Reading Time: 91 Minutes

Title: Hidden Resources for Young Men of Quality
Author: MeyariMcFarland
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Contemporary, Family, Fantasy, Humor, Paranormal/Supernatural, Urban Fantasy
Relationship(s): Gen
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death, canon child abuse and war, grief and mourning, mental breakdown, Dumbledore bashing
Word Count: 115,299
Summary: Six years into Hogwarts and Harry was well used to being shuffled off to Privet Drive for the summer. Oh, traumatic things happened, great events going on, be a good boy and go back in your fetid little box. Not a lot that Harry could do about it yet, but still looked like Harry had yet another miserable summer aimed right at him. Until a letter came by courier from beyond the grave.
Artist: ani

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Part Five: Building Homes Requires Building Alliances

41. End Convalescence Gently Lest You Re-injure Yourself

Harry sighed as he stretched and then burrowed deeper into the covers. Bed. Very nice bed. Lovely soft mattress with perfectly smooth sheets and a pillow spelled to be the exact right degree of coolness.

Never getting up. Nope. Staying right there.

Tiny clicking sounds next to Harry’s bed intruded just enough that he sighed and shifted the blankets to create a hole so that he could peek out.

“Good morning,” Emily sang at him, knitting away at…

“Is that a jumper or a really long sock?” Harry muttered as he pushed the blankets back enough that he could breathe, darn it all.

Emily grinned. “It’s a very long sock. Thigh-high, though I’ve only gotten to knee length so far. There’s breakfast under a cloche for you, fresh clothes and you’ve got a private bath with a shower through the door to your right.”

Harry looked. Groaned purely for effect because seriously? Waking up with everything he might need right there waiting for him, including a friendly face and information on what he’d missed, was the best thing ever.

Emily let him bathe, dress, eat and get scanned by Healer Bannet who pronounced Harry as a blithering idiot but sufficiently healed to be allowed out of his bed. As she put her now mid-thigh-length sock away into her purse, Harry stomped into boots that he didn’t remember buying. Or trying on.

“New?” Harry asked, studying the dragonhide with approval.

“Of course,” Emily said. “They were in the Peverell Vault. Oliver saw them and snagged them for you since you didn’t have a pair of good boots.”

Harry raised an eyebrow at Emily because she had that cat that got the canary smile going. “And how many other dragonhide items were there?”

Emily cackled, so lots. So many. A ridiculous number. Potentially enough to crash the market for secondhand dragonhide clothing.

“We’re all fitted out and looking to donate the rest to the aurors,” Emily said. “Madame Bones is pleased with the potential to have her people properly equipped without having to spend a mint on it.”

“I like that idea,” Harry said.

Hopefully Chieftain Ragnok would approve as well since all this stuff was actually Gringotts’, not House Peverell’s. But then, Emily wouldn’t be talking about the donation that way if Chieftain Ragnok hadn’t already said yes, so yeah, good thing.

“What else have we sorted out?” Harry asked as they left the Healing Halls side by side.

They emerged into much more controlled chaos in the hallways than when Harry went into the horcrux ritual. It must’ve been at least several days. Possibly a full week? He hadn’t asked Healer Bannet since all Healer Bannet would do was stare at Harry flatly like Harry didn’t have a single brain in his head.

While the hallways between the healing halls and the carts were busy, no one scurried like they were afraid that they’d be fired or killed if they didn’t rush. The stuff being carried by looked much more reasonable and organized, like to like, instead of the wild stacks of who knew what?

“Well,” Emily said cheerfully enough that Harry smiled at her instead of frowning or humming or whatever, “the vaults are finally hitting a level or organization. Still tons of stuff to go through but we’ve got it roughly separated out now. We’re working with House Longbottom on some seed vaults, with the ICW providing support on two of the vaults as they’re incredibly dangerous.”

Harry nodded as if he knew what a seed vault was. Something to look up.

He kept on nodding as Emily ran through the various alliances being born and, as they roared down the tracks towards the Peverell Sanctum, the new issues that Harry was going to have to work on.

Including the Wizengamot.

He waited until they were inside to say anything.

“I know absolutely nothing about how the Wizengamot works,” Harry admitted. “I never, there are no classes, what? I mean, there’s…”

“We know, dear,” Emily said. “We’re working on it for you so that you don’t have to fuss over it.”

She headed automatically, just like Harry, to the kitchens because difficult discussions needed food and tea, thank you very much. They had the massive kitchen to themselves for about half an hour, during which Emily pulled out tea treats and Harry made grilled sandwiches of about eight varieties. The pantry had most everything else they could need to eat, so really, it was just the grilling that needed to be done.

“You’re back!” Kenneth barreled straight into Harry’s legs, beaming up at him as Fiona and Reggie poked their heads into the kitchen like normal kids.

“I am,” Harry said, grinning at Kenneth. “Bacon butty or ham and Swiss grilled?”

“Oh, hard question,” Kenneth said. He looked at the sandwiches and shrugged. “Both?”

“Both it is,” Harry replied.

He ended up cutting all the grilled sandwiches in quarters so people could grab what they wanted when they wanted it. Ham and Swiss, beef and cheddar with the cheddar all melty and the bread nicely browned. Bacon butties with and without tomatoes. Mushroom with pepper jack, and turkey sliced extra thin with mozzarella and a smear of cranberry jelly that Harry had experimented with and now liked maybe more than even bacon butties.

By the time the food was on the table, the chairs were all full. Kenneth squirmed as he ate from two sandwiches at once, one in each hand. His mum Theresa leveled the Disappointed Mom Look of Doom when Jonathan, Kenneth, Fiona and Reggie’s dad, did the same.

“More choices is better,” Harry said with a shrug.

“More choices is fine,” Theresa grumbled as she swatted Jonathan’s elbow without success. “Just one at a time, please, dear.”

“But they’re good,” Jonathan protested around a too-big bite of his mushroom sandwich.

Which, logically and illogically and very amusingly to Harry, turned into a huge debate across the table about proper manners when eating small sandwiches with no outsiders around to see you. Theresa switched sides not once, not twice, but six separate times so she obviously wasn’t half as annoyed about it as the Disappointed Mom Look of Doom look made it seem.

Eventually, around the time they were all either sneaking tiny thumb-sized cheesecakes off of other people’s plates or sneaking them onto other people’s plates, the conversation turned into updates on who’d done what.

“Wait, you got Neville in?” Harry interrupted.

“We had to,” Lacey said, glaring at Anthony because she’d looked at Harry and in that instant six cheesecakes materialized on her plate. “Stop that! The seed vaults included one that was actually from the Peverell vaults. The real ones. That’s the one full of beans. The other two are from the “Peverell” vaults and they were… horrendously dangerous. None of us have the necessary certifications or skills for seed vaults.”

“I am so confused,” Harry told Fiona.

She reached over to pat Harry’s hand with full little kid condescension. “We know. It’s fine. You just have to look like you’re in charge. We all know that Grammie Emily is really in charge.”

“Okay, that’s true,” Harry said overtop of Emily’s groan of dismay and the general snickering around the table. “Emily and Lacey, honestly, with Amal making sure we all have our socks and good wellies.”

“Damn right,” Amal agreed as he tried to steal one of Lacey’s cheesecakes only to have a fork-battle with Anthony who just wasn’t having it.

“While Lacey’s been taking care of the vaults and Amal’s been fussing, we’ve been taking over the government,” Oliver said proudly enough that Harry focused on him despite the battle between the two of them rising to the point of snapped napkins at each other and threats to throw drinks in each other’s faces.

“Unofficial or official?” Harry asked. “Because I mean, if you’re doing it official I might have to actually pay attention and I kind of loathe the Ministry of Magic.”

“Fair,” James said.

Harry ducked under the table as the cheesecake battle went airborne. James and Oliver did the same, as did Reggie who sighed like he just couldn’t not stand to be related to such un-cool family members.

“And it’s unofficial,” Oliver said. “We’re backing Hermione Granger and Susan Bones. They’re going to alternate as Minister of Magic.”

“Or maybe arrange things between the two of them so that one is Minister while the other is Chief Auror,” James said. “We’ve not roped Susan Bones in yet. That’s Draco Malfoy and Longbottom’s job, there.”

“You need to talk to Theo Nott, though,” Reggie said seriously enough that Harry ignored the way Amal froze everyone above the table, dropping the kitchen into total silence.

Well, other than the sound of Amal cursing at them all for being ridiculous people who were wasting food that could feed people who were starving and they should all feel guilty for their shockingly disrespectful ways.

Yeah, totally staying under the table until Amal calmed down.

“Why?” Harry asked Reggie.

“I met him,” Reggie said. “We all did. He’s got a vassal bond like Amal and Grammie Emily, but it’s not complete. Apparently his daddy was a terrible, awful person who got thrown out as vassal for swearing to Voldemort, but it was just his daddy, so Theo is all twitchy and unhappy.”

“That’s… going to take some work,” Harry said, blinking as he tried to find words for it that weren’t cursing a blue streak that would’ve shocked Uncle Vernon.

Reggie nodded. “Yeah, I know. But it needs to be done.”

Amal stuck his head under the edge of the table. “The lot of you are getting up off the floor right now.”

“Yessir,” Harry said because of course he did.

James and Oliver scrambled up immediately. They knew better than to get stroppy with Amal when he had that look in his eyes. Reggie, being as eleven as he could possibly be, sighed like getting off the floor was a horrible trial and he, personally, was being abused by being required to act like a normal person who ate at the table.

Merlin but Harry loved Emily’s grandkids. They were so amazing.

Dinner was, obviously, over once they got out from under the table. Harry and Emily were firmly forbidden from cleaning the mess. Which was… probably good given how much food had ended up splattered on the cavern ceiling.

Just.. how?

How?

Harry didn’t ask.

Next time he would make a point of participating in the food fight just to see if he could pick up some pointers on flinging things harder and faster. Instead, Emily took Fiona, Reggie and Kenneth off for brushing teeth, bath times (mostly for Kenneth since he proudly bopped along with ketchup and cheesecake in his hair), and then bedtime.

Harry took Diana in her sling because apparently during the week he’d been asleep, she’d gotten past the screaming all the time thing and now was in an only-sleep-while-cuddled thing.

“So cute,” Harry whispered once Gail secured Diana’s sling around him.

“She really is,” Gail agreed while her wife Maribelle stared at the ceiling with just as much awe as Harry had. “While sleeping. We are not having more, just so you know. We’re just not.”

Harry grinned at her. “Totally fair. Though you will have gotten all that experience so the next one might be easier?”

Gail waggled a finger in Harry’s face before chasing him out of the kitchen with a litany of all the misery she’d gone through with Diana’s pregnancy. That was gory enough that Harry kind of maybe was going to put off having kids for, oh, a while.

