Dear all, thanks so much for reading! I have no guarantees on getting chapters out on this one. Once I finish up with Hermione's Proposition, these will come much more regularly. Also, a huge thank you to jitra for helping me with Czech and Slovak names last chapter.

Chapter 2: In Which Hermione Declares Her Intentions

Hermione Granger was a happily unmarried woman.

A very happily unmarried woman, happily seated amongst her friends at the Burrow and happily tucking in to a breakfast feast.

The late summer light shone through the windowpanes into the happy home, reflecting off juice glasses and catching the mirror in the hallway at an odd angle. Books and wands were set aside for now in the sitting room, awaiting their use when the morning meal was over. Hermione and Ron and Harry and Neville surrounded the scrubbed wooden table in the kitchen, all scrambling for eggs and sausages and stewed tomatoes. Whenever one plate emptied, usually falling victim to Ron's appetite, Molly appeared with a pan in hand, doling more goodies out for everyone to eat.

Hermione sipped her morning cuppa, a nice, strong orange pekoe that she allowed to steep a few minutes more than was strictly necessary.

The war over and done with, it was nice to return to some semblance of normalcy. Gone were the days of fearing for her life, running from killer snakes, and withstanding unbearable torture at the hands of her schoolmate's auntie. Eighteen was a rough age for anyone, but for most eighteen-year-olds, this consisted of unexpected acne and applications for university rather than a gritty fight for survival. After all they had gone through, Hermione was glad to return to the busyness of schoolwork.

She was so proud of her boys.

She had been meeting Ron, Harry, and Neville at the Burrow almost every day over the summer, in accordance with the rigid timetables she had written up for their N.E.W.T. revision. Their exams were only a few days away, and even though their schooling had been completely forgotten during their time on the run, Hermione felt confident that she and her friends were in good stead for high marks. Well, as high as any of them were going to get anyway, she consoled herself. Ron was never going to walk away with more than a handful of N.E.W.T.s, but he should scrape by with enough to get him enrolled in the Auror program with the Ministry. Harry was going to be fine, and Neville's improvements in her absence were quite impressive. The schedule rotated through all their shared subjects, beginning after breakfast each day and ending just before dinner.

This warm August morning, a flurry of owls pecked at the window above the sink. When Molly opened it, three owls came delivering newspapers, with one for Hermione, one for Harry, and one for the Weasleys themselves.

Ron was buried under a pile of blood sausage, so Neville took the Weasley's copy of the Prophet and set it down on the counter behind him.

Harry accepted his copy, offering the barn owl a piece of sausage in return. "How do you always know where we are?" he asked the beautiful bird. He looked up at the others. "It's a good thing Voldemort never used the Prophet's owls to track us down last year."

Having paid her owl, Hermione unrolled her paper and began to read the cover story.

Bollocks.

It had passed.

That idiotic law had actually passed.

Hermione couldn't believe it. Oh, there had been rumblings and murmurs about some kind of marriage law, but she had assumed it would be one of the restrictive laws to pass. Something that told Purebloods they wouldn't be allowed to procreate with their second cousins anymore, or that ensured a greater degree of kinship between the couple getting married.

She hadn't been expecting this.

The Daily Prophet had been ominous for weeks. There had been a solid month's worth of 'The Return and Final Fall of He-Who-Can-Now-Be-Named," followed up by stories on cleaning up the Ministry and sentimental tributes to those who had fallen in battle. Once the hubbub of war had died down, a number of reports on the State of Wizarding England started to appear in the press.

Hermione had been relieved by the first few, all on the state of education. The Wizengamot had decided to create a flexible testing system for all O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. students, giving students the option to prepare at their leisure and take their exams at the end of August. O.W.L. students would be expected to return to their sixth year at Hogwarts, while N.E.W.T. students would be ready to enter this brave new Post-Voldemort world. Hermione was fine with these stories.

It was the series of reports on the declining magical abilities of Purebloods that had been troubling. Evidently, nobody had ever warned the elite of Wizarding society that a limited gene pool produced terrible results. Since they couldn't be arsed to check Muggle history, they had no idea how repeatedly marrying your cousin led to a Hapsburg lip or a severely stunted intellectual development. Personally, Hermione thought it a fitting punishment for their bigoted attitudes. It was delightfully Darwinian, as those fools who wailed about Muggle-borns stealing magic were now on the verge of losing their own, simply because of they wouldn't look at those same Muggle-borns as social equals.

