Epilogue

Iris sighed, watching as her youngest son boarded the Hogwarts Express for his final year. He levitated his trunk up the few steps onto the train, not caring as it scraped against the wood paneled walls. That was so very much like him. Ever since he had turned seventeen, he was using magic to do anything and everything, and he wasn't doing it very thoughtfully, in her opinion.

Still, that was something he would learn on his own, she decided as the young man turned around and waved at her. As he broke eye contact with the trunk, it suddenly stopped levitating and dropped down with a loud thud. She watched as her son's expression changed from a grin to a pained scowl, and she could only imagine the profanity coming from his mouth as he hopped on one leg, holding the foot on which his trunk had fallen.

She chuckled, and waved one last goodbye as he hobbled onto the train, before seemingly forgetting his pain and embracing a friend. Iris turned around and strolled back out into the muggle world, passing through the barrier to platform 9 ¾. It seemed like only yesterday that she had been dropping off her eldest son at King's Cross for his first year at Hogwarts, however she knew that in reality, it had been a long 10 years ago.

She had always been quite fond of the tube, so she decided to forgo apparation and take the Piccadilly line to work. It was a fondness she had inherited from her mother who had always been fascinated by muggle infrastructure. Uncle George had even told her stories of how when she was a baby, her mother would often take her in her carriage for rides on the trains. It had been a sure-fire way to put baby Iris to sleep, he had claimed.

It was well past rush hour, and Iris gratefully took a seat on the train. She pulled out the Daily Prophet from her bag, which had recently instituted a new fancy piece of spellwork to appear like the Guardian to muggle eyes, and opened it to the page she hadn't gotten the chance to read that morning amid all the hubbub of rushing Oscar off to school.

About halfway down the second page, a headline read: "Obscurus Books to Publish New Complete Anthology of Carolina Flint's Collected Essays." Iris sucked in her breath. She wasn't sure how to feel. Publishing her mother's essays–trying to make sense of the thousands of pages of writings collected over a lifetime-had been practically the only project she had pursued over the summer, neglecting the majority of her duties as co-owner and inventor at the shop, and now that it was finished, she felt… well, a bit empty.

"After the sudden and unexplained death of Carolina Flint, weekly contributor to the Daily Prophet and former Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, in May of this year, Obscurus books is now releasing the first published collection of the prolific author and politician's work, edited by her daughter, Iris Flint in conjunction with former Ministers for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hermione Granger. Flint retired from her position at the Ministry at 65, after serving for 47 years, the final 34 of which, she spent overseeing the Wizarding Judiciary as the Ministry's Chief Warlock, and the first two of which she spent raising funds for and planning the Second Wizarding War Memorial in Diagon Alley. Flint became a household name after the Second Wizarding War, with her appointment as Interim Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement under the Shacklebolt Administration and subsequent meteoric rise in rank.

"During her tenure on the Wizengamot, she produced over 400 essays on the Wizarding Judicial System. A proponent of the radical reorganization of the Ministry after the Second War, Flint's writings are greatly accredited with switching popular wizarding opinion to endorse an elected judiciary and cabinet members. Her most famous essay, titled 'Political Power and Representation,' argued that the corruption that had sprouted from the War could have easily been stymied had politicians been forced to answer to the public and urged Wizarding Britain to reckon with the impunity of our previous government in order to create a new, transparent, corruption-free one.

"Obscurus Books is excited to announce the upcoming publication of Vol. I of Flint's writings, spanning the years 1995 through 2005. The anthology will not only include her memos as a Magical Law Clerk under the brief tutelage of the late, Honorable Amelia Bones, but will also showcase the acclaimed 'Umbridge Papers,' which Flint wrote at the age of 17 in response to ministry involvement at Hogwarts, and will be published in conjunction with a second edition of Flint's widely read and critically acclaimed 'Accounts.'

"'Accounts,' which the wizengamot member published one year after the Battle of Hogwarts, consists entirely of interviews held by Flint herself with those who fought in the Second Wizarding War. The newly minted second edition features formerly unseen photographs taken during and after the Battle of Hogwarts.

"Pre-sales for both books will be available through distributor Flourish and Blott's starting September 15, with the official release date set for September 30th."

Iris finished reading the brief article just in time to exit the train at Leicester Square. She folded the paper and shoved it back into her purse. It was short and concise, two traits her mother had always valued, however never been able to fully execute.

