AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is my first Marriage Law fic, because I needed a writing prompt badly. The title and chapter headings are from an old Elvis Costello song, and I'll run through all the lyrics, at least, so now you know what you're in for.

I'm still not sure of the pairing! If you review, please give me your suggestions on who Hermione (and others, of course) will end up with. I'm also in search of a graphic for this fic. It'll happen eventually.

I promise not to blather up here too much…on with the show!

Chapter 2 - You can put your money where your mouth is but you're so unsure

"Granger, you may as well sit down," Draco said, after the two wizards had departed, and he'd returned to the table and Summoned two large tea mugs. "I'm fairly sure, given what I've heard and read, that you don't have any particular place to be at the moment—other than possibly stopping by Gringotts, and I've already told you your tab's been comped."

Hermione fumed for a minute and then sat back down. Although she was loath to admit it, Malfoy was correct. Her plans for today had involved little more than sleeping off last night's debauchery and possibly ordering in takeaway.

"And for Merlin's sake, finish these," Draco added, gesturing to the remaining doughnuts. "Or I can order in some takeaway." He waved his wand toward the bar and a well-thumbed tri-fold menu with a stylized elephant on it landed neatly on the table.

"Are you doing Legilimency?" Hermione blurted.

"No," Draco said, as he glanced idly through the menu. "But you seem to be projecting. And if we're going to formulate a plan for all this, we'll need to eat."

"I never said I was interested in formulating a plan with you, Malfoy," Hermione said. But she didn't get up, and she accepted the menu when he handed it to her. "Chicken Tikka Masala and naan, please," she finally said. Draco reached in his trouser pocket, pulled out a mobile and a black Amex card, and ordered the food as Hermione sat, speechless.

"It'll be round in half an hour. If you want to run upstairs and have a shower, go down to the end of the hallway-the door's marked. My room is the first one on the right at the top of the landing. I'll open it for you," and he lifted his wand. "There's a stack of clean clothes in the closet, feel free to borrow something." Hermione looked down at her black bodycon dress, which was stained all down the front, as if she'd spilled a drink, or multiple drinks, or worse. She was fairly sure she had no changes of clothes in her bag, unfortunately.

"Go on," he said. "Lock the door behind you by tapping three times on the sink. Thorfinn has the room next to mine and he's a light sleeper."

Hermione stood up slowly, waved her wand in the direction of her black stilettos, Transfigured them into a pair of flip-flops, put them on, and then headed down the hall. Draco's room was industrial, modern, and rather stark, in keeping with the overall theme of the building, although a Slytherin banner (without wording) hung over the Eames sofa. The bathroom was of similar design, although in true wizarding fashion, it was rather spacious. There was an abundance of exquisite, expensive personal grooming items. She used quite a lot of the conditioner.

The only clothes that she could find that fit her were an old Slytherin Quidditch jersey (which she suspected he'd worn as a Second Year) and a pair of black leggings, although she did briefly consider Transfiguring what looked like an Armani suit into her size. When she emerged from Draco's room, feeling very much refreshed (the mirror had told her, "Brush 100 strokes, dear!") she saw nobody in the hallway, which was just fine with her. The delivery person was just departing, and the delicious smells of Indian food were wafting through the club-room.

"I really do wish the Ginger Minge could see you now," Draco drawled. "You are a vision."

"Oh, put a bloody sock in it, Malfoy," Hermione snarked, as she sat down and began to open her carton of food. "This was the only thing that fit me."

"Well, you could have Transfigured something. I'm all in favour of staying fashionably thin but you've taken it to the extreme. That was my first Quidditch jersey, you know."

"Ron used to say I needed to lose weight."

"Ronnikins is a bloody idiot," Draco riposted, as he opened his food. They were both silent as they ate the first couple of helpings, and then Draco added to his previous statement. "Pansy seems to think he's going to marry her...but…"

"You're kidding," Hermione chuckled. "If she does marry him, it'll be dissolved when the Law takes effect, unless they're really in love and they petition for special dispensation."

"I'm not sure she's in love with him as much as she's in love with his relative respectability as a war hero and all his Galleons…which is the thing that I most have the trouble wrapping my mind around," he said, as he picked up his water bottle and took a long drink. "She wants to open a boutique down Knockturn. Asked Father for a loan but…the well is pretty much dry there, until the renovations are done and the Connecticut house sale goes through."

