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I am not J.K. Rowling. No, really, I'm not. I didn't write "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", nor that awful epilogue. I did however write "Off Balance".

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Chapter 22: Three Letters

Eighteen months later

"You know, mate," Ron began wistfully, "at a time like this I can't help but think back to when we first met on the train. The three of us, I mean. Eleven years old, no worries. A poor kid in hand-me-down robes looking to make a name for himself, a famous boy wizard who had no idea why he was a famous boy wizard and a bossy know-it-all who was actually every bit as insecure as the rest of us. Don't tell her I said that, though, or she'll hex me." Harry smirked at that. "Blimey. Who'd have thought we'd all end up here?"

"We're at Hogwarts, Ron," Harry deadpanned. "I dunno about you, but when I got on the Hogwarts Express, this is exactly where I thought I was going to end up."

Ron shook his head at him. "I'm not talking about Hogwarts, you git. I'm talking about the famous boy wizard marrying the bossy know-it-all and the kid in the hand-me-down robes standing in as best man. I'll bet nobody saw that one coming in our first year."

"I sure didn't," Harry remarked seriously as he adjusted his tie in the mirror. Headmistress McGonagall had graciously allowed him to use the familiar confines of the Head Boy's room to prepare for the wedding, which would take place in less than an hour in the Great Hall. "When I first met Hermione, I thought about as highly of her as I did of Professor Snape." Thinking of Severus Snape made a slight shiver creep up his spine. He had never learned whether his former teacher had willingly served Voldemort or Dumbledore, but he supposed it no longer truly mattered. Both wizards were now dead and Snape had not been seen by anyone in over a year.

Ron smiled wickedly. "Can I quote you on that during the best man's toast? I've been wracking my brain for days for something interesting to say. No offense, mate, but you two make a right boring couple."

"Yeah," Harry agreed with an overly serious expression. "I've noticed that, too. We put each other to sleep all the time." He then matched Ron's wicked grin with one of his own. "Of course it's because we've tired each other out from…"

Ron put his fingers into his ears and began to hum a happy little tune. "Can't hear you, couldn't possibly imagine what you're saying, la la la…"

Harry laughed and punched him lightly in the chest. "I don't know what to tell you about us, Ron," he continued once Ron had removed his fingers from his ears. "I always knew she was brilliant and amazing and I've known since fourth year that she was beautiful, but…I guess it just took a while for my heart to put all of those things together. Almost too long." Ron winced at his last three words. "Ron, we never did get a chance to talk about it, but I have to know. Are you still…?"

"I'm over her, Harry," Ron interrupted him with a sincere look in his eye. "Really I am. Truthfully, I don't much know what I saw in her in the first place." Before Harry could step in to defend his bride-to-be, Ron elaborated. "Not that she's not great and everything, it's just…she's not really my type, if you get my meaning."

"Oh?" Harry asked, perfectly willing to humor Ron on this point. "And what is your type, Ron? Blonde Ravenclaws who take you on trips to South America and give you a liter of Essence of Gurdyroot every Christmas?"

"For example, yeah," Ron answered with a quick nod as his ears went beet red. "Hey, d'you know something? When you and Hermione get married, you'll have the same initials!"

"I hadn't thought of that," Harry replied. He then turned around and gave Ron a curious look. "How did you come to think of it?"

"I read it in one of the press clippings about the wedding," Ron admitted as he stuck his hands in his pockets bashfully.

"I suppose I must have missed that one," Harry remarked dryly as his hands went back to the tie around his neck. "I always seemed to pick up the ones that said Hermione has me on a love potion or that I got her preggers or some rubbish like that."

Ron walked up behind Harry suddenly and forced his hands away from the tie. "You keep fiddling with that thing and it's going to wrinkle up like a prune." Ron eyed Harry suspiciously. "You're not nervous, are you?"

Harry, well remembering what Bill Weasley had told him on the day of his wedding to Fleur, replied, "I'm marrying the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the world. Of course I'm nervous. I'm a basket case. What if I say something wrong or step on Hermione's dress or accidentally transfigure her wedding band into an earthworm or…"

"Harry mate, I don't know how to break this to you, but you're marrying Hermione," Ron informed him seriously. "You've been best friends for eight years and anyone can see that you're crazy about each other. As long as you show up and say 'I do', I don't think any of the rest of it is going to matter to her."

