Annalee McKinnon was the Maid of Honor.

The girls were all piled into Emma and Marlene's flat, doing a bit of self-care. They'd set up as though it was a salon, with rows of pretty nail polishes and fragrant potions for skin, hair and nails and little tubs of rouge and lip colors and balms and loads and loads of flowers and hair ribbons and clips. There was a tray of sparkling jewelry, and a tiara of flowers that sat upon the top of Meg's beautiful flaming curls. The whole thing was a taffeta-pink affair, with bubbling strawberry drinks - non-alcoholic, of course, just as Jasper's Stag On was dry, so was Meg's hen party - and little petit fours with raspberry jam and white chocolate icings. Meg was in the central throne-like chair, her feet soaking in a floral scented bath with large pink flowers floating on the surface of the water. Surrounding her on poufs were the myriad of friends and bridesmaids - Annalee herself, Marlene, Emmaline, McKenna, Carly, Alice, Lily, and Dorcas, who had her baby Hannah in a carrier at her side, rocking her gently even as the girls fawned over Meg. Lily was painting her fingernails while Alice worked on a complex, storybook heroine style up-do, weaving in flowers and ribbons as she went.

"When was the first time you KNEW it was Jasper?" Annalee asked, "Like, knew that you loved him, I mean."

"In a way, I suppose I always knew it. Or should have, anyway. Jasper was there for me every time I needed him," Meg said. Meg flushed and sipped her strawberry drink as all the girls giggled excitedly around her and leaned in to hear the story.

Annalee shook her head as Marlene offered her one of the petit-fours. "So you knew from fourth year on?"

"Oh before that. I met him when I came over for the tourney from Ilvermorny, remember. He tried out for the Hogwarts team... He was third in line for the Seeker position. James was second and ended up playing it, remember?"

"James wouldn't ever let anyone forget it," Lily laughed.

Marlene snorted, "Isn't that the truth?" she said, popping a petit-four into her mouth.

Meg laughed, "Well he was just so sweet. He was the nicest person I think I've ever met. And I remember one day having a fight with Jack Scout, the captain of the Ilvermorny team about no-maj and wizarding relations and he said just about some of the most horribly purist things I'd never heard said..." she shook her head, "And he just kept making excuses for it and he'd become friends with some of those terrible blokes from Slytherin. We had dinner with the Slytherins one night and Scout was very buddy-buddy with Mulciber of all people..."

"Ugh, I hate that guy," Alice said, shaking her head.

"So much," Carly agreed, "He's so gross."

"And I was so frustrated with the things they were saying, I ended up leaving the Great Hall but I didn't know my way around, really, and I wasn't sure how to get back to the rooms we were staying in, so I couldn't go far. I ended up sitting on the stairs in the entrance hall. Well Jasper Odair came out of the Great Hall - I don't know where he was headed off to, but he spotted me and he came over to tell me he was impressed with the skills I'd shown on the pitch during a practice earlier that day. I thanked him, you know, but I guess he could tell I was upset because instead of going wherever he was off to, he sat down next to me." Meg smiled, "We talked for hours..."

"He's so good at listening," Lily said.

"He is!" Meg exclaimed happily. "He really makes you feel heard in a way that so few people are capable of doing."

Lily nodded.

"Sean is like that," Annalee said, and she turned pink.

Marlene nodded, "He is, you're right. It must be the Hufflepuff in them."

"God I love Hufflepuffs," said McKenna. "I wish I was one."

"Girl, you could never be a Puff," laughed Carly, "You are way too bold."

McKenna laughed, "I know. And I'm too blunt to be kind and I'm absolute rubbish at finding things."

The girls all laughed.

"So what took so long to get together with Jasper, then?" Emmaline asked. 

"Well, I don't know, really," Meg said.

"You went back to Ilvermorny, for one," Annalee pointed out.

"Yes, but Jasper and I were penpals."

"Really?" Alice asked.

"Yes," Meg said, "We wrote to each other at least once a week while I was gone, and he was the only reason I wasn't bloody terrified when Mum and Dad said we were all moving to England that summer. I knew that whatever happened I had at least one friend at Hogwarts. I wanted to be sorted Hufflepuff so much, just to be near to him, but of course the hat sorted me Gryffindor." 

