Author's Note: Sorry this was so long in coming, but I had a completely different chapter that I was about to post ages ago when I realized that it was completely not what I wanted for the chapter. Plus, school's just started, and with that and practice, I'm not certain how much I'll be able to update. Hopefully, I'll get to do it every weekend. I think that will work. I'll make it work.

Thanks for all the reviews!

Schatje: Thanks so much for all your reviewing! You see Harry's decision this chapter. I completely agree that he has to save her! Question is, will she let him?

Graham Mallalieu: I'm so glad you like it! Thanks for all your reviews.
earp124: Thanks! You see if Harry comes back in this chapter. I think the more interesting part is what happens after he comes back, and I hope you read the next chapter and agree with me!

Jarno: You won't find out why Harry left for a while, but I've planned out the scene already and I really like it. I might just give a little preview of it one day if I get enough reviews (hint, hint). I don't make any promises about this chapter relieving your anxiety, but I hope it'll make you forget it for a while.

bubble: Thanks for your review! It made me feel bubbly! Okay, I'm a dork, read on anyway.

Kd7sov: Read on and you'll find out! Thanks for reviewing, it's so great reading them, and it makes we work harder. And write faster. HINT. I hope this keeps your interest!

Vampirehelsing: I get to a good point in this chapter, and it really picks up in the next one. That's the plan, anyway. Thanks for your review!

sarahhhhhhhh: Thanks for your review! I really hope you like this chapter. On another note, I have a friend named Sarah. She only spells it with one h, though ;-)

Outsider08: I hope you like it!

fuzzylumpkins82: You have no idea how happy your review made me! I hate those too, I'm like, "the conflict was where…?" I'm so glad you like it! It moves a bit faster from now on, but that's just moving from point to point. I guarantee this won't be a one-chapter resolution. I hope you like this chapter!

bigkid-42m: It helped! Review this one and I might get the next one up before next century (grumblegrumblehomeworkgrumblegrumbleevilteachersgrumblegrumble).

5CANDALOUS: Thank you so much! Hope you like this one! If you don't, read the next one anyway. I can make it better, I promise.

Wolf's scream: Sorry, I had been putting things like that in when I was writing, but they never showed up! I think I fixed it. I hope. I completely wasn't even thinking when I made the day. I just looked up what would be the nicest months in England (because I'm a dork and felt like I should) and I really liked April for the wedding, and I didn't want it in the beginning of the month because of Fred and George's birthday, and I didn't want it at the end because I thought it would be too hot. It's my sister's birthday, too, and I didn't even think of THAT when I made it the date. I'm so scattered.

pink gecko: School's completely bombarding me too. One of my textbooks is the size of my niece. It might be bigger. I really hope you like this chapter! Your reviews are the best part of posting this, so I really, really hope you like it.

Tomanak: Thanks so much!
stressygirl: :-D I'm so glad you like it!

Chaos023: I hope reviewing was worth it!
Rose: When I thought of the wedding bit, I had a way I wanted to do it, and it's kind of similar…you see more of it in the next chapter.

Noshiwoshi: Thanks! I know coming from me that would be really big since all summer I lived on ff's, so thank you so much!

IndieRock'n'Roll: Thanks for your review! It very nearly made me change how I was going to go about Harry showing up, but in the end I did what I planned. Yours sounded really good, though. There's more about it in the next chapter, and it's more similar in that one, but it's not quite the same… I hope you like it anyway!

supermansweez: I hope it was worth the wait!

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. Except my cat, but that's different.

Though he meant to, Harry couldn't bring himself to throw out the invitation. His body refused to part with this last connection to his old life, and so it stayed on a dirty counter, gathering dust as the days wore on.

Harry would catch himself looking at it sometimes, and he had to give himself a mental shake and repeat that he couldn't go back. Not ever. Not after… He just couldn't.

Still, every time he saw it, he had to resist the urge to but new dress robes.

April fourteenth dawned cold and wet, though the rain that had been falling dismally for a week had stopped in the night. The bright rising sun promised a bright and lovely day, and offered further hope for Ron and Hermione's wedding day.

Ron and Hermione's wedding. Harry still hadn't fully comprehended that his two best friends were getting married. In his mind he still imagined an eighteen-year-old boy who took nothing very seriously, was quite immature, and wished to remain a child forever. He saw a girl who was a bit too serious, obnoxious at times, and couldn't abide Ron's silliness. It seemed impossible that they had fallen in love and were ready to commit their lives to each other. It seemed impossible that he had missed that.

He shouldn't have missed that.

He didn't want to have missed that.

He shouldn't miss this either.

Slowly, Harry picked up the invitation. It looked as though he would need some new dress robes after all.

