The flowers in the dressing room were already wilting. To Pansy's eyes they looked as though they sank and drooped further with each passing moment.

"How is this, mistress?"

"Darker in the crease here," Viola's high, sharp voice cut through the air like the whip of a wand. "And more contouring here - no, don't cover up the beauty mark, I told you. I want it to show up in photos."

"Mistress looks very beautiful," Ivy said. "A beauty mark for beautiful mistress."

Viola rolled her eyes.

"What nonsense," she said to Pansy. "Don't use the bronze, for heaven's sake, she's the bride, not a showgirl he met in Monaco," she snapped at Liddy, who was doing Pansy's makeup.

Liddy bowed. "Of course, mistress - how stupid I am."

"God, you have to watch them every second," she said to Pansy, exasperated. "Pity it's tradition for the husband's elf to dress the bride. Ivy's always been the only one who knows how to bring out your cheekbones. This one's hopeless."

Liddy bowed again. "Please, mistress, I am begging your forgiveness. Miss Pansy is so beautiful, I am not worthy to be touching her."

Viola rolled her eyes again and huffed loudly, and Pansy said, "Water the flowers now, they're wilting."

"That's what comes of having a July wedding," Viola said, as Ivy lightly touched her cheeks with her fingers to set the makeup, accompanied by the faint crack signifying elf magic. "I told you, it's simply too humid."

"It's beastly hot," Daphne agreed. "There was a breeze this morning, but it's gone now."

"Not so dark in the brows," Pansy instructed Liddy.

"Don't be foolish!" Viola told her. "You'll disappear in all the photos - "

"I don't want to look ghoulish to my husband, never mind the photos - "

"What will he care?" Aster, her young cousin, laughed, sipping her champagne. "You're younger by half than his last wife, he'll be well pleased no matter how you look!"

"His wife died," Lila said to her in a hushed voice, shocked.

"Two years ago," Aster said dismissively. "He's going to be all over you tonight, Penny, eyebrows or no."

Aster fussed with her fine dark hair in the mirror. Her elf, Henbit, gave a small squeak and rushed to set it back to rights.

"Is it true you invited Blaise Zabini?" Aster said, painting her lips a vivid shade of red with a lipstick she had smuggled in her handbag. As Henbit moved to take the lipstick away from her, Aster laughed and wiped the lipstick over Henbit's face. "He's quite handsome."

"I had to invite him," Pansy said boredly. "He was in my year at school."

"Professor Nott was in your year - you've not invited him," Aster said.

"It's a small venue, Aster. I couldn't invite everyone I would have liked to."

As Henbit reached again for the lipstick, Aster slapped her. "Down," she snapped.

"I wonder what it would be like to kiss Zabini," she said meditatively. "I'd like to try."

"You're sixteen, stupid."

"Seventeen next month," Aster said airily. "Still, I expect I'll be the youngest at the wedding. Something a little more fresh for him, maybe."

There was a very real danger that Daphne would claw Aster's face off, and that Pansy herself might finish the job if Daphne should weaken mid-strike.

"Fresh indeed!" Viola laughed. She found Aster charming; Pansy found her unbearable. But her mother had insisted that Aster be one of her bridesmaids. It was just one of the decisions made about her wedding party that Pansy had to accept. Her thoughts strayed to Maggie, her flower girl, who was one of the others.

In fairness, it hadn't seemed as though Eustace's daughter had been thrilled about it either. The child had been sullen and silent through the rehearsal, barely consenting to take part; only when Eustace had drawn her aside to speak to her privately had she gone through the motions, but the resentment lingered in her eyes when she gazed at her soon to be stepmother.

I didn't want this, either, Pansy wanted to snap at her, but she made herself smile and speak kindly to the girl. She would be at Hogwarts in a few years, and until then, Pansy knew well from many of her classmates' stories of growing up how little time it was possible to spend in someone else's company on a large manor house. Maggie had her father and her governess for companionship; if she did not want Pansy's, so much the better.

"I do hope you'll behave yourself, Aster," Viola said, indulging their cousin with a fond smile. "It is Pansy's wedding. She's waited so long for this. We wouldn't want such a special day to be ruined by any unseemly behavior."

Viola did not look at Daphne as she said this, but she did not need to - all of their thoughts turned immediately to Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass, caught half undressed in the vestry at Gregory Goyle's wedding a few years ago. Daphne's whole face puckered at the slight, but she said nothing.

