Ch 11 The Pure Blood Prince
Hermione needed a private place to read and think, but she didn't want to do what she needed doing in her own rooms, as she felt that that would sully her only retreat from the world. She'd never needed so much to retreat from the world as now, Hogwarts was no longer the same friendly place it once was, aside from the memories of terrible things that had happened there, so many 7th year students were hurting because of the Marriage Act and those unaffected were resented by those who were, that it felt as though everyone was at odds with each other.
She finally settled on the Room of Requirement, she could read the damn letters she'd received from the ministry about her prospective suitors, and she could perhaps do some research about the truth behind the marriage act, if the Room would cooperate. The room had at least provided her with a couple of couches a coffee table and a nice fire in the fireplace, so she began to read.
Severus had decided he would read Albus' book of remembrances, but he didn't want to do so in his office or quarters. In case he found what he read extremely upsetting, he didn't want to feel as though those few places he felt safe in were somehow tainted, so he settled on the Room of Requirement. As Severus entered the room, he was surprised to hear a feminine voice cursing.
"Those bloody sodding bastards at the ministry!" Hermione ranted.
"Miss Granger such language, if I didn't know you thought you were alone in here, and if I didn't agree with your sentiments so wholeheartedly I'd being taking copious amounts of points away from Gryffindor at this very moment," Severus said as he came fully into the room.
"Professor, how did you get in here?" Hermione asked without stopping to think whether it was entirely appropriate for her to question one of her professors about his actions.
"Same way you did I suppose, I stood outside the door thinking that I needed a private place to read something," he surprised both Hermione and himself by simply answering her question rather than snarling something at her.
Hermione noticed the book in his hand.
"Is that what you've come here to read?" she asked timidly, pointing to the book.
Severus looked at the book as if he'd forgotten he was holding it and answered her in that deep and silky voice of his with the most drawn out single syllabic answer she'd ever heard, "Yes."
"Um, well the room is plenty big I suppose we could share it," she suggested.
"I'm not sure that would be wise," he replied.
"Oh, why not?"
"Well, we both obviously craved privacy when we came here and privacy does mean being alone, does it not?"
"I suppose, but well it's not like I really wanted to be alone to read these," she pointed to the letters on the table in front of her. "I just didn't want certain people to be bothering me as I read them and thought about them."
"What are they?" he asked.
"Letters from the ministry telling me about wizards who are interested in asking for my hand in marriage," she answered in a disheartened voice.
"Well, at least it looks as though you've got quite a few to choose from, as of course you should have," Severus commented.
Hermione stared at him a second not sure what to say. She wanted to tell him just how awful her choices were, but then he'd tagged on that bit about how she should have quite a few to chose from and she wasn't sure what to make of it.
"Some choices, go ahead take a look at the lot of them, maybe you can tell me which I should accept, as I have to accept someone eventually," with that comment she sighed and flopped down on one of the two couches in the room.
"Um, well really if anyone should help you with this selection perhaps it should be your parents or your Head of House," he suggested as he sat down on the couch opposite hers.
"No, I'm not telling my parents about this, they'd never understand and Professor Lupin? No, I don't think he'd be right for the job either. Oh it doesn't matter, they're all awful."
"What makes them so awful?"
The youngest one in the stack is 53, they are all some sort of mid level bureaucrat either at the Ministry or Gringots and in their personality profiles they all sound deadly dull. Here read one for yourself," she picked on out of the stack at random and handed it to him.
"Delmer Farnsworth, age 58, Assistant Undersecretary for New and Improved Household Magical Charms, hair brown, eyes brown, height 5 feet 7 inches, weight 15 stones ten, 15 stones ten! Merlin's beard I'm half a foot taller than that and I'd consider myself portly at 15 stones ten!"
"Yes, he must look a bit like Slughorn. Keep reading you haven't yet read about his hobbies."
"Likes: watching quidditch and listening to the wizarding wireless. Thoughts on marriage and children: a wife should keep a clean orderly house and make sure the children are well behaved. This git sounds like a Neanderthal."
"They all do. I think this stupid Marriage Act was just a way for the losers in the ministry to get wives."
"Well you don't have to marry any of these prats. You can simply marry Weasley, he's a pureblood."
"No I can't marry Weasley. Haven't you read the Marriage Act?" she asked a bit huffily.
"No actually, at first I didn't think it applied to me and later when I found out it did," he paused and hefted the book in his hand. "I had other things on my mind."
"I can imagine," she looked at the book and wondered what it was but felt she'd better not pry at least not yet, maybe he'd feel like divulging his secrets later after they'd talked a bit more, that is if she could keep him talking. "The Marriage Act stipulates that older bachelor wizards get sort of a head start as it were, the younger bachelor wizards can't start asking witches for their hand until 6 months after the Act is in place and a witch has only six months after she receives her first requests to make a decision. So I will have to marry someone before Ron is even eligible to ask me."
"That's unfair, not that the whole bloody Act isn't unfair, but by giving the older wizards a head start as it were, they are condemning a generation of younger witches to marry older wizards!"
"Yes indeed, I mean I wouldn't mind it so much, if at least the wizards who were interested in me came from the younger end of the older wizards and weren't so well deadly dull."
Severus considered the girl for a moment.
"What do you want in a suitor Miss Granger?"
"Well, he should be under forty, intelligent and well read. He should prize education enough to let me continue mine and he should be modern enough to let me have a career despite having children."
"What no stipulation that he be tall, dark and handsome?" he teased.
"Why professor, if I said that someone might think I was describing you," Hermione gave him a smile as she answered
Severus puffed out a small laugh and grinned as he replied. "I doubt that, as no one has ever called me handsome."