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Hermione sat in front of Ginny, her face white and her hands trembling. She had tried on her wedding dress again and it had suddenly occurred to her that she was getting married that day. Ginny spoke in soothing tones, desperately wishing she were somewhere, anywhere, else. When Hermione had realized that there was only a week until her wedding last Friday, she somehow made the fireplace explode and Fred took a brick to the head.

"You're going to have a very happy life," Ginny said, realizing almost immediately that she shouldn't have said it.

Hermione gripped Ginny's hands in a way that rather suggested she intended to rip them off Ginny's arms. Her face was paler than ever.

"Life?" she whispered faintly. Ginny winced, sure an explosion of some sort was coming.

The door opened, and Hermione began to wail.

"You're not supposed to see me in my dress before the wedding!" she cried.

"I'm not!" Ron said hurriedly. "See? I'm not looking!"

"You saw me!" Hermione accused.

"No, really Mione, I promise I didn't see you." Hermione looked slightly mollified.

"Why are you here?" she asked calmly.

"I came to talk to Ginny," he said, still carefully looking away from Hermione.

Placated, Hermione looked at herself in the mirror.

Shaking her head, Ginny walked to her brother.

"The planner said you might need back-up," he said quietly.

"She was in a right state," Ginny whispered. "But she seems okay now." She gave a sidelong glance to Hermione, who was now spinning in front of the mirror.

"I wouldn't know," Ron said, determinedly looking anywhere except his fiancée. Ginny smiled.

"Get out of here," she said playfully.

"Richard said he might come help," Ron added.

Ginny's smile was rather forced as she said, "That would be lovely. But tell him he needn't bother: I think I can take care of her now."

Ron nodded and left.

Ginny grimly turned back to her charge, who was now worrying that Ron left because he though the dress was ugly.

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Tonks was twirling about the kitchen in the light blue dress she had purchased for the wedding. It was a mid-calf length, light blue, strapless dress with a white underskirt that barely peeked out at the bottom and the top. For the occasion, she had matching shoes, earrings, and hair. She was experimenting with different hairstyles when Remus came into the kitchen.

"I'm not entirely certain that a mohawk would be well-received at the wedding, dear," he said, eyeing her hair critically.

Tonks smiled brightly. "You look very nice, too."

Rolling his eyes, Remus replied dryly, "You look great."

"I know," she said with a wink as she spun around once more and rested her hand on her belly, which was now very large with pregnancy. She was almost six months along.

Smiling at his wife, and advising her to give up the mullet too, Remus told her that he was going to Hermione's flat, which was serving as wedding headquarters, to supervise the day ahead. The task had been originally entrusted to Fred and George, but Hermione had found out and seemed to think it was a bad idea. (She had never really trusted them after they spiked all the drinks in her house with vodka at the party she had held for Ron's twentieth birthday. Though he was quite a funny drunk.) Remus had then nobly volunteered to take the responsibility. No one realized that he had been intending to wrest it from the twins anyway. He wanted the wedding to go well.

Remus entered Hermione's flat completely unprepared to face the spectacle that waited. Two of Hermione's friends were complaining about their bridesmaid dresses in rather shrill howls. Eleanor, Bill and Fleur's six-year-old daughter, was nervously tossing flowers about as the wedding planner's assistant tested her, and Percy's four year old son Henry was crying because he lost the rings.

Shaking his head, Remus approached Fred and George who were laughing uproariously. They immediately stopped when they saw him coming and attempted to quickly make their way out. Catching them, Remus held out his hand, and they sheepishly gave him the rings they had hidden from Henry.

He walked over to Eleanor and told her she was doing a wonderful job, and he told off Wendell, the assistant, for making her uneasy. She gave him a wide, endearing smile, and he gave her chocolate. The girl could charm anyone.

Remus ignored the wailing bridesmaids because he had no patience for complaints about ribbons and frills.

Grabbing Fred and George, he dragged them up to Hermione's room, thinking they might be able to calm the bride who, he was sure, would be sitting amidst fiery ruins by now.

When he entered the room, however, he was shocked to find it intact and Hermione fixing her hair calmly. She gave him a serene smile and went back to adjusting one of her diamond clips. Looking around the room, frankly bewildered, Remus saw a tired-looking Ginny watching Hermione warily.

"Did you…" he asked her quietly, not finishing the question.

"Did I what?" she asked, playing dumb.

He eyed her suspiciously. "Did you give her a calming draught?"

Ginny looked at him and raised her head primly. "You think I would give a bride a calming draught on her wedding day?" she inquired with a maddening air of superiority.

"You gave Percy a sleeping potion the day of his wedding," he pointed out.

