Contributory Vows
A response to the Marriage Challenge on WIKTT.
Pairings: Hermione/Snape Rating: R for things to come
---
Tact was never really Hermione's strong suit, if compared to her wealth of other virtues. She had always been far too honest with herself and early on in life had decided that all those who had the misfortune to be around her were to be extended this same courtesy. Sure, there was the occasional moment when the filter between her brain and her mouth actually decided to work, but this, it was decided, was most definitely not one of those moments.
"What's wrong with you, Harry? You look like your Firebolt's just been run over by the Knight Bus."
The most powerful wizard under the age of one hundred was sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, clutching the latest issue of the Daily Prophet, his emerald eyes wide with shock and his goblet of pumpkin juice set next to him, forgotten. He was in his regular school robes, and his dark hair was just as messy as usual and the pink of his scar stood out as a stark contrast to the pale skin of his forehead, but that was nothing unusual. Still, as Hermione eyed him cautiously, she could tell there was something that was terribly, terribly wrong.
"Harry?" Ron Weasley asked, stepping up on the other side of the black- haired wizard. "What is it? Is Voldemort back from the dead? Did they declare Sirius innocent? Did Fudge turn into a fluffy chicken while he slept and lay an egg?"
Even Harry, in his present state of shock, couldn't resist a rough laugh at Ron's last question. Instead of answering, however, he simply handed the paper over to Hermione, who immediately scanned the headline, a knot of fear forming in the pit of her stomach as she anticipated the worst. What she found, however, turned out to be something not even she could have imagined.
'AFTER MONTHS OF DEBATE, MARRIAGE ACT FINALLY PASSED'
Hermione's gasp of breath was enough to startle Ron and even Harry, who had known what was coming. The Marriage Act was something on which the three had long debated, and the end decision they had reached was that the Ministry, no matter how demented, would never allow the Act to go through.
Apparently they were wrong.
The Marriage Act was, as Hermione had put it so eloquently only a few days before, a piece of parchment not worthy for even Guy Fawkes' bonfire. There was little she wouldn't have done in order to stop it from being passed, but now there was no hope. Softly she cursed whatever deity above that had caused such a ridiculous piece of legislation to go through, but silently she was wishing with every ounce of her strength that the Act would be repealed before she was old enough to be affected.
Shortly after Sirius Black's death at the end of their fifth year, Harry had become so enraged and enraptured with grief that, stupidly, he had left the protection the Dursley's home had given him and opted to single- handedly go after Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort. Hermione and Ron hadn't learned of his disappearance until a sweltering summer day in the middle of July, when Dumbledore had summoned them both into his presence. With a heavy sigh, he had explained Harry had gone missing—and had apparently been missing for many weeks—and even though his magical signature was strong, the Order was having difficulty tracking where he had gone.
Twenty-four hours later, Hermione had modified a Location Charm and had found exactly where Harry was; Malfoy Manor.
Needless to say, only forty-five minutes later the place had been swarming with Aurors and members of the Order, all much more interested in the small area of burnt stone scorched into the middle of the dungeons than the small, shaking boy who had just defeated the greatest wizard of all time. When Hermione and Ron had finally been able to see him, he had been given a calming drought and was on the verge of a dreamless slumber. In those moments where he lingered between waking and sleep, he had mumbled a few words of the traumatizing battle he had somehow managed to live through—
—but after he had fallen asleep, he never spoke of it again.
After Voldemort's defeat and it was discovered that all of his followers had been pure-bloods, St. Mungo's did a test on the genetic pool of those whose purity of blood went back for six generations or more, trying to see if their mass call of arms to fight for Voldemort had been influenced by any 'bad' gene that had evolved over all those years of interbreeding. It was a ridiculous reason, of that Hermione was much aware, and when the Ministry had gone along with St. Mungo's findings that the genetic pool of pure-bloods needed to be replenished, or else they would essentially die out barren and evil—which wasn't too off the bill, Hermione had admitted—leaving only muggle-borns and half-bloods to pave the future for the wizarding world. As a result, the Ministry had put for the Marriage Act, a binding contract for all witches who were of age.
The Act required that an unmarried pureblood male was required before the age of forty to put forth a petition requesting the hand of an unmarried muggle-born female who was at least seventeen years of age. Once the binding petition was received, the female had only three days to decide between petitioners, or if only one was present, then that petitioner was the one to whom she would marry. The Act was without appeal or regulations regarding the lives of both parties involved, and the pure-bloods had as much potential to be victimized as the muggle-borns, seeing as how the patriarch was allowed to petition on a son's behalf.
It was almost as if the Middle Ages were back in fashion, Hermione mused, still too shocked to say anything regarding the Ministry's decision.
"Don't worry, Hermione," Ron said in a disgustingly unconvincing tone. "Maybe it'll be repealed before you turn seventeen."
"Ron," Hermione hissed through gritted teeth. "That's in less than a year—do you honestly think a law that the Ministry has gone back and forth on for months would be repealed in less than twelve months?"
