Okay, I'm updating a day earlier. I can't help myself, I'm feeling this story at the moment. Also, I'm not done with my next chapter of Perfect Storm, so I've got to focus. See you next week!
Also, someone on AO3 pointed out that my timeline on the letter before was 1998, which is the same year as the battle. Big boo boo on my part. I just can't add apparently LOL. It is 1999 as Ginny and Hermione have been at school for a year. I fixed it in the last chapter, so all should be good now.
NanHackett: Thank you so much! I feel like the pace of a story is always my biggest anxiety when it comes to writing them, so I'm glad it feels genuine.
Bookcozy: Oh, God, I know! I read that she passed and I was like noooo, I love her. She was the perfect McGonagall, no doubts. I also just love writing supportive friendships. Harry is just one of those people that has a difficult time being supportive, but is somehow still supportive? He's awkwardly toeing the line lol. Pairings are here though, eek!
Chapter Four
The weeks leading up to receiving their pairings dragged slowly. Hermione had tried her very hardest to prevent herself from spiraling into a panic by distracting herself with things that would keep her busy.
The majority of her time was spent filling out packets and packets of those damned forms the Ministry had sent.
They were certainly thorough, though she had minimal doubt that they would be effective. Was it possible for someone to tell who their perfect match could be from answered surveys alone?
She was skeptical, but she had no choice but to answer the questions as seriously as possible, considering the stakes.
Some of the questions were easy, softball sorts of questions — her favorite color, her favorite food, her hobbies, how she'd grown up. Others were more in depth — how had she pictured her wedding day, what important characteristics did she need in her ideal partner, what ways would she discipline a child, how did she imagine her life after children.
Questions she had never before considered as she hadn't been in the place to have done so, but now she was forced to sit and consider every question and answer for hours at a time to determine how she really felt about her life or her future. It was the sort of thing she'd not expected to need to consider for at least another 5 years. Maybe more, considering her ambitions.
Some questions were downright awkward — her financial situation, her living arrangements, her previous sexual history. She'd had to walk away from the paperwork then because these seemed like overly personal questions and sharing them with the Ministry felt like a violation. Though, of course, the law also felt like a violation, so she didn't see why the testing would be all that different.
It was her anxiety at the risk of being paired improperly — and her overly studious nature — that forced her to answer all of the questions regardless of her anger for them.
Perhaps she should have been relieved that the Ministry was taking the entire thing seriously enough that they were asking such extensive questions. Mostly, she just had the urge to storm into the Wizengamot and hex every single person who sat on it.
The aptitude tests had tempered some of that anger. She liked logical puzzles as well as academia, so it was hardly surprising. They were almost fun if she ignored the reason she'd been doing them.
She'd sent them back several days before the deadline, watching the owl that carried them until she could no longer see it on the horizon. It felt like she'd been sealing her fate, but she still had some hope that Ron might propose and make the forms moot.
They hadn't spoken since their argument — she adamantly refused to owl him, and he was too prideful to admit that he was in the wrong. Owling him, though, would imply that she had "grown up", and she didn't see the point. She hadn't done anything wrong in assuming that he'd propose when they'd already been dating.
She'd hoped that he might come around to the idea when Harry proposed to Ginny, and he saw how much simpler it would be for them now. Harry had done it only days after they'd bought the ring, deciding that putting it off would be to no one's benefit, and Ginny had said yes exactly as Hermione had predicted.
She'd been subjected to hours of Ginny's dreamy recount of how special dinner had been, how romantic the location had been, the wonderful words Harry had said before he'd asked. She'd then been subjected to several more hours of Ginny and Mrs. Weasley's excited squealing and tears, their excitement in planning a wedding, and their fawning over the ring.
Hermione might have joined in that last bit, despite her propriety. It really was beautiful and it looked even better on Ginny's finger than it had in the case.
They'd had a celebratory dinner with the entire family, of course, and there was not a single frown at the table that evening, even despite the looming legislation on everyone's mind. Harry and Ginny had eyes for only each other the entire evening, and Hermione had selfishly hoped that Ron would see their happiness and decide that he wanted that with her.
But he hadn't. A week had passed since and still no word from him. No owls, no knocks on her bedroom door, no ridiculous arguments that she suddenly missed now that they were gone.
Being heartbroken was quite possibly the worst pain she'd ever been in. The constant chest ache paired with emotional numbness made no sense to her. Crying every evening despite the numbness made it worse, particularly when she had to worry about the law as well. She never wanted to eat, and she felt like she had constant stomach pain and headaches. Perhaps from crying so much, but it was such an annoying factor to add to the crushing sadness.
It was better when she was distracted. The ache was still present, but at least her mind was occupied elsewhere instead of thinking about what she'd done wrong or how she could have been different in order to make him change his mind. If she'd just used a different tone when she'd spoken with him or if she'd snuck out of Hogwarts to see him more, would the answer have been different?
She was a logical human being — she knew that this was just the Bargaining stage of grief, but it annoyed her anyway. It angered her that she'd even consider changing who she was for him just to avoid the heartbreak. But then she'd see something random — a chocolate frog card under George's old bed, the tube of spearmint toothpaste in the bathroom, a chess piece in the living room — and it would remind her of him and then it all came crashing back down.
It was all so very stupid.
