Hermione felt as though she might vomit. She'd given her presentation to the Wizengamot with the rest of the Department of Mysteries, and being just one of many people presenting research, going through the question and answer portion, and arguing over the finer points of certain conclusions hadn't felt this fraught. Kingsley has asked her to give the bulk of the presentation—in part because the public recognized and trusted her, and in part because she'd been the one to see this coming and had alerted the Unspeakables—but she was still fidgeting terribly in the forum anteroom. She'd begun goading herself into it under her breath like she used to do at school before important practical exams, as she'd never had any issues with the written portions as long as she'd studied enough,
"You can do this—you're Hermione Jean Granger, you're the brightest witch of your age—you fought and survived a war—you were tortured and you didn't breakyou robbed a bank and rode out on a dragon for Merlin's sake! You went back to school and finished top of your class and you had the highest NEWTS score in four centuries—you did for creature advocacy in a year what no one else could have done in a decade—you tore down Pureblood Clauses of Advantage and ended wergild—you spotted the beginning of this, you can give a bloody speech!"
Her shoulder rolled back, chin up, jaw still a little tight, she strode carefully to the door and followed Kingsley up to the dais.
...
Draco took a seat next to Potter and when he felt someone sit next to him, he turned to see Blaise and Theo. Blaise leaned over and whispered conspiratorially,
"If we're going to be friends with her, we have Got to do something about That Hair." Draco chuckled, and whispered back,
"Blaise—are you aware that your gay is showing?"
"Draco, I'm serious, I don't care if she ends up calling me her fairy godmother until I die, I will fix that monstrosity."
Draco turned to see her approaching the dais from the anteroom, and he could see that it was indeed quite wild today, there were even little amber sparks jumping into the air from the ends of her curls. She'd clearly been running her hands through it out of stress, as her posture was Perfect, even if her shoulders were a bit tight. He'd sat behind her in every Hogwarts exam, he knew what a tightly-wound Granger looked like. He whispered out of the side of his mouth towards Blaise,
"I concede."
He turned as Shacklebolt introduced her—as if that was really necessary—saying that she had spotted the beginnings of a domestic threat to magical Britain and had been working with the Department of Mysteries to thwart it. She was scanning the crowd, but didn't seem to be registering any of the faces. She didn't even stop on Potter, which surprised him. Draco watched as the Minister ceded the podium and she took a deep breath from her already raised shoulders in order to begin talking. You could have heard a knut drop, he hadn't even realized there'd been quiet chatter while the Minster was talking, until it was held in contrast to this moment.
...
"Thank you, Minister Shacklebolt, for the kind introduction. We are here today to discuss first, what this threat is, and how we might all contribute to its solution. We are an island nation, we are an island people. What you perhaps did not know, is that our island currently puts us at risk—this is not a threat to our environment—but rather it is our environment that is now threatening us. There are roughly one hundred island nations on earth, or else islands governed by other nations with distinct cultures. The nature of island living precludes a certain amount of population, its growth, and its movement, including the population of magical peoples. As I learned from the Department of Mysteries, and I'm sure many of you from older families know, magic is a living force of nature originating from the land. The nature of islands with magic—and therefore magical people—is to guarantee the continuation of that magic, even if it means forcing the issue through affliction."
She heard a collective intake of breath go around the room—no one liked the idea of illness—and Britain was just now beginning to move on from the War. She continued on as if she hadn't heard anything,
"Each island seems to have a different memory of it's culture's magic, and therefore each affliction is slightly different, and each culture's reaction to it differs as well. This happens naturally on all islands with a magical population, normally after natural disasters when the population's been suddenly reduced, but in our case, war."
Hermione pulled out a sheet of parchment with her notes from inside her robes. She wasn't going to miss anything,
"Allow me to give a brief summation of my research—as the only references I found to this happening here in Britain were once during the first few Roman invasions, and again during the Burning Times. The problem with the records from the Roman invasions is that Romans wrote them. There are no records from British writers of the age to explain our particular binding to our land. The Romans had no understanding of what was going on—only one scholar from that time was from Sardinia and had seen it before. He called it 'insula languorem' or 'island sickness'. He did however, note that the population of Britannia did not seem to suffer exactly as his people did. Later accounts from the Burning Times are either in Latin or Anglo-Saxon, as some of the Saxons came from Scandinavian islands, they'd had their own cultural version."
