The Mating Game

Chapter Three

Database Results

Hermione was in a thoroughly bad mood by the time she got back to her home in Dover that night. She was sorely tempted to throw her copy of Who’s Who out of the window and delete the whole database she’d just finished compiling without even looking at it.

Somewhere between reading that morning’s news and returning home, she had disintegrated from depressed to dejected, despondent, and emotionally drained. She had to choke down three shots of Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey before she felt fortified enough to begin her search.

First she had the computer eliminate all wizards who were married, dead, or not of legal age. Only two hundred remained after the first cut. Not bad, she thought, not bad at all. I was sure I would be at this all night.

Having eliminated the impossibles, her next step was to sort the remaining possibilities. At this point, she still insisted on thinking of her potential mates as statistics–it was so much easier to evaluate them in a logical fashion.

After debating a number of sorting methods, she decided to rank the candidates by number of NEWTs received. Those who had received eight or fewer were automatically struck from the list, leaving few enough contenders that she figured it was possible to go through them one by one. Her approach had assured intelligence, which she’d always assumed would be a characteristic of her future husband; now she had to debate the other merits of the remaining choices.

She printed the remaining names, then retired to her favorite armchair with her list, a pen, and her bottle of Ogden’s. Harry’s name caught her eye right away–he was quite near the top, and the list of honors he had received made him stand out from the crowd.

She chewed on her lip thoughtfully. Was there any way she could get past her utter revulsion over being intimate with him? She’d known him so long; she’d watched him grow from an awkward pre-adolescent into a gangly teen and then into a well-built, confident young man. Once, in a fit of self-pity (which was brought on by the fact that she’d never been in a physical relationship with a boy), she’d let Harry kiss her, and she’d found even that disgusting. He’d told her later that he’d felt the same way. They really were too much like brother and sister to be physically affectionate.

Yet he was one of her best friends. They worked well together–when they weren’t arguing, anyway. He ought to be the logical choice. But was he? He did want eight children, after all; she could never handle so many. He wanted a wife without any career ambition. Nope, he was definitely the wrong one. Besides, she thought, between his unruly mop and my frizzy locks–our children would have impossible hair! She giggled as she picked up the red marker and crossed his name off.

The name below Harry’s was Cornelius Fudge. She grimaced and crossed him off without a second thought. Then she realized that, because her eye had been drawn immediately to Harry, she hadn’t started at the top of the list. Let’s do this in an orderly fashion, she thought.

Number one on the list was Albus Dumbledore. Age 152? Forget it! Remembering Charlie's accounts of their former Headmaster and the flirtatious attitude he now displayed towards their former Head of House, she quietly snickered to herself. Definitely not! She crossed his name of the list and moved on.

Number two was Severus Snape. Hermione shivered, remembering his intimidating style of teaching, but scanned the entry anyway.

Snape, Severus Sebastian. (1961-) Son of Sebastian Salazar Snape (1927-1979) and Aurelia Abernathy (1943-1981). OWLs 16; NEWTS 14. Order of Merlin, First Class.

She debated for a good ten minutes before moving on to the next entry. In the end, she decided to keep her former potions professor on her list–at least for now. Even though he also has bad hair, she thought moodily. Maybe his greasy hair genes would tame the ringlet genes. Or maybe our kids would be both greasy and frizzy.

By two in the morning, she was quite tipsy (firewhiskey definitely seemed to help her evaluate the entries) and had narrowed the list to ten possibilities. She decided to go to bed and finish her analysis in the morning.

* * *

When Hermione finally dragged herself out of bed at noon the next day, she discovered that not only did she have a pounding headache, she was clean out of hangover relief potion. Unfortunately, given her current condition, she was likely to splinch if she apparated to the apothecary’s. She settled for a large quantity of black coffee instead and made a note to pick up more of the potion when her headache had disappeared.

Picking up the list she had made last night–now mostly covered in red ink–she sought out the names which had survived her second cut and made another list on a fresh sheet of parchment. Ten candidates, ages twenty-five to sixty-four. (Sixty-four? What had she been thinking?) Okay, down to nine candidates, ages twenty-five to forty-nine.

She read through their Who’s Who entries twice more, biting her fingernails in concentration. Admittedly, she found herself prejudiced against most of them. Marcus Fletcher, for example, was Mundungus Fletcher’s younger brother. Perhaps his personality was the complete opposite of Dung’s; she would never know. Her mental image of the inebriated, scruffy spy caused her to wrinkle her nose every time she saw the name "Fletcher".

Even though none of candidates seemed particularly attractive to her, she had to choose one of them. Gritting her teeth, she ranked them in order of desirability. Her number one choice was not someone she would have even considered two days ago.

Desperate to check her work, she got a fresh sheet of parchment and began covering it with rune-laden equations. If her talent for Arithmancy hadn’t diminished, she would be fairly certain of her compatibility with candidate number one by the time evening arrived.