A/N: I own none of this. It's either JKR's, Cole Porter's or whoever came up with that whole Marriage Law idea in the first place. And it's probably darned smart-alecky of me to do this. I mean, a parody of a beloved challenge-fic-premise is one thing. Dragging nineteen-thirties tap musicals into it is just sadistic. But here you go anyway.

The Quibbler

March 31, 1998

From Our Traveling Correspondent

As everyone in Great Britain knows, the Ministry came under a lot of fire for the new Marriage Law enacted last September. What mostly everyone also knows, is that a great lot of eligible witches and wizards decided the new Law was, in the words of one Ron Weasley, 18: "bloody stupid." What almost nobody knew up until this issue is that a number of said witches and wizards decided to ditch said bloody stupid law by embarking on a diplomatic mission to North America with the one hundred and twelfth United Coventry Aurory.

There can be no doubt of how this happened. The 112th is a highly prestigious unit of the world's finest international Aurors, composing the private guard of both the Chairperson of the United Coventry and the President of the United States (Wizarding,) since 1946, when, in a gesture of trust and faith in the newly-formed UC, President Josiah 'Jeb' Bartlet began a policy of UC presence within the Slightly Beige House. (The Muggle President never made such a gesture, and American Muggles' feelings on their world body, something called the U.N., are anything but warmly unified, as American wizards' are on ours.) Since the war with Grindelwald, when a few very young officers from the division of the United States Aurory which eventually became the 112th UC were dispatched to help Albus Dumbledore in his defense of Britain, the sagely Headmaster and the decorated unit have maintained strong bonds.

Headmaster Dumbledore hosts several officers every year at Hogwarts –usually for the occasion of the House Cup, and each Christmas a massive holiday trunk arrives, lifted by as many as seven albatross owls, full of UC tactical briefings, presents and what has been described as 'rather toothsome fruitcake' of a specie which can only be found in the southern United States. This friendly relationship between a Headmaster and a global armed force has been kept in deep secrecy, for the obvious reason of the current Ministry paranoia. The 'DA' scandal of 1995 would be a mere pebble in a pond compared with the massive implications of Dumbledore's inviting a real army to drop by for tea.

It was thought by most political experts that the long-awaited and decidedly permanent demise of Lord Voldemort would subdue any major political movements for the time being in Britain. Normally, any major victory on the national level slows and obscures local legislature while the citizens take a bit of a well-deserved holiday. It was precisely this inattention and relaxed atmosphere that allowed the Ministry to slip the Marriage Law past Parliament, attached as a rider to a proposed bill regarding minimum cauldron thickness in the UK.

The results were, as the reader knows, galvanic. Any law so Machiavellian and blatantly eugenic would naturally be revoked within the month, most citizens assumed. They were wrong. A further clause of the Marriage Law did not allow it's consideration in Parliament or by any other body of the Ministry for 'review, amendment, addenda or repeal' until June of the following year. It has been postulated that this law was authored and passed for the sheer advancement of a select few Ministry officials' families and love lives; it has further been postulated that the authors were lovesick over some specific Muggle-borns and felt the law would assist in the admittedly awkward task of proposing to said persons.

The Quibbler is under legal injunction to neither confirm nor deny the above allegations. However, it seems perfectly fair to reveal that the authors of the law were Percival Weasley, Marcus Flint, and Derrick Bole. We wonder how the public will view this news, almost as much as we wonder when Flint and Bole learned to write. Given Percy Weasley's recent nuptials with one Penelope Clearwater, formerly of Edinburgh, daughter of Martin and Helena Clearwater, solicitors; we can only sigh and shake our heads before ordering another butterbeer.

The handful of rebellious witches and wizards determined to avoid the law, with Dumbledore's aid, boarded the ocean liner U.S.S. American on November 13, 1998, only two months after news of the law reached Hogwarts. There were numerous reasons for selecting the vessel. As an American ship, the Ministry had no diplomatic power to seize passengers from it mid-passage. Further, as an American Muggle ship which made the maiden voyage in 1930, it was relaxingly slower on an Atlantic crossing, laden with luxurious, if antique amenities, and on the whole, it provided a nice atmosphere.

Until it hit the iceberg, that is.

Yours truly can clearly remember two of the refugees, Hermione Granger, 19, and Professor Severus Snape, 38, having a terrific row near the ship's bow about whether salt water will freeze or not, when the iceberg collided.

It was only by rapid action of the ship's surgeon that three onlooking passengers were spared from certain death by irony poisoning.

To our surprise, it was the august Professor who rapidly became hysterical, shouting for the lifeboats to be lowered, going on about the situation's imminent fatality, and eventually becoming incoherent as he muttered something dire about death and freezing and Celine Dion.

To our even greater surprise, it was Miss Granger who slapped him solidly across the face and told him to snap out of it. She patiently explained that the ship had more than enough fuel to run the pumps in the lower hold until such time as a UC welding ship arrived to repair the damage, the ship systems were undamaged, and the Professor was being 'a big baby,' as she so politely stated the obvious.

