Author's Note: Liked the idea of a Marriage Law, so tried to give it my own take. Thanks to all who have reviewed. I like that my story is provoking such reactions!
Oh and none of these people are mine…
What Might Have Been
Chapter Six
"What?" Harry breathed in shock. "Why would they do that?" Hermione appeared dazed, her eyes wide and staring.
"Malfoy paid them off, so he … so he could…" her words were drowned under a hiccupping sob. Harry was alarmed, seeing Hermione so close to coming completely unglued. He slipped one hand into hers under the table.
Ron watched them silently, stealing frequent glances over at Malfoy, and looking pensive.
"He'll pay off everybody….I'll have to marry him…I'll have to live at Malfoy Manor with his horrid mother…and …" Hermione was speaking lightly and quickly, and looked nearly hysterical.
"Hermione…" Harry pleaded, helpless to reassure her.
"Hermione, not everyone can be bought," Ron finally spoke, and Hermione snapped back to the present, her eyes becoming clear. Her forehead creased with anxiety.
"I hope you're right, Ron," she said finally, a shudder going through her frame, as she tried to calm herself down. "I - " she stopped, her eyes drifting over to the Slytherin table, where Malfoy was watching the trio with interest. He blew her a kiss, and she swallowed with difficulty, shaking her head violently. "I - I can't - " She stood quickly. "Tell Professor Lupin I'm ill."
In a flash of black robes and a swirl of brown hair, she was gone.
"Ron, what are we going to do?" Harry said, his voice desperate, nearly cracking with urgency.
"I dunno, mate," Ron said, his blue eyes following the path Hermione had taken from the Great Hall. Harry looked at him with exasperation, and stood too.
"Tell Lupin that I - " he paused, considering, then shrugged. "I don't bloody care what you tell him."
He nearly collided with Ginny, who looked after him, startled, as she sat down next to her brother, and began ladling food onto her plate.
"What's going on?" she said.
"Damned if I know," Ron muttered, watching the double doors of the Great Hall darkly. Ginny looked at him sharply, but refrained from further comment.
There was thunderous applause and more than a few whistles and whoops, though they perhaps did not fit with the solemnity of the occasion. Harry looked up into Dumbledore's somber gaze as he lowered the wide ribbon over Harry's head. The Order of Merlin hung heavily from his neck, swinging pendulously. He lifted his chin, looking into the noisy throng, and tried to smile graciously.
Ron and Hermione stood to either side of him, each with a medal as well. Hermione was smiling uncomfortably, and Ron was standing stock-still, red to the ears, but looking dazed.
Mrs. Weasley was in the front row, crying prodigiously into a handkerchief. Harry knew she was proud of Ron, but was fairly certain that he was not the reason she cried.
Bill Weasley had succumbed to his injuries five days previously. Harry had sunk down into a kind of despair, watching the Weasley family - his family - grieve. He was being lauded as a victor, a savior, but people had still died. People he should have been able to save. And this ceremony was more than he could bear.
He turned abruptly, clattering noisily down the stairs from the dais, and disappeared from sight. The applause trickled off and was replaced by a rush of whispers and murmurs. Ron and Hermione exchanged glances, and hurried after Harry.
They found him, crouched in a Ministry hallway, with his Order of Merlin some 5 meters away from him, a suspicious dent in the wall just above it.
"Harry?" Ron prodded, his voice a loud whisper in the silence of the empty hallway.
"I didn't ask for this," Harry said, suddenly, looking up at them. His eyes were hard and set, his voice low, but his jaw trembled rebelliously. "I didn't ask to be everyone's hero!" A shudder ran through his hunched body, and he dashed a tear away angrily with the back of his hand.
"Harry, we know that," Hermione said gently, kneeling beside him, placing one hand on his back.
"You don't understand," he replied thickly. "There were - people - Bill… I should have…"
Ron squatted down in front of him, and put both hands on Harry's shoulders.
"Bill died fighting Voldemort," he said, and Harry wondered how much it cost him to say those four words with such passion. "Just like any of us would have."
Harry sat in silence for a long time, his two friends knelt beside him, lending him what wordless support they could give.
"Ron, I'm so sorry," he finally said in a quiet broken voice. "Thanks."
Ron stared at him for a moment, and Harry felt a closer communion with him than he'd ever had before.
"Don't mention it, mate. You'd have done the same."
"Hermione!" Harry gasped, out of breath from having sprinted to their rooms from the Great Hall. "Hermione!" He took the stairs two at a time, loudly galloping up and careening around the corner into her bedroom.
