"Isn't that right, Professor?" Harry addressed the silvery-bearded bespectacled man who was now standing behind his friends.
"As you have reminded many of us time and again," responded Dumbledore, highly amused. He had apparently slipped into the hall unnoticed by Harry and the rest, so absorbed were they in the moment.
Harry had only happened to see him after he'd put his glasses back on. His friends tried to whip around in response and fell to the floor in a heap, yelling variations on the word, "AAAH!"
Wondering what would possibly cause such an infectious loss of balance amongst three normally surefooted individuals, Harry stared for a full five seconds before dropping to the ground to assist them.
"Are you all right?" he asked them all at large.
"Yes," answered Draco, unable to meet his eyes. "But you…I think you pulled a…a…"
"A what?" questioned Harry, wondering why Draco was seemingly accusing him of causing this.
"I believe Mr. Malfoy is telling you that when you told them to stop, you unknowingly directed a leg-locker curse on them," supplied Dumbledore, obviously intrigued.
"But I didn't say—" began Harry, startled.
"Oh, I know you didn't say the words, but you definitely invoked the curse. The most important part of spells is the energy that is pulled in and directed. Words are essentially meaningless. They're simply meant to instill the required feeling behind the spells. That's why we can chant the same words in different languages," Dumbledore educated them all. Even the three now on the floor listened. It was funny that the headmaster was still giving them objective lessons, even after graduation, and at a wedding ceremony. Once a teacher…
"What is most amazing," continued the professor, "is that you directed it without using a wand. Almost nobody can do that. In fact so few can, the practise mostly remains theory, even to this day. Or…haven't you noticed your tendency to do wandless magic has increased, Harry? I daresay since…last June?"
Something clicked into place in Harry's brain. Ever since he'd defeated Voldemort, he'd noticed he was able to do certain…"magicky" things that he hadn't been able to before, without using his wand. Or a potion. Or any other enhancement. That's what had finally finished the Dark Lord off; Harry had caught him squarely off-guard, by saying one thing and doing another.
Since then, Harry once levitated a cup of tea straight out of Draco's reach, much to Malfoy's combined annoyance and fascination. He could open doors with a thought, switch off the lights by snapping his fingers, and mash the snooze bar on the alarm clock, all by will alone.
Not only that, but Harry could also see energy eminating from everything around him, if he looked the right way. That's how he was able to do things wandlessly. The energy was right there for the taking; all one had to do was draw it in. All these things started happening so close to graduation, that Harry had thought it was just a natural part of…being an adult wizard, really. It hadn't even occurred to him that nobody else amongst Hogwarts alumni could yet do the same things.
Evidently it was another talent which Voldemort had effectively kept him from knowing about instead. Hmm. Wandless magic. The only two people Harry had yet come across that he knew could do such things on a conscious level were Voldemort and Dumbledore himself. And the possibilities were…endless. Magical learning and discovery didn't end at graduation, manifestly. But before he considered more, Harry decided he did need to let the curse-catchers off the floor.
He looked at Dumbledore, who'd begun reaching in his robes for his wand, as if to assist Harry. Harry instead shook his head and waved him off. He wanted to see if he could remove, as well as invoke a curse without wand augmentation. Better stick with the real terms this time, however.
Feeling a tad (but only a tad) foolish and Merlin-ey for trying this, Harry concentrated on drawing the curse away from his friends, s-curved his arm in front of him and fully stretched out his fingers in a star-shape.
"Locomotor inceptio!" shouted Harry, closing his fingers to a point and pulling his arm back. He actually felt the curse come with it. Then he had to duck out of the way slightly as the magical backlash flew past his head. It was more of an exchange of spells, actually. For he was sending one, as well as removing another.
Instead of being angry or incensed, the two girls got up off the floor and ran to Harry exclaiming, "Wicked, Harry! That is sooo brilliant! How come you never told us?"
Draco, decidedly less exuberant to have been subjected to Harry's inadvertencies, answered sardonically, "Because, as always, he assumed it was something that everybody else would be able to do." Harry offered him a hand up, but Malfoy declined, a bit irritatedly. This was not a good sign.
