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Author: Cygnus Crux Story: Union Rating: Teens Setting: AU Status: Completed Reviews: 0 Words: 48,625
Chapter 5 Rain droplets splashed against the forward viewscreen of the Boreas as it cruised over Concordia. Hermione briefly wondered how the witch on her broomstick, a mere twenty feet below them, would have reacted if she'd actually been able to see the ship. "Lovely weather," Gavin Carey muttered. "I hope it'll clear up on the big day." "It will," Hermione said. She kept her answers short, not wanting to be distracted in the final approach. Although she had worked hard to learn to fly the Cruisers, she was nowhere near Gudrun's level of skill. Gudrun could fly the Cruiser blindfolded. "Citadel Control, this is the Boreas on final approach, requesting permission to land," Doc said from the second pilot's seat. "Boreas, this is Citadel Control. Maintain present velocity and stand by," an unfamiliar voice replied "Understood." "This is Citadel Control, requesting the opening of the gates," the voice continued. "We have the Boreas on approach. Let's open her up." Fifteen seconds passed before the voice came back. "Boreas, you're all clear. Proceed to the epsilon landing pad." "Roger that, Control." "Door's open, bed's made, welcome home." "No place like it," Doc replied. Hermione carefully guided the ship over to her landing pad and set her down. Then she began to disengage the many enchantments that allowed the ship to function. Doc casually observed her, and nodded his approval when she was done. "A dozen more hours and you can double as a pilot." Hermione shrugged. "We'll be short-handed for a few more years. Being versatile makes things easier for the commanders. I wish I hadn't missed Ginny's bridal shower, though," she continued, as she rose from her seat and headed to the levitation platform with Doc and Gavin. It wasn't like crowding onto a platform with Max and Ron. There was plenty of space left, and she didn't have to tuck her arms to her sides. "If only I'd known about it far enough in advance—but it was a last minute plan. I'm happy that Heidi managed to organise something for Ginny on such short notice." They stepped off the levitation surface after it touched down. The view of Harry and Ginny's gift from the Japanese wizarding empire dominated the centre of the Boreas' luxurious lower deck. Two mannequins, side by side, dressed in clothing fit for a courtly visit. The silk was of a special kind, having come from smaller and more docile subspecies of Acromantula, which had been created through years of selective breeding. Hermione wondered if that was where Neville had got the inspiration to try the same with his killer grapevine plant. A flick of the wand prompted the mannequins to march down the loading ramp after Gavin. Hermione turned to a storage cabinet behind one of the plush sofas to retrieve her bag, and found Doc already presenting it to her. "Why, thank you. You're a gentleman." "Just remember that any other goblin would want something from you if he behaves like that." Hermione laughed. "I'll keep that in mind." "Shhh!" Doc placed one of his long index fingers in front of his lips, and used the other to point at Captain Sanzotti. "The poor dear hardly had time to sleep during negotiations," he whispered. Stifling any further laughter, Hermione and Doc tiptoed out of the Cruiser and encountered Ironheart giving Rachel Esklove and Ginny instructions. "I want this Cruiser recharged as fast as humanly possible." "Yes, sir!" Ginny and Rachel chorused. Hermione rushed over to Ginny and engulfed her in a quick hug before she pulled back. "Ginny, aren't you supposed to have the week off? What about preparations for the wedding?" "Everything's been taken care of. The rings are here, the specifics of the reception have been arranged—" "What about your dress?" "I get to try on the finished dress today. If anything's wrong with it, I'll still have tomorrow and the morning before the wedding to make adjustments. The others could really use my help here right now." "You know, I suppose there's an advantage to being fitted at the last minute," Rachel said. "What would that be?" Hermione said, eyeing her doubtfully. "If the dress is made weeks in advance, you have to watch your weight! I know it's easy enough to expand the dress a little, but the implicit humiliation…" she trailed off, melodramatically holding the back of her hand against her forehead. Ginny giggled, and Hermione managed a chuckle too. Ironheart, who had been looking on so far, cleared his throat and gave Hermione a questioning look. "Excuse me, but did Gustava return with you?" "The long hours have taken their toll on her. She's napping on the couch," Hermione replied. "I didn't have the heart to wake her." "Then I'd better wake her. Her first grandchild was born a few hours ago," Ironheart said, before he strode up the loading ramp, looking very pleased about something. "I didn't know Captain Sanzotti had any children," Rachel said. "Oh no, she has a son—Heidi told me," Ginny said. Her face lit up as a thought dawned