They hadn't even broken up yet — or at least not officially — and she was already grieving the loss of the relationship. It was illogical and totally senseless. There was a chance that they'd be paired together, right? They were compatible as friends at minimum. Surely, that would translate to their romance as well, particularly as they already had introduced romance into that friendship.
She had no reason to be grieving — not yet. Even if he didn't propose, they could still be paired together, no matter what Harry had said. The odds were not totally negligible. It all really depended on how he answered those questions and whatever spell the Ministry had come up with to measure that compatibility.
It was possible.
So instead of wallowing in self-pity, she'd used that additional few days before the letters went out to look over the stipulations they'd been sent in their original letter.
The letter was quite detailed, and it did appear as though they'd considered everything, down to fertility. Including St. Mungo's information and financial assistance was a move to appear as if the Ministry cared about their emotional well-being, but she wasn't a moron — it was a cushion at best, and children were just as expensive after birth as they were before that point.
There was a part of her that hoped she'd be found infertile just for the sake of being exempt from the law, but then she thought that that was a horrible thing to think. There were thousands of people who struggled with infertility in the world, and it was a devastating thing to learn. She'd be devastated herself, even if she wasn't sure if she wanted children at this point, and it was not something she'd wish upon even her worst enemy.
Then she'd considered just letting them strip her of her magic. She'd survived before she'd known she was a witch, and she'd been perfectly happy. She could do that again.
But not knowing that she had magical talent was entirely different from learning that she did, spending years honing that magic and growing fond of this world, and then having it taken away. It would be devastating as well, and she was not so far removed from her emotions that she didn't recognize that.
And Azkaban was entirely out of the question. No one knew what to do with the dementors, so they'd been placed back at the prison until they could figure that out, and she remembered distinctly what it felt like to be near them. She had no desire to deal with that now. And she was an intellectual mind — being behind bars was simply not her idea of a good time.
So, really, she'd run out of options in terms of avoiding the legislation requirements. Her only option, for the time being, was to accept it as it was until she could do more research and pick apart the law.
Which also meant that her only option was to wait until July 1st and pray for the very best.
The morning of July 1st dawned bright and sunny, despite the immediate anxiety that she felt. She'd been so anxious upon waking up that morning that she'd had to get out of bed and get ready for the day immediately, in an attempt to bat the feelings back. She'd gotten up, dressed, made her bed, gone for a run, and showered all before Ginny had even woken up.
She hadn't bothered with breakfast, simply going outside to find something to distract herself with instead. Crookshanks had followed, rubbing himself against her leg incessantly as he normally did when she was anxious.
She'd landed in the garden somehow, deciding that she could use the distraction for the moment, even if it meant that she would have to shower again before dinner. She'd considered de-gnoming the garden before she'd moved to the harder work, but she couldn't bring it within herself to subject them to that treatment.
They'd only come back anyway, and she could work around them. So she'd decided to pull the weeds instead — the muggle way. Magic was a short cut, but it wouldn't distract her for very long if she just vanished them all, and she still had hours before dinner.
The fact that the garden had been ignored for the last several years guaranteed to distract her for a great while. So she'd spent the majority of the day on her hands and knees pulling weeds, ignoring the sun beating down on her neck, and the dirt smears on her hands and face from the number of times that she'd brushed the sweat or hair away.
She tried very hard not to think about the looming dinner and what they were having it for, and she stayed away from the gnomes as much as possible — being bitten because she'd gotten too close was something she only needed to happen once before she'd learned her lesson. Though she was ashamed to admit that she'd considered dizzying that one gnome when it cackled at her pain.
It was nearly three when she heard someone approaching her from behind, but she refused to turn to look, continuing her work as diligently as was possible.
"What are you doing out here?"
"I'm pulling weeds, what's it look like?" she said irritably, not even bothering to look at Harry at all.
She heard him sigh in a long-suffering sort of way, and it made her shoulders tense.
"Mrs. Weasley says you've been out here for hours," he said pointedly. "Without eating or drinking."
"I'm fine," she said shortly.
Not entirely true. She had a horrible migraine, and her knees ached, her hands were scratched from dry dirt and thorns, and she could still feel that spot on her finger where that damned gnome had bitten her.
"Hermione, please don't make me vanish all the weeds and subject myself to being screamed at for the next hour," Harry said tiredly. "She sent me out here with water and a snack, and if I go back in there with this still, she's going to have a fit."
Hermione sighed heavily, pushing herself to sit on the ground instead, ignoring the ache in her knees. She looked at Harry for the first time, and felt an undeserved pang of anger toward him; he looked happy. He was practically glowing with it, and here she was, in a garden the Weasley family had long abandoned, pulling up weeds as a means to pretend like she might not marry the one person she'd ever loved.
She breathed through the misplaced anger, and looked at the snack he'd brought — fruit, cheese, crackers, and far too much water.
"She's not expecting me to eat all of that, is she?" she said blandly.
Harry snorted, taking a seat in the dirt next to her without even a second thought.
"No, she sent me out here to eat some with you," he said.
"That platter could feed a thousand, Harry," she said incredulously, bypassing the food entirely and downing a glass of water instead.
Perhaps she had been thirstier than she'd thought…
"Yeah, well, what do you expect?" he laughed, popping a grape in his mouth. "She's always like that. And don't think about stalling to eat — she told me to sit out here until you've eaten an acceptable amount."
