Daphne and Hermione entered the waiting room at St Mungo’s Hospital. The room was empty, Hermione’s appointment was the first after lunch. They were an odd couple. Enemies at school, and then after years of separation they had come together as allies in the long-term campaign to get Hermione’s sanity back from wherever it was hiding.
Of course, they were never enemies. It was all a cunning exercise in misdirection organized by Daphne’s family and carried out by Daphne for all their years at Hogwarts. Daphne and her little army had hindered and blocked Harry’s enemies as they tried to make trouble for Harry, Hermione, and their friends, all without ever revealing themselves.
“Daphne, does Potter know about you and Astoria and the others helping us at Hogwarts?” Hermione asked. “I know that your husband and Potter are friendly, they go for long rides together, on their motorcycles, don’t they?”
“It has never come up in conversation. Harry never talks about the details of who did what at Hogwarts.” Daphne replied.
Hermione looked at Daphne. “Why are you spending so much time with me? I appreciate it very much. You have helped me in ways that I don’t think anyone else could do. I know you’re not Rita Skeeter. I can’t help thinking about all the stories that are coming out about us.”
“You are right about there being enough material for a series of books. But I would never use any of it for columns, articles, or books, for a couple of reasons. The first and most important is that Astoria and I are still working on protecting you. You enabled Potter to do what had to be done, and now you are in a vulnerable situation because of what you did for Potter.
The next reason is that any story would have negative things to say about Albus Dumbledore, as I have mentioned before, any such story would never be printed.
If you agree, one day I would like to write out the full story. You can keep it yourself and put it in the secret section of your family library.”
Healer Brown came to the door. “Mrs Weasley, please come in.”
“I would like Lady Pimlico to come with me again, if I may,” Hermione said.
“Certainly! Welcome, Lady Pimlico.”
Healer Brown waved the ladies into his office.
The usual introductory questions were answered.
“Well now! Are there any concerns that you need to discuss today?”
“I’m still crazy! When will I get better?” Hermione demanded.
Healer Brown glanced at Daphne. Daphne kept a straight face but gave the tiniest downward hand wave.
“Ah! Hermione, I’m sure that I or someone else has given you this talk before.”
Hermione huffed.
“The mind is a marvellous thing. It can get sick and then recover. It can be severely damaged by attacks from outside and then recover. The recovery takes time.”
Hermione huffed again.
“The problems that you are having are the results of malicious, deliberate attacks. These attacks have injured your mind, and these injuries have gone on for a very long time.
The injuries caused may never really be fixed, but there is still hope. Don’t despair. What we are waiting for is for your mind to detect those parts of itself that are not working properly. You may never be happy with how it was done, but the source of those injuries, your old wand, is gone. Your mind is now free to put the repair process into action. Your mind will isolate the broken parts and build new pathways to go around them. This is what takes time.”
Hermione was frowning at Healer Brown.
“You will be able to tell when the broken parts have been bypassed when you start to make decisions in new ways that you haven’t thought of before. Your mind will show you new ways to solve old problems. We can help your mind to make the repair process go a bit faster by giving you as much rest as we can and reducing any stress on you.”
Hermione gave a grimace.
“This is why you should continue to accept the kind generosity of your family and stay at the Bill and Fleur Weasley house until you know that you are making progress.”
“Fine! Fine! I will stay with Bill and Fleur and let them feed me up. I know Fleur keeps checking on me. She has told me that I am severely underweight, and I am risking health problems if I don’t eat properly.” Hermione glared at Daphne.
“What? I didn’t say anything.” Daphne said.
“You don’t have to. I caught that look. I will stay and eat everything that is put in front of me. Satisfied?” Hermione glared again.
“Yes, for now,” Daphne replied.
Healer Brown moved some papers on his desk.
“Hermione! Are there any other issues that need to be discussed?”
Hermione’s face softened, she seemed to be less sure of herself.
“In general conversation at Fleur’s afternoon teas, I have heard the Wizarding Marriage Ritual being mentioned. The general attitude was that there is something not right about it. That is how Ron and I were married. I must admit that while looking back at my own history, something did happen there that I am now getting uneasy about.”
Healer Brown managed to keep a straight face. He really wanted to cheer right now. The best person in Wizarding Britain to investigate that ritual was suspicious of it as well.
“Can you put any detail with those concerns, Hermione?”