Instead of doing anything sensible, Harry headed down into the box so that he could see what Sirius thought about the whole mess. That took nearly two hours since Sirius kept interrupting to ask a million questions.

“Prongslet,” Sirius finally said with a wry smile, “I’m so glad that you found them. I mean it. You found people who are just like you. That was the very best part of meeting James, you know? We just got each other immediately. I’m delighted that you’ve got them now, even if it is causing mass chaos for everyone everywhere all the time.”

“That’s…”

Harry paused, gently rubbing Diana’s little back through the sling. That wasn’t wrong, was it? Both on the “found his people” side of things and the “mass chaos” side, too.

“I’ve been,” Harry paused to find words, “gleeful, I guess. Amal and Lacey and Anthony were a huge relief, Sirius. Finding them settled something inside of me. Then there was Emily and she just. My magic kind of did this victory dance inside of me when I met her and she claimed me? Then she brought her kids and grandkids, and I’ve been…”

“Vibrating with glee ever since,” Sirius said with a grave nod. “Harry, you have to understand something. Family magic is what defines a House. You’re the heir, the Lord, to two Houses that were destroyed practically to the last man. Literally for Potter. Your magic resonates with that loss. Add in the abuse from your relatives and the nonsense that Dumbledore put you through and hey, guess what? You were primed to latch onto anyone you could. So yes, you are gleeful. You are vibrating with joy. And your joy carries through to everyone else because you’re the Lord.”

Harry leaned back in the rickety chair at Sirius’ desk, sucking a sharp breath between his teeth. That was a problem. A big problem.

Except? Was it? Really?

“They’re doing so much,” Harry murmured as he stared at Diana’s sleeping face. She had a tiny snot bubble that shrank and grew as she breathed. It should not have been that adorable. “Really, I don’t have to do much of anything other than point them at issues and they go power through it until they find a wild, crazy solution.”

Sirius nodded. “Yeah, that’s how Houses work when they’re healthy. You’re not the general. You’re more like a really delighted sheepdog having the time of his life with this crazy herd of sheep. Border Collie, you know?”

Harry snickered. “Yeah, I guess. Still not fond of dogs, but yeah. I get it. So, I guess that what I need to do is figure out what’s most important.”

“Tomorrow,” Sirius said. He grinned and waggled a finger at Harry. “You’re just out of the healing halls, Prongslet. You need to get a good night’s sleep or Healer Bannet will be pissed. And Amal will make tragic faces at you while Emily knits terrifying socks or something.”

“She would,” Harry agreed. “Right. Thanks, Sirius. It really helps that I can come talk to you this way.”

Sirius’ expression went all sadly loving but his smile was a real one. “Anytime, Prongslet. Off you get. Make sure to have fun. No matter what’s going on, House Peverell is all about the fun and you, personally, deserve to have just as much fun as you can cram into any given day.”

Harry laughed before heading back up into the Sanctum.

As much fun as possible, huh? Not a bad plan, at least for the next year or so. One way or the other, all the issues he had to deal with were important so he might as well pick the one that promised to be the most entertaining.

Getting Healer Bannet mad at him so soon after he escaped from the healing halls was definitely not what Harry wanted to do.

42. Prioritization is a Vital Skill for a Gentlebeing of Quality

Seed vaults weren’t anywhere near what Harry had pictured. When Lacey had first told him about them last night, Harry had pictured a box like Sirius’. Bigger on the inside, shelves full of stuff, just with seeds instead of a massive supply of everything under the sun gathered by a nervous nelly of a godfather.

Then he’d figured, nah, it would be a small box, maybe fist-sized or something. Magic, you know? Why make a vault that was huge and hard to move around. You’d want the seeds to be easily accessible at planting time so a seed vault would logically be small, easy to carry and easy to access.

Nope on both counts.

The Peverell seed vault, which was the only one they had left at Gringotts, was a trunk. An iron-banded oak trunk straight out of a pirate movie with a complicated lock that made video game locks look like simple padlocks. Apparently, you needed specific spells plus knowing specific tidbits of knowledge plus a good mind for puzzles to get one open.

Harry had had no idea that Neville was that good at puzzles.

“That is amazing,” Harry said as he watched Neville deftly manipulate like eight things at once while nonverbally casting a spell to open the lock.

“There’s a trick to it, of course,” Neville said once the lock was open. He grinned, just as bright as he could be in exactly the way he never was at Hogwarts. “I’m surprised you never learned it.”

“I had a zillion other things to learn,” Harry said, holding up his hands in surrender. “The most important one being when to let the experts handle things that I don’t understand. And I don’t understand that lock. The contents, sure. The lock? Not a chance.”

Neville snickered as he pulled up the inventory spell with its lists of beans stolen from various places for no good reason at all. Except that looking at the list, Harry could actually see the reasoning behind each theft. It did make sense in a twisted kind of way.

“What about the contents makes sense?” Neville asked as he pulled out his fee, ten beefsteak lima beans the size of his head.

“It’s not…” Harry paused and then shook his head. “Okay, no, the seeds stolen do matter. Every single bean type is a good eating bean. They’re all good growers, with good amounts of beans produced. They’re all useful beans, not ornamentals or hazardous or some stupid hybrid that you can’t breed.”

“Huh,” Neville said, studying the list before nodding slowly. “Okay, I can see that.”

“So, she was stealing things that would be useful to the family,” Harry continued as he reached over to tap the listing for the location of the beefsteak lima beans. “But just as important as that, each of these bean sets were stolen from places that lock the beans up and don’t use them. They hoarded them, not for a real reason but just because they were “valuable” in some way. The usefulness of the beans was being thwarted. No Peverell likes obstructionism for obstructionism’s sake. And then finally, all of these heists were a distinct challenge.”

Harry scrolled back through the list which was arranged newest on top. The earliest heists were simple, straightforward things. Crack a lock. Slip into a vault and out again. Maybe flirt and distract someone until she could get what she wanted.

“Oh,” Neville breathed as he tapped on a location and studied the notes that Pansy Peverell had made on each heist. “They got harder. More challenging.”

“Mhm,” Harry agreed. “There’s a logic to it, even if it is a silly little quest. Free the beans! Pansy obviously cared about the beans themselves. She saved them in her vault. But she also cared about the challenge and improving her skills.”

Neville scrolled through the index for a bit, tapping on Pansy’s notes here and there. After a while, his bright intrigued smile turned into a frown that Harry suspected he already knew the cause of. When Neville turned to Harry, grim-faced, the question wasn’t unexpected at all.

“How’d she die?” Neville asked.

Harry smiled wryly. “We’re not entirely sure. She went off to China on a trip, supposedly a vacation. She never came back. From what records we’ve been able to find showed, she attempted to get into the Imperial Vault in Beijing. I’ve inquiries in with the Magical government there about what might have happened to her, but well, she made the attempt during the Boxer Revolution. It’s possible that she was caught in the crossfire and killed. Or that she made it into the Vault but couldn’t get back out.”

“Wow,” Neville said, shaking his head. “That’s sad. What are you going to do with them now?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Harry said. “I’ve got a great many things going on. The Peverells always have too many things going on. But I’m a bit of a gardener myself. I’m all about the edibles, personally. If it’s foodstuff, I’m delighted to grow it. So, finding Great-Aunt Pansy’s seed vault is lovely. I just don’t have the time to raise any of these.”

Neville straightened up and beamed at Harry.

Really, he’d changed over the summer. Not just in the obvious height that he’d gained in his latest growth spurt, but also in the way Neville was coming into himself. That courage and strength had always been there, even back on the train before first year when Neville went hunting for his adventurer-toad Trevor despite being so afraid of everything.

Now it showed right there on Neville’s face as he smiled down at Harry with eager joy.

“House Longbottom would be delighted to take on growing and distributing Pansy’s beans for House Peverell,” Neville said.

Harry grinned right back at him. “I kind of thought so when you wanted the beefsteak limas as your payment for unlocking the thing. We should sit down and negotiate a contract. I’d prefer an alliance, but I’ve been informed, very firmly, that there’s a process for such things. Contracts first, establishing a relationship between the two heads, and then later alliances.”

Neville snickered. “That is the usual method, yes. Peverells don’t do it that way?”

“Not often, no,” Harry said. “One of the things that makes someone a Peverell is a… sort of instinct, I guess. We just. We know. We see someone, encounter a situation and we just know how to respond. If we should trust. If it’s time to start casting bombarda while shielding madly. Peverells know Peverells and we have a really good sense of who we can trust or not.”

Neville’s smile went sad and wan. “You would’ve loved Harry Potter then.”

“I did,” Harry confirmed. “Good kid. Well, not really a kid. He was never allowed to be a child. But a good young man who… he’s earned peace. I think he’ll be happier out of the public eye than he ever was in it.”

Harry certainly felt that way. It was different wandering around as Lord Harrison Peverell. Sure, there were expectations, but no one looked at Harry as if he was the savior of the world. Magi Britian didn’t watch his every breath. There’d been exactly three articles, brief ones, about his convalescence. Most of the articles had been about how the Boy-Who-Lived had succeeded by enlisting Lord Peverell, with a heavy focus on how Harry Potter had won House Peverell over.

Harrison Peverell was just a guy. A wildly inventive and ridiculously rich guy, but still just a guy.

Harry Potter was an icon.

Both less than human and superhuman at the same time. No one who’d ever looked at Harry had seen him as just some kid muddling through as best he could. He was a genius or a monster, the Savior of the Light or Darkness Incarnate by turns, all depending on people’s moods of the moment.

It was so incredibly relaxing to be allowed to be a person instead of the Savior of Magi Britain.

Neville sighed, rubbing one grubby hand over the top of the seed vault. “I’m glad. I wanted to be friends with Harry, but I was too shy, and he was always wrapped up in his friends and adventures.”

“To hear him tell it,” Harry said with a snort of laughter, “he was so busy scrambling to keep up with everyone else while not dying that he barely had time to realize anyone else was at school with him. Can’t say that I’m terribly impressed by Hogwarts, frankly. The stories I’ve been told are… worrisome.”

“Fair,” Neville agreed.

When Neville stared into the distance, there were horrors in his eyes. Made Harry wonder a bit whether he was the only person who’d gone through their own private hell at Hogwarts or if everyone felt as unsafe as he had.

Well, not Malfoy.

If Malfoy had felt unsafe at Hogwarts, absolutely everyone inside and outside of Hogwarts would’ve heard about it. In detail. Repeatedly.

“What were you thinking for the seeds?” Neville asked, apparently deciding to dismiss everything to do with both Hogwarts and the, to Neville, long-lost Harry Potter.

