Trying my hand at the marriage law trope, with a little soulmate stuff thrown in. Working without a beta, but I hope my over-worked, but magical beta (Bella Luna 92) will get a chance to look over this at some point!

JK Rowling owns these characters. She is the queen.

Enjoy!

T-Minus 12 Months. Let the countdown begin.

Hermione closed her eyes and carefully laid the newspaper on the table in front of her. She felt her hands shaking and she gripped her fingers together to stop them from trembling.

"OK, Mione?" Harry asked as he returned to their booth with two cups of tea. He sat one in front of her, a spoon on the saucer. He nudged the bowl of sugar cubes and the small pitcher of cream toward her then leaned across the table to grab four cubes to plop into his own tea with a small splash.

"Here," she said, nudging the paper toward him. While he picked it up, she spooned two lumps of sugar carefully into her tea, stirred it, and followed it with a splash of cream.

She watched Harry's mouth drop open and his cheeks bloom red with anger as he read the headline: Marriage Law: Approved by the Wizengamot in Conjunction with the Soulmate Charm. He skimmed it quickly, then met her gaze.

"What the bloody hell?" he said, crumpling the paper and dropping it, before looking at her.

"It passed," she said, sipping her tea, her hands still shaking. "Within the next year, every witch and wizard over the age of 25 has to be married. And apparently - " she scoffed and felt tears well in her eyes, though she managed to keep them at bay. "Apparently we aren't going to be allowed to choose our spouses. A soulmate charm, which is really just a compatibility charm patented by the Ministry, is going to do that for us." Her voice broke at the end, and she sat her cup down, letting it rattle against the saucer.

"But, what about you and - "

"I don't know," she said, traitorous tears escaping down her cheeks. "I only just found him, Harry." She closed her eyes. "It's only been a few months. I thought I'd have more time to figure things out with him. I thought - " She closed her eyes to try and staunch the flow of liquid. "I thought taking things slow would mean we'd be better off in the long run." She took a steadying breath. "I thought he could, one day, be it for me."

"He still could be," Harry said, his voice unsure. Hermione scoffed.

"If ever there were two people from more different worlds, I'd be shocked. This article says a charm will identify our soulmates, and there's a little blurb about how your soulmate is the person best suited to you. He and I are as dissimilar as people can be." She sipped her tea harshly. "We argued just yesterday about where to go for lunch."

"Still," Harry said, weakly.

"Aren't you worried it won't be Ginny?" she asked, her voice quiet, and Harry blanched. However, before he could, the object of Hermione's affection and worry appeared, slightly out of breath, still wearing his white healer robes.

He sat, kissed Hermione's cheek, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. "Sorry I'm late," Draco Malfoy said as he leaned back in his chair.

Hermione tried to brush the tears off of her face before he noticed them, but he saw. His expression shifted to worried in an instant.

"What's wrong?" he asked, leaning forward and taking her hand in his.

Hermione stared at him, all the words suddenly gone.

"Potter?" he asked, looking to his girl's best friend. Harry grimaced.

"Have you seen the paper today?" he asked before swallowing.

"No." Draco narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

Hermione gently pulled her hand from his and pulled the paper toward him. "Frontpage," she said, wiping her cheeks more thoroughly.

"I should go," Harry said, awkwardly looking away from Draco and standing, putting a handful of coins on the table, enough for both cups of tea. "I need to go talk to Gin."

He rounded the table and kissed the top of Hermione's head, then clapped Draco on the shoulder before he slipped away.

Draco read the article in its entirety - Hermione had only skimmed it - then sat it down, eyes on the table. He reached over and took her tea, took a sip, then replaced the cup before he met her eyes. She'd been staring at him, eyes wide, the whole time.

"You think we're doomed." It was a statement. There was no judgment or anger behind it. "You think this law means our relationship is doomed."

"I don't know." Her voice was barely a whisper.

He looked at her for a long moment, then offered her his hand. "Come on," he said, pulling her up. "Let's go for a walk."

With heavy steps, Hermione followed him, her tea cold and forgotten.

Her smaller hand wrapped in his, he walked her down the street, toward the little park where she'd taken him on their second date.

It had been very different than their first date. After Draco had convinced Hermione to have dinner with him - she'd been so sure it was some kind of trick to humiliate her publicly, and only a good word from Harry had convinced her to go - he'd taken her to the nicest restaurant in Muggle London. That was an impressive feat in and of itself but after their delicious, surprisingly fun mean, he'd gone way out of his comfort zone and had taken her to a Muggle movie. It was that that really convinced Hermione that he'd asked her out because he wanted to.

So, on their second date, she'd taken him on a simple walk to the park to get honey roasted almonds from a street vendor, and they'd walked and shared the bag of treats and talked until they were exhausted.

That's where he took her now. He skipped the food stalls and instead shifted his grip on her hand so their fingers were laced together. It was cool - they'd started dating in August and it was nearing the end of October - and her hand was cold in his.

"I wasn't sure you were ever going to go out with me again, after that first date," he said, his breath fogging slightly in the air in front of them.

Hermione was jerked from her private reflection and looked up at him as they followed the wide, concrete path through the trees.

"Why?" she asked, leaning her shoulder against his arm. He chuckled.

