Previously in the Darklyverse: Sirius and Remus adopted orphaned Draco Malfoy and got engaged.

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August 1991: Draco Malfoy

Epilogue

First of all, let's talk about that name he's saddled with. As far as Draco is concerned, it positively drips with all the elitism and pretentiousness that his birth parents stood for. Dad should know—it was another branch of the very same family that saddled him with the name Sirius.

He can understand that he probably wouldn't have been very happy to change his given name when he was only two years old and Dad and Papa had just adopted him, but they could at least have changed his surname. The name Lupin is just as charged in Wizarding Britain as the name Malfoy is, but at least being Remus and Sirius Lupin's son is something Draco can be proud of. Instead, Draco has to carry around with him every day the reminder that his birth father was the Minister of Magic when all that Death Eater crap went down.

Draco doesn't know a ton about the Order of the Phoenix, to be honest. Dad and Papa have told him a little, and he can tell from the way witches and wizards still stare when Draco goes with his parents or Aunt Lily or Aunt Alice into shops and stuff that they still don't have the best reputation. The whole thing is crap, in Draco's opinion. So what if they broke a bunch of laws to save the world? They still, you know, saved the world. You'd think people would be more pleased with them for saving their arses and making all the killing stop.

All Draco knows is that he's proud to be a Lupin, but not a Malfoy. Dad says Draco hero-worshipped his birth father when Draco was a little kid, but it's hard for him to believe it, and he definitely doesn't remember it. His birth mother, on the other hand—Papa didn't know her, and Dad refuses to say even one word against her, but Draco knows she wasn't exactly a saint, either, even if she did switch sides in the end. Dad and Papa, on the other hand—they may have bad reputations, but at least Draco can carry with him the knowledge that he can and should be proud of them, even if nobody outside of the Order agrees.

Anyway, it's not like his parents and their friends are outlaws or anything. Dad takes down baddies every day as Hit Wizards, and Papa's been a model citizen working at Flourish and Blott's ever since the Ministry tore down the anti-werewolf laws that kept him from getting a job. Maybe Aunt Alice and Uncles Frank and Kingsley got blackballed in the Auror Office, but they still have perfectly respectable careers at the Ministry right along with Uncle Arthur, don't they? And Aunt Lily might not ever be able to run for Minister of Magic again like she did before Draco was born, but she's still got a job in the Department of International Magical Cooperation just like she always wanted, hasn't she? Even Uncle Reg is living his best life as a home caregiver over in the United States, where the Healers weren't stupid enough to turn him away just because he didn't have a couple of N.E.W.T.s.

The injustice of the thing rankles at Draco, of course—that nobody sees his family the way he knows they ought to—but it's like Dad and Papa are always telling him: he's just got to remember that not everything is about reputation. Besides, Draco knows the truth, and so do his three best friends in the whole world.

He, Harry, Neville, and Ron all start at Hogwarts next week, and Draco is ready for it. Sure, he'll miss Dad and Papa, but he's equally looking forward to getting to hang out with his best mates without any parents around to tell them off for misbehavior. He hopes they all get into Gryffindor. Maybe they'll even get lucky and have the whole dormitory all to themselves, just the four of them, like Dad and Papa and their friends did when they were at Hogwarts.

He can't actually say this to Dad and Papa, though, because they're still pretty sensitive about their old Hogwarts friends. The thing with Uncle James Draco can understand, sort of—he's dead, and they're not over it yet, even if it happened, like, a whole decade ago. Peter Pettigrew, on the other hand, is still alive and available and living in a sensible flat in London, and Draco doesn't know why Dad and Papa don't just get over themselves and go—do what they've got to do to get closure with him, you know, yell at him or make up with him or whatever. Anything so that they stop living their lives on hold and tiptoeing around every mention of his name.

He kind of wishes they'd be more like Aunts Lily and Alice in that way. Lily certainly seems to be well and over whatever drama happened between her and Snape when they were kids, and Alice has forgiven Pettigrew—even drops by his place for dinner about once a month. For that matter, look at her and Uncle Frank—they're totally functional friends, have put all their old baggage behind them, and he's still good friends with Uncle Kingsley, too, even now that Kingsley and Alice are married.

In any case, he knows he's not going to let the old drama and baggage of his family legacy hold him back. Next week, he's going to march right into Hogwarts with his head held high and prove to every last person in that castle that they can't chase the Lupins or the Order of the Phoenix into irrelevance.

He can't wait.

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END

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A/N: If you've made it this far, thank you SO much for reading. I quite literally can't believe this fic is over after 13 years of working on it lmao so I don't know, maybe I'll be back later to flesh out what happened in the aftermath when the Order first returned to Canada and tried to put their lives back together, or maybe I'll write a spinoff about the kids, but at least for the moment, I'm ready to close this out and work on other projects. Hugs to everyone :3