“Well, some of them are pretty but not especially useful,” Harry said only to laugh at the way Neville rolled his eyes at him. “I warned you. All about the edibles. Even potion ingredients aren’t that interesting to me. Either way, for the edibles, I’d like to grow them in bulk and release them to the poor at a massive discount. Especially the beefsteak limas. One pod of those is enough food for a solid two weeks, with other vegetables on the side. I’m already working with the Goblins on mushroom production for the poor. Combine the beans and the mushrooms, throw in some grains, and food suddenly becomes much more reasonable for everyone.”

“I love that thought,” Neville said, waggling a finger at Harry. “Gran doesn’t much care about edibles, but she’s delighted by some of the potion ingredients in this vault. I’m prepared to dedicate a whole field to the beans in exchange for access to any other interesting finds you come up with.”

“You’re already top of the list for consultation when we have weird vegetation things in the vaults,” Harry said, waving his hand to reassure Neville. “I’ll tell Lacey that you’re first on the list after we get a contract written up.”

He waved for Neville to follow him on down to the Peverell Sanctum where Amal waited with a first draft contract that the two of them argued over for a while as Fiona, Reggie and Kenneth rampaged through regularly. Neville seemed delighted to let Kenneth climb him like a mountain as he took Reggie’s questions about growing varieties of Mimula seriously.

By the time they had a good solid contract for their lawyers to go over, the kids had rampaged off to go swimming. James and Oliver sauntered in and made much of getting to “introduce” Harry to Neville.

“You realize we’ve been talking for about three hours now,” Harry drawled at them.

“Nonsense,” James said so breezily that Neville hooted with laughter. “That hardly matters. I’m sure that the important things haven’t been covered yet.”

“Like the crup?” Harry lied, exactly as they’d snickered about after he adopted them into House Peverell.

Best way to establish a fake history between people was to make something wild up and then refuse to discuss it except in occasional “slips” that the other people involved wailed over as utter bollocks.

“We do not speak of the crup,” Oliver said sternly enough that Harry nearly burst in belly laughs. “It’s not like you weren’t right there with us on the crup thing.”

“Please tell me you’re not plotting to liberate another crup,” Amal said as he came back into the meeting room with Chieftain Ragnok and Slicethroat, the lawyer that House Peverell had contracted with while Harry was sleeping off the horcrux ritual.

Neville burst out in full-on cackles.

“We do not speak of the crup,” Harry said. Deliberately, with as much mischief as he could pack into the words.

“Of course we don’t,” Amal drawled.

It took a good ten minutes for Neville to stop laughing, more because of Harry squawking when Gina gave baby cuddle time to Chieftain Ragnok instead of to Harry. Every time Harry frowned at Chieftain Ragnok, James, Oliver and Neville snickered at him. And every time Chieftain Ragnok looked unutterably smug back at Harry, the three of them dissolved into peals of laughter.

All in all, not the most productive meeting Harry could have had with Neville, but it certainly set a tone for their future interactions. Harry kind of liked it.

“Oh, my sides,” Neville wheezed once the laughter finally ran out of steam. “Merlin’s pants, working with House Peverell is going to be fun. I hope you’ll be working on overhauling the Wizengamot, too.”

“Much as I can,” Harry said with a shrug. “I mean, James and Oliver are working on it. I’ve got plans to talk to both Miss Granger and Lord Nott in the next day or so.”

“Make sure to talk to Madame Bones, too,” Neville said, all humor gone as he straightened up to stare into Harry’s eyes. “There’s a lot of stuff she’s found over the last couple of days. I shouldn’t say more than that since my source of information is my girlfriend, but you definitely need to talk to her.”

“I will,” Harry promised.

Not that he was sure when. But fine, he’d add time for Madame Bones, too. After he got Diana back from Chieftain Ragnok, the baby cuddle stealing monster that he was. Seriously, how very dare he? Baby cuddle time was sacred!

43. When Moving Politically, Take Steps to Secure Your Position

“Thank you for meeting with me, Lord Peverell,” Hermione said in such a business-like tone that Harry almost gave himself away just to hear her scold him for all of his nonsense.

“You’re quite welcome, Miss Granger,” Harry replied.

They shook hands.

Properly and formally, no hugs or stern looks. This was…

Well.

Much harder than Harry expected. Much.

He’d arranged for Hermione to be brought down to the Sanctum to one of the meeting rooms. Harry wanted to meet her there, in his new home, specifically because he trusted Hermione with everything. Maybe not his new identity, not yet, but he’d relied on her for everything for years. There was no thought of stepping back and being cautious when it came to Hermione.

Now that they were seated on opposite sides of the coffee table that Sirius had chosen from the box specifically for this meeting, Harry kind of wished that he’d done it up topside in one of the purpose-carved meeting rooms that had no magical resonance or history to them.

Every single thing around them echoed with the magic of Harry’s new family and with the magic of the previous Peverells.

Hermione had no link to any of it.

That sucked.

“Lord Longbottom strongly recommended that I talk to you,” Harry started and then grimaced because no. Nope. Not going to do this that way. Not when Hermione nodded like this was a job interview. “I was already going to try to talk to you. When I… talked… to Lord Potter, he kind of… wouldn’t shut about you.”

Hermione instantly went red, even though she didn’t twitch or huff or reach out to smack Harry the way she normally would have.

“Not in a pining away sort of way, if you’re worried about that,” Harry explained quickly. “He just, well, thinks the world of you. He credits most of his survival at Hogwarts directly to you. Though, frankly? He was pretty sure that you were going to be marrying his best mate, Ron Weasley.”

“That–!” Hermione clamped her mouth shut before she could start ranting.

Did not one thing to stop her hair from bushing out dramatically with her outraged magic. Harry grinned to see it and then laughed gently as Hermione glowered at him as she tried to smooth her hair back down.

“Your hair really is a barometer to your mood, isn’t it?” Harry said, grinning at the way Hermione narrowed her eyes at him.

“He better not have told you everything under the sun,” Hermione grumbled.

“All good things, at least as far as I’m concerned,” Harry reassured her. And then leaned away as if expecting a swat, which Hermione looked more than half-tempted to smack him with. “No, really! House Peverell is not exactly the most formal House around, you know. We’re a bunch of wild inventors, idealists and nonconformists. I frankly think you’d fit in perfectly with us if you wanted to be adopted in.”

For one long, heart-stopping, moment, Hermione looked like she was tempted. Then she sighed and shook her head no.

“I might consider it for House Potter,” Hermione said. “Harry is my little brother in every way that counts. But not for House Peverell.”

“He thought you’d say that,” Harry said, nodding through the minor pain of not getting to have Hermione as his sister anytime soon. “Instead, I’d very much like to offer you House Peverell’s patronage. We’d pay for your education and housing anywhere in the magical or Muggle world. I’d be delighted to sponsor you right through a PHD if that’s what you want. In return, I, well. Would you consider handling the Wizengamot? I just don’t have the time or the interest in dealing with those idiots.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him but her hair all but levitated in a cloud around her head. It took her a moment to raise one eyebrow at Harry.

“Just how little interest do you have in the Wizengamot?” Hermione asked. “Would I have a strict list of things I could address or free reign?”

Harry shrugged and waved one hand. “I’d give you nearly free reign, actually. House Peverell is a forward-thinking House. I want Magi Britian modernized. They are so far behind the times. I want Hogwarts entirely reorganized and expanded back to what it used to be. There should be orphanages, shelters for Muggle-born kids and adults who can’t safely go back to their families. Social programs. Divorce. Why doesn’t Britian allow people, women specifically, to divorce? And don’t get me started on “creature” rights. That’s a travesty. If you’re advancing all of that, I’d back you. We’d need to talk regularly, but, well, that’s expected with patronage.”

The stars in Hermione’s eyes had stars by the time Harry shut up.

She laughed, patting her chest before nodding her agreement with him. The “discussion” that followed was one of the normal ones where Hermione ranted about all the stupid things that Magical Britian did, and Harry agreed with her.

More forcefully than normal. With some deviations for Harry’s determination to ensure that everyone in the magical world had food, no matter whether they had money or not. Ron might never, ever have admitted it, but Harry knew the signs of someone who’d gone to bed hungry more than three times a week for years.

Seven kids on one meager income. No real promotions and only side-hustles that were probably off the books to make ends meet. Harry knew that a lot of Ron’s jealousy was straight-up the resentment of a youngest brother who’d never in his entire life had anything that was just his own. Not even his pets.

Not even his pants.

There was a special sort of horror that came from knowing that your pants had wrapped around other people’s bits before getting tossed into your trunk or drawer.

Harry couldn’t make things better for Ron and his family directly, not without it being obvious, but he absolutely could make things better overall. A rising tide lifted all ships.

By the time their hour meeting was over, Harry had a first draft of the patronage agreement hammered out with Hermione. She had a fire in her eyes and a smile on her lips that was so much better than the blank, cold determination she’d walked in with.

“Do you think… I could write to Harry?” Hermione asked just before Harry opened the door to their conference room.

Harry grimaced. “I don’t think so? I mean, I can reassure you that he’s safe and happy and very well cared for. He’s got two of the last Blacks at his side. They’re basically his new parents. And he’s got his seneschal and the seneschal’s secretary. And grandkids. They’re making a new home. A new family under a completely new name, though the family magic for both Potter and Black is still there waiting for him to have kids to take it on. And it’s…”

Harry didn’t even need to explain further because Hermione had tears in her eyes and her fingers pressed against her lips as she smiled tremulously at him.

“It’s everything Harry ever wanted,” Hermione whispered.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “But he was desperately worried that Mr. Dumbledore and the Ministry would try to get him back. They’re…” Harry waved one hand as he grimaced, “stupidly convinced that he’s some sort of savior. Cutting everyone off was the only way that he could see to be free. Hopefully, in a few years, after the Wizengamot and the Ministry of Magic has changed, you’ll be able to talk to him.”

Hermione nodded, holding her hand up to stop the flood of words. “Understood. Let’s get that patronage agreement signed. The sooner I can reform the Wizengamot and Ministry, the sooner I can hug the stuffing out of Harry.”

And that, it seemed, was that for Hermione.

He left her with Amal and Anthony to go over the agreement in detail. Getting it written up correctly was a matter of word-smithing, not vows and magic, so they were the best choice. And Harry had a second appointment to get to, anyway.

That one was up in a newly-carved room with Chieftain Ragnok at his side.

Theodore Nott stood still and ice-cold-calm when Harry marched in with Chieftain Ragnok by his side. He had one moment to look blackly frustrated that Harry was Lord Harrison Peverell, not Lord Harry Potter, but the frustration disappeared as soon as Theo bowed very properly to Harry.

“Chieftain?” Harry said, waving for Theo to hold his words.

