Chapter Text
“Are you ready to do this Beautiful?” Sirius asked.
She nodded and took his arm as he led her down the aisle, followed by Ginny Weasley, Gabrielle Delacour and a cute little Victoire Weasley.
Some ballad by Celestina Warbeck was blasting out as her groom, Ron, turned around and looked at her. Their best friend, Harry, was stood at his side, beaming at her.
She nervously squeezed Sirius’s arm. He had made such an effort to support her as a surrogate father figure. He'd reluctantly put on wizarding robes, shaved off his beard and even tamed his wild, dark locks just to make her proud.
“I’ve got you, my angel,” he said. There’s still time to change your mind if it’s what you truly want.
“No, let’s do this.”
“You’ve got the bracelet on?” He smiled at the beautiful sapphire bracelet he’d placed on her wrist a few minutes earlier.
The walk down the aisle seemed to take forever. She glanced at all the smiling, and in some instances, weeping faces. Molly was one of those sobbing, so surprisingly were several of her old classmates: Padma Patil, Susan Bones, Lavender Brown and even Pansy Parkinson, who was Draco Malfoy’s plus one.
It must be a Pure-blood thing, she thought to herself as she couldn’t imagine crying at Pansy Parkinson’s wedding, not that she’d be likely to get an invite anyway. Draco was staring at Hermione, as if sending her a silent message. He discretely gave her a thumbs up from his seat next to the sniffling Slytherin princess.
Oh no, who the hell invited Rita Skeeter, she thought to herself and nudged Sirius. He looked across and shot a warning glance over at the poisonous pen owner, who was sat with a sickly sweet smile on her face.
He whispered something in Hermione’s ear and she squeezed his arm in response. She was grateful for Sirius’s strong arm guiding her along as her nerves were causing her to feel faint and some bile was trying to force its way up her throat.
Eventually they reached Kingsley and the groomsmen. It was quite an honour that the Minister himself had agreed to perform the ceremony.
The Minister of Magic cleared his throat and spoke “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my absolute privilege to have been asked to perform the ancient soul-bonding rite for two of our most beloved war heroes.
You are gathered here to witness the sacred joining of Ronald Bilious Weasley and Hermione Jean Granger as two souls to be intertwined for eternity.
Hermione stared wide-eyed at Kingsley before turning to Sirius and mouthing ‘what?’, she had never heard of soul-bonding before, it sounded like she would be ensnared and her magic forcibly tethered to Ron’s for eternity, her grip on Sirius’s arm tightened causing him to wince slightly.
“Now, before the ceremony can continue, I have a legal requirement to ask if anyone here objects to the bonding of these two.”
There was a long silence, and just as Kingsley prepared to continue, there was a huge gasp. Sirius had turned round to face the congregation and said “yes, me”.
Before anyone could interfere he cast a silencing charm on Molly Weasley. “Sorry, Molly. If I’d done that six months ago, we might not be in this pickle now.”
Ron’s face was scarlet with a look of pure hatred, but his natural fear of Sirius prevented him from speaking out.
“For those of you who do not know me, my name is Sirius Black.” A few people laughed as Sirius was one of the most famous people in the wizarding world.
He coughed, nervously. “Well, as I said, I am Sirius Black, and Hermione asked me to be her honorary father for today. Sadly, her own father is no longer with us and it was a great privilege that Hermione asked me to stand in her beloved father’s place.
Well, some of you may be aware that I have spent a significant portion of my life in isolation and one of the methods I used to stay sane was counting. I count anything and everything. How many times I heard a cough, how many crashes of the waves. I even once tried to count the hairs on my head. This habit has unfortunately stuck with me and I now keep a notebook of things I’ve counted throughout the day.
How many times Crookshanks clawed my leg, how many times my mother’s portrait insults someone, and even how many times the Chosen One farts - believe me, that’s a lot! Harry blushed.
Harry and Hermione here are my housemates, so naturally a lot of my counting involves them.
People were starting to look around confused as to where the strange speech was heading.
Sirius cleared his throat. “Anyway, I digress. I was spat back out of the veil at the exact time my cousin, Bellatrix, died. This, apparently, was also the same day that Hermione and Ronald finally got together, mid battle. How romantic!
Except that it really wasn’t romantic, because I have witnessed the battle raging between them ever since.
Now, the Christmas after the battle, Hermione was at Hogwarts and Ron and Harry were deep in the middle of Auror training. Hermione wanted to go and find her parents in Australia. I offered to accompany her as Ron didn’t want to ‘waste his leave’.” Sirius did the finger quotes. I was free; at the time I was still a man of leisure. Unfortunately, we soon found out the tragic news about her parents and returned home immediately, only to find Ron in Hermione’s bed with a witch. In my house! Naturally, Hermione did not react very well to the sight of that, she was devastated.
That was their first split and Hermione only took him back because he claimed it was revenge. According to Ron, he thought she was doing the same with me. I can assure you that there has never been anything other than friendship between us.
This pattern was repeated again and again. Hermione took him back no less than five times. That should be reason in itself not to have a soul-bond.
Incidentally, today is the first time that Hermione even found out that soul-bonding was part of the ceremony, she doesn’t even know what it is. As a Muggle-born, she should have been given classes and instructed on exactly what that entails.
So, if reason number one is his cheating past, then reason number two is that this should not take place today. Not until she’s been made fully aware of the implications. But, as usual, many decisions have been taken, without her consent or knowledge.
This brings me to the next reason, which in itself is 37 individual times that decisions have been made about this wedding which completely ignored her wishes. The most serious being she never actually said yes when he proposed.
