Chapter Twenty-Seven: Pace Tua
Clear and cool, the day of All Hallow's Eve broke early and the sunlight streamed in through the window into Harry Potter's face. Slowly, his emerald gaze pierced the room and he shivered in the emptiness. It was the first day in months he woke up without with the reassuring weight of Hermione leaning against him.
Which, of course, reminded him exactly what today was. The day he was getting married to the woman of his dreams. As he rolled out of bed, he sighed, dressing himself with a wave. No point in showering before he went about his daily rounds.
Not that the students were going to see him, since Dumbledore had declared a holiday, and none of the students would be awake at dawn on a day they did not have classes. He pondered, sleepily, just breaking through the wards to apparate down to the dungeons, but Dumbledore had not been particularly amused the last time that had occurred. Draping a deep blue cloak over his shoulders, he headed out of his oversized staff apartment, which he normally shared with his fiancée, though the strictures of High Wizarding Tradition meant he could not see her for twenty four hours before the ceremony.
Since they had agreed to wait on becoming fully intimate, Dumbledore, when he had discovered this fact by whatever route it was he gained such information, had suggested that they perform the most binding of marriage rites, which Harry and Hermione, unsurprisingly, had no problem with. On the other hand, the enormous amount of magic that would be flowing during the ceremony would prevent anyone younger than the sixth and seventh year students from attending the wedding.
But that was for later today, he knew, as with a sigh, he pushed open the heavy door with lazy flick of his wrist, and prepared to do his duty. This self imposed duty was the main reason Harry had confined himself to the Flying Instructor role, rather than the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, because this was far more important in the short run, at least until an effective prison without the presence of the Dementors could be developed.
Cloak fluttering around him, Harry stalked down the first row of cells, glancing in each one to check on the Death Eaters contained within. As he glanced in at Bellatrix and then Dolohov, he had to physically shove his hand into his pocket to keep from fingering his wand.
Hermione would be upset if you were to hex them for no real reason, he reminded himself, and managed to calm down, pushing the anger and hatred down. A tingling feeling of loathing remained, urging him to kill them to make sure they could not escape, could not ever harm anyone again.
It was, in fact, rather pitiful, he realized, looking at Bella's broken form hunched in the corner of her darkened cell. She was afraid now, and heartbroken, as much as one such as she could be. Voldemort was gone, permanently, and she had failed him. That knowledge formed an overwhelming burden in her black heart, and she no longer resisted.
As always, his checks went swiftly, the interrogations he supervised and the depressing, crushing weight of defeat keeping the Death Eaters from trying anything drastic. Not that they even knew for sure where the doors to the cells were, as they had been placed in the otherwise featureless rooms while unconscious.
It took nearly an hour to check in on each Death Eater personally, but Harry trusted no one else to do it. It was his responsibility now that he had brought them back by his actions, though the self imposed light punishment was nothing compared to his joy in the return of the woman the loved.
Speaking of which, there was still a lot to do before the wedding.
* * * * * *
Harry looked up briefly from his work at the sound of Dumbledore's voice, though he had missed the question, and Harry's own question must have been apparent as gleaming emerald met twinkling sapphires. The Headmaster smiled. "I trust all of our guests are doing well?"
Harry chuckled with little mirth. "Indeed, they are all still safely ensconced in their own private worlds." He hurriedly reviewed his memory, though, and continued. "But that's not what you asked me originally, Headmaster."
Dumbledore smiled. "Please, call me Albus, at least when we are alone. And I was inquiring as to why you are inscribing a double pentagram into the floor of my Great Hall."
Harry's smile faltered. "For some people who should be here, but aren't."
A bushy white eyebrow rose over half-moon spectacles. "You and Professor Granger have discussed this?"
Harry nodded. "I recall a lot more than I thought I would from that future. Reliving the memories during the Death Exchange has caused me to have an absurd wealth of knowledge no one should have at eighteen."
"And yet you still only took the job of flying instructor," Dumbledore stated softly, in a tone that made it a question.
