FIC: Remnants; Chapter Nine
Title: Remnants
Characters: Andromeda, Teddy, Victoire, Narcissa, Scorpius, Weasleys
Rating: PG
Length: 3106
Summary: The epilogue gave us hints of Teddy/Victoire and Rose/Scorpius. This is the development of those relationships through the eyes of Andromeda.
The Wedding
The door crashed open as Teddy came running in; his cheeks were flushed, and he was slightly out of breath. He came skidding to a halt in the doorway of the kitchen, where I was sitting drinking tea. He grinned rather stupidly at me until I raised an eyebrow and cleared my throat. That snapped him out of it.
“IaskedVictoiretomarryme!” he exclaimed.
I put down my cup of tea.
“Excuse me dear?”
“I asked Victoire to marry me.”
Some would have seen this as something to be upset over-the loss of a grandson, his moving on into a new stage of his life and so on and so forth-but I was pleased. Victoire was a wonderful girl, and I was glad that my grandson was marrying Bill’s daughter. (I did hope that Molly wouldn’t be too much of a pain about the great-grandchildren, though. I wasn’t too worried; I could take her, probably…)
I grinned at him.
“Oh, Teddy that’s wonderful,” I leaned over and hugged him tightly.
“Yeah, yeah,” he agreed, still slightly out of breath. “It is good, right?”
“Yes dear, very good,” I said as I poured him a cup of tea. “Now drink your tea.”
He happily complied.
They announced their engagement two days later, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive; Harry’s children were particularly enthusiastic, and Molly was pleased that Teddy (and I by extension) was now an official member of her family.
The two of them spent a couple of days basking in their engaged status, but then decided that they should probably get down to planning sooner rather than later. They obviously viewed this with process with no small amount of trepidation, and that was where I intended to step in.
I fully intended to plan their wedding. I was going to let them get to the point where they panicked at the enormity of it, and then I would sweep in before Molly or Fleur had the chance to get their hands on it.
Devious? Yes, but I am a Slytherin after all; plus I had never been able to plan a traditional wedding. Ted and I did the signing a paper thing, and Dora’s wedding was too rushed for extensive planning. Teddy’s wedding would be my last chance to plan a wedding for some form of my offspring, and I wasn’t going to let it pass me by.
If Molly or Fleur (or both of them) put up a fight, I would offer to pay for the whole thing (I didn’t miss out on the Black family money entirely, Uncle Alphard left some to me as well as Sirius).
My plan was a success. Fleur and Molly seemed rather put out, but after I offered to cover the cost of the entire thing-and after I tearfully argued that I hadn’t been able to give myself, or my daughter a traditional wedding like I had always wanted, and implored them to let me plan the wedding of my poor, orphaned grandson-they easily went along with it.
Neither of them were stupid, so they obviously saw the rather forced sentimentality of my display, however, they knew me well enough by that point to see enough of the true emotion behind that display to allow me to plan it, and to let me pay, of course.
That’s not to say that they and Victoire, wouldn’t have a part in the planning, but I liked that I was the one who was giving them the wedding, so to speak.
Things went as smoothly as could be expected. Fleur and Molly butted heads a couple of times-the most notable of these being an argument over home cooked food versus catering, they came to a compromise on that one-and Bill and Arthur knew better than to interfere.
Teddy and Victoire would occasionally work up the nerve to venture a quick question, wisely understanding that they were likely to have their heads bitten off if they made an attempt to plan their own wedding. They were, however, consulted about things like color, food preferences, the wedding party, and the guest list.
It all went smoothly, as I said, until it came time to construct the guest list. The problem lay in the fact that Teddy was quite close to his Malfoy side of the family-the side of his, and my, family that the Weasley-Potter clan liked to pretend didn’t exist. How inviting these people to a Weasley wedding would go over, I had absolutely no idea.
Teddy bought this up to me before discussing it with anyone else, Malfoy, Weasley, or other. It was a wise choice.
It was the night after a surprisingly involved discussion over the drinks we would serve, and we were both pretty burned out on wedding plans.
He was sitting in the chair, staring rather glassily into space, and I was on the couch reading a letter from Kingsley.
He cleared his throat.
“Erm, Gran?”
“Yes dear?”
“I was thinking about the guest list, and I think that I’d rather-I’d rather like some of the Malfoys to be there.”
