Disclaimer: Not mine in any way shape or form.
When she finally left the comfort of the back room she had been hiding in the room had descended into pandemonium. Hermione's mother was shouting, quite loudly at someone Hermione could only assume was the caterer while the florists and decorator were still hurrying around the room.
"And that is why I am never getting married." She heard a snort and turned to find Jesse St. James standing behind her, now dressed in his own costume. He too was wearing wings, black and even larger than her own and she felt for him. His were not, as hers were, feather light and naturally attached. Her shoulders ached with the phantom pain of the thin wires they were attached with. He didn't seem bothered.
She started slightly when he started speaking, realising she'd been staring and quickly fell into her stretches. "Really now? Because the caterer didn't bring enough cold cuts? Seems a bit harsh to me." She smiled. She wasn't sure why.
"No, because this is what my mother calls a 'little get together', if I ever get married it will be massive, things will go wrong, and my mother will end up in prison for murder." She was only half joking. During the brief period she had entertained thoughts of marrying Ron she had often envisioned eloping, possibly to Greta Green or Paris, and then taking an extended honeymoon until at least the public had forgotten about them.
Jesse looked her up and down. "So you're a ballerina?" His eyebrow was raised as she rose into an arabesque, getting a feel for the wings, twisting to avoid them hitting the back of her leg.
She looked over to where Emma Granger was now smiling proudly at her. "Mother always wanted me to be a prima ballerina, father wanted me to be a barrister. I did my best to make both of them happy, but then other things got in the way. I could still be a barrister of course, but the ship has sailed for my mother I'm afraid."
"You stopped training?"
"Formally. I kept dancing, but it dropped too far down my list of priorities. You know the kind of passion required to be a performer, and the time and dedication people put in just to dance in the background. I gave up that dream a long time ago."
"No you didn't."
"What?"
"You still have it, you still want it. There is a fire in your eyes that is captivating. You may think you're too old to start up again, to become something, but you haven't given up. How long ago did you give up classical training?"
"Seven years."
"My point. No one keeps form like this, and more to the point keeps dancing in pointe shoes, for seven years just for fun. Not to mention you clearly kept the eating habits. You have plenty of passion and determination. I can see that and I barely know you."
"Really, because it sounds like you know me all too well. Besides, I was never cut out to be a prima to begin with. For one thing I went through puberty properly and at the appropriate time. The malnutrition wasn't voluntary by the way." It wouldn't do to have rumours of eating disorders milling about before she even moved in.
"Doesn't have to stop you."
"And yet it does. Guess you misjudged my determination huh?"
"I don't think so." He seemed so sure of himself in a way Hermione could never quite manage, even when she knew she was right. "So what captured your attention? What pulled you away from dance?"
"Now now, I can't tell you everything, you'll get bored with me." It was a prospect that displeased her much more than she thought it probably should.
"I doubt that very much." They didn't speak again as people started arriving and the five boys got into position and provided the familiar soundtrack of Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan that her parents had danced around the living room to when she was a child. The boys were all good. Jesse was a born performer. Blaine sang like a dream but he was shy.
When Blaine knocked on her parent's door the following night Hermione had been twirling her wand in her right hand for two hours. She listened to her mother greeting the teenager who somehow managed to convey both excitement and nerves in three short knocks and asked herself for the 28th time that night why there were no obliviators on the way. She tried to convince herself it was some sort of moral imperative and she would do it herself, that she just felt the need to explain what was happening, even if he wouldn't remember. She looked down at him from her perch at the top of the stairs and knew she was lying.
Her father shot her an amused grin as he passed her and noticed her very pointedly not looking at the boy she had invited over who was almost bouncing and looking around the hall, apparently willing her to appear.
"Blaine right? I don't think we had a chance to talk yesterday. John Granger." He shook the boy's hand firmly. "If you're looking for my daughter she's upstairs, feel free to go get her, tell her to come down and set the table." He chuckled as the teen bounded toward the stair and he felt Hermione's glare as she was forced to stand up and pretend she hadn't just been spying on her guest. At one point he'd thought he was going to want to threaten every boy she spoke to, but so far he had gotten the impression that his daughter could crush any one of her love interests without lifting a finger. He had almost stepped in when that Krum boy had asked for her hand in marriage but she had overheard the conversation and had told him in no uncertain terms that she would not be getting married until she was out of school and well into her career, if at all. The memory never failed to make John smile to himself. Emma had even begun to recognise the very slight sadistic twist that particular smile had.