“Do you consent to my casting privacy spells on this room and on the three of us?” Chieftain Ragnok asked Theo. “You will not be able to discuss anything we reveal here with anyone for any reason at any time. There are no exceptions, not even with the three of us under the same spells again.”

Theo’s eyes went wide. “With the stipulation that none of the spells be lethal or keep me from forming a vassal bond with Lord Potter, yes.”

That said a heck of a lot about Theo’s desperation.

That he didn’t even flinch as Chieftain Ragnok wrapped the most powerful privacy spells know around them said even more.

“Right,” Harry said once his ears had popped and the momentary lightheadedness faded. “Multiple people all but ordered me to talk to you, Nott. But I can’t until you know one very specific thing.”

Harry reached inside to drop the identity redirection spell that made everyone see him as Harrison Peverell.

There was no actual sensation to wearing the redirection spell. Harry just felt like himself. Same messy hair, same shortness, same everything as always. Being Harrison Peverell was just him.

Taking the redirect down, though, that felt like something.

The weight of the magic made him gasp for breath and wheeze a bit. His ribs and hips ached like he was buried under one of Dudley’s dogpiles. It made his teeth ache right up in the roots even though he’d checked and there were zero differences between Harry Potter’s teeth and Harrison Peverell’s teeth.

So, standing there staring at Theo with the face he’d been born in felt way harder than wearing Harrison Peverell’s face.

“What the fuck?” Theo spluttered as he collapsed onto one of the stone stools around the stone table in their conference room.

“Dumbledore, Voldemort and the Ministry were driving me straight towards suicide,” Harry explained. “Sirius was basically murdered. He managed to get a message to me; plus resources I needed to escape. Chieftain Ragnok gave me a new identity as Lord Harrison Peverell. It’s kind of like I was born for it. So much fun, honestly. But I had no idea about you. If I had, I might have done things differently.”

Theo barked a laugh. “No, you wouldn’t have. And you shouldn’t have. Dumbledore did everything in his power to keep us apart. I… you’d allow the vassal bond?”

Harry came over and sat next to Theo at the table. Heavily, with a huff and a gasp and then a grimace. “Yeah, I can’t keep this down for long.”

All the weight disappeared once Harry stopped fighting the redirect. His spine popped like ten times as his lungs filled properly again. Theo shook his head in amazement.

“Right,” Harry said. “Yes, absolutely, I would allow the vassal bond. But we’re going to need to figure something out because we can’t admit that your vassal bond is to me. I would want you in the Wizengamot to keep stupid policies from being enacted, so you have to keep being Lord Nott.”

Theo sighed as he rubbed his temples. “How did I know that this was going to be stupidly complicated? I just knew.”

“Potters,” Chieftain Ragnok said with a grin at Harry. “They make things… interesting.”

“That they do,” Theo agreed. “All right. I don’t need anyone else to know about the vassal bond. I’m perfectly prepared to tell people that I went to you for access to Potter and then agreed to work with you in Britian as Potter’s representative. No one would question it.”

Harry nodded. “That would work. It would give you an excuse for working closely with Amal and Emily. They’re both vassals, too. I’m not sure yet if one of Emily’s kids or grandkids will take up the vassal bond.”

“The baby, Diana,” Chieftain Ragnok said with enough certainty that Harry frowned at him. “You Magi might not be able to tell, but we Goblins certainly can. Once I drop the privacy spell, I’ll arrange a portkey for you, Lord Nott. You’ll go directly from Gringotts, spend a night, and then come back the next day. We already have a lovely little “contract” for this one to work with himself. Adding an addendum for you to represent his other aspect will be simple enough.”

Despite the two of them never spending any time around each other, despite the weirdness of Harry’s identity and their supposed places on “opposite” sides of the conflict that Dumbledore had so carefully cultivated, Theo looked pleased with that.

He nodded. Then smile a wry, sharp little smile that made Harry beam at him.

“I see why Granger and Weasley spent so much time riding herd on you,” Theo said. “I presume that your other vassals will take care of that aspect. We’ll have to talk about exactly what you want me to be, what my job will be, but yes, let’s go ahead with the bond. We can sort the details out later.”

“Perfect!” Harry exclaimed.

Another friend. Another ally. Another person to add to House Peverell, even if it was unofficial. Harry’s magic all but danced a little jig inside of him as Theo knelt for the bond. This was just what Harry wanted, no matter how weird anyone else might think it was.

44. To Establish Ground Rules is to Control the Battle

It felt downright weird to walk into the Ministry and not have people staring and whispering.

Well, that wasn’t true. There were plenty of people staring, but that was more because Harry was wearing his finest Peverell robes and had Amal on his elbow with a dragonhide folio that was probably worth more than most everyone there earned in a year.

And the whispering absolutely happened, but that was accompanied by giggles and flirtatious looks, so yeah, that wasn’t anything odd. Or new.

Not something Harry intended to allow, granted, but definitely not new.

What was weird was to have Madame Bones smile when he walked into her office, leaving Amal outside to talk to the aurors and gather information.

Harry hadn’t thought that Madame Amelia Bones could smile without her face cracking or something. She’d always been so very serious when he’d seen her before.

But Harrison Peverell had never properly met Madame Bones, so Harry put on his best gregarious smile as he offered her his hand.

“Madame Bones, thank you so much for seeing me today,” Harry said.

“Lord Peverell,” Madame Bones said. “Thank you for coming promptly.”

Her grip was as steely as her gaze, though not so strong as to make Harry’s bones ache. That was welcome. Uncle Vernon, despite being a marshmallow of a man in his middle age, took pride in having a crushing handshake that could and had brought rivals to their knees. Usually followed by a laughing “joke” about being a rugby man who didn’t know his own strength.

“Not a problem to escape the chaos over at Gringotts,” Harry replied as the two of them sat. “Things are improving, finally, but there’s still masses of stuff to sort out and properly document.”

“I can’t imagine it,” Madame Bones said as she tapped the table between them to get a proper tea service with an unremarkable black tea and some truly amazing looking little peach tarts with caramelized sugar on top. “But then House Bones works very hard to keep our vaults small, well-organized and properly documented.”

“Dementia is a terrible thing,” Harry said once they both had teacups and tarts. He sacrificed his normal half milk and six scoops of sugar with the bare minimum of tea added to the cup because Madame Bones absolutely was the sort of witch who tracked what tea everyone preferred.

So of course he grimaced at the first sip like an idiot.

“Not a fan?” Madame Bones asked, smirking.

“I’m more of a Oolong or flavored Black fan, personally,” Harry said truthfully. “This is a bit… harsh.”

He added more milk and a lot more sugar because wow, harsh was putting it mildly. Madame Bones laughed as he stirred his sugar-milk concoction until the sugar all dissolved. Still not good but hey, he’d survive. It was just one meeting.

“I am curious about what you wanted to discuss,” Harry said as he sipped and nodded his approval. Better when there was a peach tart dipped into it, but hey, he was Lord Peverell. He could have a sweet tooth if he wanted.

“There are… changes… coming for the Wizengamot,” Madame Bones said as if Harry was supposed to instantly know what that meant. “I was curious who you intend to support.”

Harry snorted a laugh despite his intention not to be rude. “Madame Bones, I don’t support anyone. They support me and my agenda, or they get out of my way. I’ve already ensured that Lord Potter-Black has proxies who will vote for him. He’ll never serve in the Wizengamot. It’s not safe for him. But he does care about Britian, so we’ve come to an agreement.”

Madame Bones sat pale and very intent, teacup halfway to her mouth.

“You have to understand,” Harry said as he set his cup down and leaned towards her, “that Magical Britian is easily a hundred years behind the rest of the world. I never would’ve brought House Peverell here if I’d had any other choice. Come what may, we’re here now. Things are going to change. If you have a specific agenda, I’d suggest making that clear right now. Otherwise, I’ll just go on as I’ve begun.”

“I see.” Madame Bones set her tea down. “That’s not what I expected, and I honestly should’ve known better. I thought you’d be all for Dumbledore’s grand plans for our society.”

Harry shook his head. “He was an old, old man who lived like we were in a completely different age, Madame Bones. His ideas of who Magi are and how we should live are something out of the eighteen-hundreds, not nearly the twenty-first century.”

She blinked and them hummed thoughtfully, actually managing to get her tea from plate to lips as she considered that. Though why it had to be considered was a puzzle to Harry. He knew she wasn’t Dumbledore’s fan.

“I’d thought that you planned on working with his people,” Madame Bones commented.

“Because of the ritual?” Harry asked. He rolled his eyes. “The old man came and begged for help. I’m a Peverell. What else was I going to do when I was presented with someone who needed help and an “unsolvable” magical puzzle. That was like catnip before a kneazle.”

That, finally, got her sense of humor back on line. She chuckled and raised the eyebrow that didn’t have a monocle as she smirked at Harry.

“Point,” Madame Bones admitted. “And you’re certainly not going to work with the Dark side.”

“That is so… inaccurate,” Harry huffed.

Chieftain Ragnok had filled his ears with a dozen lectures on “dark” magic versus “light” magic. Which only added frosting on the entire cake of Hermione’s outrage at the stupid ways Magical Britian legislated magic. Her rants were epic.

“There’s black magic, blood magic, ritual magic, and various intents applied to magic,” Harry grumbled before taking a too-big bite of his tart. He waggled his fork at Madame Bones when she scowled. “Don’t start with the blood purity nonsense you’ve been steeped in. I’ve an actual education that wasn’t warped by the ridiculous laws and customs of this country. None of it works the way your country tries to make it seem.”

“Definitely not what I expected,” Madame Bones said. “Dumbledore had been quietly campaigning to get his post as Chief Warlock back before his death. There are those who think we should carry his plans forward out of respect for him.”

“Oh, no,” Harry said, honestly horrified. “Absolutely not. I hope you’re ready to be put in instead of any of them because no. I’ll not allow that. The safety and educational record of Hogwarts alone spoke against him. His record in the ICW is… appalling. And frankly, there are several hundred laws that he allowed to be put on the books that need to be outright repealed. It’s going to be a huge amount of work to fix it all, but I can’t allow my little nieces and nephews to grow up in a country like this. I mean, seriously.”

Madame Bones intent stare went so scathingly unimpressed that Harry almost, almost, flinched and started apologizing. But not quite. Really, who else could they put in?

“I am the chief auror,” Madame Bones snapped.

“And who else can hold that post without cleaving to the old factions and stupidity, hm?” Harry asked. “I can’t do it. I’m newly arrived and I’ve no intention of attending more than this one meeting of the Wizengamot. I have a proxy lined up for myself already. She’ll be brilliant.”

Madame Bones groaned as she collapsed back into her chair. “You got Granger. Damn it all, Susan wanted to get her before anyone else could.”

