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“Your sister is mad again.”
Is there such a thing as too much tulle? There is such a thing as too much tulle and Hermione, for what it’s worth, is convinced that this wedding is ultimately a universal sign as to why, why never making it down the proverbial aisle with Ron might have been for the best.
Padma, now a long-standing friend, sits in the middle of the room, surround by whisps and rolls of fabrics of all sorts. There’s tulle, overlayed against the wall. There is lace, in fact several rolls of it as well – cluttered and congested on the couch. She thinks she spots velvet too, underneath a mess of tangled jewelry, belted gold chains, and bangles. The room reads stress, obviously, but Padma’s expression is contorted into elopement or bust because between her mother and sister, it’s all exploded into a party of terrifying proportions.
“What?” Her friend rolls her eyes. “The cards said it was going to rain again?”
Hermione chokes, shaking her head. “She loves you,” she says gently. “She wants you to have the day that you want. That’s all that is.”
“What I want,” Padma mutters, “is not have a three-ring circus. What I want is Neville to not say yes to every goddamn thing. What I want is my sister to stop consulting pieces of cardstock and astrological signs to tell me that I’m going to find out that I’m pregnant soon and I want Lavender to stop feeding her bullshit and focus on finally bloody confessing her feelings for her so that she can leave me the fuck alone and my mother can turn her attention to the other twin.” There’s something about a peacock too, but Padma throws the tulle in the air, clasping her face with both of her hands and letting out a muffled scream.
Hermione sighs. She moves to the floor, sitting in front of her friend. They were attached, no less, since their first year, since Draco Malfoy decided to not just yank her hair, but to terrorize Trevor the toad, the budding sociopath that he is, and Hermione, even as a child, channeled her thirst for justice by shoving her fist into his face. Was it the right thing to do? Probably not. Did it make eleven-year-old her feel better? Absolutely. Did Draco Malfoy sit on the opposite end of the train at both the beginning and the end of the year? Allegedly, of course.
“What can I do to help,” she says calmly. She reaches forward, her fingers curling into the tulle that Padma currently has a death grip around. She slowly begins to pry her fingers off the fabric, one-by-one. “We could go to lunch,” she says. “We could make a run to the shops to see if you might find anything you like.”
“I wanted to make my own dress, Hermione,” Padma mumbles, her shoulders dropping. Her eyes squeeze shut. Hermione frees the tulle from her dress. “I want flowers in my hair. I want soft music and conversation. This was supposed to be me and Nev and a few really good friends and Nev’s scary Gran because – do you think she hates me now too? Do you that’s why all of this feels insane? Or are cards right and I – god, what is wrong with me.”
“You’re in love,” she says carefully. “Neville is in love with you, despite your best effort to convince yourself otherwise. You want to see him happy and he wants to see you happy. I suspect, should you ask, he might even be happy to have a ceremony for you and him alone –”
Padma’s eyes round with surprise. “You think?”
Now, here, Hermione Granger has two options.
Her first option, a reasonable approach, given her status as the best friend of the bride and a close friend of the groom, is to say things like, “of course!” and “he’s been in love with you since you rescued Trevor the toad from the clutches of Malfoy and his really greasy hands?” which then, well, would lead to encouraging think pieces as “maybe you should talk to Nev?” or a well-rounded, “let’s take a break!” because with great power comes great responsibility. Her second option, a more pro-active approach, would be to peel the bride-to-be away from her doom fabric organizing, sans conversation, and walk her into activities such as lunch and maybe to a shop to purchase shoes she might not need. Padma loves shoes. But while brilliant, Hermione Granger is also a bit stressed with the responsibilities of being not just the bride’s best friend but the purveyor of wedding plans, and happens to drive herself into the first option without thought or recourse.
“Of course,” she tells Padma. “I think a private ceremony might be a really great idea.”
Padma’s eyes light up.
This is trouble.
