Ginny smiled up at the ceiling of her old bedroom, already awake. Her mother would come in soon to rouse her, not yet knowing that she had been woken up by the early morning sun streaming through her window and the pleasant knowledge that she would be married that day. All of the preparations had been taken care of, her mother had seen to that, and she knew that the day would unfold as planned, so she lay in bed undisturbed and unworried. Ginevra Potter, she thought with a bright smile, excitement crushing over her in a wave.
A light knock came, preceding the appearance of her mother's smiling face around the door jam. "Hello, Ginny dear," she cooed as she had ever since the healer had placed the squalling infant Ginny in her arms. The thought made her eyes water, her youngest child, marrying.
"Hello," Ginny smiled back, noticing the tears that her mother was blinking rapidly away. It made a lump rise in her throat, seeing her mother like that and knowing that these brushed away tears were only the first of several that day.
"Excited?" Her mother pushed, walking in and perching on the edge of her daughter's bed, brushing Ginny's red hair off of her forehead, "Nervous?"
Ginny nodded, "Excited, mostly. It feels like it's been a long time in coming," she reflected, smiling. Even though she was only twenty-one and her husband-to-be only twenty-two, it did feel like she had been waiting for this day to come for too long.
Her mother nodded, "Too soon, for me, dearie." She waved away her daughter's objections before Ginny had time to speak them, "I know, I know. It's Harry, and I love him and I love you two together and I know that you'll be fine but you're my youngest and—" her voice cracked and she patted her eyes with a handkerchief that she pulled out of the pocket of her apron. She laughed shakily, "Not even seven yet, and I'm already crying. That's enough of that, isn't it, hmm? We have a wedding to get ready for."
With that she patted her daughter's cheek and got up, gesturing for the younger woman to follow after her.
After making sure that Ginny and her small bridal party (Hermione and Luna) were fed, Mrs. Weasley left the burrow with her young adoptive grandson Teddy on her hip and large batch of hangover help potion. She arrived at number 12, Grimmauld Place shortly after, having disapperated nearby. She let herself in, knowing that nobody inside would be awake, and deposited Teddy on a couch in the living room opposite her own passed-out husband. She made a note to speak to him later, but for now she had more important things to do.
She knocked on the door of the master bedroom, and receiving no reply, entered. There she saw both her youngest son, Ron, and the groom, Harry asleep, fully clothed and above the covers. She rolled her eyes, and walking inside, saw that Neville Longbottom also lay on the ground by the foot of the bed, an empty bottle a few inches from his outstretched hand.
She prodded Harry rather ruthlessly in the shoulder and watched, amused, as he struggled with waking, mumbling,"Just go, Ginny, I'll see you when I get home." She poked him again, harder, and he opened his eyes, intent upon yelling at his girlfriend for being so mean to him, when he realized that the foggy image before him wasn't quite the right shape to be Ginny. He reached for his glasses on the bedside table and pushed them onto his face, his head pounding.
"Mrs. Weasley," he groaned, rubbing his temples. He glanced around, and seeing Ron's form beside him, his confusion didn't abate. "Oh, my head."
"I'm sure," she replied dryly, a smile barely turning up the corners of his mouth. "My sons seem to have that effect on people."
A thought seemed to occur to Harry as he listened to Mrs. Weasley speak, "Where's Teddy?"
Teddy had stayed at The Burrow the night previous, at Mrs. Weasley's prodding. She had known better than Harry had where that night was going to end up for him and her sons, and had decided that Teddy should have no part in it, even as a witness. "Downstairs, sweetie," she replied, waving away his concerns as her heart swelled slightly at his worry. He was taking to the whole "parenting" thing better than anyone had expected when he had told Andromeda the year previous that he wanted to take Teddy on fulltime. She had known that he would do fine, and was quite proud of the fact that he was, in fact, doing quite well. "He's still asleep, actually, I just left him on the couch, with my husband." That being said, she poked her son in the shoulder with her wand, asking conversationally as she woke him, "Where are my other sons?"
Harry shrugged, feeling nauseous, "I have no idea." There were more than enough bedrooms in the house to accommodate all of them, "Percy went home sometime last night. I remember that."
