"Oh... it's beautiful." Hermione could hardly catch her breath, between her apprehension and the dizzying journey by Portkey. The garden was exquisite, its lily pond smooth as glass, the hedges that few on all sides dense and thick, their green mass impenetrable.
"We weren't going to let you get married in that dismal thing Grimmauld Place boasts as a back garden." Molly Weasley sounded huffy, as if the dreary house had done something to personally offend her.
"Certainly not," Moira Granger echoed, giving Hermione's hand a warm squeeze.
"Can you imagine Sirius's mother?" Ginny lifted her voice high, screeching in a fair imitation of the portrait in the front hallway at Grimmauld Place. "Hellfire and damnation! A sin against the wizarding world! That knock-kneed little boy marrying that wretched little Muggle? Keep the bloodlines pure, I told them, keep them pure, but did they listen? No! Not a word--"
Hermione was laughing, but Ginny stopped abruptly, her eyes filling with tears as if she hadn't realized what she'd been saying. Molly suddenly looked grave, and she darted Ginny a look that quieted her. Moira was solemn as well, and Hermione let her laughter subside. A year ago, Ginny's impression would have been very funny indeed... but now, it seemed distasteful. Ginny gave Hermione an apologetic look, and Hermione tightened her hand around Ginny's fingertips. She knew Ginny hadn't meant anything by it.
"Anyhow," Molly said brusquely, if a bit chokily. "Nobody will find us here. You're all safe."
The anticipation Hermione had been feeling turned into a sick nervousness... she had been so involved in her own joy that she had forgotten the danger they were putting themselves in, merely to have a memorable day. She felt her heart begin to pound against her ribcage. Not only were she, Ron, and Ginny in danger, but everyone else as well. Dark Wizards were everywhere, all of them pure-blooded or "purified", as they called the painful process of making themselves clean and untainted in Voldemort's sight. Muggle-born wizards were killed on sight, and no amount of purifying made them acceptable to the Dark Lord. Muggles and wizards that kept company were executed.
"Mum," she whispered tensely. Moira did not look down at her, but she tightened her grip on her only child's hand. She fully knew the worst that could occur, Hermione was sure, and she was determined to see it through anyway.
"Don't you worry, Hermione," said Ginny. "We'll be home in twenty minutes at the most. We'll be perfectly safe."
Hermione didn't have a chance to respond, however, because just then her father appeared. Ian Granger was tall and confident, broad of shoulder, a pleasant contrast to his vivacious yet somewhat plain wife. He came to stand by his two women, wrapping his arms around their shoulders. Hermione looked up at him questioningly.
"Everyone is here," he said. "If we want to go down the path and round the corner, they can come out here and we can get this underway. What do you say, Hermione?"
She assented with a numb smile, and Ginny accompanied them behind the hedge while their mothers found seats on the chairs Molly had conjured up. Hermione put her arm through her father's, and his enormous hand blanketed her own small, trembling one. Ginny peeked round the corner briefly.
"All right," she said, turning her head back to the nervous pair behind her. "Professor Lupin and Ron are out there, and everybody's in place. I just wanted to make sure those flowers in your hair were still all right." She tucked at the glowing clusters of petals again, and then threw her arms around Hermione, pressing her already damp cheek against Hermione's pale one. "This only happens once. Don't you worry about anything but what's at the end of the path, do you hear me? This is yours, Hermione. Don't you dare let them take it from you. Don't be afraid."
Then she was gone round the corner, no doubt to take her seat alongside her parents and brothers, and Hermione was left with a newfound courage. She brought a hand up, touching the lion charm on its chain. This is my day. They can't have it. They took everything else, but they are not taking this from me. She squared her shoulders... and her father led her out onto the path.
Ron was standing there, just down the stony walkway. His shoulders were thrown back, his expression jovial but a bit pale as he stood next to Remus Lupin on the steps of the pond. Hermione felt a real, true smile burst onto her mouth before she bid it to, and Ron's answering grin gave her all the heart she needed. She and her father proceeded down the walk, and as they neared the lily-pond, Ron came forward to take her hand. She knew her mother was crying, and Molly was, too; she had seen Ron's twin brothers, Fred and George, give her the thumbs-up as she had passed, and Ron's father, Arthur, was beaming. Everything was a blur, but she could feel her own smile and see Ron's face, and she had her father's steadying hand under her arm until he gently delivered her to Ron's care.
