LEGALITIES OF THE HEART
Summary: Post DH the saved wizarding world is rocked by a decree from the ministry that ensures life will never be the same again. HHr friendship - Non-compliant with epilogue.
Disclaimer: I own nothing – it all belongs to JKR
CHAPTER ONE
Dear Mr Potter,
Recently it has come to the attention of the ministry of magic that there are a disturbing number of squibs being born into our world due to the perpetual insistence of purebloods that they will only marry their own kind. In fact during the last ten years over 50 of magical pregnancies have resulted in a squib and the ministry have calculated that at this rate, combined with the heavy losses sustained in the war, in ten more years the magical world will be producing nothing but squibs and as a result will gradually die out completely.
To counter this, it is with great reluctance that the ministry of magic have passed a marriage law that requires all witches and wizards aged between sixteen and forty, that are still of a childbearing condition, to marry someone of an alternate blood status to themselves and produce at least one child in the first two years of marriage.
This is a desperate measure for the ministry and to ensure the continuation of our world a compulsory step. Should you resist then your wand will be confiscated and you will be reduced to a muggle status or you may retain your wand and will be required to leave the European continent forever.
The ministry of magic wish to cause as little trouble as possible so you shall be allowed to chose your own marriage partner. Once you are amicably engaged please contact the newly formed magical marriages committee to register your intent to marry and provided you and your partner are of compatible blood statuses you will receive a marriage licence in the post within 7-10 days and then will be free to marry at your leisure so long as it is before the deadline of 1st May.
If you have not registered an intent to marry by 31st March then you will be given the choice of marrying someone of the ministry's choosing or leaving our world forever. Also, in choosing a partner it is wise to remember that there are no magical divorces– till death do us part is taken quite literally in our world.
Best of luck in securing a happy future for yourself.
Sincerely,
Kingsley Shacklebolt
Minister for Magic
"Damn," Harry swore, throwing the letter down on to the breakfast table in disgust. At the moment he was choosing to ignore the part of the letter about how the wizarding world would die out unless people complied with the law. He had thought that once Kingsley had been confirmed as the new minister for magic, the ministry would stop causing trouble for a while but apparently he had been wrong. How the hell could sane, rational Kingsley do something like this?
So much for the thought that now Voldemort was gone for good he might be able to have something of a normal school year. Getting married and having a family of his own was something that he had wanted to do his whole life but he had never imagined that it would happen like this. It was the twenty fifth of September so that left roughly five months to find a partner and another month to get married in. Briefly he thought of Ginny who he had dated for a few months back in sixth year. For the whole time he had been on the run with Ron and Hermione, looking for horcruxes he had dreamed about her and the life they could have but during the final battle he had discovered that she had only been with him because of his fame and money and was really in love with Seamus Finnegan. Less than an hour later she had been killed by deatheaters along with Seamus, Hagrid, Professors Slughorn and Flitwick, Percy, Arthur and Bill. The shock of losing half her family in one go had given Molly the strength she needed to kill Bellatrix Lestrange and two other deatheaters but the shock had also eventually killed her.
Beside him Hermione hissed angrily at the same time as tears fell down her cheeks. Her hand that was holding her letter shook dangerously. "Bastard! They have absolutely no right to make us to this." All around the great hall their fellow students, especially 'victims of the law' expressed similar rage.
Harry could have pointed out that as ruler of the magical world Kingsley had every right to do this, but he didn't. Instead he just laid a comforting hand on her arm. As furious as he was about this, Harry was all too aware that this had to be even worse for Hermione. During the final battle she had been captured by deatheaters and viciously raped by several of them at their base camp in the forbidden forest. No one had known about this until several weeks after the battle when she discovered that she had been impregnated during the attack and subsequently tried to kill herself.
She had been saved but she had miscarried the baby, which she declared was a good thing. At the time of the battle she had been seeing Ron for a couple of months but they'd found out she was pregnant while she was still unconscious and he had naturally assumed that she had been cheating on him. Even after the truth came out when Hermione allowed Minerva McGonagall to view her memories of that terrible night he still acted cold and indifferent towards the woman he had declared to be the love of his life even though the sex she had couldn't have been further from consensual.
"It'll be okay," he whispered to her. "We'll work something out."