Iris had memories of her mother's bedroom-turned-office in their small two bedroom apartment above the shop. Carolina would often fall asleep fully clothed with the lamp still on and a quill in her hand. There were stacks of parchment on nearly every surface and piles of books that always seemed to be precariously on the precipice of toppling over. Her mother's room was in great contrast to the rest of the apartment, which Carolina kept immaculate. She expected her daughter's room to match the majority of their home, a fact that Iris had rued for the greater part of her teenage years, feeling it utterly hypocritical given the messy state of her mother's own chambers.

Iris slipped into the Leaky Cauldron and nodded in greeting at the young barmaid, before heading out back and tapping her wand onto the correct bricks. The bricks began to whir and spin and slowly, an entryway revealed itself in the once solid wall.

Diagon Alley was bustling as usual, although it was quieter than it had been the past week with all of the last minute back to school shoppers. Iris turned right and headed down the cobblestone street towards Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

Now that she had dealt with her mother's insanely prolific penmanship, the next project would be emptying the apartment above the shop, where her mother had lived since the age of 19, initially with her father and Uncle George for one year, and then only with George for eight months, and then with Iris herself for the first eleven years of Iris's life, before she started attending Hogwarts.

Not much had changed about the two bedroom since Iris's childhood except that her mother had changed Iris's childhood bedroom into an actual study and library after her daughter graduated Hogwarts and moved out. Carolina's bedroom had still been covered in drafts of essays and paper, but much less so with the addition of a real study.

Iris opened the bright glass door to the shop and a small bell tinkled overhead. Her Uncle George sat behind the wooden counter, dozing off on his stool, his head lolling to the left.

Iris grinned. Despite having turned seventy in April, Uncle George had refused to retire from running the shop, even if he could barely keep up with the hours. He wasn't inventing as much as he used to, Iris had taken over that part of the business after Hogwarts, but he still wanted to be in the shop for at least a few hours each day.

Thankfully, September first was always the slowest day of the year for them, as all of the wizarding families in Britain were preoccupied dropping off their children on the Hogwarts Express.

"Had a good nap, there?" Iris smiled, dinging the bell on the counter.

George awoke with a start and blinked his eyes rapidly.

"I wasn't sleeping, just resting," George grinned at his niece.

"Of course not," Iris grinned back. She sighed and turned around to observe the empty shop. "I just came back from dropping Oscar off at King's Cross."

"I remember how that felt. You know, I was with your mom when she dropped you off for your last year at Hogwarts. It was Freddie's first year, as well."

"I know," Iris said, turning back to him. George had come with her mum every time she dropped off Iris at the station. Even before his own kids were old enough to go, he had been there. "I saw Roxy at the station, she's getting some food with Freddie and said she'd be back in the afternoon."

"And they didn't invite you along? What rude children I raised!" George said dramatically, waving his hand around in embellishment.

"They did, they did," Iris chuckled, shaking her head. "Thought I'd better relieve you of duty, though."

"Oh, I don't mind," George replied, scratching the top of his balding head absently. "You know, I was just dreaming up a new product. Invisibility compasses… they could detect—"

Iris cut him off. "I thought you hadn't been sleeping," she said snidely.

"Can't get anything by you, can I? Just like your mother, and your father for that matter."

"Am I?" Iris grinned. She had loved it as a little girl when Uncle George had told her stories about her father, and she still enjoyed hearing them in her adulthood.

"Just like him," George said, nodding fondly. She really was. Had his bright blue eyes and the same grin that he shared with his brother. And the smattering of freckles across her face, and her lean frame and bony elbows. Even her youngest son Oscar had the trademark flaming Weasley hair. He had also landed himself in Gryffindor, despite having a Slytherin for a mother and both an older brother and father in Ravenclaw.

But more than any physical attribute, Iris had inherited her father's will for trouble, a trait that George had tried his best to foster and add to in her youth, and one of the reasons he had opened the doors of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes to her after graduation, eventually making her his partner.

"He would have liked Oscar," George continued. "Granted he would have liked Elliot as well, but he would have been over the moon about Oscar."

Carolina grinned. "He was levitating his trunk onto the train and dropped it on himself."

"Sounds about right," George smiled. "Speaking of Elliot, however" he continued, "He wrote me; was wondering if he could move into your mum's flat above the shop with his girlfriend. After it's cleaned out and all. I told him to ask you."

Iris pinched the bridge of her nose. "I suppose… you wouldn't want to use it for anything would you? Maybe add a second floor to the shop?"

George smiled, looking out the window into Diagon Alley distantly. "I'll leave that up to you. It's time for a changing of the guard, if you will..."

"I don't know why he didn't just ask me in the first place, I am his mother after all," Iris complained.

"He said he thought you had a lot on your plate, didn't want to add to it. He's a good kid."

"I suppose it would be good for him to get his own place. I think Jacob is sick of cooking dinner for both of us and Elliot and his girlfriend."