-
The last time Hermione even shared a room with Harry Potter, the former Slytherin Head Boy had nearly kissed her – granted, graduation parties were in full swing and they were all a little drunk, a little excited, and off to the next phases of their lives with hope and no apologies. She can’t remember exactly how they sort of found each other. The Tower was not, in fact, the Dungeons, and the Gryffindor Common Room was too red and gold for most of them, so they all ended up in the Greenhouse, drunk but not drunk enough to engage Professor Sprout’s student-eating devil’s snare variant.
She thinks they were sharing a bench. Someone had already dared Ron or was Terry to climb to the top of the Whomping Will. Her tenure as Head Girl had, if anything, been uneventful up until that point – if she didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. She and Ron split at the beginning of the year anyway, mostly because she had no desire to really get married. Or get married straight out of Hogwarts, especially him. Ron liked to be comfortable and Hermione was fine with not being comfortable. She had plans to go straight to school, perhaps even dabble in Muggle university. She wanted to travel. She weighed her options, whether or not to go into healing, maybe even the MLE – Headmistress McGonagall had offered a recommendation for her, should that be the case. But she was thinking about none of that. Her hands were gripping the bottom of the bench, her eyes glued to the exposed glass-like look into the sky, the time of day where Hogwarts became really romantic.
Harry Potter was always that one variable, present and waiting, that only made sense to her but then didn’t. He was constant. They were always circling around each other, hovering close. It never made sense in her head. She wasn’t ever sure if she read him correctly, if she was imagined stolen glances, working way too close to each other, and these were the things that made her feel silly and foolish.
But that bench, sitting next to him, his knee pressed into her leg – it felt pivotal and necessary, even though she wasn’t sure as to why.
“Is that Perseus?” Potter had asked.
“Nope,” Hermione had replied. Her voice is sort of wistful. Her foot kicked the back of his lightly and he laughed. “I think that’s the big dipper,” she answered. She pointed to a set of stars towards the tail. “And that’s Mizar and Alcor – or, I think, according to Hindu legend? Arundhati and Vashistha. The story is rather romantic.”
“Is it?” Potter looked at her. She thinks she remembers this part. His eyes were bright. There was the slight cock of his mouth. He never, ever looked away from her when they talked. She would continually call him The Weirdest Slytherin Ever. They were never far from each other either, which strangely seemed to make sense.
“I don’t remember it though,” she admitted, and Potter dives into a laugh, full and lovely, that crawls into her skin, warms her in a way that gives her pause.
Hermione does not forget that laugh.
And she does not forget moments later, when he leaned over, from his side to her side, his mouth grazing her cheek. She does not forget that he smells amazing, for lack of better terms. Something woodsy. Something spicy. She’s not really sure to this this day if the memory of him, that smell, if it was all really real. But she doesn’t forget how his mouth is so close to hers, achingly close to hers, to the point where even a decade later, she can remember things like the sound, the change in pitch, how warm and soft the catch of his breath was.
“Potter!”
In the distance, someone had called out his name. And it was over.
But now?
Now, she’s staring at grown-up Harry Potter who, well, is definitely no longer the Harry Potter of her memories. He is not a stranger, but he is always a surprise. He is at least a few good inches over her, the slight scar that ghosts the corner of his mouth a point of fascination for her. Does she want to bite it? Maybe. Is there something wrong with her? Obviously. He’s ridiculously handsome though. The sharpness of his gaze is a lot, an imbalance of how bright his eyes are to the slight tilt of his head when he watches her. Which is a lot. And lately, given that he’s attached to the Neville side of the wedding, they have resumed their age-old habit of spending a lot of time together because the universe… well, the universe hates her.
“This is a welcomed surprise,” he greets her. Forgotten is the reason why she walked into his office. Instead, she is staring at him. His Auror robes are draped over a chair. He is mid-button, his shirt opened over a long bandage over his chest. Oh, she thinks. Okay. “Didn’t think you made house calls, Head Healer Granger.”
Her mouth curls. “Certainly not paid enough to, Head Auror Potter.”
