Bathwater

Being Miserable At Best

Squinting at her reflection in the full-length mirror, the recently turned Weasley-to-Potter huffed disagreeably at what she was seeing. "Please tell me my dress selection was not as terrible as this. If it was, you tell me right now, Hermione. If I made you look like a bloody fool, tell me!"

Sitting on a stool, trying to fix her hair into an updo (after Ginny had taken the liberty of straightening her curls), Hermione did not spare eye-contact for she was under the pressure of assuring everything was complete perfection or eyes someone would have her head. Literally. 

"Your dresses were fine," she mumbled to Ginny. 

 With her fingers now tugging at her silky, red waves, Ginny opened her mouth to continue protesting, but she was cut off immediately. 

"And for the thirtieth time, no. You should not temporarily dye your hair black. Leave it as is or I'll be forced to confiscate your wand."  

"It's red, Hermione. Red! How do you expect it to coordinate with this?" Ginny pulled on the v-neck of her deep pink bridesmaid dress, stomping one heeled foot on the carpet floor. 

The bedroom door opened with a bang, startling both girls into a silence. There stood an angry Pansy Parkinson, wrapped in a bathrobe with her usually neck-long hair now reaching her shoulders, curled into perfect ringlets. 

"Will you shut up?" she snapped at Ginny. "I can hear you bitching from the bathroom and it's three levels away! The color of the dresses will stay the same, you will not alter your features, and you will stop shouting or get out!"

At the tension that was no invading the room, Hermione put her head down, suddenly finding the carpet far more interesting.

Surprisingly, though, Ginny settled her rage in one swift movement. "I'm sorry, Pansy," she murmured carefully. "This really is a lovely dress. I promise I'll stop complaining now."

Startled by that quick compliance from the untamable Ginny Potter, Pansy forced herself to let go of her ire, too. "I didn't mean to suggest that I'd be happy if you left, Ginny. You know I need you here."

"I didn't meant to imply I wanted to leave, either," Ginny said with a vague hint of sarcasm. This was her bedroom, after all; it was her house, her garden, and her brother that Parkinson was marrying. Technically, it was she that would have to leave. Seeing, however, that Ginny was a kind girl, she would allow the Slytherin to marry her brother (after all, Pansy was doing all the Weasleys a favor of having Ron, so there was no point for Ginny to delay the process). 

Pansy smirked now as the door closed behind her. She pulled on the knot that held her bathrobe closed. "Of course you wouldn't want to leave. It's the wedding of the decade. Not to mention I wouldn't survive if you left."

Ginny scoffed. Sure, like the press would be talking about Pansy Parkinson and Ron Weasley's wedding instead of Harry Potter's. Ha. Half of the reporters that will somehow turn up hiding behind the bushes of the Burrow will end up focusing on the Boy-Who-Lived and every step he took with the Girl-Who-Tied-Him-Down (talk about Pansy's future tantrum). 

"Mum is still crying?"

"Like Moaning Myrtle!" Pansy grunted as she flung her pink bathrobe off her body. "When I apparated here I found her crying in Ron's old room with a box of tissues and his childhood photos. She looked like she had been up since before sunrise. It honestly terrified me."

Finding that the coast was clear from any impending hurricanes, Hermione said, "Molly couldn't have been that bad. She only cried three times at Ginny's wedding. And that's when she saw Harry, in the ceremony, and when they apparated away."