She immediately felt sorry for attacking her friend, but in reality there was no other reaction his words would have elicited even in the easiest of circumstances. Hermione had always been exacerbated by her friends' lack of intelligence when it came to such matters as—well, everything, really, and to hear Ron speak so assuredly of something he knew nothing of—
It was frustrating, that was all.
"Hey, Hermione?" Harry began carefully, and she looked over at him, attentive. "Do you think the Ministry counts Time-Turners?"
It took her a moment to realize what Harry was asking, but when she did, her response managed to supply the school with a week's full of gossip in a single moment:
"Oh SHIT!"
With tears forming suddenly in her eyes, she dropped whatever pretenses she had held about eating breakfast and darted through the aisle toward the entry to the Great Hall, and once the archway was cleared, she ran past a startled group of second-years and up the stairs, heading in the direction of Gryffindor tower.
Blindly Hermione dashed down the halls, not even stopping to apologize when she crashed head-on with Colin Creevey, making him drop his camera and smash the lens. She cringed when she heard the sounds of breaking glass and a frantic gasp of breath, but she couldn't stop; Colin knew how to use Reparo, and sometimes things were just too important to stop.
When she finally reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, she was so out of breath that she could hardly wheeze out the password—"Gillyweed Copse"—but when the Fat Lady finally accepted her gasps of air as a password, she climbed into the Gryffindor Common Room and darted up the stairs, taking them three at a time as often as she could manage. Once she reached the top, she ran into the Sixth Year girl's dormitory and stopped cold in front of her trunk, staring at it as if it held what both dreams and nightmares are made of. Slowly she kneeled before it, and with shaking hands she undid the locks, too focused to even consider the option of magic. When Hermione finally pulled open the trunk, she snuck her hand along the side, feeling down into the depths of the wooden container, praying fervently to herself that she would find what she sought.
A miracle later, her fingers brushed up against the very volume for which she had looked, and while emitting a tiny squeak of anticipation, she pulled the book out of the depths and into the cool air of the tower, where she stared at the cover as if it had suddenly betrayed her.
'Logs of Miss Hermione Granger, September 1, 1993 through June 6, 1994'
They were to be either her salvation or her destruction, and with trembling fingers she pulled open the musty pages, looking down into the column that depicted the final accumulation of time she had managed to gain while in her third year.
"Three-hundred and twenty-two," she mumbled numbly to herself.
She had already turned eighteen.
Horrified, Hermione looked up from the traitorous book to the four-poster bed on which she had slept since the beginning of her first year.
That meant she was eligible to be married off to the bidder of her choosing.
But only if there was more than one.
A response to the Marriage Challenge on WIKTT.
Pairings: Hermione/Snape Rating: R for things to come
---
Tact was never really Hermione's strong suit, if compared to her wealth of other virtues. She had always been far too honest with herself and early on in life had decided that all those who had the misfortune to be around her were to be extended this same courtesy. Sure, there was the occasional moment when the filter between her brain and her mouth actually decided to work, but this, it was decided, was most definitely not one of those moments.
"What's wrong with you, Harry? You look like your Firebolt's just been run over by the Knight Bus."
The most powerful wizard under the age of one hundred was sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, clutching the latest issue of the Daily Prophet, his emerald eyes wide with shock and his goblet of pumpkin juice set next to him, forgotten. He was in his regular school robes, and his dark hair was just as messy as usual and the pink of his scar stood out as a stark contrast to the pale skin of his forehead, but that was nothing unusual. Still, as Hermione eyed him cautiously, she could tell there was something that was terribly, terribly wrong.
"Harry?" Ron Weasley asked, stepping up on the other side of the black- haired wizard. "What is it? Is Voldemort back from the dead? Did they declare Sirius innocent? Did Fudge turn into a fluffy chicken while he slept and lay an egg?"
Even Harry, in his present state of shock, couldn't resist a rough laugh at Ron's last question. Instead of answering, however, he simply handed the paper over to Hermione, who immediately scanned the headline, a knot of fear forming in the pit of her stomach as she anticipated the worst. What she found, however, turned out to be something not even she could have imagined.
'AFTER MONTHS OF DEBATE, MARRIAGE ACT FINALLY PASSED'
Hermione's gasp of breath was enough to startle Ron and even Harry, who had known what was coming. The Marriage Act was something on which the three had long debated, and the end decision they had reached was that the Ministry, no matter how demented, would never allow the Act to go through.
Apparently they were wrong.
The Marriage Act was, as Hermione had put it so eloquently only a few days before, a piece of parchment not worthy for even Guy Fawkes' bonfire. There was little she wouldn't have done in order to stop it from being passed, but now there was no hope. Softly she cursed whatever deity above that had caused such a ridiculous piece of legislation to go through, but silently she was wishing with every ounce of her strength that the Act would be repealed before she was old enough to be affected.
Shortly after Sirius Black's death at the end of their fifth year, Harry had become so enraged and enraptured with grief that, stupidly, he had left the protection the Dursley's home had given him and opted to single- handedly go after Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort. Hermione and Ron hadn't learned of his disappearance until a sweltering summer day in the middle of July, when Dumbledore had summoned them both into his presence. With a heavy sigh, he had explained Harry had gone missing—and had apparently been missing for many weeks—and even though his magical signature was strong, the Order was having difficulty tracking where he had gone.