He laughs, unbothered. His buttons are abandoned as he leans against his desk. She bites her lip.
“What can I do with you?”
Hermione sighs. “Padma wants to elope. Neville agrees. Surprisingly,” she says dryly.
“So the ceremony is cancelled?” He snorts too. “Augusta is going to kill him.”
“No. The ceremony is not cancelled,” she says. “They want to have a ceremony with just them. And us. Because they need witnesses. But Padma - and I quote - is ready to burn the venue down but hasn’t because Nev’s Gran is really scary.”
“The Manor?”
“Yep,” she says.
Harry laughs, but her expression remains unchanged. He sobers quickly.
“Oh,” he says. “You’re serious.”
“I’m never not serious,” she says dryly.
His mouth curls a little. “Should we test that out?”
Her face flushes. “I’m really just trying to prevent arson,” she says.
“So, what? We run interference?”
“You’re the Auror.”
He arches an eyebrow. “That’s not quite the insult you think it is.”
“I take my crime seriously, obviously,” she says dryly.
He lets out a laugh, warm and husky, the kind of laugh that sends itself straight to her belly. She tries not swallow in front of him, but shifts from foot to foot to sort of distract herself from her reaction to the sound.
“So what’s your plan,” he says, moving to her. His shirt still hangs open. Her eyes immediately shoot to the ceiling. “Because you must have a plan, Head Healer Granger.”
“There is no plan,” she murmurs. He’s basically clothed, she keeps telling herself. It’s not like she hasn’t seen a naked body. She sees a lot of bodies in various states, especially undressed. “We need to secure a place, make sure they have a secret ceremony and —“
“Pretend we know nothing?”
“Well, we wouldn’t be good accomplices if we ratted them out. Aren’t you a Slytherin?”
The slow smile he gives her is dangerous. He looms over her, reaching out and plucking an imaginary piece of her hair. But the hair isn’t imaginary though and she watches as slowly, thoughtfully, his fingers wrap around the end of her braid.
“Could have been a Gryffindor. That sounds like a challenge though,” he murmurs.
Her lips part. He tugs lightly. Her eyes narrow, but she watches him wrap the braid around his knuckles, ignoring the butterflies that come to life within her stomach.
“We should focus,” she says. She’s a little breathless. She can’t hide it either.
“I am focused,” he counters.
Her teeth skim her lip. His eyes immediately dart to her mouth. She doesn’t know how to look away. Her eyes move to his bandage.
“Did you do this yourself?” Her voice is dry, but there’s a slight edge to it. She’s distracted, now, because he’s in front of her and her hair is wrapped around his hand, but then there’s his open shirt. Her fingers graze the bandage gently and he hisses through his teeth, his eyes rounding and darkening.
“Now, I’m not focused,” he tells her.
“Not my fault,” she replies.
“I have several counterpoints,” he shoots back. He tugs her hair again. Her eyes narrow. His mouth twitches. “Want to hear them?”
“No,” she says, but she’s breathless.
“Too bad,” he says, and he releases her braid. Somehow, the ribbon she’s tied at the end comes loose. When his hands fall to his sides, he offers a lopsided smile. “So, what, we find them some place to get married?”
The moment is over, but her heart is still racing.
“Yes,” she says. She fights herself into swallowing. “Something like that.”
-
If being the bride’s best friend were an extreme sport, Hermione would medal immediately.
The first venue? Not the best idea, not even memorable. In fact, having Harry with her is sort of like a litmus test for secrecy given how his strange bout of celebrity will ultimately expose the plan and get them in trouble with Neville’s grandmother - Augusta Longbottom scares everyone. It’s hard not to name drop her either. It’s also bad enough that Lavender and Parvati have monetized gossip into a fairly lucrative business endeavor too which, of course, makes this wedding business even harder. It feels like an impossible task. Everyone knows that their circle of friends is relatively small too, that she is trying to sure up any loose ends and Harry, similarly, is representative of the groom.
