Scene at a Wedding

Scene at a Wedding

July 2002, The Burrow

Harry Potter could not remember the last time he'd felt this nervous. Not even the final confrontation with Voldemort four years previously had filled him with this much feeling. Indeed, on that day he had felt numb, a robot with a task to perform. Today, on what was a joyful day for most wizards in Britain, Harry felt achingly miserable, with the dull resignation of someone who knows that their life is going to be hell and that there is nothing they can do about it.

Yet Harry was someone who never resigned himself to an eventuality. He was, and always had been, a wizard of extraordinary determination, perseverance and decisiveness. If this had been a matter of fighting Dark Wizards, he would have dealt with it with much more ease. He was afraid that he wouldn't be able to deal with it at all.

When had he fallen in love with her? He knew the exact date- May 25^th 2000, almost exactly a year before he'd completed his Auror training. She'd come to London and they'd spent the day together at his flat; he'd never seen her happier. He had found himself wishing that he, and not the engagement to Ron, were the cause of her happiness. He did know that she was immensely happy to see him, that he still occupied the same special position in her life, that he also knew that her giddy, almost delirious state of happiness was due to the fact that his best friend had proposed to her the previous morning.

The ring had irritated him most of all. Every time he'd seen her in the past twenty-six months, it seemed to him, she'd been wearing it, and he hadn't been able to take his eyes off it. Not because it was particularly beautiful or noteworthy in itself- It was without question a very nice ring, and Hermione was secretly sure Ginny, and not Ron, had chosen it- but because it maddened and yet obsessed him.

It was this that was at the root of Harry's nervousness. Today, of all days, Harry required an almost superhuman self-control. And while he had never doubted his self-control in his twenty-two years of existence, he doubted it now.

Seated on a bench in the garden, he looked up to see Remus Lupin walk up and sit beside him. Neither spoke, both gazing solidly at the structure in front of them. Hermione had wanted a Hogwarts wedding, but Ron had insisted on the Burrow: it was where every Weasley male had been married for the last three hundred years. Harry was glad that Hermione had insisted on a small, private affair, with no newspaper cameras; the last thing Harry wanted was for a Daily Prophet journalist to accurately interpret his silence as sadness. Harry might have defeated Voldemort, but he was still prone to all the vagaries of celebrity life.

Remus spoke, finally. "Harry, why aren't you with Ron? I thought you two would be sharing his last moments of bachelorhood."

Harry made no reply, instead lazily flicking open his pocket watch, now charmed to give the time. Informed that there was an hour to the wedding, he looked at Lupin and said, "How've you been, Remus?", as if noticing the other for the first time.

Remus sighed. "Harry, do you want them to get married or not?"

"No. Yes, no I mean of course I do. They want it. They're in love, aren't they? Yes, I want them to." His voice fell away.

Ignoring these words, Remus continued, "So why don't you want them to?" Harry didn't answer, and Remus asked the question they both knew was coming, eventually.

"Harry." He paused, neither to reflect nor for breath. "Harry, you don't have to answer this. But are you in love with Hermione?"

"No! Of course not!" Harry protested instantly, but not instinctively. "But it's just that, this way, I'm losing them both, aren't I? I'm just more alone than ever, and our friendship will have changed irrevocably. So, naturally, I don't know, it just feels strange!" Harry hoped that his desperate partial honestly would hide his earlier lie.

It if it didn't, then Remus showed no sign of it. "Harry, that would never happen. They'll never forget what you are to them. How could they? If they'd never met you, they

wouldn't be married at all."

Harry looked at his former teacher and old friend, and Remus thought that Harry was furious with him. But Harry quickly rose, muttering, "Thanks for that, Remus. Don't know what I was thinking. Fuck it, I'll see you in a bit," and strode directly towards the Burrow, not looking back once in Lupin's direction.