Harry grinned. “I’m her patron and I’m planning on getting her into the Minister’s position just as fast as humanly possible. She’ll need some more experience, of course, some training, but in a decade or so I think she’ll be brilliant.”

“My niece had her eyes on that post,” Madame Bones grumbled.

She demolished her tart in three big bites and then summoned a refill for both the tea and the tarts. Different, much nicer tea. Same tarts. Lovely!

“Well, frankly, the two of them could take turns for a while,” Harry said, allowing himself a little lie that might not actually be a lie. Maybe. “But if your niece is anything like you, I think she’d be better straightening out the Department of Mysteries. I’ve heard troubling things about them.”

“You and everyone else,” Madame Bones complained. “They’re an issue that will need to be dealt with, but no one has access to them.”

“Now that’s not true,” Harry said. He pulled out his notebook and scribbled a reminder to set up meetings with the Queen. “I’m sure the Prime Minister can get some traction. Just need to start with the Queen and move on from there.”

Yeah, Harry wouldn’t have an easy time getting hold of the literal queen. Fine. He’d work with Chieftain Ragnok who was a known head of another government to the highest levels of the British government. With Chieftain Ragnok’s help, a meeting could be arranged.

And then the Prime Minister and his government could put pressure on Harry’s idiot government which might possibly maybe make things a little bit better.

Sadly, the idea of working with the Muggle authorities in any single way seemed to break Madame Bones’ brain. She gaped and then huffed as if Harry was being unreasonable. Only to frown and then look utterly flustered when he just raised an eyebrow at her.

Lacey’s lectures on how other countries handled the interface between Magical and Muggle government made it really darn clear that Britian was the oddball. The hostility and lack of cooperation really hamstrung the Ministry in way that they probably didn’t even realize.

“I don’t believe I ever truly understood what people meant about Peverell creativity,” Madame Bones said just faintly enough that Harry frowned at her.

“That’s not creativity,” Harry protested. “That’s civics. Completely common knowledge anywhere but Magical Britian. Really, you need to educate yourself on how the rest of the world works. Including Muggle Britain. The Ministry isn’t totally independent, no matter what they think. They’re a portion of Her Majesty’s government. This shouldn’t be a surprise.”

Madame Bones sucked a sharp breath through her teeth. She chugged down her tea and then went to a drawer in her desk to pull out a bottle of Ogden’s finest. Harry blinked at her as Madame Bones put about two teaspoons of the whiskey into her cup before pouring in more tea.

She offered the bottle to Harry with one eyebrow quirked up.

“Oh, no, thank you,” Harry said. “You really don’t want a Peverell both buzzed on sugar and drunk,” Harry said. “That’s just, wow, not a good idea.”

“Ah,” Madame Bones said with slow, ponderous horror.

She shuddered and put her whiskey away again. When she sat back down and picked up her doctored tea, there was nothing but the brutally efficient Head Auror looking at him. Harry slouched a little in his chair, only to sigh.

“Tell me what I need to know,” Madam Bones ordered. “The points I need to research. I’ll learn it. I refuse to let things continue as they have.”

Harry smiled at her. “You got it, Chief Witch Bones.”

“Start talking, Peverell,” Madame Bones growled at him.

Harry laughed because she didn’t seem that upset by the idea. Or the teasing. He poured some more tea, lightly doctored with milk and a single sugar before sitting back in his chair to start repeating everything that Chieftain Ragnok, Lacey, Emily and Anthony had complained at him.

If it came out rambling and incoherent, well, fine. He was Lord Harrison Peverell. No one expected a Peverell to think in a linear fashion. His explanation could ramble wherever it needed to, go as long as Harry wanted.

Or at least it could go as long as Madame Bones was willing to listen to, which amounted to the same thing.

Still, probably a good idea to hit the high points that she needed to know before Fudge or some other reactionary old coot showed up to interrupt. He set to talking about the interface between Magical France and Muggle France, since that was the one he’d heard the most about so far.

Thank goodness for listening to Hermione for so long. Harry was good at taking what someone ranted at him and distilling it down into useful bits of knowledge.

He just hoped that it would help Madame Bones figure out where she needed to go and what she needed to learn, because there was an entire government to fix and pretty soon it was going to land right in her lap.

45. Civic Duties Must Be Taken Seriously

The last time Harry had been to a Wizengamot meeting had been his so-called trial. It’d been terrifying and exhausting and so very frustrating, in no small part because no one would explain anything substantive to Harry about any of it. Especially about how the Wizengamot actually worked.

It’d seemed like a black box. People went in. Laws and judgements came out. Harry’s life got harder.

There was no logic or information to be had about it, especially with Dumbledore twinkling around Harry to keep anyone from telling Harry what was going on or why.

Once out of the Wizengamot, he’d had maybe five seconds to be annoyed about that before Molly had mothered the heck out of him, ensuring that he had zero time to ask any questions or, worse, to get any answers.

That was probably unfair to Molly. Still felt very true to Harry.

In his mind, the Wizengamot was a grim, dark place full of judgmental people who wanted to see him destroyed.

Arriving at the Wizengamot as Lord Harrison Peverell with Fiona and Hermione at his sides and Amal walking at his heels was night and day to his last encounter with the government of Magical Britian. Theo sauntered over to smile tightly at Harry. That tight smile lasted just as long as it took for Fiona to look at him.

Then she beamed and waved so enthusiastically that she nearly hit Harry in the nose.

“Easy,” Harry told Fiona. “Watch where that hand’s going.”

Fiona blinked and then groaned at the look disappointed look Harry pointed at her. “Sorry. Hi Theo! You’re here, too?”

“Of course,” Theo said.

His tight little smile broadened just a hair as his shoulders came down from their defensive clench. Theo never did something as gauche as hunching, but he’d always had a sort of clenched and ready for impact air to him whenever Harry saw him.

“Good to see you again, Lord Nott,” Harry said, offering his hand even though half the Wizengamot seemed to hold their breath.

“And you,” Theo agreed. Their bond echoed with his amusement at how engineered this little encounter was, but well, it wasn’t like anyone got to know that Theo’s vassal bond went to Harry. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“Anytime,” Harry said.

Hermione raised her eyebrow at Theo in that “explanations would be nice” look she had that always had Harry scrambling to justify whatever he’d just done. Theo was made of sterner stuff than Harry because all Theo did was casually shrug and wave one hand at Harry as if it was Harry’s job to explain.

“Seriously?” Harry complained when Hermione turned the look on him.

Theo smirked.

“You’re awful,” Harry huffed. “I just arranged for him to meet with Lord Potter. Vassal bonds are nothing to mess with.”

Hermione’s breath hissed between her teeth. There was a lot of anger in the glitter of her eyes. And a lot of hurt. Harry had refused to put her in contact with “Harry Potter” after all.

“Vassal bonds go both ways,” Harry told Hermione. “Lord Nott felt it. So did Lord Potter. It was harming them both so of course I had to help. Though really, it was just convincing Chieftain Ragnok to arrange secure portkeys and transportation.”

“…I need to learn a great deal more about vassal bonds,” Hermione said, anger and pain sliding into that intense need to know that made her hair crackle but not poof out.

“Ask Amal about it later,” Harry suggested. “House Peverell does vassal bonds, too, so we’ve got plenty of information on how it all works.”

“Deal,” Hermione said.

While they’d been having their little “private” discussion in the middle of the floor of the Wizengamot, the other members had arrived. Eavesdropped. Settled into their seats. Started passing notes and whispering and acting like the mean kids in primary before they ganged up on someone.

Or maybe that was just Harry’s trauma talking.

Either way, Madame Bones arrived with Madame Marchbanks who looked utterly disgruntled to have Fudge stumbling along at her heels while muttering in a worried tone about who knew what. Madame Bones looked right at Harry’s little group.

Her chin came up.

She nodded once.

The entire Wizengamot went silent, other than Fudge who sat at the Minister’s seat like he was wishing he was anywhere else.

“The Wizengamot will begin shortly,” Madame Marchbanks announced in a crisp tone that shushed even Fudge. “Those wishing to claim their seats or declare proxies will speak now.”

“House Peverell here,” Harry said, waving a hand. “I’m claiming and naming a proxy. Also, a provisional heir.”

“Me!” Fiona exclaimed, bouncing on her toes as she grinned at Madame Marchbanks.

“Very well,” Madame Marchbanks said with a quite nice smile for Fiona. “The proxy?”

“Miss Hermione Granger has accepted House Peverell’s patronage,” Harry announced and then leveled a stern glare at Rita Skeeter up in the visitor’s galley. “You. Will. Not. I’ve brought my seneschal, and I’ll sue both you and your paper if you write any of that nonsense about my proxy ever again, Miss Skeeter. Am I clear?”

Rita paled though from the way her lips pursed, she wasn’t convinced that he’d do it. “Understood, Lord Peverell.”

“Good,” Harry said. “Our seats?”

A box opened for them. The insignia on the front shifted from a blank grey disk into a swirl like looking down into a drain that’d become a whirlpool. Appropriate for the crazy that was House Peverell, though he’d expected the circle-triangle-line sigil. Harry took the Lord’s chair with Hermione at his right. Amal took the seat behind him while Fiona perched on her chair to his left to watch everything with a bright, delighted expression that had more than a few people smiling at her.

Once they sat down, Lord Cresswell nodded to Theo who stood in the middle of the floor. Lord Dirk Cresswell came down to stand next to Theo which made even Madame Bones frown in confusion.

The twins had told Harry about the whole discussion in Hermione’s little coup group about how Cresswell should handle Potter while Theo should handle Black. They’d had some good arguments.

Harry hadn’t agreed at all.

He didn’t know Cresswell. He barely knew Sirius before all this happened. To Harry, Cresswell was the perfect choice to vote for House Black because first, Sirius-the-portrait had burst out into belly laughs at the suggestion, second, Emily had started cackling when she’d been told, and third, Cresswell had been deeply grateful not to represent House Potter when he’d been brought in for a meeting.

Not one where he actually met Harry as Harry Potter. No, he’d gotten Lord Harrison conveying a letter to Cresswell asking that he represent Sirius’ House.

“I’d’ve said no if he wanted me to represent House Potter,” Cresswell had said quietly as he read the letter for the sixth time, relief written all over his face. “Please don’t tell the boy that. It’s not him. It’s everyone else on this blessed island. They’d treat it like the end of the world. Doing House Black? That’s just Sirius Black pulling one more prank, you know?”

“Oh, do I ever,” Harry had agreed and that was that.

“Lord Harrison Peverell put us in contact with Lord Potter,” Cresswell announced. He glared at the gasps and shouted questions. “Oh, shut it, you idiots. Let me finish. Lord Potter holds two seats: House Potter and House Black, at least until he has kids. He asked if I would fulfill Sirius Black’s request to be proxy for House Black. I was more than happy to say yes. I’ll be voting for Cresswell and for Black, separately. The instructions for House Black are ah, interesting.”

