Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, page 27
"Then teach Herbology." Hannah's tone had taken on the familiar stubborn edge that he had come to know meant no hope of retreat. "Professor Sprout will be retiring eventually, you know. And you do love that. I've seen you make things grow I would have thrown on the compost heap for dead."
"Maybe." Neville conceded, though it was more to try and close the subject than any real consideration. "What about you? What do you want to do if we get through this somehow?"
"Babies." She responded instantly. "I want to have great, wiggling, gurgling, happy piles of babies. There's been so much death, I know a lot of the girls feel the same way." Hannah patted her flat stomach over the skirt, "We can't stop the death, but we can make life, and I think there's going to be a lot of families with more kids than the Weasleys when this is over."
Neville laughed. "My Gran says my Mom wanted a big family before -" he stopped himself abruptly. "So what else are you going to do besides have a bunch of kids?"
"My Gramps owns the Leaky Cauldron. He was gonna leave it to my Mom, but...well, you're not the only one who can dodge a subject. Anyway, it'll be coming to me soon enough, and I've always liked helping him out there. I wouldn't want to sell it, anyway. It's been in the family too long. So I think I'll go work in the pub proper, then run it myself when he dies."
They had reached the café, and they settled into the queue behind other shoppers waiting to be seated by a harried-looking young woman with a pair of rather wilted pasteboard antlers perched on her head. Hannah was quiet for a long moment, then she drew in closer to him, leaning her head against his shoulder. "Do you think it'll matter?"
"That what will matter?"
"All this talk about teaching and pubs and babies. Ernie and Susan getting married. The D.A.. I mean, will it really matter what we want to do with our lives if we're all just going to die at the end of the year anyway?" Her voice was quiet, tentative, and he thought carefully before he answered.
"I think it matters a lot. Because if we have things and people we love, plans for the future, we'll fight harder for the slim chance that we might survive. If that chance comes true, we'll have something to help us move on - because we're going to lose a lot of friends, no matter what, and we'll need that." He paused, then went on, the words coming easier now. "But if it doesn't, then we'll have fought a little harder to live, and we'll have gotten that much further before we died, and our lives will be worth that much more, whether it's tending bars or gardens or kids or just taking out one more Death Eater than we might have otherwise, and not letting that Death Eater go on to take someone else's future."
They were almost at the front of the queue now, and Hannah squeezed his arm tightly, a look on her face of such intensity that he shivered. "Then let's have Muggle food for lunch, and go on an adventure on the train, and help our friends elope in Gretna Green, and name babies and plan lessons and find Luna and help Harry and do all of it today, and twice that tomorrow, and the day after that, because if I'm going to die, I want them to pay dearly for it."
"If they kill you," Neville set down the bags, reaching to cup her chin in his hand, "I'll make sure they pay more dearly than they can imagine."
A thin, dark smile touched her lips, and she drew back, tossing her hair as her green eyes flashed. "Then I won't be sorry if they do."
OOO
The train ride itself was surprisingly similar to the Hogwarts Express the way it had been before Snape and the Carrows had modified it, and there was, in fact, a trolley. Despite having already eaten lunch at the café in Marks and Spencer, the four still bought their dinners and quite an impressive pile of snacks from the little cart. The meals themselves were exciting in their blandness, as apparently, Muggles preferred to avoid flavor of any kind while traveling, and had managed to somehow extricate it from food that seemed otherwise perfectly normal. The snacks, with their brightly colored, motionless packets, were surreptitiously reduced and hidden to show their wizarding friends when they returned to school.
Finding a place to stay was not as daunting as they had imagined, as the entire town of Gretna Green appeared to have been built entirely for the purpose - so far as they could tell - of exactly what they were doing. Ernie was stunned. When he had asked his Half-Blood classmate Morag MacDougal where a person got married in the Muggle world, he hadn't realized that they all did it in one place! Everything and everywhere was covered in images of weddings and romance, frozen pictures of couples kissing, laughing, walking, holding hands, exchanging vows.
