A Slither and A Pounce

Chapter 4

Hermione was rushing up the stairs to the Astronomy Tower, she had completely forgotten her therapy class and she had — she checked her watch — not five minutes before she would be late! She slipped up the last few steps before finally arriving in front of her therapy room. The door was open and Mrs. Malfoy was waiting for her at the desk. Hermione sat on one of the sofas opposite the desk and waited for Mrs. Malfoy to begin speaking.

"Good morning Ms. Granger, would you prefer to leave the door open today, or closed?" Mrs. Malfoy asked, not unkindly. Hermione did not have to give it much thought, the best way to figure out if Mrs. Malfoy could be trusted, would be behind closed doors.

"Closed if you will," She quipped, careful not to sound too friendly, this was still a Malfoy, a former Deatheater's wife, she could not be trusted — yet. Mrs. Malfoy had gotten up to close the door which surprised Hermione as she thought that it would have been easier to cast a simple close charm before she remembered that Mrs. Malfoy's wand had been confiscated.

"How are you feeling today? Stressed? Angry? Sad?" She was seated again, and her quill was in her hand, clearly ready to take notes. Hermione could respect that, being a good note-taker was her specialty. Which was why she was going to give Mrs. Malfoy a good deal to take notes on.

"I'm unsure of what exact emotions I feel right now, but I can say with certainty that I do not feel fine," she paused, thinking.

"That's perfectly normal, the absence of defining your emotions is why therapy will be beneficial for you —"

"I went to the Hospital wing yesterday for a 'health examination' and was given some disturbing news." Hermione cut off Mrs. Malfoy, testing her temper boldly. Mrs. Malfoy did not react, if anything she looked worried and hesitant, and perhaps a bit embarrassed, though why was beyond Hermione's reasoning.

"Oh? Would you feel comfortable sharing this information?" Mrs. Malfoy asked politely. Hermione frowned, "No I do not mind, you see, Madam Pomfrey told me that since the whole reason for this marriage law was to repopulate the wizarding world that we would be paired with people who would genetically ensure a witch or wizard child. In short, it would be expected for me to be paired with a pure-blood."

Hermione waited for some sort of reaction from Mrs. Malfoy, some disgust or sign of her prejudice coming out, but she saw nothing. Instead, Mrs. Malfoy finished her writing and looked up to Hermione with a rather blank, but kind look, her eyes wide and trusting. "I can tell that this bothers you a great deal, which is understandable, do you feel like talking about this?"

Frustrated with the lack of a response, Hermione decided to press forward, "Well, I don't understand how the Ministry would expect hundreds of years of prejudice and hatred for muggle-borns to be forgotten in a single year due to a simple law. Logically, it would be impossible! The systemic racism in the wizarding world is everywhere, even in Hogwarts! I doubt that pure-bloods would relent to such arrangements, even if it did benefit all of us!"

Mrs. Malfoy was only listening at this point and had placed her quill down, when Hermione finished talking she placed her hands together and sighed, "I fear you are very much correct with your analysis. There will be much revolting and disagreement, perhaps even violence. But I believe that the Ministry has good intentions at heart, I'm certain that their goal is to better the wizarding community and ensure that nothing like the Great War will happen again. I would think that in their minds, bringing these two very different and opposed bloods together will eventually mend and fix the broken pieces of the wizarding world."

She had a point, Hermione reasoned, but then again, she wasn't looking for a logical response, that she could reason out herself, she wanted an emotional response. She wanted proof that this woman was not hiding behind a facade of kind words and trusting eyes. "I doubt it will fix hundreds of years of hate crimes —"