Centre of the Universe

The courtyard was, above all, colourful. Flowers everywhere, every color. Bright, bold yellow of the sunflower stark against the blood red roses on the dias. Blue forget-me-nots, purple lavenders planted across the isle- some of them do not contrast well at all, but Hermione decided against removing anything. It was her day, her and Draco’s. Draco who has an obsession with bleak colors. He prefers gray, white, beige, not because he likes them, but because he thinks he should be around these palettes that are so easy to hide in. After five years of being in love with him, Hermione absolutely, empirically disagrees. So she decides on colours for their wedding day, the whole lot, vibrant and unashamed.

The cream white drapery over the pavilion gives the flower some substance, what otherwise would have looked tacky looks absolutely purposeful. Of course it looks perfect, came to her mind every time Hermione glanced over the patio over the last few days. It loosened her strained muscles, this realization. Of course their wedding venue is colorful and vibrant. Of course it looks like something out of a fairy tale. They’ve earned their happy ending.

The weather had not agreed. What was supposed to be a breezy, clear spring afternoon turned out to be a cloud-cluster mess. The sky started bellowing in defiance at noon, and to Hermione’s utter horror, heavy drops of rain started harrowing down their perfect venue. Harry and Ron hurried down of course, even before she could let out her cry, and tried their best to cast a shielding charm strong enough to cover the large ground. Pansy patted her back before she and Ginny got down as well, wands out, ready to duel with complete anarchy. 

Hermione watched her friends with a queer dread. She knew this was going to happen. This or that or something else. Something was supposed to be wrong. With a gust of air, the rain started attacking from sideways. A light drizzle sprayed on Hermione this time. The droplets set on her makeup without seeping in. Another gust of wind and Neville and Blaise join them. Someone screams at her to go inside but as the tightness in her stomach decided to persist since the preceding week, Hermione persists in watching the debacle of her wedding day. Part of her wanted to scream in frustration at Harry and his stupid wand movement that was wrong in so many ways and part of her wished for a cup of brandy. And a chair. 

Suddenly she wished Draco were there so they could sit together, hands interlocked and watch on as their friends tried to salvage the wedding of the century.

Not her choice of title, but Witch Weekly never asked for their consent.

She only calmed down to a limit when Mrs. Weasley came to her with a cup of tea. 

“It’s said to be auspicious to have a light shower on one's wedding day,” she said softly.

Hermione took the cup in gratitude, covering the hotness of the cup with her palm. The warmth did not reach her heart, or even her throat. She felt the same hopeless terror she had been feeling since this morning.

“I don’t feel auspicious.”

“Oh honey.” Mrs. Weasley spread her arm over Hermione’s shoulder. She nudged closer to the woman, resting her head on the comforting shoulder only for a moment, because that was what she could handle without falling apart like an idiot.

“And it’s more like a storm than a light drizzle.”

“Arthur’s calling the weather department. If the rain doesn’t stop until the evening they will send their experts to ward it off the parameter of the venue.”

A stupid tear falls from Hermione’s eyes anyway at her kindness. “Thank you.”

“None of that, young lady.” a gentle squeeze on her shoulder. “You deserve a perfect day… you both do. Besides, Arthur and George are starting for the station any minute now. We don’t want that sloppily done magicked canopy hanging over when they come.”

Her parents. Lost memories and a broken connection to her. Something about her makes them feel like home, they said when Hermione had accidentally ran into them in Australia.

“Poor kids…” Mrs. Weasley hums at their battered attempts to fix the patio. She was becoming more of a mother to her every passing day but it can never feel just right. Just what she wants.

“They mean well,” she said with an affectionate huff, “but you’d think I taught them better.”

__

When Hermione met Monica Wilkins in Lucky Bay, Australia, she was reading The Winter’s Tale. It swelled her heart into something very unnaturally alive, imagining her name repeated in her mother’s mind. It didn’t matter that the Hermione in the book was dead, that another Hermione, who had called this woman mum for seventeen years had all but dissipated into nothingness.

