[potter wedding] it's not so hard to be married [ginny]

It's much the simplest of crimes
The Burrow, Ottery St Catchpole
July 19th, 2003, late

The Leightons had missed the last Weasley wedding on account of the war, but Cordy had heard it had gone to shit (again, the war) and so wasn't too miffed about missing it. They had all had their own things going on.

But that was five years ago. And for once, five years ago couldn't be further from Cordy's mind.

The ceremony had been beautiful, of course - she took a couple of notes, surreptitiously, on the scenery and a couple of notables in attendance, which was quite a rude thing for a wedding of a friend but that didn't actually stop her. It was the wedding of the year! It was her beat! And everyone was focused on the bride and groom, nobody noticed her taking a little shorthand. Just a couple of notes, that's all, in her tiny tiny notepad in her dress wand pocket.

(All of her dresses had wand pockets - tiny openings, barely perceptible unless you knew they were there or could spot the weight of one side dragging slightly lower. Just to make her feel safer.)

A little while into the reception, the idea of trying to report on anything happening was unthinkable. She would remember whatever she could remember on Monday, and that would be that. She had been dancing for maybe twenty minutes straight, had done two shots with old DA comrades, and was now taking a small break to drink water, rest her feet, and watch Lysander yell animatedly at some poor Weasley cousin about the latest Gobstones results. Over her shoulder, it looked like Mum and Dad were having a good catch-up with Arthur and Molly. Cordelia smiled softly to look at the two couples. It was almost normal to see them like this. Almost.

Her heels were in the way. Cordy kicked them under the table - she would find them later. It was almost like a class reunion here - everyone from Ottery St. Catchpole, of course, then all the Weasleys and then all the DA, then some others - friends of Harry's, Cordy figured. Was that the Knight Bus Driver?

A blur of long red hair whipped her way. Cordy stopped analyzing the guest list and went to envelope Ginny Weasley (Ginny Potter!!) in a huge, sweaty embrace. "Congratulations and all that, Ginny!" She pulled away, glanced at Ginny's feet, and laughed. Matching shoes, or lack thereof.

"You've been dancing with everyone, come take a break!" Cordy wanted another drink. "Shots?" She wasn't about to take no for an answer, and pulled Ginny with her to the open bar.

@Ginny Weasley

What had begun as the slowest-moving day that Ginny could recall had – in the blink of an eye – done a one-eighty the instant she reached Harry at the altar. The hours of preparation that, in the moment, she felt had dragged on for eternity suddenly evaporated, and everything then converged on this single point in time. She’d felt as though she were floating without any semblance of time, hearing the spoken words but not quite fully processing them (except when Harry read his vows; that part she clearly remembered). And then, all at once, Harry’s lips were on hers and her ears were flooded with cheers, applause, and the roar of her own adrenaline surging.

Ginny had ditched her heels not fifteen minutes after the ceremony had concluded (they’d gotten all the formal pictures they’d wanted by then, anyways, so Mum would have no grounds whatsoever for complaint), and had spent the past however-long-since-then twirling about the dance floor barefoot and – of course – mingling. She’d heard it said that your wedding reception was less about you doing what you wanted and more about playing the hostess; Ginny had called bullshit on that initially, but was ultimately surprised to find that it did hold not-insignificant weight. Fortunately, it was hardly much additional effort to ‘play hostess’ with the crowd they’d invited; and even if it were, it would have been worth it.

A beautiful midsummer’s night, all of her favorite people in one place, no bloody war to ruin the day… And the now-bygone months of distance and weeks of arguments – they’d all been worth it. Finally, it felt as though all was beginning to go right with the world.

Absently, she reached up to touch her hair; Auntie Muriel’s tiara was miraculously somehow still pinned into her increasingly-unruly mane (the July humidity was certainly doing a number on the once-cooperative fetchingly loose curls she’d had when the ceremony began…), even after her enthusiastic dancing. In that moment, Ginny briefly had the presence of mind to return the heirloom before something unfortunate happened to it as the night went on. But as she scanned the guests for her great-aunt, her gaze landed on Cordy first and – at the sight of her long-time neighbor and friend – all else was momentarily forgotten.

Positively beaming, Ginny made a beeline for the other witch, her bare (and definitely filthy by now) feet pattering lightly across the temporarily flooring they’d put down (so as to avoid the backyard becoming a muddy trampled mess) and nearly launched herself into the other’s embrace; and Cordy hugged her back just as fiercely.

