(9 days until marriage law deadline)
Parvati could swear the smoke from the Floo is judging her.
"Parseltongue, you said?"
"Yes, mum."
"Remarkable. Potters are master potioneers, my daughter. You took him to the Yule Ball. Had anyone else ever courted him?"
She shakes her head.
Even over the floo call, her mum blazes disappointment. Parvati's hands shake around the marriage offer. Harry was perfectly, well, Harry in the way he turned her down. Rubbing the back of his neck, pink-cheeked, apologising for making her uncomfortable, even a momentary opening of his arms. If she'd been braver– Gryffindors forward, right?–she could've gotten a bloody hug, at least. Maybe from there, she could've rebuilt his interest.
"Mum, I…"
"I don't want to hear it, Parvati." She counts on her fingers. "An Englishman with the Speaker's Gift. The respected scion of a family of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. A boy who wouldn't treat you differently because your grandfather was born in Mumbai, not London. His family knows almost as much about potions as ours."
"Mum…"
"Not a single boy in Britain would serve us better. Magic take this marriage law. It's worse for us, little bird." Her mum brushes her finger on the bindi between her brows. "Fewer options. No army of aunts and cousins to protect us. More to lose if we're married to some beast."
She sighs, then her whole face softens, and she leans closer to the floo. "Perhaps I'm asking the wrong questions."
You've just talked at me.
"Did he hurt you?"
She shakes her head.
"Is he a boor to you?"
"At the dance," she mumbles. "I don't think he wanted to be there."
"He was thirteen, little one. He was a thirteen-year-old boy. Shy, based on what I've heard from Padma. And a late bloomer, if he's as thin as you tell me."
Her mother chuckles. "Your father was a few years older than Harry and did not want to be with me when we first courted. At least he was of an age where he wanted to be around women. Certainly, he was ready to make use of one."
"MUM!"
Her mother waves her complaint off, smirking.
"Did Harry apologise?"
She nods.
"Could you see yourself as Mrs. Potter?"
Parvati nods so fast she's surprised her head doesn't flop off.
"See what you can do, my child. I love you."
Sumana Patil snuffs the fire, sighs, and gets off her knees. She scoops the post off the coffee table and shuffles the sheaf in her hands. Bill, Daily Prophet for the birdcages, bill, fraudulent bill, Ministry summons, Ministry invite, legal summons from some idiot who thinks a half-rate solicitor and his last name will suffice to chase foreigners from the British marketplace.
At the bottom of the stack is letter on unusually slick parchment the eerie silver of fish scales, sealed with a fat dollop of painfully bright yellow wax. The sigil is a three-horned, five-legged beast unlike any she's ever seen, read, or heard stories about. There was also her husband's complaint about a multi—coloured flamingo chasing off a post owl this morning…
The Lovegoods.
She slits the letter with a cutting charm.
The offer isn't much–the Lovegoods don't have much–but it's everything they have, except for Xeno's home. Half share of the Quibbler and access to the presses and delivery owls, too. Perhaps she could start her own publication? Pandora Lovegood's personal notes and grimoire. Family books about magical plants and creatures. The Lovegood seat in the 'Mot, pending Luna's approval at her majority.
The Lovegood seat in the 'Mot. Padma could bring a hereditary seat into the fold. Sumana chuckles. An Indian witch colonising Wizarding Britain's legislature. Melisana Shackebolt was the last witch to do that, four centuries ago, and she had the advantage that the white man she was married to was a Longbottom.
Xeno's head may be stuffed with pixies, but he must know how explosive that would be, to have Padma on that seat, even for a single day. To him, no price is too high, it would seem. The entire contract pleads 'Make my little girl happy'.
Sumana picks up the Protean-charmed notebook she made for Padma and flips to the most current pages. She doubts Luna asked for this contract to be sent. Her daughter did. She's known Padma was a witches' witch since she turned ten, and as the younger girl–by minutes, but still–it was always likely she would continue her line, not Anuj's.
