The wedding guests had long since faded into their beds or their hangovers. The music had drifted to a soft hum of wind across the lawn. The sky was thick with stars, a velvet blackness pricked with silver.
Hermione wandered out to the back gardens, still barefoot, holding the hem of her gown in one hand and a half-empty glass of champagne in the other. Her heels had been lost somewhere between the dance floor and the dessert table. She didn't care.
She found Narcissa seated alone on a marble bench beneath the arch of flowering white roses — the same flowers that had lined the aisle, petals now curled with dew and enchantment.
Hermione hesitated.
Narcissa looked up, her posture as graceful as ever. "Come, dear. I don't bite."
Hermione smiled softly and joined her, folding the train of her dress beneath her.
They sat in silence for a long while.
The kind of silence only two women who had truly seen the world could share — both of them older now, both exhausted in ways that weren't always physical.
Finally, Narcissa spoke.
"You looked beautiful today."
Hermione blinked at her in surprise. "Thank you. So did you."
A small smile curled the edges of Narcissa's lips. "You're not what I pictured all those years ago, when Draco first… spoke of you." She tilted her head. "You were fire, and I feared fire. But I see now… it wasn't to burn him. It was to warm him."
Hermione swallowed.
"I was terrified of you," she admitted. "Of your silence. Your eyes. Your judgment."
"You had every right to be."
More silence. Then:
"You know Lucius would never have attended," Narcissa said softly.
"I didn't expect him to."
Narcissa exhaled through her nose. "He believed blood determined destiny. That Draco's marriage to you… was a stain." She turned toward Hermione, and for the first time, her voice trembled. "But I've never seen my son glow the way he does when he's near you. He is no longer bitter. He is no longer cold. And that… is because of you."
Hermione looked away, trying to suppress the sting behind her eyes.
"You should know," Narcissa continued, her voice low, "I once warned him. That if he married you, he would be exiled. That people would look down on him. That it would cost him more than it gave."
Hermione's throat closed around a knot.
"But," Narcissa said, a faint smile touching her lips, "he told me something I will never forget. He said, 'Mother, she made me want to be someone worth the cost.'"
Hermione covered her mouth with a shaky hand.
Narcissa turned to her fully. "And now… I want you to know something too."
Hermione met her gaze.
"I do not just accept you, Hermione. I thank you. For giving my son the love he was too proud to believe he needed. For raising Mia with a gentleness this family never knew. For surviving a world that hated you… and choosing to walk back into it anyway."
Tears spilled over Hermione's cheeks. Narcissa didn't shy away — instead, she took Hermione's hand in her own, warm and trembling.
"You are the strongest woman I know," Narcissa whispered. "And tonight, it was an honor to watch you become my daughter."
Hermione broke.
Sobs wracked her chest as Narcissa pulled her into a careful, motherly embrace — the kind Hermione had never known from her own parents since the war. The kind she hadn't let herself need.
The roses rustled above them. The moon shone down like a silent blessing.
And for the first time, there was no divide.
No war. No bloodlines.
Just love.