She heard Draco take a short, exultant breath. She fell in love with him then, at that moment of great discovery. They’d chanced upon Monica and Wendell Wilkins the following afternoon. And after, in shadowy darkness of their hotel room, Hermione had cried into his arms about things that were lost and could never be brought back, felt him kiss her hair, felt the saltiness of his tears when she finally looked up and kissed him, she told him she loved him.

He looked scared, almost, eyes lost like a boy just shy of adulthood, eyes like someone living inside a rock suddenly blistered with the sun.

He didn’t say it back, didn’t kiss her breathless as she hoped. After days, it felt, after eons, he asked, “For real?”

“For real.”

His eyes bore into her like a pale tornado. Grey centre of the chaos. “I love you,” he whispered. “I’ve loved you so long.”

Scattered pieces of her life fell blissfully into places. Pieces of a puzzle, long lost part of a series of paintings drawn by a troubled genius. She felt so tired, after all this chasing, and she was finally home.

They stretched their vacation into another few weeks. They met with the older couple every other day. It seemed that Wendell really liked Draco, something Hermione hadn’t counted on. But her father taught him - a man so different, but so similar to him - fishing. They went fishing again, after becoming amiable acquaintances, after so many months when they broke the news of their engagement.

Hermione told Monica that they were getting married that evening.

“Would you come?” she asked, her voice like a child’s, like the girl who was so lost in Matilda the first time her mum read it to her.

Something welled in her parents. There was a flicker of something so familiar that Hermione immediately feared for their mind.

But her mum smiled. “Of course. Love to - we’d love to.” 

“You’re like a missing piece in our life. We feel so content, now that we know you,” her father said, a gruff but sentimental man. The last time he called her my darling was almost a decade ago.

Hermione felt so overcome with loss that she couldn’t answer. It was Draco who clutched her hand with a soft determination and answered for her.

“You were like a missing piece in ours.”

—

The rain stopped before the experts came in, luckily. But Hermione still felt the unhappy weight in her chest, spreading over like a tumor. Luna stands beside her in silence as she watches from the window as the boys charm the grounds to get rid of the sludges of water. Pansy and Ginny walked into the room and gape in horror.

“Hermione, you’re wet!” Ginny glances at Pansy, as if wanting the other girl to confirm that. Pansy purses her lips and gives an affirmatory nod. They all are wearing identical tea length gowns. Golden dresses with the edges trimmed with laces identical to Hermione’s gown. They look beautiful with gold hoops with jewelleries they all picked together, pendants matched with their birthstones. They look so pretty, though somewhat disheveled from all their efforts. Hermione suddenly wants to cry again.

“She’s going to cry,” Luna says as a matter-of-fact and god bless her for her untimely sweet innocence most of the days, but Hermione could really punch her now.

Ginny smiles animatedly in an attempt to chafe off the sodden words.

“It’s nothing,” Pansy adds. “We can fix you up in an hour. Just… got to redo the makeup.”

“And hair,” Luna adds.

“Is that mud?” Ginny points to the lower part of her skirt.

“Two hours.” Pansy stares at the brown imprint. “No more.”

Luna conjures a chair for her to sit. It lands on her side, it is covered with white cloth with a crown of pink orchid on its top rail. The chair looks perfect, just what she wanted from the wedding planner, but all it does is feed off her anxiety. She sits down, carefully, as if it might break from the weight. She turns her head to the girls to find them staring at her as if she were a peculiar bird.

Hermione searches her head for the right words, what she feels, what she wants to say, but they all elude her. She feels the perfectly tailored dress uncomfortable, too tight, as if she somehow grew a new skin not accustomed to her surroundings. She thinks of the bright and lovely flowers and imagines them rotting soon after. She thinks of Draco in his wedding robes, so beautiful, so perfect and the tears pool on the corners of her eyes.