She takes a sip of Earl Gray—drives the locals mad that she doesn't favour Darjeeling—and thinks on it. Weiselmann's work in Bavaria shows great promise for witch-witch couples–at least in Muggleborns. Some adjustments would have to be made for the little cracks and quirks British purebloods have picked up in their isolated, tangled bloodlines.
Or perhaps not so tangled, in Luna's case. There are those rumours about Pandora Lovegood: That she wandered nude in the Scottish winter nightly while at Hogwarts, seemingly unaware of the cold, that she had a grasp of wandless fire magic, and that Control of Magical Creatures was there the night Luna was born.
And if any witch was going to hatch her little girl from a bloody egg in some warped imitation of pixie reproduction, Ministry law be damned, it would be a Lovegood.
Pandora's grimoire should be fascinating.
"Very good, Padma."
She clicks her tongue to call Ghost from her perch, dashes off a blood-quill signature, and ties her reply to the peahen's leg.
"The Rook, girl. And don't eat any of those mad plums of theirs this time."
The bird shakes her crowned head; probably disappointed that Sumana thought so little of her intelligence.
Tonks shakes her head and morphs her hair, throwing most of the water off. She tosses the keys in the antique ration cup by the door and flicks her wand at the Muggle locks before casting a quick paling. It's not much, and an orphaned sock is no anchorstone, but enough to slow an intruder down and let her do the rest.
For tonight, it'll do.
Any home–or dodgy flat near the harbour–that hosts a Black-blooded witch in it is a fortress. At least, that's what her mum would say while looking down her fancy-people bone structure nose and sipping from a joke store teacup her Da's crazy aunt bought her.
Mums are weird.
She taps her wand to the back pocket of her jeans, summoning the velvet bag inside before enlarging it.
"Johnnie?"
Nothing. She wonders if she should, laughs at herself, and cups her hands to her mouth.
"AWOOOOO!"
"Really?" she grumbles at the empty hallway. "No scolding? No 'very funny, Nymphadora'? No 'If only the Order could provide two flats?'"
"Accio most recent thing Remus Lupin touched!"
A bedside portrait frame sails around the corner. Two photos are inside, one torn down the middle, and another slipped over it. The Marauders at Hogwarts–minus one traitorous rodent–and her induction ceremony for the Aurors.
"Cute. Wanking to my photo," she mutters. She lifts the frame to her face, screws her eyes tight and makes her sinuses swell. She waits for her nose to sensitise before sniffing the glass.
"…or maybe not."
A note flutters out of the back of the picture frame.
"Dear Lyra, I'm leaving you this because if I see you, if I look into your eyes when you ask, I'm not sure I'll be strong enough to lie. I won't be able to keep it to mysel-FUCK."
She flicks her wand at the closet, summoning her field kit and bag of spare potions. She has a commitment-shy stray to collar.
Author's Note: This next probably seems out of place, given Umbridge's attitude on gender in the witching world. But is she the norm, or is she the magic world's equivalent of a bitter conservative stamping her feet about women who focus on their careers?
(6 days until marriage law deadline)
Daphne can hear her nails scraping the finish off the desk. Once pristine enamel–Sinful Seafoam by Delacour-Rosier Potions, not cheap–chips and cracks under the grind of her clenched fingers. Highly unbecoming. She could stop. At the very least, a Notice-Me-Not would be in order.
Binns drones and drones and drones. He's covered this Goblin Rebellion three times–not that he realises it. He's probably responsible for as many Muggle-borns giving it all up as Voldemort himself: Who wants to live in a world with a history as dull as he describes?
"Yours too, my lady?"
She startles but Pansy protects her from the humiliation by body-binding her before she can leap out of her skin.
"Thank you, Heir Parkinson."
Her handmaiden smiles, curtsies and settles into the next seat over.
"Yours too, I take it?"
"Beg pardon?"