Theo snorted a laugh and turned away to snicker into his fist.

From the way Madame Bones rolled her eyes, she probably had a good idea of what Cresswell meant. Fudge looked utterly horrified, but then he had no power to stop any of this right now. The Minister had no say whatsoever about people claiming their seats or naming proxies.

Cresswell nodded to Madame Marchbanks before going back to his seat where a second seal formed, the Black Seal which was a sun with three tiny planets orbiting it. Huh. Harry needed to do a bit of research to learn why that was what the Wizengamot chose.

All eyes turned to Theo who raised his chin as he smiled that narrow little smile that was so very threatening.

“House Nott… was a vassal house to Potter before my father broke faith and turned to the… to Voldemort’s side,” Theo said. His little pause before saying Voldemort’s name was so perfect. Utterly theatrical and yet very genuine. “The incomplete vassal bond between Lord Potter and myself has been sealed. House Nott serves House Potter. He has asked that I vote as his proxy as he does not trust the Minister or anyone else in the Wizengamot not to work against his best interests.”

Theo passed the letter they’d written together over to Madame Marchbanks who studied it and then nodded her approval.

“How dare you?” Fudge gasped, glaring at Theo like he wanted to shout for the aurors to arrest him.

“Your Undersecretary tortured Lord Potter all year long by making him write with a blood quill, Minister Fudge,” Theo said as he passed more paperwork to Madame Bones. “You, personally, administered the Kiss to a man without trial, without a Kiss order on file. You put out the Kiss on Sight order for Lord Sirius Black despite his never having a trial and being completely innocent.”

“I believe that we should start the session before you get into that,” Madame Marchbanks drawled.

Theo nodded. “Probably. But the Minister did ask. I dare because Fudge is a terrible leader who needs to be removed and replaced. Also, because Lord Potter specifically asked me to make sure that Madame Bones got all the evidence he had gathered up.”

Hermione’s breath hissed between clenched teeth. She had to recognize the folio. It was one that she’d bought for all the evidence that she, Ron and Harry had gathered up over the years in various vain efforts to save Harry, Sirius, and a couple dozen other people.

“He came back with it,” Harry murmured to Hermione as the rest of the Wizengamot roared in outrage, shock, delight, fear, whatever.

“Good,” Hermione replied, fiercely angry and so very proud that it made Harry’s heart hurt.

Maybe someday he could tell Hermione. Hopefully. He really wanted his best friend back. She was the one who’d stood by his side no matter what came their way. Ron was his first friend. Hermione had been and would always be his best friend.

Hopefully.

Madame Bones silenced the chamber, including Fudge who looked like he was having the vapors as he sagged in his chair, clutching at his chest and at the table like he’d been stabbed.

“Thank you, dear,” Madame Marchbanks said. “Well, let’s get this meeting called to order. Take your seat, Lord Nott. Then we’ll… get to work.”

Theo bowed quite properly to Madame Marchbanks before going to the Nott box where a second seal showed a simple pot with a stirring stick poking out of it formed for the Potter seal. Which looked absolutely nothing like the Potter seal that Harry had seen before coming here. Weird. How were those things chosen anyway?

“First order of business,” Madame Marchbanks said with a stern nod towards Madame Bones, “has to be addressing the charges that Lord Nott has conveyed for Lord Potter. The question is how to handle them.”

Harry lit his seal and waited for Madame Bones to allow him to speak.

“There really can only be one response to it, Madame Marchbanks,” Harry said as he stood. “House Peverell calls for a vote of no-confidence against Minister Fudge. Just one of those charges is enough to get him thrown out and arrested in Europe. I’m appalled that there’s something to debate here.”

Draco lit his seal and then stood. “I second the motion.”

“No!” Fudge howled. “You can’t!”

Madame Bones silenced Minister Fudge as eighteen other seals lit up. Every single one of them was led by young lords or ladies who’d grown up under Dumbledore’s thumb and in the shadow of the incompetent Ministry. All of them, every single one, supported the motion.

“The motion passes,” Madame Marchbanks announced once all of the other seals had been answered and extinguished. “We will vote and then choose a new Minister for Magic.”

46. Currents Underpinning Social Interplay Can Be Dangerous

Harry leaned back in his chair, watching as Fudge had a toddler’s meltdown over the vote of no confidence. Red face, flailing fists, spittle flying everywhere; it was an all-out true tantrum of the highest order.

Probably some really amazing swearing, too.

Completely inaudible swearing as Madame Bones had silenced Fudge as soon as he started off on his tantrum. The rest of the Wizengamot wasn’t silenced at all. They murmured to each other; words audible if so boring that Harry didn’t bother paying attention to anyone else. At least the general flow of whispers and muttering made individual words more or less ignorable.

“But we can’t hear anything. I wanna hear what he’s saying,” Fiona whispered into Harry’s ear.

Her eyes were locked on Fudge, just like Harry’s. Most people’s eyes were on him. Not Hermione, of course. She took notes on the various laws she intended to introduce after the vote as if Fudge’s tantrum was utterly unworthy of notice. Theo watched Fudge as if he was a particularly worthless bug. Neville looked like he was half a second away from leaning his chair back and taking a nap until Fudge was done embarrassing himself.

“I think that’s probably better,” Harry whispered back to Fiona. “He looks like he’s swearing.”

“Yeah, but I wanna learn all those words,” Fiona protested with a pout that Harry had to grin at.

“Absolutely not,” Hermione said. “You are aware that everyone can hear you no matter how quiet you are, right?”

Fiona went very still before turning to look around the room. More than a few knowing grins bloomed. Fiona groaned up at Harry; pout turned to ten thousand.

“I’ve never been in here before,” Harry protested. “How was I supposed to warn you when I didn’t know?”

“Research!” Fiona complained. “You should’ve done research.”

“That’s why I have Miss Granger,” Harry countered to rising giggles all around them. “She’s an expert at that. If you fail to make use of the resources at hand, that’s on you, kiddo. She did offer to give you a full briefing on the Wizengamot, how it works and what to expect.”

“Uugh,” Fiona groaned as she flopped against Harry’s side. “Quit making me regret my own choices, darn it.”

“Consequences, sweet girl,” Harry said, laughing as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder to give her a half-hug. “They happen to the best of us.”

Fudge chose to huff and puff himself to a stop around that point, not that Harry paid him too much attention when Fiona was being all pouty and cute next to him. Seriously, having family members to laugh and share things with was the very best part of his whole identity switcheroo. Fiona, Reggie and Kenneth were going to get away with so much stuff. Harry was constitutionally incapable of denying them anything.

“Finally,” Madame Bones said once Fudge flopped into his chair.

Lord Ogden lit his wand, requesting the right to speak on the record. Madame Bones turned and stared at him for long enough that the tip of his wand started to vibrate with nerves. He kept it lit though her long stare, though the pointed and rising whispers, and then through Madame Bones’ scowl.

“Lord Ogden,” Madame Bones said so threateningly that Harry watched second thoughts chase of Lord Ogden’s wrinkled face.

He was the oldest person in the Wizengamot other than Madame Marchbanks. There were a handful of older Magi, ones on the so-called “Light” side or “Neutral” not that a single one of them had ever been truly neutral about anything. Or light for that matter.

“I must question whether this vote is even appropriate,” Lord Ogden said. He held up a hand when Malfoy made a noise like a strangled goose. “It was proposed by a Lord who had only just taken his seat. And seconded by equally young and inexperienced Magi. It is generally considered appropriate for those newly arrived in the Wizengamot to take several sessions before they attempt to set policy.”

Harry blinked at him and then caught Fiona around the waist before she could launch herself right out of their box straight at Lord Ogden.

“No picking fights with old men, Fiona,” Harry told her as he sat her right back down, glowering furiously, in her seat. “That’s Miss Granger’s job.”

Hermione’s lips twitched with amusement as she lifted her wand and lit it at almost the same time that Neville and Draco did.

Madame Bones sighed. “Lord Malfoy.”

“I will end you, old man,” Draco snarled.

“I’ll help!” Neville shouted even though he didn’t have the floor.

“Boys,” Hermione said, wand still lit. “If you have nothing constructive or legal to say, cede the floor and shut your mouths.”

Both Draco and Neville started at Hermione’s tone. They nox’ed their wands and nodded that they were done to generally wide eyes. Even Lord Ogden looked a bit surprised by the response to Hermione snapping at them.

“Miss Granger,” Madame Bones said, lips twitching as if she didn’t want to show how amused she was. Didn’t work. Her eyes wrinkled dramatically at the corners as she not-smiled at Hermione.

“Thank you,” Hermione said as she stood and turned to Lord Ogden. “Lord Ogden, are you aware of my standing at Hogwarts?”

“…It would be hard not to be, Miss Granger,” Lord Ogden said slowly enough that he had to be trying to see the trap that Hermione had just flung at his feet. Sad that he couldn’t pick it up immediately.

“Lovely,” Hermione said with that tight smile that preceded things like punching Malfoy in the face, cursing Ron out, or trapping Rita Skeeter in a jar for months. “Then you will understand that I found it appropriate to be prepared for this meeting. The trust given to me by Lord Peverell is a precious one. I am here to represent not just him, personally, but the entire history and legacy of House Peverell. It’s a grave responsibility that I take very seriously indeed.”

“It is a credit to you and House Peverell that you do take it so seriously,” Lord Ogden said even more warily.

Mostly because Theo had started smirking while Neville chortled and Draco grinned like a maniac. Over in the Greenglass box, Daphne had one hand over her mouth as if that would somehow hide that she was laughing at Lord Ogden.

In fact, all the younger lords and ladies had deeply amused expressions on their faces. Every single one of them, including Harry. And Fiona who’d started bouncing in her chair in excitement as she quietly clapped her hands as if she couldn’t stand to sit still as she watched Hermione wind up for the kill.

“Thank you,” Hermione said. “So. I read all the laws. All of them. Every. Single. Law. Everything that Britian has passed. Everything that’s currently followed. All the laws still on the books that everyone ignores. All the commentary. All the advisories. Everything.”

“Ah…” Lord Ogden started to sweat. Visibly.

Hermione tilted her head a very precise six degrees to the right. “I read your advisory monograph, Lord Odgen. Advice to a Young Lord From a Seasoned Legislator? I read it. All four editions of it. I created a chart to track what changes you made between editions.”

Lord Ogden opened his mouth and then shut it slowly as a bead of sweat dripped down his temple.

“Nowhere,” Hermione said crisply, “in any single law, document, advice column or monograph does it recommend that young lords and ladies sit out. Every single one advises leaping straight in. What exactly do you think you’re protecting by keeping Minister Fudge from facing a vote of no confidence? And yes, that’s an actual question. I expect an answer.”