Every shop and business they passed tried to find a way to appeal its wares to the engaged and the newlywed, which soon became so ridiculous that Neville and Ernie began to make jokes about it, taking turns inventing imaginary establishments if such a place existed in the wizarding world, such as the Swept Away Broomstick Emporium and I've Fallen for Floo Chimneysweep Service. The two witches however, seemed to find the whole thing utterly charming, and Neville couldn't help but notice somewhat nervously how much of their eager whispering and pointing seemed directed not at Ernie and Susan, but at Hannah and himself.
They had to admit that it was quite a relief how helpful everyone was, and how no one seemed surprised at how clueless they were about the Muggle world. It was apparently common enough for young couples to be traveling alone for the first time to Gretna Green, and the more egregious errors were indulgently written off to nerves. Finding a hotel to stay the night was easier than they had feared, and they soon acquired two rooms, helping Hannah and Susan settle themselves in one while the boys took the other.
As soon as they were in their own room, Neville stripped off his new Muggle garments, exchanging them gratefully for his familiar old pajamas. Despite the novelty and relative comfort of the new things, it was still a relief to return to something that was exactly the same. Ernie had done likewise, as well as discovering that the small, humming box near the dresser was freezing cold on the inside, and contained a great number of small bottles, which he had arrayed on top of the box and was now staring at very intently as he sat on the end of the dresser.
"I really hope you aren't considering drinking unfamiliar potions," Neville cautioned him. "We don't know what's toxic...those might be Muggle cleaning things."
Ernie turned, and Neville was surprised to see that his normally rosy cheeks had fallen to the color of parchment. "No, mate, it's alcohol. Look!" He held up one little bottle, pointing to the label, which showed a man in an elaborate red costume and declared the contents to be gin.
Neville's eyes widened. "Why do you suppose they've got all that in here?"
"Because," Ernie opened the bottle, tipping the contents back in a single swallow and grimacing only momentarily as it burned smartly down his throat. "They know the people in here are getting married tomorrow."
"And want to be hung over for the wedding?" He raised one eyebrow skeptically.
"And are scared to bleeding death," Ernie corrected him, assessing the other bottles before selecting one marked Bacardi and subjecting it to the same treatment as the gin.
Neville sat down on the edge of the dresser next to his friend, frowning in concern. "You having second thoughts?"
"Second, third, fourth, fifth...quite the mathematical array, actually," he nodded, and the Absolut bottle clanked hollow into the rubbish bin.
"What's worrying you?" Neville asked gently. "I mean, there's still time to change your mind if you actually don't want to...hey, be careful, Ernie. You don't know how strong that stuff is. Don't make yourself sick."
"Not trying to make myself sick. Trying to get myself drunk. Vast world of difference, I assure you, even though there are occasionally similarities in the precise outcome." He let out a cry of indignation as Neville confiscated the next bottle from his hand before he could drink it.
"Let's wait and see what five of those have done before you have any more, okay? Now, what's got you so worked up? You've seemed really sure this whole time."
The color had returned to Ernie's cheeks now, though it was the flush of the drinks rather than any healthy ruddiness. He nodded his head towards the wall dividing their room from the witches. "You know what they're in there talking about, don't you?"
"No," Neville admitted.
"Me. What it's going to be like for her being married to me." He stood up, blinking in a bit of surprise as he wavered for a moment, then picked up another of the little bottles over Neville's protesting look. "I'm not having any questions about if I want to spend the rest of my life - however long that is - with her, not in the slightest, no. I love her with all my heart, and doing that lightly doesn't tend to go with yellow trim on black pajamas, if you follow me. You should know that about Hannah."
"I'll remember."
"However," he continued, gesturing with the now-empty Don Julio, "this does not mean that everything is just brilliant." A panicked look came over his friend's face, and his voice dropped to an urgent whisper. "What if we live?"
Neville blinked. "You mean, you haven't considered being married to her for more than six months? Ernie!"