Ron led Hermione up three stone steps, until they were standing just below Remus. Their hands were so tightly clasped that their knuckles were white, and Hermione's fingertips felt cold, but somehow it didn't matter. Ron was the one holding her hand, and that was what counted. Remus smiled down at them. That abiding sadness never left his warm eyes, nor the weariness his face, but they seemed to have fallen back to allow him this, the most important spell he had performed in a long while. The wedding spell was potent and binding, and no matter if the couple grew to despise one another through their years, the spell could never be broken. They would always be connected to one another.
"Are you ready?" Remus asked them. In unison, they nodded, and the ceremony began.
Hermione, later, couldn't remember much. She thought, with a bit of humour, that it was probably the first time in her life she couldn't remember something. All she knew was Ron's hand holding her steady, and Ron's voice as he firmly repeated what Remus asked him to. Hermione's own voice had been clear and fluting, echoing the vows of loyalty and love. She remembered several potions being passed between the two of them, one that tasted positively bitter, while the rest were quite pleasant. She remembered Remus uttering a long incantation, and adding some sort of a protection charm at the end that Hermione knew was not commonly part of the rite.
Then everyone was clapping, and Fred and George were catcalling, and Ron turned her to him and smiled. His arms were familiar and strong about her waist, still with that boyishness he would never lose, and she felt as if her heart would burst from her chest and skip across the lily-pads in the pond in pure joy. She slipped her arms round his neck and they kissed, falling deeply into the comfort of knowing that at last, they belonged to one another, that the vows of safety and love they had made were impossible to break. Hermione felt tears flowing down her cheeks, unfettered streams of delirious happiness, and she couldn't help it. She laughed. But it was all right, because Ron was laughing, too, and everyone else was laughing. And then Ron kissed her again, and the whole world disappeared.
***********
"No, really, I thought I might be sick," George was reassuring Ron and Hermione as the party reassembled in the garden of Grimmauld Place. "Weddings were never much my style, much more prefer funerals--"
"Better chance to scare the bloody hell out of the family, ay, George?" Fred said, winking. Fred and George were veteran pranksters, and had terrorized the halls of Hogwarts Academy for nearly seven years before they'd decided they had had enough of school and had left for good. Molly Weasley clucked her tongue at her twin sons, giving them both a good sharp prod in the behind as Arthur deposited the Portkey into his pocket, a rather nondescript leather wallet he'd somehow got hold of.
"You leave Ron and Hermione alone," Molly scolded the pair of flame-haired twins, but they were all laughing.
"Oh, we'll leave Hermione and Ronniekins alo-one," Fred said, wiggling his brows at Hermione suggestively.
"Yeah, Mum. Maybe you'd better come with us," said George, feigning concern. "I'm not exactly sure you want to stay around for this."
"Oh, come off it," scoffed Ron, for both he and Hermione had become visibly more crimson in the face, and Hermione was shaking her head in hopeless amusement at the twins. She couldn't recall them ever being serious about anything, and she didn't think they ever would be.
"I wish Professor Lupin hadn't left," Hermione said sadly. "He always seems to be running off nowadays."
"He's a busy man," Molly chided gently. "You're lucky he was able to perform the ceremony."
"There's cake inside. I made it," Moira said happily, as she and Ian approached, holding hands. Hermione had noticed this among the married couples; weddings seemed to encourage romance... or perhaps renewal, becoming a whole person. Hermione had never considered herself incomplete until she had discovered she was in love with Ron, and now... she simply squeezed his hand. He smiled down at her.
"Mum," he said to Molly, briefly taking his eyes from Hermione's, "we'll be in in a few minutes. Go ahead and start without us. I'm going to take a walk with Hermione."
Molly smiled at this, and Ron and Hermione escaped before she could begin pinching her twenty-two-year-old son's cheeks and calling him "her little Ronnie, all grown up" as she had been prone to do the last few weeks.
There was an old rose arbor toward the back of the garden, its wood soft and weatherworn, the rose vines having long taken over the place for their own. Hermione had sat there often to study, or sometimes to write letters, or less frequently to cry. This was where they went, vanishing under the protective, latticed shadows.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, arm-in-arm, the only sound the murmur of Hermione's gown on the grass. Finally Ron broke the silence.
"You're wearing the necklace," he observed mildly.
"Yes," Hermione replied just as neutrally, but she made the mistake of looking up at him. Ron's grey eyes were cloudy.
"Don't look like that," she pleaded with him.
"Like what?"
"As if... as if the whole world's gone wrong."
"Are you mental? Of course it hasn't." He gave her a genuine smile then, a lopsided little grin... but it faded quickly and he fell back to brooding. Hermione knew he was happy, as she was, but the fact still remained that their celebration could only be brief. She drew closer to his side, until she could feel the warmth of him through the light fabric of her gown. She bit her lip, and a hand came up to pluck at the tiny golden lion, dangling just beneath her collarbone.