“No, I am not sure. Of course, I made the oaths, and I signed the forms used in that ritual. My opinions will be from someone under the magical influence of the ritual. I have, of course, investigated many rituals and the runic magic invoked by them. I have some other viewpoints which I could make use of if I wanted to.”
“That is a matter which I have been concerned about myself.” Healer Brown said. “I will not say any more other than that I am concerned.
If you are getting bored waiting for your healing to become noticeable, you might like to entertain yourself by pulling apart the Arithmancy of the Wizarding Marriage Ritual. There will be legislation passed by the Wizengamot going back centuries. I understand that amendments were made at times as well. As with all magical laws, there will be Arithmancy involved to make the legislation work.
If there is anything suspicious, it will be in the detail.”
The interview continued. Hermione’s general health was discussed. Fleur was right to be concerned. Hermione was strictly instructed to avoid any potions and to limit alcohol to one drink per day so that the natural healing process could work without hindrance. There was no potion to magically heal the damage Hermione had suffered.
--ooOOoo—
The legislation archive was about the least exciting part of the Ministry of Magic. Percy knew about it. He had to make searches in the rows and racks and stacks of archive boxes when he was writing proposals for changes to the laws and rules that governed Magical Britain. The laws were not a complete replacement for British government law. British government law applied to magicals unless it was overruled by laws passed by the Wizengamot. One area of law where British government law was replaced by Magical Law was marriage. Wizarding marriage law was complex and diverse. Ancient rituals such as Druidic Handfasting were completely legal and binding. All mundane marriages were recognized, both religious and civil. Wizards could be married in a church or by an Elvis impersonator in a Las Vegas wedding chapel. That was magically legal. A great favourite was eloping to Gretna Green to say the civil marriage vows over the blacksmith’s anvil. That was perfectly legal.
One little fact that was not widely known was that there was no magical law against being married twice or indeed any number of times. If a wizard was married twice by the British government’s marriage laws, then there would be problems as the muggles did object to bigamy, but only if they found out about it.
Then there was the Wizarding Marriage Ritual. It was once widely used but had declined in popularity. There was no well-known reason why this decline had happened.
Research copies of all the Wizarding Marriage Ritual legislation and supporting documents were issued to Percy. He then delivered them to Hermione. The piles of document boxes were truly impressive.
The third bedroom in her guest suite became Hermione’s research office. The bed was transformed into a massive table and a beautiful desk was placed under the window. Hermione had a distracting view of Fleur’s flower beds and Bill’s vegetable patch.
The history of the ritual was simple. Before the International Statute of Secrecy had been enacted wizards and witches were married in religious ceremonies as were the rest of the population. After the International Statute of Secrecy, wizards and witches needed a replacement for church weddings. The Wizarding Marriage Ritual was created to exactly replace the church wedding. The vows were even the same.
“Do you know what you are going to do with all this stuff, Mummy?” Hugo had a worried look.
“It’s not that bad, sweetie,” Hermione smiled at Hugo’s worried look.
“I have a plan. I will divide up all the paper into heaps by date. The date for each heap will be the date when the laws were passed by the Wizengamot. Then I will break each pile down by what each paper was supposed to do. That would be submissions and opinions, then legislation drafts, then final submissions to the Wizengamot and the final laws passed by the Wizengamot.”
Hugo did not look convinced.
Fleur came into the study. “Hugo, you have a visitor. Lily has just arrived with Aunt Angelina.’
“Bye Mummy!” Hugo dashed out to meet this important visitor.
Hermione shrugged and gave Fleur a half smile.
“I know that I’m odd. I still can’t stand the thought of Potter, but I love Lily. She is a darling and Hugo is obviously happier when she comes to visit.”
“Is that feeling about Potter changing?” Fleur asked.
“If it is, then it is very slow. I can’t tell.” Hermione replied.
“I am keen to start on this project. After what Healer Brown said about the Wizarding Marriage Ritual, I feel more certain that there is something important hidden in this mess.”
The paper was sorted, and the piles were made. The first pile was very small. The first Wizarding Marriage Ritual was a copy of the official British church wedding rules and ceremony right down to the vows. The changes were made to replace the authority of the church with the authority of the Ministry of Magic.
Hermione spent days taking apart the text of the ritual. The things which gave the ritual magical life were the vows.
The vows in the Wizarding Marriage Ritual had been copied from The 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
The wizard’s vow was:
"I N. take thee N. to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth."