"In Haiti they call it 'peyi obligatwa', meaning 'land binding'. It happens in Haiti quite frequently—so the magical culture there treats it the way we treat a Veela finding their mate—as the land showing you and binding you to your soul's other half. In Haiti, the process it much like Veelas as well, partners are driven to search for one another, generally with a perssitant sense of attraction and discomfort, but without the potential for pain or violence. If their partner is not found, they might languish in a bit of ennui until the land binding passes, until enough other couples have gotten together. All in all, it's a mellow process there."
"The Sardinian explained 'island sickness' as a physical fever in the already oppressive heat of their climate, motivating people to find their partners in order to feel cool and relaxed again. If however, you couldn't or didn't seek your partner, the heat would slowly drive a person insane, and they would seek what he called 'cool breezes in the desert, spring water in the volcanos', thereby implying that people went mad and found paradoxical ways to end their own lives, usually surrounding this theme of heat."
"The infrequency of this phenomenon is not always the case, however. Saxons who experienced this wrote extensively on it—calling it 'järnland upphetsning', roughly translating to 'iron land fever' or 'iron land incitement'. In the magical community on Fårö Island in Sweden, where the population has always been very small, of Wizarding and Muggle alike, the process in nearly continual, and it can be very violent. People are overtaken by a drive to seek out their partner, be that person on the island or abroad. References as early as the 9th Century Rök Runestone hint at the desperation they saw in their neighbors from Fårö. Later scholars hypothesize this drive of the island peoples is what kicked off the Viking age."
She paused, letting the precariousness of the situation sink in before resuming her speech—it was time for the other shoe to drop—such as it was,
"As Britain has been invaded and then populated by several other cultures over the centuries, it stands to reason that whatever the islands are going to force on the population could be influenced by the cultures of former conquerors. My Department and I have done extensive research into the ley-lines, and they suggest that this effect will not be limited to England, but to all of Great Britain. Ireland, Scotland, and Wales will not be exempt. This is primarily because all of Great Britain was unified in variations of the same pagan history—in short—the land remembers. The land is unified in its desire for this force to overtake us and bring more magical children through it and to it. As the peoples of these united isles, we derive our magic from our birthplace and our collective history."
"In the search for answers about how this might affect our modern era, we looked into the most recent episode of land binding in Great Britain. Records from The Burning Times are biased, mostly written by Muggle Inquisitors. They used the Maleum Malificarum as their guide to rooting out magical folks and punishing them out of fear. It was the final reason of many that we introduced the Statute of Secrecy and isolated ourselves from Muggles as a community. I suspect that so many magical folks were discovered by the Inquisition towards the end of that age, because of this greater island nation affliction, our land binding. One monk described women and men driven mad with a need to roam free, speaking 'in tongues' about transforming themselves into beasts in order to find their 'bonded half'. He spoke of great delirious energy, and the violence these folks resorted to when restrained or questioned in any way."
She paused again, her hazel eyes sweeping every face she could discern in the crowd,
"I joined the Department of Mysteries in their research efforts, and in a combined effort of every staff member positioned along ley-lines in cardinal and ordinal positions to stop this from happening to us. We put our minds and our bodies on the line in secret to protect the magical communities of Great Britain from more potential heartbreak, violence, and death. Two Unspeakables of the Department of Mysteries lost their lives to the effort. Several of us, myself included, were grievously injured and magically exhausted. We suffered these losses and injuries because the land rejected our attempt to thwart its will."
"I tell you this now, in the open, because we will either need to endure this fate and whatever havoc it will bring, or pre-empt it. When Minister Shacklebolt suggested that we forego potential wounds while we are still healing as a nation, I agreed wholeheartedly. The Minister and the Wizengamot have debated for the past month and have decided to institute a Marriage Law in order to submit ourselves to the will of the land in as peaceful a way as possible. I agree with this decision."
Hermione had been expecting riotous discontent at the end of her speech, and she was still waiting for it, but what met her first was blank, stunned silence.
There was suddenly a sound like hundreds of hissing snakes, the mass of people beginning to turn to their neighbors and whisper. The noise rose rapidly, and after Hermione had finished counting backwards from ten, the first bark-like yells erupted, she'd counted to fourteen before people were standing and shouting invective. She was thankful that this was the moment that Kingsley stood and took over, gesturing for her to sit back down while casting a Sonorus on his own throat.
"SIIILENCE!"
Everyone halted, some clapping their mouths shut, others seeming to stop mid-motion, mouths open. There were several older folks standing stock still with fists raised in the air. She almost felt like giggling—almost.