It looked as though a whirlwind had swept through Ron's bedroom. Or at least, Oleandra thought it was Ron's, judging by the decorations. She had emptied his sock drawers, torn the Chudley Cannons posters from the walls, upended his bed, and even ripped up the floorboards in search of hiding places, but all to no avail.
"C'mon, where is it?" Oleandra hissed under her breath. "It has to be somewhere around here!"
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted five figures walking with long strides across the orchard towards the Burrow. Cursing, Oleandra dropped the hole-riddled sock she was inspecting and hurried down several flights of stairs.
Breathlessly— Ron's room was on the highest floor of the Burrow— Oleandra arrived just in time to cancel her time-freezing spell on Harry, and pretended to be working a Transfiguration spell on the kitchen chairs as Ron, Fred, George, Lupin, and, for some reason, Beauxbaton's headmistress burst into the kitchen through the front door.
"What do you think, Barny?" asked Oleandra, tapping her finger on a chair she had turned golden with a Colour-Changing Transfiguration spell. "Does this look anything like the others?"
"Er…" Harry blinked in confusion. "I s'pose?"
Lupin sighed in relief. Harry was safe.
"You were gone an awful long time," he said, casting a suspicious glance at Oleandra. "Come on, there's no need to drag these back to the tent. Someone's already taken care of conjuring more for some surprise guests."
Oleandra merely smiled and nodded.
The unexpected presence of Olympe Maxime, the Half-Giantess headmistress of Beauxbatons, might well put a spanner in her plans. Oleandra had never seen her spellweaving in action, but if she was anywhere near as powerful as Dumbledore had been, running wild was no longer an option… let alone a last resort.
While most of the wedding guests were likely no stronger in combat than your average 63-year-old drunken Muggle pubgoer, Oleandra had already spotted a few members of the Order of the Phoenix loitering about. Those elites wouldn't fall so easily, and if you added transcendent, Dumbledore-level figures to the mix… even You-Know-Who would have no choice but to flee in the face of such an encirclement.
…
Unlike Daphne, Oleandra's parents had never really bothered to bring her anywhere worth visiting when she'd been younger, so attending a wedding was brand-new experience for her.
The marquee was larger on the inside than it appeared from the outside, as was so often the case with such things in the Wizarding World. Everything— the decorations and the marquee itself— was either white or gold, likely an aesthetic choice made by the bride, who hailed from France. As her presence hadn't been accounted for in the seating plans, Oleandra found herself placed at the very back with the rest of the surprise guests, behind the last rows of chairs.
The wedding ceremony began shortly after Oleandra had taken her seat. The proceedings didn't differ much from what she'd seen in films on the television. Bill and his best man— his brother Charlie— stood on a dais at the front of the marquee with the bridesmaids Ginny and Gabrielle, while Fleur walked up the aisle on her father's arm to be handed over to the groom, as tradition dictated.
All eyes were now on the couple at the front of the marquee.
Oleandra glanced about. If she wanted to slip back to the Burrow for another look around, now was the time. But just as she bent her knees to rise, she caught the eye of Lupin, standing guard at the entrance just a few feet from her.
Oleandra turned her gaze back to the front.
"Do you, William Arthur, take Fleur Isabelle…?"
Without the need for any tedious Bible readings, the ceremony had already reached the exchange of vows. With a few well placed "I do,"'s, Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour were bonded for life—or at least for life until they tired of each other and divorced. A flurry of magical visual effects burst into the air above the newlyweds as golden wedding bells jingled in midair over their heads.
The tufty-haired wizard who had presided over the ceremony bade the guests rise, then lifted his wand. At once, the canvas walls of the marquee drew back, letting the afternoon sun pour in from the sides. The chairs slipped out from beneath the guests and floated away to join a cluster of newly conjured tables along the edges, while threads of gold wove themselves into a dance floor at the centre of the room, right where the bride and her father had made their procession.
Oleandra nabbed a triangular ham sandwich and a flute of pumpkin juice from the trays of two passing waiters, then took a dainty bite. It had been ages since she'd last put anything decent between her teeth, so she reasoned she might as well enjoy the perks of being a wedding guest—at least while she searched for the Invisibility Cloak and the Resurrection Stone, which were presumably somewhere nearby.
Unless, of course, that had been one of Loki's lies in their little game. But Oleandra was fairly certain it hadn't been— which meant there was, in fact, a way to bring Malfoy's original mind back into his body, since asking about restoring Draco had been her first question.
Noticing that Lupin had stopped watching her, Oleandra drifted aimlessly about the venue before settling at the table next to Harry's. Annoyingly, he'd chosen to sit with Loony Lovegood, who was far more perceptive than she had any right to be. Taking great care to appear nonchalant, Oleandra sat with her back to the girl, glanced up at the old man across from her, and resumed nibbling on her sandwich.
Oleandra's eyes widened slightly as she spotted Viktor Krum— Quidditch superstar and one of her former Triwizard Tournament rivals— making his way through the crowd towards a disguised Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Luna. She had no idea why he'd agreed to travel all the way to southern England to attend the wedding of someone he barely knew, especially in the middle of a crisis.
But he looked angry.