"Well, considering Ron bought out Harry's initial investment in the shop, he's doing fairly well for himself," Hermione said.

"Come a long way from that bin…hasn't he?" Draco said, with just a bit of a smirk.

"It's really not that bad at the Burrow," Hermione said. "It's just…very rustic, and it's much less crowded now." For whatever reason, she missed Sunday dinners there almost more than she missed Ron.

"Oh, I always figured it was the height of backcountry respectability," Draco said. "It was Father who had all those issues with Arthur Weasley, not me. Old school rivalry and all that." He stared at the serpent patch above Hermione's left breast. "Glad to see you're able to look past that sort of thing."

"Well, working at the Ministry cured me of that fairly quickly…and hanging out down Knockturn."

"Look…your side won," Draco said. "Slytherins are survivors; it's that simple, really. Plus, you're much more fun to talk with than Pans; the only thing she really cares about is fashion." He sat down his fork and pulled off a piece of naan. "Oh, by the way….Greg was here briefly last night and he said to tell you hello."

Hermione immediately blushed and took a drink of water to cover up her coughing fit.

"Don't worry, nobody knows anything about it, at least as far as I know. And, seeing as how I'm one of those pesky teetotalers, I do hear all the gossip before it gets to the columns."

Late in the first month of Hermione's heartbreak-fueled pub crawl, she'd encountered Gregory Goyle working as a bouncer at the Claw and Stang in Knockturn Alley. Somehow, he'd managed to avoid Azkaban, and had spent a number of years under house arrest at Malfoy Manor, or so he told her as she lingered by the pub's doorway. They'd shared a cigarette and then she'd come back out and brought him a drink, because Mundungus Fletcher kept trying to get handsy with her.

Several shared drinks later; she concluded that she needed to take him home with her to fully exorcise the spirit of Ron Weasley from her flat. He was surprisingly willing. She wasn't looking for any deep conversations or any commitments. He provided no commentary, just very enthusiastic attentions and the occasional foot rub. She'd sent him a couple of owls over the past few months, when she felt particularly lonely, and he would dutifully show up, stay the night, and enjoy the mass quantities of lager and takeaway she provided him.

"That's…well, that's good, I guess," Hermione stammered.

"Oh, come now. He says you're good fun. I actually think he might be carrying a bit of a torch for you, but if it's the big, scary types you like, I'd recommend setting your sights on Walden, instead. His family have a hunting lodge and a castle, you know."

"It wasn't as much what I liked at first, it was more what…Ron wouldn't like," Hermione finally said, letting the comment about Macnair go unremarked.

"Well, did it work?" asked Draco.

Hermione awoke and realized that she was alone in the bed that she and Ron had once shared. She heard the shower start to run and thought briefly of joining Greg in there—he was rather well-built and they'd enjoyed bathing together on a couple of occasions—but, she had an appointment at St Mungo's for her monthly contraceptive potion and she didn't want to show up late and have to wait for hours in the boring waiting room. So she did a couple of quick Cleaning Charms, threw on a casual robe, and headed out to the lounge to wait for him. She'd tell him it was time to leave and he'd leave; he was good about that.

Just as she had started to pick up the Daily Prophet, someone knocked on the door, which was odd—she had very few callers and they all used the Floo Network.

It was Ron and he pushed his way into the lounge. He smelled as if he'd been sweating heavily, which was very unappealing. "Look, 'Mione…er, you didn't send along my Cannons training jersey and I'm going to the game and I really need it!"

"Ronald, I very seriously doubt that I missed anything when I…er, sent you along." She'd looked through the flat to make sure, in fact. Several times.

"But, I don't have it!" he whined, as if she was supposed to care.

"It's probably at the Burrow. Or at the store," she added, frowning. Somewhere in her mind, the noises of her shower stopping and a towel being taken off the rack registered, but she was so annoyed with Ron that she didn't pay attention.

"But…I neeeeeed it," he whined again. And then the bedroom door opened, and Greg came through, a towel (barely) wrapped around his middle.

"Harmony," (which was what Greg called her, probably because he couldn't actually pronounce her name, but she liked it nevertheless), "Ya want to go down the pub to get some…"

"GOYLE?!" Ron yelled. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"

"Oh, you could say that," Hermione said, as she recalled how she had to levitate the unconscious Ron up and send him through the fireplace. Molly hadn't been happy, but George had snickered and later that night, sent her an owl with a box of (non-WWW) chocolates and a note reading "My brother is a fool."