In light of the war they had all fought, it was not the time to remind people about the problems between Purebloods and Muggle-borns. At least, that's what Hermione thought. Now was the time to deemphasize their differences and move forward as a unified country.

The new Minister of Magic was a valued member of the Order of the Phoenix and one of the most capable wizards Hermione had ever met, but Kingsley was also a Shacklebolt. Being a Shacklebolt meant something. As such, his family was at stake. The Shacklebolts were listed along with the Malfoys, Parkinsons, Weasleys, Yaxleys, Rowles, Prewitts, and others in the Sacred Twenty-Eight Pureblood Families of Wizarding England compiled by Cantankerous Nott in the early 1930s. The illustrious history of the Notts was, of course, the first story in the book, but all Pureblood family trees were outlined, going back centuries. Minister Shacklebolt had a vested interest in preserving and protecting all his citizens, and he was clearly willing to take unusual steps to promote the health of his society.

Funny how he was unwilling to include himself in the age range of marriageable wizards. The age line was conveniently two years younger than Kingsley was himself.

The fireplace began coughing up smoke in the other room, and soon George came bounding into the kitchen, newspaper in hand. Hermione was impressed by how well he was doing these days without Fred. That first month had been so hard on him, but he threw himself back into his work at the shop in honor of his fallen brother. He kissed his mum on the cheek on his way past the stove and pulled up a chair at the table.

"Did you lot read this?" he asked, a look of panic on his face as he waved the newspaper before them.

Harry looked up from his eggs. When he saw what George was holding, he snatched his copy out from under his seat, unfolded it, and began to read.

With Neville looking over Harry's left shoulder and Ron over Harry's left, the boys slowly caught up on the news.

"Well, it looks like we're all getting married," Ron said casually.

"How can you say that?" George asked, seething with desparation. He stood up and began pacing a rut in his mum's kitchen floor. "I'm too young to marry!"

"You're twenty," Ron said, attempting a spirit of helpfulness. "That's three years past legal."

George glared at his brother.

"They're giving us until the end of the year," Neville said, quiet and concerned. All the color drained from his face. "Three and a half months to marry someone that fits their criteria, and another three years to start having kids."

"How very generous of them," Hermione said, her voice laced with sarcasm. She could hardly believe the autocratic garbage the Ministry was trying to get away with.

"I suppose..." Harry began, piling some baked beans high on his toast. Dear, sweet Harry. He always tried to make the best of things. "I suppose that's no so bad, is it? Ginny and I were getting serious anyway, and I always thought I'd marry her someday."

"You'd better work on your proposal skills, mate," George said, snatching a few pieces of buttered toast from a plate. He slathered them with marmalade and took an enormous bite. "Birds don't like it if you hand them a ring and tell them you see them as an eventuality."

"Yeah," Harry said, clearly distracted. "I'll have to come up with something special."

"How about you, Ronnikins?" George asked slyly. He elbowed Hermione in the side. "Do you have your eye on someone?"

A flush the color of his hair crept down his neck. "Blimey, I dunno..."

He received a smack across the back of the head from his older brother.

Hermione had had enough. She had wasted too much time during her sixth and seventh years pining after Ron, and when they finally kissed in the midst of battle, she realized that it would never work. She knew that Ron had come to the same conclusion, since he hadn't pursued her since. Frankly, revising with him over the summer solidified all those thoughts. Watching him fall asleep on his Herbology textbook and flick bits of paper at a befuddled Neville had killed any lingering romantic feelings she held for the redhead. They cared for each other and had been through so much together, but they valued different things. Any marriage between them would be disastrous. She spoke up. "Don't worry about me, George. I'm not getting married anytime soon."

"What do you mean, Hermione?" Ron asked. "You have to. The law says so. The Ministry will come after you!"

"Oh, please, Ronald." Hermione rolled her eyes. "What could they possibly do to me?"

