Chapter 30: In Which We Explore Wizarding Weddings

Snape awoke the next morning feeling really good. He was rested. He was happy. And, as he stood under the spray of the shower, he was content. Among other reason for his joy was the fact he no longer worked at Hogwarts. Hermione had gotten up at some horrendously early hour. He had woken up just enough to kiss her goodbye and went right back to sleep.

Now, at the much more civilized hour of nine, he stepped out of his shower, and decided to take the next step.

He walked downstairs, slipping on his favourite jumper. A wave of his wand set his kettle to heating, and breakfast things skittered from their places to settle on the counter to await him. He spent several moments looking through his papers to find the bloody thing the Ministry had sent along with his list of matches. He knew he had tossed the Guide to Courtship, but he was fairly sure he had kept the paperwork necessary for registering a marriage.

He located it at the bottom of his neatly stacked mail. Snape began to look it over while moving back to the kitchen. Today he let his wand do the cooking while he read the pages in front of him.

He put the pages down and devoutly hoped Percy had given this to some underling to write. It was the densest, least enjoyable wodge of words he had had the displeasure of running his eyes over in years.

Who knew there were so many kinds of weddings? Is this ice cream? Do we really need thirty-one bloody flavours?

He buttered his toast and began to think. The High Magic Ceremony was definitely out. He, Hermione, and the half a dozen other unmarried Order of Merlin winners were the only ones who qualified for it anyway. There was no way he was turning his wedding into a Ministry Support Festival. He felt pretty confident that Hermione wouldn't want their wedding to be a state occasion.

Ministry Wedding was a possibility. They just had to show up with the papers and be done with it. Anything else was up to them. She'll probably want something a bit more romantic than heading to the Ministry and filling out forms.

Wizarding Church Wedding? Not unless it's really important to her. He hadn't set foot in a church for years, and had no desire to do so anytime soon. He needed to talk to her about that. Did she believe in God? It'd be nice to know before the kids started asking questions.

Binding Ceremony. That one intrigued him the most. Make your vows, bind them with an Unbreakable Vow, and one witness, no need for anyone else.

We could do it tonight, be done with it, and go on from there. My kind of wedding.

What would you vow? Hmmm… Well, maybe not tonight. Better give this some thought.

Any legally binding muggle ceremony. Probably not. Granted, unlike much of the magical world, both he and Hermione officially existed, but he didn't like doing anything that reminded the muggle world of that fact.

He picked the papers up and continued reading. Okay. Fill out the papers. Give the Bride your 'token of serious intent.' Who wrote this? I'll have to smack Percy for inflicting this one anyone. Hand over the bride price. Get her parents to sign to show they got it. Well, you knew you weren't going to avoid meeting them forever. Do the ceremony. Get the witness to sign the damn papers. Send them in, and voilá, we're married. In just fifty-seven easy steps. Bugger. He finished his toast and sipped his tea.

Might as well get started on the 'token of serious intent.'

He went upstairs to find the key to his Gringotts vault and then apparated to Diagon Alley. The Goblins at the door went through their usual thorough inspection until they were satisfied that he was indeed Severus Snape. They allowed him in, and after a few moments of waiting in line, he was escorted to his vault.

He stood in front of the door, nauseous from the ride down, and remembered the last time he visited the vault. Three years ago he had received a brief letter telling him he was the last of the Prince family. As such the contents of the Prince vault had been transferred to his.

He went to investigate and found three items. A book of extremely dark magic, that he was almost embarrassed to have in his possession, a small blue velvet sack, and an ancient wand, had joined the contents of his vault.

The wand he remembered as belonging to his Grandmother: an evil, smelly old woman who had scared him more than anything else as a child. As an adult he purposely modelled the Greasy Git persona after her. He wasn't sure what to do with her wand, so he just put it on a back shelf. Just moving it made him feel uncomfortable. The book ended up resting next to the wand. He knew more than enough curses to last two lifetimes, he didn't need any new ones, especially of the kind that book was likely to contain. Short of Voldemort returning, yet again, he wasn't going to have anything to do with that book.

The small sack he was curious about, but he didn't want to just open it. There was no way to know what might spill out of it. He put it in his pocket and took it home, where he could examine it from behind many protective spells.

Later that afternoon, he opened the very small bag. Three stones and a note spilled out. He spent twenty minutes casting various anti-dark magic spells on the four items. Then another twenty minutes casting various identification spells. Nothing came up, so they were either extremely sophisticated magic, or they were what they appeared to be, a note, a star sapphire, and two little milk opals.

The note read:

Severus,

I understand that you will be the last of us. The other items should need no explanation. These are different. These stones have been used in some piece of bride jewellery for many, many generations. They are given mother to son, son to wife, mother to son and so on. Because my sister had a daughter they stayed on her finger until her death.

