Chapter Text
"Princess Hermione! Please, what are your thoughts on the upcoming ball?"
"How do you feel about talk that this could be the end of House Granger?"
"What type of gentleman are you looking for in a future king?"
Hermione tried to keep her eye from twitching at the degrading question. She smiled serenely at the small group of reporters, murmured a "No comment," and with subtle quickness, escaped back into castle.
She didn't know what she thought would happen exiting through a main door. The reporters had been hanging around for the past week and hopefully would be gone tomorrow with the rest of this nightmare.
The ball had finally arrived.
No one had spoken of anything else since it was announced. Hermione had been squeezed, poked, and prodded into multiple designs until she and her mother had come to an agreement on one. It was a lovely dress that was appealing to the eye, but still demure enough that she didn't feel like she being paraded about before the sale.
"Hermione, dear, there you are!" The queen called as she exited into the hallway near Hermione, "I was just heading upstairs to get ready. Would you care to join me on the way?"
A grimace crossed Hermione's face at the thought of the following hours applying hair and makeup charms. "Of course, Mother."
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Tom had made his way to a creek. Lost in his thoughts, the only thing to pull him out was a chittering in a tree close to his head. There was a bird staring at him from its perch. There was something long and bone-like in its grasp. The bird, some sort of owl, flexed its talons and the bone clacked, sounding wood-like?
It certainly didn't sound like bone at the very least. Curious now, Tom reached out at seized the stick the owl gladly handed over. He would be interested in that behavior also, but this thing in his hand felt... alive.
A wand.
Tom smirked. This was it. This was how he would get to the ball and it would be remarkable. He'd make sure of it.
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The Weasley matriarch bustled about the home, helping her boys prepare for the ball. All of them were catches and all of them needed a wife. Well, she thought, except Bill. Bill, the eldest, had married two summers earlier to some French girl and they resided near the coast nowadays with her precious granddaughter. But the other five needed to settled down with young ladies who would curb their wild tendencies.
She made her way to her youngest boy's room. "Ronald?" She knocked. At 18, he hadn't had the chance to go to any society events before his step-father had passed, so she would help. "Do you need help with your robes?"
"No, Mum. Charlie's helped me out," came through the door.
"I hope you thanked him," Molly smiled. She was always proud when she heard her boys being honorable, good men. Which reminded her..."Have you seen Tom this afternoon, by the way?"
"Not since breakfast."
Molly huffed and continued checking on the rest of her children. That Tom, always wandering off whenever there was work to be done. She didn't have the time, or the patience, to look for him today of all days. She would just have to hope he would be ready to go when the time came.