“I thought that you’d say that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. In fact, I was fairly positive that it was going to come up sooner or later. I’m just glad you chose to discuss this in private, as opposed to around the Weasleys, or Harry.”
He smiled at me ruefully.
“Do you think they’d have that much of a problem with it? I mean, I’m quite close with some of them and it would mean a lot to me to have them there on my wedding day. I know that they have issues with the Weasleys, but there must be some way to impress upon them how important this is to me.”
“Which Malfoys are we talking about dear? All of them, or-”
“I was thinking just Scorpius and Aunt Narcissa. I wouldn’t invite Lucius even if I did like him, and I don’t, so it’s a non-issue. As for Draco and Astoria, I’m thinking that that might not be a good idea either. I mean, I know that there are a lot of issues between Draco and Harry and all of them, and I’d rather not have to deal with those issues on my wedding day-”
“Yes, it’s probably a good idea to keep Draco and Lucius firmly off the guest list. You wouldn’t want any fights to break out over the wedding cake.”
“I shudder at the thought,” he said with a slight wince. “But Narcissa and Scorpius-”
“I think that it would be very nice and fitting to have Narcissa and Scorpius in attendance. Draco and Lucius will understand; they’ll probably be relieved.”
“Good. Now, how do we bring this up to the Weasleys?”
“Well, we explain that despite whatever negative feelings they may have towards them, the Malfoys are your family, and you have the right to have your family present on the most important day of your life. Plus I’m paying. You can subtly hint at that if all else fails.”
He smirked.
“That’s evil, Gran.”
“Well, I was in Slytherin after all,” I said as I returned his smirk. We smirked affably at each other for a minute or two, and then he bid me goodnight.
I went over the idea again once he was in bed. Of course Lucius wouldn’t be invited, that went without saying. Draco and Astoria were a bit more difficult. Teddy had never had any sort of strong bond with them, but, he was relatively fond of them, and never objected to spending time in their presence.
He had been a little less fond of Astoria of late; her grandfather, Daniel-who had been in mine and Lucius’ year in Slytherin-made a subtle yet pointed remark at me over dinner, and Teddy had been distinctively cool towards the Greengrasses as a whole since then.
They would be disappointed, but I was sure that they would understand the circumstances under which they weren’t being invited-I was fairly sure that Draco was in no hurry to be in the presence of the likes of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and Lucius would have rathered to expose himself to the Cruciatus Curse multiple times than attend that particular wedding.
I expected that he would want Narcissa and Scorpius in attendance. Teddy had been extremely fond of Narcissa from a very young age, and that fondness had never waned. Surprisingly enough, he actually managed to form a somewhat meaningful relationship with her. She took an active interest in his life, and he reciprocated by visiting her fairly frequently and owling her nearly as frequently. In fact, when he was at Hogwarts she received nearly as many owls from him as Harry and I did.
I was pleasantly surprised by their relationship. I was touched that, after all that had gone on between us, Narcissa would make an active effort to include herself in mine and Teddy’s lives.
Apologizing to me, and treating me to sob-stories about how I had been right all along, and how Voldemort had been mean to her family and so on and so forth were all very well and good, but her formation of a relationship with my grandson was what convinced me of the sincerity of her conciliatory actions, and it was what drove me to truly accept her apologies-after all, actions speak louder than words.
Teddy’s relationship with Scorpius closely resembled the ones he had with Harry’s-and most of the Weasley-children; Scorpius looked up to him, idolized him to a certain extent. I knew for a fact that his grandparents-Narcissa being the exception-were rather uncomfortable with the closeness between my grandson and their grandson, but, there was nothing they could do about it so neither Teddy nor I took much notice of their discomfort.
I was, in fact, extremely fond of Scorpius. Despite the negative influence his grandparents, and possibly his parents, may have had on him, as he grew up his personality became more absolute and little Scorpius Malfoy came to remind me of none other than Sirius.
It became increasingly obvious to me that Lucius and Narcissa were very well aware of the similarities-it was obvious by the mingled guilt and annoyance which passed over their faces whenever he came out with something particularly Sirius-like.
Like Sirius, Scorpius came to resent his family. While Sirius’ issues with his family had been a tad more serious than Scorpius’, Scorpius resented that he had to suffer from his family’s negative reputation.
