Turn 12 of 36

Hermione steps out of her Floo and into her flat with the portfolio under her arm and ash on her sleeves. The room is exactly as she left it — the kettle on the counter, the half-read copy of *Magical Law Quarterly* spine-up on the sofa, the lamp by the window casting its warm circle on the wall she painted herself the summer after the war. It is hers. Every book, every mug, every scuffed floorboard. And in fourteen days she will have to leave it.

She sets the portfolio on the kitchen table and opens it. The leather falls back with a weight that suggests the parchment inside has been expanded with a stretching charm — there is far more here than the schedule and the inspection dates. She reads standing up, turning pages with fingers that are steady because she will not allow them to be otherwise. The inspection schedule runs to four pages. The public appearance requirements run to six. There is a list of mandatory events — galas, Ministry functions, a memorial ceremony in March — and beside each event a notation: *joint attendance required, separation during event not to exceed thirty minutes*.

Then she reaches the section she was not prepared for.

It is headed *Standards of Conjugal Presentation*. The language is legal, clinical, and deeply specific. At public events they must arrive together, depart together, and maintain what the contract calls *visible marital accord*. Inspectors will assess the residence for signs of genuine cohabitation — personal effects in shared spaces, evidence of daily routine, meals taken together. One sub-clause requires that the bedroom arrangement present as shared, though it does not specify how this is to be verified. Another requires a minimum of two public appearances per month, documented by Ministry observers. A third — and this is where Hermione's hands go cold — requires that at the first formal event following cohabitation, they must present as *settled and affectionate*, with a minimum of two documented displays of physical closeness.

She reads the clause three times. *Displays of physical closeness.* The Ministry has written into law the requirement that she and Draco Malfoy touch each other in public, and smile while they do it. The portfolio vibrates faintly against the table — the binding magic extending through the documentation, reaching into the terms that will govern its enforcement, making the ink and the magic one and the same.

She closes the portfolio. Her reflection stares back at her from the dark window — a young woman with ash on her robes and a contract on her table and fourteen days to learn how to be someone's wife. The binding magic pulls behind her ribs, steady and patient, pointing toward a man who is standing alone in an atrium somewhere, reading his own copy of the same impossible terms.