The Burrow on a sunny Saturday morning was barely contained chaos.
People everywhere — spilling out the front door, crowding the garden, moving between trestle tables with trays and flowers and inexplicable urgency. The apple trees had been strung with fairy lights that twinkled even in full daylight. The gnomes, for once, had been persuaded to relocate.
Kevin and Hermione picked their way up the path and were immediately engulfed.
"You're here!" Mrs. Weasley barrelled into them with the force of a very affectionate freight train. She had done her hair up properly for the occasion, and she looked genuinely radiant with happiness — the particular happiness of a mother watching her son build something good. She held them both at arm's length for a moment, beaming, and then bustled off to collect the next arrival.
Ron and Harry emerged from the side of the house a moment later. Both were wearing matching black dress robes, standing with the slightly self-conscious good posture of people who knew they looked sharp.
"Don't tell me you're trying to upstage the groom," Kevin said.
"We're groomsmen," Ron said, with tremendous dignity. "It's required."
They did, in fairness, look excellent.
A few minutes later, the couple appeared.
Bill cut a fine figure in deep burgundy. Fleur, on his arm, was in white silk embroidered with phoenix feathers that shifted and glimmered when she moved. She looked, objectively, like something from a painting.
"Bill, Fleur — congratulations. Genuinely."
Bill grabbed Kevin in a brief, firm embrace. "Glad you made it." And he clearly meant it.
The ceremony was held under the great white tent that had been assembled in the meadow beyond the Burrow's garden. It seated most of wizarding Britain, or so it appeared. Dumbledore arrived with Professor McGonagall just before noon and was immediately mobbed by the extended Weasley clan.
Kevin and the others slipped the crowd with practised ease and found their table.
Dumbledore, characteristically, ended up at their table rather than at the formal family head table. Kevin suspected the headmaster found their company more interesting and had simply arranged it that way.
"Interesting robes, Professor," Kevin said, nodding at Dumbledore's pale purple ensemble with its constellation of small yellow stars.
"Doesn't it suit me?" Dumbledore helped himself to a lemon drop from his hat's improbable interior. "Gellert said it did."
A beat.
"You asked Grindelwald for fashion advice?" Harry said, at the same moment Kevin said, "That explains rather a lot, actually."
"How's Draco?" Harry continued, leaning forward. "You said you'd seen him at Malfoy Manor?"
"Ah. Still in his special training, I'm afraid." Dumbledore folded his hands. "Gellert says he's progressing remarkably. Might give all of you a run for your money come next term."
Harry's reaction was politely sceptical. Draco overtaking him in standard academics, fine. In a duel? He'd believe it when he saw it.
Kevin was less sceptical. Grindelwald was bored, which made him dangerous, and Draco had apparently been within range when the boredom struck. The boy had, involuntarily, landed himself the best private magical tutor in Europe.
Whether Draco saw it that way was another question entirely.
McGonagall, who had been seated at the same table the entire time and was perfectly aware of Dumbledore's ongoing friendship with Gellert Grindelwald, had adopted the expression of someone who had made peace with a great many things.
The ceremony was everything it should have been. Fleur's father walked her down the aisle with the measured solemnity of a man doing his absolute best not to cry. Bill was waiting at the altar with his hands clasped and his eyes bright, watching her come toward him with an expression that made Kevin, for a fleeting moment, think about things he hadn't entirely let himself think about yet.
Vows. Rings. The kiss that had half the tent on their feet.
And then the fireworks — enormous, magical, spectacular, filling the sky above the Burrow with cascading colour while the applause rolled on.
Then came the bouquet.
Hermione had Kevin's hand and was pulling him toward the crowd before he could register what was happening. Around them, single witches and wizards jostled for position. Harry, Ginny, half a dozen others — everyone reaching, everyone hoping.
Fleur had her back to them. She wound up. The bouquet arced high — beautiful phoenix embroidery catching the light —
It landed squarely in Kevin's arms.
He hadn't even fully extended his hands. It had simply arrived there, with an air of profound inevitability.
The tent erupted.
"Kevin caught it!"
Laughter, cheers, and the kind of gleeful hollering that comes from a crowd who knows exactly what it means and exactly who it's going to embarrass most.
Hermione went crimson. She stood beside him with her hands pressed over her face, shoulders shaking — from laughter or mortification, or both. Probably both.
Bill and Fleur drifted over, still glowing.
"Save us a seat at yours," Bill said, grinning.
"Oh, we'll be there," Fleur added, with the warmth of someone who already considered the outcome decided.
The teasing escalated beautifully. Kevin's composure, which was ordinarily quite robust, developed small cracks at the edges. He grabbed Hermione's hand and they escaped.
They found a quiet patch of grass at the edge of the meadow, under a sky that was going slowly golden as the afternoon stretched. Hermione collapsed against his side, still laughing, breathless from it. The wedding music drifted out from the tent behind them — something warm and unhurried — and she began to sway, softly, without meaning to.
"Kevin."
"Yeah."
"Nothing."
They both laughed again, for no particular reason, and stayed where they were.