“Thanks,” she replied, slightly breathless from a combination of physical fatigue from dancing and riding high on her emotions. She followed Cordy’s gaze downward and laughed as well. It was a shame that heels looked as nice as they did, because they were a bloody pain (literally) to wear for longer than about five minutes.

“You’ve been dancing with everyone, come take a break! Shots?”

Ginny could hardly argue or disagree with either of those – nor did she particularly want to.
“If you insist,” she grinned wickedly, linking her arm in Cordy’s and steering her towards the makeshift bar. “What are we drinking? And thanks for being here,” she added, briefly closing the angle of her elbow to give her friend’s arm an affectionate squeeze. It was a phrase she’d expressed in a few different ways (and varying degrees of sincerity, depending) all night – but she certainly meant it in earnest now.

"Well, I do insist," Cordelia said with a laugh, happily linking arms with Ginny and stepping out towards the bar. They hadn't gotten more than two feet away from the table when Cordelia stepped into something sticky- she made a face, looking back at her friend with an expression as if to say can you believe it? before bursting out into more laughter. The mystery substance doesn't stop Cordelia's determined march across the floor. "Hm, don't know it," she replied airily, which was sort of true. She was still deciding between a number of fancifully named drinks in her head, each successive thought amusing her more than the last.

"Of course I'd be here, love," Cordelia exclaimed, giving Ginny a light whack on the arm in return. "What kind of garbage neighbor would I be, to skip another Weasley wedding?" There is a hint of guilt in that, buried underneath bubbles and a light drunken halo of memory. "Always liked you better than Bill, anyway."

The bartender shifted his attention to the two of them almost immediately, eyes focused on the bride. Reasonable man, Cordelia thought, about to make his life unreasonable. "Two red-headed sluts, one for me and one for Missus Potter," the brunette demanded, "and we'll be following that with a set of mermaid's nipples, and then, uh," Cordelia paused just for a second, checking if Ginny was still with her, "do you know how to do a Matrix?" Without waiting for an answer - "Just do something that's red and also blue. Cheers!"

While the bartender, face twisted with confusion at that one unknown request, gets to work, Cordelia cast a glance over her shoulder at her own plus one, standing off in a corner with a number of his friends from Ravenclaw. Cordelia didn't really recognize the other men at all, but she was all too familiar with the little irrational twinge of guilt in her stomach, the one that came up every so often since her conversation with Michael a couple weeks ago. She is absolutely overjoyed to be here, she is, but - Cordelia shook her head. No war thoughts today. Only joy.

Turning back around, her eyes make contact with Ginny's, and Cordelia's face goes a little red. "What, you think I'm here to pick up more of your leftovers?" She joked, trying to bury the little bit of defensiveness. She casts her eyes around again - a glance at Dean Thomas across the way, one at the happy groom - and snorts. "The one I've got is plenty, thanks." A beat, and Cordelia smiled, genuinely. "Sorry, clearly I am tooo sober." Perfect timing - the first shots slide towards them across the bar.

Shots in hand, Cordy raises hers up to clink. "To many, happy, peaceful years of marriage, babe," she proclaimed, and then with a mischievous look, "And to a sleepless honeymoon!" Clink, clink, and Cordy tossed it back.

Laughing along with her friend, with her free hand Ginny gathered her skirts so as to more easily negotiate the crowd without getting stepped on (and save her dress from a similar sticky fate as the sole of Cordy’s foot). Ginny’s dress had been bustled hours ago, but the remnants of her train were still a bit longer than the rest of her skirt (no doubt shaken looser thanks to her dancing) and she was now barefoot.

“What kind of garbage neighbor would I be, to skip another Weasley wedding?”

“Dunno…” she began with sarcastic nonchalance, “a batshit Dark Wizard wreaking havoc on Britain is a decent enough reason for the first, I s’pose.” She scrunched up her face dramatically to express her distaste, but snorted at Cordy’s next comment. “I'm definitely telling him that, he’ll be crushed.”
She let her friend drive the ship on the drinks, cracking a grin at the name of the first.

“…one for me and one for Missus Potter.”