Without looking up from his work, Harry chuckled. "While for Hermione, since she helped teach everyone in Gryffindor while we were in school, teaching people just shy of her own age is not difficult, I would rather wait until most of the students who knew me finished up their schooling before I gave an actual classroom course. The first years won't know me except as The-Boy-Who-Lived and all that, so I'll have an easier time of it with them, I think."
Harry caught the movement of Dumbledore's nodding head out of the corner of his eye. "Is that your only reason, Harry?"
The young man shook his head. "No." He paused working for a moment and pointed down at the floor. Or perhaps, through it. "There's also them. If I was teaching four or five classes a day, my ability to monitor them would be lowered."
Dumbledore nodded. "Indeed it would." The old wizard changed the subject at this point. "I assume you have not seen Miss Granger for the last eighteen hours?"
"No, I haven't," Harry said through clenched teeth, prompting a chuckle from Dumbledore.
"Do not worry, Harry. The next six hours will pass quickly, and then you will be married."
Harry nodded as he set to work once more, hearing Dumbledore's near silent footsteps fading as he walked off.
* * * * * *
There were, unsurprisingly, a lot of people present in the Great Hall, with the chairs arranged in a somewhat circular pattern about the scribed pentagrams, Harry realized, and it appeared that every single one of them was rather full. Well, except for the ones that Harry and Hermione had required to be empty in the first few rows - seats for those lost who could not be present.
Their memorial to a war fought to preserve life.
Harry glanced down the aisle and took a deep breath as his eyes met Dumbledore's, which were twinkling maddeningly, and he caught the slight nod. He stepped forward, through the staff entrance to the Hogwarts Great Hall at the exact same time Hermione stepped through the main entrance, walking towards him.
His heart was pounding in his chest. It was the first time in twenty fours and seven minutes Harry had seen Hermione, and he had to admit she had never been more beautiful to him than in that moment. Their carefully measured steps let them cross into the inscribed images on the floor at exactly the same time, settling onto the points of the inner pentagram at Dumbledore's right and left hands.
Grinning, Harry took a moment to examine his only love, and marveled at the pale dress setting off her creamy skin, her hair tamed under the hood and veil, her lips curved into a slight, shy smile from everyone watching her, and her eyes gleaming with hidden promise. At eighteen, Harry learned what countless generations of men before him had learned…
That there is no woman more beautiful than his bride.
He glimpsed behind her in the front row, the gleaming red hair of the Weasleys, all four remaining members, with four empty chairs beside them. Two chairs sat on either side of the aisle for Hermione's parents, empty, along with a number of the teachers who only Hermione had had in her years at Hogwarts. Behind him, Harry knew, sat more teachers, and other surviving members of the Order of the Pheonix. And two chairs that would remain empty for James and Lily Potter.
Beyond them sat an empty row for those who had died in the war, parents of classmates, people whose deaths had affected Harry and Hermione's lives. Beyond that were the dignitaries that Harry and Hermione had wanted to but had been unable to exclude from the ceremony. Behind them were the students of Hogwarts, the sixth and seventh years, at least.
Harry realized that in one of those seats was Colin Creevey with his camera. Or maybe not in a seat, perhaps wandering around to get better and different angles of the ceremony, which was more likely, since Harry was actually paying him to take pictures.
All these thoughts rushed through Harry's head in the moment it took for Hermione to smile at him from behind the shimmering gauze of her veil. Then Dumbledore spoke.
"Omne initium est difficile." He drew out from his robes the Sword of Godric Gryffindor, and held it with the blade pointed in the exact center of the inner pentagram. Calmly, Harry reached out his left hand, the one closer to his heart, and swept it along the edge of the blade closest to him, slicing into it.
"Sanguis vitam est," he said clearly as the drops hit the floor, and all along the lines of the dual pentagrams, power flared, raising them in glowing lines of emerald fire from the floor. His gaze went to Hermione, and he watched the veil she wore flutter as she drew in a deep breath.
She swept her left hand in an echo of Harry's movement along the other side of the blade. "Sanguis est vim," she said, with far better pronunciation than Harry could ever hope to have, as her blood ran down the length of the blade to the floor in a stream of crimson. The runes Hermione had inscribed into the pentagrams flared now, lighting with an oddly brownish red flame.
