“I have to apologise to you”, she looked at him seriously. They found their old spot by the lake and took their time now that the castle was still in ruins and people were counting the dead and mourning. However, they had their own priorities. Winning the war was first, and that was now done. This came second.

“No, you don’t”, he was adamant. “In fact, I have to apologise to you”.

“You can do that later. However, the fact that you were at fault doesn’t mean that I’m blameless. I refused to believe you. I was faced with the person who bore a scar on his forehead from Voldemort trying to kill him as a baby in the crib, while stepping over the corpse of his mother to do it, and I defended him because it suited me. He literally tried to murder an innocent baby who was the last offspring of a great noble family while talking nonsense about pureblood supremacy and what not. In hindsight, it was obvious as day, and I refused to admit it because it would make my father look bad, and my father could do no wrong because he would sing me lullabies and tell me stories and tales when I was a baby. Harry, I wronged you by not believing you and I’m deeply sorry”.

“Thank you”, he smiled and wiped a tear from her cheek. “My turn”, he sighed. “I wronged you horribly. I don’t even know whether I should explain what I was thinking, because it was so worthless and undignified, but I think you deserve to hear it. You see, I wanted to experiment. I wanted to see what other girls would feel like. With you, I couldn’t actually say what we were. I didn’t have a word. ‘Girlfriend’ wouldn’t fit. ‘Friend’ was too superficial. I wanted to see if what I felt with you was something that happened with any pretty girl, because I thought it couldn’t be just you. After all, you were in the enemy camp. I feared you would turn on me when Voldemort came back, and I already felt he was coming back for a year. When he did, I wanted to force myself away from the emotional danger of falling for you the way I knew I should if I allowed it. I wanted to be on the right side of the war when it happened. So, I tried to reproduce what we had as closely as possible with Cho, and I didn’t feel anything. It was just nice. That was around the time when Voldemort was actively trying to influence my mind through the scar, and I was afraid that my mind was damaged, and I was turning cold and empty like he is, so I doubled down on my stupidity and tried harder, to no effect. I was just constantly angry, hurt, abandoned, complaining, blowing off steam on my friends who didn’t do anything. Then Sirius died, and I felt it was my fault, because it kind of was, and I wished I could die, truly. I wished for it when Voldemort tried to possess me, and Dumbledore said it was love and it hurt Voldemort like nothing else. I missed you, and I hated missing you because I thought you were the enemy, so how can I miss the enemy, there must be something wrong with me. Then you took the dark mark and started conspiring to kill Dumbledore, and I said yeah, that’s what she is now, and I hated you until I almost killed you, and then I held you and realised that you are everything to me, and that I loved you and would give anything to get you back. But I couldn’t sit at your bedside and see that you are well, because Dumbledore called and I had to go with him on a mission, and you know what happened when we returned. He was half dead from some terrible potion he had to drink, and then he petrified me under my cloak and you came.”, he sighed and closed his eyes. “Then I saw you weeping and begging him to save your family, and I saw the full reality of what you actually were while I hated you and lived in my imaginary world that justified my betrayal of your love and trust. I am incredibly sorry.”

Now she wiped his tears. “I know you are, and you should be. You broke my heart and left it like that for two years. You could have waited until I calmed down and then talked to me. You could have guessed that my feelings were hurt. You could have apologised. Instead, you acted as if I was nothing to you, I was an enemy who finally showed her true face, while I needed your shoulder to cry on because I had Voldemort, werewolves and villains at home and I was scared. Why didn’t you? I mean, reach out. Apologise. Ask how I felt?”, she sobbed.

“You have to understand that I’m much dumber than you. I didn’t know what we were. We never actually talked about it, we didn’t have words. There was the unresolved allegiance thing. It gnawed on me and stopped me from falling for you or even understanding what we are. I didn’t know that you changed your mind. I was so preoccupied by all sorts of important stuff that was going on, that I couldn’t even deal with something as complex at the moment. My mind was a mess. I had visions from Voldemort every now and then, and even when I didn’t, I had the ever-present darkness in my mind. I was half past insane, to be honest. Also, everybody seemed to be after me, so I was super defensive.”

“That actually sounds somewhat like what I was going through”, she reminisced. “I was feeling miserable and feeding the feeling with everything – if I hit my foot and it hurt, I used the pain to make myself more miserable. I just fed the darkness with more darkness. It looks like this might not be unrelated, or accidental. It might have something to do with the overall darkness enveloping everything after Voldemort’s return, and we just got swallowed by it and invented our own rationalisations as to why we are feeling the way we are”.