Pansy gestures at the fourth row's far corner, where a nearly-asleep Harry rocks Delphini's basket and Hermione stares at the podium, as focused on the awful lecture as a markswoman is on her target.
"My Gryffindor remains…" Pansy scowls, but fails to maintain it. A smile unfurls on her face when Granger lifts her quill to her lips, licks the tip, and dips it back into her inkpot. "Unaware."
"Yes, mine as well. I could understand Miss Granger," Daphne admits. "She has no reason to understand courtship, and you have given her precious little besides courtship."
"Truly?"
Daphne nods.
"The courtship we practise has not been the Muggle norm for a century, in this country. Longer than that, for the lower classes. For example, their women wear their hair down if they wish to, or up if they wish to. To ask to braid it means nothing more than trust between friends."
"Fuck," Pansy hisses. Daphne doesn't reprimand her. "We spent so long on that. And you looked lovely, my lady. Potter missed that, did he?"
"Entirely. Though, perhaps, the former Andromeda Black has since explained it to him."
She scoffs. "We are speaking a different language. Did you know one of my father's employees nearly assisted me with a clasp on my dress before I stopped her?"
"Morgana's teeth!"
"Godawful contraption. I'd put my wand down, and managed to snag my wand hand behind my back trying to do the laces. She is married to a Muggle," Daphne adds.
Pansy scowls–she knows that Emerald Imports isn't actually run by an American, but rather by a squib her father pays to sit in on the meetings for him. But she can't admit it.
"She told me that it would not be improper for a Muggle woman to assist another with an uncomfortable piece of clothing. She said she sometimes asked her friend to check that her 'bra'–whatever that is–was not visible."
"Ah," Pansy murmurs, cheeks colouring.
"I take it you have worn one? For your little photographic offering, I assume." Daphne teases. "So progressive."
"They provide each other…" Daphne swallows, knowing her cheeks must be Weasley-hair-red. "Imagine if we were strangers. I walk into the lavatory and realise you were frantically searching for vampire's cotton, or a moon-soothe potion and I walked up and handed you it."
"Gods above and below. Truly?"
"Muggle women do not live as we do, and I do not mean the lack of magic. We witches suffer one indignity that wizards do not: Childbearing. A wand is a wand, no matter who wields it. We are their equals in magic, wit, cunning, and worth. Muggle women still struggle to prove this simple fact to their men. They suffer far more than we, and the smarter of them recognize a stranger as a comrade."
"What do they suffer?" Pansy's tone is soft, and her mouth turned in distaste.
Daphne smiles. So protective already?
"A thousand small bothers as a bed on which larger injustices rest. Only in the last decades have they been able to open accounts in banks without their husbands, for example."
Pansy's glossy brow lifts. She must have heard her father's boasting about the carnage Alisanne Parkinson wrought on Gringotts when they tried to turn her away before she could deposit her loot from the Battle of Hastings.
"Your stunt with the wand was truly gauche. You felt as if you were defenseless. Naked. But she didn't know that. Remember that for most of her life, Granger managed without the knowledge of her magic. She was not brought up to see the offering of a witch's wand as part of her modesty. Granger might have seen nothing in it. Helping another woman is something she was brought up to do."
"You know her family ?" Pansy hisses, somewhere between confused, jealous, and nervous.
"Supposition. I asked some Hufflepuffs." Daphne chuckles. "Magic bless their trusting souls. Her parents are both specialised healers–this requires NEWTs and two masteries, in our terms–so her own mother is not without ambition. Granger would have been raised with their…what did the girl call it? Ah, yes. Feminism. One of the victories they have won with it is freedom from courtship."
"Strange thing to want." "Their courtship did not end in the lady having a choice. She might be asked, but often as not, her father's answer came from her mouth."
"Gods above and below."