The jewellery belongs to the woman; the stones belong to the future. You are all that's left of our future. They are now yours.

Find someone to give them to.

Rethana Prince

It took him a few moments to remember that Rethana was his grandmother's sister. If he really tried, he thought he could remember meeting her once, at a disastrous Christmas where his family left before the pudding because of the horrendously cruel things his grandmother was saying to his father.

He had put them back in their sack and put the sack back in his vault. Fairly sure he'd never see them again.

And now he was holding the sack again. It was dusty from its years in the vault. He opened it and tipped the three tiny stones into his palm. The two opals were matched white, luminescent tears. The star sapphire was a small blue-gray oval, a perfect six pointed star gracing its centre. He stroked his finger over them, feeling their cool smoothness.

He put them back in the sack and signalled that he needed to be taken back up to the surface.

He walked down Diagon Alley, not really window shopping, but not ready to go home yet, either. It was almost entirely re-built. Many of the shops had new names, their original owners dead these seven years, and a few of the lots were still empty, but the rest was more or less how he remembered it. He watched the other shoppers carefully. Unlike the last time he was here, three years ago, no one stared. No one noticed him at all. He was safely forgotten.

He found himself standing in front of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, and decided to go in. Mid-morning during a school day was not a busy time for the store, so the witch at the counter noticed him upon entering. "Can I help you, sir?"

"No, I'm just looking around." She was old enough that he was sure she must have been one of his students. A Hufflepuff, he thought. But she didn't appear to recognize him, and he had no desire to find out who she was. As he walked through the aisles he realized that Fred and George really had been extremely gifted Wizards. How could boys who produced eighteen kinds of joke candies routinely get T's in Potions? The fact that he was standing in one of the only two buildings that had survived the Death Eater strike of Black June also spoke to their skills with magic.

He walked into the back section, where the defensive magic was. His antidote kits were on a shelf with several other healing and first aid items. He continued to browse the defensive items while fingering the sack in his pocket. When he finished looking at the items, he walked quietly out of the store. The witch was stocking something at the back of the store and did not see him leave.

He walked past Madame Malkin's, rebuilt after Black June and currently run by the original Madame Malkin's daughter, and saw the display of wedding gowns and formal dress robes. Reminding him further of what was in his pocket, and that he needed to think of what to do with them.

He apparated home, looked at the stones, felt nothing even remotely like inspiration, and decided that what he really needed to do was work on his time delay potion. Hours later, while writing up his notes on that day's work, an idea hit him. He went to his fireplace and called her name.

Ginny Potter had gotten used to the fact that things were likely to pop up and surprise her, and that they were likely to do so at the least convenient time possible. So it was while she was spooning food into JS, while Ron was running around the kitchen, and while Molly was yelling for attention, that she heard her name coming from the floo.

She walked to the Floo in the Grimmauld Place Kitchen ready to tell off whoever was calling only to see the face of Severus Snape looking at her.

She blinked a few times and shushed Molly who was still yelling. "Severus?"

"Hello. Do you have time to talk?" He had gotten the idea that he had called at a bad time when he heard the noise in the background and saw Ron running across his field of view every few seconds.

Ginny was intrigued. Snape was flooing her. This was too good of an opportunity to pass up. "Sure, come on through."

He stepped through and found himself in a pleasant kitchen, surrounded by the noise of children. Ron almost bumped into him. "Have a seat." Ginny gestured to one of the comfortable looking chairs at the table.

"You've redecorated since I was last here." He looked uncomfortable in the din and whirl of activity but sat down.

She went back to placing bits of food in front of JS, who was working on seeing how much of it he could get into his hair, ears, nose, and the floor. "Not exactly, Kreature finally decided to do a really good cleaning job. All of this was here before. We just thought it was black, grey and mud coloured. It turns out this warm brown and gold color scheme was here the whole time, just under at prodigious layer of grime. Harry thinks Kreature was applying new layers of grime at night while we were sleeping. That's why my mum's spells weren't taking care of the mess.

"So what brings you here?"

"I would like to talk to you about designing something for me." Ron was watching him closely. Molly had stopped yelling and was now chewing on her mother's collar. Snape was rapidly thinking about making sure he and Hermione put off children as long as they possibly could.

"Go on," Ginny said.

"A piece of jewellery. I have the stones, but no setting for them." He held the stones cupped in his hand so she could see them. "I understand rings are traditional."

She looked at him and grinned. "You understand rings are traditional? Are you indicating this would be an engagement ring?"

"Yes."

"Hot Damn!" Ron heard her and began chanting 'Hot Damn' while poking at his little brother, who was dropping fistfuls of banana on his head. "Are you free tonight?"

"Yes."

"Come back tonight after dinner. These little monkeys won't give me a moment's peace until they're asleep. But once they are, we can talk, I can sketch, and we can see if we can come up for something for Hermione. "