"No," Hermione said, leaning against the door to hold it closed. "No, we're doing it their way this time, and that means you can't come in and see me."
"But my - you know - it's in your bag," Draco called from the corridor.
"And with good reason," she said. "You're awful at controlling yourself at non-magical functions. You can have it back when it's over."
He knocked in rhythm with her name. "Hermione, I'll be good. Open up."
"No, it's tradition. You aren't supposed to see me yet."
He dropped his voice. "Darling, it's not as if - come on, Aloho - dammit, that's right, you've got my…"
Draco went grumbling away from the door of the room where Hermione, her mother, and mother-in-law were getting dressed up on a spring morning.
Narcissa Malfoy was snickering at her son as she turned before the floor length mirror in her apple green Chanel suit, tugging at its tailoring as if it wasn't already flawless, reducio and engorgio-ing the corsage on her lapel. "Are you certain these robes are appropriate for today, Ann? I feel like they need something."
Ann scoffed. "If you had anything more, you'd be upstaging Hermione. You look lovely, Cissa, elegant. Stop fretting."
She sniffed. "Well frankly, Hermione's dress could use something too."
She wasn't wrong. It was the time in history where most wedding dresses were strapless and simple. Hermione's was no exception, made of smooth satin, cut in an A-line, the skirt long and flaring but nothing like a ballgown. Narcissa could bear that but she had to know, "Why white? It's ghostly. Especially the shroud part."
Ann clucked her tongue. "Shroud - it's a bridal veil, Cissa. Really."
Hermione would never have become a Malfoy if she didn't find this kind of cheek endearing, and she knew to smirk at her mother-in-law's fussiness. She said, "Honestly, you're as bad as your son. It's a Muggle tradition for the bride to wear a white gown and white veil."
"Even brides who had their first weddings to their grooms four years previously?" Cissa asked, leaving her own clothes to pick at the veil pinned to Hermione's hair.
She meant well but was raising the frizz so Ann delicately nudged her aside. "Well, none of the Granger relatives knows Hermione was married as a seventeen-year-old. Draco is her long-time school sweetheart, as far as they know, but in a few weeks they will all be able to tell she's soon to make him a father - "
"Which is another argument against me wearing white, actually," Hermione interjected.
"Is it?" Narcissa said. "Why so?"
"Never mind any of that," Ann said, smoothing the skirt of her suit, identical to Narcissa's except for in powder blue. "Let's simply enjoy ourselves today. Some of you have waited so long for this. Tim missed the first wedding completely, as did you and Severus. Little Brian wasn't even born when it happened, of course. Then there's Lucius."
"Oh, Lucius won't be coming," Hermione said. "He owled to let Draco know for certain only this morning. Can't bring himself to leave Nairobi just yet."
Narcissa shook her head. "Still doesn't trust that his pardon isn't an elaborate Ministry ruse to entrap him, more like."
Ann hummed. "It's for the best. But how is it, Hermione, that you know what Draco found out only this morning, on a day you slept at our house so you wouldn't see him? He was in your room this morning, wasn't he?"
Even though she'd been married four years, Hermione was blushing and sputtering at being caught. "Weddings - they're so romantic, and then there's the nostalgia, and I'm finally not quite so sick all the time, and having Draco stop by gave me a chance to - to confiscate his wand - "
Ann scoffed. "Is that what young wizards are calling it these days?"
Narcissa was cackling like a Muggle's Halloween witch. "Right. However it happened, tradition thwarted. And in that line, let's change the colour of this monochrome wedding dress, shall we?"
"No," Ann and Hermione said at once.
"Trust me, Cissa. It will be nice," Ann said. "Grin and bear it as we Muggles put on a lovely, modest wedding, with all our odd Muggle trimmings."
"Oh!" Hermione exclaimed, something black catching her eye as it darted through the garden below their window. "Looks like Severus is having a terrible time keeping Brian from nearly falling into the pond without using magic."
Cissa parted the curtains to better see her son and husband. "Oh, aren't they darling?" she said. "Darling and, yes, about to be drowned. Forgive me, Hermione. I'll meet you downstairs."
Outside in the garden, in the pleasant spring air, Pansy Weasley sat sweltering beneath a parasol, Ron fanning her face with the commemorative programme Hermione's cousin was handing out at the head of the path.
"No one tells you these things when you marry up with an old family Slytherin girl," Ron was telling Harry over his shoulder as he fanned. "No one tells you that all the sweet doting the girls do over boys at the dinner table is completely reversed once they're pregnant."
Harry shrugged. "Makes sense though."
Pansy batted Ron on the head with her own programme. "And no one told me Weasleys are so vulnerable to spell-slips when it comes to contraception."
Ron spread out his arms, indicating all of the many gingers in the garden. "Why would anyone have to tell you that? It's bleeding obvious, isn't it?"
Ginny had been managing to keep her Weasley self from getting pregnant quite nicely, but Harry decided not to mention it at that moment. They had, however, started to fantasize about babies in their own future - or at least, what they might name them. The first boy would be called after Harry's father, the first girl after his mother. That was easy enough.
If there were any more, they'd name them after Professor Dumbledore, who had died of the lingering effects of a curse one year into a horcrux hunt that would go on for nearly three years. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore - Harry and Ginny's child would already have a living Uncle Percy so Percival was out. Severus Snape and his wife, the former Madam Malfoy, were both so detached from Muggle life they hadn't known Brian was a normal Muggle name and had gone and given it to their son, Hermione's baby step-brother-in-law. It left Harry and Ginny with a choice between Albus and Wulfric for their own, completely hypothetical third child.
"Get me some strawberries, would you love?" Pansy was saying.
