分卷阅读64（1 / 2）

The quill shook in Draco’s fingertips. “What makes you say that?” the blond asked in a strained voice.

“Your father was a Veriae. You are a Veriae. I am your Veriae bonded. That makes me family, doesn’t it?”

“Not by blood.”

“Doesn’t matter. I can still walk with you, can’t I?”

Draco sighed. “You’re not going to leave me alone until I agree to this, are you?”

“No.”

Draco rolled his eyes and muttered, “Bloody Gryffindor,” under his breath before looking up at Harry. “Fine. You can walk with me.”

Abandoning his homework for his own sense of urgency, Harry headed for the library the first minute he could after classes had ended for the day. Harry quickly realized that he had no idea where one would store the kind of subject material he was looking for in a library setting, and therefore had to turn to Madam Pince for help. She looked rather surprised when a young teenage boy, Harry Potter no less, asked for where one would find books on wizard etiquette, but she gave him directions to a remote corner of the library and two hours later Harry found what he was looking for.

Many of the books he looked through had been about how muggle culture had been integrated into wizarding society. But that wasn’t what he’d wanted. With a family like the Malfoys, he had to go looking for the oldest book on wizard etiquette he could find. He finally found it buried on the lowest shelf in the corner, so covered with dust that he sneezed when he pulled it off the shelf. Placing it on the table where he’d thrown his book bag produced yet another cloud of dust and another sneeze.

Harry began flipping through its see-through-thin pages, bypassing the long section on wizarding naming ceremonies to the section on funeral etiquette. Now that he was going to attend Lucius Malfoy’s funeral, he wanted to know everything that would be expected of him, even if the only two in attendance would be Draco and himself…or maybe more because the only two in attendance would be Draco and himself. It was not that he did not trust Hermione to have her facts straight, but to be sure he didn’t miss something important, something that maybe only Draco himself would find important.

After half an hour of reading, Harry found that his only problem was finding his family’s colors. He didn’t think that they had any, and wondered if the Potter family was even old enough to have family colors or a family crest and plus he had no idea how to find out if they did. But the book said that in the absence of family colors, in the instance of an orphan for example, the mourning clothes would only be black with the dark red cuffs. Of course, Harry did not own proper wizarding mourning robes, but he figured that Hermione could change the color of the cuffs on his normal robes easily enough.

Harry picked up the book to close it and place it back on the shelf before he headed down to the Great Hall for dinner. As he did so, the page he’d just finished reading turned, and the heading of the next section caught his eye.

Wizarding Engagements and the Marriage Rite

Harry bit his lip as he stood there for a second and then sat back down. He knew that engagements in the wizarding world gave younger wizards a status in a way very different from the muggle world where legal status was based on age. What if there was something else about it that Harry didn’t know? He hadn’t really pressed Hermione for any details for fear that she would jump to the conclusion that he was going to propose to Draco in order solve this legal fix that Draco—and subsequently himself thanks to Rita Skeeter—was in. But, he admitted to himself, it was a real possibility, even if it was very far-fetched. In fact, Draco himself was probably not even thinking of it as a remote possibility. No, only he was… and Harry didn’t even know what he would be getting himself into.

Sitting back in the chair, Harry began to read.

The information to remember about wizarding etiquette concerning engagement and marriage was a bit more complex than that on funerals, which made Harry decide to write it out to make sure he did not forget anything crucial.

The book broke any relationship down into two beings, the caretaker of the pair (called the “maritus”) and the one who was taken care of (called the “marita”). In a case with a heterosexuals the caretaker was always male and the one taken care of was always female. In a case with homosexual partners, the two would decide which would take the traditional “male” role and which would take the traditional “female” role. This, the book stated explicitly, had no connotation to what role the partner took in the sexual relationship between the two.

First there was a long courtship process that by now Harry and Draco had completely skipped over and rendered useless seeing as they had shared sleeping quarters, something that was forbidden during the courtship ritual.

An engagement proposition could only occur after the maritus had gained permission from both his own family and the family of the marita. This permission could come only after proper fulfillment of the courtship rituals, which he and Draco would have to skip anyway. The maritus would then kneel before the marita and request, “Where I am Gaius, there you are Gaia?” (slightly different than the traditional marriage vows, spoken in the first language that the maritus had learned). If the marita accepted, he/she would reply “Where I am Gaia, there you are Gaius”. The maritus would then place the engagement ring on the marita’s finger and the marita would do the same for the maritus.