Today is my wedding day.

After months of meticulous planning, the reality of what I am doing seems to have come adrift; it feels like I’m floating in another person’s life and body. Everything is distant and hazy and blurry at the edges.

Lily is standing behind me, taming my wild, black curls into an elegant and intricate twist. She is talking as she pins my hair in place with Muggle hair pins and magic, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. Her words are a light, tangled blur like she’s talking in bubbles from underwater. Her hands are small and freckled, and they dart above my head like little golden birds.

My hands are very different. Aside from the fact that they feel damp and shaky right now, they’re long and thin and white… like spiders… like my father’s hands. I flex one hand, and I watch the skin move and shift over the bones of my hand.

“—have a ring there soon.” Lily’s voice breaks into my haze, and she pauses to beam at me, her green eyes bright and excited. She’s so full of light and hope, my golden friend.

“Yes,” I agree softly. My gaze shifts in the mirror from her face to mine. If Lily is the very image of her mother, then I am the image of my father. Nobody has ever called me pretty or beautiful. I am winter pale and sharp edged: striking, imposing, stark.

“You’re your father’s daughter!” my mother always scolded when I got on her last nerve as a child. I never really took it as much of an insult; it was always obvious that she adored him.

There’s a light knock at the door just as Lily is attaching my veil, and Uncle Harry sticks his head into the room around the door. “All ready, girls?” he asks. There’s a bounce in his step and a light in his smile as he walks across to stand at my shoulder. Lily might look like Aunt Ginny, but she smiles and moves like her father. “Oh, Grace, honey, you look amazing.” His hand is warm on my shoulder as he squeezes it gently and suddenly my heart doesn’t fit in my chest anymore; it’s hard to breathe around the ache of it.

“I’m going to get changed,” Lily chirps, and she presses a kiss to her father’s cheek before dancing across the room.

Uncle Harry waits until the door clicks closed before he pulls a chair over and sits down next to me. “All ready for your big day?” he asks quietly. His eyes are so green and kind; I’m horrified to feel my throat close up, tears prickle. I swallow hard and drop my gaze to my hands… my long, spindly, Snape hands.

“Yes, I am,” I say, nodding and clenching my teeth furiously against the suddenly overwhelming wave of sadness. It’s the happiest day of my life, and the saddest—the two emotions fight inside of me; it’s easier to drift away from the sharp edge that emotion brings.

“I have something for you,” he says. I can hear the empathy in his voice; he understands better than most people, I think. He takes my hand and turns it over palm up, slides a smooth, dark stone into my palm. It’s warm from his touch and imperfect: a thin crack bisects an engraved symbol that is etched on its surface. “This was lost for a very long time,” he says when I glace up with a questioning gaze. His expression grows very serious, and there’s a deep sadness in his eyes, now. “It’s my gift to you: something borrowed. I need it back after the ceremony, okay?”

A frown pulls my dark eyebrows together; I don’t understand what he means.

“Turn it over three times and think of them.” He stands up and leaves without another word.

I stroke the smooth patina of the stone with one long finger before I follow Uncle Harry’s instructions. I snort indelicately when nothing happens… the stone is still a stone, unremarkable and quiescent. “Crazy old Auror.”

“Honey, your Uncle Harry is neither old nor crazy,” my mother’s voice says from behind me, and I’m too shocked to let the gasp of surprise escape my lips. My legs are shaking as I stand up and whirl around.

“That is debatable,” my father says wryly, smirking at my half-translucent mother.

My lips tremble as I stare at them. My heart thuds loudly in my ears, and there is haze in my head like the world has fogged over. God. All the stress and heartache and anticipation must have caught up with me: I’m hallucinating, now. I’ve longed to see them so badly that my mind is manufacturing this illusion.

“Oh, no, honey… it’s really us,” my mother says. She stretches out her silvery hand towards me, and the loving expression on her face is as familiar as an embrace. A strangled gasp escapes from my throat, and I shake my head.

“Potter didn’t bloody explain it properly,” my father says with a familiar snarl. His expression softens as he turns to look at me. “It’s the Resurrection Stone, Grace,” he says. My hand is clutched tightly around the dark stone. “It brings us back to you, for a little while.” His tone suggests that he’s not sure it was a good idea.

Hope quivers in the air for a moment, and then I let out my breath in a shivering cry. “Oh, Mum, Dad…” I have missed them so much through the years, yes, but the hurt had eased and dulled into the background eventually. Today, though, the grief came back as though doubled; my life was changing irrevocably again, and I’d known—with such a sharp, piercing pain—that they wouldn’t be here to see me grow up and give my heart away.

“We have missed you so much,” my mother says. Silver tears stream down her moonlight face. “I am so proud of you… I want you to know that.”

I sink into the chair again in a cloud of lace and satin. My whole body is trembling. “Why hasn’t he let me have it before this?” I ask in anguish. How many times had I cried onto his broad shoulder, sobbed until my throat was raw? “I want them back, Uncle Harry,” I’d cried. “Please, please, let them come back!”

“Because we don’t belong here,” my mother says softly. “Because it was your life, and you needed to learn to live it without us. Be happy, be loved…”

I open my hand and stare at the stone for a long, quiet moment. I wear my father’s face, but my mother’s sharp, cool logic drives my mind. “I think I understand,” I allow with a small nod. If I’d had this stone years ago, I don’t think I’d be here today. It would have been so tempting to wallow in the past, to dredge my grief up again and again.

“Are you staying for the ceremony?” I ask hopefully.

“Not here,” my mother says. She shakes her head and her halo of curls bounce lightly. “We’ll be watching, though. We are always with you, Grace; pieces of us live on inside of you.”

My father gives me one of his very rare smiles—I absorb the beauty of it like a secret. “Be sure to tell young Weasley that I will find a way to haunt him if he doesn’t treat you well.” And because I am made of pieces of him, I understand that this is approval from my father, and I smile at him… my first real smile of the day.

“It was inescapable in the end, wasn’t it, Severus?” my mother teases, sliding her arm around his lean waist.

“Becoming a Weasley?” He chuckles softly. “Indeed.”

I stare at them for a long moment, and strangely, something heavy unhinges from my heart and drifts away; I feel happy and light and relieved.

“It’s time, sweetheart.” My mother looks like she wishes she could hug me; I feel the same way. I stand up and smooth my dress. “You look beautiful,” she says.

“Love you,” I tell them as I drop the stone onto the table.

“Love you,” they echo as they fade back to where they belong, now.

But instead of their absence feeling like somebody has scooped a part of me away, like there is a hole in my heart, I feel full and whole again. I feel ready to get on with my life, carrying their memory with me like a beacon instead of a heavy, hurtful burden.

Uncle Harry steps back into the room. "Let's get you walked down the aisle, Gracie," he says. "Louis is waiting…" A soft tingle of magic tickles at my cheek, and I feel my tears smooth away.

I smile at my godfather and nod. "Thank you, Uncle Harry."

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Thank you to Gelsey for proof-reading.