Chapters 101-110

Eureka!

Sometimes Percy Weasley thought he must be a changeling left at the Burrow by mistake. Contrary to his rowdy, boisterous family and the cheerful chaos they called home, he preferred quiet and order. He liked records, documents, and files. He was obsessed with details. He enjoyed knowing the rules and following them. In short, he had little in common with his family.

However, there was one thing he and his father agreed about: ‘Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brains.’

Percy didn’t. Even though he contemplated leaving the wizarding world to study Muggle computers for a while. Or maybe because of that. He had never forgotten Tom Riddle’s diary.

He loathed the Chalice of Neith.

It was a cheap way out, as he saw it. Meting out justice, arriving at the right decision ought to be hard, in his opinion. It was a difficult duty. It shouldn’t be shunted off to magical devices. Of course human beings (wizards and Muggles alike) made mistakes. No matter how much they wanted to do what they thought was right. And didn’t he know that? But magical items were not infallible either. And the idea that the Chalice was ‘impossible to manipulate’ only made him more suspicious. If there was one thing he’d learnt from growing up with Fred and George, then it was that anything could be manipulated. It merely took longer to manipulate some things.

After two weeks of sleeping at the Ministry, Percy Weasley was one of three living experts on the Chalice of Neith. The other two were his boss, Andromeda Tonks-Black, and an Egyptian Muggle, a specialist for ancient mythology at the university of Cairo.

Now it was late at night on September 2, 2000. And Percy was blinking wearily at the piece of parchment in front of him. Therefore it took a while for him to notice what exactly he was looking at.

Or rather, what he was not looking at.

A moment later, a scream shattered the late-night quiet of the Ministry offices of Justice Andromeda Tonks-Black.

‘Eureka!’ Percy Weasley yelled. ‘I FOUND it!’

oooOooo

A double period with Gryffindors and Slytherins in the Potions dungeon had never been a pleasant experience for Hermione as a student. Things had not improved during her assistantship. And facing the Advanced Potions class of the new Seventh Years was only Potions Horror â„¢ advanced to the power of seven, as far as she was concerned.

I should not even be standing here, she thought miserably. She was acutely aware that she didn’t have the knowledge and the experience necessary to prepare a class for their NEWTs. Of course she knew their lessons’ plan by heart. She’d even dared to write down some ideas for possible improvements on a piece of parchment. But that didn’t change the fact that she’d woken three times last night from nightmares that involved students asking her questions which she couldn’t answer.

But most of all, this class—more than any other class—reminded her of her husband. It was the class she’d never had with him, something she still regretted. Hermione bit down on her lip and straightened up, drawing her shoulders back.

Until Severus came back, she would simply have to do the best she could.

‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Professor Snape is temporarily absent from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Until he returns I have the honour to teach this class. Please open your books so we can discuss your schedule.’

oooOooo

‘Hermione, you should sit down,’ Minerva advised. Her gaze strayed to the shelf with her whisky bottles.

Hermione swallowed drily. It was not a good sign if Minerva was considering to offer her a fortifying dram at two pm on a school day. She took a deep breath and perched on the edge of one of the leather wingback chairs in front of Minerva’s fireplace.

‘They’ll be here in a minute.’ The Scottish burr in the voice of the Headmistress was more pronounced than ever.

‘Did—did they—’ Hermione didn’t dare to finish the sentence.

But the flicker in Minerva’s eyes was answer enough.

oooOooo

‘WHAT?’ Hermione yelled and jumped to her feet. ‘WHAT?’

The lines around Andromeda’s mouth deepened. But Percy Weasley glowed and beamed. ‘I discovered it last night.
‘Registry Office weddings became legal in the year after Voldemort’s first downfall. It was a time of complete chaos. The Ministry was a mess, worse than now.’ He flinched at the glare of his boss, but continued all the same. ‘I have the relevant documentation right here,’ he thumped a fat pile of parchments, ‘and we’ve got pensieved expertises of the curse-breaker Ewan Grant and the Unspeakable no. 007.’

He glanced at Andromeda in order to ask her permission to continue with his explanation. All he got was a curt nod. Andromeda had taken it upon herself to present his findings in a short summary to the Headmistress, Harry and Hermione, but she seemed to prefer to leave the explanations to her assistant.

Percy took a deep breath and continued, trying to ignore how hot his cheeks suddenly felt.

‘When the Chalice pronounced your marriage null and void, the judges—and everybody else, really—assumed that the verdict said you married Severus Snape only to keep him out of prison.That would have been obstruction of justice, a crime in itself, a reason to revoke his probation, and the beginning of his life sentence in Azkaban.
’As it turns out, this was not the case at all!
‘The Chalice could not pass a correct verdict on the legitimacy of your marriage, because it simply did not know that Registry Office marriages are legal to start with. It was never updated with that information. It was still working under the assumption that only magical marriages performed according to the old rites are legal. And…’ Percy cleared his throat. ‘All of those…demand consummation of marriage during the wedding night.’