"It's settled then!" George said cheekily. "Put the flat to some good use."

"It's going to take me months to clean it out," Iris groaned, staring upwards at the ceiling, as if she could see through the wooden beams to the mess that lay above their heads.

"Did you know mum was such a hoarder? I doubt there was a single piece of paper she wrote on that she didn't keep."

"I had my suspicions."

"By the way, when I went up there the other day, I found a box I couldn't open. It had the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes insignia on it though, thought you might give it ago."

George suddenly had a wistful look in his eyes, as if he was remembering something that Iris couldn't guess at.

"Bring it out, then," he said resignedly.

Iris reached into her tote bag and pulled out the wooden box, which she had shrunk down to fit. She quickly enlarged it to its natural size with a flick of her wand.

"There's no seam or hinge, nowhere for it to open but," Iris brought the box up to their ears, "there's something inside." She gave it a shake and something did seem to be moving inside.

"I know what this is," George said carefully. "I gave it to your mum fifty years ago, after your father died. It was one of our first products, impossible to be opened by anyone but the owner. Strange that the magic would linger after… well, afterwards."

He pulled out his wand and began muttering spells under his breath, moving his wand along the edges of the box. Thirty second later, Iris heard a click and the top of the box dissolved into thin air, revealing…

"I should have known, more paper," Iris groaned.

"I think you might find these more interesting than your mother's other essays," George said, stepping back so that Iris could get a closer look at the contents.

She stepped forward and picked up the papers, holding them up to her face so she could read them. She pulled her reading spectacles onto her face and squinted. There were about a dozen letters, addressed both to her mum and from her mum.

"Your parents wrote those, their seventh year," George said. "Fred would stand by the kitchen window, waiting. It was very unlike him. Ginny really took the mickey out of him when she found out he was waiting for letters from a girl. They wrote so much that the owl eventually passed out, actually," he finished, smiling fondly while looking at nothing in particular, lost in memory. "Fainted right in Ron's eggs."

Iris smiled and set down the letters, making a note to read them later, perhaps before bed with Jacob. She pulled out the next thing in the box. It was a bound booklet, nearly fifty pages long.

"That was your father's as well," George noted. "Your mother, well, they got into an argument in fifth year, and she wrote that to prove a point. I think he admired her for her gumption so he hung on to it."

Iris felt tears prickling at her eyes and she curled her toes, trying to keep them contained.

"I doubt she would have believed it if I had told her, but he read the entire thing front to back, maybe even multiple times… and it was the most boring waste of paper ever put to use. I stole it from him once when I was curious what he was reading; all about why Hogwarts needs prefects or something… anyways, he read it all, just because she had written it."

Iris felt a tear fall down her cheek and quickly wiped it with her sweater.

"Did she ever tell you how they met?"

Iris shook her head, feeling as if she couldn't trust herself to speak without her voice breaking. Her mother had never really talked about her father. She had gleaned all her information from his siblings and of course, her grandparents.

"Well, I suppose they met second year when he cursed a chicken to follow her around the school, but really, when he started to see her in her own light, was the beginning of fifth year. She had hexed your Uncle Marcus for something… he was probably bullying a first year, and she caught him and put him in a full body bind curse!"

"A body bind curse? On Uncle Marcus?" Growing up, her other uncle had always seemed so meek compared to George, granted she hardly saw him as often as she saw the Weasleys.

"Yeah, your mother and Marcus didn't get along so well back then… Though they made up a bit after you were born, I suppose… Anyways, Fred was smitten. He loved the idea that a prefect would break the rules and hex another student, especially her own brother. I think that was when he really saw her as not just another Slytherin, or Flint's little sister, but as… well, you know. Like I said, he was smitten."

Iris grinned. "And did she like him?"

George shrugged. "Not particularly. I think that memo that you're holding was more to get him off her back than anything else, but it backfired quite spectacularly. And a good thing too, otherwise we wouldn't have you!"

He smiled as he stood off his stool and placed a creaky arm around his niece.

"Hey pops!" Roxy said, the bell jingling as she entered the shop. "Hey Iris, long time no see," she grinned.

"I think it's time for my afternoon nap," George said, smiling as he hobbled out from behind the counter. He grabbed his cap from the shelf behind him, and then continued towards Roxy.

"I'll be back tomorrow. Rox, your mother wants me to remind you about dinner on Friday night."

"Ay-ay, captain," Roxy joked, saluting her father, who saluted back before making his way out the door. The bell tinkled again and was followed by a loud crack as George disapparated.

Iris picked up the other papers in the box and examined them, before slipping them delicately into her tote bag. They all seemed to be related to her father in some way or another.