"They'll break your wand!" he cried, so concerned for his friend that he momentarily stopped eating.

"If they do, I'll get another," she replied, collected and self-possessed. Hermione didn't know how many wand makers there were in the world, but after seeing the caravaners and campers at the Quidditch World Cup, she knew she had options. There must be dozens, if not hundreds of wand makers who would sell her one. "France, maybe? I could ask Fleur who she recommends."

Neville frowned. "What if they put a trace on people who don't get married? Like with underage magic or saying Voldemort's name."

"I sincerely doubt the Ministry could manage that," she said, scoffing. "But let's say that they do. Let's say they take away my wand and I can't get another." Hermione looked around the table at the four pairs of eyes on her.

"Yeah?" George asked.

"I could be perfectly happy without my it," she said, primly folding her paper back into its original position. The first eleven years of her life were arguably much saner than the last seven, and she hadn't had a wand for any of those. "Beyond the fact that I can already manage bits of wandless magic, I can always live with Mum and Dad and enroll in university. They'd probably be thrilled to have me back since I've been away so long."

Ron gasped, dropping his fork in a clatter. "You mean, you would... you would leave us, Hermione?"

Neville, Harry, and George wisely kept their traps shut while Ron and Hermione had it out.

"What?" she asked. "No. I wouldn't be leaving you."

"But without a wand..." His voiced trailed off.

"I'll still be able to visit you here, or Harry in London. I'll simply take the train." She smirked. "Or you'll have to Apparate to get me. You can side-along a Muggle, so why not a wandless Muggle-born?"

Ron looked at her as if she had grown three heads.

Hermione continued on. "The Ministry might be able to scare someone like Lavender or Pansy into getting married. Neither of them have ever operated in the Muggle world, so the thought of getting a job or an education without magic might be enough to terrify them into a forced marriage." A steely look took over her features, one that Ron and Harry recognized all too well. "They don't scare me."

Harry seemed impressed.

"Where are your backbones?" she cried, waggling her finger in all the boys' faces. "We've been defying the Ministry for years. Haven't we?"

Ron, Harry, Neville, and George all watched the witch warily. They were all careful not to make sudden moves around Hermione when she was on a rampage for justice.

"Haven't we?" she repeated, clearly expecting a response.

They just stared at her with wide eyes.

Harry shrugged. "We have."

"I don't care what the bloody Ministry says. I might stay single forever just to spite them," Hermione replied, standing up and waving the newspaper above her head in a call to arms. "You can go along with it if you like," she said, defiant, "but you don't have to." She looked each of her boys in the eye. "We don't have to do this if we don't want to, especially if we band together. We can find another way."

Hermione had to slow herself down. She was working herself into a tizzy. She took a deep breath, and thought of how much could change with the passage of the law. Of how much would change. It was inevitable even if the government hadn't thrown them this curveball, she supposed. Everything changes when you leave school and head out into the world.

She thought of the tenderness growing between Harry and Ginny. He needed to know that she would be behind him, no matter what. "Maybe it's not a terrible sacrifice for some of you, and maybe it's only confirming what you would be doing anyway." She raised her eyebrows at the young man who was like her brother, signaling her approval of his plan to propose.

Harry nodded in understanding.

"If that's your choice," Hermione continued, addressing Harry first before looking at the others. "I will always love and support you."

"But Hermione," Ron said, frantic and worried, "you don't understand. You need to get married. You need to—"

"No, Ronald," she stated, interrupting him before he said anything else he would later regret. She took another long sip of her tea. "I don't need to do anything. I am never, ever getting married."

NEXT CHAPTER: In Which Neville Forms a Plan

Neville pointed to the line in the article that described the rolling implementation of the Marriage Law as people came of age. "It says that they get three months after their N.E.W.T.s or three months after they come of age before the law applies to them, whichever comes last."

"That's something, at least," Hermione huffed. "I would have had to have words with Kingsley if he denied us our education."

"Marrying us off like cattle wasn't enough?" George asked.

"He's only marrying off those of you who stick around," she said, winking at her friend.

Honestly, could you ever picture a Hermione who willingly goes along with a Ministry marriage law? Because I can't... at all.