In the ensuing days, it became pointedly clear that the Professor suffered from that most humiliating of inabilities –he couldn't swim. As the liner American dates from the Jazz Age, it was no surprise to discover that it did, indeed, possess a 12,000 gallon swimming pool, which is kept in the most pristine condition and filled at all times with specially heated and purified seawater. Some of the ship's several ghosts-

Ah, yes. The U.S.S. American is haunted. But we digress.

-directed Miss Granger and the unfortunate Professor to a closet where a great number of bathing suits, designed and manufactured in the same era as the ship, were stored. (It was customary in the 1930s to rent a sterilized bathing costume for 25 cents U.S. –roughly the equivalent of one-fifth a Galleon. Isn't that fascinating?) They took the ghosts' advice and donned the antiquated costumes, which, incidentally, satisfied the demands of almost Puritan modesty. It became routine, during the weeks the liner was becalmed on the Atlantic, for these two to meet for swimming, first lessons, and then merely out of habit.

The ship's ghosts, interestingly enough, include the cast of a former nightclub act –the Angels. These tap-dancing specters were happy to entertain every night at dinner and afterward, whereupon the headliner, a rather sultry, if translucent, spook called Reno Sweeney at once endangered the souls of the male passengers with her torch songs and then saved them with her high-energy production numbers. Apparently she was something of an evangelist in her day, as well as an impossible matchmaker. Within the space of a single, prolonged voyage, she managed to arrange a record 17 romantic chance meetings, 23 misunderstandings with amorous implications, and 41 kisses under the moonlight.

And so it was, that nearly everyone who sailed away with the Aurors to escape from the Marriage Law wound up helplessly besotted with one of their fellow refugees. Hannah Abbott and Seamus Finnegan were 'together' by the fifteenth of December and Parvati Patil and Justin Finch-Fletchley announced their engagement two days later. One by one, the passengers started pairing off, in various forms of the phrase, from announcements of engagement to merely meeting each day at a certain place onboard, to actually shacking up in the staterooms. Only the august Professor and wise former Head Girl dismissed the activity as 'silly,' for which expressed sentiment the Angels felt it necessary to work twice as hard setting each one up.

Unfortunately, it was nearly Christmas by the time the stowaway was discovered. Mr. Ron Weasley, 18, had been hiding aboard in no less than forty-seven different disguises as he pursued his own true love. When Ms. Granger discovered he was aboard, the reunion between the pair was adorable.

It was at this point that the Angels decided to call in the big guns. Literally. Since it was clear that the oh-so-tragically English Mr. Weasley did not belong with the sweetly intelligent Ms. Granger, they embarked on a campaign of anti-matchmaking the likes of which had not been seen since Sophie Tucker's day. A fiendish specter of either a former gangster or minister (we still aren't sure which,) called Moonface Martin trapped Mr. Weasley in the most compromising of positions (boxers, undershirt, face full of shaving cream,) with another young lady refugee. This gambit, however, did not have the intended effect, as Ron exhorted him to tell Hermione the tale. "And be sure to say I was a beast," he chirped giddily. Clearly, things were not as they seemed.

Brother Martin went to seek out Ms. Granger, but to his chagrin, she had got blind on Dubonet and gin and was singing Noel Coward and Cole Porter ditties at the top of her lungs with a matronly ghost called Mrs. Harcourt, who, in spite of not being alive was just as smashed. They were two-thirds of the way through 'Miss Otis Regrets' when Professor Snape arrived, shoved Brother Moon through a wall, and 'rescued' his former student from the blitzed former debutante. Hermione, needless to say, needed rescuing like she needed tutoring, and promptly dared him to have a drink.

The next morning was unpleasant for all, especially as it turned out that Ron and the young lady Mooney had caught him with had spent the night dancing on the deck. Through the blistering hangovers, Ms. Granger and Prof. Snape came to the eventual conclusion that what they had been at the preceding evening was more than just Dubonet and gin.

Apparently, while apparitions, in fact, cannot get drunk, Mrs. Harcourt excels all of the other resident spooks in pretending to be loaded. She also won the impromptu matchmaking competition that had been started among the post-living by getting the two stodgiest intellectuals on two continents into a stateroom together. Their resulting engagement announcement was one of the funniest, especially as Brother Moon and the Captain got into a terrific row over who got to perform the ceremony. Finally the matter was decided by mutual compromise and there was much rejoicing.

The ship will dock in Britain on February 14th, after the return 'honeymoon' voyage from New York. The Marriage Law was repealed just in time to add some extra glee, not to mention poetic irony, to the reception in Manhattan. Some things are bad ideas, and some things are worse, such as booking a haunted boat, or worse, trusting Americans with your travel arrangements, but it all generally turns out well.

Until such time as we all return, I remain,
-Luna Lovegood-Weasley
'Quibbler' columnist

(Well, who did you think Ron got caught with?)