A/N: I needed some fluff in my life, opened up Google Docs, and this happened. I hope you like it!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. No copyright infringement is intended by the below - it contains a few lines from the actual books and I just want to be clear that I'm not claiming to have come up with those particular times, I just came up with this plot.
Harry," Ginny said firmly as she walked into the kitchen. "You're not working on your speech."
"Excellent observational skills you've got there," he quipped back, never diverting his gaze from the most recent edition of Transfiguration Today. For some reason Hermione had felt it necessary to sign him up for a subscription on his last birthday, but he had to admit that they had interesting articles sometimes.
"Their wedding is in two weeks and you're best man. What exactly are you planning on saying?" Ginny demanded to know.
"Er," replied Harry as he turned to a rather lengthy article about the rise of Animagi. "I'll figure something out."
"Harry!"
It wasn't that he didn't take being Ron's best man seriously or that he wasn't thrilled for his best friends, but the fact remained that he had known them for more than half of his life and was now expected to summarize that relationship in a five-minute speech. There was just no way to explain Ron and Hermione, to describe how naturally their relationship had come to life, without growing up alongside of them. He could say all of the trite things people usually said, cliches along the lines of how Hermione made Ron a better man and how lucky he was to have her, but they deserved better. They were his best friends and they would only get married once and so this had to be perfect.
So, in keeping with tradition, Harry was leaving this very important task until the very last minute.
"I promise I'll do it, Gin," Harry said. "I'm just, y'know, waiting for inspiration to strike."
Deciding he'd read about Animagi later - he had enough experience with them to last a lifetime, anyway - he turned to the next page, where a full-sized advertisement caught his eye.
Traditional Pensieves are outdated and difficult to use. Have a memory to share? Why not share it with a crowd?
With the Party Pensieve, you'll be able to broadcast your recollections to all of your closest friends at once!
Available now at Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment in Diagon Alley!
"And what if it doesn't?" Ginny countered.
Harry grinned and tore the ad out of the magazine. "Oh, it has."
Two Weeks Later
George had bewitched a spoon to clang perpetually against his glass of champagne, which meant that he could eat his meal in peace while making the same task increasingly difficult for his younger brother. It was intensely satisfying. Another guest would notice the clicking of metal on crystal and join in, soon creating a small orchestra inside the tent. At the head table, Ron would kiss Hermione, which would appease the crowd just long enough for him to consider taking a bite of food. Once he did, however, someone else would notice the noise from George's glass, and the whole thing would start all over again.
Ron felt that he should have been rather vexed by this, but the truth was that it would be damn near impossible to ruin the best day of his life to date. He had, indeed, accomplished the very thing he had been hoping to do since he was seventeen: he had married Hermione Granger. She had walked down the aisle in a floaty white dress, her hair in gentle curls down her back, and they had placed rings on each other's fingers and made promises and he kissed her for far longer than was probably appropriate. And if everyone wanted them to keep kissing, who was he to argue?
"Would you tell your brother to knock it off?" asked Hermione after they pulled back from what had to be their seventh or eighth kiss since dinner began. She was trying to sound stern, but a smile playing on her lips betrayed.
"Why, you don't like kissing me?" Ron teased. "Has our marriage become stale already?"
"No, I'm just hungry, and I know you are too."
"Yeah, I am, but…" Only George's glass was emitting noise now, but Ron laced their fingers together on her lap and kissed her lightly on the lips. "You only get one wedding day. I mean, hopefully."
Hermione swatted his chest with her free hand. "You are the worst."
"And yet you still married me."
"I did, didn't I?"
After stealing one more kiss, the pair of them attempted to tuck into their meals, but they only got a few bites in before the time came for speeches from the bridal party. Even George had the good sense to silence his glass and spoon as Harry stood, his voice magically magnified, a flute of champagne in his hands.
"Ron and Hermione, Hermione and Ron," Harry began, regarding the couple before him. "I've known I would need to prepare this speech for quite a while, but I still don't know where to begin. We've all known each other since we were eleven, and to try to sum up their relationship - we'd be here all night. So rather than tell you about it, I thought I'd show you."
With a wave of his wand, he summoned from behind a corner of the tent a large expanse of what appeared to be canvas, except that it was shimmering, almost rippling, neither liquid nor gas. Harry waved his wand once again and the device jumped to life, revealing Professor Flitwick's classroom as it was in October of 1991. Ron's jaw fell open, as did Hermione's, as they recognized their younger selves, wands held aloft.
