Chapter 27

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or NCIS or any of their characters. I do however own this story, I wrote it and I do NOT give permission for anyone to post it anywhere else. If you want to share it post a link.

-o0o-

Hades was amused to find out that in the wizarding world the public marriage ceremony was largely for show the true bonding between the couple could occur in private as there were several rituals where the vows didn't require witnesses. "So we can have a muggle wedding then exchange vows in private and register the marriage with the bank" Hadrian excitedly told his fiancé.

"What are the vows?" Tim asked.

"It depends on the couple and what they want from the marriage, from what I've read it sounds a lot like you can vow whatever you want. Traditionally that was love honour and obey forsaking all others but it doesn't have to be.

"I don't think I'd want to promise to obey you" Tim said quietly.

Hadrian grinned, "That's okay I wouldn't promise to obey you either. What do you feel comfortable promising? Remember that magic won't let you change your mind and break your vows."

Tim looked through the book. "I like this one, what do you think?" he asked passing over the book.

"I love it but that's a lot to promise Tim. You don't have to promise me that much" Hadrian said awed by the depth of commitment Tim wanted to make.

"It feels right" Tim replied.

"Yeah" Hadrian agreed. "It does. Did you look at the actual ceremonies?"

"I was more interested in the vows but I can say I don't want to use the druid ceremony" Tim replied, referring to an old ceremony where the marrying couple consummated their marriage while the druids stood in a circle around them reciting druid blessings. "Certainly not if I'm going to invite my team, friends or family."

Hadrian laughingly agreed. "Who do you want to invite?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, not my family except maybe my grandmother Penny and perhaps Sarah, the others would cause a scene if they agreed to come at all. Gibbs and perhaps Ziva, Tony, Ducky, Jimmy and Abby. What about you?"

"Just Teddy" Hadrian replied a little sad that he couldn't invite his friends.

"You haven't made any friends since you've been here?" Tim asked worriedly.

"I have friendly acquaintances but nobody important other than you" Hadrian replied smiling. "I'm a little disappointed that I can't invite my best friends from home but it isn't possible."

"None of them would keep your location a secret?" Tim asked.

"Kingsley and Robbards both would though they're more mentors than a friends, and Neville would but his wife wouldn't and he won't come without her. Likewise, I think Hermione would keep my secret if she could but she couldn't come without telling Ron where she was going and I wouldn't trust him not to tell his Mum and his sister. Ron's incredibly homophobic and he and Ginny gave me the impression that the rest of the wizarding world would be too, or perhaps they just wanted me to believe it was so I wouldn't consider dating or marrying a man. I don't know how any of the others would react to me marrying you and I don't want to risk our wedding day being marred by prejudice and hatred. Neville and Hannah would never manage to pass for muggles either, not with how observant Gibbs is."

"Tony and Ziva are observant too" Tim agreed. "But that goblin we spoke to didn't have any problems with you marrying a man, he said our children could inherit so maybe the wizarding world isn't as homophobic as you thought it was."

"No those inheritance traditions predate the male pregnancy spell by hundreds of years. It wouldn't have crossed their minds to exclude children carried by a man" Hadrian said sighing.

"So we need to have a completely mundane ceremony if you're team mates are present, what about this one for the magical ceremony. I checked with the goblins. It's legal though not widely known and we could do it ourselves."

Tim read it though. "This would be every parent's nightmare" he said.
"You have to truly mean every word for it to work but yeah, in a society that arranges marriages for their children at birth like the pure bloods do it would be a nightmare" Hadrian agreed then grinned. "Maybe I should send it to someone who could pass it along to the students." Anything that interfered with the old families maintaining their belief in pureblood supremacy was worth it in his opinion though this would create a lot more problems for the students involved than most of them would realise.

"If we choose this one we could do it tonight or tomorrow and then wait until after the baby's born for the mundane ceremony if you like. That way we won't have to hurry through the planning before your pregnancy starts to show" Tim suggested.