Daphne watches Pansy Parkinson–daughter of two Death Eaters, pampered child, nearly as stone-hearted a cunt as her mother–tremble at the thought of Muggle women being mistreated. Because Granger is from that stock. The surest way to die foaming at the mouth is for a Parkinson to hear of your mistreatment of their family before Sunday tea.
Perhaps the Headmaster's blathering about the power of love is not so insane, Daphne muses. I can think of no curse or potion that would have turned her to Granger's side after how her parents brought Pansy up.
"How do they…" Pansy moans. "Salazar's snake. What do I do instead of courting?"
"Socialise."
"I'm not sure I understand, my lady."
"Here is what her parents might expect: In a few years' time, Granger could go out to a pub alone, meet a man in said pub, take a liking to him in conversation. He might ask, or she might invite him to call on her. Chaperones would be unlikely, to say the least. Dining together, something called a movie–no, Pansy, I haven't had the pleasure," she adds when her handmaiden turns a curious gaze on her.
"Spending time together, nothing more and nothing less. Unless the courtship was quite short, or she concealed the relationship for a long time, her parents would see nothing unusual in simply being presented with a man she had decided she was going to marry."
Pansy stares at Granger as if she's never seen her before in her life.
"Explains my woes," Pansy admits. "Yours?"
Daphne laughs. "More traditional. Have you ever known a wizard to say what he thinks of you?"
"Happily, I've found a way to avoid that," Pansy teases, settling her eyes back upon Granger.
"Milady?"
Daphne looks up from her arithmancy. If she doesn't bring up her marks, she'll fall behind Granger again. She can't have her handmaidens' intended be her superior.
Milicent Bulstrode stands before her, but scarcely the girl she was last year. The heft remains, but it's been turned to ample, sweeping curves and muscle.
Curiouser and curiouser.
"My lady," Daphne corrects. "Milady is a common address."
Milicent winces at the reminder of her mistake.
"At any rate, House Bulstrode is not beholden to House Greengrass. You are not my vassal, my enemy…" She thinks for a moment, recalling her house's status with the others. "Nor my friend. Simply speak to me as one lady to another."
"I cannot say much," Milicent mutters. "But it's rather obvious you court Potter, and…"
She draws herself up. She must be taller even than Daphne–she's never met another woman with that stature save her own mother. This is no longer a chubby, boorish brat. This is the scion of Magda the Red, a raider too fond of English wizards to get back in her longship.
"If there comes a time when I call on you for aid, remember this, Lady Greengrass."
She thrusts a scrap of parchment at Daphne.
Pansy lays her most daring gown on one side of the bed and the Muggle outfit over the other. She drags a hand across the velvet of her duvet and the wool of the suit, smoothing it down and examining it like she would while unfurling her kit and counting out her knives, ladles, rods, and pestles for potions.
Time is short, so she had to take risks.
Snippy's senility is something she'd played up to her parents for six years, in case she needed the elf for her own purposes. No need to punish an elf too far gone to understand, she claimed. His eyes would've shown them exactly how wrong Pansy was. Cruel, perhaps, but a kiss next to her mother's standards.
"Go to London, find out how women court each other there," she had said.
Her purse is fifty galleons lighter–thank Magic that the exchange rate favours them over pounds–and dozens of shop-keepers in London must be confused by missing products, cash tucked on the shelves, and a locked door.
"Missy is having questions?" Snippy whines.
"Why this?" she wonders, tapping a button on the jacket's lapel. Why is the suit so much sexier to…what was their word? She flips through one of the booklets Snippy found. Lesbians?
"Why is this," she gestures at the suit. Demure. Meant to be worn professionally. Buttoned, it would be like armour. Perhaps, if the blouse was sheer enough, and enough buttons were skipped, a hint of skin.
She points at her best gown–corseted, sleek, silver-on-black, the horned snakes of House Parkinson emblazoned not as a sigil, but a tapestry . The serpents duel in lines of gold–a dance partner would make it out, but only in her arms, not from across the room–swirling and writhing, stretching from the bustline to the ribbon that cinches around her hips.