“Do you not want to attend the wedding?” Luna asks as if she’s talking about someone else’s wedding.

“Luna!” Ginny huffs.

A stupid tear falls this time.

“Oh God.” It’s Pansy. Hermione watches through her blurry vision as both Ginny and Pansy approach her. And the tears are almost uncontrollable as they kneel in front of her.

Ginny holds her hands. “Is that it?”

“No.” Hermione sobs. “I want to marry him.”

“Then what?” Pansy asks. “Not right now? Do you want to postpone the wedding?”

“ No.”

“Are you feeling sick?”

“I don’t know. My chest feels so… congested.”

“It’s just nerves,” Pansy says soothingly. “All those stupid tabloids are to blame. And that roast duck we had last night -”

“It was delicious ,” Ginny counters defensively. It was her choice of restaurant.

“The main course was too heavy, Ginny. Look at her.”

“Was it the duck, Hermione?”

She shakes her head no. “No I - I haven’t been. Well, I’ve been feeling so anxious for a lot of days… not just today. All this. The rain and the pastor.”

“He has the flu. It’s normal this time of year.”

“We’ve got you a better pastor.”

Ginny nods. “This one’s going to wear a golden dress. It’ll match with the venue better.”

Pansy snorts.

“It’s silly.” Hermione cries. “I feel so silly. I’ve been planning this wedding for so long and it’s not perfect.”

They don’t interrupt while she empties the small pond stuck in her chest. She thought it would feel good, letting the tides out. She would tire herself so the only emotion clinging to her will be happiness. Because there is happiness. All the time they spent working on each other - trying to be familiar with the idea of forever, forgetting the simpleminded bitterness of their childhood - has finally paid off. They tried so hard to deserve this ending. In her mind she sees Draco with his head held high, walking into a room full of people who hated him. The hand she held clutched hers in uneasiness. But he never left the room. Not even when his sincere apologies met with rebuke. Hermione walked into the manor with the same trepidation, with him telling her again and again that they didn’t have to do this. She met with his mother and father who barely left their mansion. Who were all but caged in their past.

“I love your son,” she told them, proud and determined. “And I’m going to make him happy.”

They gave their blessing wearily, but with surprising warmth.

That is one of the things she learned while being in love with Draco Malfoy. People can surprise you in heartwarming ways. There are flowers growing even in the darkest corners of the world. She decided, while taking a tour of the manor with Narcissa, that she will pluck out all the flowers for him, all of them, and rearrange them in his life.

“I want to marry him,” she says again, now, to her friends. “We will be so happy.”

“We know, Hermione.”

But then why does it feel like this? She lays her palm flat on her chest. Why does she feel that she is messing something up? Somewhere else she should be.

“Maybe it was the duck,” she says quietly.

Pansy nods a little too encouragingly. “That must be it. I was almost gagging -”

“Shut up, Parkinson.” Ginny smirks. “Just because you can’t gag on something you really want to doesn’t mean you can blame my duck.”

Pansy looks lost for only a moment before the memory clicks and she groans. It’s Ginny’s favorite topic. It’s her doom.

“Not again, Weaslette. It’s Hermione’s wedding.”

“Yes and Harry doesn’t have a date for this wedding.”

“I think I heard that before. From...” Pansy makes a face. “Oh yes. From the ten thousand times you and Blaise have mentioned this.”

Ginny laughs. “We’re only trying to help out! The poor guy’s been single too long. You ogle at him all day. And you’d have great chemistry in bed.”

“Weasley, I am warning -”

But the threatening tone makes her giggle even harder. “Honestly. Harry will go crazy about all the stuff you like. The praising, the teasing and that thing you do with your -”

“If I knew that sleeping with you once is going to expose my sexual appetite to every single person I know then I would’ve stayed the fuck away from you, Ginny.”

“It was fun!”

“It’s not fun now!”

“Hermione’s laughing!”