"And you came and joined us!" Carly said.

"But I was so scared!" Meg said. "God you're all so beautiful, I mean -- look at you!" she pointed emphatically at McKenna, Annalee, and Carly, who were all absolutely beautiful girls. "I was plump and had frizzy red hair and bucky teeth and a brash American accent and personality and I was so clumsy and I felt like such an ugly duckling compared to you lot."

Annalee said, "We were kind of bitches in school, too."

"Kind of?" Carly asked, "Girl... I was the Queen Bitch, there was no kind of about me." They all laughed.

Meg flushed. "I mean..."

Carly reached over and touched Meg's arm and the goopy green kelp-based potion covering her face was funny but it did nothing to mask the sincerity in her voice or her eyes as she said, "I'm sorry for any bitchy things I said or did to you, Meg. Especially when you first came."

Meg smiled, "Thank you Carly. I appreciate that." Meg paused, biting her lip, "There were some hard times, especially at first... and Jasper was there for me through that. Listening, and always so - so supportive."

"What a good man," Alice said with a dreamy sigh.

"I had so many self-esteem issues back then," Meg murmured. She looked sad for a moment, and Lily, who was holding her hand and doing her nails had sudden flashes of Meg's memories...

"You know, if you wanted to lose a few pounds, Annalee knows some really good appetite-curbing potions," said McKenna in a catty tone.

"Could help you shed those extra fifteen pounds you've got in your hips," Carly said pointedly.

Meg put down the muffin she'd been about to put butter on at the breakfast table in the Great Hall.

Flashes of going shopping for robes, of Madam Malkin letting out the seams, and Meg trying to conceal tears, looking up at the ceiling to avoid looking in the mirror before the stool that Madam Malkin had placed her upon for the fitting.

"They're heavier set in America," whispered Annalee to Carly one night when she thought Meg wasn't listening. "The food is just so rich over there... My brother goes to Uni in the states and he says the portions are ridiculous, too. It's a cultural thing so it's really not her fault."

Jasper's face was kind. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about this - " Meg said, grabbing onto the little folds of her body that bunched at her waistline, just above the hem of her skirt. "These rolls of lard on my sides."

Jasper stared at her hands a moment, then up to her face, "So?"

"Boys don't understand."

"I'm sorry," he said, then, trying, "Help me understand better."

Meg had tears falling from her eyes, "I'm ugly compared to them, I'm ugly compared to all the girls in this school. They're so pretty and I'm so plain and I just want to be pretty, too."

Jasper had put down his books and taken her face up in his hands and stared into her eyes. "Meg. You're better than pretty. You're beautiful."

But not beautiful enough for him to ask out, she noticed. Not beautiful enough for Jasper to make a move. Or for any of the boys to, for that matter. None of the Gryffindor boys ever noticed her at all.

Her Mum had sent her dress robes for Yule Ball in fourth year but the zipper wouldn't close.

And there was Meg on her hands and knees in the girls toilet after dinner, crying.

There was Meg not going to breakfast.

There was Meg, getting up early to jog around the castle.

There was Meg, pouring over the potions textbook, searching for the potion that Annalee knew that would suppress her appetite. There she was making it only to find that it made her violently dizzy so that she tripped over nothing and nearly passed out in Charms. There was Meg in Madam Pomfrey's infirmary, Pomfrey clucking her tongue and asking whether she'd eaten enough.

"What do you mean you're not hungry? I know for a fact you weren't at lunch," Jasper said. He was holding a picnic basket in the corridor outside Gryffindor. Meg could smell the food. "I'm worried about you."

"Well don't be worried about me, I'm fine."

Jasper frowned.

"Meg, you don't have to change yourself to be liked by those girls, you know."

"I do have to, though," Meg said.

"I think you're perfect like you are," Jasper said.

"I'm anything but perfect, Jaz," Meg sighed.