Sometimes the children of families who had had particularly bad luck in the war would blame Scorpius for the crimes of past generations, and some of his fellow students formed a rather negative opinion of him based solely upon his family’s reputation. This was exceedingly offensive to him as he didn’t hold most of his family’s past prejudices.
This was largely due to Teddy and I; if we hadn’t intervened I’m sure that he still wouldn’t have gone wholeheartedly along with the pureblood superiority thing-especially not after his father’s experiences in the war-but Teddy and I did a rather thorough job of ensuring that this would not happen, just in case.
Yes, I thought, bringing myself back to my original train of thought, they would be pleased by their invitations to the wedding, but the real question was how the Weasleys would respond. I doubted that they would be excessively pleased by it.
I was fairly sure that they wouldn’t take issue with Scorpius; he was in the same year as Rose and Albus, and had had some how managed to form a somewhat easy friendship with them despite the fact that he was in Slytherin and they were in Gryffindor, and despite the fact that their families rather disliked each other. Because of those friendships, the Weasleys would probably be alright-though not enthusiastic-with Scorpius’ presence.
Narcissa, however, Narcissa would be a whole different story. Molly absolutely despised Narcissa, and Narcissa wholeheartedly returned those sentiments. Narcissa never explicitly stated the reason for these feelings, but I knew they had to do with the fact that it was Molly who killed Bellatrix.
Arthur wasn’t fond of Narcissa by any stretch of the imagination, but his real derision was towards Lucius, not Narcissa. I was fairly sure that none of the other Weasleys would be overly pleased by Narcissa’s presence, but she was intelligent enough to avoid doing or saying anything overly offensive, so I wasn’t too nervous.
It went just as I expected; Molly and Fleur grudgingly agreed to invite Scorpius, and even more grudgingly agreed to invite Narcissa (Molly was more grudging than Fleur). They both knew how much Teddy wanted them there, so they agreed for his sake; I only had to mention the fact that I was paying for the event once.
Scorpius and Narcissa were both pleased with the invitation, and Draco and Lucius weren’t at all angry that they had not been invited, in
fact, I feel quite comfortable in saying that they were both extremely relieved.
Narcissa did inquire as to the other guest’s comfort with her presence, but I assured her that they would be fine with it as long as she kept to herself. Scorpius was excited, but he didn’t see his invite as anything out of the ordinary, or unexpected; he had never expected not to be invited to Teddy’s wedding.
Things smoothed themselves out again after we had dealt with that.
The usually dramatic process of selecting a wedding party went quite easily. Victoire chose her sister, Dominique to be her Maid of Honor, and her Aunt Gabrielle (who was childless), and her cousins Lily, and Rose to be her Bridesmaids. She passed over Molly, Lucy, and Roxanne because she thought that it would be cute to have the two youngest and the two oldest Weasley girls in her wedding. They weren’t offended; it was a very accepting sort of family.
Teddy’s selection was much simpler; he chose Harry as his Best Man, and James and Albus as Groomsmen. After giving it some thought, he decided to include Scorpius in their number. Since, according to Teddy, Scorpius was quite good friends with Albus, so it wasn’t likely to be an issue. And if it was an issue, well, then they’d just have to deal with it. I rather liked Teddy’s attitude on the subject.
The wedding day finally arrived, and everything went as planned. There was some last minute chaos, but it wouldn’t be a wedding without last minute chaos. The bridesmaids all looked lovely in their blue dresses, and Victoire was gorgeous in her simple, form fitting gown.
Fleur looked lovely as well; she had obviously gone through great lengths to avoid outshining her daughter.
The men took a much shorter amount of time to get ready-fifteen minutes in total. The women took an hour, but they had a right to take such a long time; weddings were mainly for the women, if it was up to men all marriages would involve a government agent, a piece of paper, and a signature.
As I watched the ceremony, I felt rather odd. I should have been proud to see my grandson marrying this lovely young woman, but instead of feeling pride, I felt distinctly unhappy. All I could think about was how much I wanted his parents, and Ted, to be there. How proud they would have been.
I wanted them there. Badly. And I felt almost traitorous for being there when they weren’t able to attend. I supposed that they were there in spirit-we had even set aside three empty chairs in their memory-but that wasn’t much of a consolation. It took my best efforts to keep myself from crying.