There was another stab of annoyance that she ignored. It would be no use arguing with Mrs. Weasley about the subject, and she was already on the precipice of spiraling. So, instead, she grabbed a slice of cheese and chewed through the taste of sawdust.
"I'd ask how you're doing, but I don't suppose you'd be out here weeding if you were feeling alright," Harry said eventually, watching her closely as she ate slower than a toddler might have. It was difficult to eat when everything tasted horrible and it felt like she'd been chewing for at least an hour.
"Not all of us are getting to marry the person we love, Harry," she said angrily. She sighed when he grimaced and said, "I'm sorry, Harry, I shouldn't be taking this out on you. This isn't your fault. I'm happy for you and Ginny, really."
He waved the words away.
"I know you are," he said surely. "And I'm not trying to pretend like I understand what this is like for you…but you can't starve yourself to avoid this, Hermione."
She couldn't avoid it at all, but that wasn't the point.
"How's Ron?" she said, unable to stop herself from asking.
Harry paused, and looked at her for a long moment, before he sighed heavily.
"He's…normal," he said, as if he were admitting something he'd rather not be. There was a kaleidoscope of emotions that immediately came over her at the words, and she almost couldn't breathe through them all. "He's been focusing on training mostly. He's angry about the law, and complains about that a lot obviously, but he — otherwise, he seems fine. I'm sorry, Hermione…"
She looked away from him and tried to cover her lack of answer by eating a cracker with cheese. It was a pretense, but it gave her time to try and blink away the tears before they threatened to fall.
He was fine.
She was drowning in grief and fear over what was to come, and he was going through his every day activities with no change. She was psychoanalyzing herself, dissecting every one of their arguments together, and trying to figure out where she went wrong and he wasn't considering her at all.
She was tormenting herself over the status of their relationship, and he was merely…normal.
It devastated her as much as it angered her, and she didn't know what she was supposed to say or do in order to pretend that she didn't care. That this didn't bother her.
"What are you sorry for?" she said, clearing her throat and refusing to look at him. "It's not your fault, is it?"
"No, but —" he laughed awkwardly. "I'm really not good at this, you know." She did know. Truthfully, he was horrible at this sort of thing. "He really thinks you'll be paired together, if that helps."
She snorted derisively.
"It doesn't," she said bluntly. "If he really believes that, I don't see why he wouldn't have just proposed. What's his plan if I'm not paired with him, huh? He's just going to marry the next girl with no complaint."
Harry gave her a confused look.
"Well, he wouldn't have a choice, would he?"
She huffed in annoyance. It was always like this with him. He took Ron's side without considering hers. He'd done it with Crookshanks in their third year, with Ron's relationship with Lavender in their sixth, and in their fourth year, he'd refused to admit that she was right about Ron's treatment of Viktor because he'd been jealous. This was no different, except for the fact that Ron actually was being forced into marrying someone else. But there was nothing stopping him from coming to talk to her now, and she had sincere doubts that Harry would have told him so.
"That's not the point, Harry," she said, turning away from him, and beginning to rip out more weeds viciously. She wished they were Ron's head, but these would have to do. "The point is that he doesn't care —"
"Well, I'm sure he does care, Mione —"
"Don't you take his side!" she snapped, whirling on him. He raised his hands in placation, his eyes wide. "If he cared, he would be here right now. If he cared, he would have proposed to spare the risk of not being paired together. If he cared, he wouldn't have stormed out of my room without even the decency to break things off face to face. If he cared, he would at least be upset that he could be forced to marry someone else. Nowhere in his behavior shows that he cares at all!"
Harry stared at her for a long moment, looking awkward. He cleared his throat awkwardly.
"No, I understand that, Mione," he said cautiously. "I just — I mean, maybe he's just handling things a bit differently —"
"Differently?" she shrieked indignantly. "He's handling things by moving on as if I didn't mean anything to him at all! I'd say he's handling things very well, wouldn't you? Maybe he's wanting someone funnier or prettier or meeker than I am. Maybe he's really excited about the fact that he could be paired with someone who wants to stay home with his red-headed baboon children while he goes out and has a career and adult conversations every day!" She was hardly even paying attention to Harry anymore, ripping roots and weeds out so viciously that clumps of dirt went flying in every direction. "Or perhaps he's just excited at the prospect of being with someone who will have sex with him before marriage — that's apparently very important to him, you know!"
Harry grimaced and filled his cheeks with air before releasing it slowly.
"I really should have let Ginny come out here," he muttered to himself, looking very awkward at the change in conversation. "I'm sorry, Hermione, really. I'm not trying to say he's not a git, alright? I'm just saying that — er — that this isn't exactly a normal situation, is it?"
She didn't care about that.
She didn't care that this wasn't a normal situation. It was no excuse to toss her aside as if she were nothing to him. It was no excuse to talk to her as if she were the one who needed to grow up and grow a pair. It was no excuse to try and make her feel badly about the fact that she'd wanted to wait until marriage to be intimate, to suggest that she didn't even love him at all, when he was just going to go about as if she'd meant absolutely nothing to him. She didn't care about any of it because they'd been best friends for eight years, and dating for one of them, and he couldn't even be bothered to have an adult conversation with her — or even look in her direction — before the biggest decision of their lives was made for them.