"She may be Hermione, but she's still a woman, Ron," Harry said chidingly. "Hermione's been planning this day for years. I think she's going to notice if something goes wrong."

Ron suddenly looked very worried. "But…all girls aren't like that, are they? They don't all plan their wedding for years in advance and obsess over every detail and…bloody hell. I'm doomed, aren't I?"

"You and Luna aren't thinking about getting married already, are you?" Harry asked with eyebrows raised. "She's not even out of Hogwarts yet."

"Well, no, I hadn't…not really, you see, although I…I might have proposed to her," Ron stammered.

"You might have proposed?" Harry asked pointedly. "You're not sure?"

"Well, at least I think I did," Ron said, fidgeting nervously. "I couldn't tell you whether she said 'yes' or not, though…"

"That's something you should find out before you have the wedding, don't you think?" Harry advised him with a friendly smile that took some of the awkwardness out of the situation. "You might want to let her finish school first, too."

"Why?" Ron muttered, his visage grim. "Ginny didn't." Indeed, while Harry, Ron and Hermione had decided to finish up their seventh year at Hogwarts, Ginny hadn't even completed her sixth, disappearing somewhere with Draco Malfoy in the wake of the final battle.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Who needs N.E.W.T. scores when you're going to be the next Mrs. Malfoy?" Harry, Ron and Hermione had all passed their N.E.W.T.s with flying colors, finishing with some of the highest scores in recent memory (although Hermione, naturally, scored the highest). Hermione could probably have passed her N.E.W.T.s directly after having passed her O.W.L.s, but the high marks achieved by Ron and Harry surprised nearly everyone. Of course, those people had no idea that the two boys had both ended up with pieces of another, older wizard's soul residing in them, giving the two of them access to an almost encyclopedic knowledge of spells and spell work. If Hermione resented this at all, she did not show it outwardly (although she sometimes looked at Ron as though he had sprouted another head when he bragged about his N.E.W.T. scores).

Ron scowled and reached into his dress robes, which were a very light shade of green to match the groom's formalwear. He looked at Harry with apprehension, as though he were about to reveal that he had secretly been working for Voldemort all this time. "I got a letter from her yesterday. Ginny, I mean. She, erm, asked me to pass it on to you. It was postmarked from somewhere in Switzerland, I dunno if that's where she is now or…" Harry looked at the letter in Ron's hand as though it were a dead squirrel that he'd recovered from inside a storm drain. "Look, I know the reason that she sent this to me is because you haven't responded to any of the letters she's written you and I know that your wedding day is a rotten time to bring this up, but she asked me to and…well, she's still my sister." Ron turned his head to one side and gave Harry an appraising look. "I could just chuck it in the rubbish bin if you want. Tell her I forgot about it."

"That's nice of you, Ron," Harry told him with a forced smile. With a sigh, he opened the envelope and removed the letter, recognizing the handwriting of his ex-girlfriend instantly. "But I reckon it wouldn't hurt anything to read it. It won't change my opinion of her." 'And it certainly won't change my decision to marry Hermione,' Harry added to himself.

"Fine," Ron replied with a bob of his head. "Great. I'll just be outside because, erm, well to be honest, I've seen how you are when you get angry, so…bye."

A few moments after Ron fled, Harry reluctantly turned his attention to the letter in front of him. "Dearest Harry," it began, forcing him to immediately suppress his gag reflex. "I feel as though I owe you an explanation for my departure from Hogwarts. Draco was quite frightened, you see, by the sudden arrival of Lord Voldemort." 'As opposed to everyone else in the castle, who were waiting for him with banners and biscuits,' Harry thought sarcastically. "He knew that Voldemort," the name was written both times in very small letters, "wanted to kill him for his failure to murder Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower. He also knew that your army would be unlikely to protect him."

"That's rubbish!" Harry exclaimed aloud, although there was no one else there in the room with him to hear. "We would have protected him, even though he certainly didn't deserve it…"

"So we fled," Ginny's letter continued. "We found a safe house on the continent and have been living there ever since. It is quiet and peaceful here, but also secluded and lonely. I miss everyone terribly, but most of all I miss you. I often think of what we could have had together. When I read that you were marrying Hermione Granger, I wondered what might have happened differently to make me the girl that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with."

