FicWad

Severus Snape and the Dubious Duty
A Harry Potter fanfic ( 1420 words)
By Andrew Aelfwine
*

Characters and situations belong to J.K. Rowling; they're merely borrowed for this non-commercial fanfiction.
Warnings: humour, Marriage Law parody, polyamoury, fan!Snape, yours truly
Pairings: Snape/McGonagall (Snape/McGonagall/Sprout implied, Harry/Ginny/Luna implied)

Thanks to Suika Roberts for the notion of bribing House Elves with chocolate.
*

Severus Snape sat down, turned on the Wizarding wireless, and put up his feet. "Not bad at all," he said to himself. "Not hard the life of the outlaw in hiding." He sipped his single malt whisky as the Hot Club of Swanne's Alley played 'Nuages' on tenor viol, cittern, and theorbo. He'd eat steak and kidney pie in an hour or two, courtesy of the Hogwarts house elves provided him by Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, and read over the latest issue of /The Journal of Potions Research/. For now... he Summoned his copy of Hubert Snappdove's /Colonial Front: Dragons over Charlestowne/. There were no more pesky students, no more semi-reptilian Lovecraft-character-knockoffs and bearded fashion victims using him as a pawn in their game of "my delusions of grandeur are better than yours." At last he was nearly caught up on the thaumaturgic romances he'd missed in the turmoil of the Dumbledore-Voldemort-Potter years. Perhaps, suitably disguised, he might even attend the odd con now and again.

The Wizarding Jazz Hour was suddenly interrupted with the strains of a brass quintet playing /Sumer is icumen in/. Blast, why a Ministry news bulletin /now/? Had one of Perfect Potter's pestilent polyamorous paramours pupped? At least Snape wouldn't be forced to teach a host of little Potter-Weasleys and Potter-Lovegoods, unless his life should take a drastic turn for the worse, in the form of a formal pardon and an Order of Merlin.

"The Wizengamot in full session today passed the Wizarding Population Preservation Act, or, as the popular press has insisted on dubbing it, the Marriage Law. We take you now to Minister Weasley."

"As you know, Gentlewizards and Witches, the past few years have seen an unfortunate decline in Britain's Wizarding birthrate..."

Snape had been ignoring the Prophet/, /Quibbler/, and /Sol alike. He'd had his fill of current events. And the fewer photographs he saw of Molly Weasley, Minister for Magic, her bumbling husband, her various vile offspring, and the Boy Who'd Somehow Survived the better. So, he thought, Iron Molly's made them legalise polygamy, has she? I suppose in the end she couldn't leave her daughter to go on living in sin with Potter and the Lovegood girl. He considered turning off the wireless.

No, he'd change the channel. Wizarding Scotland hadn't much time for Ministry babble, having largely abandoned the campaign for formal repeal of the Union in favour of simply ignoring Londinium altogether. He didn't much care for the Scots language, so alike to the Northern dialect of his unbeloved childhood, but he understood it well enough and was not about to allow Molly Weasley to drive him from the wireless altogether.

It took him a moment to realise what he was hearing, due to the slight stutter that spelled translation into Scots gave Molly Weasley's voice and the sheer surprise that Wir Ain Braidcastin Cumpanie would bother carrying a Ministry bulletin. "An sae th Wizengamot hae deponit..."

He turned back the dial. "...that all fertile Halfblood men of marriageble age will be required to take not fewer than two wives of marriageable age and full magical capacity, Halfblood, Pureblood, or Muggleborn. We understand that this will cause strain in families, and discommode many habitual bachelors. However, we remind these gentlemen that England expects every man to do his duty."

God knows how the Scots rendered that/,/ he thought irrelevantly, with the small part of his mind that wasn't thanking said Supreme Being, to Whom he seldom paid much heed, that he, Severus Snape, was an outlaw in hiding and therefore not subject to the Ministry's decrees. The thought of a dozen spinsterish former students beating on his door, their adolescent crushes revived and the full weight and majesty of the law behind them, was not a pleasant one.