It was so utterly exhausting, and stupid, and insensitive. And she'd known that he was insensitive before this, of course, but she'd never expected him to throw her aside. Twist her words around, sure. Say something incredibly stupid, probably. But throw her aside? She'd never have guessed that. Though maybe she should have — he'd abandoned them when they'd been on the run, hadn't he? Perhaps this was just the way he thought he could solve most issues.
"Well, it won't matter in an hour anyway, will it?" she said derisively, standing and dusting her hands off on her jeans. "Once the letters are here, he might not have to deal with me at all. I'm going to shower before dinner."
She didn't bother waiting for him, choosing to storm off back toward the house instead.
She was late to dinner that evening, and she knew this wasn't appreciated because Ginny had come banging on the door to tell her to "hurry the hell up."
She hadn't meant to take so long — she'd just been so devastated and angry that she'd sat in the tub for at least half an hour with the jet beating against her head before she'd pulled herself together. She had a lot of hair, so it took awhile to wash and there was dirt in places she'd never have imagined that dirt could even reach. She had to forgo brushing her hair — she'd learned at a very young age that brushing her hair made it frizz so badly that she looked like a rabid Angora rabbit — and didn't bother dressing up for the occasion.
By the time she'd come downstairs, wearing an oversized jumper and leggings, it was five-thirty, and there was a stack of letters in the middle of the table, all food lying completely untouched. The only seat left open was across from George, but at least it was next to Percy and not Ron.
"Sorry I'm late," she murmured, taking a seat next to Percy and looking at the stack of envelopes with more dread than she'd felt than when Harry had told her that Voldemort had created six Horcruxes.
She felt a little bad now for being late — they'd all just been sitting here, staring at that stack of envelopes this entire time, probably as anxious as she was. Not even the twins appeared to have any jokes to make.
"Right, well, I don't imagine we'll be able to eat until we know…" Mrs. Weasley said, eyeing the entire table and twisting a kitchen towel in her hand anxiously. "Who wants to go first?"
Not a single person volunteered and the silence was long. Perhaps if they didn't open them at all, it would be like it had never happened. They could tell the Ministry that they hadn't even received their matches.
Mr. Weasley sighed heavily, pulling the stack of envelopes toward him.
"Percy, yours is at the top," he said, handing it toward his bespectacled son.
Percy looked paler than she'd ever seen him. He almost looked like a ghost. The only time she'd ever seen anyone paler was when Harry had fallen off his broom in their third year, and they'd all thought he'd died.
Percy cleared his throat several times next to her, ripping the letter above the Ministry wax seal, and unfolding the parchment inside. They all waited in tense silence as his eyes scanned the page.
"It says that I'm to be wed to Audrey Smith," he said pompously, though his shoulders did not relax. "I'm not familiar with her. I suppose I'll have to — have to owl her to meet."
Not even Mrs. Weasley appeared to know what to say to that, and this information did little to relax everyone else at the table. Mr. Weasley cleared his throat, handing the next envelope to Charlie. Hermione wasn't sure that doing this one by one was the best solution, but she couldn't even open her mouth to say so. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears, and she had to sit on her hands to keep them from shaking.
"Lydia Reynolds," Charlie said before sagging in relief. "I went to school with her. She was in my year, I think — Hufflepuff, maybe. She seemed nice enough."
"Good, good," Mrs. Weasley said, her hands still twirling the kitchen towel, but some of the tension relaxed in her shoulders. "Who's next?"
"Fred," Mr. Weasley said, handing the envelope to Fred.
There was a protracted moment where Hermione wasn't sure if he was even going to grab the envelope. He stared at it for a long moment before he reached forward and took it. She'd always known him to be a very good actor, and his hands did not shake or betray any nervousness, but she had no doubt that he must feel that way internally. He and George were sitting so closely that their shoulders touched, and she didn't think that that was by accident. Perhaps being so near George was comforting somehow.
Hermione could tell the moment he'd read the name because he sagged in relief and laughed in disbelief.
"Katie Bell," he said, blowing out a large breath. "Thank Merlin. I was afraid it might be Millicent Bulstrode…"
Hermione snorted, despite herself, and he winked at her from across the table, some of the color coming back into his face. She was grateful he hadn't gotten Bulstrode too. If she never saw that woman again, it would be too soon.
"You know her then?" Mrs. Weasley said, eyeing her twin son anxiously.
"She was on the Quidditch team with us," Fred said, running a hand through his hair. "A year younger than us. Just saw her last week, actually."
Mrs. Weasley seemed to relax some more, the towel in her hand coming to a rest finally, though her hands were still gripping it very tightly. Hermione had expected the next envelope to be George's — maybe she was just so used to Fred and George being viewed as one entity or something — but she froze in horror when Mr. Weasley, instead, handed the envelope to Ron.
Ginny, who sat on her other side, reached under the table for her hand, and squeezed it tightly, smiling at her gently.
She watched every movement Ron made as he opened the envelope. She could hear the sound of his nail against the wax seal, the paper scratching against the envelope as he pulled it out, the way that it crinkled as he unfolded it, as if it were her own heartbeat in her ears. It felt like an eternity, that horrible, bubbling feeling in her stomach and the racing of her heart making her want to faint.
There was a moment — one small, glorious moment — where she'd begun to relax and feel relief. Because Ron had grinned widely at the paper in his hand, and she was sure, based on that information alone, that he had to have been paired with her.