'One of us could have undergone a complete personality transplant,' Harry supplied sardonically. 'I could have been put under the Imperius Curse or taken more of that carpe diem potion. And if the piece of Riddle inside my mind had obscured my feelings for Hermione just a little while longer, maybe that would have worked for a while…'

'Don't bring me into this,' the now-familiar voice of Tom Marvolo Riddle inside his head cautioned him, although he could feel that Riddle shared his amusement. 'If it had been up to me, you never would have dated the Weasley girl in the first place.'

"I had to write to you, Harry," the letter went on, "because I need to know if it's too late for us. Even though Draco cannot possibly return to England, I would come back in a heartbeat if I thought there was even the slimmest hope that you would give me another chance. I still love you, Harry. I always will."

Harry considered that for a moment. Would it be worth lying to Ginny, just so she would come back home? The Weasley family was worried sick about her. Sophocles Plante would likely make a deal with her if she would give him reliable information on the whereabouts of Draco Malfoy. Her situation was not necessarily so dire, if only she would make an effort to turn it around now.

Harry smiled thinly as he thought about the new Minister of Magic. Rufus Scrimgeour had been certain that Harry was attempting to undermine the Ministry and to seize power for himself. In a strange way, Harry supposed that he had been responsible for the downfall of the Scrimgeour government. Sophocles Plante had become Minister of Magic mere weeks after Voldemort's defeat, having been given credit by the media for allowing Harry Potter a free hand with which to best the dark wizard, in spite of orders to the contrary from Minister Scrimgeour. 'Of course, the only reason he didn't follow those orders was because Commodus Brinecove put him under the Imperius Curse.' As neither Plante, Brinecove, Harry or Percy Weasley were too keen on this fact becoming public knowledge, all four wizards had decided to remain silent on the matter.

Harry crumpled the letter and, as Ron had suggested earlier, chucked it in the rubbish bin. He would not lie to Ginny just to get her out of harm's way. She had made her own choices and so had he. Now they would both have to live with the consequences of them. Ginny was off hiding somewhere in Europe with Draco Malfoy while Harry was at Hogwarts, getting ready to marry his best friend.

The thought of Hermione, radiant and smiling in her mother's wedding gown, made dark thoughts vanish from Harry's mind instantly. Only half an hour remained until the ceremony would begin and Harry could hardly wait for it to start; for he and Hermione to be man and wife at last. When the door opened to the Head Boy's room, he absurdly hoped that it would be Hermione, but was not terribly surprised to discover that Ron had returned. "If it ever comes up in court, Harry, I was nowhere near your flying motorcycle just now. Nope. It was all Fred and George."

Ron looked and smelled as though he had snuck a flask or two of Ogden's Firewhisky under his dress robes and had already drained them dry. "Are you drunk?"

"Nah," Ron proclaimed emphatically as he shook his head, the action making his body sway slightly. "Just a bit knackered. Say, Harry, did you know you're getting married on Valentine's Day?"

"Yes, Ron, I did," Harry answered him, his voice tight. "Hermione and I both thought it would be romantic."

Ron began laughing as though this were the most hilarious joke he had ever heard. "Well I say you're just lazy, the both of you. You're lazy and you don't want to forget your anniversary and who could forget it, because it's Valentine's day and no bloke forgets about Valentine's day unless they're really thick or color blind."

Harry gritted his teeth in frustration. "Ron, I really need you to sober up a bit. The wedding's going to start soon."

"Sober," Ron replied with a curious tilt of his head, as though it were an existential concept he was only now considering. "Yeah, I can do that. Just let me go to the loo for a bit and get all sober."

"It's down the hall, first door on your left." As Ron departed once again, Harry tried very hard to understand why his best mate had hit the bottle so hard before his best friend's wedding. 'Best friends' wedding, I guess I should say, since we're both his best friends.' Perhaps that was it, Harry reasoned. Ron felt as though the two of them were choosing each other and leaving him behind, making him the odd man out. He attempted to imagine himself in Ron's place, watching Ron marry Hermione while he stood in as the best man. It was not a pleasing thought. 'I would have at least waited until the honeymoon to get plastered, though,' Harry assured himself.