The second venue is worse. It used to be some sort of Manor, housing a variety of rare plants, which could be fun and sweet. Padma is a fan of flowers, but not to the level that Neville is. They both enjoy the outdoors though. While Harry’s suggestion of some sort of garden area is lovely, the owner relays to them that he would be excited to have them and to not worry about the accidents people talk about in conjunction with the area.
The accident gives her pause until they come in full view of a devil’s snare, entirely different from the one that she’s seen at Hogwarts or that is kept live in the Ministry labs. It’s humungous and green and currently flowering, flowering these wildly out of place blossoms that are both gold and orange. She looks at Harry who, at least, is sensible enough to look just as concerned as she does.
“So,” Harry says slowly, “devil’s snare flower?”
Hermione hits his stomach. He chokes on a laugh. The old wizard pays no attention to them though, continuing to relay the small garden space.
“Oh yes!” the man says. “This particular variety is homegrown. I wanted to see if I could coax and grow one similar to kinds I saw in my travels to the jungles. And then… they eat meat.”
It’s a clumsy sentence. Hermione’s eyes widen. The implication is the same. Her mouth opens. Then it closes. Meat is not plant food.
“Oh no,” the owner laughs. “We feed it grass-fed beef, imported of course. It doesn’t eat people anymore.”
Anymore, Harry mouths.
“This was your idea,” she mutters.
“Everything is safe. We have all our permits.”
Her eyes widen. Harry grasps her elbow.
“We’ll have to check back with the bride and groom,” he shares quickly.
The wizard blinks. “It’s not you two?” He pulls a contract out of his pocket, frowning. “Are you sure? You match –”
Hermione opens her mouth. Harry drops his arm around her shoulder, dragging him against her. She’s flushed against his chest, her eyes wide as she tries to play off her stumble as something natural. The older man looks at them like they’re crazy, head tilted to the side.
Before she reacts, Harry presses a kiss against her cheek or somewhere near her eye. She makes a sound, sort of a hybrid between a soft, rounded oh or strangled yelp. His mouth is warm though, way too gentle and thoughtful.
“It’s us,” Harry says, and she’s wide-eyed, staring right at him. He ignores her for the moment. “We’ll have to think about it. Hermione, here, has really bad seasonal allergies.”
She lets out a loud, strangled laugh. His hand covers her mouth and he’s thanking the man as Harry kind of drags her back. Another point for him, she thinks quickly. His survival instincts are intact, thankfully. Because she does not need to know that the devil’s snare that they have just come into contact with eats grass-fed beef.
“What are you doing?”
“It was looking grim,” he replies, straight-faced too.
Her eyes widen and then she laughs, given that the whole situation can barely be summed up into words. He laughs too and suddenly, she’s glad she doesn’t have to do this alone. Not that she would, but spending egregious amounts of hours with Lavender and Parvati making eye at each other, she might have actually lost it. Because two would have come.
“Should we get lunch then,” she says with a sigh, checking her watch. She isn’t due back at St. Mungo’s for a few more hours.
Harry is surprised, but the expression disappears quickly. “Sure, I’d like that,” he says.
-
“Would you ever get married?”
They end up skipping lunch, heading straight to ice cream at Fortescue’s. Hermione, without thinking, dips her spoon into Harry’s scoop of vanilla. Fortescue's vanilla is sweet, but not too sweet and strangely on the cake batter side.
“Me?” She asks. Harry snorts. “Stop,” she says. “I was being serious.”
“I mean,” he points out, “this whole situation is rather insane. I’m doing it because Neville asked me to stand at his side.”
She offers Harry a bite of her strawberry ice cream and he leans in, taking a slight bite from her spoon, half-full from a bite she means to finish. She narrows her eyes. He smirks.
“Well,” she says. “Sure. I would get married. I think I’m a lot to handle though and I refuse to do anything this crazy —”
“I don’t think you’re a lot to handle, sweetheart.”
