a/n: This chapter has been almost a decade in the making and as much as I have loved (and at times hated) this trilogy I am so excited for it to be over and to move on to bigger and maybe sometimes better things. I'll be posting one more chapter to conclude the side series Dinner with the Dursleys next week and then I'll be saying goodbye to Harry Potter. This fandom has seen me through a lot, has helped me grow and shaped me as a writer but it is definitely time to say goodbye.

Thanks for the wonderful reviews, all the favourites and follows and the interest you've shown in this series. You're the best.

Epilogue – Rick

The attack came out of nowhere. He'd been treating his great-granddaughter to ice-cream, sitting in Diagon Alley and watching the crowds drift by, young and eager faces filling up shop windows, preparing for a new school year and listening to Baby (what was her mother thinking?) tell him all about her latest adventure with Socks (the cat) when there was an explosion and chaos filled the alley.

He didn't move as fast as he used to, joints ached, and it took a lot more effort to take steps but, in that moment, none of that mattered, adrenalin burst through his system and he moved with speed he hadn't possessed for at least twenty years. He scooped baby up and dove inside the second-hand bookstore, moving as far back into the store as he could before placing Baby behind him. Long forgotten things he'd learned from his first wife floated back to the forefront of his mind and he placed his back to Baby, cautioning her to stay hidden and watched the door.

He wasn't the only one hiding in the bookstore. The clerk was crouched behind the counter, arms over her head and a young wizard who must have been shopping when the explosion occurred, was huddled right beside her.

Out in the alley there was another loud bang and the ground shook with the force of another explosion. The screams seemed to triple in volume and then there was a sound Rick didn't understand and some of those screams cut off abruptly. He knew what that meant, and he knew what it meant that the rumble of explosions was getting closer, the screams moving further. Whatever was causing the explosion, whatever or whoever was attacking the alley was moving away from Gringotts and toward the other end of the alley – toward the bookstore.

He'd never been much of a fighter and he didn't think he stood much of a chance against whatever was out there, but he needed to know he was going to be able to get Baby home safe to her parents. He needed to know if they would survive hidden away or if their best chance at survival was to run, to flee. He silently cursed the wards the Ministry had placed upon the alley almost forty years ago now, wards that prevented anyone from simply apparating in or out of the alley. At the time it was meant to create a friendlier and safer place for witches and wizards to do their shopping but now it was preventing a lot of people from escaping.

He could still hear the screams, how they were lessening, though the alley was no quieter and he knew those screams were being cut off abruptly as more and more witches and wizards died and not because they were escaping.

He had to know. He moved slowly, attracting the wide eyed and fearful attention of the two behind the counter but he simply held a finger to his lips and shuffled as quietly as he could to the front window. He held his wand at the ready, though he wasn't sure what good it would do, he was far too old to be fighting like this.

Before he reached the window, though, the sounds outside changed. He couldn't have said what it was that told him things were different now, perhaps some long-buried gift he'd never before needed, but he knew when he finally reached the window display and carefully peered out amongst the books that something had changed. He couldn't say, even after all the things he'd seen in his life, that he was quite expecting the sight that greeted him.

It might have been seventy years (give or take) since they'd separated but he'd recognise that blonde anywhere. At first glance she didn't look any different than the day she'd walked out the door, all of her belongings jammed into the old school trunk she'd spelled to hold it all. On second glance, she didn't look much different either. She was still the woman in her early twenties, still dressed in jeans and a t-shirt (some things really did never go out of fashion – more so in the wizarding world) and wearing sturdy dragon hide boots and from this distance he couldn't see her face, couldn't see how the years had changed her eyes.

She was still the same Abby though. Standing in the middle of the alley, surrounded by rubble and, his breath hitched, the bodies of witches and wizards – some children – who hadn't escaped the attack, wand in hand as she battled with someone he couldn't see.

Against his better judgement he pushed forward, trying to see more of the alley and maybe what she was fighting and another figure came into view, dancing back out of a shop doorway and ducking as a spell flew over her head. When she straightened, Rick recognised the woman, though it took him a little longer to remember her name – Stephanie he thought it was. The one that married the twin?

