Chapter 20 – Happy Ever After
Disclaimer: I do not own anything that belongs to J.K. Rowling.
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Sirius sat opposite Heather in the lounge and stared at her while she read her book. As if unaware of his eyes upon her, she continued to read, her legs curled under her and a dreamy smile on her face.
He was sure that there would be no interruption if he asked her to marry him now…
The door opened on its hinges and a blast of cold air entered, along with the two teenagers who had been out for most of the evening. Sirius sighed irritably and turned to greet Harry.
"Hello, Sirius, Heather. I've brought Ginny over and she's going to stay the night, ok?"
Sirius nodded. If Harry and Ginny were going to go upstairs and talk, he might still have a chance to pop the question.
Heather smiled at them over her book. "That should be fine, Harry. Just don't make too much noise, ok?" She smiled knowingly and Harry blushed before taking his girlfriend up to his room.
Sirius moved over next to her chair and Heather looked up, enquiry in her eyes. There was a long pause.
"What is it, Sirius? Did you want something?"
Sirius cleared his throat. "I wanted to ask you…"
His speech was interrupted when the sound of two over-amorous teenagers echoed down the stairs, obviously too far into their own personal procreation to care about the importance of Sirius' next question. He sighed in annoyance and Heather grinned.
"What was it, Sirius?" she asked gently and he turned back to her.
"I wanted to ask you…" Sirius paused again as the sound coming from upstairs reached a whole new peak in its volume. "No, I can't ask you while all that racket is going on!" he grated.
"Oh, Sirius…"
Leaving the room at high speed, he stopped at the bookshelf to pick up an aged volume and marched up the stairs. He opened the door to the room where the noise was coming from and threw the book in, knowing, when he heard a yelp, that it had hit its mark.
"Standard Book of Spells Grade 1, Chapter 9, Silencing Charm! Use it!" Sirius yelled through the door, before slamming it shut, causing it to wobble on its hinges.
He stormed down the stairs, ignoring the laughter that emanated from the room. Sitting down on the sofa again, he frowned ferociously.
Heather put down her book and moved over to sit next to him. Cuddling up in his arms, she sighed and smiled.
"Now, what was so important that you had to go and interrupt Harry and Ginny having fun just so you could have silence to ask me?" Please say you were going to propose, Heather wished inwardly.
Sirius stroked her hair. "I'll ask you again when the time is right," he sighed and Heather wriggled into his embrace as much as she could to hide her disappointment.
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Heather leant against the counter in the kitchen and sighed. Being with Sirius was better than she could have ever imagined and was probably made more perfect by the odd courtship they had endured. And there was only one more stage they could go through before it would be better than her wildest dreams…
"Heather! Are you ok?" Heather spun around to find Harry looking at her in concern from the doorway. "I didn't interrupt anything, did I?"
"No, I'm only wool-gathering. Did you want a cup of tea or something?" She glanced at her watch. "You're home early; I didn't expect you for hours yet. You did go to that Quidditch match with Ron today, didn't you?"
Harry grinned. "Yeah, the Chudley Cannons versus the Wimbourne Wasps. No contest – Ron was gutted as usual. Emily Judd pulled off a beautiful Starfish and Stick, though. He should be proud of that…" he stopped as he saw the confused expression on Heather's face. "Come on! You've gotta like Quidditch, especially now that you're marrying Sirius – he's a fanatic!"
Heather shook her head with a self-deprecating smile and a shrug. "It's not that I don't like it, it's just I can't get my head around it!"
Harry rolled his eyes and gave up.
"Speaking of, do you have any idea what's up with Sirius? He's been acting really odd lately and I…" She stopped when she saw that Harry was smiling enigmatically. "What is it?"
Harry pasted an innocent expression on his face, but couldn't conceal the glee in his eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Heather studied him for a second. "Sworn to secrecy?"
He nodded.
"Dammit. I just know he's got some scheme up his sleeve and he won't tell me. And neither will you!"
"Sorry, Heather." Harry shrugged, but didn't look very sorry.