And despite all of her anger and betrayal and grief, she was grateful it was her because she didn't know how to love anyone else —
"Romilda Vane," he said, looking up at Harry. "Isn't she that bird that tried to give you a Love Potion? She's quite fit, isn't she?"
Hermione's entire world came crashing around her, and it took every ounce of self-control she possessed to maintain her composure. She'd known — deep down she'd known that he wouldn't be paired with her. Why else would she be so anxious? If she really thought them compatible, she should have been as sure as she had been about Ginny being paired with Harry. She hadn't been.
But that didn't help her because it felt like she couldn't breathe and she had to keep breathing in order to maintain some form of apathetic facade because he certainly didn't deserve a reaction from her. Not when he was grinning so widely, as if he'd simply won the lottery, despite the fact that the person he was set to marry was not the girl he'd been dating — and proclaimed to love — for the last year.
"The Love Potion you ended up ingesting by mistake and ended with you being poisoned, you mean?" Harry said pointedly, clearly trying to get Ron to appear somewhat devastated.
Mrs. Weasley's towel had begun being twisted again and she scowled at this news.
"Yeah, well, perhaps that was a sign," Ron said with a laugh. "I mean, what are the odds, d'you think — that I swallow the Love Potion of my future wife? It'll be a nice story for the kids…and she's nice to look at —"
Ginny kicked Ron hard under the table to get him to stop talking, but the damage had already been done. She'd heard too much, and he wasn't upset that it wasn't her. He was perfectly happy with the idea that he would be marrying Romilda in ten months, and no matter what he said now, she would always remember this moment.
The grin on his face, the words, the sound of his laugh as though he couldn't believe he'd gotten so lucky — all of it was replaying in her mind as if it weren't happening directly in front of her. Even worse was the pity on his parents' faces…the loud, awkward silence in the room…the way that Ginny and Harry were seething in Ron's direction, while everyone else refused to look at her…
She'd never be able to forget what this felt like, and it was going to get so much worse, wasn't it? Because now she had to learn who she would marry…knowing it wasn't going to be Ronald Weasley.
She closed her eyes against the onslaught of images, and breathed in slowly to keep the tears at bay.
It was Mr. Weasley who broke the horrible, awkward tension.
"Er," he cleared his throat loudly. "Well, George's was next, but perhaps we should do Hermione's first."
She didn't see the point in it all, but she took the envelope with shaking hands, refusing to look at Ron completely. Her hands shook violently as she opened the envelope but no one said anything as they waited. The air of pity in the room was stifling, and she was sure that whatever was in here was going to make that much worse.
If it wasn't Ron then who could it be? She was trying to remember every single male she'd ever known, but that was so very many people, and all she could remember at the moment was everyone she was hoping it would not be.
Draco Malfoy…Gregory Goyle…Cormac McLaggen…Zacharius Smith…
She tried to breathe through that panic, and remind herself that it was going to be fine. Whoever it was, it couldn't make her feel any worse than she did right then. There was no way that this moment could get any more painful or awkward.
The moment her eyes caught sight of the name on the letter, she wished she'd never have thought such a thing to begin with.
Perhaps this was God teaching her a lesson, telling her that she shouldn't be so sure that her life couldn't turn upside down at any given moment.
Because there was absolutely, positively no way that she was seeing things properly.
She was gaping at it silently as everyone in the room looked at her. Thinking maybe she was seeing things, she squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again in the hopes that the letters would rearrange themselves somehow. They didn't, so she squeezed them shut and shook her head as if she were clearing it of cobwebs. The name was still the same.
She gaped again, pulling the letter so close to her face that it blocked her completely from view. The name still didn't change.
There had to have been some sort of mistake. This was her most compatible match, and yet, she could think of no one more different from her in every single way.
"Hermione?" Harry said, worriedly.
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish, an odd noise coming from the back of her throat. She cleared her throat and stared at the paper in front of her, refusing to look up at the other people at the table with her.
"George," she said weakly.
"What?" he replied, raising an eyebrow. "You want me to open mine first?"
She choked, not entirely sure if she was trying to scream or cry or laugh. It was a true testament to how absurd the entire thing was that he immediately assumed that she was merely asking him for a favor and not implying that they would have to be married.
She raised her eyes from the paper to meet his gaze, the panic growing worse when she had to look him in the eyes.
"No, it —" It didn't even sound like her voice. She cleared her throat again, hoping that maybe it would help. "It says that I'm to marry you."
Mrs. Weasley froze completely, and the silence moved from awkward and pitying to absolute shock. George stared at her for a long moment as if he didn't quite understand the words that were coming out of her mouth — to be fair, she wasn't sure she did either — but then he jolted forward to rip the letter out of his father's hands and tore it open faster than any of them had before him.
She didn't blame him for wanting to see it himself. It was absurd. There had to have been some sort of mistake…
But it said clear as day —
Miss Granger,
We have carefully weighed the information you provided in your personality and aptitude tests. Based on this information, we have found your most compatible match to be:
George Weasley
Based on the information submitted by you and Mr. Weasley, you share common values, aspirations, and share a similar intellect. Please contact your betrothed at your earliest convenience and be sure to submit to the required fertility testing as soon as you are able. As a reminder, you must be married by a Ministry official prior to 1 May 2000 at 5 PM. If you have any concerns, please reach out via owl to set up an appointment with our department.
Congratulations to you both!