"No we won't, Harry," Hermione said, breaking down completely. "There's nothing that even you can do. He only way around this is to leave the continent." Once she could have snapped her wand and gone to live as a muggle with her parents but after she started at Hogwarts, the Granger family had grown further and further apart until they reached the point that they just didn't speak to each other anymore. Hermione hadn't been in contact with her mother or father since the beginning of fifth year and had heard that they'd gotten divorced. She felt guilty at the thought that she could have been the reason for the breakdown of her parent's marriage but rationalised it that if they couldn't accept who she was then she couldn't be held accountable for their feelings and actions.
"Well McGonagall, then," Harry said desperately. He knew that Hermione trusted the headmistress implicitly and that the older woman had become something of a mother hen towards Hermione since she had been attacked.
"She won't be able to do anything, Harry," Hermione said dully. "Not even Dumbledore could get us out of this."
She was right, Harry thought miserably. He suddenly realised that even if they could find a way around the new law they would probably still have to go through with the terms. The consequences of not doing so would be unthinkable and Harry knew that he would never be able to let the world that he had fought so hard to save to die out. Lost in thought he looked around the room, at all the older students who were reading their letters in shock and at the staff table were the younger professors were doing the same thing. Angelina Johnson who had taken over from Madam Hooch looked furious and Charlie Weasley, the eternal bachelor, who had taken Hagrid's old post, looked nauseous.
Across the table Harry could see Ron making out with Lavender Brown, with whom he had reunited only a few days into the new school year. He had clearly just asked Lavender to marry him, something which was going to put him on the outer with his brothers. Charlie, head of the family since the end of the war, had made it clear that if Ron was going to continue to fraternize with Lavender then he would no longer be a part of their family. It pleased Harry that the other remaining Weasleys could see what a cow Lavender was but he also thought that their reaction was because they all considered Hermione a little sister and especially since Ginny's death wanted to look after her.
As close as he and Ron had once been, they had drifted apart since the end of the war, Harry having come down firmly on Hermione's side in things. It wouldn't have been easy for them to maintain their romantic relationship but Harry was sure that if Ron wasn't being such a bastard they could still be friends and at the moment he wanted to kill his old friend. It wasn't so much the fact that Ron had apparently moved on from Hermione that angered Harry, it was the blatant disregard for her feelings. Ron had to know how much Hermione still loved him and yet he was flaunting his new relationship right in front of her face which Harry knew would be killing her inside.
Briefly he wondered whether he should offer to marry Hermione himself. There was no one that he wanted to marry and thought that maybe he and Hermione could build a good life together. He wasn't a pureblood but by the sound of Kingsley's letter, that didn't matter, they just had to be of a different blood status. He also knew that he was one of the few people that Hermione trusted and that he would always be gentle with her. But it would never work out, he thought as he came to his senses a minute later. He did love Hermione but that love was what he imagined it would feel like to love a sister. Marrying her would be just weird. The best he could do was to ensure that she found someone that would be good to her and understood that if they ever hurt Hermione he would hurt them.
Making that decision, though, left him with rather a large problem of finding a wife for himself. As much as he didn't want to get married he knew that there was no doubt that he would. He couldn't just up and leave the world that he and almost everyone he cared about had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to make a better place. There were lost of girls that would willingly marry him, that much he was sure of but was it Harry Potter they wanted to marry or the boy-who-lived? Spending the rest of his life in a relationship where he was a spectacle was not something that he wanted – he wanted to be loved because he was Harry not because he was the boy-who-lived and he knew that he would have a tough time finding someone that would be willing to do that. Maybe he should just wait until the 31st of March and marry whoever the ministry wanted him to.
That wouldn't work either, he realised a minute later. He would have liked to believed that Kingsley would make sure he was okay but the very fact that they were being forced into this proved Harry couldn't rely on his old friend so knowing the ministry he would probably end up married to one of Lucius Malfoy's nieces or something. So if he wasn't going to wait, he wasn't going to propose to Hermione, he didn't currently have a girlfriend and most of his friends were guys; that begged a huge question.
Who the hell was he going to marry?
The End: There's the first chapter done – please review. I already know who Hermione is going to end up marrying but I haven't made up my mind who Harry's wife will be so any suggestions will be welcome.