Epilogue: Nineteen-Years-Later

Draco often woke in the middle of the night. He'd never slept particularly well, not even when he was a child and before his depression had fully manifested to drive him into the kind of waking sleep of mindless listlessness, but now was different.

But not worse. Not really. Draco found he didn't need to sleep quite so much anymore.

Squinting into the darkness of early morning, only the barest hint of predawn peeking through the half-drawn curtains, Draco reached a hand absently, instinctively, towards the blankets at his side. He'd known they would be empty, known they would be cold, but it was still natural to reach.

Harry was always cold. He never left a spread of warmth behind him. And when he woke to a visitor, Draco always woke as well.

If Draco strained hard enough, he thought he could feel it. Once upon a time, such a thing would have been impossible, but now… Now he thought he could feel it. It was a chill on the edges of his awareness that wasn't driven away by the summer warmth that clogged the room, and breathed a stagnant wind that somehow didn't feel bad but was jarring nonetheless.

Once, Draco wouldn't have been able to feel the deathly presence of a visitor. That had changed in the two decades he'd been living with Harry.

Muffling a sleepy groan, Draco rolled onto his side and fumbled for the nightstand. His sleep-numb fingers found his wand and, with a silent flick, he cast a Lumos and illuminated his room.

The white walls, bathed in more brightness than even a normal house to contrast what had once been a bleakly grey, sprung into sharp relief. The silk curtains, an aesthetic choice the likes that Draco's mother would have approved of, blended into those walls in a silvery fabric that greedily drunk the magical light. Propping himself up onto his elbows, Draco blinked away from the stout forms of the pair of wardrobes across the room, scrubbed at his eyes as his gaze grazed up the bed, and paused briefly upon where Peggy lay at the very end.

She took up a good third of the bed. The Labrador in her mutt genes – the only breed that Draco had ever bothered to recognise – had built her into a giant of a dog years before. Sensing Draco's attention, she turned her head slightly where they rested on her front pays, thumped her tail just once, and returned to staring at where Harry perched on the edge of the bed just beside her.

Draco straightened to sitting as the last vestiges of sleep dribbled from him. Sometimes it never left him. Sometimes Draco still struggled to force himself to face the day, and those days he, Harry, and Peggy would often spend most of their hours curled in bed and largely silent.

But not that day. That morning, before it was even truly morning, Draco shrugged aside his sleep, drawn by the phantom and barely perceivable hint of Death magic, and crawled his way across the mattress to Harry's side.

"Where, though?" Harry murmured, so quietly that it couldn't have been his voice that had woken Draco. "I need a location."

Nothing replied. No sound, no change in the Death magic that Draco could feel like the lightest brush of fingers across his skin. But Harry shook his head slightly as though he'd heard one and continued. "That's too vague. You'll have to do better than that. Come on, I know you can."

Crossing his legs, Draco dropped an elbow onto his knee and his chin into his hand, watching Harry silently. The Lumos charm illuminated him as brightly as the walls, though Harry didn't seem to notice. His thin face was trained upon the empty space before him, his gaze fixed and attentive, and one hand was extended before him, seeming to clasp at the fingers of someone who wasn't there.

Or someone who didn't appear to be there. How anyone could disbelieve that Harry truly saw visitors of the non-living variety, Draco didn't know. He couldn't understand how Hermione still sometimes seemed to question the validity of what Harry did and who he was, chewing over her old, old suspicions that the loss of his magic had somehow broken something in him.

Draco knew otherwise. He knew because he'd sat beside Harry too many times when a visitor arrived, and he knew it wasn't in Harry's head. He could feel the magic, if only so slightly that it was barely perceivable. He knew because almost every visitor that sought Harry out, all but begging for his help, Draco assisted him with.

That was it. That was all of it, all of who he and Harry had become. Once, Draco wouldn't have considered such an eventuality possible to say nothing of desirable, but now…

Nineteen years and Draco hadn't reconsidered his decision a single time.

He watched as Harry shook his head once more, barely hearing his murmured, "I know, but where? You've got to give me a range." He stared at the familiar youthfulness of Harry's face, his unlined forehead while those of their old schoolmates had begun to fade with age, the youth that still filled his cheeks despite their thinness, his boyish frame that had never quite grown past the moment he'd defeated the Dark Lord Voldemort. It struck Draco sometimes, just as it did when he turned to Peggy and saw her as the barely adult dog that she'd been for nearly twenty years. It struck him too when he looked in the mirror and saw his own face, unchanged from how it had been for years.

