"I'm not fussed, actually," said Hermione.
"Well, you should be. Go on, then," said Ginny, brandishing a jar of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion at her. Hermione didn't take it.
"My hair is fine the way it is," Hermione snapped. "Besides," she said, fluffing out the bushy curls, "no one's going to be paying any attention to me."
"If by 'no one' you mean Ron, then you're probably right, said Ginny dryly.
Hermione glowered, but Ginny just laughed.
"Phlegm and her faux-veela family will be flapping about like pale, overgrown moths. If Ron can manage to remain standing through the ceremony with the rest of the groomsmen, I'll be amazed. But that's no reason not to try."
Hermione glanced at herself in the mirror and noticed that she was dangerously close to pouting. She was muckle-mouthed and wide-eyed and looked like exactly the sort of person that she knew she was; one who'd come top of the class every term. One who never took her nose out of a book.
Ginny swooped down in Hermione's moment of hesitancy.
"Just this once," she cooed. "There certainly won't be a chance to smarted up once you're all off hunting for the rest of the Horcruxes." She said this last part darkly and in a rush, as though she had not actually meant to say it at all.
Hermione could see Ginny's reflection in the mirror and thought that the younger girl looked older than she ought. We're all of us older than we ought to be, Hermione thought. In her seventeen years, Hermione had done far more than excel in school. For the past six years she'd helped her two best friends, Ron Weasley and the infamous Harry Potter as they struggled to keep the darkest wizard in ages from regaining power. Eventually Voldemort had returned to full strength, and they had done what they could to prolong the inevitable.
But this summer the end was finally here. After Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour's wedding, Harry was setting off to finish the work he had begun with Dumbledore: locate the remaining objects housing severed pieces of Voldemort's soul and destroy them. And then destroy Voldemort himself. Hermione and Ron were taking this final journey along with Harry; they'd been with him for most of the way, and they'd end it together.
Ginny would not be going. Her mother insisted that Ginny return to Hogwarts this year, but even if Ginny had been of age and could have done as she liked, Hermione knew that Harry, who cared very deeply about the only Weasley girl, would never have consented to take her along.
It was very possible that after the wedding, Ginny would never see Harry again. We might none of us make it, Hermione thought. And though she banished the thought from her mind immediately, it was that fleeting realization that made up her mind. We might all die, and I have one more chance to feel pretty. I might as well take advantage.
"Oh, fine!" Hermione groaned as she snatched the potion and began to douse her hair with the stuff. The grin returned to Ginny's freckled face.
"Excellent!" she said. "I've got to dash and get ready myself, now." Ginny was a bridesmaid in the ceremony, along with Fleur's younger sister Gabrielle. "I'll see you afterward," she called and she turned with a swish of long, red hair and disappeared down the hall.
"See you," Hermione echoed vaguely. Her scalp began to tingle as the Sleekeazy Potion set in. She watched in the mirror as her flyaway hair gradually smoothed down, eventually falling in soft ripples about her shoulders. The potion did make a difference, she had to admit.
Hermione gazed into the mirror for a bit, sucking in her cheeks, and attempting to arch her eyebrows the way Parvati often had a trick of doing when passing Firenze, the divination professor, in the castle halls.
"That's right, dear, hold the chin a bit higher now. Yes, that's what the boys like!"
For a moment, Hermione did begin to raise her chin, and then realized that the mirror had been talking to her, as mirrors in the wizarding world often did.
Instantly she returned her chin to its proper place.
"Oh, rubbish!" she said, turning abruptly. She left the room in a huff.
"Shoulders back, dear!" the mirror called after her.
The wedding was a large one held in the backyard of the Burrow, with all the Weasley children in the bridal party. Fred and George, to the shock of all, behaved admirably and Molly blubbered through the entire ceremony. Percy was not in attendance.
Hermione sat beside Harry and felt decidedly out of place. The seats on the lawn were filled both with silvery-blonde heads and red ones. Hermione did her best not to watch Ron too closely, but she couldn't help but notice that he wore the glazed look of one entranced by the veela-spell.