"It isn't bloody fair," Ron burst out suddenly. They stopped walking.
"What isn't?" Hermione asked, though she knew perfectly well.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this, Hermione," he said stubbornly. "It isn't supposed to be this way. It isn't right."
"What happened happened, Ron. You can't change it," she said quietly.
"We should have been there!"
"It's not our fault. There was nothing we could have done--"
"We could have stopped it, we could have done something for Harry..."
"Ron." Hermione's voice was level, calming. "Stop. Just stop. Stop doing this. Harry wouldn't want this."
"Harry doesn't know what he wants," Ron said bitterly, kicking at a clump of grass. Hermione felt her heart freeze inside her ribcage, but she pressed on.
"He knew he didn't want to go into hiding. He knew he could trust you as his Keeper, Ron--"
"As
Keeper of what, Hermione? What am I keeping? Dumbledore only asked us to do
this for one reason, and that reason was to throw off the Death-Eaters and
Vol-Vol..."
"Voldemort."
Ron shivered. "Yeah. To throw them off. To make them think there's still a threat. There isn't. They've won."
"But Voldemort-- really, Ron-- doesn't know that. He doesn't know what's happened. But it isn't about them!" Hermione felt herself growing passionate, a fire burning inside her, frustrated with Ron that he never quite seemed to get it. "This is about protecting Harry because he is our friend. We're not protecting the Boy Who Lived. We're protecting the boy you taught to play wizard's chess, the one who used to cheat off my History of Magic homework. We can't do anything about the world anymore, Ron, because it's bigger than us now-- but we can do something about Harry, and that something is keeping him safe! Maybe, someday, something will come of it... because that wasn't the end, Ron! The prophecy said... it said that one of them had to die, and neither of them did!"
She realized that she was crying again, and that she had let go of Ron's arm and they stood facing one another now. She wiped her cheeks messily with the backs of her hands, staring at the grass between Ron's shoes.
"C'mere," he said gruffly, and swung her to his chest, cradling her there and resting his cheek on her hair. She cried against his shoulder, soaking the fabric of his shirt, and she instinctively knew that he was crying as well, though he tried so hard to be nonchalant about it, swallowing heavily.
"Hermione! Ron!" Molly's urgent voice floated through the overgrown weave of branches. Ron straightened up and hastily swiped at his cheeks with his sleeve, while Hermione studiously stared at the ground and wiped her own. Married now, but forever the same, she thought, and it comforted her.
"I suppose my mum made them wait so we could cut the cake," Hermione said. Ron looked back at her and raised an eyebrow.
"Muggle customs are mad," he said, amused, and took her hand again. "What does it matter if we're there for the cake or not? It's--"
"Hermione! Ron!" Molly called again insistently.
"You'd think we were still in first year, the way she carries on sometimes..."
"Come on," Hermione said urgently, giving his hand a light tug. "I'm hungry."
They began to walk back toward the house.
"Y'know," said Ron in a mulling-over sort of voice, "I still wish I'd been there."
"Me, too," Hermione amended softly, and then their silence was mutual and contented, knowing they were on the same plain, that they both had regrets. As they neared the back door, Hermione smiled suddenly, putting a spring into her step and leaping onto Ron's back. This was so unlike her that Ron let out an exclamation of surprise, staggering slightly under her sudden weight with a "Bloody hell, Hermione...!"
"Muggle custom," she announced. "You have to carry me over the threshold."
"Mad," he protested, but he was grinning anyway. He adjusted her weight and swung open the door, traipsing inside the house with her laughing, her arms wrapped about his shoulders.
The first thing she saw was a blinding flash of green light... and then she was on the kitchen floor, Ron's weight half on top of her, a crushing pain in her neck and shoulder and in her leg. She blinked dizzily, reaching for Ron, checking him with a touch of her hand, before her eyes cleared and she looked up.
"Malfoy," she gasped in surprise.
Draco Malfoy stood before her, still with that sneer he wore like a prize ribbon, still with that widow's-peak of platinum hair. His blue eyes were flat and cold.
"It's a whole den of Weasels," he said nastily, raising an eyebrow at Hermione. "And look what they've drug in. A little Mudblood."
"What the hell are you doing here, Malfoy?" Ron growled, clambering to his feet. He seemed unhurt, just winded, for Hermione's body had broken his fall.
"Come to pay a little visit to the lovebirds," he said, as if surprised they hadn't expected him. "I thought I'd bring you a little present, perhaps."
Hermione felt cold inside as she got to her feet, staggering a bit. How had Malfoy found them? What was going on?