Fiona crowed, clapping her hands with glee because Lord Ogden blanched so abruptly that Harry half thought the old man was going to have a heart attack right there.

“That’s… that’s no one’s business!” Lord Ogden spluttered.

Hermione raised one eyebrow at him. “You are advocating leaving a man who has broken our laws, broken the ICW’s laws, and who literally committed an extra-judicial execution not face any consequences, Lord Ogden. There are people in Azkaban right now who did far less. There are at least three people in Azkaban at this moment who were sent there for shoplifting.”

Gasps went around the chamber. Hermione ignored them all as she stared at Lord Ogden like he was the stupidest person she’d ever met, worse even than Ron.

No one doubted her. How could they? Everyone in Britian knew that Sirius had been hunted. By now, they all knew that Sirius had never gotten a trial.

Didn’t they? Huh. Harry couldn’t remember if anyone had ever done anything about that. Something to remember to ask about and check on once the Wizengamot meeting was over.

Not that it mattered at the moment with Lord Ogden wheezing and Hermione vibrating with sheer outrage.

“And you… think that a literal admitted public murderer should face no censure. Not trial! Just… nothing. Why? What do you gain by keeping that man—” Hermione pointed at Fudge who had turned so pasty pale that he looked like another candidate for immediate heart attack, “in power?”

Fiona tugged on Harry’s sleeve. “Is he really?”

“Bragged about it in all the papers,” Harry murmured, knowing that everyone would hear it. He shrugged. “The whole thing after the Tournament?”

“Oh, the dementor thing,” Fiona breathed. “Right. I forgot about that.”

“Fair,” Harry said. “There were beans.”

“Uugh, not the beans,” Fiona groaned, cracking both Harry and Neville up.

They shut up right quick when Hermione glowered at them, not that she was truly upset. Her hair hadn’t bushed out at all, not like when she turned her glower back onto Lord Ogden. Her hair turned into a halo when he tried to raise his chin and sneer at Hermione as if she was just some silly girl who knew nothing.

“I… I don’t have to answer that,” Lord Ogden spluttered.

“Then sit. Down.” Hermione stared at Lord Ogden until he did exactly that. “Madame Bones. The vote.”

Madame Bones asked if anyone had evidence to present. Theo’s evidence was copied so that they could all read it. Then Hermione submitted a stack of evidence that covered the entirety of Fudge’s career, from his first job as a clerk in the department of creature regulation on up to the previous day. Neville had six rulings that Fudge had put down that had absolutely ruined potions growers until his Gran had gotten at Fudge. Daphne Greenglass had a slim little folder of names of people in the old Grey alliance who’d been threatened by Fudge with being arrested simply because they got in his way as he rampaged around.

As everyone at least skimmed the evidence provided, the atmosphere shifted from old against young to the growing awareness that many of the things that everyone complained about when it came to Ministry “incompetence” were more accurately a matter of outright corruption.

Because Fudge argued over and over and over that he’d done exactly what his predecessors had done. That it wasn’t his fault. He just acted as other Ministers of Magic had acted. That he’d had Dumbledore’s support. That the ICW hadn’t objected. That it was perfectly okay for an elected official to have various lords pay for his “services” in advancing their agendas.

That it was all just how things worked.

“And that,” Hermione said once Fudge spluttered into silence under the gaze of the entire Wizengamot, “is exactly why we need this vote.”

“All in favor of Minister Cornelious Fudge receiving a vote of No Confidence?” Madame Bones asked.

Only one wand stayed unlit.

“All opposed?”

None lit.

“Abstaining?” Madame Bones stared at Lord Odgen.

Lord Ogden sighed and lit his wand. “I… abstain. And I will be passing my seat to my heir after this meeting is over. For the record.”

“Noted,” Madame Marchbanks said crisply enough that Lord Ogden flinched as he slumped in his chair like he’d just run three marathons back to back. “The vote of No Confidence passes. Mr. Fudge, step down or you will be removed.”

Fudge wobbled his way off the bench, collapsing into one of the witness seats near the doors to the Wizengamot. Yeah, he might just have a heart attack shortly. Well, not Harry’s problem. He’d be delighted if Fudge did drop dead. If anyone wanted the man to live, they could get him to Saint Mungo’s’.

“As the rules demand, the Head Auror is automatically confirmed as the Interim Minister until an election can be held,” Madame Marchbanks declared. “We will meet again in three days to present candidates. They will have one week to campaign. Then we will vote in the new Minister after that.”

Hermione smiled like Crookshanks after he caught a pigeon. Theo looked just as pleased, as did Cresswell who smirked right at Fudge. Step one to changing Britain done. Now they just had to get through the rest of the nonsense and get someone reasonable into the Minister’s seat so that someday, maybe, life could settle into a quiet, comfortable routine.

If Harry’s life ever could be quiet.

Eh, he’d take what he got with his new family, but if the political side of things could be boring, that’d be amazing. Hopefully soon. Just the rest of the meeting, some schmoozing and then he could get back to the Sanctum to ask about who knew what about Sirius.

47. Private Discussion is as Important as Public Action

Talking to people as Lord Peverell was so very weird.

Harry kind of loved it.

“I must admit that I didn’t expect her to be… that,” Lord Odgen admitted ruefully as he watched Hermione brilliantly debating cauldron bottom legislation with Percy and Draco who looked bitterly determined to disagree with each other even though they’d started from the same side.

“There’s a reason I chose her as my proxy,” Harry said, smiling down at Fiona who was humming as she hugged him.

Lord Ogden sighed. “Do you truly need a proxy, Lord Peverell? You’ve moved here. You’re part of our society now. Surely you can—”

He snapped his mouth shut when Harry raised a hand. From the frown directed Harry’s way, Lord Ogden hadn’t actually expected to be interrupted. He wasn’t offended, exactly, but he clearly wasn’t used to anyone gainsaying him about any of the nonsense that came out of his mouth.

“I have no time for this,” Harry told Lord Ogden. Firmly, brooking no contradiction. “As you say, I’ve just moved. I just moved to a new country with new laws and have to completely reconstitute every venture that House Peverell is involved with. There are all kinds of paperwork that my Seneschal is cursing over. There’s the Ministry assuming that they can just… claim portions of my family vaults. There was Mr. Dumbledore asking me to perform death-defying stunts, which inspired multiple other people to do the same. I just don’t have the time for politics, too.”

“And gardening,” Fiona interrupted.

“And gardening,” Harry agreed. He grinned over his shoulder at Amal who blew a raspberry and rolled his eyes at Harry’s love of gardening. “No one else in the family is interested in gardening the way I am. The kids will barely even pull three weeds before they run off to do anything else.”

“Weeds are boring,” Fiona groaned. “Beans are even more boring.”

“Did someone say beans?” Neville boomed as he shouldered his way right into the conversation with exactly the right level of glee to make Lord Ogden pale and Fiona whine as she tugged at Harry’s robes as if that would stop either of them.

“Fiona did,” Harry said, grinning down at her murderous expression. “You know better than to put a name to something you don’t want, sweet pea. You name it. You call it. It manifests.”

“That’s… real?” Lord Ogden asked, dramatically pale as he looked at Harry, then at Fiona, then back at Harry.

“Mmmm,” Harry wobbled one hand. “Maybe? Certainly seems to work that way when you’re a Peverell. Or around Peverells. I mean, seriously, I started asking questions about how your Dark Lord got away with things and just the next day I had Mr. Dumbledore begging me to find a way to destroy him.”

Neville nodded cheerfully. “You guys really are good at attracting all kinds of nonsense. But the seed vaults were awesome, so I hardly care. I’ve gotten the fairy beans sprouted and they’re already glowing. Purple! They’re purple fairy beans, Harrison!”

“Wait, what?” Harry spluttered as Fiona abandoned him to scamper over to Hermione’s side. “Fairy beans are only every pale blue and rose red.”

“I know!” Neville exclaimed loud enough to get half the Wizengamot staring at them. “Whoever your cousin stole them from managed to hybridize the fairy beans to get new colors. Gran’s so entranced by them that she refused to even leave the greenhouses.”

Harry nodded because yeah, totally. That was just logical. If he could go straight there to see the fairy beans, Harry would.

“I wonder if they’ll have different properties since they’re a different color,” Harry mused. “The blue are so good for healing potions while the red is best for dyes and absolute pants for healing. You’d assume that the purple would be different again.”

Neville grinned. “I’m wearing off on you. Pants. Yeah, I think they might. We’ll have to wait another forty-five days for the beans to mature and set pods, but it seems logical that they would.”

Off in a little crowd of gossips, Rita Skeeter’s pen hung in her hand as she stared at Harry with the flattest, least impressed expression that anyone could have. Except maybe Hermione who shook her head while pinching the bridge of her nose. Or Draco who rolled his eyes at Harry and Neville.

“They keep doing this,” Fiona complained into a lull in the conversation around Harry and Neville’s speculation about just what the original grower had done to get purple fairy beans. “All the time. Why are they so stuck on beans?”

“Just ignore them, dear,” Hermione said, patting Fiona’s shoulder. “What do you know about cauldron bottoms?”

“Britian is stupid and either has them too thin or too thick,” Fiona immediately said because Lacey had gotten to both Fiona and Reggie when it came to proper cauldrons. “I won’t use a British cauldron, not on your life. I’m gonna use proper French cauldrons. And if I can’t get those, well, I’ll use Goblin cauldrons. The thicknesses you guys mandate mess up the potion proportions and cooking time!”

Aaaaand there went the cauldron debate going nuclear.

Harry and Neville paused their debate which had shifted into Neville’s plans for fine mesh screens to capture the fairy beans instead of cheesecloth. Given how tiny the beans were, barely the size of the head of a pin, Harry favored using fine handkerchief linen woven as tightly as possible. You could easily lose half the harvest if your screening medium was too loosely woven.

“Should we save her?” Lord Odgen asked Harry.

Harry laughed. “Nah. She’s fine. Anyone tries to touch, and Miss Granger will lop their arms off. Fiona might beat her to it, though. She’d got a great wandless cutting charm that she’s learned to cast wordlessly.”

Neville blinked several times. “Wow. That young?”

“She’s no younger than your Lord Potter when he learned to cast the Patronus,” Harry said with a shrug. “That’s really not too surprising. Wandless is all about creativity. Wordless is just pure stubbornness. Fiona’s got spades of both. No, the surprising one is her littlest brother Kenneth. The other day he figured out how to levitate on purpose instead of doing it just because he’s excited.”

Lord Ogden opened his mouth, then slowly closed it, frowning. “On… purpose. Why?”