Miranda O'Rourke
Department for the Regulation of Magical Union
No, she wasn't crazy, and the words did not change no matter how many times she read them. She was sure that George's would say the exact same thing as hers.
Fred leaned over to look at the letter himself, his face painted with incredulity. His gaze lifted from his twin's letter immediately to look at her before his eyes drifted to George and then to Ron, who had tensed and was waiting to see if George would confirm what she was saying.
Fred's eyes moved the same path again — her, George, Ron — before he burst into raucous laughter. Hermione jumped in surprise, the sound feeling so foreign given the current circumstances. George didn't even appear to notice, his eyes glued to what she assumed was her name on the parchment in front of him.
"Fred, it's not funny!" she scolded immediately.
Fred did not appear at all focused on anything around him. He'd simply lost all control, his laughter so loud that it rang in the room, tears beginning to stream down his face from the force of it, his fist banging on the table repeatedly.
"This — is — the — best — day —" he gasped through his laughter. "Since I've — been alive. Oh Merlin —"
"Shut up, Fred," Ron growled angrily. Fred didn't appear to have even heard him — he was gripping his sides as if he were in pain, but the laughter did not stop.
Ginny ripped the paper from her hands in order to confirm herself. Instead of appearing disappointed, she started squealing excitedly, throwing her arms around her in a hug.
"Oh, Hermione, I know it's not what you expected, but — but we're going to be sisters soon!" She said excitedly. Mrs. Weasley had started crying.
"Oh, she'll be part of the family now, won't she?" she said happily. "Oh this is wonderful news —"
"Wonderful news?" Ron said loudly, turning on his mother angrily. "How can you say that? She's my girlfriend! She can't marry my brother!"
Ginny stood angrily.
"She doesn't exactly have a choice, does she?" she snapped in her mother's defense. "Besides, you haven't even spoken to Hermione in weeks. And you were just bragging about getting to marry Romilda Vane —!"
"So you're taking her side then?" Ron yelled, pointing at Hermione.
"This isn't her fault, you prat!" Ginny shouted. "If you wanted her so badly then maybe you should have proposed before the letters went out! We're allowed to be happy that she'll be an official part of this family, whether you like it or not!"
"What I did is beside the point — FRED, STOP BLOODY LAUGHING!"
Fred didn't stop laughing, the chaos around him appearing to only make him laugh harder. Whatever patience Ron had had before that point appeared to have left him entirely, and he lunged across the table at Fred, knocking him completely out of his chair and sending them both toppling to the floor.
Fleur and Hermione screamed in surprise.
"RON, STOP IT!" Hermione said.
George appeared to have been snapped out of whatever reverie he'd been in at the show of violence toward his twin. He'd been quite overprotective of Fred since he'd nearly died, and though it had been over a year since Fred's brush with death, that overprotectiveness had not dissipated.
And by the way he lunged at Ron in retaliation — despite the fact that Fred was still roaring with laughter — Hermione assumed that the fact that Ron was family made absolutely no difference to George.
George was either a lot stronger than he looked or Ron was simply so blinded by rage that he wasn't paying much attention because George had lifted Ron off of Fred as though he weighed nothing at all, slamming him into the wall hard.
The entire thing occurred so quickly that the rest of the family had only managed to jump out of their seats with their wands in hand by the time it was over.
"BOYS!" Mrs. Weasley yelled. "THIS IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS! WE DID NOT RAISE YOU TO BEHAVE THIS WAY"
"Calm the fuck down, Ron!" George snarled warningly, ignoring his mother completely. "Take a walk."
"Fuck you, George," Ron seethed. "You think this is a joke —"
"Yes," Fred said at the same time that George said, "Do you see me laughing?"
Ron pushed George hard in the chest and he went stumbling backward, but Hermione had the distinct impression that it was only because George allowed it. She'd never noticed before, but George was far more in shape than his brother, and if he hadn't wanted to move, she didn't think that Ron would have been able to move him.
"You're a bastard if you think you're marrying her," Ron said angrily. "I won't allow it —"
"Allow it?" Hermione said angrily, despite her anxiety at the events unfolding in front of her. She'd never wanted to be the cause of any sort of division within a family that had accepted her so readily, but she couldn't ignore the absolute absurdity of the statement. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you're going to ask the Ministry for a — a reevaluation! You can't marry George!"
"You read the rules yourself, Ronald!" she said in irritation. "There are no exceptions made —"
"YOU AREN'T MARRYING GEORGE —"
"That is enough!" Mrs. Weasley said loudly, sending a shower of sparks out of her wand to get the room to silence. "I have no idea what has gotten into you, Ronald, but you cannot speak to her that way!"
"Mum —"
"We're all going to take a breather," Mr. Weasley said firmly. His voice was quiet, but he commanded the attention of the room, and Hermione had never once heard him use that tone before. "Once everyone has calmed down, we can try this again. The Ministry has made the pairings and we can deal with the rest tomorrow."
"Dad —"
"This is not up for discussion, Ron," he said sharply. Ron immediately fell silent. "Percy, Charlie, Fred, and Ron — owl your…fiancés and invite them to dinner next Sunday. I expect every one of you to be on your best behavior by then."
There was a long silence in which George and Ron merely seethed in each other's direction, and Hermione wasn't sure that they were going to drop the argument at all, but Ron grabbed his cloak off the back of his chair and stormed out of the house.
