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Harry is as sniffily as Celeste today. His little girl, all grown up.
“Dad, you can’t be weepier than I am,” she scolds him.
Harry smiles through the tears still tracking down his face. “I can’t help it. We get to walk you down the aisle today.”
Celeste’s smile blooms across her face, disrupting the path of her own tears. She appears lit up from the inside, just from the reminder that she’d be marrying her fiancé, Tod, today.
Tod was a good sort. Celeste met him in Hogwarts and both of her fathers gave him quite a time when they realised their firstborn had herself a crush, especially one that seemed returned. But neither could deny that the kids were cute together when they actually started dating in 6 th year.
“Yes, well, if we don’t get a move on soon, we’ll miss walking her down said aisle,” Draco points out, checking his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes.
They aren’t running that far behind, but Harry knows Draco is expressing his nervousness about today in his need to keep the events running smoothly. He told Harry before they arrived that he refused to break down in front of anyone today. Harry believes that about as much as he believes that Molly and Narcissa will be dry-eyed today. So not at all.
“Yes, Father,” Celeste says, smiling softly at Draco, like she can see right through his tough guy act, too. “How do I look?” She twirls around again, her white dress covered in live, colourful flowers catching the wind and billowing up around her legs. Her spin releases the scent of the flowers, bathing the room in a beautiful floral scent and giving the impression of flower petals raining down around her.
Leo, their youngest, rolls his eyes. He’s dressed in his ring bearer tux and looks extremely put upon. At 7, he is quite unimpressed with his oldest sister getting married and leaving him. Aurora, their 10-year-old, is a little more engaged in the activities and copies her older sister, spinning in her floral flower girl dress to watch her small flowers flutter in the wind, too.
Their only teenager currently, Elio at 17, was asked to be in Tod’s wedding party, as the two got rather close when he was at Hogwarts with Celeste and Tod. Elio may or may not have been Harry and Draco’s original spy to make sure Tod was treating Celeste right when her fathers couldn’t monitor them in school. But Celeste was too smart for them, clearly seeing through their attempts. She invited Elio along with her and Tod as often as not, just bringing the siblings closer together and ensuring she had another proponent in her pro-Tod camp.
Harry watches Celeste check herself in the mirror again, feeling himself choke up again. In his mind’s eye, he can see her as young as Leo, younger even, doing these same twirls and checks in the mirror of her childhood bedroom. Their sweet little girl, their greatest gift. She was the one who made them parents and has taught them a million lessons since she entered their lives. Harry can never thank her enough for that. “You look beautiful, my star.”
Celeste beams at Harry again before turning back to Draco. “Okay, Father. I’m ready.”
*
As they walk Celeste down the aisle, following Aurora’s wake of flower petals, Harry hears Draco start to choke up on the other side of their daughter. Harry cracks a smile and promises himself he won’t tease Draco about it until after the ceremony completes.
Up ahead, Tod is staring back at Celeste like she is the most beautiful thing he has ever witnessed in person and as if she hung every star in the sky herself. Just as someone should look at Harry’s little girl. Elio glances back and forth between Tod and Celeste, looking like a proud father of a younger brother himself, and Harry’s smile stretches even further.
They reach the front and he and Draco hug Celeste before handing her off to Tod, feeling like this is the real transition. The real end and beginning of things. She’s not quite their little girl anymore. She’s grown into a beautiful woman and is starting her own life with a partner and Harry both is and isn’t sure he’s ready for this. But they let her go anyway, and he and Draco join Molly and Narcissa is the close family section with tears on all of their faces.
It’s a good day.