x x Part Onex x
She felt numb, and supposed that that was the only thing keeping her sane at that very moment. The impulse to throw herself to the ground and cry, perhaps scream, was very much alive and well; it was just that damned numbness that was keeping it at bay. She didn't have the energy to cry. Nor the energy to scream. It was all she could do to drift slowly from the Headmaster's office, with the assurance that he would send someone for her later, to make her way slowly to her rooms.
This couldn't be happening.
Yet, it was, she reminded herself; the sarcasm taking a large bite out of the numbness she was wrapped in. She shivered despite the warmth of the halls and her robes. There was nothing warm about her situation.
The halls were mercifully empty at this time of day, most students in classes. A few, those with a free period, cast curious glances her way as she wandered past. What did she look like to them? It wasn't written on her forehead, she knew. No one could just look at her and see that she was being forced into this barbaric rite. There was no possibly way that they could look at her and know that –
Hermione stopped, leaning heavily against the wall. She pressed the side of her face to the cool stone, taking deep gasping breaths of air. Getting hysterical wasn't going to change anything, she knew. But, despite that logical assessment of the situation, her body and mind were steadily working against her. Her world was spinning out of control while she stood at the center of it, getting dizzier and dizzier. Unreal, she thought bitterly. It was all so unreal. She was going to marry. . .
Oh, sweet Merlin.
She slid downwards unthinkingly, stopping herself halfway to the floor. This wouldn't do at all. Having a breakdown in the hallway wasn't something that she did. That was for drama lovers like Lavender, perhaps Parvati. Hermione Granger did not have a meltdown in the middle of the hall.
Or off to one side, as it were.
She pulled herself together, casting thin reassuring smiles at the students that had begun to slowly make their way over to her. Nothing to see here, she hoped her smiles said. Keep it moving. Just another day in the life of an overworked seventh year.
The walk back to her rooms had never seemed as long as it did during that journey of torturous inner thoughts and near-hysterical silent cries. She muttered the password to the portrait, unresponsive to the regal-looking woman's murmured cries of alarm. She looked a fright, apparently. Tear tracks on her cheeks, evidence of the sorrow she couldn't even remember shedding. Shock was the Muggle term for what she was feeling. Shock and a good, not-so-healthy dose of pure terror.
She bit her lip, wandering through the common room that she shared with the Head Boy, towards her door. It was open, just as she could remember leaving it that morning. Her nightgown was folded neatly at the end of her bed, the books she needed to return to the library piled in an even stack on her nightstand. It seemed an eternity since she had done those normal, everyday things that morning. Cleaning her room, readying her bag for the day. The same things she could remember doing every school day since she came to Hogwarts.
It was that familiarity, that normality, that broke her.
She sobbed once, tears beginning to flow freely down her cheeks to leak in wet globules off her chin. Turning in a slow circle she surveyed her things, her room. It was all so wrong now. A married woman – that's what she'd be. She'd graduate from Hogwarts as Hermione Granger-Snape. Or would it just be Hermione Snape? For all she knew this horrid law regulated how her name should be taken. . .spelled. . . written.
She snapped, growling in frustrated anger as the tears continued to flow.
Turning, the seventh year grabbed hold of one of the books on her nightstand, hurling it angrily at the Gryffindor banner that hung on her wall. It crashes to the floor, spine up, the pages bending at an awkward angle. What did Houses mean to her now? What did –any- if it mean?
In a slow circle she spun, frantic, teary eyes darting around the room. Would she stay here, amongst her own things? Or was she required to live with –
"NOOOO!" She screamed, falling to her knees, hands covering her ears in abject horror. This couldn't be happening. It was all a nightmare and any moment now she'd wake up, to find that the world was still right side up. Just a nightmare, she told herself. Why else would Lucius Malfoy want her to wed Draco? He hated Muggleborns – mudbloods, as they called them. Even as her harried brain began the line of reasoning, it was just as easily shut down. Of course he would want her. Hadn't she always been the brightest, the smartest? That was what she'd always wanted for herself, right? To prove herself as a 'real witch'.
Find job she'd done. It wasn't a nightmare, she realized with deathly certainty.
Nothing could wake her from this.
Nothing.
She curled in on herself, pulling her knees to her chest. A mere sobbing wreck on the thin carpet covering the stone floor. She didn't feel the hardness of the ground she lay upon, or the draft from where her skirt had hitched up as she curled in on herself. She couldn't feel –anything- except the desperate pain in her heart.
"You poor child. . ."
The words were in the air before Hermione even realized that she wasn't alone. She pulled up as thin arms encircled her, drawing her from the floor to be almost cradled against another warm body.
"Professor –"
"Shh." McGonagall murmured, holding her in a reassuringly tight grip when she tried to pull away. "It's alright, dear."