"You have absolutely no business remembering such things," she said, walking out the door.

Remus instructed Fred and George to stay with her and call him when the effects of the potion began to wear off.

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Ron stood at the altar nervously. Thoughts kept running through his head about what would happen if Hermione didn't show up. Matters were not helped when the twins started telling him that Hermione accepted his proposal because she felt sorry for him and had run off with one of the strippers from her bachelorette party.

They had since stopped at a glare from Remus, but Ron was feeling no better. Tonks, noticing his pallid expression had given him an encouraging smile but it made no difference. The twins had already done the damage. Everyone made a mental note to quarantine them during important events in the future.

Looking at the sea of people that had come to attend his wedding, Ron felt a jolt in his stomach. Boy, it would be really humiliating when she didn't show up.

Ron's thoughts were rudely interrupted by the music starting and the sudden hush as the bridesmaids appeared at the beginning of the aisle. He blanched.

The first one to walk down the aisle was the daughter of an old family friend of the Grangers' whom Hermione had known all her life. She hadn't been able to abide her when they were younger, but they grew to like each other more after Hermione got out of Hogwarts, which Katherine didn't know about. Katherine approved of Ron, and smiled at him as she walked. He took this to mean that Hermione had left in a very nice, sweet way.

She was blonde and the dress looked very nice on her. It was a pale blue, spaghetti-strapped dress with a very flattering empire waist. It made her look rather taller than she was, which was very becoming. It had a sweetheart neckline and had a small diamond design in the middle of the chest.

Luna Lovegood came next. She and Hermione had maintained contact after Hermione graduated, and they became very good friends. She also looked very pretty, and her light blonde hair was arranged exactly as Katherine's had been and as the other bridesmaids would prove to be. It was fanned out on her head in a very elegant up-do. The knot in Ron's stomach loosened slightly when he chuckled at Luna's rabbit foot earrings, which she had insisted would bring good luck to the couple.

Percy's wife Emma came next. She was a rather plain-looking brunette, but the dress made her eyes stand out, and they were quite nice. She was a very pleasant woman who worked at the Ministry in the Department of Magical Games and Sports and was an absolute Quidditch fanatic. When you looked at her you though her quite dull and silly, so it was quite a shock when she transformed into an animated companion with quite a colorful vocabulary.

Fleur was the last bridesmaid and looked as beautiful as ever, though there was a definite sadness in her eyes that hadn't left since Bill died. She carried herself gracefully down the aisle and gave her old, wonderful smile to Ron. Though he was pleased she had smiled, as she usually only gave true smiles to Eleanor, he was not affected the way he had been in the past, which he though was a good sign. He was always affected that way when Hermione smiled at him.

Ginny came next in the same dress, though hers was green to differentiate her from the bridesmaids. It flattered her hair, and she couldn't stop smiling as she walked down the aisle, which made her all the more beautiful. There was one person sitting in the back who couldn't take his eyes off her.

Henry came next, and he was clearly doing his best to remain dignified as he marched down the aisle. He had his nose in the air and acknowledged no one as he walked, which Fred and George thought was much too similar to Percy to be good. Mysteriously, Henry was tripped by two well-aimed hexes.

Little Eleanor came next. She had inherited all the grace of her mother, and many of her facial features as well. Her red hair came from her father, and no one was quite certain where she had gotten the curls. All the same, they were adorable. She smiled endearingly at everyone as she walked, and artfully bounced her locks with a toss of her head. The resemblance to Fleur was striking.

Ron's stomach gave a strange lurch as the music changed and everyone stood up. Just as Ron had convinced himself that Hermione had gone, a vision in a white wedding dress appeared.

Hermione looked absolutely radiant. Her hair had been pulled up into an elegant bun that some of her hair had been curled around. A small wisp had escaped the restraints of the diamond clip that held her hair back and framed her face becomingly. Her dress was strapless and had a close-fitting satin top that was covered in diamond designs and let out into a full skirt that swished with every move she made. She gave Ron a dazzling smile and began to walk down the aisle.

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The service was over and people were milling about in Mr. and Mrs. Granger's yard. Many were congratulating the new Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, some were dancing, some were eating, and some were trying to convince Fred and George to stop feeding Henry Canary Creams.

Ginny was sitting at a table with the bridesmaids and wasn't listening as they talked. She was watching her brother and his wife, both of whom looked deliriously happy and kept referring to each other as "Mrs. Ron" and "Mr. Hermione." She shook her head as she saw her nephew turn into a giant bird.

Her eyes paused on a pair that were very familiar. Her breath quickened and her face whitened. Her hands closed around the edge of the table and she could feel herself becoming faint as she stared into a pair of emerald eyes.