Harry's thoughts were interrupted abruptly by a thumping sound at his door. Thinking that perhaps Ron had passed out in the hallway, Harry opened it, only to allow a portly gray barn owl to enter. The bird swooped in, dropped a piece of parchment in Harry's hands and then flew out again without pause. Harry turned the parchment over, examining it carefully before breaking the seal which held it closed. 'This had better not be another note from Ginny, begging me to take her back.'

The outside of the parchment read To: Mr. Harry Potter From: Your Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. By process of elimination (three were dead, one was in the closed ward of St. Mungo's, one was in Azkaban and the other was Severus Snape, who he deemed unlikely to contact him by owl), he supposed the letter's author to be Commodus Brinecove. Brinecove had chosen to stay on for another year as Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, making him the first person to do so since Harry had arrived at the wizarding school.

Removing the seal and unfurling the parchment, Harry began to read what Brinecove had written him. "Dear Mr. Potter," it began. "I regret deeply that I am not there in person to attend your wedding. I have been on sabbatical from Hogwarts ever since Christmas break, as I have discovered a fascinating new subspecies of grindylow with the ability to regenerate their limbs at will. I believe my findings could potentially revolutionize defensive magic, but, of course, that is not why I am writing to you.

"Although I have not been a teacher for long, I already know that it is a rare thing to be able to teach a great student. It is an even greater rarity to teach two of them. Without a doubt, you and Miss Granger were two such students. I feel privileged to have played a part in your education, if only a small one.

"With that in mind, I feel quite certain that I'm doing the right thing by breaking my own rule and telling you what I saw when I looked into your eyes the day I first met you. It was the same thing I saw in Miss Granger's. It was your wedding day, Mr. Potter. I have seen many wedding ceremonies in the eyes of those I have met over the years, but seldom has a wedding been the greatest moment of both the groom and the bride. You are therefore quite fortunate to be marrying Miss Granger, although I doubt very much that you needed me to tell you that.

"I don't want to get your hopes up, but there have been rumors of a silver-handed man wandering about the woods near where I am staying." Harry's hands shook slightly, making the parchment rattle. 'Peter Pettigrew.' The Death Eater and former Marauder remained at large, much to Harry's consternation. He had left the rat alone with the members of the Order of the Phoenix who had conspired to kill him on the day of the final battle, but Pettigrew was already gone from the castle by the time Harry emerged from the Chamber of Secrets. He had left all of the Order members for dead, although Kingsley Shacklebolt had only been badly injured. Harry had chosen not to press charges against Shacklebolt and never contradicted reporters who made him out to be a war hero. Still, Harry made a point of keeping the Auror at arm's length.

Harry returned to examining Brinecove's letter. "I have chosen not to enclose my location because I do not want you cutting your honeymoon short to come after him. Allow me to handle it. Take a break from hunting dark wizards and enjoy married life. You and your new wife both deserve it.

"You may also consider this letter as my official acceptance of your offer to join the Order of the Twin Feathers. It seems a noble and worthwhile endeavor and I applaud you for undertaking it." The Order of the Twin Feathers was the group Harry had been talking to Ron and Hermione about just after the final battle. It was an organization dedicated to combating dark magic and evil wizards all the time, not just when someone like Voldemort reared his ugly head. It was only now getting off the ground and counted most of the members of the now defunct Order of the Phoenix as new inductees. Harry hoped that it would grow larger and more influential, given time. He did not want there to ever be another Dark Lord, nor another Boy-Who-Lived who had to defeat him.

"You have become a fine young wizard and it has been a great pleasure to know you," Brinecove continued. "Your mother would be quite proud of the man you've become and I believe Albus would be as well. Stay well and give the new Mrs. Potter my best.

Sincerely,

Commodus Achilles Brinecove"

Harry rolled the parchment up again and placed it in the inside pocket of his dress robes. He hated to admit it, but he had come to like Professor Brinecove, even if he still found the man to be a bit strange. He had turned out to be the second best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher he'd ever had (after Remus Lupin, of course), going out of his way to teach Harry how to use his newly heightened magical powers, often staying after class to teach him a new spell or to allow him to practice using his new wand. He had even gotten Ron over his fear of spiders by conjuring a few oversized arachnids and allowing Ron to use the reductor curse until the classroom was filled with various spider parts. Headmistress McGonagall didn't necessarily approve of this, but she didn't prevent it from happening, either.