She poured him a cup of tea with narrowed eyes. "Is it dangerous? Can you tell me that?"
Harry smirked. "It depends."
"Depends on what?" Heather frowned.
"Just depends."
"Drat and darn it. Can you tell me anything?"
"Nope."
"Bloody men," she muttered savagely. "Always got bloody stupid ideas… I can just imagine him sat in that garage inventing some new gadget for the house, something that will explode at contact…"
Harry made a sharp escape.
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Sirius sighed and flicked through the channels on the television. He figured now was just a good a time as any - he'd paid Harry to stay out of the house for a couple of hours so he and Heather were alone. It was the perfect time to ask the question that had been plaguing him for the last week! He decided that it was probably right not to make a song and dance about it, or something would probably go wrong – like it had the last couple of times.
Taking a deep breath, he took the chance.
"Oh, Heather, sweetheart, there was something I wanted to ask you." Sirius sipped at his beer, trying to look casual.
Heather curled her feet a little, playing with his t-shirt with her toes. "Mmmm?" she opened her eyes lazily. "What is it?"
"Err… I was wondering if you wanted to marry me?" he asked, as if he was asking whether she wanted another cup of tea. He changed the channel again.
The silence went on and on.
"Heather?" Sirius turned his head to look down at her, where she was lying on the sofa beside him. "Do you want to or not?"
"What kind of question is that?!"
Sirius' brow furrowed at her irritated tone. "A marriage proposal?" he said, bemused.
"That's not what I meant and you know it!" Heather sat up and fixed him with a glare.
"Do I?" Sirius was beginning to feel very confused. This was not how it was supposed to turn out. "What's wrong with you? I thought you wanted me to propose."
"I do! Just not like a moron!" Heather got off the sofa and stood over him.
Sirius stood up and leaned down, so close to her that they were almost nose-to-nose. "A moron?! I thought that was a perfectly good proposition!"
"For what? A call girl? Where's the romance and flowers? If you really wanted to marry me, you would have made more effort. Do you really want to or are you just doing it out of obligation?! If you don't, then don't bother."
"I never do anything out of obligation! Of course I want to goddamn marry you, woman. I've been trying to ask you for bloody weeks!" Sirius waved his hands emphatically in the air.
"Oh, yeah? Then how come I've never noticed, eh? If you really tried, I would have noticed. I thought you were acting strangely because you were trying to stop me noticing you were out in the garage charming your corvette to fly – which I know about, by the way! Anyway, I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth!"
"That's not what you've been saying for the past couple of weeks!"
"You expect me to be responsible for what I say post-coitus?! Merlin, Sirius, I can hardly be expected to think after we've just slept together! I can hardly move, for Pete's sake!"
Instead of being smug about the backhanded compliment, Sirius' face stiffened. "So all the times you said you loved me were because of the sex?!"
Heather's brow furrowed and she threw her hands up in the air in frustration. "No! I do love you, you bloody idiot of a man!"
"And I love you, too!"
"I know!"
"So, what's the bloody problem?!"
"There isn't one! Apart from the fact that you won't bloody propose properly! Dammit, Sirius, I thought you were romantic – how else did you get all of those women to like you?!"
"Obviously it's my bloody good looks and my bloody fabulous charm!" Sirius scowled.
Heather raised one eyebrow. "The charm that's in full force now? I'm still not getting it."
Sirius huffed.
"So, if you can propose properly, what are you waiting for?!" Heather continued, irate.
"Fine!" Sirius got down on one knee, grabbing her hand roughly in his, and glared up at her. "Will you goddamn marry me, you bloody idiotic woman?!"
"No!" Heather yelled, scandalised.
Sirius clenched his jaw and tried again. "Will you marry me?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"You could ask a little more nicely."
Sirius looked as if he was going to strangle her, but he fixed a smile onto his face (which turned out more like a grimace) and tried one more time. "Heather, darling, will you marry me and make me the… happiest man alive?"
"Finally! Yes, I'll bloody marry you!"
"Good!" Sirius exclaimed, getting off his knees and folding his arms, fixing his new fiancée with an annoyed glare.