There were no strawberries anywhere in sight but Ron rose to his feet to find some anyway. He paused, not looking peeved about serving Pansy but sorry to be leaving her for a few moments. He rubbed her belly, then had to kiss it. She raked her fingers through his hair as he bent whispering something to it, and then he kissed her face before setting off.
Tim Granger had grown to love Draco Malfoy in the four years since he'd joined the family, but he still watched the dreamy red-head doting on his wife a little wistfully. Since Hermione's pregnancy was not yet widely known, Tim had yet to see how fatherhood would change Draco. But it would change him. Tim knew that.
Ah, there was Remus Lupin with his own little one, trying to get him to leave his cap on so the Muggles wouldn't notice if his hair changed colours. And there was the man Tim once knew as Hermione's nasty chemistry teacher, now Draco's step-father, carrying on his shoulder a pale, dark-haired toddler, the sweetest little vampire look-alike Tim had ever seen, the little boy destined to become an uncle before his third birthday.
These wizards - they did everything too young and took their disagreements far too seriously, but they were alright, all of them working to be normal in front of the rest of the family this morning.
And the rest of the family was what Tim was attending to now, greeting them as they arrived and found their seats - the aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, friends. They weren't magical or necessarily heroic, but they were not nothing, not superfluous nobodies to be swept away so the wizards could have their story. They deserved to remain a part of Hermione's life and that was why, instead of sending out word that a wedding had already happened, maybe on a beach, Tim and Ann had planned this service to honour and include the rest of the family.
The music struck up. The bride was coming.
After four years as her husband, it should have been difficult for Draco to look nervous or elated or affected by much at all as he stood at the head of the aisle in the rented garden set up like a wedding chapel. He was a ham when he tried to act - just ask Potter. It meant his quiet, sincere look of awe, as he stood beside the vicar from Hermione's grandmother's parish, watching his bride approach for the second time, must have been genuine. This wedding would have no lightning, no spells or blue fires, but it would have the most important elements: each of them.
Their mothers made their entrance first, arm in arm, parting to sit at the front on opposite sides of the aisle. Tim and Hermione came next. Narcissa had enchanted the wedding dress at the last minute, and the plain white A-line strapless was overlaid with a delicate lacy film that covered the skirt and bodice, then draped over her arms in high, fine sleeves. It had a fairy-like look - light, springtime magic they could share with anyone.
Hermione came to Draco on her father's arm - Draco's wife, always, and now bringing along with her his child. In wizarding Britain, parents tended to be young, especially in a generation like theirs. There had been times when Draco and Hermione, Ron and Pansy, Harry and Ginny, and the rest of them questioned whether they'd have a future at all. So they chased after the future they had won, fast.
The best part of the Malfoys' second wedding was their second honeymoon, because it was actually their first one. After finishing their second wedding, they didn't go to potions class, didn't worry about urinary tract infections, but went to the hotel suite Hermione's Uncle Randall booked for them as a wedding gift. It wasn't as posh as the purged and repaired Malfoy Manor, but it was different from their routine, and their aim was to take a break from their rigorous advanced studies - as much as they could when Hermione insisted on packing two Arithmancy texts for herself and a compendium of potions for Draco. They had a plan to found their own magical research institute someday, independent of the politics of the Ministry. It was ambitious and would take all their academic efforts.
But on this day, they rested.
"Let's pretend London is another country," she said to him as they lay in their hotel bed. "Let's do something here we've never done before."
Draco raised his eyebrows and rolled on top of her. "I like the sound of that."
"I mean, let's do something like go to the ballet," she laughed at him. "Once the baby comes, it will be harder to find a chance."
He groaned into her silky smooth shoulder. "The Royal Ballet? If it's not French or Russian ballet, I can hardly be bothered."
She scoffed, shifting herself until she was on top of him. "Well, I happen to like British dancers. Tall, thin, pale ones who glide and pirouette."
He laced his fingers in the small of her back. "All the more reason to keep you away from the Royal Ballet and its dancers and here with me."
"I am talking about you," she said. "You are my favourite dancer, in Britain, France, or Russia." She leaned forward and kissed his grinning mouth.
He was still smiling broadly, dragging his fingertips up and down her spine as he asked, "Really? When was the last time I danced for you?"
She laid her head on his chest. "At our Muggle-wedding, just now. You waltzed like an angel in front of all my relatives and made them love you."
He smoothed her hair as it covered them. "Wedding waltzing? Too easy. Doesn't count."
"Alright then," she turned onto her back. "Dance for me now. Get up and do a pirouette for me."
He scoffed. "Now? No, Granger. I'm not dressed."
She sat up, winding the sheet around herself, leaving him uncovered, giving instructions. "Your pajamas bottoms are there, and I happen to know you're already limbered up. Go on then."
Not at all nonplussed about being exposed, he propped himself on his elbows. "Hermione - "
She gathered the sheets more tightly, smirking, demanding. "Either you give me a pirouette here in our room, or we spend a night at the opera watching for someone else to do one there."
He sat up, muttering, pulling on his pajamas. He scuffed across the floor. "My feet are going to stick."
She summoned a fresh pair of socks and tossed it at him. "Dance like you did in our fourth year, at our lessons, the first time you ever did something I thought wonderful."
He stood on one leg as he put each sock on, so beautifully balanced it was almost enough for her. When he was ready, his foot slid out to second position, his arms extended, and as he always did before he pushed off, he checked to see if she was watching him with complete and utter adoration.
She was.
AN: Thanks again for reading. If the last section doesn't make sense, it's a call back to the prequel to this story, "Dancing with Draco." It's posted here too.