Authors note: As always, any characters from the HP series belong to J.K.R. This is a sequel to "When All is Said and Done," which can be found both at ff.net and at the WAiSaD e-group, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WAiSaD. Glin and Marigold are mine, and Law is kind of mine. Thanks to all my loyal reviewers, and to everyone who enjoys this. Questions or comments can be included in reviews, e-mailed to me at mlpmama@yahoo.com or posted to the e-group. Happy reading!

Small Packages



Glinda Goodrich rolled over onto her back. The mid-afternoon light was streaming right through the flimsy curtains and filling the room with light. Through a small slit between the draperies, a beam of light caught her eye and momentarily blinded her.

She'd hoped to wake up before noon today, as she had hoped almost every day for the past two months. Rarely did it happen, unless she had an appointment of some sort. As she glanced about the room, she noticed that the clothes she'd torn off Ron last night were folded neatly and hung over the hand-painted oriental screen that created her dressing room. An overwhelming sense of guilt washed over her, and she sigh, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Hrgm..." Ron mumbled. Ron Weasley, her current... whatever, was sprawled out facedown on her bed. Which wouldn't have been so entirely aggravating in and of itself if he wasn't taking up a great deal more than half of the bed. His head was on her pillow, his left hand was where her stomach had been only moments before, and his big, gangly body was crowding her, damn it.

She shoved at him a bit for good measure, and went to get dressed when he didn't move.

"Where're you going?" He asked sleepily.

"Christ Ron, look at the alarm. It's after three!"

"So? Come back to bed."

"Ron, I thought we discussed this." She angrily pulled the curtains open, even though the flat across the street afforded an excellent view of her bedroom.

He groaned and rolled over, wincing his eyes at the light. "We didn't really talk about it. You were a bitch about your maid finding out we were involved, and I got mad and you... calmed me down, so to speak."

"Well, there's the first problem. You never listen when I talk. I don't mind her knowing about us, I'd just rather she didn't have quite so graphic of an example. Secondly, I can't resolve every argument we have with sex."

"Why no?" Ron said, lewdly assessing her nude form.

"Stop that. My point was that I can't very well expect Louisa to clean up my messes when I'm passed out on the bed with you."

"Why not? She's your maid. She works for you."

"Her having to clean at noon when the two of us are all naked is... well I think it makes it a hostile working environment or something."

"That's bullocks."

"It's not."

"Come back to bed," Ron said, hoping to diffuse the argument.

"Are you completely devoid of any sort of worth?"

"Why're you so up in arms about your maid seeing us naked? You're extremely over-emotional. Is this some sort of a female thing?"

Glin stared at him open-mouthed in astonishment.

Ron backtracked immediately. "That was obviously the wrong thing to say-"

"Really, you think?" She retorted sarcastically.

"I'm really-"

"Let me guess. 'Sorry?' Fuck that, Ron. Get out."

"I'll talk to you later, after you've had a chance to cool down."

"Get out!"



A knock sounded on Ginny's office door. "C'mon in, Sadie."

Draco walked in, Ginny's secretary trailing behind him, sputtering angrily. "You don't have an appointment, Mr. Malfoy. I really must insist-"

"Does a man need an appointment to bring a biscotti to the woman he loves?" Draco asked Sadie, in a manner that could charm the socks of almost anyone.

"He does if she's the Minister," Sadie replied stubbornly.

"I'll try to see that he makes appointments in the future, Sadie," Ginny said, sending them both a quelling look.

Sadie left with a sour look on her face, shutting the door behind her.

"Biscotti?" Ginny said, wrinkling her nose at him. "One of those dry cookie things?"

"Biscotti for me, Pop-tarts for you."

"What kind?" She asked skeptically.

"Strawberry, no icing." He held the foil-wrapped square out to her. "As if I'd forget."

"Mhm," she replied through a mouthful of toaster pastry. "C'mere."

He knelt down next to her wheelchair, concern blooming across his features. "What is it, Darling?"

Before he could protest, she pulled his face to hers. He tried to be brave, to stick to his resolve. For five long weeks, he hadn't given her more than a quick peck on the cheek, knowing that if he kissed her like he wanted to it would lead to other things, things Ginny's battered body weren't ready for. Just now, though, she was biting his lower lip, searching for a response.