And she wanted him to ask her out but she knew he wouldn't. She knew he just said that stuff about her being beautiful to be kind. It wasn't because he actually thought her to be beautiful. It was the Hufflepuff in him...

But she wanted to be enough for him.

He was kind and sweet and they went places as friends in the summer. Once, he'd shown up with a bruise and she'd asked him about it and he'd told her he didn't know where he'd gotten it. "Probably playing with my brothers. Actually, you know what? I think Edgar threw a ball and caught me funny, yeah. We always rough each other up," he laughed. "Mum always warns us somebody's going to get hurt."

She just wanted him to trust her the way she trusted him.

To love her the way she loved him.

Maybe if she was better. If she just was a little bit prettier, just a little bit skinnier, just a teensy bit more like the other girls...

And that Autumn, she finally hit her goal weight. Finally made it. She got a pretty dress for Christmas and it fit, the zipper slid all the way up without any magical fix to the hem, without any tears or struggles or skin-tight shapewear underneath. And she could breathe - barely, but she could.

She floated to Platform 9 3/4 only to find Jasper Odair fawning over Lily Evans.

When she got to Hogwarts, the dress was balled up in a crumpled mess in her trunk.

"Ohh what a pretty color," Annalee commented on it before Meg shoved it away.

"Do you want it? I'm not going to wear it."

"Oh I'm not very good at taking in seams," Annalee said.

Meg shoved it all the harder under everything else and cursed the dress, cursed herself for caring so much. Maybe it didn't matter if she was like these girls after all. But she'd ruined everything trying to be, hadn't she? She'd lost the one person who liked her before she'd changed.

And it wasn't just Lily Evans that made her feel like she'd lost him. He'd stopped telling her about things, started getting shady about telling her stories about his life at home. He hardly ever talked about his family... Things had been hard at the Odair household, Meg knew that, Jasper had confided that his parents fought, that his Dad drank, that things could get loud... 

"How are you, though?" Meg asked.

Jasper shrugged, "I'm alright."

"But how are you really?"

Jasper laughed, "I'm alright, really."

But there was something in his eyes.

Then for his birthday in the summer, she'd written him with a card and not yet heard back. She assumed he'd decided she was too shallow... too much like those other girls...

Then she'd found out what was hidden in his eyes.

His father, dead. Jasper in the paper, his face bruised in the photo for Azkaban, blood dried on his face... God, why hadn't she pressed harder? Why hadn't she insisted on being there for him? She'd known. She'd known and she'd been so caught up in her own stupid problems - her own stupid, shallow problems...

She'd let him down.

Her fault he'd cracked with no one to listen to him.

Her fault.

She had to numb the guilty feelings. 

So she threw herself into what she'd become.

Then James Potter was dating all the girls. 

He was the challenge.

None of them could make him happy, none of them could keep him, none of them could hold his attention longer than a week or two. Even the prettiest girls in the school weren't able to satiate James Potter.

"His standards are too high," Annalee was saying.

But he looked at Meg and smiled.

His eyes sparkled when she came near, when she hugged him 'round the neck on the pitch.

He complimented her hair.

And he had nice hair, too.

Gods it looked like Jasper's.

And there was Meg, feeling triumphant on his arm. Feeling pretty, feeling wanted. And there were kisses and touches and James Potter whispering sweet words in her ears and the jealous stares of all her friends, all the girls who couldn't get James Potter to look at them twice and yet she could. With a flip of her hair and a smile, she could mesmerize him.

And she lay on top of him, her heart beating fast, the alcove warm and dizzyingly private. He felt so warm, too, and soft, yet muscle-y and he smelled of boy and spices. And his fingers on her skin sent sparks to every inch of her body, like nothing she'd ever felt before, like her nerves were on fire. And she wanted to give herself to him completely because he was kind and he was brave and he made her feel wanted.

Oh Gods Evans.

And she felt exposed.

Exposed and used and dirty and fat and unwanted all over again. 

Of course he'd been hers at a flip of the hair.

It was red, like Lily Evans's wasn't it?

And she lay in her bed in the dormitory, hidden away in the dark, missing classes, missing life, tears wet on her pillow.