"I had assumed the same thing as well, at his age," replied Dumbledore in defence of Harry. "At any rate, your guests are growing quite anxious. I offered to come out and fetch you, in the event you had lost your way to the Great Hall. I know you haven't been here in a fair six months or so. And Hogwarts is a rather large place." The Headmaster smiled and raised his eyebrows at them all.
At once, Star and Gabby began to attend Harry and Draco. Being on the floor tends to make one look rather disheveled, evidently. The girls took their wands and Scourgified the spots off their robes, making them look good as new. While fixing their swags and crowns, Star turned to Gabby and said wistfully, "Snape and Lupin are so lucky. I wish I could be the one to test the binding strength! Imagine, tugging on their arms for the test…!"
Gabby looked Harry straight in the eye, even though talking to Star and replied, "Oh, I know…" and trailed off, reaching up to fix Harry's fringe. Since graduation, Draco and Harry had gone fashionably "bachelor" and let their hair grow out a bit. Gabby flushed a little as she rearranged his hair, but to her credit, didn't turn away. Being in close promixity to Harry always made his friend slightly skittish, but it was something they had pretty much glazed over since the start. It was something Harry found rather charming; it didn't matter to loads of girls that he preferred another man's company. They were attracted all the same. Star was the same with Draco, just much more open about her appreciation.
Things had still not seemed to simmer down between he and Malfoy, however. They had not exchanged word one since the start of this haste to make them look presentable to the public. Something needed to happen, so as a means to assuage the tension, Harry tried to make small talk.
"Those flowers were amazing," he said to Draco, "what on earth did you use to make them light up that way?"
This comment not only caused Malfoy's face to fall completely, but any and all surrounding conversation came to a screeching halt. And there was Dumbledore, in the background, patient as a saint. An uncomfortable silence grew around them, until Draco spoke up.
"I would think you, of all people here, would know the answer to that." It was such an enigmatic reply, Harry didn't know quite what to make of it. So he faced his fiance and asked, in a slightly cautious manner, "And why is that?"
Draco gave a short pained sigh and said, "Potter, you're going to regret making me say this."
Now in no mood for more of Malfoy's games, especially since he'd addressed Harry by his surname, he turned fully to Draco and exacted, "What…did…you…use?"
Drawing himself up to his full, considerable height, Draco assumed a foppish and snootily proper air about him. Harry hated it when he pulled this unctuous and insufferable attitude. Then with a wholly inscrutable look in his eyes, Malfoy said, with utmost supercilious dignity, "Faerie…lights."
Making a small, strangled noise in the back of his throat, Harry blinked rapidly up at Malfoy, not quite sure how to respond. Muggle and magical terms could be different. Had Draco even the slightest idea of what he'd just said?
Star and Gabby were under no such confusing constraints, however. They knew from the start just what Draco was going to have to tell him. Now they were giggling their fool heads off about it.
Turning back, Harry saw the only telltale signs on Draco's face that he knew precisely what he was doing, were a small quirk at the corner of his lip and a flaring of his nostrils.
"What?" demanded Draco in his strongest Malfoy drawl.
Harry couldn't stand it. It was just too much. Holding a hand to his mouth, he struggled to withhold the laughter building in his chest. With a last fighting choke, he began sniggering like an idiot with the girls.
"Can't a man have a little respect at his own wedding?" yelled Draco into the hall, throwing both arms out in perfectly feigned indignation. He was standing there, green-damasked in leaves and dewgems, tendrils of white-blond hair curling around his face, and looking for all the world, paragon of mythical being himself. Faerie lights, indeed. The only thing Draco was missing were the pointed ears. He could even fly!
At this final thought, Harry was driven to raucous laughter, and the girls joined in a half-second later. And it was all due to Malfoy's "faeristocratic air" being played to the hilt. Harry supposed the man could strut into the Great Hall buck-naked at this very moment wearing nothing but Dobby's tea cosy, and still be capable of commanding respect. Now that was an idea.