"He wasn't chewing your ear off again, was he?" Roxy joked, stepping behind the counter with Iris.

"Oh, he's well good company," Iris smiled back. "Though he was asleep when I came in."

"Figures. He's napping all the time now. Drives mum crazy. He falls asleep in the strangest places."

"Like in the shed at the burrow?"

"Heard about that, did you?" Roxy chuckled.

"Well, with everything he's done, he deserves as many naps as he pleases," Iris laughed back.

Roxy paused, a serious look crossing her face. "I used to be jealous of you, you know."

"Seriously?" Iris said incredulously. She had hardly picked up on that from Roxy. They had gotten along for as long as she could remember. And had had nothing but good times when Roxy started working at the shop upon her own graduation. They had even pulled some good ones over on Uncle George.

"Not any time in recent years, but when we were kids… before I went to Hogwarts. I used to think dad liked you more than me… or, wished you were his daughter, or something."

Iris frowned, her eyebrows scrunching. "I'm sorry, Rox, if I'd have known how you felt—"

"No, it wasn't you. I mean, there was nothing to be done about it. And I haven't felt like that in years. Besides, I think… I think sometimes he did wish he could be your father, or that he could help your mum out more or… I think he still feels guilty that he survived and Fred didn't."

Iris nodded. She looked down at the contents of the wooden box that her mother had kept safe for nearly fifty years. "I think my mum felt that too. She never talked about it, mind you, but I think… Yeah, I think she felt it too."

"Iris…" Roxy started. "Did you realize…" she paused her sentence and looked up at the ceiling, into Carolina's flat. "She passed on the fifty year memorial for the Battle of Hogwarts? The same day your dad died?"

Iris nodded. "Yeah," she said slowly. "It was strange though. I had seen her the day before and she was her normal self. She had actually been rather angry, something about the editor of the daily prophet…"

"Hmm," Roxy said, lost in thought.

"Rox, do you mind if I take the afternoon off? No one's been by this morning and I'd like to get started cleaning out the apartment on an easy day."

"Of course, of course!" Roxy said encouragingly.

Iris smiled, grabbed her tote and headed into the back of the store where she and Roxy worked on new inventions. In the back of that room, there were two doors, one to the storeroom where she had used to hide as kid when her mother and she had played hide and seek after hours in the shop. The second door led up to their flat.

It had been a strange death. The healers had even said so. She had been perfectly healthy, bustling with errands to run and things to do as she normally was, though just as forgetful as any 70 year old would be, and then, the next morning she hadn't woken up. The healer's had tried to describe it to Iris as something similar to a muggle condition… something called a 'Heart Attack.' But, it hadn't been like that, they had said. Just that at some point, in her sleep, Carolina's heart had stopped.

Iris had her own suspicions though. It couldn't have been a coincidence that her mother's heart had stopped on the 50 year anniversary of Fred's death…

She stuffed her morbid thoughts to the back for her mind upon opening the door to the flat. Even with her writings cleaned up and organized, her mother's apartment was still a mess. There were trinkets and trophies lining the shelves, and bound volumes of legal documents and history books both muggle and wizarding overflowing onto the floor. On the shelf above the small fireplace was a strange, miniature white cat statue that Iris didn't recognize from seeing around during her childhood.

She let out a breath, knowing that she had a lot of work ahead of her. Then, she remembered the box she had found with the letters written by her parents. Maybe there would be other hidden artifacts in the clutter that her mother had left her that would reveal new stories about her parents' short time together. Iris smiled, despite the task looming ahead of her, and stepped inside.

Author's note: Surprise! An epilogue! And happy birthday to Fred and George! Can't believe it's finally done… Thank you all for sticking with the story til the end—your support has meant the world to me. I couldn't have (wouldn't have) written this without you readers—especially those of you who have been following and reviewing this story since the very beginning! I honestly didn't think I would be able to finish a 175,000+ word story (let alone in one year) and I am supremely grateful to all of the readers. I really can't say that enough. If you enjoyed reading my story, please leave a review; it means so much to me when you do. :-)

Also, since a lot of you guys were saddened by Fred's death, I'm considering writing an alternate ending one-shot. And maybe, as recommended by a reader, a chapter regarding Harry, Ron and Hermione breaking into the Ministry. Kind of like a deleted scenes additional story. Let me know in the comments if you would be interested in reading these (and any other one-off chapter ideas you might want to read) and if they have enough support, I will write them ASAP!

Xoxo - CarolinaFlint

P.S. If you like my writing, stay tuned for a new story by me. Hopefully will start publishing it around September/October 2019.