There, she thinks, he goes again. He leans in too, as if to prove some sort of arbitrary point, wiping his thumb across her lip. Her eyes widen, her breath catches, and it catches her off guard.
“That’s a lie,” she says. Her voice drops and she tries to regain her footing, pointing her spoon at him. “You used to tell me I was a lot all the time.”
Harry tilts his head to the side. “I was flirting, Hermione.”
Nope, no. She is not doing this. Her mouth opens. Then it closes. Her heart is racing. It’s a totally different ball game when the boy that has always been there, in some shape or form, finally says something — but it’s not just something, it still has a lot of subtleties attached to it. At least, this is what she tries to tell herself.
“Harry.”
“Hermione,” he mimics, amused.
“You were not flirting.”
“I was,” he says. He dips his spoon into her ice cream, then brings it to her mouth. She opens it, without thinking, swallowing the strawberry easily. “I’m flirting right now too.”
She feels crazy. And a little giddy. It’s not like they’ve been strangers these last couple of years — or maybe she’s a little slow on the uptake, maybe it’s more that she can’t see him seeing her because she might be older but is she really wiser?
Probably not, she thinks.
“Why?” She still asks, gnawing at her lip a little.
He dips a spoon into her ice cream again.
“I’ve got some catching up to do,” he says.
It seems he hasn’t forgotten the bench either.
-
It becomes a thing.
Their quest to find a super, secret venue for Padma and Neville to elope, but not really elope, just to sort of numb them to the massive production that their wedding has turned into – it becomes a thing, a lunch break thing, where they start to check off venues on a list that seems massive and strange. They are terribly unsuccessful, of course. Killer devil’s snare, aside. There are werewolf attacks at another site. One particularly beautiful manor is haunted by several ghosts, all who could really pass on if someone decided to give them the floor plans so that they may squash eternal beefs and get on with it. There is the tiny Italian restaurant that was packed, lovely, but impractical for what they wanted to do. Or what Padma and Neville want to do, which remains as generic as possible, when asked.
“Honestly,” Neville tells her finally, softening as he watches Padma launch into her fourth argument of the day with her sister. “I thought about kidnapping her and stealing her away on plant expedition and marrying her there, but –”
“Your grandmother would kill you,” Hermione says dryly. “I know.”
He laughs a little. “I just want a little piece of us, I suppose,” he admits. “That why we can enjoy being married and everyone else can focus on… buying us a peacock? Or was it a butterfly observatory. I’m not really sure what Seamus was trying to convince Dean to go in with him on. I actually don’t want to know.”
She does, unfortunately. Because she’s had to stop all of it, considering Padma’s high blood pressure usually ends up with something exploding. They entertained getting married at Padma’s grandparents’ estate, but that devolved quickly because her mother wanted to hire a specific chef because it just makes sense. It didn’t. There is even the Hogwarts’ Greenhouse which, while a delight to visit, seems rather dangerous in theory because the castle has the tendency to botch guests that it doesn’t particularly care for.
Harry still comes to find her in her office one night, one late night – she’s working to cover for a Healer that is about to go out on maternity leave, one of those favors for a favor that happened eons ago. All things considered, Hermione doesn’t mind. It gives her a bit of a break from any sort of wedding chaos.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, seeing him. Her hands rub against her eyes and she drops to sit behind her desk. “Did I miss an appointment?”
“No,” he says. There is a bag in his hand, brown paper and stapled close. “I figured you were forgetting to eat again so I brought you food from that Indian place you recommended me a couple of weeks ago. They were a bit considered when I name-dropped you, but put together your favorite stuff.”
Her jaw drops.
