[[Wedding]]

[survivesitall]

Christmas Eve had seemed the perfect time to get married. Elena loved Christmas, a holiday she'd only come to celebrate as an adult and part of the Pack. This would be her first away from them; away from all of the effort Jeremy would go to, making sure Stonehaven was absolutely perfect. Here it was just Clayton and her, her hand drifting to her already curving belly at that thought. It would be their last Christmas alone, that was definite. But without the Pack, without Jeremy, it had made sense to them both that they try and make it as much a celebration as they could.

They'd decided to have the wedding at the house, clearing out the living room to make room for their friends. A crackling fire gave the room warmth, and the tree they had felled together stood proudly in the corner, covered with little lights but nothing else in the way of decoration. On the mantle there was a snow globe with two wolves in it, their only other Christmas decoration and a recent acquisition.

Elena wore the same dress that she'd worn to Hermione's wedding. Beaded and off-white, it didn't fit as well as it had then. By their count she was ten weeks pregnant, but already she looked closer to four months. She didn't care about that, she would have been happy getting married in jeans. The celebrant spoke of simple things; committment and love. Elena knew that they had that already. She knew that in the nearly thirteen years since they'd first come together they'd been through more than most couples could ever dream of. Being turned into a wolf, kidnapping, magic attacks, killer mutts... The list went on and on and that didn't include the things that they'd done together.

When she said I do she could feel the tears welling, and for once she didn't care about that either. She'd grown up needing to be strong and tough, and finally she could let another side of herself show. The side that was scared for what they were getting into, but loved Clayton completely and wouldn't want to have her life without him.

She kissed him and heard the cheers of their friends. It was done. They were now Mr and Mrs Danvers.

Comments

[survivesitall]

Hermione's words are the ones that Elena has been thinking. She's the writer, the reporter, and she couldn't put them together like that. She could only say that it was the right time for them to do this.

"He used to say it didn't matter if we weren't married. That we were mates, and that was more important." On some level Elena knew that to be true too, that it was enough for him. She also knew that this was better for them both.

"Really?" Her eyebrow cocks, curious and not bothering to hide it from her friend. "This I think I have to see."

[cleverness]

"Mmm..." Hermione glances around the party, looking for something that she can clear up as an example. She spots a plate, presumably once holding a piece of plate, left neatly on a nearby table. Looking around to see if anyone's watching closely, Hermione flicks her wand in its direction, Summoning it over and catching it with her free hand.

"I'm not nearly as good as my mother-in-law is, but I'll have many years to practice, I'm sure," Hermione says with a smile. With another wave of the wand, she Banishes the remaining smears of icing and crumbs, leaving the plate as spotless as it was before the reception.

[survivesitall]

"Wow. That's... Wow." It's different than the magic Paige used, though even Paige had been finding spells that she called mid-level spells that did more practical things. But this was amazing. "I didn't think people could do this?"

[cleverness]

"It's usually only possible to cast such spells after at least a few years of study," Hermione admitted. There were still a lot of spells and charms that she didn't have a perfect grasp on, mostly those which required a sort of material assessment that would only come after a great deal of practice. "But yes, the magic in my world is capable of accomplishing quite a great deal. Although I find that it's still very valuable to remind ourselves now and again of how to do these tasks without."

[survivesitall]

"I don't know," she says after a second, trying to imagine never having to do the massive pile of dishes that a house full of wolves at Stonehaven could produce. "I think that's something that I'd never get tired of. I hate doing dishes."

[cleverness]

"I started gaining an appreciation for doing dishes after realizing that they didn't do themselves. Which probably sounds silly, but at my school, the dishes we used for meals always seemed to clean themselves in an instant. What actually happened was that they were transported elsewhere for house elves to wash and clean — which proves that you can't really ever fully destroy something. Even now, this trick simply sends the food to a compost bin that I set in my backyard," Hermione admits with a small nod and a smile, thinking of the many house elves she'd continued to meet over the years and wondering how they've been faring in the time since she arrived in Darrow. "So that's something I have to mind and be conscious of."