He was so busy being thankful that it took three or four minutes before it occurred to him that there was something fundamentally odd about the announcement. Legalising polygamy, that was a logical move for Molly Weasley, once she'd accepted both that Potter would not choose her daughter over Lovegood and that, even if he would, her daughter would never choose Potter over Lovegood. But mandating polygamy, even if only for Halfblood men, that was surely far too drastic a solution, even for the woman who'd dropped an entire hillside on a squad of Death Eaters during the First Voldemort War and cheerfully served a picnic lunch atop the rubble.

"The Cardinal-Archbishop of Winchester and the Abbot of Glastonbury have consulted the Holy Father, and assure me that, under the circumstances, the Church will put her full support behind these measures. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the General Assembly of Wizarding Non-Conformists have provided me similar guarantees, as have the Chief Rabbi and senior Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim clerics."

"'Under the circumstances'?" Snape said aloud, "What circumstances?"

"We will not submit tamely to demographic collapse. We will not allow Pureblood inbreeding to cripple our population, nor an excess of Muggle genes to turn us all to Squibs. We will not go gently into the night." Christ, Molly'd just robbed a phrase off Dylan Thomas. Halfway robbed, at least. Was Gilderoy Lockhart working as her speechwriter?

There was a sudden pop as someone Apparated into the room. "You've not been reading the Prophet, Severus, have you?" Minerva McGonagall was wearing her usual conservative robes, but her hair was let down, falling in black waves to her hips, held back from her face with a pair of silver clips.

"Bloody hell, Minerva! What's-- " She plopped herself into his lap. "Why... why are you...?"

"I've wonderful news, Severus. We're going to be married."

"Congratulations, Minerva. Who's the lucky man?"

"Stop being ridiculous, Severus. You're not so dense as all that."

She had taken off the glamour that made her look more nearly a Muggle of her age than a witch. Given the effects on his skin of steaming cauldrons, smoky fires, and minimal care for his own appearance, some might have thought him some years older than herself, rather than several decades younger. He was uncomfortably reminded of his schoolboy crush on the Transfiguration Mistress. "Don't be foolish, Minerva."

"Severus, I'm hurt."

"What's a little matter of refusing to do my part spawning the next generation atop being a fugitive Death Eater? I'd be facing the Kiss already, if Dementors weren't extinct. Would they leave me to rot in Azkaban Prison for life, then haul my dead-of-natural-causes carcass to Tower Hill for shortening?" She stopped him with a finger across his lips.

"Listen to the wireless, Severus."

Molly was still speechifying. "It is also my pleasant duty to acknowledge at last a hidden hero of both Voldemort Wars. Severus Snape, whom some of you may know as the man who allegedly slew the late Headmaster Albus Dumbledore--" Snape reached out and shut off the
wireless.

"No. It can't be."

"It is, Severus. You're pardoned. And reinstated to the staff of Hogwarts. And awarded the Order of Merlin, first class. And, as a fertile Halfblood male of marriageable age... Well, Pomona and I get on well, and she's fancied you for years."

"What if I'm not, Minerva?"

"You most certainly are, Severus. I have a full report from Poppy. And your elves, of course, have been keeping tabs on your health. If you had been... injured, we would know about it."

"Damn it, Minerva, this is unconscionable."

"Think of it this way, Severus. If you reject my suit, I'll have no choice but to pass your location on to Sybill Trelawny. Do you by any chance remember Evelyn Kirke?"

"I wish I didn't. She stole my nightcap and tried to make a Portkey of it. Keyed to her own bed."

"Sybill and Evelyn have become very good friends over the years, Severus. I'm sure they'd be each other's first choice as co-wife. And did you know that Evelyn's sharing a flat in Diagon Alley with Artemisia Prewett?"

"Prewett... The Gryffindor prefect who offered a House Elf fifteen pounds of Godiva chocolate to slip me a dose of Love Philtre Number the Ninth?"

"The very same. Think about it, Severus. Pomona and me? Or Sybill, Evelyn, and Artemisia?"
*

HOGSMEADE-- Dignitaries from around the Wizarding World gathered today in St. Eadwine's
Church to celebrate the marriage of Severus Snape, the covert operations hero of the Second
Voldemort War, to long-time colleagues Minerva McGonagall and Pomona Sprout. Attendees
included Minister for Magic Molly Weasley, her husband Arthur, and Harry, Ginny, and Luna
Potter, who took time off from their own honeymoon....
*
Here endeþ ðe fic.