Wedlocked
Chapter 13: The Sunday After

"Ow!" Hermione whined, pulling the pillow over her face to block out the light which pierced her eyeballs painfully. "Oh, my head."

"Serves you right," a gleeful voice declared.

Hermione's head was in no state to try to sort out who was talking, so she opted not to care. "Go away."

"No, I was told you had to come downstairs for breakfast," the man insisted. "Pancakes."

The thought of food provided her the motivation she needed to get out of bed. She scrambled out from under the blankets and raced to the washroom, vomiting up what little she had eaten the day before. Since she had eaten virtually nothing, she was finished rather quickly.

Standing upright, she released a horrified gasped at the disturbing painting moving before her, only to groan as she saw its movements matched her own. Leaning in closer, seeing the smooth glass, she knew it was no magical copy of some Munch painting but her own reflection.

"Oh, what have you been doing?" she asked herself. Her makeup was smudged. Her hair, a tangle of veil and curls and bobby pins, resembled an abandoned squirrel's nest. She looked down and saw that she had slept in her wedding dress, which had held up surprisingly well, wine stain notwithstanding. The splash of claret on her stark white dress reminded her of the night's activities. She and Sirius had gotten drunk on hundred-year-old burgundy, broken every remaining dish in the kitchen and stumbled to bed. She frowned, her brain still not up to the challenge of thinking just yet. Where had she slept?

The frown only grew deeper as the young woman dug into the hazy memories of the previous night, Sirius telling her all manner of bad jokes, fond memories of Harry's dad and some of his more illustrious exploits from school and the few good years he had before Azkaban, all of which had Hermione laughing until her face ached. She remembered vaguely his hands on her waist, steadying her on the treacherous journey up the stairs, but could not remember if his hands had gone anywhere else. There was talk of her garter, that he had not gotten to remove it as was tradition.

Frantically, she pulled up the layers of her skirt, cursing Ginny for picking a dress with so many. Her hands came to rest on her bare thigh. "Oh, bloody hell."

She tore open the door and ran back the way she had come, returning to the bed in which she had been so rudely woken. Her feet skidded to a stop on the hardwood floor, her mouth dropping open as her heart missed several beats.

"Yep," James grinned at her from the frame on the wall, "that's Sirius's bed."

"Where did he sleep?" she whispered even though she knew the answer.

"There," he said, pointing to the same bed. "You two looked so cute together, all drunk and cuddly. I was very disappointed you didn't take advantage of your uninhibited state to do something you'd both thoroughly regret." He sighed and shook his head.

"We didn't?" Hermione fell back onto the bed in her relief. "Oh, thank god."

"No lying down!" James admonished. "Pancakes!"

Grumbling, she struggled back to her feet and returned to the washroom to sort out her hair and wash her face. Sadly, she had no clothes to change into and was forced to head downstairs in the damn bodice. She paused outside the kitchen door, afraid of how big a mess they had left before retiring.

"Hermione, dear," Mrs Weasley beamed as soon as she dared to open the door. "I was wondering when you'd join us."

"Us?" the girl blinked, confused by the woman's presence.

"Yes, us," George grinned from the table. He sat between his twin and sister, across from Harry and Ron; Remus and Tonks bookended the table, with Sirius slouching in the chair nearest the door. She had not seen so many people at Grimmauld Place since the night of the marriage arrangement.

Sirius's head fell back as if he couldn't be bothered to hold it up, and he made a face of annoyance that only she could see. "Molly came to by to 'bring your suitcase'," Sirius informed her, his fingers making extremely sarcastic quote marks in the air. "She just wanted to make sure I didn't try anything last night."

"Did he?" Tonks asked hopefully.

"No!" Hermione said, though she did not know for certain and couldn't ask with them all sitting there.

"I tried to get you drunk," he said.

"And succeeded," she replied as she dropped into the seat beside him and let her forehead crash to the table. It was testament to the pain in her head that she didn't feel a thing when she collided with the wooden table top. "My head is killing me."

"Drink this," Sirius pushed a repaired cup over to her.

"Is it tea?"

"No, what good is tea? It's whiskey," he said. "Hair of the dog and all that. Just until the hangover relief potion is done."

"You are a brilliant man," she muttered and downed the cup.

"I'd be brilliant if I had thought to add another lock to the door before we went to bed," he said. "Instead I get woken up at some ungodly hour by Molly Bloody Busybody over there shrieking that I've defiled you when we were both clearly still dressed."

"What were you doing in the same bed together?" Molly waved the spatula at him threateningly. "Well?"

