The Marriage Law is the creation of WIKKT
Chapter 2 A Bad Law's First Victim
When word passed back and forth about the proposal of a law requiring witches of less than pure magical ancestry to be married to pureblood wizards, Severus didn't take it seriously. Nobody in their right mind would pass a law like that! Forcing people to marry? Punishing them with banishment if they did not? Singling out one group for greater persecution? The Ministry of Magic would surely never be that stupid!
Therefore, he was astonished when they did pass it, his reaction one of incredulous outrage. What were these idiots thinking? Voldemort was not even dead a year and the Wizard World was again in peril, this time from a danger of their own making. This new law made a travesty of justice--curtailing freedoms, solidifying social classes, making discrimination and enslavement legal. It was a step of cultural regression. Severus cherished his world and his place within it. Now, he felt certain that he was hearing the faint beginning rumble of it's death knell, the foretelling of it's dissolution into chaos and anarchy. Any society that regressed from freedom to slavery was doomed. It never occurred to him that Miss Granger would be one of it's first victims.
At breakfast, the topic of conversation at the Head Table turned out to be the passing of the Marriage Law. There was much head shaking, tsking, and finger wagging about the absurdity and the injustice of it all. And there was hushed speculation concerning the fate of a Miss Hermione Jane Granger who, it seemed, was over eighteen years of age due to the unbridled use of a Time Turner in her third year. A Time Turner! What idiot put one of those into the hands of a student? Snape could have hexed the Gryffindor Head of House into the freezing heart of Antarctica for that blunder.
Severus looked for Miss Granger as the students filed in for breakfast. When he saw her, he couldn't help but notice an uncharacteristic droop to her step. She moved woodenly amid her relatively carefree friends, a scroll held in her left hand, her wand in her right. At one point, she looked up at the Head Table and her gaze met his. He regarded her gravely for a second before the automatic camouflage sneer hid his face. She turned away. So she had already received a scroll. That meant that someone had already petitioned the Ministry for her, perhaps more than one.
Damn it, he thought. What a waste of talent. To see her sold off to some blithering idiot for breeding purposes before she could even finish her education! For this to happen to any student was criminal. For it to happen to this particular student was sickening. By the look on her face, he could tell she was horrified, crushed. For someone with her ambition and hunger for knowledge, her voracious mind, this would be the end of the world.
She stared ahead of her, not touching her food, her friends oblivious to the pain she was in. Snape could have pleasurably hexed them into the Deep Freeze as well, and the Headmaster along with them! From the conversation floating around him at the Head Table, he could tell that the old fool actually favored this law. What a stupid, senile, old bastard-- sentimental over marriage and babies even if the mothers of those babies were taken against their will! The Wizarding World was definitely heading to Hell at rocket speed if Albus Dumbledore approved of an insane law like this!
A movement from the Gryffindor table brought his attention back to Miss Granger. She stood up, wand in hand, and advanced toward the Head Table. She stopped in front of the beaming curious Headmaster and placed her scroll deliberately on the table in front of him. She carefully pointed her wand at herself, tip touching the base of her throat, and pronounced, "Avada Kedavra!"
There was a brilliant green flash and Miss Granger crumpled to the floor, wand rolling away from her limp hand. The Great Hall erupted into instant confusion. Students screamed. Glassware crashed. People moved about frantically like ants in a stepped on hill. Few but Snape had paid much attention to Miss Granger's movements so most of the students had no idea what had happened. Students pushed and shoved one another trying to get closer to the scene, even if it meant clamoring over their fellows to get a better look. Others tried to flee, but many of them simply blundered about in terror thinking that the Hall was under attack of some kind.
The mess at the Head Table was just as bad. Teachers milled about each other, rushing to the unconscious student and then holding back when they reached her, uncertain of what to do. Dumbledore was just standing in front of her at his place at the Head Table, just standing in shock, a dawning of guilt and self recrimination in his mild blue eyes.
Severus pushed his way savagely past the other teachers. "Get back! Move away, all of you!" He snarled. They made room for him and he knelt to the prone figure on the floor, fingers feeling for a pulse. He knew it would be there.
"Is she...dead, Severus?" Whispered a stunned and horrified McGonagall.
"No, of course not! The Avada Kedavra doesn't work on oneself! You should know that!" Snape looked accusingly from her to the Headmaster. "But she'll find a better way next time! I hope you're satisfied!" He fumed in earshot only of the teachers around him. "Brilliant, capable young witches withheld from any decent career! Killing themselves rather than facing that! I wonder how many others will try this!" He picked up Hermione's limp form and strode toward the door. "Out of my way!" He ordered, and the confused crowd parted from him, Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall following in his wake.
At the hospital wing, Severus marched commandingly through the wards and into a private room where he laid Miss Granger carefully on a hospital bed and turned to Madam Pomfrey. "She will wake in a few minutes. I take it there is chocolate in the room?" The witch nurse nodded. "Leave her to me. I will stay with her until she awakens." Madam Pomfrey nodded and left. McGonagall didn't move.
"As Head of her house, Severus, I should be the one to stay with her." Said Professor McGonagall reprovingly.
"With all due respect, Minerva, that is precisely why it should be me in here with her when she awakens, not you. You can't say to her the things she needs to hear. She doesn't need coddling at this point. She needs a good jolt of common sense and reason!"
"I'm perfectly capable of that!" She countered with asperity.
"Not this time."
"Why ever not?" Stormed the enraged older witch.
"Your guilt for one thing!" He retorted. Professor McGonagall's mouth opened in protest but Snape didn't give her time to draw breath. "You're the one who gave her that stupid Time Turner three years ago and that's the reason she has aged ahead of her class to where that insane law can turn her into a baby machine before she's even graduated!"
"Damn you, Severus!" Whispered Minerva bitterly. "You know no one had any idea that this would be the result!"
"Of course you had no idea! Don't be absurd! But it still was a stupid thing to do, and you do follow my reasoning?"
"Severus, she needs kindness, not a lecture, and certainly not punishment! That would be nothing but cruelty! She's been through a terrible time, not only from this, but from the loss of her parents as well!"
Snape sighed. "I do understand, Minerva. I'm not a monster, after all!" Then he continued more quietly, "But you must realize this. The next time she attempts suicide she will be successful. The only reason she used the Avada Kedavra was it's exhibition factor. She wanted to make a statement and she has done so. The next time she will use poison, or a blade, and it will be in private." McGonagall hesitated, her expression pained. "I'm not going to eat her!" He said sardonically. Not today at least,the Potion's master thought to himself. He would savor that pleasure at another time...
"Just...just don't be too hard on her." Pleaded Minerva weakly. "What will you say to her?"
"Whatever I have to to keep her alive." Snape said decisively, his black eyes inscrutable. "Now leave her to me, please." McGonagall nodded sadly and left. Severus sat down next to Hermione's hospital bed and waited.