There was that whole "You just used a Muggle dark ritual to permanently sacrifice your ability to believe in blood purism" bit.
True, but he was also a lot less useful - Voldemort intended to take the gloves off and have the entire Ministry either dead or imperiused within the next 24 hours, meaning Lucius's political connections suddenly mattered a whole lot less.
Hm. Remember how memory charms, while removing the memories, don't necessarily remove the emotions of the erased moments?
Draco at the start of the chapter:
The feeling of emptiness that filled him up was so profound that it left no room even for pretended courtesy.
Everyone was dead.
Draco after obliviation:
The feeling of emptiness that filled him up was so profound that it left no room even for lies.
Everyone was dead.
Everyone was dead, and it had all been futile from the beginning.
Harry has, throughout the story, demonstrated a tendency to lecture people when simpler words were far more likely to get results. He is... not a good communicator.
He's about Harry's age and Narcissa was disappeared before Voldy got kaboomed, so, yeah.
Kind of glad Draco wouldn't give an answer to Harry - it's sad, but also entirely realistic. Would have strained my suspicion of disbelief if he'd just accepted to forgive and forget.
As for Narcissa... Sweet vindication. ...And then a gutpunch as she speaks her husband's name.
Hm. To be honest, I'd hoped that this chapter would include a scene of Harry explaining events (or at least a version closer to the truth) to McGonagall, Snape and Moody, since it seemed unlikely they would fall for his melodramatic psychic display. (And because keeping secrets has NOT worked well so far, as Harry recently realized.)
It does cast a different light on that time he asks Harry why Voldemort does the things he does.
So, apparently, the final exam question was "What would Taylor Hebert do?".
OK, that one got me to chuckle out loud.
Hm. So far, while I've been enjoying these epilogue chapters, it feels like there's not ENOUGH of them. I'm not sure the story can be given a satisfying conclusion with just one more chapter.
...Of course, in theory the chapter can be 100,000 words long, but...