"Sleeping, obviously," he snorted. "It's what married people usually do in bed at six o'clock in the bloody morning on a Sunday, woman."

She just clicked her tongue and turned back to the frying pans.

"Who cleaned the mess?" Hermione asked. Judging by his inability to sit up straight, she doubted Sirius had the energy or ambition to repair all the things they had broken. The man offered a vague gesture to his right.

"I did," Remus said. He dropped his voice and leaned in closer so Mrs Weasley would not hear him, "I tried to stop her, but you know what Molly's like."

Sirius just batted the apology away. "I don't care why you're here. You cleaned up my mess, Moony, that's all that matters."

The conversation picked up around the table and became a buzz in Hermione's pained head. She ate but only because Molly insisted, and talked but only when Sirius prodded her in the side to make her pay attention. After an hour at the table, she still didn't know why half of them were there. She had to assume they had come for the same reason Mrs Weasley had, to make sure Sirius had not done anything to her. She wanted to say that it was the stupidest idea that had ever entered any of their brains, that the man married her to keep her safe and would not take advantage of her, but, after the slurred and giggled comments about her garter, she remembered nothing of the night until James shouted for her to wake up.

As they cleared away the dishes and the unwanted guests started to leave, Harry hung back. "I know you're… um… getting settled… and everything," he said awkwardly, "but do you think I could stay for a while and talk to them?"

Sirius hugged him. "You can stay as long as you want."

Harry grinned and hugged his Godfather tight before racing across the sitting-room to talk to the portrait of his parents.

"He's never going to want to leave," Remus commented.

"I'm fine with that," he smiled and turned to Hermione. "So, Mrs Black, would you care to join me in the anteroom? We have a lovely cauldron brimming with hangover remedy."

She took his offered arm, but could not muster the humour necessary to return the light tone.

"Regretting me already?"

She bit down on her lip before whispering to him, "My garter, Sirius, where is it?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Wherever you threw it."

"I threw it?"

He looked at her sideways. "You can't hold your alcohol, Hermione. I made one little joke about tradition and you went off on some drunken feminist rant about the garter as a modern shackle or some such rubbish. You seemed to take it as a personal affront that I would dare try to take it off, so you did it yourself." He stopped to grin wickedly. "Put on quite the show, too."

She flushed. "What did I do?"

He laughed. "Nothing, really, but you do have some nice legs."

"Oh shut up," she glowered and folded her arms as he finished the potion and handed her twice the recommended dosage. Hangover cured, she ran from his presence, too mortified to bother being adult about the situation she had made for herself. It was humiliating. And worse, her dress was being as uncooperative as her memories. The only formal attire she had ever worn before had been the lovely, flouncy dress she picked up for the Yule Ball. That had been easy to operate, a simple zipper up the side and she was done. This contraption, by contrast, was impossible. The buttons were miniscule and located on her spine where she could not hope to reach them. Even with magic, she couldn't get them undone. She tried directing a spell at a mirror so it would bounce off the reflective surface onto her back, but her aim was poor or the buttons were just stubborn.

A knock came at her bedroom door. "Hermione," Sirius said. "Lily said you were fighting with your dress… and losing."

"Go away! You've seen more than enough of me already," she shouted.

"I've seen a leg, Hermione," he assured her with barely contained entertainment. "One leg, which I've seen every time you wear your uniform."

"Oh, come in," she huffed. "I think Mrs Weasley jinxed it so you couldn't undo the buttons. The damned thing is stuck."

Clever man that he was, Sirius did not laugh as he entered. "Turn around," he ordered. "What are you complaining about? These are not jinxed." He made quick work of the irritatingly tiny buttons. She was soon hugging herself to keep the dress in place and Sirius was once again getting a prime view of more skin than she had ever wanted him to see.

"Well, maybe you've just more practice at this than me," she retorted.

"No, I can't say I've had much practice removing brides from their wedding dresses," he frowned in much the same manner as when he was running through his memories looking for a bodice. "I've removed one or two bridesmaids from theirs, but you make the first bride."

"Aren't I special?" she cooed sarcastically. She knew she should not be snippy with him, not with this man who had already given so much to keep her safe, but she was standing around discussing his sex life while barely managing to keep her dress on. This was not the sort of situation that bred discourse, civil or otherwise, in her opinion. She just wanted him to go so she could get back into her normal clothes.

Sirius, however, did not seem all that inclined to leave. He was smirking at her again. "Yes, I'd say you are."

"What is that supposed to mean?" she questioned.

"Nothing," he smiled and turned slowly to leave. "Out of curiosity, what do you plan on doing with that dress?"

