"So you just rang the bell and said, 'will you marry me'?" Harry asked over his pint. "And you expected that to go well?"
She rolled her eyes. "It wasn't quite like that."
"In what ways?"
"Well, we said hello first."
"And then you just asked him to marry you?"
Hermione frowned. "Basically yes."
Harry laughed. "And you expected that to go well? You didn't ease into it."
"What's the point? Even if I had said, "I miss you, I think about you every day, I still love you," he would have known where it was leading." It would have felt like a betrayal of our relationship, she wanted to say. It would have felt like trying to cash in our love to fix this situation. But she couldn't tell Harry that. "He would have thought I was lying to get to the endpoint I wanted."
"So instead you got nowhere."
"Not nowhere," she corrected. "He said he'd think about."
"Right before he shut the door on you?" Harry clarified.
She grimaced. "Well, yes, right before he shut the door on me."
He laughed but then looked serious again. "What are you going to do, Hermione?"
What, indeed. The Marriage Law had snuck up on them quickly. It had only been announced a few days ago but required marriages to be made within three months. No exceptions. It had been clear: marry, leave, or have your wandsnapped at a public wizard shaming ceremony. It would have been comically antiquated if it weren't so terrifying. And infuriating. She'd fought to save the world and won and in thanks she was forced in marry within three months. She would have preferred a canned Halmark thank you note for her efforts.
"I'm not sure. I've started looking for jobs abroad as a backup. Anywhere in the EU would be ok. Australia would be easy. "
Harry paused a long moment. "You wouldn't consider," Hermione knew where this thought was going and involuntarily convulsed "trying for someone else?"
She wouldn't consider it. The thought of marrying someone else, even just to satisfy the Marriage Law, made her shudder. Made her feel physically ill. A month ago she would have just married Draco, with hardly a second thought. But then he'd asked and she hadn't been ready and now it was going to happen anyway. It was a great cosmic joke on her. The one bit of relief was that the Prophet hadn't seen the proposal. She never would have lived through the publicity. Nor would have Rita Skeeter, she was sure.
"No, I wouldn't." She said. She didn't elaborate but threw the question back at him. "Would you, if you couldn't marry Ginny? If you weren't already married?"
Harry froze at that. "No, point taken."
It was a victory she didn't particularly want. "You can still visit all the time. Where ever I end up." She tried to sound more excited than she felt. She could end up on a great foreign beach in her dream job. She would not be on a waterlogged island anymore. It just happened that the waterlogged island was where all her friends and family were.
"He won't let it come to that," Harry tried to reassure. "I'm sure he still loves you. He's just upset about what happened."
Maybe Harry was right. But he hadn't seen the look on Draco's face.