Harry let out a small sigh. Deciding that readjusting his tie for the fifteenth time wouldn't be terribly productive, he decided to follow Ron into the Head Bathroom. Once he made his way inside, he found his best mate with his head in the sink. Running water flowed inside and around his nostrils, although Ron appeared to be snoring in spite of this. "Ron!" Harry exclaimed as he pulled the redhead from underneath the faucet. "What are you doing?"

"Wha?" Ron asked dazedly as water dripped down his face and onto Harry's shoes. 'My very expensive rented shoes,' he added to himself. "Oh, Harry, it's you. I was just…washing my face, wasn't I?"

"You looked more like you were drowning yourself," Harry told him, a scowl of disapproval set on his face. "Look, Ron, I don't really understand why you decided to get pissed on my wedding day, but…" His mind immediately turned to the thought of he and Ron switching places. "Alright, so maybe I do understand a little, but I don't really think…"

"I keep telling you, I'm not drunk," Ron insisted. "I smell like firewhisky because Fred and George were pouring it all over your flying motorcycle and I tried to stop them and it didn't work, 'cause they confunded me, but I'm not drunk, I swear. Harry, I would never get drunk on your wedding day!" His eyes were so wide and his expression so hurt that Harry couldn't help but believe that Ron was telling him the truth. "It's just that…well, I haven't really been sleeping lately."

Harry frowned at him. "Really? Why not?"

"Because…because there's something important that I need to say to you," Ron replied earnestly. "Something that's been keeping me up at night."

"The best man's toast really isn't that important, Ron," Harry told him sympathetically. "We can even skip it, if you'd rather."

"I didn't think you'd last," Ron blurted out suddenly. "You and Hermione. I didn't think you'd stay together after the war."

"What?" Harry retorted reflexively, taken aback by Ron's declaration. "What do you mean?"

"I thought it was just some temporary thing between you two," Ron said sheepishly as his eyes seemed to examine the bathroom tile. "I figured you finally realized just how much you cared about each other when your lives were in danger, but after it was over…I mean, really, Harry, do you know how many Hogwarts sweethearts break up after they get out of school?"

"I see," Harry replied tersely. "So you wanted Hermione and me to break up, then?"

Ron looked horrified. "No, of course not! Bloody hell, this is coming out all wrong. I wish I had some of that firewhisky right now." Harry's disapproving scowl had yet to vanish. "I didn't reckon I'd have to deal with how I felt about the two of you because it wouldn't last very long. You know, I figured it for one of those things that happens between friends, I date Hermione, you date Hermione, we all figure out that we're better off as friends and decide to stay friends until we're old, toothless and wrinkled. But that didn't happen, did it? You and Hermione decided to get married. Even after the engagement, I told myself that the wedding wouldn't happen, that it couldn't, but now…now, it is happening. And…"

Harry tapped his foot slowly. "And…?"

Ron wiped a few droplets of water from his forehead and then looked Harry straight in the eye. "I'm not stupid, Harry. I know a lot of people have been walking on eggshells around me every time the subject of you two getting married came up. So even I figured I'd explode when it finally sank in that you two were really going to spend your whole lives together. But that's not what happened." Harry looked very surprised as Ron told him, "All this time I was pretending to be happy for you, and then I went and figured out that I actually am happy for you. You and Hermione have something, mate; something that your average Hogwarts sweethearts could only dream of having. And I want you both to hold on to that for as long as you can. You'd be right stupid not to and I'd be even stupider to stand in your way." Ron waggled his eyebrows mischievously. "Especially now that I have Luna. Have you seen her in that bridesmaid's dress?" He let out a low wolf whistle.

"I'm confused," Harry admitted with a frown. "Are you giving us your approval because you're not interested in Hermione anymore or because you're trying to respect our feelings?"

"Yes," Ron answered him simply. "Look, Harry, I know you don't need my approval. I just thought you might like to have my friendship without this whole Hermione thing hanging over us like the sword of Damocles." Ron winced. "Sorry. I think that was a bit of Septimus Prince coming out. Ruddy Greek mythology references."

Harry smiled in spite of himself. "Of course I want your friendship, Ron, but, to tell you the truth, I've never really felt like I didn't have it. Well, except for that time when you didn't believe me about the Goblet of Fire. You were being a right git then."