"There's a charm that can be placed on clothes to protect and hide a pregnancy. In fact, in wizarding Britain it's considered terribly crass to appear visibly pregnant in public even for women" Hadrian replied. "The problem as I see it is finding a date either before or after the baby is born, that you can be certain you and the team won't be working to hold the wedding on without telling your big boss so he could schedule you off."

"We're guaranteed to be off the weekend after Christmas until New Year's Day if you think we can organise a wedding that quickly" Tim said.

"You'd be surprised how quickly things can be organised with magic, house elves and an unlimited budget" Hadrian said smirking.

"So we need to decide what we want so the elves can get started. Do you want a civil commitment ceremony here in DC somewhere or a legal wedding in Boston?"

"The idea of being legally married appeals to me. I know we'd be married in your world but I'd like to be married in the mundane world as well" Tim replied. "I don't care if it's a full ceremony or a quick trip to the courthouse there doesn't seem much point if it's not legal. Are you sure we can get married in Boston without being residents of Massachusetts though?"

"My family have been paying housing taxes in Massachusetts for the last two hundred years, I've been paying them since I was one. I own a house there that makes me a resident in my eyes and I can always confundus the clerk if they don't agree" Hadrian declared.

"Okay Boston it is" Tim agreed smiling. "What sort of ceremony do you want?"

"I don't really care, something fairly small and intimate. I'm not at all religious so a secular service would suit me though I'm happy to use religious marriage rites if that's important to you. What sort of ceremony do you want?"

"Something that doesn't make the newspapers. Gay marriage is still pretty new so if we do something too extravagant then it will probably attract press attention" Tim replied. "I'm not religious either. It's the marriage itself that I want the party part of the wedding isn't important to me."

"Do you want to go and see the house in Boston to see if having something at home is possible? It will be too cold to be outside and I'm not sure how big the house is, though the taxes indicate something fairly expensive" Hadrian suggested.

"That might be a good way to keep it private" Tim agreed. "It's a pity we can't get married here in the ballroom."

"Please don't say that in front of Quincy or the elves or they'll try to find a way to transport the whole house to Massachusetts for the wedding" Hadrian begged.

Tim laughed.

"I'll go to the bank and get the keys tomorrow and we can go on Saturday if you don't have a case" Hadrian suggested. "You can have your first experience of portkey travel."

"How are we going to get everyone there for the wedding, it's a six-hour drive to Boston and we can't portkey my team and I don't feel comfortable asking them all to pay for their flights" Tim asked mentally reviewing his guest list.

"I can pay for the flights or maybe charter a plane once we know numbers" Hadrian said casually.

"Gibbs, Tony, Ziva, Abby, Ducky and Jimmy and Penny" Tim listed.

"What about your sister Sarah?" Hadrian asked.

"I don't know if I can trust her not to tell Mom and Dad" Tim said thoughtfully.

"I could spell the secret so she literally can't tell them" Hadrian offered. "Though that would mean nobody could tell anyone except us."

"So nobody could tell the director?" Tim asked.

"Yeah but I was talking about just our wedding" Hadrian said thinking hard. "I could make our whole relationship a secret but it wouldn't affect anyone who already knows so don't rely on it. The problem is that Gibbs would notice if he couldn't tell someone about the wedding and would question it."

"He wouldn't try to tell anyone if I asked him not to" Tim said.

"No but I'm fairly sure the others would notice too and the last time I spelled a secret it took less than twenty-four hours for the first person I told to realise they couldn't blab."

"Your ex-fiancé?" Tim asked tipped off by the look on Hades' face.

"Yeah and she got really pissed off that I spelled her instead of trusting her in spite of the fact she proved she couldn't be trusted" Hadrian added disgustedly.

"More than a little hypocritical" Tim retorted.

"I know this isn't very romantic but do you want to go shopping for rings together?" Tim asked. "Or would you prefer me to choose a ring and propose?"

Hadrian smiled. "There's a lot of family rings in my vaults if you want to look there first. I'll understand if you don't like any of them they're probably really old fashioned."

"We can look but I kind of like the idea of matching rings and most of the ring sets in your vault will probably be male-female sets" Tim replied.