on her. "Oh, no wonder Commander Ironheart looks so happy. Captain Sanzotti's son is married to Yanamari, remember? It's his grandchild too." "That explains it." "Ginny, do you know where Harry is?" Hermione asked "He's working out in the Training Hall." "Thanks." "I hope he doesn't demolish any more golems," Rachel grumbled. "We have better things to do down here than fix things he's wrecked." "Will you be there when I try on the dress?" Ginny called after Hermione. "We're meeting at the town house." Hermione pondered that question. Her discussion with Harry wouldn't take that long. "I'll be at home preparing for the Weasley invasion. Give me a call when it's time." * He could fly out of the golems' reach, but that would defeat the purpose of the exercise. Instead he stood his ground and allowed the blue golems to charge him. To Harry, the charge felt more like a timid tortoise trying to approach him. He knew he could smash every one of them a dozen times over in the time it would take them to reach him. But the kids needed to see the action clearly in order to learn something. He immediately smiled inwardly at his thought. The eldest of those 'kids' was a few months older than he was. No wonder Wolfe kept calling Harry 'kid' until this very day. He'd been in the Order for years, before Harry joined. The recruits gasped as Harry casually spun out of the path of a golem's punch, grabbing its wrist and pulling, twirling around his centre of gravity as he spun, and throwing the golem onto another one that had been coming at him. He continued his turn to face the third golem, and repeated the process. The recruits applauded when the third golem crashed into the other two, which had been about to charge again. "End exercise," Harry commanded, preventing the golems from charging again. Then he turned to face the students. "Strength is important, but using your opponent's strength against him makes things much easier. Practice the techniques you've learnt last week on each other. Then you can each pick a white golem to train with." From the corner of his eye, he saw Hermione standing behind the glass in the observation room. Her pointed look told him that she wanted to talk to him about something. "Danielle, Rolf, make sure everything is done properly. I'll be right back." He took to the air and turned himself intangible in order to float through the glass. "Do you have any idea how creepy it is when you do that?" Hermione asked, after he landed in front of her. "Hello to you too, Hermione. How was Japan?" "I think they try to kill people with formalities," Hermione sighed. "Gavin told me that Mayumi's recent reforms made it less so, but I hardly noticed. Reading about their tea ceremony really isn't the same as sitting through one. The master of ceremonies made Binns look like a very entertaining fellow, and this man was alive." She pursed her lips pensively. "Or maybe being a Ranger and living with Ron lowered my tolerance for boredom." "That's a possibility," Harry laughed. "So, are you wondering about the wedding preparations? Worried that Ron and I made a mess of things?" "It isn't polite to read my mind like that." "I wasn't. I just know you." Hermione blushed at the retort. "I'm worried about the cake. Lilia told me that Ron had taken care of it, but a groom's cake is quite small." "Not this groom's cake. It's five-by-five feet, divided equally into four different types of chocolate cake," Harry explained. "I hope no-one's allergic to chocolate. Was that it?" "One more question. Who will give Ginny away?" "If Wolfe doesn't get back from his mission in time, Ron will be the Guardian. But if he does, as we expect he will, Ron will be the Summoner. So he'll be giving Ginny away. You've heard that Heidi's going to be the Maiden, right?" Harry asked, hoping that Hermione wouldn't be offended. "Yes, they called me and asked me if I was okay with it. Considering that Heidi's been fulfilling many of the Maiden's duties already, I think it's an excellent idea. Of course, I still expect a role in the ceremony." "Ron thought you would. You get to be the East Keeper. We had a bit of trouble assigning the roles of Keepers. Ideally the Keepers should be people who have something in common with the bride, and with each other. We thought about asking others from the Order to do it, but that would make everyone inside the circle a Ranger—except the priest, of course. Instead we've decided to give Ginny's sisters-in-law the roles. Since Jasmine already attended the bridal shower, she chose to forfeit her position in favour of those who hadn't." "This was Ron's idea too?" "Nicolai's, actually." A devilish smile appeared on Hermione's face as Harry mentioned Nicolai. "Tell me, are the stories about him true?" "That he's grown about a foot since you last saw him, and that he can make women drool at the sight of him? Yep." "Unbelievable. I have to see that for myself." Harry fought hard to keep a straight face. Ginny had told pretty much everybody how Heidi had behaved in Nicolai's presence. Ron had vowed that if Hermione reacted like Heidi had, he'd rub it in so hard