He wondered occasionally how on earth she had managed to keep the boy as a pen pal after that but she seemed to have a way with people. She was never good at making friends, he had spent hours with her crying in his lap at the start of every school year, but when she made them they were very reluctant to lose her, and who could blame them?
Blaine was both infinitely more and less intimidating than the hulking great Bulgarian that was his daughter's first boyfriend. He was clearly at least two years younger than her, and very nervous, not to mention the fact that John could have sworn he saw the boy pick up a spider and set it on a windowsill the previous evening. Unfortunately he seemed to also be the one putting a sweet smile on the face of his daughter. His beautiful, courageous, brilliant, but not at all sweet daughter. John Granger wasn't stupid. He knew what it meant that his daughter didn't even bother trying to hide her wand, and it wasn't hard to understand why it had been in her hand for so long when she clearly wasn't using it. The fact that there were no strange men in orange robes knocking on his door meant that she hadn't called whatever officials she was supposed to contact.
He comforted himself with the thought that the starry eyed boy who was currently looking at his daughter as though she hung the moon was not going to be pressuring her into anything. He didn't bother to contain his laughter as the boy decided to accompany the dishes and cutlery dancing their way to the table on the piano in the corner, belting a song he was fairly certain was from one of the Disney musicals his wife had so wanted Hermione to enjoy as a child.
"So." John started, as his wife and daughter moved into the kitchen. Emma clearly expected him to say something to the boy. "You seem fairly smitten." The boys eyes went from closed in laughter to almost cartoonishly big and entirely round in seconds. That probably wasn't what his wife wanted him to say, but it was fun.
"Hermione's really nice, and really smart, and she's made of magic." The boy blushed and his speech was just barely above a whisper but he didn't hesitate or pause in his answer. "And she watches Dr Who." John laughed loud enough for his wife to poke her head through the door and glare suspiciously at him.
"That boy is hopelessly in love with fairy tales. She'll chew him up and spit him out and she won't even know until she's done it." John is glancing out the window to where Hermione is hugging Blaine goodbye on the drive and Emma looks up from her chemistry journal, smiling at his enthusiasm.
"I'm glad you like him. You'll be disappointed when she brings Jesse home then."
The speed with which he manages to spin around to look at her is more than comical and she chuckles to herself, gently marking the page and setting down her reading on the bedside table, knowing tonight is going to be one of those nights her husband needs to talk. "What? Who?"
She shouldn't make fun really, but he does make it so easy. "Oh you know, the older one of the performers yesterday, they seemed to get on swimmingly." And they had. She liked Jesse. He was really a spectacular singer.
"The one with the curly hair who doesn't do his shirt up?" John's lip curled in obvious disapproval.
"That would be the one."
"Absolutely not." It was sweet how he thought Hermione would give him any kind of say in her love life. He was lucky they had managed to instill sense into her at an early age because by fifteen, when she started dating, she was too far out of their reach for them to be able to do much about any choices she made. Hermione might have humored him about the Krum boy, but only because she already agreed with him.
"Oh give up darling, you wanted her to go to law school, bunch of bastards the lot of them." Emma had been working on Hermione's appreciation of the arts since the moment she first started feeling the urge to throw up in her last year at Oxford, if for no other reason than to avoid any more of the stuffy, akward people her husbands family seemed to consist of. That meant not letting her become, or marry, a barrister.
"Oh like performing arts weirdos are any better. Why can't she find a nice boy?" He was outright pouting now.
"Like Blaine?"
"Yes, one that's…harmless." She chose not to mention that Blaine was probably sixteen and wouldn't stay 'harmless' for long and that sooner or later, dating 'harmless' boys would start to be regarded as cradle robbing. If he wanted to cling to the idea of Blaine's innocence, that was his perogative.
"It all depends who you're comparing them to. Let's not forget they only need to be harmless compared to a girl who rode a dragon out of a bank vault with a stolen piece of an evil wizard's soul." It never failed to put a smile on her face when she thought about the things her daughter was capable of. Thinking about the things she still did on a regular basis tended to wipe the smile away quicker than fast, but the bad-assery (as the boy they had hired for reception would say) that was already in the past was a constant source of pride to Emma, even if she couldn't share it with any of her friends.