Wedding Aftermath

August 1st, 1997
Post-Hogwarts
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The Death Eaters were not satisfied that Harry Potter did not appear to be with the Weasleys so they continued to interrogate them and turn the Burrow upside down. Marcus leaned against a once golden pole and watched the Death Eater sentry out of the corner of his eye. He'd perfected the strong, silent type attitude years ago and the façade wouldn't break until he allowed it to. Well, sometimes if Jocelyn snuck up on him it would crack, but he'd been working on that. So much time without her had given him plenty of time to practice.

So when a glowing, silvery white salamander scuttled across the grass, up his legs, around his chest and perched on his shoulder to whisper in his ear, he didn't move a muscle.

"I trusted you," it whispered in Jo's voice. "You bastard, you said you chose me. But you lied," her salamander snarled. He'd never seen a salamander snarl before.

Jo's patronus wound its way down and across the grass to Fred to deliver a much less threatening message, one that exuded calm and poise, reassuring words like "We're safe." before fading.

Marcus slipped his wand into his hand and very carefully cast a Patronus charm, he didn't know how to send messages but hopefully this would be enough. He watched as Fred did the same.

Jo and Leili got their assurance that everyone was ok when a dachshund and a bear materialized in their room.

"Marcus Flint's patronus is a bear, huh?" Leilani said; it was the proverbial elephant in the room. She couldn't just not say something. Fred's Dachsie patronus wagged its tail, glowing tongue lolling. It was incredibly tempting to pet the sausage dog but their hands just fell through the skinny body.

"Shut-up," Jo said, completely not having this conversation.

"You know, it's said that frequently the memories used to conjure a patronus largely revolve around the person the caster is in love with..."

Jo grabbed a pillow to launch at Leili.

"Ok, ok! I'm sorry! I was just trying to help!" She'd raised her arms to protect herself from the imminent smack that never came. Instead Jo dropped the pillow and grabbed at Leili's hand.

Leili laughed at Jo's sudden distraction, "What?"

Jo held Leili's hand up, palm out, "Where did this come from?"

Leili suddenly stopped laughing. There was a ring on her finger. She hadn't arrived at the wedding with a ring on her finger. When did it get there, how did she not notice? "I—I don't know, no, no, wait, hang on." She pulled her hand in closer to her face. "That's my gramma's. Why am I wearing my Gramma's engagement ring? How am I wearing—?"

An ear splitting grin lit Jo's face, "You know what I think this means?"

"Don't you dare say it," Leili said, jabbing a finger at Jo, the light setting the ring all a sparkle. It was very distracting.

"You got engaged and you didn't even realize it! You got engaged!"

"In the middle of a war," Leili felt the need to point out.

Jo just shrugged, "Better now than never. It's so sparkly!"

It really was. It was a plain white band with a single round diamond and two tiny pink sapphires on either side.

It was her mom's mother's ring and she couldn't figure out how Fred had gotten it, let alone gotten it on her finger without her noticing. It hadn't been there before the Lynx had crashed the wedding, she was sure of it; Fred's hand had been on her shoulder blade the whole time anyway, nowhere near her hand.

"I'm gonna kill him," Leili said, flopping backwards on the bed, the light catching the sparkles in her dress.

"Don't you dare!"