Interhouse rivalry, for her, was always stupid. Take Ernie Macmillan. He was a Hufflepuff and she found him, still finds him, exceedingly boring and chauvinistic. One could even make a solid argument as to how he and Malfoy sort circle each other in many categories, but Malfoy, having the sociopathic behavior going for him, isn’t boring. Potter, on the other hand – Harry, she reminds herself – has never fit into any sort of category for her. He’s still incredibly popular, shrewd but warm, able to talk to a variety of people and connect to them in that she admires from a far. You could make an argument that Harry pulls from all four houses, similar to how the Sorting Hat was convinced that she could moonlight in three of the four. She doesn’t know why him bringing her food surprises her, but it certainly hits a mark.
He sets the bag in front of her. She eyes it suspiciously. He laughs, gently nudging it forward as he opens the bag. Slowly, he sets the food in front of her, opening each container – it smells so good and she might start crying, stuck between the fact that he’s brought her food and her favorite nonetheless.
“Are you –”
“Yes,” he says without letting her finish.
“I haven’t even asked the question,” she says dryly. He steps around the desk, handing her a fork. He even opens her napkin for her, leaning into her space and carefully tucking it into her blouse. “Why are you taking care of me?”
“I like taking care of you,” he says simply, and that, there, is so insane to her.
“It’s late though,” she counters. She takes a bite, moaning softly. “Sorry –” His eyes are glued to her. She wiggles a little in her seat. “It’s just really bloody good. Did you get food for yourself?”
“I ate,” he says, and she stares right at him, trying really hard not to read the situation. It’s unspeakably easy for her to spend time with him. He’s always been charming and funny. They had classes together too. He worked hard. She does remember him telling her that even with the family name, he has a lot to prove. “Was just thinking of you,” he says too.
She bites her lip.
He studies her, openly too, and she feels as if he’s peeling her apart, as if there’s a strange sort of intimacy to how he watches her. She doesn’t know how to feel. It doesn’t bother her, per say, but she does feel exposed, does feel as if she’s supposed to know that he’s watching her this way – but what does one do with that?
“Are we still going to the beach tomorrow?” She changes the subject quickly with lack of anything else to say. “I think we’re cutting it close.”
Harry nods. “In the morning – I need to be back pretty quickly. Nev said it’s not too far from where they’re initially getting married. That way there’s the idea of everything being connected. At least, that’s what he said when he stopped by.”
“Okay,” she says. They discuss quietly where they might meet. He agrees to meet her at her flat. She’ll be home in time anyway, enough to catch a few hours of sleep before they head into this space. Afterwards, she’s due to meet Padma to help facilitate or, rather, convince her mother that an orchestra is a terrible purchase. She grabs a spoonful of rice and vegetables, not thinking or remember that he had said that he had eaten before. “Do you… want a bite?”
His eyes widen slightly. It’s almost too quick for her to catch, but she ends up cupping the spoon underneath too. Before she draws back, he leans in quickly and takes that bite, his mouth going a little too far over the spoon. It’s the way that his teeth kind of catch the side of her thumb, the way his tongue sort of swipes at some imaginary sauce.
She doesn’t drop the spoon. Her lashes lower. Her skin buzzes a little. She bites her lip, staring right at him, as the air in the room starts to change.
“You have something –” His voice is low and it’s all so silly, but she watches as his thumb swipes over her lip, catching it and releasing it from her teeth. When he pulls back, she stares at him, wide-eyed even. He takes it a step further, his mouth grazing the pad of his thumb. “You’re right,” he says. “It’s really good.”
“Yeah,” she manages. She’s breathless. “Right?”
Harry nods. He’s now sitting on the corner of her desk, perfectly content to stretch out his legs and take more of her space. Her heart is racing. She doesn’t know what to do. She digs her spoon back into her food, starting to push it around as if to try and convince herself that she’s eating. Her ears are ringing. Her fingers flex a little. She’s tense, but she shouldn’t be. Her mind is ready to convince her she’s missed a thousand different things, but she’s not even ready to hear that. There’s an answer right in front of her.