Harry ran a hand down his face, kissed Ginny, and hugged Hermione before he went after him, looking as annoyed and overwhelmed as the rest of them.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for —"
"Don't be ridiculous, Hermione," Mrs. Weasley said, waving her away, and wrapping her in a hug. "That wasn't your fault. Ron's always been a bit emotional…he'll come around. I'm just so happy that you and —" Mr. Weasley cleared his throat pointedly and she changed tactics. "Right, no, that's probably something you should discuss. Not tonight though. I think we've had quite enough drama for the evening."
The others appeared to agree because they all dispersed rather quickly without a word. George met her eye briefly before he smiled at her awkwardly and followed after Fred to head back to the shop.
She relaxed a little — she wasn't sure what she should say to him yet, and it felt like too much stress to try and figure that all out now. Maybe some time alone would help figure that out, she didn't know.
She wasn't sure that all the time in the world would be enough to calm her nerves about marrying George Weasley.
There was simply not enough firewhiskey in the world to cope with this turn of events.
And he'd downed quite a bit, Fred watching him from the other side of the kitchen in amusement. If he didn't love the idiot so much, he'd have taken a swing at him for looking so smug at the moment.
As it was, he did love him…and he was too busy staring into his whiskey glass, watching the amber liquid as if it held all of the answers he'd been looking for.
Hermione fucking Granger.
Maybe he'd hit his head or something. It was all some weird delusion he was under.
Because being paired with Hermione Granger felt absurd. It was absurd.
He didn't know who he'd expected it to be — he'd had an on-and-off relationship with Alicia Spinnet for awhile, though they really operated better as friends who met for an occasional shag than they ever had as a couple. No matter the fact that she'd made it clear to him that she was hoping they'd be paired together.
Aside from that he was really more of a casual fling sort of person — the Muggle girl in the village, one of Fleur's Veela cousins, a few girls at Hogwarts. The likelihood of him being paired with any of those people was either unlikely or entirely outside the realm of possibility.
But Hermione Granger?
He downed more of the firewhiskey before pouring himself another.
Fred snorted, taking the bottle from him and putting it outside of his reach.
"I think three glasses is quite enough," he said, leaning back against the counter and crossing his legs at the ankle. He still looked far too amused for the situation. "There's nothing wrong with her, you know."
George gave him a pointed look.
Of course, there was nothing wrong with her. She was intelligent — though maybe a bit of a swot — she was loyal, she was brave, she'd saved his twin's life which was a debt he'd never be able to repay her for. She was very nice overall, and certainly not afraid to speak her mind.
She wasn't bad to look at either, though he'd never have told her that. He'd had a…well, he didn't know what to call it, really. He hadn't had a crush on her, but he'd had a fantasy or two about her before. And she'd grown to be a very beautiful woman. To say otherwise would be stupid.
Problem was that she was his brother's girlfriend, and though he and Fred agreed that Ron did not deserve her, he'd never once considered marrying her. Or anything else for that matter.
It made everything so much more complicated.
He'd not been happy about the law to begin with — with the shop so busy that they were wanting to expand, marriage certainly hadn't been anywhere on his radar — but it was much worse now, being paired with his kid brother's…girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend now?
Who was now his fiance?
See, it was too damned complicated.
Not made better by the fact that she'd clearly been devastated by not being paired with Ron. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
His twin knew all of this though, he didn't need to say it all out loud.
"You know that's not what I'm drinking for," he said instead.
Fred sighed heavily.
"George, moping is going to solve nothing," he said bluntly. Fred had always had very little patience for people being upset over things that were beyond their control. It was the reason George always ended up having the softer conversations with people. And cleaning up their messes when they ended up going too far. "You can sit here and drink yourself stupid over getting paired with a very decent, very attractive human being —"
George raised an eyebrow with a smirk.
"Do you want to marry Granger?" he said pointedly.
Fred grinned at him, pouring his own glass of firewhiskey.
"Not particularly," he said. "She probably deducts House points if you're having an off night in bed. That would really bruise my ego."
George bit his tongue to prevent himself from giving his brother the satisfaction of hearing him laugh.
"Yeah, well, you could use that, couldn't you?" he said instead.
"All I'm saying is I've got eyes, haven't I?" he countered, ignoring the jibe. "And it could be worse. You could have been paired with Milicent Bulstrode —"
"What's your problem with Milicent Bulstrode?"
"She's stronger than I am, George," he said seriously.
"I wasn't aware your masculinity was so fragile, Freddie," he said, grinning at him over the rim of his glass.
"It isn't, it's just not my preference to be snapped in half every time she remembers that we're the ones that sent her that box of Puking Pastilles disguised as chocolate from her secret admirer."
George snorted. He'd forgotten about that.
"Fair point," he conceded. Fred gave him a serious look.
"Besides, we both know Ron's a great prat," he said. "If you'd let me ask her what in the bloody fuck she's doing with him in the first place —"
George rolled his eyes. An argument they'd had a hundred times before.
"You can't just ask people questions like that, Fred," he said in irritation. "It's Granger, in case you've forgotten. She'll hex our bollocks off and I don't want to have to explain that to a Healer —"
"Prude," Fred snorted.
