Ch 6 Post Mature Marriages
"She began to wait and worry, so they wedded in a hurry." Thanks to my great beta readers again, for catching my mistakes.
It was the Monday after the announcement about the change in the class schedule. Rose and Cleopatra were just entering the Gryffindor common room, shortly before the ten o'clock curfew. Rose and Scorpius were some of the hardest working students at Hogwarts, with Albus and Cleo right behind. Albus may have known almost all of the magic, but he had to tutor Cleo, who almost always performed the magic a little differently. As a result, most evenings Rose and Cleo did not arrive in the commons room until shortly before curfew.
Nan Roberts, one of the seventh year Gryffindor girls, spotted Cleo. "Cleo, you have made scents for Macario and me. We are engaged, well, we will be. I'm trying to get my parents to sign formal engagement papers, and Macario is trying to get his parents to as well. We want to marry over Christmas."
"You are a good couple," Cleo confirmed. "What is the problem."
"Carrie is pregnant, and she and my brother Bert are going to get married over Christmas and move into the rooms for couples next to the Gryffindor commons room. I understand that Professor Longbottom and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Potter used those rooms right after the Battle of Hogwarts.
"It is NOT FAIR that Carrie gets pregnant and they can move in together, but I do the right thing and take birth control potions and I cannot openly sleep with Macario!"
Rose looked down at her feet. Rose was rather sure that what Nan was talking about didn't have much to do with sleeping, but was something else you normally did it in bed.
Nan put her hands on her hips, and then pointed both of them at Cleo. "You talk to the headmistress. You and Albus seem to know her." Wagging her fingers right at Cleo she continued, "Tell her, convince her, that if our parents let us marry, we ought to be living together."
Cleo sat down and tried to figure out what to do. She was all for Magi marrying, all for the physical side of marrying, and really wished she and Albus could sleep together, or more. She looked at Nan. "You do not want to become pregnant, Nan?"
"NO!" Nan yelled. "Well, eventually, I do, actually, especially when I see you, but not yet! Macario and I have plans, and we are not going to be ready for a child for a few years."
Cleo looked at Nan. All this made perfect sense, if you were thinking like Albus or some of the other adults. It didn't make a lot of sense to her, in her gut, emotionally, for her, but she had been working very hard not to project the need to become pregnant right away to the other witches. Mum Potter had explained how getting married and especially becoming pregnant too early was a problem. Mum Potter also admitted that, although she and Mr. Potter had to marry early because of some unusual circumstances having to do with how he defeated Tom Riddle, and she wanted to be married, they otherwise would have probably waited a year.
At the same time, Cleo was all for the kind of union of bodies that being married involved. That was, usually, very good at least. She had examined enough happily married couples to get some feeling how special it was to, as the Christians put it, "become one flesh."
Cleo quietly muttered, "I will talk to Albus. Maybe we can say something to Professor McGonagall."
The next morning Cleo tried to explain the situation to Albus. Albus knew that his parents had roomed together his mother's last year at Hogwarts, and his mother was not pregnant with James for several years. He had to admit that Cleo was making a reasonably good argument, so that evening they met with the headmistress.
Professor McGonagall started, "How responsible are you for Carrie becoming pregnant, Cleo? I know you want to have babies, but you also project to others the desire to marry and have children."
Cleo tried to figure out how to answer this question. It was not simple. She played with the end of her little plaits as she thought. "Carrie wanted to marry and have a family, Professor. I didn't cause that. Just like Nan wants to marry but wait to have children. That, waiting, makes me uncomfortable, but it shouldn't, and I work really hard not to project that everyone should have children right away.
Cleo looked at Albus, then the headmistress, tossing the little plaits she was playing with down her back alongside the two big ones, and giving a big sigh, she continued, "Once I knew that Carrie wanted to marry and have children the scents, what I thought, what I maybe projected, did not discourage her, so maybe I am a little bit responsible for the timing, but not she and Bert marrying."
"I know that Magi at Hogwarts are maturing faster, and that Magi mature a little faster than Muggles anyway. I love it that so many of the eighth year and beyond students are married and have children, well, some of them have children and most of them will have."
"We are trying to discourage our students from getting married before the end of the seventh year, Cleo," Minerva kindly informed her. "And having a baby when you are a student is hard on the parents, and to be honest not easy for the school either."
"But Nan and Macario are a good couple, Professor, and they will be a better couple with the contracts and spells."
"Contracts?" Minerva questioned.