The witch’s vow was:
"I N. take thee N. to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth. "
The vows were different not just in the use of the words husband and wife. There was an extra phrase in the wife’s vow. It was ‘and to obey’ meaning that the wife vowed to obey her husband.
The next differences were that the man said, ‘I plight thee my troth’ while the wife said, ‘I give thee my troth’. So, the husband promised to be loyal and faithful while the wife gave her loyalty and faithfulness voluntarily without expecting compensation.
The fact that there were differences had an impact on Hermione.
The first questions that hit Hermione were, “Why didn’t I notice this when I took that vow? If I had seen it and understood what it meant, why did I happily take that vow?”
Her answer to herself did not sit well with her. “If I was in my right mind, I would never have agreed to take a different vow to my husband’s vow. NEVER!”
She worked through the next part to her answer to herself. “I wasn’t in my right mind. I was under Loyalty Enchantments keyed to Dumbledore and Ronald Bilius Weasley and Amortentia Love Enchantment keyed to Ronald. If Ronald had told me to accept the ritual, I would have accepted it without question. I would not have thought about it until now. The enchantments finished when my wand was burnt. Now, I can question it, twenty years too late.”
Then Hermione examined the Arithmancy of the vows. The magical power added up to nothing. This was because of the phrase ‘according to God’s holy ordinance;’. That phrase on its own reversed any magical significance of the vow.
The Wizarding Marriage Ritual had the potential to be magically binding but was saved by the Christian church origin of the vow. Wives married under the original ritual were not magically bound to obey their husbands. There was no difference from any other marriage ceremony.
The search moved on to the next piles of paper. The amendments and regulation changes made were all purely administrative. Marriages were originally recorded in a book. That was replaced by forms stored in files and the files were then stored in boxes. It was all very dull and unexciting. It required piles and piles of regulation changes to be approved by the Wizengamot.
Then it was changed again. There was nothing that changed the Arithmancy of the original vows which added up to nothing.
A week went by. Hermione worked with her usual focused determination. She finally came to the last pile. This was the smallest pile.
The proposal to amend the Wizarding Marriage Ritual came from a Wizengamot committee chaired by Chief Warlock Albus Dumbledore. The alarm bells rang loudly in Hermione’s inner senses. This was it. Dumbledore was not the sponsor or author of the proposal. He never put his name to anything if he could send in his loyal followers to act for him.
The proposal asked to add sets of runes to the forms signed by the bride and groom which were then sent into the ministry to supply a record of the marriage. There were different rune sets for the bride and groom. The proposal claimed that the runes would provide magical validation of the marriage vows. The paperwork was lacking any explanation of what that meant or how it was to be achieved.
Hermione searched through the pile of paper. She found the pages of runes near the bottom.
These runes were not rare or unusual, but the way that they were used was nearly indecipherable. The runes were so small when printed on the form that they looked like rows of dots. Only the most suspicious observer would have noticed them.
Hermione translated the old Nordic script into sequences of Arithmancy expressions. The sequences and sets of runes linked the witch and wizard to an object of magical significance that was located in a place of magical significance.
There were places of magical significance in Britain. The most active were St Mungo’s Hospital, the Ministry of Magic, Diagon Alley, Gringotts, Stonehenge, the Avebury Stone Circle, and Hogwarts. There were hundreds of others as well. Some were well hidden and very magical like Platform Nine and Three Quarters at King’s Cross Station. There were wholly magical towns such as Hogsmeade. There were mundane villages with many wizards and witches living in them such as Godric’s Hollow, Ottery St Catchpole and Tinworth.
The runes linked each bride and groom to each other and to a magical object at Hogwarts. Hogwarts had a clear runic sequence which could not be confused with anywhere else.
There were hundreds, possibly thousands of magical objects at Hogwarts. There was no hint of what the object was or where exactly it was at Hogwarts. Hogwarts was huge. There were hundreds of rooms and spaces which were never used where an object could be stored.
The Ministry could demand access to all the ancient and hidden places in Hogwarts to conduct a search. The problem was that Hermione didn’t know what it was. The Ministry would not react to a request to turn the place upside down looking for something magical. The whole place was intensely magical.
Someone would have to go to Hogwarts and spend as much time as it took to track this thing down and then discover what it did.
It had to be done.
The easiest way to get access to Hogwarts was to become a staff member.
285Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWe4IEK3YMG
