The Austere Stonewall

by Mudblood88

When the Ministry revives an old marriage law as a smokescreen to hide the reconstruction after the war, Hermione Granger is one of the first wave of people caught in the law. Not willing to marry Ron and doom them both to a life of misery, Hermione has no immediate prospects. With few viable options, Hermione proposes to someone else caught up by the law to help him avoid Azkaban.

1. Book 1 Prologue

The Austere Stonewall, Book 1: Hermione

Prologue

There were times, occasionally, in Hermione Granger's life in which she would later reflect that she must have gone temporarily insane. When she was 7 years old her father forbade her to read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart'. The nightmares she'd had for a week were proof that she had gone against her father's wishes. A teenage Hermione claimed temporary insanity as the cause for such a bad idea when her parents teased about it.

There was also the time that Hermione had turned 11 and gotten her period for the first time and, being embarrassed and wholly unprepared for it to happen to her so soon after learning about it, she'd pretended it hadn't happened and began stuffing her knickers with toilet tissue. Her mother, being the person who did the laundry, had caught on quickly and began asking pointed questions to her daughter. A very mortified Hermione had claimed she'd sat on raspberry jam...for three days in a row. Her mother had known what must have occurred and simply began stocking Hermione's bathroom with feminie supplies. It took Hermione a few months to realize her mother knew and to simply answer her mother's questions rather than dodge or lie. It wasn't until she was at Hogwarts that she realized how dumb a cover up "accidentally sitting on jam" was and that her mother had not believed her for even a second and simply went along with it to preserve her dignity. Again, Hermione must have been mad to have thought that lie would work. Temporary insanity as a result of panic.

With her Hogwarts days came so many more instances in which she now pleaded insanity. The troll incident was probably the worst. No one at Hogwarts who had spoken to her for 5 minutes would believe that bookish Hermione Granger who nagged others about following the rules would go looking for a troll in order to prove her abilities. Since Harry and Ron had managed to subdue the troll and because no one had been injured aside from a few bumps and bruises on Hermione's arms and legs, the teachers had pretended to swallow her lie. An older Hermione began to recognize that adults found it easier to pick their battles when faced with children lying. Her lie was not enough thought-out nor had she been believable.

Crazy thoughts and impulsive behaviors became more likely to strike her after becoming friends with Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. So many times she now wondered what she had been thinking. Perhaps it was because of her friendship within Gryffindor House that caused her rash and, frankly, barmy ideas when backed into a corner but none of them could compare to asking Professor Snape to marry her.