"Eustace's family seems so kind," Lila said, eyes flicking anxiously from Daphne's sour expression to Viola's amused smile. "It will be such a delightful day."

"The first of many for my sweet sister," Viola said, raising her champagne flute. "Cheers, to the future Mrs. Seton."

"Pansy, where's your glass!" Lila cried, as they all clinked glasses. Pansy shrugged.

"It's empty."

"Worthless," Viola snapped at Liddy. "This is your future mistress and this is how you look after her? Fill her glass, fool."

"A thousand apologies, miss - Liddy will go and iron her ears," Liddy murmured, levitating the champagne to fill Pansy's glass.

"It's fine," Pansy said. "Punish yourself after the ceremony. Hurry and finish dressing me now, it's nearly time."

"You musn't be so lenient with her - she'll get complacent," Daphne told her. "Tori let our elf get away with murder growing up and now he doesn't know what to do with himself, he just shuffles around. A firm hand is what they need or they grow fretful."

"They don't look it, but they can be quite sly," Tracey agreed as she adjusted the pearl accent in her hair. "Remember the Malfoys' elf? He raised a wand to his mistress. Where does that kind of behavior come from? We clothe them, shelter them, feed them from the cradle, as if they're part of the family. The ingratitude is really quite hurtful."

"Times have changed," Viola sighed. "Soon they'll be picketing for pay and vacation and sick leave. They'll have little unions. Would you join a union, Ivy?"

"Ivy would rather die than face such dishonor, mistress," the little elf said with dignity.

"Don't torment Ivy," Lila said anxiously. "You know how it upsets them to hear those awful ideas. There was a report on the radio about the elf rights movement the other day, our Crowley started punishing himself right in front of us out of shame."

"It's embarrassing for all of us," Daphne said. No matter how she adjusted it, the bridesmaid robes would not sit flat across her thin chest. She pursed her lips in annoyance. "I keep wondering, where will it end? What else can they take from us? What is the limit?"

"We still have our traditions. Times can change, but we don't have to. They can make their laws and trample on proper wizard feeling all they like - we don't have to follow suit."

Even as she said it, though, Pansy wondered if this were really true. They had been brought to heel, all of them, in ways no one liked to admit. If the war hadn't happened, if the world hadn't gone so desperately wrong, her wedding day today might have been a very different affair.

"I need to finish getting ready," she announced to the bridal party, and they rose as one.

"Good luck, Penny," Aster tossed over her shoulder as she left.

"You look so beautiful," Lila said told her, giving her a delicate hug, Daphne and Tracey smiling beside her.

Viola, the last to leave, touched Pansy's shoulder gently. "It's all going to be fine," she whispered. "You'll see."

The door whispered shut behind her, leaving a deathly quiet.

The flowers were wilting again. With her wand, Pansy added some water, but it did not revive them.

"It's time, miss," Ivy said softly. She stood close to Pansy, her simple cotton shift clean and pressed for the occasion; although she did not touch Pansy's arm, her soft attention gave the impression that she had.

Pansy regarded her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes stared back at her from a stranger's face, powdered, pressed, another woman's emerald tiara winking over her carefully coiled curls. A dead woman's tiara - Eustace's mother had passed away while Pansy was still at Hogwarts, years after she had seen her son married to his first wife.

"Have you thought about what I asked you?"

In the mirror, Pansy could see Ivy's small face melt into petrified anguish.

"Oh miss - I is so sorry, miss - but I cannot, miss. I is so sorry. Ivy is bound to serve the Parkinsons. Ivy will serve Master Peter, when he has a wife. It is so, miss. Ivy wishes - "

Ivy broke off, but she continued to stare, stricken, at Pansy's face in the glass. She did not need to elaborate on her wishes. Peter had always been her favorite child. She would never have come with Pansy.

"It doesn't matter," Pansy told her. "I felt sorry for you, that's all. I only wanted to help. Peter's never liked you, you know."

Ivy's enormous eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away and curtsied deeply as Pansy stood up and shook out the long skirt of her robes. At the door, the rat-a-tat of her father's knock sounded.

"Pansy, are you ready?"

A/N: To all the beautiful people who have read this to the end, thank you! I hope you have enjoyed reading. If you have a moment, please leave a review and let me know what you thought!

A very special thank you to the extraordinarily kind and thoughtful pkp033, pipistrelle, Son of Whitebeard, and all the other sweet people who have taken the time to review. It truly means the world to me.

Thank you all again!