"You could be acting a little happier about it!"
"Bloody woman!!!"
"And it's about time, too."
Heather and Sirius stopped mid-roar and turned towards the door, where Harry was leaning, smugly amused, with a smirk on his face. Ginny was peering over his shoulder, giggling.
Sirius looked like his head was going to explode. "This is a private conversation," he ground out between gritted teeth.
"Mmm… So private that the whole street could hear you. I had to put a silencing charm on the house!" Harry raised one sardonic eyebrow as he looked at his godfather.
"So, you finally learnt how to do one, did you?" Sirius growled.
Heather, looking from one male to the other, suddenly found it all very amusing and let out a loud giggle, to which she received a sharp look from her husband-to-be.
"Oh, come on, Sirius. You must see how amusing the whole situation is."
"What? You yelling at me because I'm inept at proposing? Bloody hell, woman, I've only done it once!"
Harry snorted incredulously and Sirius shot him a sharp glare.
"Once," he repeated warningly. "Will you just get out of here and give us some privacy? And that is not an excuse to get up to no good, no matter how old you are."
"Like you can talk!" Harry grinned and made a quick exit, Ginny following.
Heather touched the side of Sirius' face to make him look at her. "I'm sorry. It's just, since I was a young girl, I'd dreamed of you proposing – and not in front of a tele-wotsit, sipping a beer."
Sirius grimaced. "I suppose you didn't imagine me doing it when we're screaming at each other at the top of our voices, either."
"Not exactly," Heather smiled, "but it'll have to do."
Sirius kissed her to seal the bargain.
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"Let's hope this one will work."
Sirius sat in the kitchen with Heather and Harry. Heather had been on at him for days about the seating plan for their wedding. He had run out of ways to procrastinate and had ended up sat around the large table arranging little figures of their guests. They had a model of the hall where the reception would take place and tiny little representations of the people so that when you had them in place could animate and see how they reacted to each other. It was all due to being engaged to a charms expert.
It must have been the twentieth permutation and Sirius was just thinking that everything was perfect when a blazing row broke out between Heather's Uncle Erskine and his Aunt Norah.
"Queiesco," he enunciated and with a flick of his wand the tiny people stopped as still as if they were carved from stone.
"Well, that's just great isn't it…?" Heather sighed in exasperation.
Sirius brushed his hair back off his face and wished he had gone to see Remus to discuss getting their next Robe Altering sorted out and left all this to Heather. "Let's start again," he said, carefully picking up the offending figures and putting them on opposite sides of the Hall.
"Shall I make some coffee?" Harry asked, feeling a little useless, as he didn't know many of these people.
"That would be great. Better make it strong, we're gonna be here for a while." Heather started shuffling her family about a bit, but kept coming up with obvious problems. "I really thought that last one was going to work." She rubbed her hands over her face.
By the time Harry had made the coffee, Heather and Sirius thought they were about ready to try again.
"Animo." Heather waved her wand and the scene came to life again. It had to be stopped when one of Heather's Aunt Roberta ran for the edge of the table yelling, "Get me away from that man!" in reference to some old guy sat next to her dressed in crimson. Sirius caught her just in time and Heather paused the scene.
Harry set the cups down and then, seeing someone he recognised, "Hey, what the hell is Snape doing at your wedding?" He asked brow furrowed in confusion.
Sirius made a small sound in the back of his throat, "Uh, well you see…" He trailed off, not quite how to explain that Snape and Florence came as something of a pair.
"I think I can explain that one." Heather said, flicking her wand again and conjuring up a box, about the size of a muggle shoebox. She gingerly and ever so slightly warily picked up the figure of Snape by his cloak and then the figure of Florence Findal (a lot more confidently). She put them both in the 'shoebox'. "Look what happens when we put them on their own!" Heather said with a sort of morbid fascination.
"Heather," Sirius hissed through gritted teeth.
"He's eighteen, Sirius. They aren't going to warp his mind," Heather grumbled.
"It's not his mind I'm worrying about."
Heather shot him a quelling look. "Queiesco."
