The Marriage Decree

Chapter 31: Behind the Boulder?

Hermione and Draco take a seat on one of the bench as they watch Mark and Mia run around the play park, trying to catch each other.

"Troll, really Draco?" She mutters to him.

"I whispered it." He smiles, nodding towards Mark and Mia who are currently taking it in turns to try and run up the slide. "They didn't notice."

"And what of they had?" She asks, turning her head slightly to look at him.

"We could have just told them it's a mythical creature like the Rapha Homalopsinae, yeti, unicorn, merpeople," He begins to list.

"Alright, I get it but it still wasn't funny." She huffs.

"Sorry, Hermione." He tells her, reaching over to take her hand in his but before he can, she stands up.

"Come on, we're going on the swings." She tells him.

"Really!" He raises and eyebrow. "Are we the children now?"

"You're never too old to go on a swing." She tells him, taking his hand abruptly and pulling him over to the two vacant swings.

They sit down on adjacent swings then kick off. No words are shared between them for a few minutes as they swing and watch Mark and Mia, who are still trying to run up the slide. Mark almost makes it but then he slips at the last moment, sending him sliding back down and flying off the bottom of the slide. Much to the amusement of both himself and Mia. Hermione slows her swinging as she watches to see if Mark is hurt but he jumps straight back up, ready to take another shot at it.

"What are you thinking about?" He questions Hermione curiously.

She sighs deeply before turning to face him, letting her swing come to a steady stop. Draco follows suit, stopping his own swing.

"You already think that I'm descendent of the Rowle's." She states rather than asking him.

He takes a moment to try and gage her thoughts but renders it impossible, deciding to just tell her the truth.

"All the evidence suggests that you are." He admits.

"We don't really have much evidence though do we. Just what my uncle has told us. Maybe he's wrong and there is no Karina Rowle in our family." She suggests.

He quirks his eyebrow at her questioningly, making her sigh.

"He's a history teacher. He would have checked all the resources to verify her before placing her name on that family tree he's got in the spare bedroom." She kicks off and starts swinging again.

"I know you don't want to open the Rowle file tomorrow and discover that you are in fact a descendent of a squib who was left in muggle London by her pureblood parents, but I think you're focussing too much on the Rowle family instead of Karina," Draco suggests.

Hermione frowns at him in confusion. What's he talking about? She's spending too much time thinking about the Rowle family than Karina. She is part of the Rowle family.

"From what we know and can assume is that Karina's parents abandoned her in muggle London after they discovered she was a squib. She would have been between the ages of six and nine. Can you imagine how terrified she must have been to suddenly be thrown into this new world that she knew nothing about? All she would know about muggles is what her family would have told her, and as purebloods, I doubt any of it was good. Her family probably expected her to die before she reached her teenage years but as we know, she managed to fend for herself and survive into adulthood where she married and started her own family." He explains to her and she understands what he's saying. "Does Karina really sound like such a bad person to descend from?" He asks.