Death magic left its mark, just as Harry had suspected long ago. Draco had barely aged a day – and yet he couldn't find he regretted that, either. Not even when his father grew old enough to appear more like his grandfather.

Draco was drawn from his thoughts, from his staring, when Harry sighed and finally nodded. "Alright," he said. "We'll try." He turned to Draco as though, even without indicating he'd noticed his presence, he'd known he was there. "Did you want to come?"

Why do you still always ask that? Draco thought to himself, but he didn't speak the words. He'd long ago stopped bothering to question them, though time and again Harry asked. "Of course." His eyes flickered to the empty floor alongside them. "Who is it?"

Harry turned towards the visitor that Draco couldn't see and pursed his lips slightly. "Her name is Maisie," he said. "She got abducted from school and killed."

Draco didn't flinch. He couldn't, because he'd heard just as bad before and to flinch would only make the situation worse. Just as knowing the girl's name was somehow worse too; Harry hadn't been able to discern that, once upon a time, but years ago that had also changed. Visitors introduced themselves now, he'd said.

"She isn't screaming?" Draco asked, because he had to make sure. He doubted she was, but he had to check. He didn't like it when Harry fought to handle things by himself. Listening to a murdered victim scream as they had in the last moments of their life - no one should have to endure that alone.

But Harry shook his head. Draco wasn't surprised. Maybe it was because Harry was more composed, or had more of a handle on his Death magic, but the murdered visitors didn't seem to arrive and wail in terror and horror anymore. He nodded and drew his gaze back to the empty patch of floor. "What does she want?"

Harry didn't respond immediately, staring at the girl who stood invisibly before him. Draco reached a hand to Harry's forehead and gently flicked his fringe aside, retrieving his attention. "Tell me," he said quietly.

Catching his bottom lip between his lips, Harry glanced back towards Draco. "She dropped her phone somewhere along the way," he said. "She wants me to get it. She says she thinks she managed to get a picture or two on it."

Smart girl, Draco thought but didn't say. Smart she may have been, but her efforts were ultimately futile. "And she doesn't know where?"

Harry nodded. "I asked her," he said, almost defensively, and Draco raised a placating hand.

"I know," he said. "I heard."

Harry nodded slightly, obligingly. Once, he'd never asked. He'd never demanded his visitors give him more than they thought they could, even if it would help them achieve what they wanted. Draco was heartily relieved when Harry had managed to overcome that hurdle. It made their job far easier.

Slinging his legs over the side of the bed, Draco slid to the edge. "Shall we go and get this sorted, then?" he asked. "We need to be back for breakfast."

"It's not the end of world if we're not back in time," Harry said, though he too rose to his feet. "Fixing this is important."

"Yes," Draco said, reaching for his shoes as he silently brightened his Lumos charm a little more. "But it would be pleasant for you if you were home before Hermione and Ron brought the kids over."

"They'll understand," Harry murmured, though Draco knew he was right.

They didn't speak after that. They didn't need to. Draco dressed swiftly and efficiently, and Harry just as much, though his outstretched hand bespoke the clinging hold of his visitor following him as he rifled through the right wardrobe and extracted a pair of his own shoes.

Peggy clambered down from the bed with a huff, trotting to the door and nudged it open. Without comment from any of them, she led the way on their route. It was strange, but Peggy seemed to have developed her own sort of response to Death magic too; without being told, she always seemed to know where to lead them.

Just like that, just as they always did, Draco accompanied Harry out of the room, out of Grimmauld Place, and into the dark morning with their nineteen-year-old puppy. It was normal. Natural. Had become habit by then.

And, walking through the dark streets, leaving Grimmauld Place behind them and led by the invisible presence of a murdered girl, Draco shared a glance with Harry that held more words than he could ever manage to say. It might be horrible, might be terrifying, to think that he would be bereft of death as Harry had feared years before…

But Draco wouldn't want it any other way. Harry didn't want to be alone, and neither, for that matter, did Draco. Even if not necessarily happy, Draco was as content as he could ever be.

A/N: Well, um... the end? I guess? Or something of the sort.
I hope you enjoyed the story. It was a bit of a tricky one to write, and just as hard to post, but I'm so glad I managed it. If nothing else, the wonderful reviews I've received pertaining to this story - it's been incredible.
Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read, to review, and to keep up with this story throughout. I hope you liked it, or at least got a little something out of it. What else can we ask for, really?