They clasped their bleeding hands together and squeezed them tightly. "Vitae animum nobis est," they concluded together, and with a bright flash, the doorway between the spirit world and the living one was torn open, letting the dead walk the Earth once more. On the points of the inner star, Ron Weasley and Sirius Black appeared, their forms grinning and ghostly, but with joy shining in their eyes. The outer pentagram found itself full of Dean, Seamus, Neville, Lavender, and Pavarti, the entirety of the recently graduated Gryffindor class.
Beyond them, in the chairs, came perhaps the most surprising of all. Each member of Dumbledore's Army, each member of the Order, and Cedric Diggory, appeared as gleaming spectral forms. The Weasley clan was represented minus only its youngest member, the chair allotted for her by Harry and Hermione suspiciously empty.
Even Severus Snape found himself, much to his apparent disgust, if the look on his face was any indication, seated with the other teachers lost in the Death Eater assault on Hogwarts. The only other seats that should have been filled by Harry's parents remained empty, for their deaths were too long before to recall them.
But all that Harry and Hermione felt, as they only had eyes for each other. "Hermione Jane Granger," he said clearly, "seventeen years ago, my family was taken from me, and it defined who I am to this point in my life. Today, I restore my family, to let it define the rest of my life." He knelt, placing his undamaged hand on the hilt of the sword.
"Harry James Potter," Hermione said softly, though audible to the entire hall, "seven years ago, I met a scared boy on a train, and I knew then that he would define the rest of my life. Today, I join with him to set that definition unbreakable before the universe." She knelt and wrapped her fingers around his hand on the sword, as Dumbledore withdrew his wand with his free hand, placing it against their hands.
They spoke together, just the two of them, before hundreds of souls, living and dead.
"Ad vitam paramus, non mihi, non tibi, sed nobis." A thin streamer of flame shot out of Dumbledore's wand and wrapped around their wrists. "Amor est vitae essentia." A second stream of fire emerged, once more binding them together. They raised their still clasped hands to the sword and placed them alongside those already bound. "Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur." Yet another streamer, this one about all four wrists. "Amor caecus est." A fourth. "Amor ordinem nescit." A fifth. "Amor vincit omnia." A sixth. "Semper in te glorior." A seventh bond of flame bound them together.
Dumbledore smiled and twisted his wand slight away from their hands, the flame shimmering there for a moment. "Esto perpetua." The fires burned and wrapped around the two young people, hiding them from sight for a long moment before they reappeared, standing once more, their hands still clasped as they faced each other across the pentagram, gold gleaming on their fingers as wedding bands.
They stood perfectly still for a moment, as if waiting for something else to happen, and finally Dumbledore let a small chuckle before whispering, "Normally you kiss at this point."
Had there been a hundred kisses between them at this point, or a thousand, or ten thousand, they were all swept away in that moment as Harry lifted up the veil from Hermione's face and they moved into each other's arms and time stopped…
Their lips met, fused, joined together, love deepening their kiss as they pressed together, the world falling away from them as they were merely themselves, finally free of the terrible burden that had been placed upon them. Finally free to love and be loved, to live as they wanted to…
The shock of the cold shattered the long moment, and caused Harry to jerk back away from Hermione, as she did the same thing. Turning their heads to look up the ghostly arms that now lay between them, they discovered a grinning Ron and Sirius connected to them. "Save it for later, you two," Sirius mouthed, and Hermione blushed slightly.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, and all our fair magical visitors," Dumbledore intoned, "it is my great honor to present to you, Mister and Misses Harry Potter."
The applause was like thunder, and somehow, despite all that they could do with searching people on their way in, Fred and George managed to set off enormous fireworks high overhead in the Great Hall.
Colin did not need a flash for his camera.
* * * * * *
It took hours before Harry and Hermione managed to sneak away to their shared room, finally escaping from the party, which was still ongoing, a celebration of the life that could continue thanks to the victory over the darkness.
