He slumps in the seat opposite Albus, picking up a cold piece of toast. We can take photos there! The guests can wait in the foyer while the room is redecorated from the wedding space to the reception space.” He places a hand on Teddy’s cheek, thumb brushing over his cheekbone. He rakes his hand through his hair, the red disappearing and morphing back to the familiar shade of turquoise he has become famous for over the span of his life. Albus thinks his glass of orange juice is going to pop from the sheer tension in the room alone. Conjuring little fires to dry everyone off.” Charming umbrellas and marquees and plastic tarps. But here, stood underneath a grand chandelier with the top few buttons of his shirt undone and his hair unintentionally turning red at the tips, his voice is sharp at the edges. Albus almost doesn’t recognise it Teddy is normally alight with humour, his voice always raising an octave or two at the end of his sentences as a joke slips from between his lips and drags giggles from his audience. “Like what?” Teddy’s voice is laced with aggravation. Places where, if it rains, we can do something about it.” Harry cleans his glasses with the arm of his shirt, squinting through his blurred vision to spot if all the smudges have vanished. He sinks lower into his chair, foot tapping a mismatched beat on the floor, his eyes once more glaring at the orange juice before him. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes assume I’ve been killed by an equally-panicked bridal party.”Īlbus’ soul shivers with envy as James traipses out the dining room and turns towards the elevator. The legs taper towards the bottom, shortened to expose his ankle bone. He’s half-dressed, for some odd reason, pearly-white shirt tucked into his pinstripe trousers. “I’ll go,” James offers, chair screeching on the fine marble floor as he stands up. “Can someone go check on Vic? She’ll be losing her mind over this.”
Collectively, as if they are a wave reaching its peak before crashing onto a sandy shore below, the entire room (except Albus) release an aggressive sigh. “A summer storm is supposed to pick up, instead,” Teddy reads off the end of the sentence. “Look here… by eleven the rain is supposed to stop and…” He licks the tip of his finger and turns the page. “It’ll be fine!” Grandpa Arthur declares, frail index finger jabbing at the weather column in a Muggle newspaper he picked up from the entrance. (And, anyway, Albus hates weddings at the best of times.)
Which, given the circumstances of there being a wedding later today, is rather inconvenient. He misses Scorpius, who isn’t arriving until noon.įour. Every single man from the Weasley-Potter-Granger-Lupin (and every other surname his cruelly complicated family boasts) are pacing around said breakfast tables and talking loudly and being general nuisances. It is before six in the morning and he has been woken up to come and eat breakfast in preparation for ‘the long day ahead’. Instead of exposing Magic to Muggles (and risking a stern telling off from his Aunt) purely because he is having a downright rotten early, early morning, Albus makes a list of his grievances in his mind. There is incessant noise around him – the clinking of cutlery against ostentatiously fancy china, the drumming of booming voices, the chirping of an over-enthusiastic bird that calls through the open French doors – and it takes all the willpower he has to not whip out his wand and conjure silence himself. Truly his eyes are shaded with agitation and he is certain that weaving between the lines of green and brown and amber that swim around his irises are threads of anguish. You make my whole world feel so right when it’s wrong,Īlbus stares at his glass of orange juice with such ferocity he is surprised it doesn’t shatter right in front of him.