Turn 10 of 36

Hermione reaches for the Floo powder.

The pouch is where it always sits, on the brass shelf beside the hearth, and her fingers close around the velvet just as the atrium doors open behind her. She does not turn — she assumes it is a clerk, or the janitor returning for his mop — but the footsteps that cross the marble floor are not the shuffling tread of Ministry support staff. They are measured, heeled, deliberate. The sound of someone who has been walking toward a specific destination and has arrived.

"Miss Granger."

Hermione knows that voice. It is the voice that presided over trials, that announced verdicts from behind a lectern while the Wizengamot watched, that said *the Department of Magical Law Enforcement will oversee the terms of reintegration* as though those words were not a sentence dressed as policy. She turns. Percy Weasley stands ten feet away, a sealed portfolio under his arm, his robes pressed and immaculate despite the hour. His face carries the particular stiffness of a man who has been sent to deliver something he knows will not be well received.

"Percy," Hermione says. Behind her, she hears Draco go still.

"The Minister asked me to deliver this before you both left the building." Percy holds out the portfolio. It is thick, bound in Ministry-green leather, stamped with the seal of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. His hand does not waver.

"The cohabitation documentation. The full terms, the inspection schedule, the public appearance requirements. The Minister felt it was best you receive these tonight rather than wait for the week."

"He said a week," Draco says. His voice is flat.

"The Minister revised the timeline this evening." Percy's gaze flicks to Draco, then back to Hermione. There is something in his expression — not sympathy, exactly, but the grim awareness of a man delivering news he had no hand in writing.

"The thirty-day window begins today. The first Ministry inspection of your shared residence is scheduled in fourteen days, not thirty. You have two weeks to establish a household, not four."

Hermione takes the portfolio. It is heavier than it looks. The leather is warm against her palms, as though the parchment inside has been freshly printed, and she can feel the faintest vibration of binding magic through the cover — the contract's magic extending itself, reaching into the documentation that will govern its enforcement. She opens it. The first page is a schedule. Inspection dates. Appearance requirements. A list of public events marked *mandatory attendance*. And beneath the schedule, in smaller script, a clause she almost misses: *Failure to establish a shared residence within fourteen days shall constitute a breach under Clause 14, with penalties as specified.*

She reads it twice. Then she looks up at Draco, and the expression on his face is one she has never seen before — not the mask, not the exhaustion, but something raw and brief that flashes across his features like lightning before he shuts it away. He has read the same clause. He knows what it means.

"They've halved the window," Hermione says. Her voice sounds strange to her own ears — calm, precise, the voice of a woman who is holding a portfolio full of mandates and refusing to let her hand shake.

"Two weeks. Not one."

Percy adjusts his glasses. "The Minister felt the original timeline was… generous. Given the political climate. There are parties in the Wizengamot who would prefer the union demonstrate its sincerity sooner rather than later." He pauses, and for a moment the official mask slips, and what is beneath it is a young man who grew up with her at a dinner table, watching her carry a weight he cannot lift.

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I argued against the revision. I was overruled."

He leaves the way he came — measured, heeled, deliberate — and the atrium doors close behind him with a sound like a verdict.