The day of the wedding dawned bright and cold. A thin layer of snow had fallen the night before and covered everything with a veneer of purity. It would be melt in an hour, but the early morning sun reflected off the sparkling white and flooded Hermione's room with brilliance. "Merry Christmas," she muttered to herself as she took a bite of the toast sitting on the tray. Tea, toast, and the end of her life, all in one morning. She chewed and her jaw moved the same way it had all her life. Teeth ground food, throat swallowed, everything worked automatically as she tried to calm the churning nerves that made her afraid even this bland breakfast would prove to be too much.
What she wanted was a drink? Where was the morning champagne for the bride?
She wanted her mother.
She wanted Harry.
She wanted a thousand things, all lost to the war. Had Ron's bride felt like this on her wedding day? Had Ron paced the floor before the ceremony, half-guilty, half-excited? Was it wrong to feel the tiniest bit of happiness about this?
The door opened and closed with the softest of clicks and she didn't need to turn to know it was Draco Malfoy standing there. "Isn't it supposed to be bad luck to see the bride on your wedding day?" she asked.
"Worse luck to marry an unwilling woman," he said. She could hear his feet as they moved across the soft carpet, could feel his hand on her shoulder. "You still have time to go," he said.
"I don't think I like what they'd do to you if I ran," she said. A truth. Not a whole truth, but a truth.
"I could come too," he said. "If you'd have me."
That she had not expected. "Your mother," she said. "Your parents."
He set a second hand on her other shoulder. "I do think in marriage one is supposed to turn from one's parents and cleave to a wife," he said. "Where you go, I will follow. Your people will be my people. All that traditional rot."
Something burned at the edge of her eyes. "It usually goes the other way round," she said.
"I was a careless student," he said. "I might have skimmed a bit of the reading."
She turned at that. His grey eyes looked down at her, a bit too raw for her liking. The bags were a bit too deep. He hadn't slept. "You've never been careless in your life," she said. She reached a hand up to lay it against his pale cheek. "Not once."
"Do you want this?" he asked. They'd danced around the expediency since Narcissa had maneuvered them into an engagement. It was a good idea, they'd agreed. It would give them more room to move, alleviate the last suspicions she might be more than a besotted girl, redeem him in the eyes of some of the underground. It made sense on every practical level, much as his first trade of port-keys for her presence had.
"It's clever," she said, hedging.
He waited.
"Do you?" she asked.
He closed his eyes and drew in a breath. "I think it is unfair of me," he said slowly. "I am asking you to tie yourself to a man in hell."
"I do," she said. The words were soft and saying them made her far too vulnerable to this old enemy. She was certain the man she knew wouldn't twist them into a knife, but the boy she'd grown up with wouldn't have hesitated. He would have laughed with glee at the idea that the mudblood wanted him because it meant he could hurt her. Bullies always went for your weak spots. She would say 'I do' again soon enough, and magic would bind them, but somehow that seemed trivial compared to this moment. What power did a bonding charm have compared to honesty?
"Really?" he asked.
She brushed her thumb over the arc of his cheek, then ran her hand down his jaw. He trembled under the touch, and she used her other hand to cup the back of his neck and pull his mouth to hers. They'd kissed a dozen times at least since she'd arrived. They'd kissed to fake assault. They'd kissed to fake love. They'd shared that misunderstood kiss in the dance club.
They'd kissed at least a dozen times.
They'd never kissed.
She pressed her lips to the side of his mouth first, then the center. His arms reached around her, one hand pressing into her lower back, the other twining fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, and feel his touch get slowly more assured, and then she was lost but so was he. His mouth opened, or maybe hers did first, and they stumbled backward until he pushed her against the wall and she was pulling at him because this was magic. This was raw, pure magic and she wanted more of it and more of him and she never wanted to let him go.
For the first time the unbreakable marriage bond she was about to make seemed like a benefit.
"Well," he said when he pulled away. His mouth was swollen and she could see the pounding of his pulse in the hollow of his throat. "I feel reassured."
She stared at him in shock for a moment and then a tiny giggle began to form in the depths of her throat. It put down roots, reached upward, and bloomed into a full laugh that charmed its way out of her and danced in the air around them. "Oh yes," she said. She had to find spaces to fit the words around her laughter. "You can be reassured."
"You want me," he said. The words were a bit wondering. He repeated them again, a schoolboy reciting a lesson so he wouldn't forget. "You want me, despite all this."
"It's certainly not because of all this," she said, though that wasn't quite true. If it hadn't been for all this she would never have come here.
"We'll fix it," he said. "All of it."
"I don't suppose we can just have a tragic fire," she said. "All the guests were lost, the happy couple and his parents barely escaped kind of thing?"
"It would make for a memorable event," Draco said. "These things do tend to be all the same."