She had been going to dump him that evening, because she’d found out about yet another of his infidelities. Then this very public proposal occurred, and before she knew it, the engagement that she didn’t want was splashed across the front pages of the Daily Prophet and a wedding was being planned for six months down the line.
That night was the first of 53 times I found Hermione crying because of the wedding or something Ron or Molly had said.
Did you know that Hermione has been a vegetarian for three years now? Harry, Draco and I are happy to eat vegetarian meals at home, which is probably why Harry farts so much,” he gave Harry a wink.
“Sorry, I'm rambling again. Molly and Ron are in denial about her vegetarianism, 86 times Hermione has tried to tell them in front of me, that she doesn’t eat fish or meat. They’ve even overruled her today and the vegetarian bride is not even allowed a vegetarian option at her own wedding.
Since she told everyone she was a vegetarian I’ve heard a Weasley tell her it was nonsense 157 times. One Sunday alone it was 23 times. Nonsense, you have to eat meat. Ronald would expect you to cook meat at every meal.” He mimicked Molly’s voice. “It’s nonsense that you expect him to share domestic duties.
No, Molly, it’s nonsense that you expect Hermione fucking Granger, the brightest witch of her age to give up on her career aspirations to stay at home looking after your useless offspring, cooking him meals and doing his laundry, while he’s out whoring his way around half of wizarding Britain.
Hermione is the most brilliant, gifted, talented witch I’ve ever met in my entire life, and that includes Professor McGonagall over there, who I never thought would be equalled. The Scottish witch blushed and gave a slight wave to her former student.
Zero is the number of intellectually stimulating conversations that have involved Ronald Weasley. In the past five years, I’ve had 1052 with Hermione. 167 of those also included Draco Malfoy.” Ron scowled.
“Another time she was told nonsense was over this fucking hideous monstrosity of a dress. I offered to pay for Hermione to have a brand new dress, but no, I was told nonsense, all the Weasley brides have worn this.” He again mimicked Molly’s voice.
“Zat is not true,” shouted Fleur. I did not wear zat ugly zing.”
Sirius gave a slight wink in the direction of the French witch and continued his speech. “Now I am well aware that I have been babbling on for long enough and, believe me, I could give you many, many more reasons, but here is my final one. He has cheated on Hermione with at least thirteen different women, six of which she knew about and the other seven I only found out about in the last few weeks. Five of those women are in this room and he has been with all of them in the last month.
And yes, I am going to out you all. Pansy Parkinson, Padma Patil, Susan Bones, Lavender Brown and her own bridesmaid, Gabrielle Delacour. The one that was forced upon her when she was told nonsense, there’s no way you can have that Lovegood girl as a bridesmaid, she will say something strange.”
Luna looked over at Sirius. “Yes, sorry Luna, you were Hermione’s first choice as a bridesmaid.”
“It’s okay, Mr Black, I don’t think I’d want to be part of such an awful wedding. He has way too many wrackspurts for Hermione to deal with. She should marry you instead, your auras are perfectly aligned.”
Sirius and Hermione both looked at each other wide-eyed. Sirius started to go red with embarrassment. “Well, I sincerely hope that Hermione won’t be marrying anyone today, especially in that monstrosity.”
Hermione, who had been frozen to the spot, suddenly used her wand to loosen the charms holding the dress in place and she calmly stepped out of it; leaving it in a heap on the floor. She tore off the veil and dropped it onto the dress along with the engagement ring.
She was wearing a corset and petticoat, stockings and high heels. She tapped her wand and her garments all changed from white to black. “That’s right, Sirius. I will not be getting married today. I believe under such circumstances the groom may marry the bridesmaid.”
“I’m not wearing zat ‘ideous dress,” said Gabrielle, storming off.
“Maybe one of your other fuck-buddies wants to step up and bind themselves to a worthless piece of shit like you. I can tell you all this, there’s only two people who have consistently had my back, Sirius Black and Draco Malfoy. Draco has repeatedly told me I was making a mistake.”
At this point, Ron finally spoke. “So that’s it. You’ve been fucking Malfoy all this time. I knew it. That’s why he’s been hanging around you.”
“I always knew you were a moron, Weaselbee. I prefer Wizards, namely the one stood next to you. He’s the main reason I’m still living at Grimmauld Place. Although I do enjoy Sirius and Hermione’s company too.”
Ron took a step back and punched Harry. “You and Malfoy, that’s disgusting.”
Malfoy and Harry both winked at Hermione, knowing that it would help with the gossip. Rita Skeeter was practically dancing with joy and had three Quick-Quotes quill pens going.
“Well, thank you everyone, I think that will be quite enough,” said Kingsley. “I can confirm that I, for one, will not be performing any union today, especially not something as sacred as a soul-bonding. I had no idea that Hermione was not even aware. That is shocking. I am horrified that you would attempt to trick her into this coercive magical binding. Her consent, particularly as a Muggle-born, must be evident and clearly it is not.”
He summoned a piece of parchment from the table next to the register. “In fact I will go one step further.”
He held up the piece of parchment. “This is the betrothal contract between Hermione and Ronald. I have reason to believe this may have been drawn up fraudulently, therefore, by the power vested in me as Minister for Magic, I declare this contract null and void.” The contract magically dissolved into pieces in his hands.
Molly was clearly shouting under her silencing charm and was gesticulating wildly with her arms.
Sirius turned to Hermione and said “time to send you on your exotic honeymoon.”
He decided to finally lift the charm on Molly and all he heard was “wait till I get my hands on you Sirius Black,” as he activated the Portkey on Hermione’s wrist, whisking them both away.