A Story of No Consequence

Pink and Frilly

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Were Ginny Weasley still alive, and if she hadn't married Harry Potter, and Harry and Pansy still managed to get together, she would have been invited to the wedding. Had she been the Childhood Crush Who Lived, then she would have probably married Neville Longbottom and had been a huge, glowing globe of seven months pregnant by the time Harry and Pansy got around to marrying.

Mostly because that's the way the Fates work. Ask them, they'll probably, most likely, tell you.

Anyway, because Pansy would have always been jealous of picture perfect Ginny Longbottom, even though she was nice and married and pregnant by the not dead war hero Neville, she would have made her a part of the wedding party.

This has everything to do with Pansy being insecure, most of those insecurities brought on by her horrid, vicious mother, and not because she'd be the kind of nice, turn the other cheek person that invites gorgeous redheads to take part in the wedding of their ex-crush.

See, being in the wedding party means you're completely at the mercy of the bride. And Pansy would have completely and totally taken advantage of that fact. Something pink and frilly and absolutely disgusting against Ginny's peachy, speckled complexion. Everyone knows redheads, most redheads anyway, look horrid in pink.

But, as it is, Pansy and Harry had a nice light blue and ivory wedding. In times of peace, it's best to completely ignore your house colors. Especially when they'd end up making your wedding look like a Christmas postcard. Which is bad when you're wedding takes place in June.

Pansy is absolutely completely mental during the eighteen months it takes to plan and execute the biggest wedding of the century. She, understandably, becomes more mental every day that brings her closer to the June 8th wedding date. Harry, not surprisingly, doesn't do much at all.

I mean, he does stuff, but, he doesn't do a whole lot. He gives candid, humorous interviews to the press, excluding Rita I need liposuction and a brain transplant Skeeter, which only makes the interviews that much more entertaining. He gets measured into dress robes, ushers the male part of the wedding part off for robe fittings, waves off the idea of a bachelor party even though he knows they're going to do it anyway, and agrees with everything that Pansy says even if he doesn't wholeheartedly agree with it.

That's just what grooms do. It took him nearly two years to figure that out. Nearly two years and a whole lot of alcohol. Not too much that you'd be able to call him an alcoholic, but enough to make him realize that if he didn't catch on soon enough he'd end up passed out over a public loo somewhere making a complete and total ass out of himself.

Pansy, not only made herself completely and totally mental, but drug a whole lot of people along for the ride.

Hermione.

Padma, a former best friend who ended up with Ron after he finally, completely, got over Hermione.

Parvati, because Pansy had to have a set of twins on her side of the wedding party if Harry was going to. And who wasn't too terribly, horribly upset about the whole Padma and Ron thing because she ended up becoming a lesbian with Lavender.

Luna.

Susan.

Hannah.

And Daphne.

Note that Pansy really didn't keep a lot of Slytherin friends around after the war. Mostly because they saw her as a cowardly blood traitor of epic proportions. Also because she thinks it's probably not a good idea to keep around people that might get drunk and say things to her boyfriend/fiancée/husband that they'd probably rather not say but not be able to take back because it'd be splashed across the front page the next morning.

That and she thinks that they're terrible, awful bores. Really, truly, if you want interesting conversation, you go talk to a Gryffindor. Or a mildly intoxicated Hufflepuff.

Weddings are one of those things that can bring out the best, and the worst, in people.

Pansy's wedding gives Hermione a purpose that she didn't have after Kingsley became Minister. She becomes the best damn wedding coordinator ever to the woman whose information and frantic pleas she once ignored and filed away in chronological order. She yells at the florist when Pansy is too busy pulling out her hair to do anything else. She makes the other members of the wedding party behave, makes sure there are plenty of mild pain potions on hand for the bride-to-be's recurring headaches, and does some mild transfiguration when the dress robes for the bride's side come out the wrong shade of light blue two days before the wedding.

Padma keeps Ron from complaining too vocally about Pansy's meticulous pre-wedding schedule. That alone makes her Pansy's second favorite person in the whole wide world…for about three months anyway.

Parvati smiles and looks pretty and is generally agreeable. Everyone agrees that this is probably the best course of action.

Luna, not surprisingly, spends most of her time at Hogwarts teaching her students about the mysteries of Divination. She snaps at her husband a lot, mostly because of his complaints that he wasn't invited to be a part of the groom's side of the wedding party, and ignores Pansy until it's absolutely, completely necessary. This isn't because Luna is a mean, snappish person, but because the bulk of the wedding planning comes during important parts of the school year and she has a hard enough time being taken seriously without wedding plans getting in her way.

Fortunately, after the wedding, she goes back to her sweet, dreamy self. Everyone but her husband appreciates the change. After all, the new Luna had been a whole lot more forceful in bed than the old one.

No one said that Theodore Nott Junior wasn't a tad bit kinky.

Susan and Hannah do what they're told. They never were really good friends with Pansy, they know this, she knows this. They're just there because they equal out the number of boys and girls. And because they're pretty. And, strangely enough, Pansy thinks it's what Neville would have wanted. She never questions her feelings when Neville Longbottom is concerned.

Daphne is a bitch. Stays a bitch. Doesn't stop being a bitch until she's nice and cold and buried many, many years later. But she's blonde and looks good in blue and she's always nice to have around for the occasional tea party.

Pretty much everyone ignores Daphne before, during, and after the wedding.

PT gets her revenge for her horrid, awful name by suddenly taking up the hobby of puking in Pansy's shoes and then rolling in it. Harry says it's probably because of all the stress of wedding planning and moving into Number Twelve. Pansy thinks her cat just hates her. None the less, PT gets to go stay with her Auntie Molly until after the honeymoon and bothers the chickens and chases the garden gnomes to her heart's content.