The two little figures, acting on their heightened impulses so as to give a worst-case scenario for the wedding reception were in each other's arms in seconds. Heather paused their activities.
"You see? They're something of an item, so we have to have him there or I won't have a bridesmaid." Heather hovered her hand over the box. "I'm not sure I want to pick them up like that," she said in a hushed tone to Sirius.
Harry was still in a state of shock, the thought of someone wanting to kiss Snape was a notion that had never once occurred to him, he shuddered and dragged his eyes away. That's why he hadn't hated her then… It was definitely one extreme or the other with Snape and DADA Professors. But Professor Findal had seemed so nice, how could she be going out with a nasty piece of work like Snape?
"Perhaps a tiny bucket of cold water is in order." Sirius smirked.
"I'll just have to levitate them. They'll soon stop when they realise they're in public," Heather said.
"I'm not so sure," Harry said faintly; his face had a greenish tinge. "It doesn't look like a steamroller would stop them."
Sirius patted his godson's back in sympathy, while Heather levitated the little couple, returning them to the hall.
Sure enough, when Heather unpaused them, they jumped away from each other and looked a little shifty for a moment before moving around the room… separately.
"I think I embarrassed them." Heather looked one step away from affectionately patting the little people on the head.
"Um… Heather…" Sirius raised one eyebrow pointedly.
Heather came to her senses. "Ok, right, back to the grind. Permutation twenty-one coming up!"
"Yes, lets move Aunt Nobelia next to…"
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"Are you nervous at all?"
Heather groaned and rolled over in the dark, opening her eyes. "Huh?"
"Are you nervous at all?" The almost inaudible question was repeated a little slower than the first time as though he was talking to a dunce.
"About what?"
Sirius sighed. "The wedding."
"Am I nervous about the wedding?" Heather could almost hear Sirius' eyes rolling in his head.
"Yes, I- Never mind." He shifted slightly in the bed and sat up, reaching for the glass of water on his bedside table.
"Of course I am!"
Sirius flicked on the light and gave her an incredulous look at her vehemence, while Heather tried to restore sight in her eyes.
"Ouch! You could give me a little warning next time, you ass." Still blinking owlishly at the bright light, she said, "Of course I'm nervous, stupid! Who wouldn't be? My whole life's changed in a matter of months and I'm getting married to a guy I was sure I'd never see again. It's a little mind-boggling."
Sirius just continued to stare at her.
"Why? Are you nervous?"
He drank from his glass. "Nope."
Heather narrowed her eyes and glared at him suspiciously. "Then why did you wake me up at," she glanced at the clock and winced, "three-thirty a.m. to ask me a question that you're not really bothered about?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Bored, I guess." His straight face slipped under her sharp glare and he grinned sheepishly. "Ok, I'm a little spooked."
Heather leant back in bed. "Finally."
"Actually, I'm a lot spooked," he sighed and downed the rest of his drink. "Merlin, I wish this was Ogden's Old Firewhisky…"
Heather looked over at him in concern. "Sirius." She paused, unsure whether to go on.
"What?"
"Sirius, if you don't want to go through with this, marry me, then that's fine. I mean, you don't have to," she said, staring fixedly at the engagement ring on her finger. "It's fine."
There was a moment of silence, in which she thought her heart would break into a million pieces and then he smiled.
"Don't be silly."
"Eh? What?" She frowned at him.
"I've been looking forward to this for…" he shrugged. "Ages. Even before I knew I wanted to." He grasped her hand in his. "So stop being silly. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to marry you."
"Thank Merlin," she sighed and grinned. "I think we've got some Firewhisky in the cupboard – an engagement gift from Uncle Erskine. It might help you sleep."
"Ahh… wonderful, but I don't think I'll have much trouble sleeping now." He turned off the light and settled her in his arms. "Goodnight."
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"Heather, you look absolutely beautiful!"
Heather did a little turn. "You think?" she asked with a smile, her hand touching the delicate flowers that had been fastened into her hair. She had arrived at her mother's house with Florence early that morning to get ready and had left Sirius sleeping in bed. She swished her skirts to and fro nervously.
