Under the Willow Tree | Draco Malfoy

epilogue

1 Year Later

The sweet aroma of blooming wildflowers carried into the cottage on a breeze. Lorelei paused at the kitchen sink, letting her eyes fall shut and drinking it in. Nothing compared to the feeling of spring on her skin, warming up but still with hints of winter clinging to a stray wind. She would never take it for granted again, never wish away the cold or the tears or the cloudy days. Not after what she experienced last May, during the Battle of Hogwarts.

Lorelei wasn't sure why she remembered everything she saw this time. She knew she must have been there before, must have had to leave her father behind in death before, but she was left with more questions than answers, even a year later.

The only time she could think of when she'd gotten close to death could have been the car accident with her dad as a little girl. She didn't remember going somewhere white and bright and unfeeling though. It was a horrible accident, but then she'd woken up in her hospital bed with only a vague recollection of what had happened. More details came back with time and rest, but never memories of a place like that, like the place she saw Dumbledore.

Her friends were a little cautious to believe her at first. If she was being honest with herself, Lorelei wasn't sure Theo was still totally convinced, but it had helped him when she said she knew what he wanted to talk about, that Dumbledore had all but told her for him.

Platonic soulmates.

None of her friends seemed to even know such a thing existed, but once she branched out and asked Hermione about it, she learned that she wasn't the only one. Hermione had done research on it because Harry had the same thing happen to him, a sort of glitch where his final soulmate letter held two names.

Ginevra Weasley, R.

Ronald Weasley, P.

It was astonishing to hear that someone else had experienced this too, and once she learned that Harry also went to the same place she did, saw Dumbledore, and yet came back to life to defeat Voldemort, her world tipped on its head.

She learned with her friends that most people thought it was a conspiracy, but restricted journals of other wizards and witches with both types of soulmates led them to the truth. Those with both a platonic and romantic soulmate had their soul split in two directions, equally full for each but divided between two people instead of focused solely on one. Horcruxes, the objects and living things Voldemort put pieces of his soul into to achieve immortality, played off of this very idea. A soul divided cannot be held in death until all of the pieces have been returned to them.

It was why she and Harry couldn't die.

It was why she'd had a sense of knowing about the location of the Horcruxes.

It was why Harry was able to withstand being a Horcrux himself without crumbling under the weight of a soul that didn't truly belong to him.

Lorelei hated the idea of being forced to watch both Draco and Theo die before her, but both of them had been comforted to know she would be safe for a long time, no matter what life threw at her going forward. And their peace of mind meant the world to her.

The frayed edge of her final soulmate letter sat pinned up on the corkboard in the entryway, just beside Draco's. She took a few padded steps over to it, touching the bold ink with the tips of her fingers.

Theo Nott, P.

Draco Malfoy, R.

Theo was convinced they were meant to be soulmates, that Draco had been lying to her, when he first received his last soulmate letter. He'd admitted that he didn't want to play the ministry's games, to be tormented by the knowledge of who it could or couldn't be for years, so he never even looked at the letters until the last one. What he found made his stomach bottom out completely. He knew it would devastate Lorelei if she knew—she'd built her world around Draco—and with the war raging, he didn't want to add more fuel to the fire before he truly understood it himself. He'd never been in love with her, but he did love her.

Once he knew that he was meant to the person she trusted most in this world, but not as her lover but as her very best friend, his world righted back on its axis. This made sense to him--there was no one he loved and trusted more than Lorelei, but he'd never seen her through eyes of romantic love. He cared for her, saw her, wanted to protect her, but he didn't look at her the same way Draco did.

It was hard for Draco to accept all of this at first. Lorelei knew a sense of rivalry, of insecurity bloomed in him, based on years of mistreatment from his father, but she showed him through the little moments, through gentle acts, that she chose him. Her relationship with Draco was different than the one she had with Theo.

While she knew Theo would always be there to hold her when her legs threatened to go out from under her, Draco was the one she wanted to let herself fall into. He was the one who made her see the world in all its complexity and its beauty. He was the one she wanted to be her family, with the good and the bad, the brilliant and the ugly. He was hers, and she was his, in a way that she didn't want with anyone else. In a way that was theirs and theirs alone.

The front door creaked open, and she spun, a brilliant smile on her face and the colorful skirts of her dress curling around her bare ankles. Draco's silhouette was framed by the wooden doorway and backlit with sunshine. His blond hair had grown out, falling into his eyes more lately, and Lorelei watched the way it shifted on a cool breeze. His mouth tipped into a genuine smile, taking over his entire face and crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"You're home." She beamed, pushing forward and wrapping her arms around his middle.

He was warm, softer now that his father was gone. Living in the cottage with the wood burning stove, the flowering, colorful garden behind the house, and the lingering smell of vanilla and creme from the puffy pastries Lorelei made each morning, it was the sort of home he'd never had growing up. It was the sort of home he'd needed.

Draco's arms didn't hesitate to come around her, holding her to his chest. His scratchy healer's uniform rubbed against her cheek. The brown paper bags in his palms crinkled with the movement. The warm, cheesy smells of the takeout he'd picked up for them perfuming the foyer. Neither of them cared about the cooling food or the still open doorway or the rough fabric of his healer trainee attire. They were both alive, both safe, both healing from pain they never should have had to carry, and maybe that was the most beautiful thing about their love story. Not the fanfare, not the heroics, not even the intensity of their love.

The most beautiful thing about the story of Lorelei and Draco was that after so much chaos, they could still create a soft life together.