She rolled her eyes, shaking Ron roughly, who squinted before waking fully, complaining of his head. "There's hangover-help downstairs, dear," she said to Harry, moving to shake Neville rather roughly from his sleep on the floor.
"Why did you come over anyway?" He asked, sitting up with a great deal of effort. "Not that I don't appreciate it," he added, seeing her eyes swivel up to him.
"I wanted to be sure that you lot got up and moving on time," she explained as Neville woke with a great deal of grumbling, "I thought that this might be what I found."
"I did set an alarm," Harry mumbled, standing and toddling to the door. Checking his watch, he saw that they still had an hour left before the alarm that he had set would have gone off. Clearly, Mrs. Weasley thought that getting prepared for a wedding took longer than Harry had figured.
"Mhmm," Mrs. Weasley replied, nudging Neville again, "Yes, perhaps, but getting you lot moving will take more than that, I'm sure."
Harry nodded, and feeling the pain that began ricocheting off the sides of his skull immediately regretted it. Beside him, Ron lurched for the door and could be heard running towards the bathroom down the hall. Harry would have chuckled if he was in a better position to do so.
Ten minutes later Harry, Ron, Neville, George, Bill and Charlie all sat around the scrubbed wooden table in the basement kitchen of number twelve grimmauld place, all nursing rather rough hangovers. Usually, Mrs. Weasley would have left them to suffer, but being that there was a wedding that needed to go on, she poured them each liberal amounts of hangover help before bustling around the kitchen, quickly preparing breakfast. Kreacher stood in the shadows of the kitchen, trying to be helpful, but still unsure of himself around the ever-expanding Weasley clan. The few times that they had all been around since Harry's return to the house he had been awkward and had difficulty keeping from his old habits. Harry had told him, repeatedly, that he was not to call anyone a blood traitor, and that if it came to the point where he absolutely had to say something insulting, that he was just to leave the room. So, when any of the Weasleys were around (except Ginny and Ron who he was quite accustomed to) he tended to lurk upstairs.
Teddy wandered into the kitchen a few minutes later, followed by a drowsy, flustered looking Mr. Weasley. Teddy looked around the table, and seeing his usual chair occupied by George, simply walked over to Harry and crawled into his lap, the four-year-old too tired to be embarrassed by his affectionate nature. Harry swallowed the rest of his hangover help and grimaced, it tasted foul but he quickly felt the effects of it spreading through him, and perked up noticeable afterwards.
Mrs. Weasley put a plate down in front of George, who glanced at the eggs and bolted for the bathroom. They all tried to politely ignore his puking noises, though Ron, now fully recovered because of his mother's skill with household potions, snickered quite a bit. Mr. Weasley looked like he might follow in George's footsteps until his wife pressed a glass of potion into his hand with a tight smile. "Drink a bit too much, dear?" She asked sweetly.
"Maybe," he returned her smile, drinking the potion quickly, "I'm not quite as… resilient as I used to be."
George returned to the table and drank his glass of potion in one gulp before sitting down again and pushing his eggs away, to be dealt with later, and putting his head back on the table with a dull moan. Teddy tugged on Harry's sleeve and asked, "Is Uncle George sick?" He sounded very concerned, George was Teddy's second favorite uncle, right after Ron. He always snuck him sweets and let him run amuck in the shop.
George looked up at Teddy, his complexion clearing up, "Getting better, bud. Never drink."
Teddy looked at him, wide-eyed and nodded. He took every word of what his red-headed sort of uncles said as law. Harry laughed and tickled the toddler, who squealed and giggled, writhing around on his godfather's lap as Mrs. Weasley set a plate in front of the toddler and looked at the pair affectionately. She was so happy that he was finally becoming a real part of the family. But glancing around the table at all of her men, well most of her men (Percy had gone home to his and Audrey's flat and wouldn't come back until later in the day) she knew that Harry had always been part of the family, ever since the first time that he had walked in her door. The thought made her misty-eyed again.
"Oh, mum!" Ron exclaimed, spying his mother's impending tears. "It's not even eight yet!" The rest of the table swiveled their eyes to look at the teary woman, who was clutching a wooden spoon to her chest and looking quite like a mess.