"Yeah I like the idea of matching rings too. I haven't really looked though the rings in the vault but you're probably right. Do you have a jeweller in mind?" Hadrian said.

"I've never gone looking for engagement rings before" Tim replied. "You're the one with experience. Did you give Ginny a family ring?"

"No she wanted something new" Hadrian replied. "Now I realise it might have been because using my family rings wold make me the dominant partner in spite of her blood being purer. And a lot of the women's engagement rings would be spelled to make her completely faithful, not just sexually, until the marriage vows."

"And you want me to wear one of these rings?" Tim asked surprised.

"Not without getting someone to investigate what charms are on it" Hadrian said hurriedly. "I wouldn't trick you into something like that. We can get something new if you're worried."

"I'm not worried about you trying to control me, how about you have a look through your vault when you go to get the keys and I'll take a look if you find something you like that you think is safe for me" Tim suggested.

"We should look for a celebrant too" Tim said looking on line at celebrants in the Weston area of Boston. "They spoke to several over the phone and made an appointment Sunday morning with the two they liked best.

"Book us a room for Saturday night I don't know whether the house will be habitable" Hadrian suggested while Tim was still on the computer.

"Can't we just portkey home and go back Sunday morning?" Tim asked.

"If we really wanted to but I think you'll be glad not to after you try it" Hadrian replied.

Hadrian used his time-turner to repeat part of the day on Friday so he could spend hours in his vaults looking through the jewellery. Having put off doing anything more than a cursory tour through the vaults when he learned of his inheritance after the war, he was excited about what he might find. He'd taken a tip from muggle law enforcement's handling of crime scenes and Dumbledore's final illness and was wearing latex gloves to make sure he didn't trigger any curses. Tim was right that most of the matching rings were heterosexual sets but he did find a couple of male rings he liked and wanted to show Tim. Several of them felt Dark even through the gloves and he put them aside to be assessed by the curse-breakers and potentially destroyed to protect the generations to come.

"Did you find anything interesting in your vault?" Tim asked.

"There were only two potential ring sets I liked. The curse breakers said there are protection charms on the rings but nothing that would restrict your personal choices in any way. This one's a replica of the Potter head of house ring and is about four hundred years old and I'm not sure exactly why it was made, perhaps the original ring was lost for a time or someone other than the true heir wanted to pass themselves off as the head of house. I got the Potter family diaries from that era so I'm going to read through and try to find out the story. The other set is a mix of gold, rose gold and platinum woven into a Celtic knot."

"Let's see them then" Tim said interrupting Hadrian's nervous rambling.

Hadrian handed the rings over and took the disillusionment off his head of house ring. "Feel free to tell me if you don't like either of them. You'll have to look at it on your hand for the rest of your life."

Tim dismissed the Celtic knot ring as looking a bit too girly and difficult to keep clean and not catch on things, and looked down at the exquisitely detailed gold ring with the large blood red ruby. Hades had said it was a copy but it was still 400 years old and one of the largest stones he'd seen set in a ring. "It must be worth an absolute fortune" he said in awe.

"Don't worry about that. The charms on it make it nearly impossible to damage or lose. Do you like it? Is it too big? Would it get in the way as you draw your gun? I won't be upset if you want something more simple. It is a bit much. It took me a while to get used to the weight of my head of house ring and I wear it disillusioned most of the time. I just wanted you to have the choice of it if you wanted it."

Tim slipped it onto his finger and then went and got his gun and holster out of the safe practicing drawing his weapon several times. "It doesn't get in the way of my gun" he said, he then moved to his desk and typed for a moment before grabbing a note pad and writing himself a note. It doesn't get in the way at all. I like it Hades. It's uniquely you. I'd be happy to wear this ring if that's what you want. But you already wear your head of house ring. Don't you want a wedding ring too?"

"This ring is a magical composite of all my head of house rings. I can separate out the Potter ring and wear it on the left hand" Hadrian said taking the ring off and showing Tim how as soon as he wasn't wearing it, it became six separate rings one almost identical to the one Tim was still wearing. "When I'm wearing it I can choose which ring it looks like."