The room falls into silence. It’s tense, but not awkward. They’re sort of waiting for another move. Whether it’s him, whether it’s her, she’s not sure. This, here, is how she decides she wants to kiss him. That she should kiss him. This could make her crazy. I’m flirting right now too. She hasn’t forgotten. But there’s a knock on the door and one of the younger healers barges in, questions flying out his mouth as if it were a normal occurrence for her to be sitting at her desk, the Head Auror next to her.
Maybe it is. There shouldn’t be a place for that here.
But she wants there to be.
-
The beach corresponds with Padma’s biggest breakdown.
“I am halfway ready to call the whole damn thing off,” she seethes, and her eyes are filling with angry tears, the kind that Hermione knows will either get someone killed or hurt. She gets a call at home, then an appearance as Harry shows up to her flat. Padma is covered in a variety of half-finished dresses, her hair wild and her hands clenching into fists. “I love him, you two, but I don’t want any of this bullshit and I will murder the fucking peacock if I have to.”
She breaks down into sobs and Hermione immediately gathering her into her arms, smoothing her hair back as Harry mouths peacocks? and she shakes her head. She has no idea either. Or maybe she just doesn’t remember. The beach will work, she thinks. And Padma can hide in her flat.
They arrive, however, in the small seaside town, where the wedding is supposed to take place. They find a Bed & Breakfast, which kindly allows them an entrance to their side of the beach. It’s a little on the cooler side, but the breeze is nice, pushing at her cheeks the closer she gets to the water. She enjoys the beach, enjoys the softness of the sounds, the romance of the water and sand – she’ll never admit to any of this out loud, her mouth curling when she turns to him.
“I think it’s perfect,” she says.
Harry’s hands are in his pockets. “Sure,” he agrees. His expression is warm and he seems seemingly content to watch her. “We can have them in and out,” he says. He looks over her shoulder, nodding towards the other side of the town. “How far is the place her parents are renting for the actual wedding?”
“Twenty or so minutes,” she says. “So, well, if we sneak them out under the guise of getting dress or even roping in the photographer –”
“No one will know,” he says, laughing. “Sure you weren’t supposed to be a Slytherin?”
Her lips curl. “Why? Want to see me in green?”
“Yes,” he says easily. “But you’re also very pretty in blue.”
God, the man hits every single note – she has a problem, she decides, when she listens to him do and say things like calling her pretty all the while holding her gaze and giving her the space to process what he’s saying to her. She’s pragmatic to a fault, she thinks. But even that pragmaticism leads her to listening to the way his tongue sort of curls over each letter of the word, even when he says his name, and that conversation with herself is equally as dangerous.
“Am I?”
When he steps forward, her breath catches. The sand kicks at her legs. Her hands immediately dip into the pockets of her jeans. She tells herself that she’s cold, that her hands are cold, but as soon as he enters her space, that is forgotten.
“You are,” he says, reaching forward. His fingers trace her cheek. “I think you’d be pretty in everything, sweetheart,” he says too.
She laughs a little. Her teeth skimming her lip. “Is that what you say to all the girls?” He snorts and her lips curl in amusement.
“I’m serious about you,” he tells her.
Her eyes widen. Her cheeks burn.
“Why is that a surprise?”
“It’s wedding season,” she blurts. “We’ve got to get things done.”
“We can do two things at once.”
Hermione’s eyes narrow. “Can we?”
“I’ve spent the last ten years,” he tells her, “thinking about our graduation night and grabbing your hand and just kissing you. What would have happened then. I suppose it’s a bit of a hyper-fixation, but you’re really rather hard to forget.”
Her jaw drops. He laughs. At least, she thinks vaguely, the wind is starting to pick up and her cheeks must be red. They have to be. She hopes they are. Her heart is pounding against her chest. She doesn’t know what to say. She’s supposed to say something. His eyes are glued to her and when he reaches for her, his fingers grazing her cheek, she can’t help but lean into him, almost instantaneously.
“But timing –”
His mouth grazes her forehead. “What about it?”
“Harry.” Hermione laughs a little. “Has anyone ever said no to you?”
“You,” he says.
“That’s not fair,” she says. “When I have ever?”