I heard the distinct sound of sobbing coming from next to, and sure enough, there sat Narcissa, her eyes glued to the ceremony and a little white handkerchief dabbing at them. Perhaps I should have been touched that Narcissa was showing such emotion at my grandson’s wedding, but I really just wished that she would shut up and leave me to my thoughts in (relative) silence.
I was pulled out of my reverie by the sounds of hooting and cheering; I was astonished to find that the ceremony was over. I pulled myself out of my seat, and joined the throng of well wishers surrounding the newlyweds. The crowd made way for me as I approached, and I drew them both into tight hugs.
I turned to Teddy.
“Your parents would be so proud of you right now,” I told him tearfully.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Your mum would make a dirty joke or two, but there would be some parental pride there.”
He grinned and pulled me into a tight hug.
I looked back towards where I had been sitting; Narcissa sat there with Scorpius (who had done an excellent job in the ceremony), both of them looking slightly unsure. I assumed that she had hung back out of discomfort; she really had no wish to push through the mass of reveling mass of Weasleys.
It took around twenty minutes for the well-wishers to dispel, and for the guests to take their seats.
The rest of the day went along typical wedding lines; people danced, tears were shed (mostly by Molly and Fleur), toasts were made, and there was dancing. It was a lovely, normal traditional wedding, and it was all I could have wanted for the wedding of my grandson.
Teddy and Victoire danced with everyone. As the night was winding down, Teddy made his way to my table and quite solemnly requested a dance with me. As we made our way to the dance floor, we passed a gaggle of teenagers; mainly Weasleys. They dispelled as the band struck up the next song.
I turned and glimpsed at them as they made their ways back to the tables. Rose and Scorpius lagged behind the rest of them, laughing at some joke or other. Rose recovered the soonest, grinned at Scorpius, and went off to join her cousins in their scavenging for leftover cake.
He watched her retreating back, and a confused, frustrated sort of expression passed over his face as his eyes followed her. He stood looking confused for a moment or two, and then shook his head slightly, and made his way over to where Narcissa was sitting.
I smiled slightly to myself. If that confused expression meant what I thought it did, we would all be in for a very interesting ride.
Characters: Andromeda, Teddy, Victoire, Narcissa, Scorpius, Weasleys
Rating: PG
Length: 3106
Summary: The epilogue gave us hints of Teddy/Victoire and Rose/Scorpius. This is the development of those relationships through the eyes of Andromeda.
The Wedding
The door crashed open as Teddy came running in; his cheeks were flushed, and he was slightly out of breath. He came skidding to a halt in the doorway of the kitchen, where I was sitting drinking tea. He grinned rather stupidly at me until I raised an eyebrow and cleared my throat. That snapped him out of it.
“IaskedVictoiretomarryme!” he exclaimed.
I put down my cup of tea.
“Excuse me dear?”
“I asked Victoire to marry me.”
Some would have seen this as something to be upset over-the loss of a grandson, his moving on into a new stage of his life and so on and so forth-but I was pleased. Victoire was a wonderful girl, and I was glad that my grandson was marrying Bill’s daughter. (I did hope that Molly wouldn’t be too much of a pain about the great-grandchildren, though. I wasn’t too worried; I could take her, probably…)
I grinned at him.
“Oh, Teddy that’s wonderful,” I leaned over and hugged him tightly.
“Yeah, yeah,” he agreed, still slightly out of breath. “It is good, right?”
“Yes dear, very good,” I said as I poured him a cup of tea. “Now drink your tea.”
He happily complied.
They announced their engagement two days later, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive; Harry’s children were particularly enthusiastic, and Molly was pleased that Teddy (and I by extension) was now an official member of her family.
The two of them spent a couple of days basking in their engaged status, but then decided that they should probably get down to planning sooner rather than later. They obviously viewed this with process with no small amount of trepidation, and that was where I intended to step in.
I fully intended to plan their wedding. I was going to let them get to the point where they panicked at the enormity of it, and then I would sweep in before Molly or Fleur had the chance to get their hands on it.
Devious? Yes, but I am a Slytherin after all; plus I had never been able to plan a traditional wedding. Ted and I did the signing a paper thing, and Dora’s wedding was too rushed for extensive planning. Teddy’s wedding would be my last chance to plan a wedding for some form of my offspring, and I wasn’t going to let it pass me by.