“Merlin’s pants , Granger!”

“I’m sorry.” Hermione laughs. She tries to stay still for a moment but then Ginny makes another gagging noise and they all burst out of laughter. Even Luna.

After they stop, red to her cheeks, the blonde girl says, “Why don’t you ask him out, Pansy? Is it because you wanted to hand him over to Voldemort?”

The stiff silence associated with uncomfortable truths falls. Hermione is relieved, only for a moment, that the attention is not on her. 

Pansy has her words in knots. She tries - “I’m not. I - I really wouldn’t. But he’s - I mean I -Jesus. Yes . that’s why, Luna.”

“But you’ve apologized to him,” Ginny says, patting her back. “And it was so long ago, honestly. None of us are who we were then.”

“And Harry likes you,” Luna Lovegood announces as if she just hasn’t talked out loud the very thing Pansy runs away from everyday. “He has mellifluxious all around him when you’re there. He laughs at your jokes even when they are not funny.”

Ginny snorts as Pansy blushes. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Luna. And I don’t even know what those are… But - I dunno. He’s supposed to be the Chosen One with the pristine history. Why doesn’t he ask me out?”

“He’s never been good at that,” Hermione says.

“Him and Ron both,” Ginny agrees. “They’ve always needed a little push.”

“So did Draco.” Pansy sighs, getting up. “But we all can’t be as lucky as that. Hermione, darling, we should really start getting you ready.”

Hermione smiles timidly as Ginny quirks her eyebrows. 

“Lucky?” she asks. “Why?”

Pansy points her wand out and flicks it so the makeup kit files towards them. “Well, he’s liked Hermione since after the war. But the whole of our last year he never attempted to ask her out.” She sighs. “For obvious reasons. Then -”

“Then he had a dream about me.” Hermione finishes the sentence. She remembers the night very well, when he confessed to this. She remembers vowing to never stop loving him, as he described, with a terrible terrible awkwardness of his teenage crush on her. “With me in it. In a wedding dress, assuring him that this was going to go well.”

The raging dread subsides for a moment. She smiles at the memory and his lovely, perfect face and just when she thinks she might just be able to ignore the coldness of her feet and go through with this wedding, Pansy speaks again.

“So, imagine if Potter comes in my dream in his wedding robes, soaking wet -”

Hermione’s heart leapt to her throat. “What?” 

“What?”

“What did you say?”

Pansy narrows her eyes. “That you came in your wedding dress -”

“Soaking wet?”

“Well - yes.” Pansy stares at her, confused. “Why?”

“He didn’t tell me I was wet.”

“So? It’s just details, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have remembered it except I was thinking about it when it was raining. And seeing you like this - what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Hermione stands up. It feels as if a missing piece is sliding back in her mind. She takes a step back, staring at the half-amused, half-alarmed expression of the two girls. 

“Was there something else?” she asks Pansy. “Some other details?”

“Why are you -”

“Just answer me. Was there?”

“Maybe - some pretty earrings he noticed? I mean, all brides wear pretty earrings but I think he said they were familiar.” Her eyes follow Hermione’s hands in confusion as they hover over her ear. 

“These,” she whispers. “Pearls. Family heirlooms. Narcissa gifted me.”

“Ooh. I know!” Luna claps. Hermione turns to her, her eyes sparking at the newfound revelation.

“ What do you know?” Ginny asks cautiously, standing up as well. She and Pansy exchange a glance and Hermione can’t say the look they give her is at any measure different from how they normally look at Luna Lovegood.

“Hermione?”

“She went back in time to help Draco to make a move on her!” Luna cheers excitedly.

Hermione is now sure of the missing piece, the centrepiece. She smiles, for real, the sure exultant smile. The satisfaction you get after solving a terribly irrational equation. Suddenly there aren’t any imperfections in her wedding day. For all she knows, it has just started.

“I have to go back in time to convince Draco to make a move on me,” she announces.

And the room explodes.