never left yours as his hands found their way up under your shirt, causing you to shiver both from the cold and from his touch.
He pulled away then, looking up into your eyes. "Pull out your wand," he instructed, and you looked at him quizzically, though you did as he asked.
"Cast the warming spell," he instructed, and you realized why he'd asked. You couldn't believe you hadn't thought of it first.
"Calorus," you whispered into the night air. The cold around you immediately vanished, and you felt as warm as you would've in your own dorm room. Draco smiled as you placed your wand on the ground in the corner, before pulling you roughly back on top of him.
"Now," he said, his signature smirk resting on his face, "where were we?"
You couldn't help the grin that encompassed your face as you pulled him back into a kiss. His fingers found their way back up your sweater, drawing shapes on your bare skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake.
He broke away from the kiss momentarily, staring up into your eyes as his fingers fidgeted with the hem of your sweater. "I think this needs to come off, love," he murmured, and you smiled right back as he sat up to help you pull it off.
The two of you spent the next three hours in that hideout, and finally, after three rounds, you collapsed on the blankets in a heap of naked bodies and smiling lips.
"I wish I could stay," Draco whispered as he gazed into your eyes. You felt a slight sense of panic at the realization that he'd have to leave—you hadn't thought that far ahead.
"I'll stay until the morning, but then I'll have to go," he said quickly, noting the immediate change in your expression. You relaxed, but the sense of unease had yet to leave.
"Y/N, you don't know how much I've missed you," he said then, reaching up a hand to brush a stray strand of hair from your face. "You look different."
"So do you," you admitted. "It's been a year and a half, and we went through one hell of a year before that. We've grown up, Draco."
He sighed heavily as he nodded once. "Yeah, I know. I just wish we hadn't been forced to."
"Yeah, you and me both," you agreed. "But it's for the best, you know? Now we know we can be together, and that's all that really matters anymore."
Draco let out a short breath through his nostrils, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You're the only one I ever want to be with, y/n," he said quietly. "I just wish I didn't have to wait so long for you."
"We've waited this long, what's another few months?" you asked, leaning up on your elbow to get a better look at his face.
"I know, I'm not saying I won't do it," Draco responded. "But it's so lonely at my house now. My mother and I barely speak. My father's back in Azkaban, and we're lucky to be allowed to visit him once a month. It's shattered my mother, and while I know it would bring her more happiness to see me happier, I can't ask that of you when you have so much ahead of yourself."
"Draco, I graduate in five months," you reminded him. "Every part of me will be yours the second I'm out of here for good."
Draco smiled at your encouraging words, his eyes seeming to sparkle in the candlelight. "I know," he said. "I just want to make it official, you know? A no-going-back type of deal."
You sat up further, both confused and excited by his words. "What do you mean?" you asked, though you had an inkling that you already knew the answer.
Draco rolled over slightly, rustling through the clothes he'd thrown to the side before digging something out of his pants pocket.
He rolled back over to face you, and your heart skipped a beat when you saw the black box resting in his palm.
"I envisioned a more romantic setting for this, but honestly, given our history, I don't think there really would be a better time or place," he said quietly, his finger drawing shapes on the black velvet that enveloped the box he was holding.
You were speechless. You couldn't bring yourself to say anything as he opened the box, revealing a beautiful, but dainty emerald ring settled into it. It matched your House colors, and the silver band that it had been placed into made it stand out even more. It glinted in the candlelight, and it looked absolutely gorgeous.
Draco looked up at you, trying to gauge your reaction as you stared at the ring.
"Y/N, I know we haven't been the best people to each other in years past, but I believe now that we're the best people for each other," he began. You half-wondered if he'd written and memorized this himself, but you didn't voice that thought. You simply let him continue.
"I didn't deserve you. I still don't. You were willing to throw your life away for me—and then you essentially did, to keep yourself and me safe when we were at Hogwarts a year and a half ago. You've shown more loyalty than anyone I've ever known, even though the last person you wanted to show loyalty to was the one person you did it to, and it was all for me.
"You are strong, resilient, and beautiful, and I thank Merlin every day that I was given someone as incredible as you. I know our relationship hasn't been perfect, and it will never be. But I think that we'll be far better together than apart, to face whatever the world has to throw our way next."
You had tears in your eyes at this point, and you looked up at Draco through glassy eyes to realize his eyes were exactly the same way. His grey eyes full of unshed tears, and yours matching.
He took in a deep breath as he moved the ring box closer to you, trying to provoke an answer from you.
"Marry me, y/n," he said softly. "Please?"
~~~
A/N: Hi loves It's Autumn! The next chapter is gonna be the epilogue. I can't believe we've made it this far. I can't thank you guys enough for sticking with this story throughout the slow updates and everything in between. I plan to hopefully start another fic soon, but till then, I need you guys to be patient. Thanks for enjoying this! <3