Three days later, as the full moon shone brightly in the sky, the two of them stood in the Great Lake with water up to their ankles. "Are you happy, Harry?" Draco asked. He skipped no stone, as he had no stone in his hand – not that he wanted to skip any stone. He just wanted to look at Harry and Harry alone, look at how the darkness within him finally melted into the light and became an disconnected and odd kind of grayness. How the moonlight flickered in his eyes and lit up a thousand fires and a thousand stars at the same time.

"No," Harry replied, and smiled. "But I'm getting there."

The water splashed around Draco's legs when he stepped closer, and as one, both Harry and he reached out to grab the other's hand. Their fingers laced together to form a bond stronger than any they had ever formed before, and Draco wondered if it was a good idea what they were doing – but then he didn't care because Harry was speaking.

"And you, Draco? Are you happy?"

And Draco thought, long and hard, but really, when he looked into Harry's eyes he found that the question had already been answered the first time he cast a corporeal patronus. "Yeah," he said, and smiled. "I am."

"Is there anything else you think we should do about the whole… war?" Harry asked, and Draco's heart shattered and mended again in the matter of a few seconds because he still thought about that, after everything.

"Voldemort is dead, Harry," he said. "Black is freed. The stone is gone. I don't think there's much more to do." He took a deep breath, and looked away from Harry's burning eyes to gaze at Hogwarts, with its tall towers and sharp edges and bewitching atmosphere. "I think it's time for us to live. Don't you?"

A few seconds passed where the only sounds were their breaths and their heartbeats and the water splashing sluggishly around their feet. Then Harry let out an even breath, and when Draco turned back towards him, he was smiling. "Yeah," he said. "It is."

He wrapped an arm around his neck and caressed the side of his face, and somehow it was cold and warm and ice and fire at the same time, and their lips pressed against each other and it felt like coming home and it felt like power and it felt like peace.

end