firecracker ???

The chandeliers were incredibly bright,

They hovered, poised in arcs of suspended starlight, each crystal pin set like a constellation in orbit. The magic here didn't pulse like it did at Grimmauld or breathe like it did at Hogwarts. It simply existed — absolute, indifferent, enduring.

The ballroom had been transformed, of course. Dressed for celebration. Green silk draped from the vaulted ceiling. Silver enchantments danced across the walls, curling in abstract patterns. The long tables gleamed with crystal and gold, there wasn't a chair out of line.

It was regal. Tasteful. Cold.

It was so perfectly Malfoy it made his teeth itch.

Harry stood just off-centre, a drink in his hand, a speech he hadn't written. 

He wanted to throw up.

Not from nerves. Not from fear. But from the sheer unreality of the moment. Of being here. Now. After everything. 

His robes were formal, crisp black with green accents that Lyra had personally spell-fitted and triple-checked. He wore them without complaint. For once. His hair, no longer cursed into defiance by the Gryffindor Tower humidity, was sleek. His scar, faded long ago, barely showed against candlelight.

He didn't fidget.

Mostly because Lyra had threatened him if he did.

She sat now, next to her mother and father, cross-legged in black silk and silver, her heels resting neatly, her gaze heavy. Watching. Not worried — she never worried about Harry when it came to important things, but there.

Always there.

At the head table, Draco stood with the same expression Harry had seen a thousand times before a prank went off — straight-backed, hand resting lightly on the edge of a glass. A picture of controlled mischief. 

Tonight was all him and his bride — and improbably, hilariously, also about Harry.

Draco's best man.

Theo had smirked when he heard.

"Really?" he'd said. "Not offended. Just surprised."

Blaise joked. "He must've flipped a galleon."

Even Sirius had paused halfway through spell-dicing Regulus's goblet to say, "You're not the obvious choice."

And Harry had agreed with every one of them.

He wasn't the one who stood beside Draco when they were boys. He didn't grow up inside those heavy halls, or learn how to sneer without blinking, or know which corridor Draco, Theo, and Blaise carved their names into when they were five. He hadn't earned this by history.

And yet—he was here.

Some part of him still wondered if he'd taken something that was never his to take.

They knew his history. His pride. His complicated tangle of lineage and legacy.

But Harry had only known him five years.

Five years of dueling. Sneering. Snapping. Then, one sharp pivot — and four years of something quieter.

Something better.

He hadn't expected it to be enough.

But Draco had asked.

And Harry had said yes before he could talk himself out of it.

Now he stood before a room that wasn't his, full of people who had once considered him a cautionary tale — but he didn't exactly feel out of place.

Not anymore.