If Molly or Fleur (or both of them) put up a fight, I would offer to pay for the whole thing (I didn’t miss out on the Black family money entirely, Uncle Alphard left some to me as well as Sirius).
My plan was a success. Fleur and Molly seemed rather put out, but after I offered to cover the cost of the entire thing-and after I tearfully argued that I hadn’t been able to give myself, or my daughter a traditional wedding like I had always wanted, and implored them to let me plan the wedding of my poor, orphaned grandson-they easily went along with it.
Neither of them were stupid, so they obviously saw the rather forced sentimentality of my display, however, they knew me well enough by that point to see enough of the true emotion behind that display to allow me to plan it, and to let me pay, of course.
That’s not to say that they and Victoire, wouldn’t have a part in the planning, but I liked that I was the one who was giving them the wedding, so to speak.
Things went as smoothly as could be expected. Fleur and Molly butted heads a couple of times-the most notable of these being an argument over home cooked food versus catering, they came to a compromise on that one-and Bill and Arthur knew better than to interfere.
Teddy and Victoire would occasionally work up the nerve to venture a quick question, wisely understanding that they were likely to have their heads bitten off if they made an attempt to plan their own wedding. They were, however, consulted about things like color, food preferences, the wedding party, and the guest list.
It all went smoothly, as I said, until it came time to construct the guest list. The problem lay in the fact that Teddy was quite close to his Malfoy side of the family-the side of his, and my, family that the Weasley-Potter clan liked to pretend didn’t exist. How inviting these people to a Weasley wedding would go over, I had absolutely no idea.
Teddy bought this up to me before discussing it with anyone else, Malfoy, Weasley, or other. It was a wise choice.
It was the night after a surprisingly involved discussion over the drinks we would serve, and we were both pretty burned out on wedding plans.
He was sitting in the chair, staring rather glassily into space, and I was on the couch reading a letter from Kingsley.
He cleared his throat.
“Erm, Gran?”
“Yes dear?”
“I was thinking about the guest list, and I think that I’d rather-I’d rather like some of the Malfoys to be there.”
“I thought that you’d say that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. In fact, I was fairly positive that it was going to come up sooner or later. I’m just glad you chose to discuss this in private, as opposed to around the Weasleys, or Harry.”
He smiled at me ruefully.
“Do you think they’d have that much of a problem with it? I mean, I’m quite close with some of them and it would mean a lot to me to have them there on my wedding day. I know that they have issues with the Weasleys, but there must be some way to impress upon them how important this is to me.”
“Which Malfoys are we talking about dear? All of them, or-”
“I was thinking just Scorpius and Aunt Narcissa. I wouldn’t invite Lucius even if I did like him, and I don’t, so it’s a non-issue. As for Draco and Astoria, I’m thinking that that might not be a good idea either. I mean, I know that there are a lot of issues between Draco and Harry and all of them, and I’d rather not have to deal with those issues on my wedding day-”
“Yes, it’s probably a good idea to keep Draco and Lucius firmly off the guest list. You wouldn’t want any fights to break out over the wedding cake.”
“I shudder at the thought,” he said with a slight wince. “But Narcissa and Scorpius-”
“I think that it would be very nice and fitting to have Narcissa and Scorpius in attendance. Draco and Lucius will understand; they’ll probably be relieved.”
“Good. Now, how do we bring this up to the Weasleys?”
“Well, we explain that despite whatever negative feelings they may have towards them, the Malfoys are your family, and you have the right to have your family present on the most important day of your life. Plus I’m paying. You can subtly hint at that if all else fails.”
He smirked.
“That’s evil, Gran.”
“Well, I was in Slytherin after all,” I said as I returned his smirk. We smirked affably at each other for a minute or two, and then he bid me goodnight.
I went over the idea again once he was in bed. Of course Lucius wouldn’t be invited, that went without saying. Draco and Astoria were a bit more difficult. Teddy had never had any sort of strong bond with them, but, he was relatively fond of them, and never objected to spending time in their presence.
He had been a little less fond of Astoria of late; her grandfather, Daniel-who had been in mine and Lucius’ year in Slytherin-made a subtle yet pointed remark at me over dinner, and Teddy had been distinctively cool towards the Greengrasses as a whole since then.
