A Law to Herself

Chapter 19

By Shiv

Hermione excused herself from the cabal as soon as was possible without being rude. She’d got what she’d come for – probably – and now wanted to get out before she said something to put the fragile détente at risk. Severus remained behind to soak up as much of the presumably excellent brandy– it tasted like paint stripper to her, though she wouldn’t dream of saying so –and catch up on the news and gossip about the wider Wizarding World.

It didn’t take long to get ready for bed, but once she was there she found that she couldn’t get to sleep. Her mind was leaping ahead and trying to make plans and fit them into neat categories, colour-coded for ease of reference, and indexed alphabetically.

She knew from bitter experience that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she’d sorted everything out in her own mind, so she got some paper out of her case and sat at the dressing table to write up her notes.

She was eventually disturbed by sounds of movement in the adjoining room. She stared at her reflection for several minutes, considering the wisdom of trying to talk to Severus. On the one hand, if she talked things through with him she might be able to get to sleep. On the other hand, it would involve knocking on the connecting door, which might lead to an argument, and he might refuse to discuss things where they might be overheard.

Oh sod it, if he wasn’t prepared to put her mind at rest, he might at least be able to get her a nice, hot milky drink which might help her sleep.

She tapped on the door, which opened a crack. “What do you want?” he hissed.

“I can’t sleep.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to sing you a lullaby,” he said, putting his head round the door. “I’m not … what on earth are you wearing?”

“Nothing.”

“I can see that.” His dispassionate gaze raked her from head to foot, taking in the cream satin nightgown and matching wrap. “Did you intend to make the ultimate sacrifice and seduce Lucius?”

Hermione flushed bright red, and wrapped her dressing gown round her more firmly. “Don’t be absurd. Anyone would think I was wearing something tarty in leopard skin print with red lace trim and a slit up to the thigh. You can’t see anything.”

Hermione was mortified. She’d bought the ensemble – something with that amount of lace had to be an ensemble, especially when you considered the price – so that she’d feel grown-up and sophisticated and hopefully a little less out of her depth. All she felt now was irritated, which was better than feeling juvenile, but only marginally.

“No”, he continued, still staring at her chest in horrified fascination, “but it is being hinted at in a way that your normal night attire doesn’t do, and there aren’t any fluffy sheep in sight. I just wondered who was supposed to get the benefit?”

“The House Elves,” she snapped. “I didn’t want them running off to tell Narcissa that I wore flannel pyjamas and a pink fluffy dressing gown with a rabbit on the pocket that my parents got me for Christmas three years ago. She seemed just the sort of woman who would wear nothing but silk, and patronise lesser mortals who didn’t make an effort.”

“Women do worry about the oddest things,” he said, leaning to one side, with his shoulder against the doorway. “Why should you care what Narcissa thinks about clothes that she’ll never see personally?”

“Says the man wearing his new dressing gown I got him for Christmas – does this mean that you were going to model it for her?” she snapped back.

“Don’t even joke about something like that,” he said, eyes wide in horror. “If Lucius even thought… Christ, he’d go potty. I really don’t fancy being found distributed over Diagon Alley in several bloody pieces. And that’s assuming that they’d find them all.”

“Is that part of the Pureblood code then?”

“I don’t know about the Pureblood code,” he said seriously. “But it’s certainly part of the Malfoy code.”

“Men do worry about the oddest things,” she replied, mocking his earlier words. “It does look good though; I was worried it wouldn’t fit properly and had to guess your size.” She put a hand out to stroke the sleeve. “The velvet is nice and soft as well.”

He was looking at her with a very strange expression: half gratified, and half uncertain. It was rare for them to spend time together in close proximity, and he was still uneasy about the prospect. “It’s nice and warm,” he said eventually, “which is more than can be said for your outfit. Are you going to put something else on?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! If it will make you happier, I’ll put on a cardigan.” She went to the wardrobe and rummaged around, trying to find the big cardigan she’d brought in case they’d decided to go for a walk in the gardens. “Have you been drinking?” she asked, her head still in the wardrobe.

“I might have,” he said, sounding just like Harry and Ron at their sulkiest. “Why?”