"Better than that? Why is it prettier?"
"Snippy is not knowing, Missy. Snippy will pun-"
"No need."
I can't let him tell my parents. If I let him go home, he'll have to obey Papa if he asks what I had him do.
She pulls one of Granger's infernal hats from her bag and palms it.
Goyle's family elf got freed whilst doing the wash. It's been the talk of the common room for weeks. Pansy does have some questions as to how a Gryffindor got access to any of the laundry baskets of the Slytherin dorms. An elf accomplice would make it easy, but that idea beggars belief.
With a tap of the wand on the hat and a flick of her wrist, she slices her thumb, anoints the fabric with the blood of the binding family, and hands the hat to Snippy.
"Snippy…Missy…has Snippy will do better! Snippy c-c-a-" Elf wails ring off every surface. Why did they ever agree to share houses with that noise?
"This must remain a secret, but I can't bring myself to hurt you. Rather than death, you have been given clothes. Snippy. Go wherever, do whatever."
She doesn't–can't–look back at the elf.
"Little missy is squirming too much! Oh-oh-oh! Little missy is not putting on her stockings? Then she is getting the feather if she isn't good!"
"That hat's maker may be able to help you," Pansy grits out.
Snippy is gone with a pop. Pansy sinks to the floor beside her bed.
Losing the first person–elf, whatever–to ever make her laugh, the only being alive who knows how ticklish she is…
She'd never thought it could hurt this much.
Daphne flicks her wand at each corner of her four poster one more time before she unfolds the note Milicent gave her.
Arrows, curves, X and O and triangle marks, numbers. Three rings scrawled on each side. Half of it in green ink, half in red.
"Quidditch playbook," She muses aloud.
She traces her finger along the crimson line for number six–Potter's jersey, she's fairly certain–lines unspooling and coiling and changing as the charmed parchment runs through what the Slytherin team expects on Saturday. Potter's line terminates in a collision with both beaters, a chaser, and the keeper.
The countdown charm on the notebook by her bed ticks over the midnight hour, buzzing to remind her of her impending betrothal. Five days left until the deadline for the marriage law. At game time, it will be two.
She snatches a piece of parchment, puts an anti-snooping jinx on it, and writes out what she knows.
• I court Harry Potter.
• Milicent rooms with Moon and is friendly with Montague.
• Montague captains the team, and Moon is second. She would have access to the playbook.
• Milicent's aunt-in-law is a Muggleborn, and her great-uncle turned out squib. A quiet, quick marriage without a bloodline test is to her benefit. Few would take such a risk.
• The Quidditch team serves at Umbridge's pleasure.
• Umbridge's bad moods mean she hasn't broken Harry yet.
• Harry injures himself every other match, often laid up for days.
"Gods below," she groans.
Even Umbridge is smart enough to orchestrate something to get Potter injured long enough to put him in violation of the law. It's clear he would miss deadlines often, without Granger to crack the proverbial whip.
The team wouldn't question why they were ordered to injure him, because they strive to do that anyway. It would be a trifle to earn their loyalty. There are far too many unpromised sons in her house for them to all escape Ministry assignments, especially with foreign matches excluded. And the team of "expert healers" making those decisions–using magic never before discovered, if it even exists–is surely in Umbridge's pink little pocket.
A quick knock off a broom, enough broken bones for an extended hospital stay, and Umbridge gets what she wants.
Lily Moon could have the pick of unassigned purebloods, if she complied. A part-strigoi girl from an infant, embattled house ascended to the Sacred 28! Her grandmother died on a hunter's stake and her mother was Imperiused into marriage while on holiday, not human enough to challenge it under Moroccan law. Lily's daughters will swan into a ballroom with a crest upon their robes and all the rights and immunities thereof.
Daphne would be disappointed in Lily if she didn't make a play with such a reward on offer.