It was impossible to be truly light-hearted. Life goes on, even in dark times, but the joy in the air was undercut by apprehension. Bill still had visible scars on his face and arms after being attacked by Fenrir Greyback, a savage werewolf, in a battle last year. And although Fleur looked stunning as always, her face, which was typically haughty, was now changed. She was fiercely somber. Bill's attack had touched a place deep within her, and she was forever altered.
Following the ceremony there was music and feasting. The yard was lit with dozens of twinkling fairy lights and the wooden picnic tables covered in elaborate silver cloths sagged beneath the weight of Molly's admirable cooking.
Hermione stuck to the outskirts of the party, a glass of pumpkin juice in hand, and scolded herself whenever she caught herself deliberately standing beneath the lights to make her hair glisten and her skin glow.
"Rubbish!" she muttered as she moved into shadow for a third time in quick succession. "I won't stand here preening like a peacock, waiting for Ron to notice me!"
She put her half-empty cup down on the end of a table with such force that some of the juice sloshed out over the brim.
With her mouth in a thin line and her hands clenched in fists by her side, she flounced off into the midst of the crowd, looking more like her typical Know-It-All self than Ginny would have deemed acceptable for one last night of whirlwind romance.
Hermione found Harry easily enough. He was skulking around the dance floor several meters away from Ginny, watching her hungrily while she greeted her relatives.
"You could ask her to dance, you know," said Hermione pointedly as she sidled up beside him.
Harry grunted but didn't take his eyes off Ginny.
"I don't suppose you've seen Ron anywhere, have you?"
Harry grunted again. Hermione let out an exasperated sigh. Finally Harry turned to her.
"What?" he asked.
"You haven't heard anything I've just said, have you?"
Rather than answer the question, Harry turned back toward Ginny and said, "Look at her! She hasn't spoken to me once all night."
"Well, Harry, you did break it off with her at the beginning of the summer."
"What's that got to do with anything?" he demanded. "She knows why—"
"Yes, yes," Hermione interrupted wearily. "It's for her own protection. Of course she knows that, Harry, but it's still difficult."
"It's only ruddy difficult because she isn't talking to me!"
"I think you should ask her to dance. She'll be really pleased."
"No," said Harry flatly.
"Well you might as well dance with me, then, and make yourself useful."
Harry blanched a bit. "I can't dance with you," he said. "Ron'd kill me."
"As if he'd notice," said Hermione darkly.
Although she had feigned ignorance, Hermione knew exactly where Ron was and what he was doing. He was across the yard surrounded by a gaggle of Fleur's younger cousins, all of them part-veela from the look of it. He was grinning idiotically and flexing muscles he certainly did not have while the girls tittered with laugher around him.
Beside her, Harry erupted with disbelief.
"What?" he cried.
It took only moments to discover what had upset him. Ginny was out on the middle of the dance floor with her arms twined around the neck of a tall, handsome boy who looked suspiciously French.
Before Hermione could chide Harry for his stubbornness he had grabbed her wrist and lugged her out to the dance floor.
"What are you doing?" Hermione hissed. "I thought you said you couldn't dance with me!"
"Yeah, well," said Harry shortly. "I'm having a bit of an emergency at the moment."
Harry steered her awkwardly over toward Ginny and the tall boy.
"Harry, don't be ridiculous!" said Hermione. "You are not going to use me to make Ginny jealous. It's your own fault she's dancing with someone else. I told you to go and ask her, but you were too busy being a prat!"
"What did you to your hair?" Harry said savagely.
"W-what?" Hermione lost her footing in her surprise.
"Your hair," said Harry, peering at it. "It's different. You've done something to it."
"Just a bit of Sleekeazy's," Hermione said, trying to sound nonchalant and failing utterly. "Don't you like it?"
"No," said Harry, bluntly.
"N-no?" Hermione faltered.
"Not at all."
Hermione just noticed that the slow waltz playing when they had begun dancing had since ended, and the song playing currently was rather fast, and yet she and Harry were still wound around one another, swaying gently side to side.
She gently pushed away from the circle of his arms. She let out a little laugh that sounded false and hollow even to her own ears and told him that she rather liked the effects of the hair potion, and besides, it was only for one night.
"Ron won't like it either, I bet," said Harry.
"Yeah, I bet," agreed Ginny, who had just stepped up beside them. She did not look happy.