Ron winced again. "True. So…we're alright then, yeah?" Harry nodded. "Terrific." He then gave Harry a slap on the back. "My work here is done. Go off, marry Hermione, have a very unhealthy amount of children and name them all after your loved ones who've passed on."

Harry made a sour face. "I'd have to have an awful lot of children to do that. Not every family needs to have seven kids, you know."

Ron smiled widely. "If you do have seven kids, though, promise me that you'll spoil them rotten. It's no fun being the kid wearing hand-me-down robes."

Harry shook his head. "I dunno, Ron. It always seemed like you were having fun to me."

Ron's eyes grew distant for a moment. "Yeah, I reckon I was. Scratch that, then. Just leave the spoiling to their muggle grandparents." Ron suddenly looked thoughtful. "Muggles do spoil their grandkids, don't they?"

"I think that one's a universal law," Harry answered him with a grin. He had been very nervous about meeting Hermione's parents for the first time, but they were perfectly nice people who bore no resemblance whatsoever to the boggart he had encountered at Grimmauld Place. Once they saw the beaming glow on Hermione's face when she was with him, they had heartily approved of the union, although he didn't think either of them understood why the wedding was such a big deal in the wizarding world.

"Harry," Ron began as his eyes warily examined something below the sink. "Why is there an egg in the Head Bathroom?"

Harry sank into a crouch to investigate. A rather large spotted bird's egg, tilted slightly to one side, was resting against the bathroom wall. He reached out his hand to examine it. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, mate," Ron cautioned. "You do remember that Hagrid works here, right? That could have a baby Blast-Ended Skrewt inside or a cockatrice or…"

Harry shook his head dismissively. "Blast-Ended Skrewts' eggs don't look like that and Headmistress McGonagall would never let Hagrid have a cockatrice. They're too dangerous."

The egg shell soon began to break apart in Harry's hands, revealing a baby phoenix. "Look, Ron," Harry said with a laugh, "I think this is…" But Ron was already long gone, having bolted from the Head Bathroom the moment the egg began to open. "Fawkes." He examined the baby bird carefully. "But since when does Fawkes hatch from an egg?"

Inside the now-broken egg shell, Harry spotted a piece of parchment with a golden seal holding it closed and his name written on the outside. Gently placing the pink and featherless phoenix on the ground, he broke the seal and began to examine the parchment's contents…at least until he realized that there were no contents to examine. The parchment was blank.

"But who would send me a piece of blank parchment in an egg?" he asked aloud of nobody in particular.

"I'm surprised you even needed to ask," a deep voice from behind him called out. Harry spun around to take in the sight of a mouth floating in midair, surrounded only by a long white beard.

"Dumbledore?" Harry asked the floating mouth and beard with a quizzical expression on his face. "Is…is that you?"

"In point of fact, I'm a modified howler," the bearded mouth answered. "But you may certainly feel free to call me Dumbledore. I must say that I like the name."

"What are you doing here? How did you get inside the egg? Did Dumbledore leave you here for me?" Harry was asking it questions so quickly that he could barely even understand himself.

"Patience, Harry," the Dumbledore howler advised him. "Let me deliver the message Dumbledore left for you. After that, you may ask me all the questions you like." The howler made a point of clearing its entirely nonexistent throat. "A wedding is a special time for each and every wizard. It's rather like a ripened lime that's sitting in a blizzard. The bride is fair, the groom is true, so keep the vows you've written. Then 'til your hair has turned to blue you two will stay quite smitten. But please shy away from scams and sneaks and women of ill repute. Else I'll tell you the tale of dams and leaks and my dimwit cousin Canute."

Harry stared at the floating beard in incomprehension. "What the bleeding hell was that?"

"It's a poem, of course," the howler sniffed. "Dumbledore wrote it for your wedding day. Do you like it?"

"Oh yeah. It's smashing," Harry answered him with a roll of his eyes.

"Excellent," the bearded mouth replied gleefully. "I'm planning on reciting it again in front of all the wedding guests at the reception. Or perhaps I should sing it instead. What do you think, Harry?"

