The war was over. Good had won and Harry Potter was a hero. After eight long years, Voldemort had been defeated.

Ginny Weasley stood over Draco Malfoy’s grave, two perfect red camellias in her hand. He had been buried, at least, unlike those who had fallen throughout the war. He had survived till the end and, for it, earned a grave with a stone to mark that he had existed in this world.

The cemetery was endless, rows upon rows of the dead who had fallen in the end, or close enough that their bodies could still be found and buried.

The camellias were his favorite; he had told her so once when they had stolen away for several hours. It was a luxury they rarely had, but they had lain together that day and spoken of inconsequential things, as though the world wasn’t tearing itself apart outside their shack.

“Your hair is the color of my mother’s camellias.”

“Hmm?”

“My mother grows camellias in her greenhouse. They’re my favorite. I always thought they were the color of blood, but they’re the exact color of your hair. Whenever I see them now, I think of you.”

She had turned and smiled at him, then lain her head down on his shoulder and slept for a while. It had been a good day, and they hadn’t had many of those.

She placed the camellias on his grave now, and ran her fingers over his name. She leaned in, closed her eyes, and kissed the stone, then stood again and continued to look down at what she had left of him.

“Goodbye Draco.” She would never see him again, she supposed. It was doubtful that, in death, they would be together. Unlike him, the sins she had committed and the murders she had caused in war would not be weighed against her in the end. She sometimes wished they would be.

As she turned to leave, she saw another person in the graveyard, headed toward where she was standing. It was Narcissa Malfoy.

A thousand words flowed through Ginny’s mind and never left her mouth; she was still standing in front of Draco’s grave, it was obvious who she had come to see.

Narcissa’s mouth pinched tight as she drew herself up, preparing to tear Ginny to pieces. Her eyes fell upon the camellias, and she stopped. She stared at them for several seconds before looking back at Ginny.

When Narcissa finally met her gaze, Ginny was taken aback by the pity she had never thought to see in her eyes. She was reminded suddenly that Narcissa, too, had lost her lover in the war and Lucius Malfoy’s body lay somewhere in a sea of unmarked graves. Now, she knew that her son had loved, and it was another thing this war had stolen from them.

“I’m sorry,” Ginny whispered.

Narcissa held her gaze steadily and nodded her head slightly, “As am I.” Then, she drew herself up again and adopted the regal pose that had once come naturally to her as she walked to her child’s grave.

No one ever understood why Ginny Weasley often visited the Death Eaters’ grave yard in the coming years, or why she continued on after the war as an auror. Her father asked her if she wasn’t sick of violence and her mother asked her if she never dreamed of marrying or having children. No one understood that her dreams had died in the war, or that the violence was the only way she could sometimes remember them.

And when, not so many years later, she died, the two perfect red camellias which had lain undisturbed on Draco Malfoy’s grave for years finally withered, turned brown, and died with her.