"No," Hermione shook her head. "It's really not."
Her professor sighed, nodding. "I don't suppose it really is, then."
The younger witch felt another dam within her burst, fresh tears taking the place of those that had begun to ebb.
"Isn't there. . .something. . ." She murmured between broken sobs. "Anything?"
"You can always leave this world, Hermione." The Transfigurations professor offered after a moment's silence, though it was clear by her tone that she spoke with the utmost reluctance. "You can offer up your wand to the Ministry and renounce your status within wizarding society. They'll have no hold over you, then."
"Oh, no," the brunette pulled herself up, out of her professor's arms. "I can't do that. There's nothing for me out there. . ."
McGonagall nodded. "I realize that, my dear. However, you wished for another option, and that is all I can give. Until someone sees fit to overturn this . . . .horrible mockery of a law. . ." She spat the words with undisguised venom.
Hermione nodded, unable to speak even to agree. What good did it do at this point anyway? By the time the law was repealed she would be unhappily married, serving out her sentence in the arms of one greasy git of a Potions Master. She hadn't read the marriage contract, but she doubted there was room for divorce. Wizarding society wasn't keen on that particular Muggle staple, though they seemed to have found enslavement something of a fad.
"I'm sorry," she whispered quietly, pulling away only when her tears had finally run through again. "You have better things to do –"
"My classes have been taken care of for the time being," McGonagall murmured with a gentle shake of her head. The Transfiguration professor's normally severe face was lined with worry. "The Headmaster thought it would be best if you weren't alone at a time like this. If you would rather I summon your friends –"
"No!" Hermione gasped, eyes widening with horror. She hadn't even begun to figure out how she was going to break this to them. Marriage – to Snape. They'd either disown her entirely or try to kill Snape.
And she couldn't decide which was worse.
"Did you wish to talk about what's to come?"
Hermione sniffled, a soft sigh escaping her lips. "I don't know, to be honest. I know about the law, of course. It's been all over the Daily Prophet. . .I just don't understand how Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Snape could do this to their sons."
She didn't say 'to me', knowing for a fact that Malfoy's father could care less than nothing about the welfare of a Muggleborn. She supposed that Snape's father must be very similar, to have gone along with such a demeaning law.
Professor McGonagall nodded tightly. "It is a hard thing to understand, when you haven't lived in our world completely. And, though it is an awful law, one that should be repealed, I can see why those who support it do so with such passion."
"Why, then? Why all this talk about preserving the bloodlines only to try to dilute them with 'mud'?" Hermione's nose wrinkled with distaste as the horrible epithet left her lips.
"Because their bigotry has endangered us all, my dear. The purebloods are staples of wizarding society – there are very few Muggleborns, believe it or not. For too long the pureblooded families have married amongst themselves, trading off every few years so that they didn't get 'too close'. . ."
"But it happened anyway?"
"Yes, unfortunately it did." McGonagall pressed her lips together in a thin smile. "The years are bringing more and more squibs to those families that once produced pureblooded children. There are. . .deformities, I suppose is the word, slowly filling the wards at St. Mungo's. The blood has gotten too 'pure', as it were. The family trees are sharing far too many branches than what is considered healthy. Do you understand?"
Hermione nodded, in complete understanding. "I still don't like it."
"I hardly expect you to. And, though I know it is no comfort at a time such as this, you received more choice than other Muggleborns have been given. Many of these girls have been wed to the first wizard to offer his hand. You, as I understood, received two offers."
"It wasn't really what I would call a choice," she whispered. "Draco or Professor Snape. A Death Eater or a. . . well, still a Death Eater, I suppose. Someone my age that I can't stand to be around for more than a moment without wanting to hex to the next life, or someone who probably feels the same way about me. It was like being placed between a rock and a much bigger rock."
"The Headmaster was going to speak with Severus as I left his office. This will be as much of a shock to him as it will be to you, I am sure. He has never been one to enjoy being ordered about by his parents."
Hermione sat up a little straighter, her eyes filling with hope. "What if he refuses. He can do that, right?"
McGonagall shook her head. "Only if he wished to be disowned, and I'm not sure that he would be willing to go so far simply to get out of an arranged marriage."
"Even if the marriage is to me?"
"Even so," her Professor smiled sadly. "And if he did, you would default to Mister Malfoy. I trust that you are still opposed to that?"
Hermione felt the hope leave her in an almost tangible rush. "Of course."
"So your best choice is still the on you've already chosen. I can't say that it won't be hard – but you will survive it."
Fresh tears slipped silently from Hermione's eyes. She bit her lower lip, turning her head from the older witch.
"But I want more than just –surviving-."
x x End Part x x