"No-one could think otherwise," her mother gushed. "Even this Sirius Black of yours," Nolie added with a subtle dig.
"Mother, don't start this again. I'm going to be married in a very short while and Sirius…" Heather blushed slightly, "well, he's going to be your son-in-law."
Nolie smiled slightly. "At least you're happy, my darling. That's all I and your father want." She reached forward and enveloped her daughter in a careful hug. "It's just a shame that…"
"Mother…" Heather warned, "don't say another word. Now, where are my shoes?"
"I think Florence has them." Nolie poked her head out of the door of the bedroom. "Florence?" she squeaked. "Come and see how beautiful Heather looks! And bring her shoes with you!"
Florence entered the room with a frown. "I don't have her… Heather! You look wonderful! Oh, Mrs Harris, you've done a marvellous job."
"I know," Nolie said smugly, adjusting her red cartwheel hat on her head. "And, Florence, you look adorable too. Let me just…" Nolie fiddled with the flower in Florence's hair and then with the hem on her skirt. Florence just smiled and shrugged while Heather gave her friend an apologetic look. "Now you almost look ready to go… apart from those shoes! Where can they be?"
There was a sharp knock on the door that left all three women looking at each other.
"I'll get it," Heather said and, before anyone could complain, bounded down the stairs and opened the front door to find Sirius with his hand over his eyes, waving her shoes in the air.
"Remus found these in his dress robes," he said, trying to push them into her hands. "Merlin knows how they got there."
Heather grinned, taking the pumps, and kissing him on the cheek. "Thank you, mum was just about to hyperventilate."
"What's new?" he said with a wicked grin.
"Um, Sirius? You don't have to keep your hand over your eyes anymore, you know."
"Yes, I do. It's bad luck and, besides, it'll spoil the surprise. I'll see you later." He closed the door behind him, leaving her grinning.
"Hey, Mum, I found the shoes!"
"Wonderful. Where were they?" Nolie popped her head around the bedroom door.
"In Remus' dress robes. Weird, eh?" Heather climbed slowly up the stairs, trying not to tread on her dress.
Her mother smiled. "Oh, yes, of course. I put them there to keep them safe." She tucked her head back into the room to say something to Florence, and missed the bemused look Heather sent her.
"Nuts… Absolutely nuts."
"I'm surprised you only just figured that out." Heather's father said from behind her and she twisted around to smile at him. "Are you ready yet? You've been ages and the wedding is due to start in an hour." He glanced at his pocket watch pointedly and she gasped.
"An hour?! We're not going to make it!" she screeched and dashed up the stairs, slamming the door behind her.
Geoffrey winced and went back into his study, away from loud noises and shrieking women.
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"Ok, it's time." Heather gave her mother a panicked look and Nolie tittered. "It's not like you're going to do your NEWTs again, dear. There's nothing to worry about… well, apart from the fact that you're marrying a hardened criminal…"
"Mother," Heather hissed.
"I know, I know."
Florence chuckled as she gave Heather her bouquet and kissed her on the cheek. "Don't worry, everything is going to be fine. You're doing the right thing, aren't you?"
Heather sighed. "Yes, it's just… everything has happened so fast, this past year. I lost my job, my home…"
"And found a new one, with Sirius."
"I'm so lucky, aren't I?" Heather smiled.
Florence grinned and nodded.
"So what am I worrying about?" she said bravely and grasped her father's outstretched hand.
"You can back out now, if you want," he whispered in her ear.
"No, thanks, Dad. There's nothing I want more than to be married to Sirius."
Heather took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped out to meet her future.
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Authors' Notes:
Hello. Once again sorry for the long update, but I assure you it's the last!
Thanks to everyone who has been reading from the beginning and everyone who has jumped on the bandwagon since then. We really appreciate all the comments, advice and sentiment that you have shown us, through reviews and e-mails, and hope that you will stick with us and read some of our other stories… when we eventually churn out some more chapters!
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Hope to talk to you soon,
Love,
Martha & Squirrel.
xxx.