Hi, guys. :) It's been a while, I know, but it's been an extremely busy year for me. But...here it is! The latest chapter. Thanks to all of you that have kept reading and for all your support. I hope you guys enjoy.
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"Ginny Weasley, there is no way in hell that I am wearing this dress."
Hermione turned before the full-length mirror, lips puckered distastefully. Her eyes bent in a dissatisfied arch.
Ginny sighed. She looked so old to Hermione. After Harry left her in their sixth year, six months became six years on Ginny's face. Small and dourly, she appeared to Hermione like some tragic widow-miles of epic sagas were written in her frown. The Juliet. The sad-eyed lover. The ancient child in red hair and red, red freckles.
Hermione quickly regretted her imminent distaste in the dress. After all, Ginny had been the one to pick it out of the catalogue. And as simple as transfiguration may seem from a dictionary, it was really quite a feat to transfigure an entire gown-the dress would have to remain mostly as it came.
Ugly.
Duck-yellow.
It had slitted, short sleeves and strips of long, tattered sequence rayon. Hermione hated rayon.
Her grandmother had been an accomplished seamstress and had taught her granddaughter the therapy of sewing. Thank god for small, non-magical favors, Hermione thought as she ripped away a particularly long tail of sequencey material.
Ginny gasped. "What are you doing?" She demanded.
Hermione cringed. Damn. Ginny was her friend and here she was ripping away at the dress the other girl had picked out for her. Ripping the fabric like Harry ripped her. Wonderful. Just perfect.
"It...it looks a lot different than it did in the catalogue, Ginny. I think they may have mixed up the orders." Yeah. Sure. Great lie, genius.
Her mind briefly flashed on a now enormously regretted scene. Hermione busied with her studies and Ginny rambling on about some wonderful new evening wear catalogue she had got on the mail.
I'll order your Ball Gown from there, okay? Hermione? Look at this one.
"Great, Ginny," Hermione had said, not even bothering to look up from her copy of Goblins and You: The Story of a Misunderstood, and Rather Smelly, Creature.
Fuckity-fuck-fuck!
Ginny frowned. Her eyes looked like heavy sacks. "Oh. Well-"
"Would you put your own touch on it, Ginny? I mean...I would love to have you fi-I mean, add to the design." Hermione gave the girl a tentative smile. "I always love what you pick out, Ginny."
Ginny seemed to contemplate this. Carefully, she slipped her hand across the bodice of the gown, feeling the satin. What person puts satin and rayon together? A small, unfamiliar smile spread across her lips. It looked like a memory to Hermione-a moving magical photograph. It had been so long since she had seen the girl smile.
Ginny crossed her arms and looked towards Hermione. She was cynical. Smiling and cynical. "I'll fix the dress, Hermione. I know you hate it-don't lie! We can sew it together. Here, hand me those pinking sheers in that drawer over there. We have...six hours before the dance. Up to it?"
----
Candles danced unstrung in the ceiling space above laughing and the smell of fruit punch in the Great Hall. Robes were buffed and starched and heels painfully bitting into ankles-some of the younger girls danced barefoot-lonely on the cool tile. It was bright and pretty. The sounds of chatter filled little empty spaces in-between the band's selections of jazz and the current popular tunes. The children looked grown-up. The grown-ups danced like children and everyone gleamed magnetically in the rows and rows of candlelight.
Remus Lupin took a corner to himself. He wore his only pair of wool dress robes and tweed slacks. A peasant shirt peaked beneath the gray material. He was twitching in it anxiously. Tonight! Tonight! His head screamed the mantra. Tonight, tonight, tonight! In a room of eyes. Tonight, he would express his feelings to the girl. Bare. Striped away of all the implications of professor and adult and werewolf. The raw materials of his care for the girl had to be exposed.
And so, nervously, he twitched. He stood. He sat. He paced in a very small patch of tile. He crossed his arms. Right over left. Left over right. Left. Right. Sweeping back his hair. Left. Right. Left. Twitching and moving and stressing like a madman. Where was she? Would she show up? She had to! Remus hadn't spoken to her recently, having just recovered from his latest midnight expedition. He touched a new scar on his neck. Forty-one scars. Line over line over line. Left. Right. Left. Twitching!
He looked up. She was there.
Hermione stood at the entrance, arm-in-arm with Harry. Head Boy and Head Girl were required to make that peculiar entrance to an onslaught of applause. Clapping for their accomplishments and their fame. Students smiled at them-the symbol of all that was right and good with Hogwarts.
Yellow. Hermione wore a floor-length, yellow gown. Simplistic. Sleeveless and with a pretty, drooping back and no sequence. Remus watched the creamy-white of her shoulder blades as she peddled through the crowd. Harry graciously released her and retreated into the mass of bodies until Remus couldn't see him-not that he was even looking at Harry.
Tonight, tonight! His courage hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat. He lunged forward in the crowd.
"Hermione..." he said as he approached. She turned and smiled, the crowd thick around them and occupied. Cautiously, she came towards him, hands fidgeting by her sides. No one seemed to pay them further attention-Harry had left.
"Hi," she said. Her cheeks pinked. Pretty brown waves fell down her breasts.
The sight of her filled him with breath. She was spectral. Her body moved when she was still and her eyes caught and refracted candlelight in hazel. His desire to touch her overtook him and he grasped her slender fingers in his palm.
"You look beautiful," he whispered.
Hermione's eyes settled determinedly on his mangled neck. "How do you feel?" she asked.
Remus gave a sideways little smile. The uneven, quirked corners of his moustache gleamed with perspiration. "Horrible," he said. Strangely, he recalled the brief scenario of Severus quickly depositing the Wolfsbane the few mornings before without even a casual insult. Odd. It occurred to him now without warning before evaporating quickly away.
