(Book 7 FanFiction) Harry Potter: The Last Horcrux

Chapter 04: Until Death Do Us Part

The day of the wedding dawned bright and glorious. Harry was awoken at what felt to him to be an ungodly hour by the chirping of birds. The sun streaming in from the cracks of the blinds in Ron's attic bedroom pierced his skull with a fierce, unforgiving intensity. The ruddy twittering was driving him mad.

Harry had been to his first stag party the previous evening, and even the sobering charm that Mrs. Weasley had performed on them all before ushering them off to bed hadn't stopped the pounding of his head this morning. He had a vague feeling of unease, but he wasn't certain if it was only due to the nauseating headache.  It had been one of the strangest weeks in Harry's life, and that was saying something.

The Burrow – a hub for chaos and activity under normal circumstances – was the center of operations for the upcoming nuptials. If Mrs. Weasley had appeared frazzled to Harry over the previous years while working with the Order, it was nothing to her state while preparing this wedding.

The Delacour family had arrived two days ago with more trunks and belongings than a small army should rightfully own. The ceremony itself was to take place in the meadow where Harry had played Quidditch with Ron and his family on many occasions. Therefore, the Delacour family took over the other side of the garden, where they had erected a large tent surrounded by lush flowerbeds.

Harry had never seen anything quite like it, even at the Quidditch World Cup. The tent was more like a castle – with peaks and turrets – and bore the French flag on the top. The area surrounding the tent blossomed with an array of exotic plants and flowers, and a small fountain appeared in a newly formed pond.

If Mrs. Weasley was stressed, it was nothing compared to the state of Mrs. Delacour. Harry had yet to hear her speak in anything but a shout, and he'd noticed Mr. Delacour liberally filling her tea with some oakmatured mead on more than one occasion.

Bill and Fleur appeared oblivious to all the fuss and merely floated in and out of the chaos with the sappiest expressions upon their faces.

Fleur had moved out of the Burrow, where she'd been staying, and in with her own family, leaving Ginny, Hermione and Ekaterina sharing one room. Harry supposed that Ginny liked Ekaterina better than Fleur, because the tautness in her face had lessened considerably after the French girl's departure.

Since their blow up in the back garden nearly a week ago, the tension between Ginny and him had been so thick it could be cut with a knife. They had taken great pains either to act overly civil to one another or to avoid each other entirely.

Ginny again proved her accomplished acting ability by easily pretending that nothing was wrong, treating Harry as no more and no less than Ron's visiting friend. She was civil, polite and frustratingly distant. It was only on brief, rare occasions that Harry thought he caught a glimmer of something in her eyes, but when he looked closely, it was gone.

Harry, on the other hand, was failing miserably at playing along. He couldn't just close off his feelings and pretend there was nothing wrong, no matter how hard he tried, and the effort was making him increasingly bad-tempered. It occurred to him that while he had failed dismally at mastering Occlumency during his fifth year, Ginny would probably be very good at it.

The presence of Jean-Luc Delacour certainly hadn't helped matters. Suave and debonair, Jean-Luc was everything Harry wasn't. He was only a year older, but he somehow managed to appear vastly more sophisticated. He had dark hair that he wore slicked back and robes that not only fit impeccably, but also were made of the finest material.

It gave Harry a new determination to go shopping for some Muggle clothes of his very own and in his own size for the first time in his life.

Jean-Luc had kissed Ginny's hand when he first met her, and always seemed to know the right thing to say or had some witty response to everything said to him.