that Hermione would never give him any grief about his reaction to Veela women again. "You'll see him tomorrow. God help womankind, but Charlie Jr invited him and Mary on the family outing." "Speaking of which, tell the boys to try and contain themselves at your stag party tonight. If all her sons turn out to be too hung-over to attend the family outing, Molly will never let you hear the end of it," Hermione warned. Harry shrugged. "I can only speak for myself, but I'm sure that the Weasley brothers are already aware of this. They'll behave themselves." Hermione glanced at her watch. "Well, I'd better go home and make the basement fit for Molly's habitation. Angelina and the younger twins get one guestroom. Arthur, the girls, and Fred, get the other." Harry chuckled. Ron had started to clear it out the day before, but after a few hours he'd ended up calling Harry and telling him that magically adding another few floors would be less of a bother. However, Concordian law demanded that buildings had to be structurally sound by standards akin to Muggle ones. Magic could not be used to sustain buildings, although it could be used to enhance their strength. "What about the study in the attic?" Hermione shook her head resolutely. "Out of the question. First of all, it would take me ages to put everything back when the visitors are gone again. Secondly, we'd always intended to turn the basement into a semi-independent living space. In fact, there's a shower and bathtub combination behind the mountain of rubble. And lastly, it'll be easier for Molly to climb down one flight of stairs than to ascend two." "Would you like me to help? My ghost trick can come in pretty handy." "That would be wonderful. You could keep Ron company while I go to the town house to see the wedding dress." "Maybe Ron and I ought to stop by. The way Heidi's been going on about the dress really made me curious." Hermione leaned forward and playfully jabbed Harry in the chest with two fingers. "You'll have to stay away. It's bad luck to see the bride in her dress before the wedding." Then she turned on her heel and strode out of the observation room. "Since when do you believe in such superstitions?" Harry called after her. "Since it began serving my purposes!" Hermione's voice came back. Smiling to himself, Harry floated through the wall and returned to his class. * "What's keeping Regina?" Heidi wondered out loud, pacing back and forth, her mood becoming fouler and fouler every second. The young seamstress was two hours late. In less than a half-hour, the Weasleys would arrive in Concordia. There wasn't much time left. "Maybe something has happened," Hermione said, concern etched across her face. Her shop's in the bad neighbourhood. She could have been—" The doorbell rang, interrupting Hermione's sentence. Heidi aborted her pacing pattern and sprinted out of the parlour, towards the door. Ginny heard the telltale creak as it swung open. "Max? You're back." Since becoming Galatea's stepsister and spending nearly all her free time with her godson Henry, Heidi had joined the select group of women who called Wolfe by his first name. On his part, Wolfe had gradually learned to accept her presence in his home. His sons were very fond of 'Aunt Heidi', so he never really had much choice. Wolfe strode into the parlour, with Heidi close behind him. "Yeah, I'm back. I've got some good news and some bad news," he said, stepping into the parlour. "Is Regina all right?" Ginny asked. "She will be, very soon." "What happened?" "Medea Aconit slipped into the city with plans to kill you. The vampire attacks served the purpose of getting me out of the city. She knew that I would see through her deception if I were around." Hermione looked incredulous. "What? But how did she—" "Apparently one of the employees of the witch who sold you the fabric for the gowns was a member of the Thieves' Fellowship. He spread the word that Regina was going to make your gown. She'd already arranged for passage into Concordia, because she'd been planning to poison you, and a whole lot of guests through the food," Wolfe said. "Not that it would have worked. Captain Kovalenko assigned ten Rangers to the task of making sure that didn't happen. We would have caught her if she'd tried it." Ginny failed to contain her annoyance. "And you didn't tell me?" "We didn't want to ruin your moment with those worries," Wolfe said apologetically. "Oh, never mind," Ginny huffed. She knew they had meant well, and the pre-wedding bliss had been sort of nice. "There's something that has me confused, though. If those vampire attacks were meant to draw you away from Concordia, she shouldn't have told the vampires about it. She should've known that you'd get the information out of their minds, right?" "She's a better schemer than that, so I doubt she told those vampires exactly why they had to go on a killing spree, in case they were caught. Anyway, I didn't get the information from their minds. I was still tracking them six hours ago. I was getting closer, but I wouldn't have caught up with them until tomorrow. If it hadn't been for my enhanced