"You're saying it wrong," said twelve-year-old Hermione in an impossibly bossy tone. "It's Win-gar-dium Levi-o-sa. Make the 'gar' nice and long."
The screen rippled, and there appeared Ron in Hagrid's hut, dejectedly vomiting slugs into a pail.
Tears were already flowing down the adult Hermione's cheeks, but Ron bit back a laugh at his childhood attempt to protect his friend.
"You won't have to do all the work alone this time, Hermione," said a young Ron fiercely as the scene changed again. "I'll help." On-screen, Hermione flung her arms around him and broke down, and Ron patted her awkwardly on top of her head.
When the image blurred out into another, Ron sensed what was next, and his suspicions were confirmed when he saw Hermione in a pretty periwinkle dress and himself in the world's oldest dress robes, both of them red in the face.
"Next time there's a ball," Hermione was shouting across the Gryffindor common room, "ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!"
Another ripple. "Good luck, Ron," said sixteen-year-old Hermione, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.
"Ron," said Hermione, this time in the Gryffindor common room, "you are the most insensitive wart I have ever had the misfortune to meet."
The common room faded into the Hogwarts hospital wing where Ron, on his seventeenth birthday, lay unconscious. "Er-my-nee," he croaked out in his sleep.
And then they were dancing at Bill and Fleur's wedding, then asleep in the drawing room at Grimmauld Place with their fingertips mere inches apart, then standing at Dobby's funeral with their arms around each other, and then the image changed to the Room of Requirement.
"No," Ron was saying, "I mean we should tell them to get out. We don't want any more Dobbys, do we? We can't order them to die for us!" On-screen, Hermione dropped her armful of basilisk fangs and launched herself at Ron, kissing him with such gusto that he reeled back a bit before hoisting her off her feet.
Wedding-dress-clad Hermione turned to smile at Ron through her deluge of tears, and he squeezed her hand tightly, but the show wasn't over.
The scene switched again, showing them kissing over butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks, then asleep against each other on the sofa at the Burrow, then attempting to babysit turquoise-haired Teddy Lupin, and finally Hermione, holding up her left hand to show a sparkling diamond ring. She was beaming as the Ron beside her kissed her temple, and then the image blurred once more. Now the screen showed Hermione, no older than twenty, sitting on the back porch of the Burrow, surrounded by old Wellington boots and a great rusty cauldron.
Harry's disembodied voice sounded through the tent. "So you think Ron's the one, huh?"
Hermione nodded, arms wrapped around her knees. "It's always been him," she replied simply, pink in the face.
"Always?" said Harry's voice.
"Yes, always," she said with a touch of exasperation. "Even when he drives me mad, it's always him."
The scene shifted again to reveal Ron, at eighteen years old, cross-legged on his childhood bed. The pile of wrapping paper on the floor indicated that it was Christmas, and Harry's voice spoke again.
"So you and Hermione have gotten pretty serious," he was saying, to which Ron nodded thoughtfully.
"She's everything," he said earnestly, before pausing and tilting his head to the side. "She's the only thing."
The screen faded to black, and Harry waved his wand to vanish it. The wedding guests were torn between stunned and awed, Hermione's makeup was ruined, as was Ginny's, and Ron even had to admit that he was feeling insanely nostalgic.
"So as you can see," Harry concluded, "it's been quite a ride. Even so, I always knew the pair of you would make it. I'm…" He paused to take a deep, calming breath. "I'm beyond honored to know both of you. You're the best friends a person could ask for, and there is nothing I wouldn't do for either of you. Today is only the beginning of what I am sure will be a long and happy life together. You both deserve to have everything you've ever wished for, and I hope you get it. I love you both." Triumphantly, he raised his glass. "To Ron and Hermione."
"To Ron and Hermione," the crowd echoed, and in the next instant Hermione had leapt from her chair and hugged Harry firmly around the neck, crying into his shoulder.
There were no words to describe what it had been like to see their relationship build through another's eyes. Harry had been there through all of it, supporting them and rooting for them and having faith when they had lost it in themselves. He had shaped who they were and how their relationship had fallen into place. It went beyond family and friendship to a bond that connected all of them for life.
Harry, laughing, carefully passed off a still-weepy Hermione into Ron's arms.
"Why are you crying?" he said gently, kissing her cheek. "You know it works out for those kids in the end."
"I know," she said, smiling up at him through watery eyes. "But it's amazing, isn't it? How far we've come?"
"Yeah, it is," Ron agreed, "but it couldn't have gone any other way."
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