The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

The Potter Wedding

Sirius or Remus - and later on, Peter and Frank, once Sirius and Remus were needed closer at hand - met each guest at the portkey arrival site, rushing forward to meet them with magic umbrellas. The guest's portkey activated wherever they were and on the wedding end a gemstone in the bowl would glow brightly. Each guest were given their corresponding gemstones, and Remus taught the blokes greeting the guests a handy little charm that produced an umbrella made of the same white smoke-like magic as a patronus, but could be held and carried for a time before it faded off - just enough time for the guests to get to the wedding site. 

"That's some cool magic," Gideon Prewett said, shaking his head as he was handed his stone and his umbrella.

Fabian nodded, "Very impressive!" He twirled the umbrella by the handle.

Gideon continued, "Bleedin' hell, I remember your grades when we were teaching..." He was talking to Sirius specifically.

"So do I!" Fabian said, and together they finished, "I just don't understand it."

"Had better things to do than excel at grades," Sirius said, grinning.

The guests went with their patronous umbrellas and glowing gemstone from the bowl, into the forest, which was dark, green, and smelled fragrant with the rain and bracken, like Christmas and cold snow threatening to fall. There were lanterns strewn about in the trees, lighting the way along the path that Remus had magicked out. 

The path wove through out of sight of the entrance, through the trees and into a clearing where there was a couple tables with everlasting ink pots and quills. The guests would pause there to write a message on their stones - marriage advice, well wishes, blessings, or whatever else they wanted on the stones. The stones were then put into a large vase, like a three dimensional guestbook. 

"This is awesome," Meg Johnson said, looking at McKenna Alliston and Marty Brown, who had come along with her. 

"It really is a brilliant idea!" Marty agreed. "I wish I'd thought of it when Quentin and I got married!"

Pandora Lovegood wrote out a longwinded message in tiny letters that covered her stone and Xenophilius dropped a branch of a dirigible bush into the vase along with his stone, upon which he'd written, A happy marriage is one that lasts long, but feels too short.

After dropping their messages into the vase, the guests were routed to another clearing where there was an arch formed from the trees and in the middle, a short, squat table, covered with a delicate knit cloth, a wreath of bluebells and pine and spruce, surrounding a snow globe. Lanterns and beaded ribbons and paper stars and birds hung from the arch.

Several guests were confused by the instruction, including Andromeda and Ted Tonks, who held firmly to the squirming wrists of Nymphadora between them, trying to figure out what to do. But Nymphadora knew without being told what snowglobes were for -- she reached out her excited hands and gave it a shake the funniest sensation came over them, as though the whole clearing were shaking and the snow was stirred up and as it flew into the air, it seemed to melt away from the ground... and the specks that had flown up into the air simply kept flying up - up - up until it had become stars in a clear, shining night sky...

Andromeda gasped. "Ted, we're in the snowglobe!" she pointed, and Ted looked to see the glass orb around them.

"Amazing," he whispered as Nymphadora let out a squeal that made them both turn to see a there was a giant stag standing in the woods just a stone's throw away. Behind the stag was two tall lanterns that burned brightly and the sound of music floated through the trees, a pathway strewn with lanterns faded away from the clearing.