"Ginny?" she called, moving toward the parlor and drawing her wand from a deep pocket in her gown. "Mum? Dad?"
"Hermione, don't!" Ron leaped for her, jerking his wand from his sleeve.
There was an eruption of incantations, of flashing lights and waving wands... and when it was over, Hermione and Ron were standing side-by-side, devoid of their wands, facing down a row of five men and women. Hermione recognized some of them; Malfoy was one, and two of the women were Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode. The other two were complete strangers, one man and one woman, and they all had the same wry smile.
"You were always good, Granger," said Pansy, sniggering and waving Hermione's wand like a prize. "It's nice to see you haven't lost your touch." As if sharing some private joke, the five of them laughed.
"Oh, but she's not a Granger anymore," Malfoy simpered. "She's a Weasel, now. Don't they look so blissfully happy?"
"Where is everybody?" Ron demanded.
"They abandoned you, Weasley," sneered Malfoy, and Ron clenched his fists. Hermione was afraid he was going to lunge.
"They all ran for the hills, really, after we came round the corner. We managed to get in a few good curses on the Muggles, but they Disapparated with the Weasel clan. Your mum was terrified, Weasley, you should have seen it... the way she yelled for the two of you..."
She was trying to warn us, Hermione realized, just as understanding dawned on Ron's face as well. The urgency in Molly's voice had been about far more than cake-frosting being ruined by a long wait.
"Too bad," mused Malfoy. "We could have had a nice little celebration with your parents, Hermione..."
"Shut up," she growled. She had never borne Malfoy's smarmy ways in school, and she wouldn't begin now.
"Come into the parlor," Malfoy ordered, and every wand was trained on Ron and Hermione as they reluctantly stepped forward, so close together that their arms brushed one another.
'Come into the parlor,' said the spider to the fly, Hermione thought... and then she noticed the many pairs of feet in the room, underneath the hems of many black robes. Ginny was there, between two hooded figures, the tips of their wands just inches away from her skin. Hermione looked up quickly, taking in the cruel, expressionless faces of those present... and she felt sick inside.
"Death Eaters," she gasped out, and Lucius Malfoy stepped forward.
"We're so sorry to drop in on such a lively occasion," he said cordially, though his voice had no feeling, and his S's rustled crisply like tissue paper. "But there seems to be a bit of a problem in all corners, now, does there not?"
"What d'you mean, problem?" Ron spat out, and his eyes were sparking with hatred.
"Why, you're disobeying the Law, after all," said Lucius in his liquid voice.
"What Law?" Ginny demanded, but she was quieted abruptly. Hermione and Ron were roughly ushered further into the room and shoved to the floor, and Ginny was seated with them, back to back. They leaned against one another, staring outward, as fifteen witches and wizards watched them sharply, their wands at the ready. Lucius took his time in answering, buffing his gleaming fingernails on the sleeve of his robes.
"The Law that the Dark Lord has brought into our world."
"What?!" cried three voices in unison.
"Cornelius Fudge is a coward and a disbeliever," Lucius said, referring to the Minister of Magic. "The moment Voldemort challenged him, he backed down. The Ministry of Magic is under Voldemort's command."
"B-but..." Hermione gasped out. "That can't happen! Professor Dumbledore--"
"Is no longer a concern," Lucius cut in smoothly. They all gaped at him in shock, but Ginny was the first to react.
"You bastard!" she roared, lunging at him, but she was brutally knocked to the floor by Millicent Bulstrode. Hermione choked on her shock, simply staring. Ron looked as if he were about to be sick. "Article One!" Lucius Malfoy's icy syllables cut through the air. "Wizards shall not traffick with Muggles, upon penalty of Death. Article Two. All Muggles in magical places, whether by accident or by design, shall be executed. Article Three. All Muggle-born wizards are impure and filthy, and shall be killed when caught. Article Four. Pure-blooded wizards are not allowed to marry half-blooded wizards or Mudbloods--" this said with a sneer at Hermione-- "under any circumstance, whether they have been Purified or not. In such a case, both partners will be killed. The impure partner will be executed, and any children of such union, for they are unclean. The pure partner will be executed for defying Voldemort's Purity laws."
"That isn't law!" Ginny said desperately, as Hermione paled and Ron swore. "That's just Voldemort and his followers, you're all daft..."
"I'm afraid, my dear girl, that it is the Law," said Lucius, giving her a patronizing smile. "Times are changing. Now. Let's see if we can separate the wheat from the chaff, shall we? " His voice became like frozen glass, hard and clear.
"Which of you is Harry Potter's Secret-Keeper?"