She was staring out her window, sitting stiffly in a chair, dried traces of tears on her face.
"Are you all right?" he asked, rather stupidly.
"Do I look all right?" she snapped back, nastily, but apology immediately flooded her features. "Harry, I'm sorry. It's not like any of this is your fault."
"If I were Pureblood -" Hermione cut him off by rolling her eyes.
"Harry, that's just ridiculous. Then you wouldn't be you." She smiled a bit, but it fell off her face quickly. She stared out the window again. "I'm going to have to marry Draco Malfoy!" she said quietly, in the tone of one who is resigned to her fate.
"No, Hermione," Harry said quickly. "There has got to be something we can do…some way that we can stop this. We can go away…just us, and we'll - "
Hermione shook her head miserably. "The wizarding world needs you, Harry. I can't take you away."
"Well, I don't need them. I - " Harry protested hotly.
"Besides, I - I don't know if I want to leave…I wouldn't be able to live as a witch…I'd have to leave everybody I love…my parents…the Weasleys…"
"You'd rather marry Malfoy?" Harry said in a tone of disbelief.
"I just don't know if I could leave it all behind," she said sadly.
Harry winced as he thought of never seeing Hermione again. The emptiness spread out before him in a vast chasm of years…years of just existing…years of wondering where she was and how she was doing…years of longing to see her again.
When he shook away his gloomy vision of the future, and looked up, she was staring at him. He felt himself flush under her perusal.
"Hermione, what are - ?" he started to say, but the words died on his lips, as she stood and walked wordlessly towards him.
"Harry, you know how much I hate having other people dictate what kind of decisions I make," she said. Harry mulled this over, and nodded. Hermione had never been one who bowed to convention or popular opinion. "And yet, here, when Voldemort is dead, and we should all be free, my choices are being taken away from me. I'm being steered, I'm being manipulated…and I bloody well hate it!" Her voice rang out loudly in the quiet room.
"Hermione, I know," he said, urgently, tenderly, "I know, and I wish… I wish there was something I could - "
"There is something you can do," she said, her voice low and confident. Her face was very close to his. "There is something I can give you that I can never give anyone else." He felt her body close to his in all the wrong places, and his face flooded with heat as he realized what she was talking about.
"Hermione - " he stammered, backing away slightly, while wondering why he was backing away. "Hermione, you're upset…"
"Of course I'm upset, Harry. But that doesn't mean I haven't thought about this," her voice was passionate. "I have been in love with you for a long time. I've just had our future ripped away from me. Don't I deserve this one thing?" Tears were standing in her eyes, and she moved into his personal space again. Her lips were trembling just beneath his.
"Hermione…" he said helplessly, before his lips crashed into hers. He should have known that he wouldn't be able to deny her anything.
And then, so quickly that he wasn't sure how it was happening, hands were everywhere, his hands, her hands, discarding clothing at a fevered pace. Her skin was hot and soft, her eyes were dilated, and her breathing was rapid. He backed her up towards the bed, and when she pulled him down on top of her, all of the blood left his brain.
"Hermione, I love you," he said, without stopping to think about it.
"Oh, Harry, always," she gasped in reply.
Harry dimly wondered what the rest of the school would think if they knew that the Head Boy and Head Girl were skiving off classes to shag each other senseless. It was the last rational thought he had for quite some time.
Ron stood in the hospital corridor, gaze distant, drifting up and down the hallway in an aimless fashion. Now and then, his glance caught the closed door of Harry's room. Hermione sat inside, where she had been, unmoving, since Harry had been brought to St. Mungo's.
It had been hours. He had poked his head in the door once, to try to get her to eat something, and had been roundly scolded by a mediwitch, who said there could only be one visitor at a time.
"You stay with him for awhile," Hermione said quickly, getting up from her chair. "I'm sorry, I've been monopolizing…" she trailed off.
Ron watched the pain flicker through her eyes, as she looked at the pale, prone figure on the bed. He could understand how she felt, perhaps even more so than she. He had grown up in the wizarding world, had heard the name of Harry Potter all his life. Harry was a symbol of hope, and, even with Voldemort gone, if he died…
…it would be the death of faith itself…
Ron sighed heavily, and winced as the pain of his broken collarbone shot across his shoulder. He had already lost Percy; they didn't know if Bill would make it; if Harry died too…his brother, in more than mere blood, his best friend.
He watched Hermione again, watched how she twisted her hands around each other, watched the crease in her forehead, the anxiety in her warm brown eyes. Her eyes had not left Harry's still, white face.