"Death Eaters, politicians, and reporters?" Hermione asked. It wasn't the sort of wedding she usually went to. The Weasleys had thrown a glorious affair with friends and cantankerous relatives and dancing. The Muggle weddings she'd gone to had mostly been loud with buffets people pretended to like and raucous laughter. Any stress was of the 'will Uncle Albie drink too much' variety.
Of course, Lucius Malfoy was here to fulfill that role.
"We are honored to have Yaxley as one of the guests," Draco said.
Hermione twisted her mouth in a moue of disgust. They'd had to send the man an invitation but she'd rather hoped he'd opted to stay away. "The Carrows too?" she asked.
Draco's bleak look answered that. "I should go," he said. He waved a hand around with a vague gesture that probably meant she had things to do. Updos to battle, shoes to slip on, wedding dresses to button herself into. Narcissa had offered to help since she was bereft of a mother of her own but she'd firmly opted out of that. Magic could do a lot of things and one of the things it was going to do for her today was get her dressed.
"I'll see you at the end of the aisle," she said.
"Hermione," he said, then stopped.
"What?" she asked.
"I'm really lucky," he said. "Thank you." Then he slipped away, door open and closed before she could react to that. She glanced at the space where he'd been, then at the glass bird sitting on a shelf. He wasn't the only one.
The day felt lighter after he left, and she wiggled into a longline bra that had to be more torture device than underwear with far more goodwill than she had expected. She'd let Narcissa pick out the dress, unable to face being dragged around to shops, and the woman's good taste had returned with a dress of plain white silk almost stark at first glance. The simple neckline didn't plunge or soar and not a single crystal or seed pearl adorned the fitted top. The volume of the skirts had surprised her, but they hid she was wearing comfortable shoes and they not only had pockets but had a giant slit in one side where she could tuck her wand.
Magic put her hair up, magic applied cosmetics, magic whitened her teeth. Her own fingers fastened the diamond drop earrings into place. Her own hands slid the wand that felt like an extension of her will into place.
Dressed with time to spare she drifted to the window, cast a charm to hide herself, and watched guests arrive. This was an event. She'd looked at pictures of things like this in the magazines her parents had kept in the waiting room of their dentist practice. Lavender had giggled over the gossip of these sorts of things in their shared dorm room. She'd have loved this. It hurt she wasn't here to see it, wasn't here to goggle at the women with more jewellery than taste, wasn't here to snicker at the old wizards in dress robes that belonged, if one was being charitable, in a costume history exhibit. "We'll get revenge for you," Hermione whispered. "Hold on, Lavender. We're coming."
Warming spells and weather spells held the December cold at bay and fairy lights danced along the drive, twining in and out of potted roses that bloomed with a red so brilliant it might have been blood. It looked beautiful and romantic and lush and utterly improbable.
A young man with a confident lilt to his steps caught her eye and she laughed when she realized it was Percy. Who knew what unfortunate he'd mugged to get hair for his polyjuice, but he sauntered up the drive with a smirk that didn't hide the way he rubbed at tattoos hidden by the spell when he thought no one was looking.
The little reporter with her necklace was out in the front with a camera asking guests to pause. Most did. One woman wearing a fur muff brushed past, almost shoving at the girl. Hermione's frown turned to a snicker as the desiccated head on her stole reared up and tried to bite the woman's ear. Well, that's what you got for wearing not only fur but fur so close to the original animal you'd left the mouth on.
Percy hurried to stabilize the reporter before she fell over. The pair of them smiled and flirted and Hermione could see the moment he spotted her necklace followed by the quick flare in the reporter's eyes when he said something. A connection made without her help. Good. Percy laughed and swung off, out of view and up the steps. If she listened, Hermione could hear the sounds of wedding guests coming in and handing outer robes off to human staff. Glasses clinked. Maybe the middle classes held off on drinking until the reception but these people didn't seem to hold themselves to that standard.
A light knocking at the door seemed loud and Hermione jerked away from the window. Her heart raced and sweat itched along her arms as the urge to flee returned. She felt like she'd been caught doing something naughty instead of just peeking at the guests coming to her own wedding.
Narcissa opened the door. "Oh," she said, stepping into the room. "You look perfect."
"You did pick out the dress," Hermione said.
"I always choose the best things," Narcissa said. "Are you ready? The string quartet has taken their place, Draco is ready, and we should have the final stragglers seating in just a few minutes."
Narcissa wasn't planning to let this linger on. "Afraid I plan to tie my bedsheets together and shimmy down them?" Hermione asked.
"Should I be?" Narcissa asked.
Hermione thought of the kiss and she thought of Lavender and she thought of Harry, a symbol again. "No," she said. "I'm here to see this through."
"Well, then," Narcissa said with an inscrutable smile, "Let's go."