senses transferred from the pendants, they would have been able to toy with me and lead me on a wild goose chase like they intended to, and I wouldn't have caught them at all." "Then how—" Wolfe raised his hand to cut her off. "I would've concluded that I'd been lured away, but at that point it would have been too late. Fortunately, Commander Ironheart's plan to cut Wormtail loose with a parasitic personality has paid off. He's become quite the mid-level information broker over the past few years. Aconit used one of his people to pass her instructions on to the vamps she hired." "How did he find you?" Hermione asked. "I paid him a visit," Wolfe explained. "When I realised that those vampires were probably keeping me busy, I went to the rat's nest and milked him for information." Heidi's eyes narrowed. "He knew what Medea Aconit was planning?" Wolfe shook his head. "No, but he knew that she had sent a message to the vampires I was chasing. That was enough for me to know that she wanted me out of Concordia. I assumed that she wanted me out of the way to try and kill you. The fact that she'd lured me away suggested that she was using a strategy that required her to get close to you, personally." "Wait a minute," Hermione interrupted. "If that's true, Harry would have discovered her too." "Maybe," Wolfe conceded. "But very few people know that Harry and I copied each other's powers. It was a blind spot in her intelligence. Still, she had tradition on her side. Everyone knows that the groom isn't supposed to see the bride in her dress until the wedding ceremony. Harry wouldn't have been around to protect Ginny." Hermione groaned. "I can't believe it, I told Harry to stay away because of that!" "It's all right, little sister. It doesn't matter anymore." Ginny ran the facts through her mind and deduced how Medea Aconit had planned to kill her. "She was going to poison the dress." Wolfe smiled. "I reached the same conclusion. Fortunately, I caught her before she got the chance. When Geo escorts Regina here, you can put on the dress right away." "She came into the city with the help of the Thieves' Fellowship, didn't she?" Heidi said The Rangers knew that there was another back door into Nomad Island, aside from the Citadel, and they knew it was controlled by the Thieves' Fellowship. "That's the part that worries me. They used to know better than to allow people on our black list into Nomad Island," Wolfe said. "I'm going to have a chat with their leaders." "Was Medea acting alone?" Ginny asked, suddenly wondering if she was part of a larger operation. "Yes. It was her own initiative. Still, it would probably be a good idea to step up our vigilance. I'll split myself up tomorrow to supervise the baking of the cakes and the preparation of the other food." "I don't believe this!" Heidi growled. "You may have caught her, but she still completely ruined the wedding. Now we'll have to look over our shoulders all the time." Ginny sighed. As upsetting as this was, she had long ago realised that it would likely become part of her life. "It's all right, Heidi. No harm was done." She turned to Max. "Can we keep this under wraps until after the wedding? I don't want my mum to worry." "I don't know," Wolfe frowned. "If we go public now, we might keep all those self-invited guests from coming." Ginny rolled her eyes. "Wolfe, it'll keep the people we do want at the wedding away too." "That's the downside," Wolfe said casually, though the twinkle in his eyes told Ginny that he hadn't been serious. "But it'll leave more cake for me." The doorbell rang again. "That'll be Regina." Wolfe briefly left the parlour and returned with Regina and George Ramos, who was carrying several bags. "Thanks for escorting her, Geo." "No problem, boss," Ramos said, while he gently put the bags on the floor. "The dresses are here." "The clock is ticking. I have to move quickly, lest the one who let Medea into the city goes into hiding. If he leaves the city, we'll have a hard time finding him." Ramos' face fell. "Awww, does this mean the bachelor party's cancelled?" "I won't attend, unless I get to the bottom of this. Cancelling the party is up to Harry," Wolfe replied, fixing his gaze on Ginny. "If he cancels it, the Weasleys are going to wonder why. It won't be the best way to keep this under wraps." "Then he can't cancel it," Ginny decided. There was no sense in ruining things for her friends and relatives as well. "Just find out how Medea got into the city, and I'll feel a whole lot better." "Consider it done. I'll stop by your place first, to fill Harry in on recent events." "He's at my house, helping Ron clear the basement," Hermione said. "But I'm not sure you should tell him. If you do, he'll want to go with you, and that might raise some questions too." "He can go with Wolfe if he wants to," Ginny said, knowing that her fiancé would feel much better if he had a personal hand in the situation's resolution. "After all, Rangers can always be called away on short notice, right? Just make sure that he doesn't miss his own bachelor party."
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