“That’s actually a good point, although I wouldn’t wish to use it to excuse myself; merely to understand part of it. I definitely wronged you, and I almost killed you before the lights in my brain started turning on. Eventually, Hermione gave me the word I was looking for, the word that explained what you are to me”, he smiled through tears.

“What is it?”, she looked at him curiously.

“Wife. She said you’re my wife. Not a school girlfriend. Not a friend. She said that I should never play with your heart because you’re a serious person. Will you be my wife, Lyra Malfoy? I love you and I promise to love, cherish and protect you forever”.

“I will”, she sobbed. “I swore to be your wife when I was eleven. I just waited for you to ask. You surely took your time”, she tried a smile.

…

“This was my first kiss, you know”, she smiled later.

“This is going to sound weird, but I think it was mine, too. When I kissed Cho and Ginny, it didn’t feel like I’m actually myself – it felt like I’m watching it from a slightly disembodied position and going through the motions, not actually feeling anything. That’s why I was scared that Voldemort scrambled my brain permanently and I’m turning into a zombie. Now, I felt like my true self, doing what I actually want, choosing my destiny, and it’s no longer scary the way it used to be – in the oh my God, I’m falling for a death eater girl way – but it’s still scary in the sense how important, right and good it is. It feels like kissing my own life. And now I can finally admit to myself that I love you”, he smiled.

“I’m sorry for just assuming things and not saying things in words”, she smiled back. “I assumed it’s all perfectly obvious – what we are, what we’re doing. But I didn’t actually confirm it with you, and it would be the most reasonable thing to do. I think I just expected you to say it, because that’s traditionally how it goes, but I didn’t realise that you wouldn’t know. Too many assumptions. Talking could have saved us from all sorts of heartache.”

“I don’t think that’s the case”, he mused. “I think I didn’t want to know. The political part was too much of an issue for me, so much so that I turned parts of my brain off rather than face the truth. Lyra, I thought about it all after I almost killed you. I realised that touching your body switched on parts of my brain, because I’m so deeply wired to you. And it’s not just touch. It’s looking at your face while we talk, seeing your thoughts move it, feeling your physical presence that feels like space within my mind. Honestly, I think I can feel your emotions and thoughts from the scent of your sweat, which feels like something fresh, pure and clean. I was always so deeply in love with you that word “love” didn’t match the feeling because it’s too shallow and means all kinds of silly stuff, especially when you’re a messed up kid like me. I have to tell you one thing. When I temporarily died in the forest, before I came back, I was in a place that felt like the King’s Cross station, only obviously non-physical and made of light. It felt like home, like safety, like everything’s finally OK. And what I realised was that I felt that feeling before, because it felt like you. It felt like the look in your eyes, the freshness of your skin, purity of your scent, like the sense of having you physically present beside me. You feel like home. To say it’s merely love is to diminish its dignity.”

“I knew it couldn’t be just me”, she smiled like an exploding star.

“So, what do we do now?”, he raised his eyebrows.

“We get married, finish school, hunt the remaining evil creatures that made our lives hell, and make babies. Not necessarily in that order, though.”, she laughed.

“We can compromise on the order, but we’re definitely making babies”, he kissed her.

“Do you need an instruction manual?”, she joked.

“Yes, in fact. But as always, learning things from you is much more fun”, he laughed.

“I guess school first, then we get married, and then, I guess, we teach each other what goes where. It can’t be that hard to figure out, since everybody does it”, she giggled.

“Well, they obviously don’t do it enough, or we wouldn’t be having a population crisis”, he grinned.

“Three at the minimum”, she lifted three fingers, and he kissed them.

“More if possible”, he agreed. “And I was thinking about another thing. When everything came back to me, I also remembered one of our first proper conversations, where you told me that the Malfoy name will die with you because you’re a girl. Always be proud of being a girl. And your name is not going to die. I’ll make our joint surname Malfoy-Potter. We’re blending two important, ancient lines, and they should be equally represented, but yours goes first, because from now on you always come first. Not after war, not after work. First.”

“Wow”. She kissed him and they just stayed like that, breathing. “I always wanted you to be proud of me. This feels… like that, plus some burden or guilt being relieved. It feels like my ancestors are proud of me, as well. I don’t know if it’s just in my head, but it feels real”.

“Well, why would the fact that it’s in your head mean it’s not real?”, he asked, and kissed her again.

…

“Come. We need to help people clean up the mess. Comfort them”, she prompted.

“Yes”, he nodded. They had the priorities straight: win the war. Put their future on the right tracks. Then everything else.

So, time for everything else.