She was fighting with her friends.

She wanted to crawl into Azkaban beside Jasper.

She wrote him, but she never heard back - of course. Nobody ever heard back from Azkaban inmates.

Even when he was out, he didn't write her back...

And it was Annalee who stayed friends with Meg, who wrote to her and hung out with her, who checked in on her, confided in her. There were things Lily didn't know, that the love magic did not show to her, but patched together with flashes of Annalee and Meg becoming closer, of Annalee's face softening and her demeanor changing...

"I'm sorry I was horrible to you," Annalee was saying.

"It's okay, Banana," Meg said and they were hugging, best friends for real now... and Meg was healig, one small step at a time, and so was Annalee.

They were at Fortescue's, then, and shocked to see Jasper Odair. He was gaunt, skinnier than he'd once been...  different... He'd been to Azkaban and Azkaban changed everyone, didn't it?

But his spirit flickered behind his eyes. Meg could still see it, even as Annalee whispered it was a shame. "He was such a good boy."

"He still is," Meg had answered, "I think." 

And he was engaged and Ethel seemed nice and he was so happy...

She wrote him a letter to congratulate him on their engagement.

Thank you, had come his reply. A short note, nothing much. But she refused to go without a reply, so she answered him back... and he wrote to her... and little notes at a time, their pen pal relationship had picked back up. A card here or there. A short note about something that had happened, an offer to come and taste some new flavor he'd imagined up. She'd made suggestions, too, and he'd written success stories or funny failures about exploding jellyslugs and using the wrong Bertie Botts and spoiling a whole drum of cream. She'd gotten long, messy letters spattered with spills of ale and firewhiskey after Edgar's death, and tear-stained admissions that he didn't know what he was doing anymore, that he felt more like his father everyday.

And Ethel found their letters.

Ethel saw Meg in the street in Diagon Alley.

"Please, whatever is happening between you two, just break it off," Ethel begged.

"Nothing's happening between us," Meg said.

"But there must be, he stays out at night."

"Not with me..."

And she'd asked Jasper in a letter. 

No, Jasper wrote, I'm not with anyone... Well, with Sirius Black and Bilius Weasley sometimes. We're just having a lark, I just need to feel something, you know? Anything at all. I don't feel anything at all anymore.

"But he does feel something," Ethel said when she confronted Meg a second time, stopping Meg from coming into the ice cream parlor one day. "He feels love. He loves you. He loves you more than me."

"Jasper doesn't love me..."

"Of course he does."

I was never safe at home, Jasper wrote once to her with a shaky quill after Ethel left him. But I feel safe when I talk to you, Meggers.

The Potter Stag party was the first time Meg had seen him in ages. And gods was he handsome that night. And their eyes had met and things had clicked back into place and she remembered that very first time they'd talked - really talked - that day on the stairs in the entrance hall so many years ago... and what should have happened then happened next. The letters became talks over cups of tea and they started talking about the things that had hurt them, about the pasts they'd kept secret from one another. They started attending meetings, they started being honest and real and not holding things back.

He'd never felt worthy.

Neither had she.

He'd always loved her.

She'd always loved him.

"It isn't sudden at all," he said, answering his mother's inquiry about their engagement. "It was a long time coming, rather."

"Lily?"

She looked up at Meg, whose beautiful hair was in the most gorgeous plait, woven with flowers and ribbons, like a faerie princess, and Alice was looking so proud of herself.

"Sorry," Lily said.

Meg laughed, "You looked like you were in a trance."

Lily looked up at Meg and smiled, "I was just thinking how much I love you and Jasper. As individuals and as a couple. Your love for each other makes me so happy, Meg."

Meg's eyes were brimming with tears... she could feel the love radiating from Lily, traveling through her like a current of emotion. She looked around the room at all the girls there. They'd had ups and downs and there had been times that they weren't friends, but they'd seen each other through it all in the end and now, older and wiser, Meg could count them all like sisters to herself, whatever the past had held. She smiled and said, "I'm honestly so glad that you're all here with me, it means so much to me. I love every one of you."

McKenna reached over and squeezed Meg's hand.