Twenty-four hours later, Hermione had modified a Location Charm and had found exactly where Harry was; Malfoy Manor.
Needless to say, only forty-five minutes later the place had been swarming with Aurors and members of the Order, all much more interested in the small area of burnt stone scorched into the middle of the dungeons than the small, shaking boy who had just defeated the greatest wizard of all time. When Hermione and Ron had finally been able to see him, he had been given a calming drought and was on the verge of a dreamless slumber. In those moments where he lingered between waking and sleep, he had mumbled a few words of the traumatizing battle he had somehow managed to live through—
—but after he had fallen asleep, he never spoke of it again.
After Voldemort's defeat and it was discovered that all of his followers had been pure-bloods, St. Mungo's did a test on the genetic pool of those whose purity of blood went back for six generations or more, trying to see if their mass call of arms to fight for Voldemort had been influenced by any 'bad' gene that had evolved over all those years of interbreeding. It was a ridiculous reason, of that Hermione was much aware, and when the Ministry had gone along with St. Mungo's findings that the genetic pool of pure-bloods needed to be replenished, or else they would essentially die out barren and evil—which wasn't too off the bill, Hermione had admitted—leaving only muggle-borns and half-bloods to pave the future for the wizarding world. As a result, the Ministry had put for the Marriage Act, a binding contract for all witches who were of age.
The Act required that an unmarried pureblood male was required before the age of forty to put forth a petition requesting the hand of an unmarried muggle-born female who was at least seventeen years of age. Once the binding petition was received, the female had only three days to decide between petitioners, or if only one was present, then that petitioner was the one to whom she would marry. The Act was without appeal or regulations regarding the lives of both parties involved, and the pure-bloods had as much potential to be victimized as the muggle-borns, seeing as how the patriarch was allowed to petition on a son's behalf.
It was almost as if the Middle Ages were back in fashion, Hermione mused, still too shocked to say anything regarding the Ministry's decision.
"Don't worry, Hermione," Ron said in a disgustingly unconvincing tone. "Maybe it'll be repealed before you turn seventeen."
"Ron," Hermione hissed through gritted teeth. "That's in less than a year—do you honestly think a law that the Ministry has gone back and forth on for months would be repealed in less than twelve months?"
She immediately felt sorry for attacking her friend, but in reality there was no other reaction his words would have elicited even in the easiest of circumstances. Hermione had always been exacerbated by her friends' lack of intelligence when it came to such matters as—well, everything, really, and to hear Ron speak so assuredly of something he knew nothing of—
It was frustrating, that was all.
"Hey, Hermione?" Harry began carefully, and she looked over at him, attentive. "Do you think the Ministry counts Time-Turners?"
It took her a moment to realize what Harry was asking, but when she did, her response managed to supply the school with a week's full of gossip in a single moment:
"Oh SHIT!"
With tears forming suddenly in her eyes, she dropped whatever pretenses she had held about eating breakfast and darted through the aisle toward the entry to the Great Hall, and once the archway was cleared, she ran past a startled group of second-years and up the stairs, heading in the direction of Gryffindor tower.
Blindly Hermione dashed down the halls, not even stopping to apologize when she crashed head-on with Colin Creevey, making him drop his camera and smash the lens. She cringed when she heard the sounds of breaking glass and a frantic gasp of breath, but she couldn't stop; Colin knew how to use Reparo, and sometimes things were just too important to stop.
When she finally reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, she was so out of breath that she could hardly wheeze out the password—"Gillyweed Copse"—but when the Fat Lady finally accepted her gasps of air as a password, she climbed into the Gryffindor Common Room and darted up the stairs, taking them three at a time as often as she could manage. Once she reached the top, she ran into the Sixth Year girl's dormitory and stopped cold in front of her trunk, staring at it as if it held what both dreams and nightmares are made of. Slowly she kneeled before it, and with shaking hands she undid the locks, too focused to even consider the option of magic. When Hermione finally pulled open the trunk, she snuck her hand along the side, feeling down into the depths of the wooden container, praying fervently to herself that she would find what she sought.
A miracle later, her fingers brushed up against the very volume for which she had looked, and while emitting a tiny squeak of anticipation, she pulled the book out of the depths and into the cool air of the tower, where she stared at the cover as if it had suddenly betrayed her.
'Logs of Miss Hermione Granger, September 1, 1993 through June 6, 1994'
They were to be either her salvation or her destruction, and with trembling fingers she pulled open the musty pages, looking down into the column that depicted the final accumulation of time she had managed to gain while in her third year.
"Three-hundred and twenty-two," she mumbled numbly to herself.
She had already turned eighteen.
Horrified, Hermione looked up from the traitorous book to the four-poster bed on which she had slept since the beginning of her first year.
That meant she was eligible to be married off to the bidder of her choosing.
But only if there was more than one.