Bloody hell, Ron thought in some amazement. She's in love with him. The certainty shot through him as surely as if she'd confessed it aloud. And somewhere, there was a pang, a pinprick of jealousy, of hurt, of fear…
"No," he said slowly, speaking as if from far away, preoccupied, "No, you stay, Hermione. Let me know if…if he wakes up."
Hermione nodded absently, and Ron wasn't even sure if she'd registered what he said. With a backward glance at those pleading eyes fixed on that famous heroic face, he quietly returned to his post in the corridor.
"Where the hell have you been?" Ron asked in consternation, when Harry finally showed up for the last class of the day. "You skived off all your classes! You aren't going to miss Quidditch practice too?"
"No, no, I'll be at practice," Harry assured him quickly.
"So, where were you?" Ron repeated.
"With Hermione," Harry answered. "She was.. er…she was really upset." He turned away to rearrange his books, not wanting Ron to see his hot face. He felt as if he had a neon sign flashing above his head that blared "Harry Potter just had sex with his best friend!"
"Anybody would be," Ron agreed, his face going thoughtful again. "She still upstairs?"
"Yeah," Harry replied, "she'll be down for dinner, she said." He tried to focus his mind, on anything rather than Hermione, but still had trouble taking notes for class.
Quidditch practice was a disaster as well, even though he was Captain. He was distracted, had trouble controlling his broom, missed several blatant opportunities to catch the Snitch, and finally had to take himself to the hospital wing, after a Bludger broke two of his fingers.
Harry stalked angrily through the corridors, causing younger students to fly out of his way, and trying to ignore the pain that was throbbing through his fingers and up his arm. Ron was walking quickly, in an effort to keep up with him.
"You all right, mate?" Ron asked.
"No, Ron, I'm not. I've two bloody broken fingers, in case you didn't notice," Harry snapped. Ron looked taken aback.
"What's crawled up your arse?" he said, with no malice in his tone, just curiosity. Harry stopped, sighed, then continued on at a slower pace.
"I'm sorry, Ron. I'm just worried about Hermione." He cast a sidelong glance at Ron, who was nodding sympathetically. "I feel so…so…bloody helpless. And all because of who my parents were." Harry was speaking quickly, almost unintelligibly, as his words tripped over themselves. "I'd marry her in a second, Ron…you know I would, if I - if I wasn't…"
"Yeah," Ron said slowly. "I know you would…" He was looking oddly at his best mate, his head cocked just to one side.
"Somebody's got to. Marry her, I mean. Anyone would be preferable to Malfoy," Harry said, swinging his arm out for emphasis, and swearing suddenly and violently when his injured hand grazed the stone wall.
"D'you really think so?" Ron asked hopefully. "Mate, I was hoping you'd say that."
Harry was a little slow on the uptake, still focusing on the incredible pain in his fingers.
"What? Why?"
"Because I sent an owl to the Ministry yesterday," Ron said, simply, looking as serious as Harry had ever seen him.
Harry stared, the pain subsiding down to a dull ache in the face of this new and incomprehensible information Ron had just imparted to him.
"Sent…an owl?" Harry echoed stupidly, coming to a complete halt in the middle of the corridor.
"Yeah," Ron said. "To the Ministry. She should get it tomorrow morning, I s'pose." He bit his lip, and looked nervously at Harry. "D'you think she'll be mad?"
"Mad?" Harry said, still feeling like his brain was functioning in a lower gear. "Why would she be mad? You're a sight better than that ferret."
"Thanks for that!" Ron said, with mock affront, but turned serious again. "It's just that…well, we fight sometimes, but I really do like her." He shrugged, self-conscious. "I know she's not in - " He broke off suddenly, and became very interested in a tapestry just opposite.
Half of Harry's mind wondered what Ron had been about to say. However, the other half was occupied with many other important emotions, teeming around his head, vying for the majority of his attention. One was jealousy… he was in love with Hermione, he couldn't have Hermione, his best friend was going to get Hermione. Another was guilt…technically (and rather crassly) he had already had Hermione. In an extremely contradictory manner, he was also grateful. He knew Ron would never ill-use her. He would not have that same assurance with Malfoy. He was so busy analyzing what he was feeling, that he didn't realize that they had resumed walking.
"Well, I certainly appreciate it, Ron," Harry managed to say, with false heartiness. "I know Hermione will appreciate it too."
"I hope you're right," Ron said, with his trademark, self-deprecating half-smile.
Harry mustered a genuine smile then, while his heart shattered into a million tiny shards, which assaulted him like tiny daggers.
"We'll find out tomorrow, won't we?" He clapped Ron on the back, as they entered the hospital wing.
TBC
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