"Look. I have a proposition for you," Draco said, and then held up his hand. "Before you get any ideas- not that type of proposition, because I simply can't help but notice that you like your wizards in extra-large sizes…."

"Oh, do shut up, Draco," Hermione said, before she registered that she'd not called him by his surname. "I mean…Malfoy."

"As long as we're on a first-name basis, 'Harmony,' Draco began, "My idea is this. All the Ministry cares about, truly, is raising the birth rate as soon as possible…and eventually their tax revenues, I presume." He paused.

"I should think they're also somewhat concerned about genetic diversity," Hermione added.

"What?" Draco asked. "Is that some sort of Muggle business?"

"You've got a cell, I figured you might have gotten some education in things Muggle along with it," and she gestured to his phone, sitting on the table.

"Oh…that. Father has a Mu—Muggleborn assistant who handles all that sort of thing. I find it rather convenient, and when the Aurors come for inspection it does help make my case that I've fully reformed," and he winked at her.

"But you were just about to say…."

"Sorry, Granger. Old habits and all that. What's this diversity business, then?"

"Well, as you have probably noticed, extreme inbreeding is Very Bad and results in such things as Squibs and such intellectual giants as…well, as Greg."

"And Vince," Draco added. "Vince's family was well-known for marrying their first cousins."

"It's not that I don't like Greg. It's just that, well, he's rather more of a physical being, you know. So you see, some of the more progressive members of the Wizengamot have figured out the logical end-point of, er, all these single-branched family trees and are likely trying to fix that problem. In fact, I suspect it's one of the causes of the Birth Rate Crisis to begin with." Hermione recalled sending a memo to that effect to her supervisor, who had promptly ignored it. It was one thing to hire the Golden Trio's Brain Trust to adorn his department; it was another thing to actually take advice from a Muggleborn chit.

"I see," Draco said, tapping his finger on his chin. "You'll have to explain more about that to me later…don't mean to change topics, but we do rather have a potential emotional crisis on our hands as well. We simply can't have a bunch of forced marriages and miserable witches and wizards running round. Morale is bad enough! Arranged Pureblood marriages always took compatibility issues into account. My Father had started making inquiries to Mr Greengrass about his daughters; I rather liked them…." He reached over and put his cell and credit card back in his pocket. "I suggest that we hold an informal mixer, here at the Serpent, to hasten things along, so that those of us who don't wish to be, er, assigned a dance partner, can at the very least have a half-decent existing relationship, or the possibility of one, to hold those Ministry vultures off."

"Yes, there's a clause, the one that I suppose….Ronald and Pansy might use, although they are both Purebloods and it might not fly…but, if a couple is already engaged, the Ministry will consider not breaking the engagement, as long as you follow through with a wedding in less than a year from the deadline, and submit to regular fertility testing." It was that clause, she recalled, that for whatever reason had particularly incensed her the previous night, and that she had ranted about at length to Macnair. (He'd muttered something that had sounded an awful lot like "I know I dinna want some Ministry plonker messin' with me todger!" as he handed her yet another G&T.)

"Well, we only have a week, 'Harmony,' we'd best get to planning. And if I were you, I'd decide if you're interested in any of us before we have the party, that way you can concentrate more on being a gracious hostess…."

"I don't recall agreeing to be any sort of hostess," Hermione said, sticking her tongue out at him.

"Oh, who better, Miss Golden Trio of the Sterling Reputation? All that slumming down Knockturn has so far managed to escape the notice of Mr and Mrs Wizarding Smith…but it would most certainly be a shame if I were to send an anonymous letter to the Prophet's gossip column…."

"I can't believe you'd stoop to blackmail." Hermione started to stand up, but Draco held up his hands. "I wouldn't really do that. Look. I don't often say this, but I'm desperate and I need your help, or else I'll be forcibly shackled to some…background Hufflepuff!"

Hermione started giggling at the mental image, and then Draco joined in and by the time Yaxley and Macnair returned, they were in the midst of a fit of helpless laughter.

"What's going on here, mate?" Yaxley asked, chuckling a bit.

"Oh….Malfoy here has a creature problem," Hermione managed to stammer out, before they started laughing again.

"I could help ye with that," Macnair muttered quietly.