"And anyway, Ron's our brother," he said, rubbing his eyes. "You can't just go about telling his girlfriend she's too good for him —"
"I can if it's true," Fred said indignantly. "We're getting off topic. All I'm saying here is that she's going to get over Ron because they don't work. Only people who think they do are those two and Mum. Though, you know, I think that's just because she wants Hermione as part of the family. No way she's that dense…"
This conversation was giving George a headache. Fred was far too easily distracted to get to the point.
"Fred, can you just say whatever you're trying to say, and be done with it," he said. "Your voice is starting to hurt my head —"
"First of all, we have the same voice, you prat," he said. "And secondly, I'm saying that eventually she's going to realize that Ron's not worth crying over, and seeing as the two of you are going to have to be shagging in ten months —"
"Fucking hell," George said, taking another swig.
" — and that would be a lot less awkward, say, if you were at least partially charming —"
George straightened indignantly.
"I'm charming, alright?" he said, so affronted by the suggestion that Fred started sniggering. "It's not as if I'm going to act like a prat about it. We're friends at minimum, and it's not like either of us have a choice — we can at least make it…less awkward."
Fred gave him a long look.
"Okay, let me ask you this," he said. "Without Ron in the picture…would this be even half as bad to you?"
"Well, how the hell should I know?" he said. "He's in the picture —"
"Do you find her attractive?"
"Yes, but that's hardly —"
"Do you like her?" Fred paused. "As a person, I mean. Not as in fancy her."
"She's a bit uptight, but otherwise, yes —"
"Too right," Fred muttered. "That'll be step one. You've got to loosen her up. I can't be hanging about someone who threatens to owl mum every time we make a joke."
"I don't know why I put up with you," George said, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.
"Now, seeing as those two things are true, you could absolutely woo her," Fred said, ignoring him entirely. "Far less awkward to shag someone you fancy, innit? Assuming you have the skillset to woo a woman, anyway, which I'm starting to doubt —"
"I swear to Merlin, Fred, I will throw this glass at your head."
"Just forget about Ron," Fred said, giving him a hard look. "There's nothing you can do about it, right? Just focus on the problem at hand — you've got to marry Granger, you've got to have kids. So you've got to build a relationship with her — use whatever limited people skills that were transferred from me to you in the womb, and it'll be fine. Ron's going to have a fit regardless."
True, but it still complicated things. Course, marrying anyone at all complicated things. And it was a bit optimistic to say that whatever friendship they had could develop into something else, even if she wasn't pining after his little brother.
He really needed to have a word with these Ministry blokes.
Neither one of them turned to look when the fireplace behind them ignited.
"Sorry, I'm late," Lee Jordan said, as he tumbled out and walked over to the kitchen. "So, who'd you get then?"
"Katie Bell," Fred said, still sounding relieved by his good fortune. He and Katie had never once had anything other than a close friendship, but they got on well enough and he could work with that. "Who'd you get?"
Lee looked rather awkward.
"Er — Angelina," he said. "Sorry, mate —"
Fred laughed and waved him away.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "We were never serious except for that disaster of a time in sixth year. We'd have killed each other if we'd been paired together."
"Right, so who'd you get then?" Lee said to George, looking relieved that Fred wasn't altogether pressed about Lee's fiancé. He poured his own glass of firewhiskey and sat across from George at the kitchen table, missing Fred's large smirk from behind him.
"Hermione Granger," George said with a sigh.
Lee snorted.
"Very funny," he said, causing Fred's smirk to widen into a very large grin. "Quit messing around — who is it?" George looked at him blandly for a very long moment before Lee seemed to understand that he was, in fact, not joking. His jaw dropped. "You're serious? He's serious?"
"Oh yeah," Fred said with a grin.
There was a long moment where Lee did not respond at all before he erupted into laughter.
It was starting to get annoying.
"Why does everyone seem to think it's so funny?" George griped, swallowing the rest of his firewhiskey and savoring the burn for the last time since Fred was still keeping a rather close eye on the bottle.
"Oh, Merlin —" Lee gasped through his laughter. "No, it's not funny. I'm sorry." He tried to pull himself together, but it lasted a mere second before he was laughing again. "It's just that it's you — and it's Granger —"
"There's nothing wrong with her," George said in irritation, not at all realizing that he was repeating his brother's words from earlier.
"Hey, d'you think she'll ground him when he comes home late?" Lee said to Fred with a grin. Fred erupted in laughter at the thought, and George rolled his eyes.
"I can't stand either one of you."
"Well, at least you've got Granger now, eh?" Lee said, sending them both into another round of laughter.
No, there was simply not enough firewhiskey.
Okay, thought processes here. First being, I didn't pair Fred with Angelina, who I feel is the normal person he's paired with. There are several reasons for this. One, because I know JKR said she married George after Fred died, and I don't know why but it makes me sad to think that she might have married him because he looks like Fred. Or even that that's what originally attracted her to him to begin with even if it developed later. Ever since then, I've been a hardcore believer that Fred and Angelina didn't work for a reason, and she was just a better fit for George, so I never pair her with Fred now lol. Second, I also don't think they were dating at the time of the battle anyway — he disappeared with one of Fleur's veela cousins at Bill and Fleur's wedding, and their relationship is never mentioned after the fourth book anyway. So I just don't see them as together in my head.
Second, Ron…I considered it a very long time. Lavender died in the battle and I considered going against canon for his pairing and keeping her alive, but I decided not to for the same reason as I did with Fred and Angelina. They didn't work in the books…I'm going to keep it that way in this. And I do like me some drama.