"Oh yes they have, as prefect I've listened to quite a few girls with crushes on their potion master."
"Silly adolescent girls," Severus replied and made a harrumphing noise.
'And what about you, how will you go about deciding which witch's hand to ask for in marriage?"
"I really hadn't thought too much about it, as I said finding out that I am a pureblood has been quite the revelation, I haven't really had time to think over the ramification yet."
"Well you better think on it. You are just in the older group aren't you?" Hermione asked.
"I'm not sure, what's the cut off?"
The younger group is 17 to 38, and the older group is 39 to 60," she replied.
"Yes, I am just in the older group then. Well, I'm not going to worry much about it because I'm sure when Cissy gets here she'll take care of it."
"Cissy?"
"Oh, Draco's mother Narcissa Malfoy. She and Lucius were a few years ahead of me when I was a student here at Hogwarts, they were rather like an older brother and sister to me. I suspect that Narcissa will make up a list of eligible Muggleborn witches and then start having dinner parties and throwing us together until one of them seems like a proper fit. She will the undoubtedly want to handle all the wedding details. Merlin's Bollocks why did I ever suggest having them as the Slytherin House parents?"
"Do you not get a long with them any more?"
"What? No of course I do, it's just this situation will bring the maternal out in Cissy. It will of course be amusing to see Lucius acting as host to a bunch of Muggleborn witches. Well, I'll have to let her fuss over me as it will distract her from how distraught she is over Draco and Pansy."
'Narcissa Malfoy maternal? Amusing to watch Lucius play host to Muggleborns? Obviously Severus saw a different side of the Malfoys than most people did.'
"You know, speaking of Draco and Pansy makes me think of another reason I came in here this evening," Hermione started.
"Oh," Severus prompted her, not knowing quite why he found it so enjoyable to talk to the 'know-it-all'.
"Yes, I've been wondering if this Act was actually all that well researched. I mean the claims about the problems with Pureblood marriage resulting in stillborns and squibs and,"–
"I don't know about the squibs, but I do know that purebloods are having a lot of trouble with miscarriages and stillborns. The house of Slytherin is a house of nearly all purebloods and nearly all only children. I also know, and don't repeat this especially as they are coming here as House parents, but I know Lucius and Narcissa had a hard time conceiving Draco, many miscarriages and a stillbirth and then she had many miscarriages and another stillbirth after Draco. Finally Lucius said enough, he couldn't stand to see what it did to her emotionally, and so he asked me to brew him a potion to make him infertile."
"How sad, but even so there still ought to be away around mandating marriages between Purebloods and Muggleborns and forbidding Purebloods to marry. Why couldn't Purebloods have Muggelborn children by artificial insemination?"
"Do what?" Severus asked, totally in the dark about what Hermione meant.
Hermione spent the next few minutes explaining the concept to Severus.
"Fascinating, but I'm not sure it would work."
"Why not?"
"Well a magically baby is given more than just genetic material, they are given magic."
"Then how do you account for Muggleborns and squibs?"
"There are various theories about that. One is that Muggleborns occur when a witch or wizard dies and there are no members of her or his family there to absorb the magic, so the magic is released into the world and may come to rest in some Muggle woman's womb so that her child is born magical."
"And squibs?"
"Well, the theory I've heard on that is that a magical couple have sex and produce a child, but their magic isn't in tune with each other so no magic is transferred or not enough to truly make the child a witch or wizard."
"So it's as though they are physically in synch but not magically?"
"Yes that's it."
"Hmm, it sounds as though the Healers of St Mungo should research the options, also I looked and there's going to be a problem, the ratio of unmarried Purebloods to unmarried Muggleborns is about 3 to 2, so about a third of the Purebloods won't find a mate, even though they've been told they have to marry. Now how will the Ministry deal with that?"
"Probably by putting their heads in the sand like they do with most everything else they cock up."
"Perhaps you could bring it to the attention of the Wizengamot," Hermione suggested.
"Me, bring it to the attention of the Wizengamot! Have you gone balmy, girl?" he asked and stood up and began pacing.
"No, they would listen to you, you're a war hero and you're Dumbledore's son."
"No, I will not trade on that," he said angrily turning on her.
Refusing to be frightened by him she said "Then you are angry at him," referring back to the questioned he'd been asked the first day his parentage had come out.
"I, I don't know. Sometimes I am, and sometimes I'm angry at my mum and other times I'm just sad," he said softly and sank back down on the sofa.
Suddenly Hernione had a thought.
"What is the book you brought here to read?" she asked.
"An Account of Important Events in My Son's Life by A. Dumbledore" Severus said sadly.
"He kept a diary about you?" Hermione asked a bit surprised.
"I guess so, I mean I haven't read it yet. I just got it from Aberforth."
Hermione sat quietly, wanting to ask so many questions and knowing she didn't have the right.
"Go ahead ask, I know you are dying to, everyone is. You want to know if I'm Albus Dumbledore's son, why wasn't I given his name? Why didn't he raise me? Why didn't he marry my mum? Why'd he let an abusive Muggle marry his witch and raise his son? All are good questions. Albus' answers are as weak as Longbottom's brewing skills."
"I'm sorry."
"You're sorry, what have you got to be sorry for? You've done me no great wrong, and if the 'I'm sorry' was meant to be a form of pity, well take it back for I've never wanted any of that."
Hermione waited a beat.
"It's just, well it's hard to see someone in a lot of pain and know they don't deserve to be and to also know you can't ease it."
He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. "I've underestimated you Granger. I truly have."