She looked down at it and thought for the first time about what she was going to do with it. Traditionally, brides put their wedding dresses away as a keepsake or heirloom, but that only applied to regular brides. Hermione was certainly not one of those. She had no plans to have children, so she would have no one to pass the dress on to. That made it just a big, white, wine-stained, impossible-buttoned, seductively low-cut bunch of fabric that she had no use for.

"Nothing really. Why?"

"Just curious," he said and left.

"He's very strange," she said to herself.

"You don't know the half of it," James commented.

"Will you go away!" she shouted. "There is nothing for you to see!"

"A bloke can hope, can't he?"

oOo

Regulus watched her as she came into the sitting-room. "You looked better in the wedding dress," he said, not impolitely. "Those make you look so… average."

"I agree," Sirius chimed in from his seat on the couch. "More bodices, I say."

"Give a rest, will you?" Harry elbowed him and turned back to the painting where his mother was smiling at him.

Hermione tried very hard not to glare at her husband as she dropped into a vacant chair. Harry and Sirius talked merrily with the painted James and Lily, and she finished the book she had borrowed from the Hogwarts library. Blood magic was well worth more research, she decided as she set the book aside, turning to her old stand-by, Hogwarts: A History. A slight frown touched her lips as she opened the worn cover; the thick paper, dog-eared and softened by countless readings, was different. Her handwritten name was missing from the title page if only because the title page itself was missing. She frowned further and turned the page, seeing that the text began without crediting any author or editor. She had always been a fan of works by Anonymous, finding the idea of a subject so controversial that the author was forced to remain nameless rather exciting. Still lost for how such a work had found its way into her book, she read the words that had replaced the ones she knew by heart.

'INTRODUCTION,' the book read. 'It may be interesting to some persons to learn how it came about that Vatsyayana was first brought to light and translated into the English language. It happened thus…'

So it was a translation of some old Indian text, she realised, still perplexed as to how it got inside her copy of Hogwarts: A History. Never one to turn her nose up at any sort of information, she kept reading about the history of this particular book, the title of which was still unknown. The book seemed rather comical, laying out in old fashioned English the archaic notions on what sort of woman was worthy of being married and how to go about marrying her. This had to be a prank, though it seemed so mild by Fred and George's standards.

She kept reading, waiting for the moment the joke would became obvious. Perhaps it would start flying around the room shouting out quotes or a banner would explode from the book.

There was an explosion of sorts, but it certainly did not come from the book.

Turning the page, Hermione's eyes grew wide at the illustration depicting, in as much detail as the ancient artist could manage, a very private act between a man and a woman. She slammed the book shut and glared hard at the only prankster in the room, one who smirked at the idea of bodice-rippers, one who had gone shopping for books that made the salesgirl grin.

"YOU!" she shouted.

Sirius smiled placidly up at her, his grey eyes glittering with delight as she fought for what abuses to hurl at him. "Problem, pet?"

"Horrid – Childish – Completely— " she stuttered her words, blushing furiously. Finally she managed to find the right words, short and to the point: "Rule Number One!"

"No pranking the wife," he reminded himself and informed the curious audience. "Does that really count as a prank?"

"YES!" she cried and threw the book down, thankful that it didn't spring open to one of the explicit illustrations.

"I think I ought to go…" Harry said as he slid from the room. His voice came to them from the kitchen a moment later, barely audible to Hermione in her fog of anger despite how loud the boy must have been shouting, "Professor! Thank god you're here! She's about to kill him!"

Hermione didn't care which professor had chosen to arrive at such an unfortunate moment. She truly intended to hex her husband's bollocks off for teasing her so callously.

"Mrs Black," Professor Dumbledore said with a smile on his lips and voice, "perhaps such activities are best saved for later. We must complete the binding and prepare to leave for school."

"I forgot about the binding," replied Sirius with irritating calm.

"No point," she grit. "I'm going to kill him before he has the chance to cheat on me."

"Still," Dumbledore smiled, unperturbed. "The formalities of marriage must be completed. The Ministry is watching for this spell even now."

At his gesture they approached him. Sirius hissed as she dug her nails into his palms; Dumbledore pretended not to notice. The old wizard chanted, his sage voice adding to the ancient magic, as his wand waved around their joined hands. The magic pricked like needles on their skin as the invisible ribbon wound around them, binding them together in an unbreakable spell. "And it is done," the old man said.

"May I kill him now?"

"Not just yet," Dumbledore said. "Perhaps after lunch."

A/N: I survived my first two days of teaching. That's all I have to say about that.