"Oh, shut up, Ronald!" She said with a chuckle, "I'm allowed to be a bit emotional today." She cleared her throat, and in a much steadier voice she began reading a list of chores to be done by the men present before the ceremony was to begin. There were a series of groans from the men at varying intervals as the work was divvied out, all of it was work to be done in the yard of the burrow, last minute setting up. No one was to go inside while the women were still preparing. "And the tent people will be by the burrow in about an hour. Arthur you need to be there when they arrive," she glanced over the list again, trying to see if she had neglected anything. "And you must all be an hour early to the ceremony, for photos, and be entirely presentable."
Ron looked at Harry and Neville in astonishment, throughout the long list of chores none of their names had been called. "Well, that's good luck, isn't it?"
"Ron," Mrs. Weasley said in a tone of mock disapproval, "You do have a job. You three," she pointed to Ron, Neville and Harry, "Are in the wedding, that means that you have to be there. You're job is to get there, all of you, in one piece, and with him," she gestured to little Teddy, now busily eating his godfather's breakfast, "in tow."
"Wait, wait, wait," George said, now feeling much better, "does that mean that we," he gestured to the rest of the table, "Don't have to be there? If we didn't show up, you would just go on with the whole thing?"
"Well," Mrs. Weasley responded, with a look on her face that dared him to name something she wouldn't do to see her youngest safely down the aisle that day, "your father has to be there too, doesn't he? He's walking your sister down the aisle."
With that she kissed each of the men on the scalp, bending a little to afford her husband a chaste kiss on the lips, and then quickly flooed home to make sure that the women were on track.
"Blimey," George said in a revelatory tone, "You're marrying my baby sister today, aren't you?"
Harry laughed, "I wasn't keeping it a secret."
"No, I know," George said in a serious mood that they had rarely seen since Angelina had entered his life, "It's just… different. She's our only sister, you know, I don't know how I feel about handing her over to a specky git like you." The last bit was tacked on to add some levity to the statement, but it felt forced.
"Well," Harry said, standing up with Teddy balanced expertly on his hip, "I suppose you should have mentioned that a while ago. It's a bit late to call everything off, don't you think?"
This elicited a few chuckles from around the table but Mr. Weasley shook his head solemnly, "Don't let my wife hear you even joking about that." Harry shook his head, waving his wand to collect the plates in midair and depositing them in the sink behind him, Teddy watching in awed delight.
"Harry," Teddy said, quite seriously, "You and Ginny are getting married today?" He stumbled over his r's quite noticeably and Harry kept a straight face with difficulty, adjusting Teddy on his hip, the toddler reached up to clamp his hands around his godfather's neck as he moved, so that he was less jostled.
"Yes," Harry told him, leaning against the sink where the dishes were washing themselves. "Remember the rehearsal the other day? It's going to be just like that, except for real this time." The toddler nodded again, very solemnly.
"And I'm going to hold the rings?" He sounded excited and perhaps a bit nervous. They had been over this a few times before, and Harry knew that Teddy took his responsibility very seriously.
"If you think you can," he told Teddy as George and Mr. Weasley passed him, both patting his shoulder before continuing on to floo home. "I can always have Ron do it, I suppose, but he wouldn't look nearly as good in the photos with Victoire."
Ron snorted, reaching for a muffin from a basket in the middle of the table and taking a large bite, "That's true enough. Bit of a height difference isn't there?"
Teddy nodded again, "I can do it, Harry."
Harry chuckled, setting Teddy down on the counter and looking the toddler in the eye, "I know you can, Ted. In a few minutes, I'm going to give you a bath and you are going to stay clean all day."
"All day?" He asked, looking up at his godfather with large eyes. Clearly he had underestimated his ring-bearer duties.
"Yes, we want to look nice for Ginny, right?" Harry asked, knowing that this was exactly the right question. Harry might be Teddy's favorite person, and his grandmother might be a close second but Ginny definitely ranked in the top five. He would do anything to garner her approval and having been the object of her disapproval before knew that he didn't want to disappoint her. He nodded quite rapidly.
"Don't worry, mate," Ron said to Teddy as the remaining Weasley brothers began to slowly drift out of the room, calling goodbyes, "I need to stay clean all day too."
"Don't know how you'll manage," Harry noted solemnly as he saw Charlie out the door. The remaining men laughed, as sunlight poured in through the high lightwell beside the sink.