They would be disappointed, but I was sure that they would understand the circumstances under which they weren’t being invited-I was fairly sure that Draco was in no hurry to be in the presence of the likes of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and Lucius would have rathered to expose himself to the Cruciatus Curse multiple times than attend that particular wedding.
I expected that he would want Narcissa and Scorpius in attendance. Teddy had been extremely fond of Narcissa from a very young age, and that fondness had never waned. Surprisingly enough, he actually managed to form a somewhat meaningful relationship with her. She took an active interest in his life, and he reciprocated by visiting her fairly frequently and owling her nearly as frequently. In fact, when he was at Hogwarts she received nearly as many owls from him as Harry and I did.
I was pleasantly surprised by their relationship. I was touched that, after all that had gone on between us, Narcissa would make an active effort to include herself in mine and Teddy’s lives.
Apologizing to me, and treating me to sob-stories about how I had been right all along, and how Voldemort had been mean to her family and so on and so forth were all very well and good, but her formation of a relationship with my grandson was what convinced me of the sincerity of her conciliatory actions, and it was what drove me to truly accept her apologies-after all, actions speak louder than words.
Teddy’s relationship with Scorpius closely resembled the ones he had with Harry’s-and most of the Weasley-children; Scorpius looked up to him, idolized him to a certain extent. I knew for a fact that his grandparents-Narcissa being the exception-were rather uncomfortable with the closeness between my grandson and their grandson, but, there was nothing they could do about it so neither Teddy nor I took much notice of their discomfort.
I was, in fact, extremely fond of Scorpius. Despite the negative influence his grandparents, and possibly his parents, may have had on him, as he grew up his personality became more absolute and little Scorpius Malfoy came to remind me of none other than Sirius.
It became increasingly obvious to me that Lucius and Narcissa were very well aware of the similarities-it was obvious by the mingled guilt and annoyance which passed over their faces whenever he came out with something particularly Sirius-like.
Like Sirius, Scorpius came to resent his family. While Sirius’ issues with his family had been a tad more serious than Scorpius’, Scorpius resented that he had to suffer from his family’s negative reputation.
Sometimes the children of families who had had particularly bad luck in the war would blame Scorpius for the crimes of past generations, and some of his fellow students formed a rather negative opinion of him based solely upon his family’s reputation. This was exceedingly offensive to him as he didn’t hold most of his family’s past prejudices.
This was largely due to Teddy and I; if we hadn’t intervened I’m sure that he still wouldn’t have gone wholeheartedly along with the pureblood superiority thing-especially not after his father’s experiences in the war-but Teddy and I did a rather thorough job of ensuring that this would not happen, just in case.
Yes, I thought, bringing myself back to my original train of thought, they would be pleased by their invitations to the wedding, but the real question was how the Weasleys would respond. I doubted that they would be excessively pleased by it.
I was fairly sure that they wouldn’t take issue with Scorpius; he was in the same year as Rose and Albus, and had had some how managed to form a somewhat easy friendship with them despite the fact that he was in Slytherin and they were in Gryffindor, and despite the fact that their families rather disliked each other. Because of those friendships, the Weasleys would probably be alright-though not enthusiastic-with Scorpius’ presence.
Narcissa, however, Narcissa would be a whole different story. Molly absolutely despised Narcissa, and Narcissa wholeheartedly returned those sentiments. Narcissa never explicitly stated the reason for these feelings, but I knew they had to do with the fact that it was Molly who killed Bellatrix.
Arthur wasn’t fond of Narcissa by any stretch of the imagination, but his real derision was towards Lucius, not Narcissa. I was fairly sure that none of the other Weasleys would be overly pleased by Narcissa’s presence, but she was intelligent enough to avoid doing or saying anything overly offensive, so I wasn’t too nervous.
It went just as I expected; Molly and Fleur grudgingly agreed to invite Scorpius, and even more grudgingly agreed to invite Narcissa (Molly was more grudging than Fleur). They both knew how much Teddy wanted them there, so they agreed for his sake; I only had to mention the fact that I was paying for the event once.
Scorpius and Narcissa were both pleased with the invitation, and Draco and Lucius weren’t at all angry that they had not been invited, in
fact, I feel quite comfortable in saying that they were both extremely relieved.