Her eyes dropped sadly. "I've missed you."
"I've missed you, Hermione. Would you dance with me?"
Hermione looked around, nervously. "Do you think that's wise, Remus?"
Eyes on them. Remus had never enjoyed a whisper or a glance in his direction. To know that he might be the cause of it against Hermione unsettled him. There would be other opportunities for them in public-or so he hoped. "No," he agreed. "In my study. Do you think you can slip away?"
She smiled. He knew that she had never really liked dancing or the socialistic qualities of a party. Like him. Hermione gave him a short nod and a pat on his hand. "I'll see you in a minute," she said quietly and then dissolved into the weave of students.
Remus watched her go and then awed in the space of her absence. Her presence always lingered with him like the remnants of a dream. Slowly, sinking into reality, he turned and stalked gratefully out of the Great Hall. Out of the noise and the people and into the dark hall he could hear only his footsteps echoing across the polished wood. His body was weary and hungry to be against the warmth of Hermione. He wanted to tell her that he loved her.
"Remus."
Remus turned, unaware, to the shadow behind him. "Albus?"
Albus moved across the shade of open window, letting his body solidify in the moonlight. The rich folds of his age seemed creased with worry. "Remus," he said, "come with me to my office-don't protest. Hermione will join us momentarily."
Remus was floored. Damn that meddling old man.
----
Hermione smiled.
"Wat's that all about?" the booming voice behind her inquired. Hagrid looked happily down at her, his crushed velvet robes and plaid tie buffed and soaked in musky cologne. "Smilin' like ye got yerself a secret ther, 'Ermione."
Hermione covered her mouth and cleared her throat. What a sight it must have been to see the socially paralyzed book worm grinning deafly into thin air-smile spreading like static from each quirky corner. "Oh...nothing. A new book just-"
Hargrid paused her with a gentle hand, a knowing smile on his face. "I understand. Dumbledore's who sent me a'ter ye. Wants ya ta meet him in his office."
Damn. Her body had already been anticipating the sway of Remus' step with her own. She desperately hoped he would not take this as rejection. "All right, Hagrid. Thanks."
Dammit, dammit, dammit!
----
The young boy sat against a mop stand, feeling the stains from the ancient muck seep into his fine robes-or, rather, robes that were once fine-tailored and fashionable. Now, they were mended by unlearned hands with pieces of scrap cotton thread. Draco was only grateful that his father had gotten his own private room before discovering his son's strange taste so that he may mend his wardrobe in private. As well, Draco had replaced his expensive hair oils and shampoos with scraps of candle wax and his broom, which had once done sixty laps around the castle quarters in under a minute, was remorsefully chopped into quill bits and flinders of firewood. With the aid of a student's magic, Draco lived literally on pennies.
Harry, meanwhile, lived on the kindness of that bothersome Weasley. The family that once pinched each pound into a hearty banquet sustained the wizarding protege. No one knew that he was poor-Harry hated charity nearly as much as Draco, although he was not seen whittling his broom into driftwood.
Draco sighed and heard soft knocks on the broom closet door.
"Who is worthy to enter my palace?" Draco said softly, making a steeple of his fingertips as he sat and he watched the door.
Harry pushed through the entrance, allowing the pitiful space to briefly become illuminated by the candlelight spilling from the Great Hall into the crevice of the hallway closet, and then darkened once more by their solitary gloom. "I'm not worthy," Harry whispered softly as he leaned forward in the space between them to plant the slightest kiss on his lover's chin.
"Nor am I," Draco answered. His hands were discovering the layers of fabric on Harry's chest, then bravely sweeping them aside. They embraced. Patched satin on satin. Their mouths explored dark tunnels and each tongue the slightest damp crevice of the other. Slowly, Draco pulled back from the kiss and sighed a warm breath against Harry's neck. He loved the taste of Harry's skin. "No one else would have you, you know," he said. His hands gripped harshly at Harry's chest, pinching inward at the nipple.
Harry gave a sweet gasp. "Dance with me," the dark-haired boy said.
Draco sneered. "Such the woman," he remarked as he placed Harry's hand in his own and pushed against his hips to start their slow and rythmic rocking.
He loved Harry. He loved to tousle his black hair as he slept and kiss his body gently beneath the warmth of their covers. He loved to tease him and roughly push him into submission with insults and the force of his own, lithe body. Harry belonged to him and, sometimes, he to Harry. And though they could see nothing of the other in the darkness of the closet, they danced and felt their bodies slide together as if in an obtuse little puzzle until nothing of the world around them remained.
----
There was no one there.
Odd. The little office felt foreign without the Headmaster. In the absence of firelight or candlelight or even the assistance of a scanty little crescent moon, Hermione sensed the darkness saturating her skin and swimming darkly around in her bloodstream until she felt a part of it-absence. Nothingness.
Instinctively, she held her wand at arm's length and watched it flicker into light. Dumbledore's study stood before her, unscathed by the dark. Fawkes sang sourly on his post, decrepit feathers crumbling onto the floor. Objects glittered the light on his desk and on his shelves. Portraits muttered at the sudden intrusion.
Hermione moved from the door towards the small couch. She was certain the light mechanism in the study was activated by some sort of spell, though she was not sure which one.
Quickly she jumped back, her calves bitting painfully into the far book shelf.
"H-hello?"
She moved the light up towards the sofa, watching it settle in a sheen across the white object. Slowly, revealing the legs of the lounge, the cushions, and finally the back, bathed in the ivory glare of the thing. It sat-the arms reaching for someone. Fabric rolling in waves down the dark upholstery. No body.
Oh God. It was a beautiful wedding dress.