"Did your father wear that ring?" Tim asked.

"No" Hadrian said regretfully. "My Grandparents died only weeks before my parents did and we were already in hiding. Dad couldn't get to the bank to claim his inheritance and become head of house Potter. My Grandfather wore it and his father and so on. I'm the nineteenth Lord Potter to wear this ring, well one of these rings."

"It's lucky it fits" Tim commented, looking at the ring sitting perfectly on the fourth finger of his left hand.

"It has a sizing charm on it. It will fit any finger you put it on" Hadrian replied.

Tim pulled it off and tried it on his other fingers watching the ring resize. "That's great. Can you apply it to clothing?" He asked eagerly.

Hadrian smiled fondly at his lover's awe for the simple magic. "Unfortunately cloth doesn't hold the charms very well. I could resize something for you but I'd have to reapply the charm probably every week or two if it's a natural fabric in good condition. Every day or two for synthetic blends, and rags like my cousin's cast-offs I was wearing when we met only held the charm for a couple of hours. And the more times you've cast the charm on the same item the less it will work" he explained.

"I guess I should've known that from how you were dressed the day we met. I think I would have noticed if your clothes seemed to grow five sizes, and you wouldn't have worn them like they were if you had a choice" Tim said nodding.

"Yeah and trust me the embarrassment of wearing pants tied up with string is nothing to the embarrassment of having your pants fall down in public when you don't notice the magic fail quickly enough when they suddenly stop fitting" Hadrian said dryly.

Tim chuckled slightly.

-o0o-

The first thing Gibbs did when Tim returned to desk duty after a week off was send him down to Ducky to check he was well enough to be there without damaging his shoulder further. Tim had expected this and arrived early in order to get the examination over before work hours started.

"It's healing remarkably well" Dr Mallard said. "I'm sure you've been using a computer or typewriter at home. Any twinges of pain when you do?"

"No Ducky it's been fine" Tim replied.

"We'll I will see you in a week or two to clear you for the field" Dr Mallard stated.

"A week or two!" Tim protested, he knew with the potions he'd taken the shoulder was actually fully healed though Hadrian had cast a glamour on it to make it look more normal for the healing time it would have taken the mundane way.

"You wouldn't want to return to the field too early and undo all the healing" Dr Mallard said firmly. "How have things been with Hadrian and Theodore?"

"Teddy's settling in pretty well. He has bad moments of course but he loves being with his godfather and Hades has taken a month off to help him adjust" Tim replied.

"And you're happy with the two of them?" Ducky asked.

"Happier than I've ever been before Ducky" Tim said seriously.

Ducky could hear the honesty in that statement and let it drop. It seemed Jethro was correct in his assessment. "I'll tell Jethro, two weeks. I don't want you risking that shoulder" he said dismissing Tim and returning to his paperwork.

"Thanks Dr Mallard" Tim said formally putting on his shirt and leaving.

He reached the elevator just as Gibbs came out of Abby's lab and joined him, and wasn't surprised when his boss pushed the emergency stop button.

"Boss?" Tim asked.

"How long?" Gibbs asked.

"Ducky said a week or two" Tim replied hedging slightly.

"I couldn't find any information about your friend Black" Gibbs commented.

"Oh God please tell me you didn't ask Abby to investigate him" Tim moaned.

"She doesn't know him?" Gibbs asked concerned.

"Abby and I aren't really friends outside of work" Tim said carefully. "She drags me along to some godawful concerts when she hasn't got anyone else to go with but she isn't interested in anything I'm doing."

Gibbs nodded thoughtfully, that agreed with the way Hadrian had described Tim's relationship with the technical analyst.

"So tell me why I couldn't find anything on your friend?" he asked.

"I can't give you details because it's classified above your pay grade let alone mine." Tim replied. "And before you ask yes I know this from sources other than Hadrian himself."

He pushed the button to get the elevator moving and didn't say anything else until they arrived at the bullpen. Tim got out and Gibbs continued up to talk to the director.

-o0o-

Tim walked into the bull pen with a grin on his face. "Morning Tony, Good morning Ziva, where's the Boss?" he as if he didn't already know, hoping they'd know why he was going up to the director.