What made it so funny was Harry didn't look much different from Draco at the moment either. So, here they were, the two biggest "faeriefolk" of them all. If you couldn't laugh at yourself with your friends, who could you laugh at yourself with? At least Harry had gotten his tension-breaker.
"Well," Dumbledore said, walking up to the four of them, "at the risk of getting flogged for using an ancient term, I daresay it's magic time." Then he looked over the top over his half-moon frames, and smiled broadly. "That's what we say in the wizard world, anywise."
Harry felt a surge of pure excitement race through him as Gabby said lazily, "Yeah, that's what we say in the Muggle world too. They're not completely clueless, you know. Only mostly."
Suddenly, the doors to the Great Hall were thrown open from the inside and out rushed Minister Cornelius Fudge in a huff. Anxiety was his middle name, it looked like. He peered over quickly to the four young adults, gained a look of slight relief, and turned to Dumbledore in barely repressed frustration.
"Headmaster, I thought you said you were going to get our guests of honour. We've been waiting so long, we were beginning to think they'd skipped out altogether and…eloped." He looked appalled at the very idea.
But the dead-serious staging of his utterly ludicrous possiblity to present company was so profoundly hilarious, Harry had to nearly bite his tongue clean off to keep from laughing. For the twelfth time in five minutes. At the moment he was feeling inexpressibly giddy, like he'd been slamming firewhisky shots. This time, even Draco was caught so off-guard, he let out a loud honk-like HA! before he could stop himself. That alone nearly drove Harry off the edge again. The girls just held their breath, not trusting themselves to even draw in air.
Fudge was slightly bigoted toward anybody not like himself, and Harry had never been an exception. His moments of shocked disbelief concerning Harry had only increased after the announcement of the Potter/Malfoy engagement. At least Fudge was equally stupid toward everyone. You just couldn't take his ineptitude personally.
Nearly taken aback by their unexpectedly high response, Fudge, now slightly pinkfaced, demanded of Dumbledore, "Well?"
Harry knew hardly anybody would address the professor in such a disrespectful manner, but Dumbledore was his characteristically composed self. He answered Fudge in a delighted tone, "Yes, and here they are," gesturing expansively to the party opposite him in the hallway.
Fudge continued, "We never saw you leave; what took so long?"
"I did leave the Hall, but I didn't use this entrance. And surely, as a minister," Dumbledore near-admonised, no less amused, "you've witnessed your share of…pre-wedding jitters?"
The minister, now going completely crimson in the face, glanced embarrassedly at Draco and Harry and mumbled, "Oh, I…see," clearly not seeing at all. "Beg your pardon," Fudge said, as if saying the words left a nasty taste in his mouth.
Draco, once again effortlessly gaining complete control of the situation, threw an arm around Harry's waist and drew him in.
"Oh, I think Mr. Potter and I may find it in our hearts to tolerate your malarkey, just one more time," said Malfoy.
Now Fudge was not only cherry-faced, but speechless as well.
"Isn't that right, luvvy?" added Draco, turning toward Harry.
Trying not to smile, Harry said, "Oh, I suppose we should do something like that, darling." Baiting the minister had become one of their favourite games together. The minister's eyes expanded to the size of dinner plates at Harry's answer.
Harry then turned to Malfoy who quite unexpectedly greeted him with a very short, if very hard and wet kiss, smack on the mouth. Whoa, Draco was really laying it on thick this time.
Poor Fudge now looked like he would about fall over and die of shock. Harry would swear his skin had taken on a distinctly green pallor.
In response, the minister walked silently, if still pompously back into the Great Hall, leaving Dumbledore to deal with the irreverent soulmates and their equally disrespectful attendants.
Sighing with great pleasure, Harry reflected that he had nearly insulted the entire wizard world, degraded his fiance, almost run away, and soundly taught the Minister of Magic a lesson, all without having even entered the Great Hall. And it had been such a memorable evening already.
9