“All the time,” he says. And maybe it’s a little true. She doubts it – he barely gives her a chance to say yes too. His fingers lace into her hair, his mouth curling as he leans in. His mouth hovers and she feels a little breathless, all over again. “Since we were eleven.”
“I was eleven,” she murmurs. “And we were really into interhouse rivalry.”
“You were perfect even then.”
Hermione laughs, delightedly, because it’s so not true and it’s heavy-handed. But he’s smiling too, drawing her close. His arm winds around her waist. Her hands rise to press against his chest and when his head dips, she feels his mouth graze just slightly over hers in the faintest of kisses. She feels him smile, feels him breathe, and it’s so strange for it to be such as small, slight kiss and it feels like everything.
She makes a sound and his mouth dips in, opening over hers and finally, finally, it feels like everything. His lips are slight and chapped, warm and almost lazy. She can feel his fingers curl against the back of her neck and she draws herself to full height, her arms wrapping around his neck as she opens her mouth to deepen the kiss.
He hums in appreciation, his fingers pressing into a slight massage of her neck. She moans softly, her teeth skimming his lip. She can feel the tension start to leave her. She forgets the wedding. She forgets the stress. Her mind is spinning and then it stops, the world quiet as he seems to make sure that she’s listening and listening to just him.
“Oh, thank god.”
Hermione jumps. Harry’s breathless, wide-eyed.
Neville and Padma stand behind them, Padma swimming in one of Neville’s jackets. They’re both grinning, hands linked and wearing what, of course, seem to be wedding bands. Hermione laughs out loud, her hand covering her mouth. She stays close to Harry, who seems to refuse to relinquish his hold on her too.
“I was running out of suggestions,” Padma says dryly. “And you love the beach.”
Hermione blinks. “What?”
“Well, you’ve had this crush on him for a literal decade –” Padma rats her right on out, Harry making a soft sound behind him. She feels him try to swallow a laugh. “And I thought to myself, why not kill two birds with one stone, send you two kids off into the sunset while we get serious and figure out how to get married.”
Hermione blinks again. “That makes no sense,” she says dryly. “We were a decoy?”
“Well, Harry,” Neville says, clapping the other man on the back, “will literally follow you anywhere. And we needed five minutes.”
Harry laughs a little, not denying it. A glint of something catches her eye, then Harry’s too as they stare at Neville’s hand. “Wait –” He looks at Hermione. “Are they?”
She narrows her eyes at Padma. “It looks like it,” she says, watching her best friend beam, a similar gold band around her ring. She wiggles her fingers in the air too. She reaches for Hermione, but Harry turns her, pressing against her back. His arm is locked around her shoulders. She laughs a little, blushing all over again. “Wait,” she says. “Wait – when did you two decide to get married?”
“It’s a long story, but thankfully, there’s no peacock.” Neville sighs. Then he clarifies. “Lavender wanted to buy us a peacock, but as a blessing and Gran thinks the bird is a harbinger of death and that escalated and we took it as a sign. But since, well, it doesn’t even matter –” He pauses, checking his watch. “It’s been forty-five minutes. We ran into the friend of Gran’s that was going to oversee the bonding ceremony.”
“And I paid him off.” Padma is serious, dead serious, and Hermione bursts out into laughter, shaking her head. Neville grins a little. She feels Harry’s arm tighten around her, his mouth brushing a light kiss against her ear. “So what we really need your help is announcing to everyone that we’re, you know, married?”
“No,” Hermione and Harry immediately say. Harry laughs this time and she smirks, shaking her head. Harry even claps Neville on the back. “Your gran likes me,” he says too. “But not that much. I’m going to go enjoy my time with Healer Granger here. We’ve got some catching up to do.”
Neville pales. Padma sighs. Hermione continues to laugh, Harry turning her and sweeping her up, over his shoulder as they simply run away.
“Love you though!” She calls to Padma, dangling off his shoulder.
This time, they leave together.