"Upstairs with Jenny?" Ziva replied. "We were talking about our plans for New Year seeing we're off rotation after bagging day"

"Boxing Day Ziva" Tony corrected. "So what about it McGeek have you got a date for New Year's Eve. Or a hot night with playing Elflord?"

"Actually Tony I'm getting married the weekend before New Year's Eve so I'll be on my honeymoon" Tim said.

Tony burst out laughing. "That's a good one McVirgin!"

Ziva also laughed. "You need to make it somewhat believable if you want to prank us McGee."

"Where's Gibbs" Abby asked bouncing out of the lift.

"Hey Abby, McLiar here says he's getting married before New Year's" Tony called.

"Very funny Tim. You're taking me to the 'Screaming Dead' concert New Year's Day. If you didn't want to go you should have said so instead of making up silly stories."

Tim sighed. "I'm not. I really am getting married on December 28th. And if you remember I did tell you I wasn't going to take you to the concert. Multiple times" he said.

"You're taking me to that concert Tim. You promised. Don't try to weasel out now" Abby said.

"What's going on here?" Gibbs said as he came down the stairs.

"Gibbs Tim's trying to welch out in a promise to take me to the concert" Abby pouted.

"Abby I never promised to take you to that concert and I've been telling you for months I'm had plans for New Year" Tim said frustrated.

"Yeah Boss McSingle tried to tell us he's getting married" Tony said laughing.

"Haven't I taught you better than that?" Gibbs said smirking at Tim.

"No Boss" Tim said seriously.

Gibbs looked at him curiously but decided to let the subject wait until he could talk to Tim alone without arousing the suspicions of the rest of the team.

Later that day Gibbs decided to reinterview a witness in the case. "McGee you're with me" he barked.

Tim jumped up slightly worried and hurried after his boss joining him in the elevator.

He sighed when Gibbs hit the emergency stop button.

"Okay spill. I thought you were dating Special Agent Black but I wasn't aware it was serious" Gibbs demanded. "Is this a reaction to being shot?" Gibbs demanded. "You don't want to make life decisions like that Tim. I've done that at it didn't end well."

"We've been all but living together for over two years. My injury did clarify things but no it's not just a reaction to almost losing my life. My one regret if I was to die tomorrow would be that we didn't have more time together. Hades has recently taken over custody of his godson and we're to be a family." Tim explained. He pulled the invitations out of his pocket sorting through and held one out to Gibbs while returning the rest to his pocket. "I trust him with my life and love him with everything I am. We'd like you to be there."

"I'd be honoured" Gibbs replied.

"Thanks boss" Tim said quietly.

"Do you want me to talk to Tony, Ziva and Abby?" Gibbs offered having noticed that the other invitations were for the rest of the team.

"If you could talk Abby out of harassing me about the concert that would be great but after their reaction this morning I don't want them at the wedding" Tim replied sad but resolved.

"I understand that" Gibbs said nodding. "And for the record I asked Fornell to look up Black not Abby."

"Fornell should have been able to find something, Hades consults for the FBI. He's British Secret Service and was seconded to the FBI as an alternative to going into witness protection after taking out an entire terrorist organisation" Tim said frowning.

Gibbs frowned too and headed out to call Fornell in private to find out why his old friend hadn't been straight with him.

A/N: Thank you to Almonda, Twiki2500, Aeryun, Dedicated4reading, DS2010, Maben00, Rike1Rike2, Rike1Rike2, acherongoddess, serenityselena, Merlenyn, charm13insomnia, xDarklightx, lilly-flower15, Rori Potter, buterflypuss, Firehedgehog, Gracie15Trowa, Village-Mystic , mithrilandt, Silvermane1, Syla07, Sorabelle, DaVinci66, BlackCorruption13, Azuyami, Mallymkun the Dormouse, Akirapharis, OreXyon, 1392, Dracaro, aulin, kyle. , Shiroiro tora, Linanimir Foxesire, sorrena, Meysha, Lucifers girl and for your support.