She found the long, thick, warm and utterly sexless cardigan – at least it was black, which could pass for some attempt at sophistication if you didn’t look at it too closely - and shrugged into it. It covered her from shoulder to knee, and the sleeves dropped over her hands and had to be folded back several times to form thick cuffs. “You’re taking an inordinate interest in my nightie,” she said, “and you seem to be leaning from the vertical.”

He pushed himself off the door with his shoulder and stood up more or less straight. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I may have had the odd drink with Lucius, purely in the interests of furthering your…our plans. There’s no need to go on about it.”

Hermione grinned at him. “I’m your wife; I’m sure it’s in the job description. If your husband comes home a little squiffy, you’re supposed to nag and make his life a misery, and confiscate his hangover potion so he learns his lesson.”

“I don’t get hangovers,” he said smugly. “I never have and I never will.”

“I expect it would make you very happy to know that Harry gets terrible hangovers, even after half a shandy. It took him a full week to recover after the getting his Order of Merlin, and all he had was two Firewhiskeys.”

He gazed off into the middle distance with a broad smile. It was almost the happiest she’d ever seen him, she reflected wryly.

It was going to be interesting trying to get Harry and Severus to work together – communication by Owl with as few actual meetings as possible seemed the best course – even before you mentioned the Malfoy connection. She sighed. It all seemed so very difficult suddenly: a ragtag assemblage of people who couldn’t stand to be in the same room with each other were supposed to band together to get the Marriage Law overturned. It was going to take nothing short of a miracle; either that, or several compromising pictures of people in a state of undress with donkeys, and could she bring herself to be that cruel to donkeys? She was too soft-hearted for her own good.

“Do you think that this is really going to work?” she asked.

“Who can say? I think we’ve made a good start, but whether we’ll succeed or not?” He shrugged.

“I was looking for a little more reassurance than that,” she said waspishly. “Couldn’t you pat me on the head and tell me it’s all going to be alright?”

“Ah, you mean lie to you, just like Dumbledore used to do. I could do, if that’s what you want.” He moved closer to her, and placed a heavy hand on the top of her head. It felt strangely comforting. She could feel the warmth of his body, and smell the faint tang of brandy on his breath, mixed with some minty smell that was probably toothpaste of some sort.

“Don’t worry, Hermione,” he said, patting her a little awkwardly. “It’ll all be fine. Lucius is a fine upstanding member of Wizarding Society, Fudge is merely a misguided but fundamentally well-meaning man, and will see the error of his ways. We will be able to get a divorce before you finish school. You will go on to run the Wizarding World before you’re thirty, and I will take up with a succession of friendly and buxom wenches who will pander to my every whim.”

Hermione snorted. “Lucius is a shifty sod, and Fudge is a fu-fool, and I can’t see any witch – no matter how friendly – being prepared to pander to anyone’s whims. No matter how much you might deserve it.”

“You really ought not to insult your host.” He reached out and tugged at one of her curls, before tucking it behind her ear. “I notice you don’t deny that you’ll be running the Wizarding World by 30.”

“Someone has to sort this mess out,” she replied, unconsciously leaning a little closer.

“It doesn’t have to be you though,” he said, his voice rumbling above her head.

“I can’t see how else I’m going to get out of this mess.”

“You might find that, if you create enough of a fuss that Fudge is prepared to do a deal with you and find some technicality that means that the Marriage Law doesn’t apply to bushy-haired brunettes with dentists for parents whose names begin with H.”

“I couldn’t do that – just give up because I’d got what I wanted. I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right.” Hermione paused, struck by the realisation that Severus might want to be free of her as soon as possible. “You wouldn’t want me to, would you?” She looked up at him anxiously.

“I certainly wouldn’t expect you to,” he said wryly. “You’ve never been sensible at any point in the previous seven years; I see no reason why you would start being so now. It’s the terrible burden of having a conscience. I’d recommend that you give it up as soon as possible. It’ll make you feel a lot better.” Severus hands stilled mid-way through another pat, and he disengaged himself from her, before moving over to the dressing table and flipping absent-mindedly through her notes.