Against his will, he opened his mouth to her and she was inside him, tasting of strawberry jam and a flavor that was all her own. Under her sweet mouth, his defenses crumbled and he began to actively respond.

One of his hands was tangled in her hair, the other cupping her face, tilting it towards his. She shifted in her chair, and he pulled back, panting. "Ginny, we can't." His eyes still dark with passion, he stood, raking a shaking hand through his hair.

"It's been five weeks," she told him, her voice unnervingly calm. "I'm not going to break if you touch me."

"The medi-wizard said six weeks in the wheelcahir, because he didn't want you re-injuring anything. Do you honestly think there'd be no risk involved in us..." His pale cheek turned red.

"We could go slow," she reasoned.

"Not bloody likely," he said realistically. "I touch you and I go mad. It's always been like that with us. After five weeks, I'm not entirely sure I can stand much more than a peck on the cheek."

"Screw that," she told him. "Pardon the pun. I'll just owl the medi-wizard and ask."

"Ask him what- 'Hullo, this is the Minister, when can I fuck again?'"

"There's no need to be vulgar. I'll just ask when I might be able to participate in strenuous physical activity."

Draco rolled his eyes. "As if he wont see through that one. 'Hmm... The Minister must be quite the quidditch enthusiast.' However did I find a genius like you?"

"Through a great deal of luck, and very little natural skill," she retorted. "By the by, Dumbledore owled me about Marigold."

"Why didn't he owl me?" Asked Draco, getting a hurt look on his face, that Ginny recognized immediately as him feeling slighted.

"I'm the one who owled him in the first place, Draco." She explained calmly. "He said she's most certainly not a squib, she's been on the Hogwarts list of magical children since her birth."

"Bloody hell. You don't think he could have told me any sooner?" Draco said in frustration.

"He probably didn't know you thought she was a muggle. As far as he can tell, she probably wandered out of her room when we didn't come to tuck her in, and was watching when Pansy... She probably picked up the stupefy from there. Pansy'd just thrown our wands into the hall and she picked one up and tried it out."

"But how is she now?" He demanded impatiently.

"She's fine. Better than fine. She's been following Dumbledore around like a baby chick trailing it's mother."

"Why'd we send her with her again?"

Ginny sighed, repeating the answer she'd been telling him for weeks. "Because we needed 'us time,' and Marigold needed to be around other children in the wizarding community before she starts school. And she needed some sort of counseling. Dumbledore's good at that."

"But we can't have 'us time' right now. We have to wait, and it's gets lonely," he complained.

"It's good for us, I suppose." Ginny sighed. "I mean, most people get to know each other before. We'll just do things backwards. It gives a chance to see what we like or don't like about each other."

"I love everything about you," he told her, tucking an errant curl behind her ear. "Except for that damn wheelchair."

"I'd better owl the medi-wizard then, hadn't I?" She smiled softly, reaching for a piece of parchment and a quill. "I've got a meeting in ten minutes. You'd better get out of here. You could go down to Hermione's office and see if they know when you'll be able to get back into your house."

"It's a manor," he corrected automatically. "Isn't she on leave to plan the wedding?"

"Yeah, but Law's still down there. She'll know what's going on."

"Right," he said, clearing the desk of breakfast's remains. He blew her a kiss, not trusting himself to touch her any longer. "G'bye then."





"Just pick one," Harry pleaded.

"Yes, but which?" Hermione queried. "The cream with a kelly green ribbon is a little more traditional, but a crimson ribbon with a gold card is rather original... Perhaps cream with a crimson ribbon with gold trim?"

"Yes, that, excellent. Choose that."

"Very nice choice," assured the wedding planner. "And what font are we thinking for that?"

"Could we see some choices?"

"Certainly," the woman smiled, as she flipped to a new section of her binder. "Parisian and Tabitha are very popular, but we've also got a very large variety to choose from-"

"We'll take Tabitha," Harry cut her off. For a moment, he thought Hermione was going to contradict him, but before he knew it, the two women were off to a new section of that dreaded binder.



Hours later, (though it most certainly felt like days) the only details of the wedding left unplanned were the identities of the wedding party.

"I'm just saying it'll look odd," cautioned the wedding planner. Her name was "Charity," or "Faith," or some sort of annoying non-name that was really a virtue or something. Harry hated her.

