Chapter 1
Part One:
Somewhere overhead there was an owl tapping at a window. That’s what it sounded like to Hermione at least. Tap tap tap. Beak against glass. She had spent the better half of the past hour stirring a spoon of thoroughly dissolved honey into a cup of, by now, entirely room temperature tea, flipping the pages of the Prophet. Knife to her throat she wouldn’t be able to tell you a single word from any of the articles she’d ‘read’ at all. Her mind was doing that spiral of worry it was so prone to, and with nothing else to do, she’d just sort of given in to it. That is, until the tap tap tap from the second floor of 12 Grimmauld Place drove her from her stupor. Why an owl would go to an upstairs window instead of the easily accessible kitchen window just a mere three or four steps from her current place was beyond her. But it seemed to fall in line with the rest of the day (or rather week) she was having. Dragging herself up from the kitchen table, her right leg heavy and buzzing from being tucked beneath her for so long, she made her way through the narrow hall and towards the steps. It was dark, and Hermione hadn’t bothered to flip the light switch as she passed or open a single curtain this morning, so when she tripped with both feet over her own trunk sitting by the front door, coming to land with a loud thud on her knees, the only person she could really blame is herself.
It was just going to be one of those terrible days. She decided, as gave the trunk a little kick before grabbing its handle and tugging it up behind her. She’d arrived at 12 Grimmauld Place yesterday evening. Ginny had insisted. You just need to get some space. That’s what she’d said as she packed Hermione’s trunk for her in the tiny bedroom they used to share at the Burrow. The summer after the war they’d all been stuffed into the burrow together. Harry and Ron sharing a bedroom, Ginny and Hermione, even Charlie sleeping on a mat on the floor of George’s room, not daring to sleep in Fred’s old bed. They had mourned together, cried and laughed and no one seemed to mind much that the table was entirely too crowded for all of them. But slowly, so slow in fact Hermione didn’t quite even realize it was happening, they began to leave. First Bill and Fluer, to France, and then Percy back to the apartment he’d never stopped paying rent on, and then Charlie, and finally (after she’d returned from her final year at the only half reopened Hogwarts) Ginny and Harry had left for 12 Grimmauld Place. And now, six months later she was here too, her trunk smacking against the back of her shins as she wrestled it up the final few steps. She could have simply levitated it, she realized, but only after it was in the corner of the tiny guest room. You just need to get some space. Ginny’s words echoed around the empty room. Both of you. That’s what this was supposed to be, a little space, a “vacation,” so that she and Ron could get over their breakup. It definitely wasn’t Hermione leaving the only home she had left, the only people that felt like parents to her. Ginny had made that very clear as she rocked her crying form back and forth. Hermione wasn’t losing everything, even if that’s exactly what it felt like.
Tap tap tap. Louder now that she was on the same level. Hermione scrubbed her hand across her wet eyes, angry that she’d allowed herself to begin spiraling again. When Ginny had left for Harpies training this morning she’d made her promise no more tears. Tap tap tap. She followed the sound out of the spare room and into the little shared bathroom. Tugging back the still slightly wet shower curtain, she took a ginger step into the tub. The window, high and narrow and coated with some plasticky film that frosted it over, clearly hadn’t been opened in years. Cursing, Hermione stood on her tiptoes and pointed her wand at the thing, muttering an alohomora. It creaked open, flakes of white paint scattering. No owl. Coming as close as the edge of the tub would allow, Hermione peaked around the side of the window to see if she could spot the bird. Instead, a little gust of wind blew and the overhanging branch from the neighbors tree swayed back and forth. The finger thin tip nearly smacked her in the cheek. There was no owl. There never was, just a tree branch and her imagination.
What had she even been hoping for? Before the question had even finished forming she knew the answer. Ron. She was hoping for a letter from Ron. He was coward enough to send an apology by owl and not bother coming in person. That’d be just like him. The realization that, without her permission, a tiny growth of hope had sprouted over the last couple of minutes left her angry and a bit breathless. She settled herself on the edge of the tub, head in her hands and took a shaky inhale. She didn’t want Ron to write to her, even if she thought she did. The logical part of her brain tried its best to convince her that their break-up, while instigated by Ron, was a much better deal for her. How many nights of the past six months had she laid awake in his bed, listening to him snore soundly after one of the whisper shout arguments, as if nothing had happened? How long did she wait, day after day for him to apologize for him belittling her choice to train as a Healer instead of an Auror? And even after the break-up, when she’d moved back to Ginny’s room, wasn’t he the one that stomped around the Burrow and glared at her like she was the one that did the breaking? The window was still open, and she’d started shivering. You just need to get some space. What she needed was to keep herself busy.
She’d spent her whole morning wallowing in self pity at the kitchen table, but that didn’t mean she needed to spend the rest of the day following suit. She had plenty of work to do. While she wasn’t scheduled for a training shift at St. Mungos until next week, she had plenty of reading to do in a mountain of Healing books that took up nearly half the trunk.
The sound of the front door slamming made Hermione jump. For a moment, those old instincts, buried over the past two years, rose to the surface. Before she was even fully aware of it, her wand was drawn and she was moving towards her closed bedroom door. Pausing, she pressed her ear against the wood and listened, heart pounding. No shouting, no footsteps on the steps. But there were voices, angry voices, coming from the kitchen. Her stomach swooped.
“They should have at least fucking warned us!” Came a shout, followed by another slam, quieter this time, a kitchen cabinet maybe. Hermione let out a long breath and straightened. Her heart was still thrumming, a nervous bird in her chest, but not nearly as panicked. That was Harry’s shout. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t a surge of back from the dead Death Eaters here to torture her. The stairs creaked as she moved down them, the sound muffling Ginny’s reply. It was only half ten, why were they home? A kettle whistled.