Both of them, were, in fact, still laughing from the confusion that had descended over the party, when it was noticed that the wedding party was gone. Well, not gone, as Dumbledore had quickly realized, but hidden under Harry's often used cloak, and working its way slowly out of the area turned over to the party, which was, as a matter of fact, the entirety of the castle, minus certain dangerous areas.
Smiling, Dumbledore directed a wink over Professor McGonagall's shoulder to them, the twinkle seeming to increase with his merriment, and they took that as a hint, using the slight confusion to escape the Great Hall.
Harry flattened Hermione to the wall though in the entryway, and kissed her passionately for a long moment, before Hermione started to moan. "Can't you at least wait until we get to the room, Harry?" she whispered throatily.
Skimming his hands down her sides, Harry chuckled softly. "Yes, but they won't," he replied as a veritable herd of small wizarding children stormed by them, the lower years having been allowed free run of the castle now that the ceremony was over to participate in the party.
Hermione sighed and buried her head in Harry's broad chest. "You are just too smart." She looked up into his eyes and Harry met her gaze, feeling a little thrill go through him at the heat reflected in the darkening brown that bored into his emerald pools. "Can't you just apparate us to the room?" she murmured softly.
Harry trembled slightly at what he heard in her voice. In the few months since he had asked her to marry him, their explorations of each other had become increasingly intimate, but they had always managed to stop at the agreed upon limit. He sighed regretfully, "As much as I want to, 'Mione, Dumbledore would be most upset with me if I blew the wards out again."
A smirk stole across his wife's face. "Do it anyway."
Harry sighed again, and shook his head, grinning. "Me and Ron really did have a bad influence on you in school, Misses Potter."
Hermione grinned at that, then leaned forward and ran her tongue over his ear. "If you do it, Dumbledore will be upset with you. If you don't, I will be upset with you, Mister Potter." He looked into her eyes for a moment, then nodded once, amusement flickering deep behind the shining green curtain of his soul.
Time stretched… and the familiar squeezing sensation of Apparition took them, combined with a bitterly cold fog clouding their minds… and they popped back, right outside their doorway. Hermione glanced up at him, and saw him with an even bigger grin on his face, when she realized that she could still feel the slight tingle of the wards.
"How?" she whispered, extremely impressed.
Harry ran his finger along her spine and she shivered, drawing into him. "Mind over matter, the same way the house elves do it."
Hermione leaned up and kissed him again, feeling very excited by the display of power he was putting on. "Do it again," she murmured with childlike glee in her voice.
Harry inclined his head towards the doorway, the painting covering it reveling softly with the other paintings nearby, none of them noticing the two standing under the invisibility cloak, of course, and Hermione nodded.
The chill pull of the wards tugged at them once more, stretched around them as they slid through them to the other side of the wall, popping back into existence with a mere whisper of sound. Now that they were back in their staff quarters, Hermione tore the invisibility cloak from their bodies as she eagerly pressed up against Harry, her hands finding their way into his black locks, her lips finding themselves tightly clamped on his.
Their dress robes tangles about their feet as they tried to move, and spilt them onto the couch, but they were far beyond caring about where they were at this point as Harry's hands skimmed over Hermione's body, eagerly hunting out the fasteners to the thin white gown, the hooded overcloak long abandoned.
His hips ground against hers and she moaned softly as he finally found the fastenings to the dress, his fingers trailing against her bare back as he undid each one with his magic touch. Skimming his hands lower, he swept them over the folded fabric from the dress shifting up at her hips and onto her bare thighs as he kissed her again. Hermione broke the kiss with effort, as Harry did not want to stop. "The bed, Harry," she whispered, gasping for air.
Eyes blazing with green flame, he took a moment to study her as her words percolated through his head, and then he nodded. The world spun and Hermione could feel the softness of their mattress come up underneath her, Harry's heavier form warm and secure atop her as he renewed the kiss.
