A Spring Wedding
Challenge Eighteen: March Madness Redux
Title: A Spring Wedding
Author: sirikit
Wizard/Witch: Ernie Macmillan/Daphne Greengrass
Rating/Warnings: G/PG
Genre: Romance
Word Count: 500
Prompt: 20. newborn Thestrals
Summary: Ernie gets an invitation in the post that leaves him reeling.
The invitation to Hannah's wedding arrives at his office amidst memos and end-of-day owls. He's just opened it when Daphne trots into the room, a tall stack of Ministry documents floating at the end of her wand. Her heels make a 'click-clack' noise against the floor and that's all he can hear, all he can notice, apart from his heartbeat and the card in his hand.
"That's it for the wild Thestral attack nonsense, then," she chatters away, blithe as daylight. "Honestly, it's not as if the dear thing killed that silly Muggle, after all, and it was just a newborn--"
She sets the parchments down on his desk and proceeds with her daily ritual of rearranging his things to suit her taste: reshuffling his folders, replacing his quills, moving his chair while he's still in it.
"--don't understand why they can't simply grow him a new hand, it's dreadfully simple--"
It's Hannah's handwriting on the back of the envelope; she's written his name in glossy black ink. He runs his thumb across the flowers embossed on the card. A spring wedding, then. Of course.
"Ooh, what've you got there?" Daphne asks with mock coquettishness. "Have you decided to nominate me for Secretary of the Year?"
He tosses the invitation on his desk as if it means nothing.
"Not quite. Maybe next year, if you finally learn to make a proper cup of coffee -- or listen to me, whichever comes first."
"There's nothing wrong with my Coffee Charm, silly," she retorts, leaning against his desk. "You simply lack a refined palate. But, what is that really?"
He hates it when she randomly chooses to be perceptive.
"Invitation to the Abbott-Longbottom wedding," he admits, keeping his tone as neutral as possible. "Old friends of mine, if you recall."
"You're a terrible liar," she says. "I remember about you and Anna--"
"Hannah."
She makes an airy gesture of dismissal. "--whatever. I remember the pair of you well enough. Everybody thought it was true love."
Ernie gives her a disgruntled look. "Yeah."
She has the grace to look sheepish, and fusses with her bracelets in her embarrassment. But Ernie wishes she would fill the silence with her nonsense again, to distract him from all this. He depends on her for that.
He sighs. "Listen--"
"It doesn't mean you won't be happy, too, you know, just because she got there first."
He glances at her, taken aback. Daphne smiles kindly at him, dazzling and artless and utterly real, and something inside Ernie fractures, some long-bound feeling he can't quite define. His head spins with it and he looks at her with wonder, as if seeing her for the first time.
An idea strikes him, and it feels like a flash of genius.
"Would you like to go to the wedding with me?" he asks.
Her smile broadens and Ernie grins back, feels his world grow steady, grow sure.
"I'd love to."
Author's Notes: Daphne's Coffee Charm produces something with a lovely aroma and an aftertaste of old socks.
Proof-reader: The lovely ladywhitehart and the peerless seaislewitch