"Lupin and Sirius will not be ushers," he stated firmly, his voice rising higher.

Hermione was attempting to mediate. "Harry's very attached to them. They'll have to be groomsmen."

"Very well," the wedding planner sighed. "Just remember how attached to them he is when you look through your pictures and see two old men standing amongst a group of twenty-somethings. What about the bridesmaids?"

"Glin'll be Maid of Honor, or the others will feel slighted. Ginny and Minnie as the other two."

"And these people are of what age?"

"Same as us, except for Minnie. She's got to be at least fifty-" Hermione looked to Harry for agreement.

"Don't worry 'bout the age though. She's a cat."

The wedding planner gave them a glare that said "you've got to be kidding." She sighed audibly, and in Harry's opinion, overdramatically. "I thought you wanted to have a non-magical wedding. People will be suspicious if they see a cat in the wedding party."

"It's non-negotiable," Hermione said, no longer finding the woman so helpful. "Minnie's a very dear friend. It's ridiculous to even argue about this. After all, this isn't your wedding, is it?"

"Every wedding I plan becomes, in a sense, my wedding," the wedding planner said through a plastic smile.

Harry looked over at Hermione, who now appeared to be involved in a staring contest with the other woman. It wasn't the first time he'd seen Hermione stare someone down, but he had to admit he'd never see her up against someone as... forceful as the wedding planner. It was actually kind of arousing, now that he thought about it.

"Perhaps we'll just plan our wedding ourselves," Hermione said, much in the same tone Harry'd heard Ron use when he made a particularly brilliant wizard's chess move.

"I don't think that would be advisable," the wedding planner countered. "Most people in the business don't even talk to civilians." Check. She smiled, self-satisfied.

"We aren't exactly civilians. Our wedding promises to be one of the largest social events of the century. It says in your binder that you did the Parkinson-Malfoy wedding?"

Harry could tell by the look on Hermione's face that she was going in for the kill. Her hand reached over to brush the hair off of his forehead.

"You see this scar?" Checkmate. "This scar means that this wedding is going to make Malfoy's look like something out of a movie about drive-through chapels. He's Harry Potter, you twit. You're probably going to forget my name before I walk out the door. But you're going to remember my face."

The wedding planner rolled her eyes and scoffed. "And why is that, exactly?"

"Because, I'll be the one next to him on the cover of every magazine in the country, wearing the Padma gown and a gigantic fucking smile.



Hermione was practically skipping down the street, a grin stretching her face in comedic contrast to the deadly look she'd been wearing just minutes earlier.

"You've just thrown out hours of planning and made a spectacle that's almost guaranteed to land us in every gossip column in the universe and you're grinning like an idiot. May I ask why?"

"Harry, being justified in rubbing someone's nose in the fact that I'm quite possibly the luckiest woman in the history of the world is a rare and exciting occasion. Besides, I was right. We can do an absolutely smashing job planning this ourselves. Padma will outfit the entire party, of course. Glin's stylist will do the hair. We'll get the caterer's Ginny used for her thing. Really, I don't know why we ever bothered with that ridiculous woman. We're free of her and her ilk, forever and ever! Doesn't that make you positively ecstatic?"

"Possibly..." He replied cautiously, one eyebrow raised as he waited for the other shoe to drop.

"I know I'll probably go completely mad from the stress, and we'll probably end up wanting to kill each other, but for now, I'm deliriously happy."

Harry looked at her closely, as she spun around in circles, insanely, down the sidewalks of Diagon Alley. "You're going to get sick if you keep doing that."

"Don't be a stick in the mud! Spin with me!"

"I don't want to get all dizzy," he said, latching an arm about her waist, halting her revolutions."

"What if I kiss you until you're dizzy?" She queried playfully.

"I dare you," he said, his green eyes sparkling like maple leaves in rain as the mood of the moment shifted abruptly. Her arms circled his neck and his arms tightened about her waist. Rubbing his nose against hers, Harry exhaled, his breath warming her cheek.

To the observant passer-by, it appeared that the Boy who Lived and a woman they'd seen in the papers quite a bit were looking to create a scene that'd make the cover of a sleazy romance novel look tame. To the untrained eye, it merely seemed a bit shocking, but heartwarming, rather like a good bit of street theater.