II


They have a small wedding. Well…it's as small a wedding as they can have, what with all of their friends and families crowding into the small Anglican church to celebrate. They dance together once, mostly because it is tradition for the bride and groom to open the festivities, and she dances with her father and her brother and with a grinning Justin Finch-Fletchley before she has to sit at their table on the dais, worn out and out of breath.

But Percy doesn't need to dance to enjoy this moment; he is content to sit beside her and watch the festivities unfold before them, and to thank their guests for their warm wishes when they come up to greet them. Penny beams up at each one from her chair, her honey-blonde hair curling around her face like an angel's halo, but Percy seems to be the only person to see the way her face tightens with each new visitor. She's getting tired, but to her credit she is trying her best not to show it, and he gently squeezes her hand under the table as Aunt Muriel hobbles up to greet – criticize, more like – the new couple.

When their reception finally ends and they climb the winding staircase to the catcalls of their respective brothers, Percy carries her into the honeymoon suite only to find that their hotel room is buried under layers of flowers and candles and a large, flashing "Congratulations!" banner that spurts out copious amounts glitter and confetti every few minutes. She laughs as they examine the gifts and tricks left by their friends and family, glitter sparkling in her unruly curls, and for some strange reason, he can't imagine that this really is his life.

Percy isn't Charlie, or Bill, or George or Fred or even Ron when it comes to the "art of seduction." Percy isn't handsome or charming; he's uptight and tense, takes far too much satisfaction in being right, and sulks when he's wrong. He knows that Penny could find better men than him – that she deserves a better man than him – but thinking about what not being with her just makes him shudder. Penelope turns to him then, the sparkles in her hair catching the candlelight, and she's kissing him and his shirt is unbuttoned and her dress is gone and he's pressing her against the soft wide mattress and although they've done all this before, it feels...different. Better. Permanent.

She has a bruise on her thigh, fresh and turning a vague shade of purple that makes her wince when he brushes his fingers against it, and she tells him that she was careless as she dressed earlier; bumping into the sharp corner of an end table as she attempted to climb solo into the mountain of tulle and satin that was her wedding dress.

She was Penelope Clearwater when she got it, and the fact that she is now Penelope Weasley makes his head spin, but it's a good kind of feeling…one that Percy hopes will last.


II ½


The next morning, and a few after that, Penelope wakes up with bruises.

Some of them are practically the size of bludgers – a veritable rainbow of purples, blues, and sickly yellows – and they mar the creamy skin of her back, her legs, her breasts; there's a bluish set on her hips that are perfectly shaped like Percy's wide hands, right down to the fingertips.

"Don't worry, darling," she laughs when she realizes why his hands have lingered on her side for far too long, pulling the silk sheet around her body to cover herself as she climbs out of the hotel bed. "It's nothing important. I don't even feel them half the time, and even then they're just a little ugly to look at…nothing more."

"There's nothing ugly about you," Percy says, sitting up in the bed and squinting blindly at the blurry figure standing by the dresser that he assumes is his wife. "Not a single thing."

Penelope smiles then, wide and bright and real, and before he knows it she's back in bed with him and any thoughts Percy had of leaving are soon forgotten. He holds her afterwards when she drifts off to sleep; her head resting on his chest and her breathing slow and even. He is careful not to put too much pressure onto the place where his arm rests against the bare skin of her back, lest she wake up with yet another space of damaged flesh to remember their honeymoon by.

She's so frail, he thinks as she burrows herself closer into the warm pocket of heat his body provides. She's brittle and breakable and ohgod ohgod ohgod I just don't want to hurt her again.