"No, I've thought about that a lot, I've hoped for that, even though I know there's not much chance. I want kids; little witches as lovely as her to spoil madly. But if we live, it'll mean she meets my family, and...." He trailed off, sitting down again. For a long moment, Neville let the silence linger, then when Ernie spoke again, his words had become a little blurred at the edges, but he had also dropped every trace of the educated refinement from his pronunciation, and his burr was as thick as his father's. "She'll ken me fer a fraud, Neville."
"That's ridiculous." He reached out, putting one hand on his friend's wide shoulder. "I don't mean to be harsh if you didn't know it, but if you've been trying to hide that you're Scottish...."
The hazel eyes blazed up at him sharply. "Nae fer a moment! I've nary a shame o'it! But ye dunna know, ye see...ma family has a fair bit a gold, and een if she's nae a Galleondigger, she'll expect t'same as anyone that we're proper Lairds, same as t' Malfoys. An' it isna so. I'm t'only one knows or cares different tween one fork and t' next. She's ma fair maid, an' I'd have her a castle, but truth's we dunna een have a house-elf!"
"I wish you'd let me go next door - not you, you're well on your way to getting your wish about the drunk, and it's bad luck anyway - and let me tell her that. It'd really make her feel better." Neville smiled. "She's been panicking that as much as she loves you, she'd never fit into some high society world where witches sit around and tear each other to pieces because someone's wearing last month's robes and you have to Entertain, not have friends over. Hell, Ernie, I'd not be surprised if Hannah's over there trying to keep her out of the little bottles."
"Truly?"
"Truly. She loves you despite what kind of society she thinks you're from. Hannah's talked about it. She's been mad about you since second year - I think she's the only girl in your house who didn't go through a phase of being in love with Cedric - and the reason she's never said anything before recently is that she's thought you were too good for her." Ernie gave a shocked kind of hiccup, and Neville nodded.
"Susan wants to be your wife because she thinks you're brave - which I know is true - honest - which is true for anyone but Snape - strong - which is an understatement - and smart...and that one I'm willing to agree with most of the time, except when you've cleaned out seven bottles of Muggle alcohol in fifteen minutes and are sitting there losing the ability to focus your eyes." He pulled open the box and scooped the remaining bottles back inside. "I'm willing to write that off to premarital brain damage if you're willing to accept that there's a witch in the next room who loves you exactly the way you are, and if you love her just as much, then you're not making any kind of mistake tomorrow, and I think you'll be really happy for the next six months or the next sixty years."
Ernie sat up very straight, swaying only a little as he fixed the other young man with a determined look, enunciating with extreme care and almost managing to sound like his usual self, with the exception of what had become a distinct slur. "Then it will be my ushmost pleasure to b'come joined with her t'morrow in the state of wedlock, I b'leive."
"And it will be my utmost pleasure," Neville smiled, grabbing one arm and hoisting Ernie to his feet, "to aim you for the bed, get out my potions kit from my trunk, and try to put together something that will keep you from feeling how stupid you were in the morning, because I am your Best Man and your friend, and I hope that when I am about to get married someday, someone would do the same for me."
OOO
Neville thought that it was, all things considered, a great success that they managed to navigate the entirety of the Muggle bureaucracy in only six hours, three Confundus Charms, and one Memory Charm, albeit on no less than twenty people who had seen Orion come soaring into the courthouse with the Muggle Birth Certificate Susan had left in the hotel. By three o'clock, everything was in order, and the four of them had signed the last of the endless documents and were standing in front of a kindly-faced gentleman in a dark suit who had the unmistakable air of someone who thought they had the best job in the world.
Ernie and Neville were wearing their new Muggle tuxedos, and he was even willing to admit that they looked perhaps almost as dashing as the girls seemed to think they did, but it was Susan who was turning heads. Twice the Best Man had needed to prevent the groom from walking into pillars or falling down stairs, but it was understandable.