Narcissa did inquire as to the other guest’s comfort with her presence, but I assured her that they would be fine with it as long as she kept to herself. Scorpius was excited, but he didn’t see his invite as anything out of the ordinary, or unexpected; he had never expected not to be invited to Teddy’s wedding.
Things smoothed themselves out again after we had dealt with that.
The usually dramatic process of selecting a wedding party went quite easily. Victoire chose her sister, Dominique to be her Maid of Honor, and her Aunt Gabrielle (who was childless), and her cousins Lily, and Rose to be her Bridesmaids. She passed over Molly, Lucy, and Roxanne because she thought that it would be cute to have the two youngest and the two oldest Weasley girls in her wedding. They weren’t offended; it was a very accepting sort of family.
Teddy’s selection was much simpler; he chose Harry as his Best Man, and James and Albus as Groomsmen. After giving it some thought, he decided to include Scorpius in their number. Since, according to Teddy, Scorpius was quite good friends with Albus, so it wasn’t likely to be an issue. And if it was an issue, well, then they’d just have to deal with it. I rather liked Teddy’s attitude on the subject.
The wedding day finally arrived, and everything went as planned. There was some last minute chaos, but it wouldn’t be a wedding without last minute chaos. The bridesmaids all looked lovely in their blue dresses, and Victoire was gorgeous in her simple, form fitting gown.
Fleur looked lovely as well; she had obviously gone through great lengths to avoid outshining her daughter.
The men took a much shorter amount of time to get ready-fifteen minutes in total. The women took an hour, but they had a right to take such a long time; weddings were mainly for the women, if it was up to men all marriages would involve a government agent, a piece of paper, and a signature.
As I watched the ceremony, I felt rather odd. I should have been proud to see my grandson marrying this lovely young woman, but instead of feeling pride, I felt distinctly unhappy. All I could think about was how much I wanted his parents, and Ted, to be there. How proud they would have been.
I wanted them there. Badly. And I felt almost traitorous for being there when they weren’t able to attend. I supposed that they were there in spirit-we had even set aside three empty chairs in their memory-but that wasn’t much of a consolation. It took my best efforts to keep myself from crying.
I heard the distinct sound of sobbing coming from next to, and sure enough, there sat Narcissa, her eyes glued to the ceremony and a little white handkerchief dabbing at them. Perhaps I should have been touched that Narcissa was showing such emotion at my grandson’s wedding, but I really just wished that she would shut up and leave me to my thoughts in (relative) silence.
I was pulled out of my reverie by the sounds of hooting and cheering; I was astonished to find that the ceremony was over. I pulled myself out of my seat, and joined the throng of well wishers surrounding the newlyweds. The crowd made way for me as I approached, and I drew them both into tight hugs.
I turned to Teddy.
“Your parents would be so proud of you right now,” I told him tearfully.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Your mum would make a dirty joke or two, but there would be some parental pride there.”
He grinned and pulled me into a tight hug.
I looked back towards where I had been sitting; Narcissa sat there with Scorpius (who had done an excellent job in the ceremony), both of them looking slightly unsure. I assumed that she had hung back out of discomfort; she really had no wish to push through the mass of reveling mass of Weasleys.
It took around twenty minutes for the well-wishers to dispel, and for the guests to take their seats.
The rest of the day went along typical wedding lines; people danced, tears were shed (mostly by Molly and Fleur), toasts were made, and there was dancing. It was a lovely, normal traditional wedding, and it was all I could have wanted for the wedding of my grandson.
Teddy and Victoire danced with everyone. As the night was winding down, Teddy made his way to my table and quite solemnly requested a dance with me. As we made our way to the dance floor, we passed a gaggle of teenagers; mainly Weasleys. They dispelled as the band struck up the next song.
I turned and glimpsed at them as they made their ways back to the tables. Rose and Scorpius lagged behind the rest of them, laughing at some joke or other. Rose recovered the soonest, grinned at Scorpius, and went off to join her cousins in their scavenging for leftover cake.
He watched her retreating back, and a confused, frustrated sort of expression passed over his face as his eyes followed her. He stood looking confused for a moment or two, and then shook his head slightly, and made his way over to where Narcissa was sitting.
I smiled slightly to myself. If that confused expression meant what I thought it did, we would all be in for a very interesting ride.