Harry Potter Characters X Reader

Severus X Lavender

On the 4th May, 2000, the Ministry of Magic passed its Marriage Act. The Act had been in consideration since three months after the War, when the Ministry had finally begun reorganizing itself, and the population numbers were finally scrutinized. It was hailed as the solution to a dropping birth rate, fewer magical marriages, and the end of blood prejudice as the wizarding world knew it.

And for Lavender Brown, it meant marriage to a half-blood/muggle-born of their choosing.

Now, Lavender could care less about blood purity. She could care less about Dark, Light and Grey magic. She didn't care about dropping birth rates, or fewer magical marriages, or anything the Ministry cared to harp on about; she was a bit too concerned with herself.

For good reason, too. During the Final Battle she'd suffered a devastating attack from the most notorious werewolf in living history, Fenrir Greyback, that had left her scarred all down the left side of her body with most of her organs having to be magically reconstituted, a case of trauma that therapists had been known to fistfight each other to treat, and the legacy of being the only known woman to have contracted the werewolf virus outside of the full moon.

(At least she'd killed the bastard. There was nothing like vengeance to cleanse oneself of the feeling of impotence. Nobody knew how she'd achieved it, but it seemed one moment she'd been laid in a pool of her own blood with the nasty bastard munching on her intestines, and the next she'd clobbered him over the head with a fallen brick and slit his throat with his own claws, just to make sure he was dead. Some theorised that it was the same phenomenon that allowed women to lift up cars to save their infant children, but couldn't understand where the sheer force of will to do it came from – she didn't, after all, have any offspring. Lavender thought that this was accurate, only she knew where the will came from – she didn't have any children, no, but she did have something she loved just as much: herself.)

Still, even someone as completely self-absorbed as Lavender couldn't miss the air of panic and urgency that clogged the streets in the months running up to the bill's passage. The newspaper had spoken of protests and rallies, published photographs of Hermione Granger stood atop the statue in the Ministry atrium, still dressed in her work robes despite her decidedly anti-Ministry stance on the issue. Ginny Potter, despite being happily married, had been spotted arriving at a Harpies match wearing a shirt bearing the slogan 'women are not cattle', with the Ministry's logo emblazoned beneath it, a huge red cross slashed through. International stars such as the Weird Sisters, Viktor Krum, the youngest Scamander and Harry Potter himself had all come out to the press, condemning the law, demanding that the Wizengamot just let the fucking thing die.

All to no avail.

And that was about the point that Lavender started paying attention.

The legislation had been brought before the Wizengamot for approval at exactly eight a.m. on the 2nd May 2000. The bureaucrat behind that move seemed to think that if it passed on the anniversary of Voldemort's death, people would be more receptive to it (see: would not riot) given that it would be disrespectful to storm the ministry on such an auspicious occasion.

Y'know, even though the Ministry had exactly shit-all to do with the defeat of Lord Voldemort.

Of course, people fought back. At the memorial ceremony held each year, Lavender had stood in the crowd to watch the 'Golden Trio' take the stage, their Order of Merlin: First Class pinned to their robes, and proceed to verbally slaughter the government. "Where are they now?" Potter had demanded, in an impassioned speech clearly written for him by Hermione Granger. "As we stand here to honour those who fought for our freedom, those that would capitalise on their sacrifice hide in government, working to put chains on their children. We, all of us that were here that day, all of you who suffered at Hogwarts in the run-up, all of you who lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives – the list goes on. Those of you who bear the scars of your torments, of over twenty years of fear and pain... they dishonour you, and us, by forcing this law upon us."