Cleo shook her head back and forth and waved her hands, like she was trying to grab answers out of the air. "It is not like marrying is walking hand in hand in the spring and looking lovingly in each other's eyes and, they call it falling in love but that emotion is really rather shallow, Professor. You don't fall in love. You decide.
"Well, you may start out like that emotional falling, but that is not … If that is all that is there, there is not much there. It is the promises, the contract, the mutual commitment, that is important. I can see that when I am examining people. For some wizards and even some witches it is wanting that physical, sex, using the other person, and that's no … that is not going to make a marriage.
"You commit, in good times and bad, in sickness and health, until death part you. It is the promises that are important. Magi usually sign an engagement contract, both parents and the couple, and that is a sign that the two families are in some way uniting. The couple takes on the duties, and received the benefits, they should, of being part of both families. And as part of the ceremony you sign the same document, after the spells, confirming that you are going to honor the commitment you have made, no matter what, and that is what is important."
Cleo had a disgusted look on her face. "I have seen enough marriage ceremonies in Muggle movies, and they have the promises, and all this about love, but they don't show the people signing the marriage contracts. Signing the contracts, and believing that you are signing a life time binding contract, that is very important.
"And then you share your bodies, and your love becomes so real that you start another person who is half of each of you, and as a witch you actually carry part of your husband inside of you, and feed that person with your body, but it's not the feeling, not just the feeling, it is the commitment to the future of the Magi, that is important. Not falling in love. Not falling.
"Nan and Macario are a good couple, Professor. They are ready to sign the contracts, and to live together as one couple, as, and it is not just the sex. That they can find a way to do. It is the living together. It is going to bed together, even without sex, and getting up, and knowing that you have someone to go home to even if you don't have a home of your own because that other person is always your home. That is what Nan and Macario are ready for."
"You think that if the parents let them marry over Christmas, I should let them room with Bert and Carrie, Cleo?" the old professor asked.
Cleo nodded her head 'yes.'
"I have to meet with the parents," Professor McGonagall confirmed. "I'm not happy that students are maturing faster, and this is an awkward situation, for both couples and for three sets of parents."
"Unlike my parents?" Albus wondered.
"That was plenty awkward too, Mr. Potter. How was I going to tell the Hero of Hogwarts that he could not live with his bride?"
Albus laughed. "Were they as lovey dovey then?"
Minerva shook her head. "Don't get me started on the history of your mother's female ancestors. I will just say that Carrie's situation is not unknown in your mother's female ancestors. And it is not something one should brag about."
Albus and Cleo looked at each other. That was a comment they were going to remember. Later, Albus did find a record of when his Weasley grandparents had married, and when Uncle Bill was born. He remembered a line from a poem that his parents had recited about Fred II and Mariam's son Barack, and the rather rushed wedding of his cousin,
"She began to wait and worry,
"So they wedded in a hurry."
His mother would also talk about 'post mature marriages' instead of 'premature babies.'
Albus, like his father, wanted to wait until he was married for that ultimate expression of union, the joining of their bodies. It was not something that Cleo was all that concerned about, for herself, one more thing to add to Albus's rather large number of things he worried about. He did know that Cleo was trying not want for herself or anyone else the desire to have children before you were old enough. The problem was that old enough was seventeen, or even sixteen. The spells at Hogwarts that kept witches from becoming pregnant faded after you were sixteen, way too young.
Saturday December nineteenth Bert and Nan's parents showed up at Hogwarts, along with Carrie's parents. Seamus and Mary Molly Finnigan also were there, but their rather large brood of children, and other relatives, were not. Albus saw on his map that the parents and children met with Professor McGonagall for most of the morning. They continued to meet over the lunch hour.
That afternoon, Albus and Cleo were in one of the potions classrooms, catching up on some homework. The two older Potions students, the ones who helped to teach, and Professor Arwen Wong, were with them. The two potions made that week were difficult for Cleo to make, until she understood them, and then as was typical for her they were easy. She had some insights into the magic, and the five Magi were refining the instructions on how to make the potions, and experimenting with some things to make them even better.
They were finishing up when an Elf found Albus and Cleo, and told them, "Professor McGonagall would like to meet with you in the room students are led to before sorting, the conference room right off the Great Hall."
Albus brought out his map, just to see who they were meeting. Professor McGonagall was there, along with all three sets of parents. Also there were Robert and Caroline Robert, and Nancy and Macario Finnigan. Albus pointed out Nan Finnigan's name, and Cleo beamed and bounced in that 'I'm happy' way she moved as they walked up to the room off the Great Hall.