She has to warn Harry Potter…about a Quidditch match. The distaste for the Death Eaters-to-be in her house pales next to the blazing hatred of the Slytherin Quidditch team.
That ghastly game is not taking what is hers.
(4 days until marriage law deadline)
Harry hasn't seen Hermione like this in a while. He's fairly certain the last person who saw that look in her eyes was Malfoy a few seconds before the slippery git got his nose re-shaped.
The parchment clutched in her fists is smoking. Sparks drip from her hair. The firsties have cleared out of the common room, and all six of the prefects have taken up positions in the corners, wands drawn. The seventh year girl's prefect is pale as porridge.
Ron leans in and holds out a knut in his palm.
"Heads or tails?"
"Huh?"
"Tails, I talk to her, heads, you do."
Harry gulps.
"Hey."
Hermione's jaw aches. She's grinding her teeth. Her parents probably won't let her come back if they realise she that.
"What?"
"Just," Harry jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "Ron and I wanted to make sure you're alright. That parchment didn't kick Crookshanks, did it?"
The kneazle shoots Harry an unamused look from his witches' lap. His overlarge paws knead Hermione's skirt in a steady, firm rhythm. He butts his head into her tummy and purrs loud enough to make her pencil clatter on the desk.
"Thanks, Crooks," she chokes out.
"Hedwig does that sometimes to me, you know," Harry jokes. "Works great. What's bothering you?"
She flings the paper across the table.
"Mr. Tonks got a hold of the Ministry's copy of the witches' rights in marriages."
Harry leans over, slowly.
He's afraid of me.
She pushes her wand across the table. Harry smiles, lets out a long breath, and pushes it back.
"If it makes you feel safe, keep it."
"Thanks," she sniffs.
Harry glances down at the parchment. "Hermione, this is a joke, right? It just says 'shall not be murdered.'"
She taps another stack with her wand, undoing the shrinking charm. The stack swells up almost to the ceiling.
"The wizard's rights, privileges, and property laws in marriages. Guess which category the witch falls under."
"I'd rather not, really."
"Trick question. All three."
She uses a third stack to levitate a sheaf of parchment across.
"Binding section of the marriage contract. The Ministry's standard one. Fidelity, obedience, keeping of his secrets, expectations of appearance and public deportment. It goes on. And I think you might recognize the ink on the signature line," she mutters, flexing her hand.
The scars from the blood quill don't ache any more. Over the weekend, when that damn toad can't freshen them, they fade away. Almost. Two weeks with no new scars would probably do it. That jar of potion she found in her bookbag is amazing–she's never seen one like it. Strange that the lid had a wand-etched image of two vipers fighting. The vial of black-frosted glass with a pink kitten stopper and something angry and green inside is starting to seem like a good idea. Surely Dobby can get something into the teacher's cups?
Harry's eyes go wide. With eyes that green and that surprised, he looks like someone put traffic lights in his face.
"This is blood quill ink, Hermione."
He slumps into the seat across from her.
"That's why there are marriage contracts like Morag's."
She nods.
"A contract makes it fair. Otherwise, the witch has less rights than a house-elf."
"Fuck," he hisses.
"Harry Potter! Language!"
Harry shakes his head.
"I realised something. I wonder how many Muggle-born girls are going to know to ask for a marriage contract, Hermione?"
"Muggle-born witches or wizards. The partner with the higher blood status is responsible for informing their sweetheart," she grumbles. "Which I'm sure Malfoy would have done, had he drawn my name. This isn't a law, Harry. It's an attack. On me and you, specifically. But also on Muggle-borns and Muggle-raised who don't know how to work the system. They'll enslave a generation, all at once. And get some healthier, smarter children for their inbred lines in the bargain."
Harry shakes his head.
"Can't put me under the Imperius, so they're trying this, instead."
"Exactly. Now, I just have to figure out how this, a potion for the blood quill scars, and a vial of poison which practically had 'Give to Umbridge' written on it wound up in my bookbag yesterday."