“But… being married to me isn’t that horrible is it?” she asked, ignoring his comments in favour of pursuing what seemed to her to be the real point of concern. “I’ll be out of your hair soon, and you can have your rooms back, so it won’t make much difference to you anyway…” Hermione didn’t know why she felt so worried about the subject. Surely she wasn’t upset at the thought of being divorced? It was what they were aiming for, wasn’t it?

“Don’t be silly,” he said acidly, and that tone – the one that said you were being so stupid that being able to walk and talk at the same time was probably beyond you, and shouldn’t you have been sorted into Hufflepuff - made her feel immeasurably better. “I’m just pointing out that you don’t have to be noble and put the interests of others before your own.”

“Which is why you spent so much time trying to bring down Voldemort I suppose?” she scoffed. “Because you were looking out for number one?”

“If I wanted to be free of him, then the only way that could happen was if one of us died. I preferred it to be him. There was nothing noble about what I was doing. If there’d been another way I might have taken it.” He dropped the notes back down on the dressing table. clearly uncomfortable about the suggestion that he wasn’t entirely selfish in his motives.

“Nonsense,” she said crisply. “You spent far too much time and effort in trying to bring down Voldemort to be able to pass that off as mere self-interest.”

Severus looked as if he’d been offered the Defence Against the Dark Arts position: a combination of shock, pleasure and resentment at praise which had been so long overdue. “I… whatever my reasons were, they aren’t important. What is important is the way that you seem to feel bound to sort out other people’s problems for them. Fudge isn’t Voldemort, so you needn’t feel guilty if you take the easy way out. If people aren’t prepared to fight for their own freedom, then they probably don’t deserve it, but I expect you’ll insist on helping them anyway.”

“So you don’t mind being married to me?” It seemed important to Hermione to make absolutely sure that this was the case.

“I find it… tolerable. Your conversation is nowhere near as irritating as I had expected, you do your best to be as unobtrusive as possible, and your cat is reasonably well behaved. There are worse people that I could be sharing a living space with.”

It was hardly a glowing recommendation, but Severus had never been one for fulsome praise. If you made a mistake in potions, he made sure you knew about it, together with the whole class. If you got it right, absolutely right – the perfect colour, the perfect consistency, and it did exactly what it said on the vial – then your work was received in silence.

“Good. Then you’ll have to put up with me until this bloody law is overturned and if I have to become the Minister for Magic to get it sorted out, then I will.” She felt immensely relieved – she’d counted on Severus to support her, and had felt very nervous at the thought of dealing with the Malfoys on her own, and now she didn’t have to. “I wish you wouldn’t worry me like that,” she said. “I don’t want to find myself divorced and out on my ear if you decide I’m too much trouble.”

“You’ve always been too much trouble, Hermione, from the moment you crossed the threshold of Hogwarts to the moment you decided to take on the Ministry. If you can polish off a dark Lord in seven years, I have every faith you’ll have this all sorted out in no time at all.” He paused beside her as he moved towards the door. "In fact, I might not divorce you after all. I think I’d rather like being the Minister’s consort. There’s quite a nice official residence, somewhere in Hampshire I believe, and a very generous shoe allowance.”

“You can never have too many shoes,” she said gravely.

“That certainly seems to be Narcissa’s approach to life.” He walked through the door, and then turned back to her. “Now, go to bed. We both need our sleep if we’re to deal with Lucius tomorrow.”

“Yes, Professor,” she said, and he shut the door firmly behind him.

She settled herself into bed listening to the sounds of Severus bumping around in the next room, with the occasional muffled curse as a button proved recalcitrant. In many ways, she thought, he was immensely irritating. But, and it was a big but, it was nice to have someone she could rely on for once, instead of having to constantly order around.

And if only one good thing had come out of this trip to Malfoy Manor it was the knowledge that, if bribery with cockroach clusters failed, using her feminine wiles was always a possibility. It was a little depressing that her feminine wiles consisted of wearing advanced lingerie because it unnerved rather than attracted her husband, but you worked with what you had.

Besides, she wouldn’t want him to think of her like that, would she?

Chapter 20 >>