Nan asked, "Could you make soap and shampoo for my parents, Cleo, Albus?"
"I think so," she replied. She examined them with her wand, individually and together. She mentally asked Albus to do it with her. Albus tried to read the parents minds, to see what they were thinking.
Finally, Cleo asked, "Are you Muggles, not magical?"
"You can tell?" Mrs. Robert asked.
"Usually, but it is not that simple," Cleo responded. She looked at Albus, trying to figure something out. Albus withdrew from Cleo's brain; once in a while she went into areas that were at best confusing and at their worse impossible and, he thought, almost dangerous to follow.
"May I get samples of your DNA," Albus asked. "There are special magical DNA segments that do not show up on the normal Muggle machines, and many people who are not magical have some magical genes. We think that when two people marry with a few complimentary magical DNA segments their children can be magical. Magical DNA is very dominant. It is not that simple. Nothing in the magical world is all that simple, but we are begging to understand it better."
"Will you publish the results?" Nan wondered.
"Are you spies?" Cleo spat out.
Albus gave Cleo a stern look, letting her know that the question, and the way she asked it, was very improper. Cleo looked down with a muttered apology, whispering, "Sorry."
"Nothing we find out will be published in the Muggle world, and we can make sure your identities are hidden as well," Albus jumped in with. "We have no reason to know what you do, and I assure you we, Cleo and I, and the people who do the testing, can keep secrets."
"May we speak with Mr. and Mrs. Robert alone?" Cleo wondered. "It has to do with scents."
The headmistress waved at a small room off the larger meeting room. Albus asked Cleo, "Do I have to summon a couple of DNA tests?"
Cleo opened one of the pockets on her skirt and said, "Accio two DNA tests, both types."
Albus did not want to ask what else Cleo had in those pockets. He thought that she had enough stuff to fill a small room. Her voluminous pockets did come in handy at times, he had to admit.
"The problem with the scents," Cleo tried to explain, "is that if you both bathe and shampoo using the soap and shampoo I make it will be obvious, or at least strongly hint, that you are a couple. If you don't want it to be known that you are a couple the scents could be a problem.
"I just had the strong feeling that you did not always want to broadcast your being a couple, or being married."
"Could you make soap and shampoo that would discourage people from thinking of us as a couple?" Mrs. Roberts wondered.
Cleo looked horrified. "Yes, yes, but, but, it is like, like … SINNING. It has to be HARD to do what you do, whatever it is."
Albus thought to Cleo, 'I will ask my father about Mr. and Mrs. Robert. If he says they are good guys, on the right side, we probably ought to do it.' Then he spoke out loud to Cleo, "Do you think we can have the scents ready by next weekend. Both sets, if you can make the other ones as well."
Cleo nodded 'yes,' still horrified at not wanting to broadcast that you were part of a couple. She knew from all the good couples that she had examined that you were not just YOU anymore. You were you, of course, but you were also part of a WE.
Albus had Mr. and Mr. Robert spit in little bottles, and then take a scraping of the inside of their mouth, in the little room alone, because they had to remove the Covid-19 masks.
When they came out Mr. Robert remarked, "I wish we could use these transparent masks in non-magical areas."
Albus replied, "My Uncle George does too, wishes he could sell them to Muggles, but the Department of Paranoia in Switzerland forbids it."
That evening after dinner Nan Finnigan asked Cleo and Albus to visit them in the suite of rooms that the two couples were going to be occupying, starting that night. Nancy was very happy that she and Macario were not going to have to keep their sexual union secret, and that they were going to be getting started on this living together.
Cleo examined both couples, so she could modify their soap and shampoo. She told them that she was going to make perfume, no charge, as wedding presents.
As they were leaving Cleo told Albus, "The contract, the commitment, the 'to death do us part,' all signed in a formal contract and then ratified by, strengthened by, spells, it really does make a difference. You don't just FALL in love. You chose to be in love."
Albus replied, "I chose you."
Cleo responded by turning to Albus, pulling him into her, and kissing him. Both of them though that this kiss was as close to snogging as they had ever kissed, and they would have to be careful not to end up like Carrie.
Although Cleo did think, 'August before sixth year Albus will be sixteen, and we could …"
And Albus knew what Cleo was thinking, and it worried him.
The bit of a poem is by Robert Service.
2021