“Will you just sit down?” Ginny said, also from the kitchen. Her voice was tight, stressed, but a bit more restrained than Harry seemed to be. For the briefest moment, Hermione paused at the last step, wondering if maybe this was no more than a lover’s quarrel. Maybe they’d forgotten she was their house guest? She considered casting a silencing charm and sneaking back up stairs. But just then Crookshanks chose to wander from the living room into the hallway, giving her a loud meow in greeting. The movement in the kitchen stilled. They knew she was there. Crossing the hallway quickly, she pushed open the door to the kitchen and found Ginny in the chair she’d vacated only a few hours before, the cold tea and open Prophet still taking up most of the table. Harry was leaning against the counter, fingers gripping the edge, knuckles white. The second she was fully through the door Ginny was out of the chair and wrapping her in a hug.
“Are you alright? We came as soon as we heard!”
“Heard what?” Hermione tried to ask, but her voice was muffled by Harry’s shoulder as he wrapped both Ginny and Hermione in one big group hug. When they both pulled away, she tried again. “What’s happened?” Ginny and Harry exchanged a wide eyed stare. And then Ginny reached down, dragging the pages of the Prophet off the table and flipped the front page to face her.
“It’s horrendous.” Harry said before she can even read it. “I’m not going to let this happen.”
“Take a breath.” Ginny said “Give her a chance to read it. Hermione did read the headline. And then she read again, slower this time because she was sure she misunderstood it. She must have. Once more, each word one at a time:
Ministry to Announce the Enactment of Centuries Old Marriage Law.
That couldn’t be right. She closed her eyes, trying to remember ever reading about a marriage law. She knew what it was, of course, there were historical instances in other parts of the wizarding world of small communities having some kind of mass arranged marriages. But never in Britain. Her eyes flitted over the rest of the article, far shorter than you’d normally see for a top of the fold front page news story. It was maddingly vague, just anonymous quotes from anonymous sources about the announcement that was set to be sent by the end of the week.
“They must be wrong.” Hermione said, looking up at Harry. His jaw was set and his wyes wild.
“Nope. Everyone was talking about it this morning. I went right to Shacklebolt. It took me over an hour just to get in to see him. You should have seen the hall outside his office.”
“Tell her what the bastard told you.” Ginny said, turning away from Hermione to begin pacing around the kitchen. Normally Harry, who had a fondness for Minister Shacklebolt, wouldn’t have let Ginny just call him a Bastard. Now he was nodding, as if he agreed.
“Oh he tried to explain to me that an entire council had been planning and reviewing this choice for a year and half, and that it was” he paused to do some exaggerated air quotes “‘in our best interest.’”
“But what does that even mean? What Marriage Law?”
“He wouldn’t give me the details.” Harry said, running a hand through his hair. A stress response Hermione hadn’t seen in quite a long time. “He just said it was something that they’d never felt the need to enforce, but had been put in place for exactly, what did I say he said Gin?” He asked, Ginny huffed.
“He said that the law was there for a ‘time of historical need as we find ourselves today.’ Which is just utter rubbish. I doubt there’s even any old law.”
“Have you heard of one?” Harry asked her. Hermione just shook her head.
“Nothing here, nothing in our laws. There was a small wizarding community in Australia that had a Marriage Law at one point. It was right around the time Wizarding schools were beginning to pop up around Europe, and too many people were leaving and not returning. So it was more about producing enough…magical heirs” Hermione struggled for the right words, “Marriage was part of it, but it was all much more clinical. And it ended after only one generation if I recall correctly.”
“So they’re going to turn us into breeding cattle?” Ginny shouted at no one in particular. “Too many magical lives lost during the war, is that it?”
“That might not be it.” Hermione said, although even to her own ears her voice sounded hollow and hopeless. “That’s just one example. I’m sure there are others. I just don’t know them.”
“Can we protest?” Ginny said, “Storm the ministry, I’m sure everyone is as upset as we are.” Hermione, who despite the overall feeling of being underwater that the shock of it all was causing, did her best to remain the level headed party, since both Ginny and Harry were still in major meltdown mode.
“Maybe. But we don’t even know the specifics yet. Maybe it will be nothing to worry about.”
“How could it be nothing to worry about, ‘Mione?” Harry said, finally remembering he’d put on the kettle and slamming a few cabinet doors. “Where is all of the bloody tea?” No one answered, since the tea was, quite literally, directly in front of his face.
“It could just be a requirement that we get married within a certain timeframe. Maybe there haven’t been many people getting married since the war and they’re worried about it. Still not great, but not necessarily worth trying to organize a coup. Minister Shacklebolt might be…” she struggled to find the right words before landing on “politically ambitious, but I doubt he’d enact some archaic law if it would actually be harmful.” Thankfully, her friends seemed to be listening since Harry calmed enough to pour them all tea without shattering any mugs and Ginny finally stopped pacing and joined Hermione at the table.
“I just don’t know what I’ll do if they separate us.” Ginny said, all the fire sucked from her voice, she just sounded tired. “We were supposed to be done with the horrible. We were in the good part.” Harry reached out and laid his palm against her cheek. Her head leaned into the gesture as his thumb ghosted over her ear. The sweetness of the moment, of the touch, felt like a hot poker shoved in Hermione’s chest. The ache of what she’d lost, or perhaps what she’d never had, hit her all anew as she choked down the scalding tea. Watching as Harry wiped a tear from Ginny’s cheek, Hermione was reminded once again of how entirely alone she’d become. A year ago, the future stretched out before her as the glittering, promising light. And now, even without this Marriage Law, it all seemed dull and ashen, a burned out fire. And while Ginny and Harry sat across from her, mourning what might be lost, Hermione could only mourn what was already gone.