"I wasn't sure if you were the kind of witch who liked fancy dinners. And after that, we went to that mover - "

"Movie," she corrected him with a laugh.

"Right. Movie." He squeezed her fingers. "Well, I took you to that movie, and I thought for sure I'd bollocksed it up. You were so quiet after, I thought I'd disappointed you."

"I was just shocked," she said, loosening up a little as they talked and walked.

"Shocked I would take you to a muggle movie?" he asked, a smirk on his face.

"Shocked that I was enjoying your company so much," she admitted with a smirk of her own. "After the war - " she felt his hand spasm in hers - "things between us shifted. I remember seeing you in Diagon, a few months after everything had been rebuilt, and you nodded at me." She smiled.

"I remember that," he said with a smile. "I'd just been accepted into the Healer program at St. Mungos. I actually wanted to come to talk to you that day."

"Why didn't you?" she asked as he slowed and led her to a bench. He released her hand to take off his scarf and lay it over the bench - the metal would be cold - before she sat. She was just starting to get used to his little pureblood-gentlemanly tendencies, and the thought that she wouldn't get the chance to get to know him more made her shiver with more than the cold.

"I panicked," he said, slipping his arm over her shoulder and tucking her against him. "I saw you across the street and froze. So I nodded, like a prat, and that was it."

"What would you have said?" she asked, leaning her cheek against the side of his chest.

"I had a plan," he said, clearing his throat. "I told myself if I ever saw you, I would apologize for - well, for everything."

"You did that later," she reminded him with a small smile as she remembered. "At a Ministry gala about a year later."

"I bollocksed that up, too, didn't I?" he asked with a laugh.

"You did." She smiled and he pulled her closer. "I think you started to apologize, but then we ended up arguing about something."

"I was sure you were going to punch me again." He leaned down at kissed her curls, a feeling vastly different than when Harry had done it earlier.

"I thought about it." She grinned and snuggled into his side a little more.

"That was the night I decided to ask you out. Have I ever told you that?"

She looked up at him, surprised. "No." She narrowed her eyes. "Was it for some trite, shallow reason? Because, away from my normal bookish appearance, you saw that I was passably attractive?"

He laughed, big and loud, startling a squirrel on a nearby tree into nearly falling from its limb. "No. Though, you did you look utterly lovely. It was when I thought you were just about to punch me again. I had this epiphany about you - no matter what, you would always fight for what you thought was right." He shrugged and rubbed her arm through her jumper. "I wanted to get to know that person better."

Hermione was silent for a long moment. Draco looked down at her and sighed.

"I'm not ready to let you go," Hermione admitted after a long moment. She turned to hide her face in his side.

"Why do you think you have to?" he asked, pulling her even closer. It was chilly and the autumn breeze was blowing their hair into their faces.

"This law goes into effect in a year. Until then, all non-soulmate marriages are banned - not that I think we're ready for marriage," she clarified, feeling herself blush. "All other relationships are allowed to continue, but only under the condition that, when the law goes into full effect, every single person will go in to have the soulmate charm applied and any non-soulmate relationships will be terminated." She had to stop when her voice caught.

"And you don't think we're soulmates." Again, it was a statement with no judgment.

"I don't even think I believe in soulmates," she said, her voice quiet. "But this charm is supposed to find the one person in all of wizarding Britain that has the highest compatibility for each of us. You and I - " she couldn't help but smile. "You and I argue all the time."

He laughed and let his hand slip from her shoulder and tucked it against her waist. "That we do, Granger."

"And that," she said, still smiling. "You still use my surname most of the time." She huffed in an exaggerated manner.

"You still call me Malfoy," he pointed out, and she rolled her eyes.

"Less than half the time," she argued. "And besides, this just furthers my point." Her voice lost its playful edge. "The soulmate charm, according to the article, will match us with other eligible witches and wizards who we're destined to get along with, forever." She sniffed, tears threatening to make a new appearance. "If anything, I'm destined for some old, boring wizard who'd always been too busy with work to form a personal life. You and I are too different." In the end, she was barely whispering.

Draco was quiet for a long moment. She felt him sigh again.

"If you're destined for some swotty old man, then I'm destined for some self-centered, boring aristocrat." He wrinkled his nose. "And I for one am not ready to give in to that bleak fate just yet."

"So what do we do?" she asked, closing her eyes as his hand traced shapes on her hip.

"We have a year before we find out for sure. Which means we have a year - a whole year - to enjoy each other's company as much as we can," he said with confidence.

Hermione felt a sudden surge of insecurity. "Or," she whispered, leaning into him as much as she could, "you have a year to go out and figure out if there's another witch you'd rather spend your last free days with."

To her surprise, he laughed. "Oh, Granger." He kissed her hair again. "For the brightest witch of our age, you can be completely clueless."

"Clueless!" she said, leaning away to look at him with a scowl. "I was just trying to be considerate of your feelings. I was just - "

He cut her off with a kiss. Her eyes went wide before she softened and leaned into his lips with a sigh.

When he pulled away a few moments later, he was smiling. "There's only one witch I want to spend the next year with, and she's the swottiest, most clueless, loveliest witch I've ever had the pleasure of knowing." He kissed her again, quickly, in case she wanted to respond, and she laughed.

"A year." She sighed and fitted herself against his side again.

"A year," he repeated.