Chapter Text
Hermione Granger burst into the Diagon Alley office of Draco Malfoy on a fair Wednesday afternoon, curls sparking angrily with magic, her no-nonsense robes snapping out behind her.
“You have got to be joking!”
Malfoy looked up from the roll of parchment open on his desk, his expression completely unsurprised by the rather rude entrance of his colleague.
“Granger. You heard the news?”
“What are you plotting?” she snapped, slamming a piece of parchment down on his desk. The curling vellum was full of spidery legal calligraphy, with his stately signature scrolled at the bottom in silver ink.
“Sorry, plotting?” he said innocently, the corners of his mouth ticking up. She glowered at his look, pacing furiously in front of his desk like she itched to grab his potted fluxweed off the corner and chuck it at his head.
“Yes, plotting. There is no way on earth you would have signed this if there wasn’t something in it for you.”
“Why, Granger, you wound me. Maybe I’m just a good citizen. What did the Minister say again? ‘We all have to do our part to save the wizarding world from extinction,’ after all.”
Granger snorted angrily, running her fingers through her hair and making the curls even more wild. “Cut it out, Malfoy. You don’t believe that for a second.”
“Neither do you, it seems. I saw your op-ed in the Prophet. Rather scathing review of the Marriage Edict; nicely done, using the old case law from the 1347 Council of Warlocks, though you really should have left out the part about how this would be barbarous in the muggle world – no one cares how the muggles would see it.”
Hermione scowled at him. “They should bloody care! How am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea? Neville told me that I shouldn’t ‘let the side down.’ Can you believe that?” She stopped pacing and rounded on him.
“And you!” she accused, “Until I received your bloody signature agreeing to the Wizengamot’s terms, I would have thought you would have seen it the same.” She jabbed a finger at the parchment she’d thrown down on the desk. “Five years we’ve been working together, Malfoy. I could have sworn civil rights were as important to you as they are to me. Are you out of your mind, agreeing to this? Requesting me as your partner?”
Malfoy leaned back in his chair, looking amused. Hermione jabbed at the parchment again, like she wanted to hex it, continuing without waiting for his response. “Not to mention, it’s morally repugnant that the government is forcing people to get married!”
Malfoy nodded. “It is. Is that your only objection? A little weak to go to the Wizengamot with, as they are not interested in the ethics of it all. Which I thought would have been obvious when they passed this unanimously. There is legal precedent, you know.”
“How can you be so calm about this!” she shrieked.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Relax, Granger. Here, have a seat. I’ll explain everything.” He conjured a chair with a lazy flick of his wand. She sat down on the very edge, angrily smoothing down her robes.
“It had better be a bloody good explanation, Malfoy.”
“It is.” He cast a quick Muffliato charm and a few other wards on the office, before he tucked his wand back in his robes, and folded his hands together on the desk, the light catching on his family signet ring. He leaned in, smirking. “I’ve found a loophole in the law.”
Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Impossible. I looked it over myself. It’s waterproof.”
“You were probably steaming as you read it, Granger. You might have missed a few things. Besides, we both know I’m the legal expert here.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m more than proficient in understanding wizarding law, Malfoy.”
Malfoy raised an aristocratic brow. “But I’m better at thinking outside the box.”
She frowned, but didn’t disagree. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did you find?”
He picked up the parchment she’d thrown down on his desk. “Read the fifth paragraph.”
She snatched it up, and skimmed it, reading aloud the most egregious parts furiously, “…and in the bonds of marriage the partners will engage in intercourse to completion during a se’ennight, once being the minimum required…no maximum limit imposed – hah! Wouldn’t want a maximum limit, now would we?…until the birth of a child or the completion of two years…”
Malfoy leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms across his chest, face smug. “See?”
Hermione looked at him, horrified. “Yes, I see that it says wizards and witches will be forced to have sex once a week until they conceive.”
Malfoy waved a hand impatiently, “No- well, yes, that is what they are implying-“
“It really could not be more explicit, Malfoy-“
“Do you know the etymology of the word “intercourse”, Granger?” Malfoy interrupted. “Comes from the Medieval Latin intercursus, and later the Old French entrecors. It meant “communication” or “exchange”, usually in the context of trade, but around the 1540s it also came to mean social communication between people, a frequent and habitual meeting of the minds.”
“As fascinating as that is, Malfoy, what does it have to do with anything?”
Malfoy gestured at the paper she was had clutched in her hands. “I looked into it. The binding magic used on this Edict is old. Very old. It’s the same magic that was used in the Vires in Numeris Laws, implemented after the massive autos-da-fé in Portugal and Spain in the middle of the sixteenth century wiped out a big swathe of the magical population.”
Hermione gasped, understanding crashing in on her. “Are you saying-“
Malfoy grinned, looking delighted she caught on so quickly, the skin around his eyes crinkling, and even after more than five years of seeing him like this, with genuine laughter on his face, not the cruel pinched kind she remembered from their youth, Hermione felt a little jolt of amazement that she was on the receiving end of it.
“Yes. Exactly. The Edict’s language is modern, but it’s magic is not. The word intercourse did not take on a sexual connotation until well into the eighteenth century. If you comply with the letter of the law, by having intercourse of the conversational variety-“
“-you can fool the binding magic into believing you are following the law!” Hermione shot to her feet, the excitement bubbling out of her, relief coursing through her veins. “Brilliant, Malfoy, you’re absolutely brilliant!”
“I know,” he said, smug.
She rolled her eyes, still grinning. But then it occurred to her. “But why me?” Hermione asked, sitting back down again. “Why would you request me as your partner? We have a good relationship now, true, but-”
She trailed off. They never talked about the time before their eighth year at Hogwarts.
Malfoy steepled his fingers, and paused for a second before answering. “I needed someone who wouldn’t actually want children.”
Hermione made an affronted noise. “What? How would you know if I want children or not!”
“No, I mean someone who wouldn’t actually want children with me.” He said. “Most of the women in my acquaintance would be quite excited by the prospect of securing a permanent link to the Malfoy fortune by providing an heir.”
Hermione curled her lip a little in disgust. She remembered the kind of calculating Slytherin girl he was talking about – the sniveling Greengrass sisters or the snob Pansy Parkinson, or even Zabini’s arrogant cousin Lucretzia. “True. They’d happily tattle on you to the Ministry, and it'd patch up the magic immediately."
Malfoy shrugged. “Exactly. And you’re not seeing anyone, so that makes you perfect.”
Hermione folded her arms, and frowned at Malfoy. “Again, how would know?”
“Please, Granger.” He drawled, ticking off his fingers. “You spend far too many all-nighters with me when we have a case, you told me you were looking forward to spending more quality time with your cat, and,” he smirked, “you start humming when you start seeing someone, which you haven’t done since you got rid of that last imbecile.”
“How annoyingly observant of you. And Louis was not an imbecile.”
“Well, he certainly was no match for your intelligence.”
He said the compliment simply, like a fact, but Hermione blushed despite herself. The room fell quiet, the only sound the rustle of his regal Eurasian eagle-owl’s feathers as it dozed in its gilded cage in the corner of the office.
Malfoy opened one of the drawers of his desk, and pulled out a small velvet box, placing it gently in front of her. He smiled at her, a quick thing, that genuine one again that always surprised her, before his face turned serious, and he nodded at her to take the box. She opened the lid, gasping a little at the gorgeous ring, gold like she preferred, with an Asscher cut emerald set in delicate clusters of tiny diamonds.
She looked up at him, feeling a little blown away. His eyes were still serious, softer than usual, the magic that lent them their silver edge shimmering slightly in the afternoon light.
“Marry me, Granger?”