Hearing Cordy address her as such aloud sent a pleasant tingling sensation rippling through Ginny’s chest; it sounded so strange, but so right at the same time. Sometimes it felt surreal that the ridiculous doodles she’d drawn all over her notebooks when she was ten years old (and even into her early teenage years, she was embarrassed to admit) had actually come to fruition.
She and Hermione had discussed whether to change one’s name or not at length on many different occasions – and almost every time, Ginny had a slightly different opinion on the matter. She’d always enjoyed going against the grain, and the idea of raising her middle finger at stuffy traditions and the greater patriarchy was an appealing concept. Her family was important to her, of course, and she’d established an independent name for herself as a Weasley… so there was that. At the same time, the Weasley name certainly wasn’t going extinct anytime soon – but the Potters could use a revival, and it would be especially meaningful to share that with Harry. Would she hurt her mum’s feelings if she replaced ‘Molly’ with ‘Weasley’ and picked up ‘Potter’? She wasn’t sure about a double-barreled surname; alternatively, did she want two middle names? Ginevra Molly Weasley(-)Potter might be a bit much…
What Ginny did know was that 1) she wouldn’t ask Harry to change his (though just imagining the uproar it would put the media in was almost worth doing), and 2) she’d bet her career that Hermione would either keep ‘Granger’ or double-barrel.

She’d spaced out, ruminating yet again on all of this – but Ginny had caught one unfamiliar word which brought her back to the present (though oblivious to the fact that Cordy had ordered them three rounds of drinks).

“…The hell’s a ‘Matrix’?”

When she didn’t get an immediate response, she turned her head to follow Cordelia’s gaze: where Michael was standing with a group of his friends. In almost every respect, inviting one’s ex-boyfriend to one’s wedding was an… uncommon… practice – but at the same time, there was no bond quite like that forged through shared trauma. They were all inexorably linked, after all: the Order and the D.A. most tangibly, but also anyone who’d stood up to the darkness in whatever way they could.

Then the girls’ eyes met again, and with the subsequent comment it seemed it was now Ginny’s turn to swat at her friend’s arm (which she did with alacrity). Perhaps not all that much time had passed since Ginny and Michael had been ‘an item’ (though sometimes it felt like a lifetime ago), in the grand scheme of things, but a lot had transpired. They certainly weren’t quite the same people they’d been when they’d met at the Yule Ball eight-and-a-half years ago. She opened her mouth to say as much but, for once, held her tongue when it seemed that Cordelia’s comment had been a lighthearted one-off and she was already on to the next thing.

Ginny smiled back with a roguish wink (and doing her best to suppress her bloody hyperactive blush reflex, despite not being embarrassed whatsoever by the implications of said “sleepless honeymoon”).
“To lifelong friends, and great excuses to have a drink with them,” she replied, clinking her shotglass with her friend’s and downing its contents – and wrinkling her nose only slightly at the assault on her tastebuds.
“Merlin, who introduced you to that one?” she asked, plucking the empty glass from her friend’s hand, stacking it in her own, and placing them on the makeshift bartop.

“Anyway…” she continued, sweeping a rogue curl out of her face with her now-free hand, “what’s the latest and greatest with top journalist Cordelia Leighton? Any juicy stories unfolding? Hot travel recommendations?”
The bride could swear she was already feeling the effects of the alcohol: a pleasant warm sensation in her throat, traveling up to her head to lighten the weight of the tiara and her curls and simultaneously settling down into her chest. She let go the handful of her skirt, letting the soft fabric settle heavily on the tops of her bare feet.

The hell’s a ‘Matrix’? Ginny asked. "Don't worry about it," Cordelia said automatically. The bartender seemed unfamiliar with the drink too - "No, it's grenadine and blue curaco and vodka and it's like, layered?" Some purple approximation slide across the counter with the other shots. Cordelia shrugged - it would taste good enough. Better after the others.

"Ouch!" Merlin, Ginny was strong, Cordelia always forgot that. Cordelia was fairly talented at Charms and spells, and she knew Ginny was too, but she always forgot that professional Quid players had to work out and stuff. She rubbed at her arm ruefully. "Alright, I deserved that." She did, but she wasn't going to apologize now that she had in fact, talked shit and gotten hit. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. But she was still grinning - it couldn't possibly that sore a point. Ginny had looked so effervescently happy up there with Harry. There was no way ginny resented her for now, years later, dating Michael - right? There was girl code, of course, but also the dating pool of men their age in Wizarding Britain was so small.

Also, she was in love, but that was a secondary concern at the moment. 

Ginny turned pink, and Cordelia laughed again, liquid splashing out the side of her shotglass as it met Ginny's. It burned on the way down, sweet and with memories of California. "Some muggles at this bar quiz, it's from a movie or something. What, you don't like it?" No matter. Cordelia pushed the other two shots towards Ginny with a mischievous grin.