The wedding takes place in the pasture that was once the Parkinson family home. Mansion. Estate, really. Hermione hires some commercial Herbologist to create a fantasy garden out of the empty space. Lilacs and roses, foxgloves and cowslips. Really too many types of flowers for Pansy to name off of the top of her head.

No, I repeat, no pansies.

Because Luna, who only contributed one good thing to the wedding besides her presence, said that it was a good omen for the wedding to happen at night, it did. Ever since the war, when Luna, in a sickeningly sweet voice, told everyone the exact time and date that Lucius Malfoy would die, her prophecies weren't taken lightly. Even when they were just passing observations.

The space was lined with chairs filled with people who had become closer to Harry than any family he'd ever had. All the remaining Weasleys were there. Tonks and Lupin, with their three hell raising wolf cubs. Puppies. Fine, children damn it. Their three children with wild brown hair and sparking chocolate eyes and a way of shouting so that it sounded like howling. Somehow their parents managed to tie them down long enough to get them in expensive dress robes and sit them on three chairs between them. They were just lucky that their second cousin Draco was part of the wedding party and not babysitting, he would have paddled their butts red and then made them listen to their cousin Hermione until she lectured their ears off.

Yes, 'Meda, Teddy, and Sirius liked their parents form of discipline much, much better.

Molly, with Hannah and Parvati's help, cooked enough to feed an army. Old habits die hart. Padma and Susan, with the help of Fred and Ron, maneuvered the wedding guests into their designated places and made sure the official overseeing the wedding didn't get wasted until after the wedding.

Charlie and George made sure that no one uninvited managed to sneak onto the grounds.

Harry relaxed with a gin and tonic and rehearsed his reception speech until he could recite it upside down and in too tight women's underwear. Thankfully, he did neither.

Pansy, as she did with most things important, completely and totally freaked out.

First her hair wouldn't curl right. Then her dress got cat hair all over it because Crookshanks decided it was the perfect place to take a nap. Then Rita Skeeter tried to sneak onto the wedding grounds and she broke out into a multitude of bright green pustules. Padma got morning sickness at four o'clock in the afternoon and announced to everyone she was nice and pregnant, causing Ron to pass out in a rose bush.

But, nearly four hours after that unexpected announcement, Pansy V. Parkinson, who was soon to become Pansy Parkinson Potter, would walk down the pretty silk-covered aisle in a gorgeous ivory wedding dress with a strapless corset top and skirt full of crinoline. With an armful of lilies, she walked up to Harry with a teary-eyed smile and a heart bursting with more love than she ever thought she was capable of feeling.

During her vows, she even remembered to apologize for vomiting on him the time he walked her back to her flat and making him late for his meeting with Skeeter. Even if he did completely and totally take advantage of it by not only looking down her shirt but also inadvertently fondling her while looking at her house key.

Really, truly, it was probably the most perfect wedding in a century. Just the way it was meant to be, after all.

Because, sometimes, even St. Potters and Slytherin Ice Queens get a chance at happiness. Even after dodging cursed Defense Against the Dark Arts professors and rescuing wayward best friends from warehouses half way across the world. Sometimes, after escaping idiotic marriage laws and dumbass Ministers of Magic and worthless flats full of too many books and not enough space, these things manage to work themselves out.

Sometimes, just sometimes, optimism wins out in the end.

Rita Skeeter may still get published by the Daily Prophet and the Cannons might still get their asses smashed into the ground on most occasions, but, good seems to win out more times than not. To be able to say this after the deaths of Bill, Fleur, Percy, Ginny, Neville, and so many other people that it's not even funny, it's a feat that the throat doesn't clog up with vomit trying to get those words out.

It's a world where Ron still plays with Cannons action figures, or something, and Hermione and Draco host Saturday brunch at the Malfoy Manor every week with a bunch of mixed blood children screaming in the garden behind the kitchen. In this world, Ron and Padma somehow manage to escape the Weasley curse and only have one kid, Harry and Pansy start at one and work their way up to four. Lupin goes prematurely grey but, somehow, all his children end up with well paying, respectable positions in the Ministry and stop setting their dear cousin Draco on fire by accident.

PT stops vomiting in shoes but does keep vibrating on men's laps; generally those that are boyfriends of Potter's daughters meeting the illustrious Harry James Potter and his lovely wife for the first time.

Not surprisingly, these boys tend to stick around the longest.

And, maybe, just maybe, it's a world where evil assholes get turned into goo and set on fire and that fact eventually, fifty years later eventually, get published in the history books for all the world to see.

Especially the part about the pissing. That's always been Pansy's favorite part of the story.

And for a girl that traded too strong screwdrivers for lazy mornings with a man with wild black hair and haphazard glasses, that has to say something for the state of the world.

So, while this might be a story of no consequence, I want you to say it with me one more time. Harry James Potter. If you say it fast enough, it almost sounds like Jesus. Okay, that's a lie, it sounds nothing like Jesus. Not even Hey-suez. But, this is the story of the Boy Who Lived and he really, really did live. So, you might as well as it one more time.

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Note: Originally, this was supposed to be a one shot. Something I came up with a little over a year ago on my way to class while I was in a funk and not wanting to listen in Honors Economics. And somehow one chapter became two…and eventually turned into seven. I can't say that the last six chapters were as good as the first, mostly because it's my favorite. And I don't know if the last three chapters were nearly as good as the first four. My muse has never hit me so hard, or so fast before. But, if even just one person enjoyed this, that wasn't me, then I guess it's worth it. Thanks for sticking it out with me, I really do hope it was worth your while.