"I can sum up what I think in two words," Harry replied with a wicked grin. "Petrificus totalus." As he flicked his wand at the mouth, it dropped like a stone, hitting the floor and rolling underneath the sink. Harry fell to his hands and knees, only to watch in horror as his glasses preceded him, falling from his face and shattering.

"Great," Harry muttered, along with a few other choice phrases. "Just wonderful." He stooped to pick up the broken frames, but was prevented from doing so by another, gentler hand holding his own.

A fuzzy figure in brown and white placed Harry's glasses back on his head. "Oculus reparo." Perhaps unsurprisingly, as the glasses were repaired the white and brown blur became Hermione. "Really, Harry, this is the third time I've had to do that spell for you. You should learn to be more careful with your glasses."

"Yeah, I guess so," Harry acknowledged dazedly. He did not realize how beautiful Hermione would look in her wedding dress until this moment. It nearly took his breath away. "Still, it's kind of fitting, isn't it? You did that spell for me when we first met and then again, here, right before our wedding."

"It's almost poetic," Hermione said with a coy half-smile.

"Do me a favor, Hermione," Harry said as he put his arms around her and pressed his forehead to her own, giving her a light kiss on the lips in the process. "Don't mention anything about poetry for a while." Harry ran his right hand down her back and kissed her gently on the forehead. "Why are you here, anyway? I thought it was bad luck for the bride to see the groom before the wedding?"

Hermione scoffed. "Please tell me you don't believe in that silly superstition. I needed to talk to you about something." She looked terribly nervous and for one horrific moment, Harry thought she might want to call off the wedding. "You see, I…I don't want to take your last name."

Harry blinked rapidly. "Oh." His horror at the notion that she might call the whole thing off turned quickly into elation. "Alright."

Hermione was not looking at him. "It's nothing personal, Harry, it's just…my parents don't have any other children and my father was an only child and I don't want the Granger name to die and besides when people talk about 'the Potters', I want to know that they're talking about your parents and…I'm sorry, did you just say 'alright'?"

"Yeah," Harry responded earnestly. "I don't really give a fig what your last name is, so long as everyone knows you're my wife."

She gave Harry an enthusiastic squeeze around the middle. "Oh, Harry, I'm so glad. I really didn't want to hurt your feelings, but I felt it was something I needed to do."

Harry lifted her chin gently and stroked it gently with his thumb. "There are plenty of girls out there who would love nothing more than to be Mrs. Harry Potter, you know."

"I know," Hermione replied softly. "But I just want to be your wife."

"Well, Mrs. Hermione Granger," Harry told her playfully, "in about twenty minutes you will be."

Hermione smiled as Harry kissed her quickly on the lips. "I suppose that means I only have a few more minutes of freedom left. Whatever shall I do with them?"

"You know," Harry began suggestively, "the Head bathroom brings back a lot of memories."

"Harry," Hermione chided him with a laugh. "We haven't got time for that."

"Why not?" Harry wanted to know. "Just because there are hundreds of people out there waiting for us doesn't mean we can't have one last fling in the Head Bathroom. So what do you say?"

Hermione shoved him away from her, although an indulgent grin was on her face. "It took two hours to get me into this dress and it will take a great deal more than your boyish charm to get me out of it. Besides, there will be plenty of time for what you want on our honeymoon." As Harry pouted, Hermione walked up to him and planted a tender kiss on his lips. "I promise."

Harry looked into her eyes with undisguised adoration. "Are you sure you're ready for this?"

Hermione screwed up her nose at him. "What? You mean the ceremony? Oh Harry, of course I am. It's only a wedding. As long as we both show up and say 'I do', not much else matters, does it?"

"I was sort of talking about more than that," Harry admitted. "Getting married means spending your whole life with me. Are you absolutely sure that's what you want?"

Hermione took both of his hands in hers and squeezed them gently. "I wouldn't have said 'yes' if I wasn't sure." Harry gave her a smile of relief. "Besides, Harry, I've spent my whole life with you up until now. Why would I ever want that to end?"

Harry could not think of a reason, nor did he truly want to. Although there were people he would have liked to have had by his side on this day: his parents, his godfather, Dumbledore, Remus…. Hermione was the only one who he needed to be here. And, as usual, she was. Although he had not always known it, this was the ending he had wanted all along. Going off hand in hand with Hermione in that greatest of all adventures: life.

The End

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