But his question went answered almost immediately as someone dressed in dark golden robes was shoved forcefully out of the shop Stephanie had just come from and was followed by the stocky figure of a Weasley twin. Rick's breath caught in his throat as he realised what he was seeing. He pushed further into the window display and picked out more figures dancing around spells and fighting figures in gold robes.

He spotted a flash of black hair that belonged to Harry Potter, more blonde and he changed places with a young woman (young looking at least) with the same lithe way of moving, and realised with a jolt he was looking at one of the Potter girls. The longer he looked the more faces he could pick out. There was Ally further down the alley fighting two robed figures at once. He spotted Ron and Daphne and what he thought must have been their three children. He saw another Potter, he caught the pale blonde hair he'd come to recognise because of how much pain it had cause and found it attached not to Draco Malfoy as he'd been expecting but to a fierce looking young woman who raced up the alley and skidded to a stop beside Abby where she immediately fired of a series of spells to help her.

He watched with fascination as the fight turned, as the people he'd once thought to be friends fought back and brought the group in gold to their knees. He watched gold robed bodies drop, some dead, some so badly wounded they may never again get up, and he listened as sound gradually returned to the alley as the fight concluded.

And then, once he'd stood watching for long enough that it really did seem like it was over, Rick found himself stepping out of the bookstore and calling a name he hadn't uttered in decades. 'Abby.'

She turned at the sound of her name and he saw the age he'd been expecting in her eyes, but it was tempered by wisdom and a youthful exuberance he didn't think she would ever lose. He saw confusion cross her face before eventually her memory dragged up a name and a long-lost face from the past and she answered him with a smile like old friends.

'Rick,' she greeted, walking across the alley toward where he stood, leaning against the doorframe of the bookstore. 'Are you alright?'

'You really did it then?' he asked, and he knew he didn't need to clarify what he was talking about.

'There's a few of us now,' she said, and he was happy to note there was no resentment in the way she talked with him. He supposed seventy years was enough to put any anger firmly in the past.

'Who?' he found himself asking and he wouldn't have been offended if she didn't want to tell him, but she just smiled and answered him.

'Ron and Daphne, their kids, Steph and George, look,' she pointed down the ally to where he could see three people standing around a kneeling figure in a gold robe. One of the figures was Draco. 'I suppose you knew about Draco already but that's Artemis he's with.' It was the pale blonde woman he'd seen fighting beside Abby. 'That's her husband Yusef. There's twenty of us now.'

He looked at her again, truly looked at her and saw that despite the fight she'd just been in, despite the bodies littering the ground and the exhaustion of the fight, she looked happy.

'You married again,' she spoke up and it wasn't a question.

He nodded. 'Three kids, ten grandchildren and the sixteenth great-grandchild is on the way.'

Abby nodded, smiling widely as though she were genuinely happy for him.

'Did you marry again?'

Her smile wilted slightly, not out of unhappiness, he could see, but rather out of decades old misplaced guilt. 'Draco,' she told him in a soft voice as though worried it would hurt him after all this time. It did, he was surprised to feel the slightest twinge of hurt but it was nothing more than the echo of what was.

'You're happy.' It wasn't a question.

'I've got two kids of my own,' she smiled. 'Three, really, Artemis has always been mine in a way. No grandkids. Yet. Artemis says they're trying but the elixir slows things down, it might take a while. It certainly might take my boys a while to stop sowing their oats. Still, they're only in their thirties, they've got time.'

'I'm happy for you,' he told her. 'I'm sorry if I slowed you down.'

'You were exactly what I needed then,' she told him firmly. Then she frowned, expression turning serious. 'This is a bad one,' she told him. 'It's looking like this is the darkness the Potter's predicted all those years ago. Stay safe, yeah?'

Bemused, he returned the request.

'You know me,' she smiled. 'Where's the fun in playing it safe?'

And he supposed, really, that was exactly as it should have been.