Flowers with Bridalls Well Agree [June 2006]
Title: Flowers with Bridalls Well Agree [June 2006] Author: bronze_ribbons. To assign blame where it belongs, though, it was catrinella who wanted to get them together (or at least to kill off Fleur...) Pairing: Luna/Bill (see the timeline for background on Granger/Sinistra, Snape/Lupin, and the others) Rating: U Words: 1000-ish A/N: The title’s from a Thomas Campion song. Originally posted 16 November 2005.
When the usher seated Bill Weasley next to Luna Lovegood, the first thing he noticed about her were her earrings, pinwheels of what he immediately recognized as samaphant teeth. He didn’t think anyone outside of wizarding Saskatchewan knew about samaphants, let alone possessed jewelry from any of their body parts.
“Swank earrings,” he said.
“Thank you,” replied Luna. “I thought them appropriate, since Ron’s marrying a dentist.”
Bill grinned. His father was half-beside himself with excitement at gaining a Muggle daughter-in-law, especially one who so good-humoredly indulged his passion for non-magical artifacts by bringing goodie bags from her practice to dinners at the Burrow; he had been over the moon when she’d given him one of the more sophisticated battery-powered teeth-cleaning systems for Christmas, knowing full well he’d be using it for study rather than oral hygiene. Mum was completely beside herself with joy that Ron was getting married; Bill himself hadn’t tied the knot until he was twenty-seven, so he hadn’t thought Ron to be that slow off the mark – twenty-eight was just not that old – but Mum had become increasingly pointed about her desire for more grandchildren sooner rather than later, and wasn’t it time for Bill to start circulating again?
“Mum, have you forgotten that I’m part werewolf now? Fleur was beautiful enough for the both of us, but there isn’t going to be anyone else like her...”
“Thank Merlin,” Ginny had muttered under her breath. That still hurt, that his wife had never gotten along with his sister. Or with Hermione, who was sitting on the bride’s side, holding hands with her Professor Sinistra and looking smug. Well, she had introduced the bride to the groom – Jill had joined her mother’s practice three years ago, and apparently Muggle mothers were as mad for matchmaking as his own.
Speaking of matches – Bill took a closer look at Luna. He hadn’t quite recognized her with her hair neatly coiffed, but – “You’re the girl my brother takes along to Quidditch matches!”
Luna smiled at him. “Weren’t the clouds lovely at Holyhead last week?”
Oh, yes, her. She was dotty, that one. But cute, too, Bill thought. She wasn’t pretty in the way his sister was pretty, and she wasn’t stunning – no one could be stunning, not after Fleur. Her eyes were large and weirdly focused. Her hair was usually messy. But those were the coolest earrings he’d seen at a wedding, ever, and was that an origami spindlemar she was folding out of the program? And her hands were beautiful, and her dress was clingy enough to show the curve of her breasts--
Whoa, Billy, whoa. Bill was shocked at the turn his thoughts had taken. Not so much at the noticing of breasts – he was still alive, wasn’t he, and a guy, ergo...but there was alive, and then there was alive, and this was not what he had expected this morning. It unsettled him, especially given the serene expression on her face.
“There,” she said, with satisfaction. “Done.”
“Very nice,” Bill said. He fervently hoped he sounded as casual as before. “What will you do with it now?”
In reply, she sent it sliding lightly along the back of the pew in front of them. It stopped at Professor Snape’s shoulder -- Professor Snape? What was he doing here? – and gave it a couple of friendly pecks.
Professor Snape didn’t turn around, but the spindlemar instantly exploded – not loudly enough to attract the attention of the entire church, but enough to create a poof of cream-coloured talc that caused Clementina, Charlie’s five-year-old, to shriek in delight. Seated next to Professor Snape, Professor Lupin did look over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows at Luna.
She grinned back unrepentantly. Amused, he turned back around and murmured a comment into Snape’s ear. Snape remained with his back to them, but suddenly the prayerbook in front of her began to leak crimson-colored smoke.
“Blimey!” Bill hissed. “If anything messes with this wedding, Mum will—“
“Hush,” Luna said, and tapped the book with her wand. The smoke immediately dissolved into a fall of rose petals. “Severus knows the rules, and so do I.” (Severus!?) Luna bestowed upon him a dazzling smile. “It’s knowing how to handle them--that’s the tricky part, is it not?”
I’m in love, Bill thought, dazedly. I am so already in love and she’s insane.
He barely registered his sister and Harry and the bride’s brother and best friend proceeding down the aisle. It took Luna tugging on his sleeve for him to rise as the organ escalated into the majestic phrases of Hyfrydol and the bride began to glide toward the front of the sanctuary. He was conscious of the ripple of quickly-suppressed comments before he himself noticed that something was terribly awry with her train – he’d known about the Muggle tradition of attaching tennis shoes and tin cans to traveling objects, but—
Luna had her wand back out. Now the train was scattering white and silver rose petals, and the rumble resolved itself as a collective exhalation of delight and relief. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Anne Delacour Wimsey herding her twins out through a side door, her expression livid.
“You are awfully fond of that spell,” Bill whispered to Luna.
“It has its uses,” she said, and smiled at Professor Snape, who was looking at her this time around. His face was still set in its customary scowl, but the look of approval in his eyes was unmistakable.
She murmured to Bill, “I learned it from Severus, you see.”
Bill frowned. “No, I don’t, quite. Since when are rose petals an element of the Dark Arts?”
Luna’s smile widened. “He and I happen to share a fondness for Dark creatures,” she said, nodding toward Professor Lupin.
Bill gaped at them, and then her, and choked. Oh, Merlin... Upon the minister’s instruction to them to be seated, Luna pulled him down and patted his back; as her hand lightly tapped between his shoulderblades, he felt a drift of silky red and white petals slide over his shoulder and into his lap.