Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. All of this is from my imagination only, and I am not profiting from these characters.

Summery: Five years after the war is over, the wizarding world looks to rebuild. The ministry passes a marriage law that threatens to upturn both Draco and Hermione's lives when it matches them together. Slightly non canon characters.

Chapter 1

The screaming echoed across the forest like a thousand gunshots. Hermione's head throbbed as she threw curse after curse into the darkness. Enemies stretched on infinitely, their masks and robes bleeding into the hideous night, making even the ground beneath her tinged with their evil. She was exhausted but still she threw curse after curse into the air. Her magic was running out. Her time was running out.

Hermione woke to someone knocking loudly at her door, as she choked on her own screams. Light streamed in her window and filled the room. She was safe. The war was over. She repeated those two facts like a mantra. But somehow, she wasn't calming down.

She took a deep breath and wiped tears off of her face before heading to the front door of her cozy flat. It was her neighbor, Mrs. Connelly, smiling politely beneath a halo of wispy grey curls. Hermione opened the door immediately.

" Could you keep it down my dear, its eight in the morning," her neighbor didn't have a short temper, which meant that Hermione must have been screaming for hours before Mrs. Connelly had been bothered enough to make it across the hall.

" Of course, Mrs. Connelly, I am so sorry," Hermione wrung her hands and tried to calm her racing heart.

" When you started I half hoped some young man had caught your fancy," Mrs. Connelly winked.

Hermione blushed, " Oh, no, just bad dreams."

" You know what they say about bad dreams, my dear?"

" No, what?" Hermione took a calming breath and tried to stay present, but the dream was so vivid it was staying in her mind.

" They mean something good is just around the corner."

Hermione frowned, " That doesn't sound right."

Mrs. Connelly laughed and started down the stairs to her flat, " Feel better, dear."

"I'll try, Mrs. Connelly," Hermione called quietly, " Sorry, again."

Mrs. Connelly waved over her shoulder and shuffled down the stairs in her little house slippers. Hermione still had some time left before her alarm went off but since she was up there was no bother going back to bed again. She put on some sneakers that were by the door and went downstairs in her pajamas to grab the Daily Prophet.

It was a brisk fall day, a perfect sunday to spend indoors with a cranky crookshanks on her lap and a cup of hot tea. Maybe later she'd stop by the ministry to see if she had any office post. In fact, as assistant to the head of the office of magical education, she really should. But if anyone needed a break today, it was her. As she walked up the stairs she deliberated and settled on her breakfast and the book she would read on the couch. She was working too hard, not taking time for herself, and that's why the dreams were coming back with a vengeance. With this firmly in her mind, she resolved to not let the outside world interfere with her lovely sunday in.

She breezed into her flat and threw the paper down on the kitchen table before turning to brew a cup of her favorite mint tea. Then she turned back.

MARRIAGE LAW PASSED BY MINISTRY THIS MORNING:

As our nation mourns it's losses, the ministry is taking a drastic step to ensure the magical population grows.

Hermione sat down at her table numbly to read. She must have read the article ten times before she was able to process it. She took in a deep, shuddering breath, and reread the sentence that was ringing in her head like a fire alarm. No, echoing, like the screams in her dreams.

In their official statement today, the ministry announced that "To ensure that no marriage that comes from this act is contested, people who report themselves as single will undergo the ancient and binding Maritare charm, which will provide peace of mind to all parties."

Mrs. Connelly was wrong. Nothing good was coming around the corner. In fact, if this article was true, nothing good would ever happen again.

The Maritare charm is an ancient and complicated piece of magic, for all that the incantation itself is fairly simple. It flows to the core of one's magic, the deepest well of where magic ability comes from, and taps into a person's inner essence.

" But that doesn't say what it does," Ginny whispered, her voice dripping with frustration.

" I promise, Gin, it's a soulmate charm," Hermione said, glancing around for Filch. It had been her idea to sneak into the restricted section after hours to find the incantation. After a day at hogsmeade together walking through the shops and having butterbeer after butterbeer, Ginny had finally shyly confessed to still carrying a torch for Harry. Hermione had been a little giddy from being let in on one of Ginny's secrets. Truthfully, though Ron and Harry were her very best friends, and she would never want to replace them, Hermione sometimes wished for more female friends. Ginny had her own friends, and she always seemed so glamorously at ease with people of either sex. Hermione couldn't even gather the courage to tell Ron she liked him.

" I mean I believe you, just…" Ginny looked doubtfully at the gleefully garish cover of Mrs. Malek's Love Spells Old and New.

"It's perfectly safe, I promise. It writes the name of your soulmate on your wand hand for a few moments is all. It'll just be a laugh," Hermione said reassuringly to the younger girl.

" So you've done this before, Mione?"

" No, but I've heard that some of the older girls did once. It's just a charm, I researched it. Isn't it fascinating, to think that your magic might be compatible with anothers in a deeply rooted way, sort of like a wand with a person. It's the most ancient magic there is," Hermione tamped down her enthusiasm as she watched Ginny grow just the tiniest bit bored with her academic interest in the charm. This was supposed to be a fun girly friend's thing, not a lecture.

" Well…" Ginny hesitated, but Hermione could see the gleam in her eye, " We'll do it together?"

Hermione giggled, "Of course." They glanced at the book's instructions before setting it on the floor and raising their wands.

" Ready?" Ginny whispered.

" When you are! One, two," Their eyes met.

They said it in unison, " Maritare Aspiritus!"

From both their wands came a weak, almost indistinguishable silverish glow. Hermione watched as the glow spread to her arm, her chest, all throughout her body. Magic rose to the surface of a strength she didn't know she possessed. In wonder, she watched as Ginny experienced the same. It was a heady, almost dizzy feeling, but warm and comforting: something that had been there all along. The charm faded until all that was left was a faint warmth in her hand. Ginny shoved her wand in the pocket of her pajama pants and looked at her hand.

" Oh, Hermione, look," Hermione smiled in triumph, as Harry's name (of course) was written in silvery handwriting on Ginny's palm.

" I wish it could be there forever!" Ginny whispered, " What does yours say?"

Hermione took her wand with her other hand. Please let it be Ron, she hoped silently.

She opened her palm and looked. That warm feeling that had been left by the spell came to an abrupt halt, replaced by cold dread.

Draco Lucius Malfoy

As if to stick the knife in, it was written in a handwriting that she recognized with revulsion as his. The same handwriting on all the nasty notes in potion and the bits of scrap parchment that he stuck in her hair when she was studying.

" No one I know," Hermione lied, trying to swallow the bile in her throat.

" Let me see," Ginny grabbed Hermione's hand before she could stop her: all those quidditch reflexes finally kicking in. When Ginny saw the name on her palm, all the blood drained from her face.

" Oh, Mione," She said quietly, " It's a quack spell anyway. I'm sure it's fake. I mean, whose handwriting is this anyway."

" Let me see yours," Hermione said. Ginny put up her now fading palm.

" I'd recognize Harry's writing anywhere, Gin. And his too."

Needless to say, that had put a damper on the evening. The last thing Hermione could remember was walking to the dorm in near silence except for Ginny's harshly whispered, " Well it isn't as if you have to be with the prick, just because some silly charm says so." Hermione had agreed wholeheartedly, but the spell had thrown her off for months afterwards. Every time he glanced her way with that familiar sneer she'd had the queerest feeling in her stomach, the dizzy warmth mixed with pure revulsion. After a while though, she was too busy researching horcruxes to think of it, and what a blessed relief that had been, in a small way.