Juicy stories? Cordelia snorted despite herself. "Unless you think denim on denim is juicy, nothing," she said at first. "Well, actually," she immediately amended, pulling closer to Ginny and speaking as low as she could manage, "I do have a lead on something. Hush hush though, it's not my beat." This close she could smell the sweat and perfume on Ginny, so she pulled back quickly. There was something fun about letting Ginny in, but not in on the secret project she was working on with Edith. "Might be a while yet before it's a story, though."

She leaned back, pleased, raising the mermaid's nipple up for another clink and then throwing that back. "California is gorgeous this time of year," she said. "But where are you two headed for the honeymoon, anyway?" Maybe she had some recommendations.

“A movie? Uh oh,” she laughed, “don’t let Dad hear about it, or it might become his new favorite thing. And take me with you the next time you go to one of those bar quizzes, yeah?”

She picked up the second shot as it was nudged towards her.
“Ooh, a lead? And a top-secret one… look at you, big-league sleuthing journalist.” Ginny pretended to pout briefly when Cordy didn’t offer to divulge more, but winked at her friend nonetheless. “Let me know when it is, then.”

“But where are you two headed for the honeymoon, anyway?”

“It’s a secret,” she teased, waggling her eyebrows playfully then cracking an impish grin in the next heartbeat.
“Nah, only joking – no idea, to be honest. We’ve talked about a couple of different options, but figured we’d just… y’know,” – she shrugged casually – “wing it. Old habits die hard, I guess. Hell, all of this” – she gestured around them with sweeping arms – “is probably the most involved planning that either of us have done to-date, let alone that actually went according to plan, and we had help.”

Even now, over five years later, Ginny felt like there were still pieces of everyday life that hadn’t really returned to ‘normal’ in her mind – the luxury of being able to plan ahead (and doing so with the confidence that the tenuous world as she knew it wouldn’t come crashing down around her ears at any given instant) was one of those pieces. Hermione always had a plan – multiple plans, in fact, as back-ups – and Ginny had always admired that about her. But at the same time, by nature both Ginny and Harry tended to fall more solidly into the ‘improvisation’ camp as it was. For something as recreational and unstructured as a honeymoon, that was all well and good – but for more impactful matters, they would do well to take a leaf out of their Muggleborn friend’s book.

She hadn't pegged Ginny for a muggle bar quiz kind of person, but in retrospect it made sense. She was the daughter of Arthur "making a flying car in the garage, don't mind me" Weasley, and hadn't Harry been raised functionally muggle? It was in one of those unauthorized biographies that kept reappearing in the Prophet lunch room. She grinned over her shotglass.

"Promise to never tell your dad about dee-vee-dee players if you don't tell mine anything about the Harpies lineups next season," Cordelia offered, adding a slight air of harmless conspiracy to the conversation. She glanced over to the two men in question -- Lowell Leighton was sitting, cane hooked over the back of his chair, animatedly talking to Arthur and a few men she didn't recognize. He looked joyful, almost as if five years ago had never happened. Something changed in Cordelia's face, her expression flitting through sadness and wistfulness and a teary sort of smile before settling back into a drunken sort of bliss as she turned back to Ginny.

Ginny pouted. Cordelia tapped a finger to the side of her nose. "I'd tell you if I could, love, or if I knew it was going to be something. If it is something, though, you'll be front of the line to see it." Oh, but keeping secrets was so not in Cordelia's nature; she knew Ginny would be interested in this Obliviation story -- hell, maybe she would know someone who could talk to her about it. She kept all sorts of company. Cordelia tilted her head -- "Actually, I'll write you about it next week? Could be you know someone what knows something." She lifted her shot glass up again, downed it -- "But that's sober talk. Not now."

Wing it? Cordelia laughed, choking a little on the last bit of boozy syrup and had a small coughing fit. "Sorry, sorry, that's just the most Ginevra Weasley thing I've heard all day." Cordy neglected to comment on Harry Potter, but from what she had picked up throughout the years, the Man Who Did The Living Or Whatever was not a planner either. "You've done well, though. Whenever I get married, can you set me up with your planner?" Another joke -- it was almost certainly the Brightest Witch of Her Age who had done it.

There was only a year between Cordelia and Ginny, only two between her and Ginny's famous husband and famous friends. Still, it felt like there was an ocean between Cordelia and those three. Didn't make sense, given there was only the one step of separation between them all. Sometimes, in more spiteful moments, Cordelia rather thought that they -- the ones what brought down the Dark Lord, not Ginny -- looked down on the rest of them, as if whatever they had gotten up to during the 1997 school year made them better. Cordelia wasn't spiteful now, of course -- she was drunk, and happy for her friend, and drunk.