Time slowed immeasurably as their kiss deepened, lengthened, their hands roaming freely until when they finally came up for air, they were both naked, though neither was quite sure how they managed that. The only explanation was magic…
Hermione arched up under Harry as his naked flesh rubbed against hers, eliciting a moan of pleasure as she could feel the steel of his desire brushing against her needy flesh. A grin lit up the emeralds meeting her eyes, a grin she had learned to fear in the last seven years, for it could only mean one things… Harry Potter was up to no good.
She whimpered once more as the feeling touched her again and was then withdrawn, a whimper that changed nearly to a frown as Harry started to pull back, a frown that became a gasp as his lips, then teeth, then tongue found the peaks of her breasts to lay positive attentions upon them.
When his fingers began to explore lower, she felt pressure beginning to build inside her and she arched again, offering herself up more fully to her love, her husband, her Harry.
A coolness washed across her breasts, damp from Harry's attentions, and she realized with a start that he was taking his kisses lower and lower, around her navel, and yet, still lower, all the way…
No, he could not be going to…
Flame shot through her, lightning setting her aglow as it radiated out from the touch of his lips to her. It was too much, as his tongue began to dance against her, and she finally cried out loudly, her breath becoming a pant…
The tightening, the pressure… Hermione sighed as she finally felt his fingers slip to where they belonged at that moment. It was then, in that very moment, as she felt herself climbing higher and higher, her vision beginning to cloud, that she finally believed him…
She was beautiful, the most beautiful, perfect to him, and Harry was hers, and only hers, forever, and nothing would come between them they could not solve together…
Lightning flared, blinding her as the shock tore through her body, and she screamed, a pure scream of joy and happiness and pleasure and love.
It took a long time for reality to return, while Harry slithered up her body.
Harry held himself motionless until Hermione's brown eyes once more met his, and he smiled at her cloudy, fuzzy gaze which slowly focused on his face. Silently, he asked a question, his body poised, on edge, against hers. She nodded ever so slightly.
The change in pressure was noticeable, and they both gasped as the first layer of tension gave way. It was slow, drawn out, pulling them both towards the ragged edge as more tension gave way between them, pressure growing greater as the friction increased, the heat boiling between them.
Then his mouth was on hers, hungrily, and a sudden movement as one sealed the bond. Harry held her tightly, breaking off the kiss as he looked into her eyes, hooded with emotion and pain. Long moments passed just like that, poised on the readiness, until Harry began the timeless dance of life anew.
Hermione's eyes slowly cleared of the pain, fading into pleasure as she joined Harry in the dance, rising and falling to the rhythm he set for them both, a ritual older than time and far more powerful than their one mere hours before.
There was nothing but the two of them, the world meaningless, time forgotten, as they moved together. Love echoed in flesh, sheathed in the warmth of their need for each other, spirit reaching for each other, joining in body and soul. The heat built between them, higher and higher, spiraling them with it, out of control, the dance between them taking its natural course - more frenzied, more primal, but with far deeper meaning, trust increasing with every step taken together.
And then they fell, together, in a burst of light so overpowering they lost sight, lost breath, forced from them, senses gone, everything forgotten as the pleasure coursed through them in explosive release.
In the suddenly silent room, brown eyes met green once more, and Harry saw nothing but pleasure and joy and love in the eyes of the woman who trusted him completely with everything she was, and knowing that those feelings were echoed in his own eyes, Harry James Potter knew that there was something far more beautiful than a bride…
A wife.
A family.
Author's Notes:
Chapter Title: Pace tua. With your consent.
Wedding Ceremony:
Dumbledore:
Every beginning is difficult.
Harry:
The blood is the life.
Hermione:
The blood is the power.
Harry and Hermione:
The blood is your soul.
Vows:
We are preparing for life, not for you, not for me, but for us. Love is the essence of life. We choose to love, we do not choose to cease loving. Love is blind. Love does not know order. Love conquers all. I will always glory in you.
Dumbledore:
Let it be forever.
The Epilogue is with my beta reader now, so it should be ready to post on Christmas (or Christmas Eve), as promised. Also, be sure to check out Pensive's Pieces of Pumpkin Pie, which is where I'll be posting all my one and two part stories from now on.