Susan had chosen a white satin dress, long-sleeved but bare-shouldered, with a skirt that swept the floor and swirled like a dancer with every step. Her hair was loose rather than in its usual long plait, and it cascaded raven-black in rich curls halfway down her thighs, pinned back with combs at the sides that were covered in delicate silver roses, which Neville recognized as real blossoms which had been cunningly transfigured. More of the gleaming flowers were scattered through her hair, and a sash of Macmillan tartan was tied at her narrow waist, trailing nearly to the floor behind her. Her pretty face was radiant, and her wide, dark eyes seemed to sparkle as much as the necklace at her throat as she smiled.
The man cleared his throat, reaching across his desk to take both Susan and Ernie's hands in his, his eyes twinkling, but his voice deep and solemn. "For hundreds of years, the town of Gretna Green has born witness to love of every kind, in her churches, her forges, on her bridges and hills, and here in the halls of her courthouse. She is a safe haven for those whom would be held apart by family, class, fortune, or fate, and has come to symbolize the strength of marriage and the bonds of true love for untold many.
"We are here today to bring another couple into that fellowship of faith to one another, and to begin a single new life in partnership where once there were two alone. The legal requirements have been filled, but it remains for the two of you to make your own promises to one another for your life ahead, and to finalize the vows."
He released their hands, and they turned to one another, Ernie taking Susan's left hand gently in his as Neville handed him a prettily tooled gold band and he slipped it onto her finger. "Susan," he said quietly, "we cannot know what lies ahead for us, but we can know our own hearts, and mine belongs to you. With this ring, I swear to you on my most solemn oath, and by all that is magic, that I will be true to you and faithful, in heart and body, that I will love you, care for you, provide for you, protect you, cherish you and keep you, as long as there is breath in my body."
Tears had begun to trickle down Susan's cheeks, but her voice was steady as she took a second, thicker band from Hannah and placed it on Ernie's rough hand. "Ernest, no matter what tomorrow has for us in darkness or light, life or death, hope or despair, I know that I have loved you for as long as I can remember, and will love you until I know no more. With this ring, I swear to you on my most solemn oath, and by all that is magic, that I will be true to you and faithful, in heart and in body, that I will love you, care for you, abide by you, tend you, cherish you, and keep you, as long as there is breath in my body."
The two pairs of eyes flickered to the Muggle official, and he nodded. "Just what I told you, and it will be done."
Clutching her hand in both of his now, Ernie turned back to his bride. "I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I, Ernest Ian Macmillan, may not be joined in matrimony to Susan Circe Amelia Bones, and I do call upon these persons here present to witness that I do take thee to be my lawful wedded wife. May it thus be known, and thus be done."
"I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I, Susan Circe Amelia Bones, may not be joined matrimony to Ernest Ian Macmillan, and I do call upon these persons here present to witness that I do take thee to be my lawful wedded husband. May it thus be known, and thus be done."
The official nodded again. "Then in the sight of all those here present, and under the law of the land and mercy of the Crown, I do declare you to be bound in the legal and civil state of matrimony." There was a long, breathless pause, and then the official laughed warmly, waving his hand at them. "Well go on, man, kiss her. She's your wife!"
Susan flung her arms around her new husband's neck with a breathless sob, and Ernie's embrace lifted her completely off her feet, turning slowly as they shared a deep, passionate kiss that seemed to go on forever, as though they knew the world was waiting for them when it ended.
Hannah caught his eye as the new couple held one another, and he hesitated only a moment before reaching out quietly and lacing his fingers through hers. He squeezed them lightly, and was grateful when she seemed to understand the message in his eyes. Someday, maybe. So much has changed...let's just take now for what it is.
They had decided to go for a late lunch to celebrate after the wedding, as Susan had declared that she might throw up from nerves if she ate before, and they were discussing the various restaurants that had caught their eye as they emerged from the courthouse. Well, at least, Neville and Hannah were doing most of the discussion. Ernie genuinely didn't seem to care, and had not stopped grinning since the ring slid onto his new bride's finger, and Susan was still crying happily into her lace-edged handkerchief, but she had managed to lay down the decree that nothing Italian went with a white dress.