“Well, we’re staying at Gringotts as we sort through the vault disaster,” Harry explained, more than happy to let everyone in the Wizengamot overhear. He did have a reputation for the Peverells to maintain and reinforce. “Kenneth was asking one of the young goblins whose renting workspace from us about how the workrooms were spelled. There are special runes carved on the roof of each workroom cavern to ensure that there’s a good inventory of who uses what. Keeps fighting over resources down, apparently.”

Lord Ogden’s face went on an entire journey as Harry talked so breezily about the situation. He smirked at the vault disaster, performatively, because the smirk was the only thing amused about him. His hands clenched and his feet fidgeted at the idea of vaults getting that screwed up.

Then there was total befuddlement about letting kids talk to goblins, shock at the idea of young goblins being a thing that existed, followed by “renting workspace” which inspired such blank incomprehension in him and everyone around him (other than Neville) that Harry had to fight not to belly laugh right at him.

Which was to say nothing about the confused awe and then disdain when Harry got to the inventory and fighting over it.

He almost felt sorry for Lord Ogden. But not really. The old man really needed to retire. Soon.

Neville, on the other hand, grinned the whole way through. He’d seen the work rooms and talked to Harry about the Sanctum’s farms, so he knew what was up.

“And he… floated his way up to poke at them?” Neville asked, laughing when Harry nodded. “Oh, no! He’s so little. He’s only seven.”

Harry shrugged while smiling wryly. “That’s about when Peverell kids usually start figuring a few things out. I’m glad its levitation instead of instinctive apparation. Kenneth would rather run than walk, a hundred percent of the time. Takes too long to get around at a normal pace, you see.”

Neville chortled into his hands, shoulders shaking as he tried not to belly-laugh right there in the middle of the Wizengamot.

The discussion moved onwards to kids and the crazy things they did when they started figuring out that they had magic, then back to beans, off at about sixty degrees from everything they’d done so far today in a detailed discussion of calligraphy and illuminated manuscripts that Lord Ogden was surprisingly into.

By the time Hermione came over with Fiona at her side, both of them with the “are you done yet?” faces, Harry almost didn’t loathe Lord Ogden anymore.

“No, no, I’ll absolutely try using a stylus for applying the glue precisely,” Harry reassured Lord Ogden. “The instructions I’d been following suggested a very fine paintbrush, but a stylus sounds like it’ll give me more precision.”

“It very well may,” Lord Ogden said, nodding firmly. “In small spots, a stylus is better. Bigger spots will logically need a brush.”

“Ahem.” Hermione’s expression couldn’t have gone more flat if she’d been a Muggle photograph.

“Uncle Harrison,” Fiona complained, hands on her hips, “you promised that you’d get me home in time for lunch with Grammie Emily.”

“It can’t be that late,” Harry said as he checked his pocket watch, the one that Anthony had bought from the Goblins that looked like it was easily two hundred years old. “Oh. Okay, I didn’t realize it was already past noon.”

Looking around, there were still a few people lingering in the Wizengamot. Not many. Rita Skeeter and the other reporters were long-gone. So were Cresswell and Theo. Neville was still there, holding forth on beans to Madame Bones who looked half a second away from gutting him with his own wand.

“Right,” Harry said with a smile that felt both apologetic and a bit brittle. “Sorry, Lord Ogden. A promise is a promise.”

“Grammie Emily said she was making tarts,” Fiona complained. “We’re gonna miss the good ones!”

Lord Ogden laughed. “Well, off you go then. It was… interesting speaking with you, Lord Peverell.”

“And with you,” Harry said cheerfully.

They shook hands. They parted ways. Neville scurried after them to the floo as Madame Bones started throwing people out of the Wizengamot since the meeting was well and truly over.

It wasn’t until they were back at Gringotts, heading down into the Sanctum that Hermione blew out a breath as she relaxed by degrees. Harry smiled at her, then helped Fiona off the cart. Hermione actually allowed him to give her a hand off, which was nice.

“Well, I think that went well overall,” Harry said as they strolled into the Sanctum side by side. “Come on. Join us for a late lunch. Everyone’s going to want a proper debrief and you paid way more attention to the undercurrents than I did.”

“Do you even notice undercurrents?” Hermione asked snippily enough that she sighed and shook her head. “My apologies. That was rude.”

“Accurate,” Fiona said.

She laughed when Harry pretended to clutch at his heart. Then Kenneth ran up, grabbing Fiona so that they could run off together, Fiona barely keeping up with Kenneth. Harry shook his head.

“Really, I am not looking forward to the day when that boy figures out apparation,” Harry sighed. “But you should come to lunch. Lacey will have questions only you can answer, and Amal will want copies of your notes for the files.”

“All right,” Hermione said reluctantly enough that Harry frowned at her. “I just. I don’t want to intrude. This is a business relationship.”

Harry choked on air. “Uh. No? Hermione, you’ve functionally taken three steps towards being adopted into the Peverells. Everyone assumes, rightly, that House Granger will form up underneath the House Peverell umbrella. You’re a new Head of House. That’s what patronage is.”

Her jaw dropped open.

Then snapped shut as Hermione pulled out a sheaf of notes that, when Harry craned his neck, were the ones she’d taken when they talked about the patronage thing. He pointed at the section that she’d kind of just scribbled while nodding absently. It had, to be fair, been after the bit where they’d talked about the extent of financial support Harry would give her for her education. And then it was followed by the part about the Wizengamot proxy seat and all that entailed.

“Got lost in the midst of the rest, I guess?” Harry asked.

“Ah,” Hermione said, staring at her notes. “Yes. It did. I. Wow. Okay. I need to talk to Amal.”

“Lunchtime,” Harry said, grinning at her flat glare. “Might as well eat first and then pick his brain after.”

She sighed and then laughed quietly as she shook her head. The notes went away. Then she nodded to Harry, gesturing for him to lead the way just like she had a million times before back at Hogwarts. Harry beamed and offered an elbow exactly as he never had at Hogwarts.

Hermione rolled her eyes at him, but she tucked her hand into his elbow.

“Your whole family is insane,” Hermione mock-complained.

“Of course we are,” Harry said, grinning his widest, most-manic grin. “We’re House Peverell. What else could we be?”

48. At Times, Interruptions Should Be Entertained

“That went remarkably well,” Chieftain Ragnok said as the two of them hefted a two meter by three meter table made of pumice and bamboo out of the stack of wobbly desks and tables that needed to be repaired.

“Hermione?” Harry asked as they flipped the table and then watched the thing’s legs collapse entirely under the very light weight of its top. “Yeah, she did great. I mean, her notes from the Wizengamot are a work of art. And we should be able to get someone reasonable in as Minister. Hopefully, anyway.”

Ragnok stared at the stupid, wobbly table as if deeply disappointed by its lack of structural integrity before waving for other goblins to come take it away. They grabbed another table, this one about the size of Harry’s torso but made of what looked like obsidian inscribed by runes that had all been painted the color of dried blood.

Or, more likely, it actually was dried blood. Ew.

“Finding the right person will be key,” Chieftain Ragnok agreed as they both grimaced and cast purification and cleansing spells on their hands once the tiny obsidian table was passed off to the cleaning and de-cursing crew.

They didn’t look too delighted by the thing, either. Not that they had a bit of trouble hefting it around, but from the way they grimaced at the flaking red dust, they were going to be cleaning themselves even more thoroughly than Harry had.

“How much more of this stuff is there?” Harry asked Chieftain Ragnok since they didn’t have any Magi around at the moment, just Goblins in the know. “I mean, there’s like twenty individual caverns now, right? Is there more beyond that?”

“There so easily could be,” Chieftain Ragnok grunted as they helped a team heft upright a granite table big enough for the entire Round Table. “We only took the vaults that we could conclusively prove had no owners anymore. There’s another several hundred that we’ll work on clearing over the next couple of decades.”

Harry snorted. “You’re going to goose the economy even more than House Peverell will.”

“Exactly,” Chieftain Ragnok agreed with a toothily delighted grin.

By the time lunch rolled around, they’d managed to sort out the magically dangerous tables from the non-dangerous ones. The mundane just-a-table-thank-you tables got hustled out of the cavern to various artisans and woodworkers who would fix them up and then sell them onwards.

Harry and Chieftain Ragnok meandered their way from the sorting vaults up to Chieftain Ragnok’s office where Healer Bannock had a lunch spread waiting for the two of them with strict orders that they were to polish it all off or else. Thank goodness for Healer Bannock’s oaths, Harry’s food and drink was human-appropriate because Chieftain Ragnok had bloody hunks of basically raw meat and some very squidgy looking “soup” that he suspected was congealed blood instead of anything rational.

Eating with Goblins around was… interesting.

Didn’t really matter when the two of them could spend a meal razzing each other about their weird tastes while gossiping viciously about everything Magi society was doing. The Goblins heard everything.

“Chieftain.” Ragnok’s secretary and seneschal Spineripper poked his head into the office. “If you’re done eating, Miss Bones is here to speak to you and Lord Peverell.”

Harry’s eyebrows went up. He glanced at his plate and shrugged. Chieftain Ragnok nodded his approval as he tossed the last chunk of bloody meat into his mouth with a snap of teeth that made Susan Bones hesitate at the door.

“Miss Bones,” Harry said, waving for her to come in. “So good to see you. How is your aunt doing with her new probably-not-temporary responsibilities?”

Susan sucked a sharp breath between her teeth as she marched right over only to quail as she studied the leftovers from Chieftain Ragnok’s squidgy “pudding”. Or soup. Blood-thingie, whatever it was. She was made of sterner stuff than Harry expected because Susan didn’t even pale. She just frowned at the squidgy thing as if she couldn’t quite figure out how it was made.

“Chieftain Ragnok, Lord Peverell,” Susan said, visibly dismissing any questions of their meal from her mind in favor of being properly polite, “thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“We were just having lunch,” Chieftain Ragnok said with a casual wave that made the leftovers, other than Harry’s cup of tea, disappear. “You arrived at a good time.”

“Anything to get away from the vault disaster for a little while,” Harry agreed when Susan looked his way.

Her lips twitched into and out of a smile so fast that Harry wasn’t sure he actually saw it. “I’ve heard that it’s quite the disaster.”

“Years,” Harry said. He rolled his eyes. “We’re going to be working on this for years. You’ve no idea how much of packrats Peverells can be.”

The smile lasted a whole two heartbeats this time. Susan hummed before gesturing towards the other chair in front of Chieftain Ragnok’s desk. When Chieftain Ragnok nodded, Susan sat, smoothing her very nice tweed skirt over her knees.

He’d never seen Susan in casual clothing. If it weren’t for the tweed skirt, he still wouldn’t have because she had on one of the standard Hogwarts jumpers with a simple white blouse underneath and a Hufflepuff tie. Even her socks were the normal Hogwarts socks, banded in Hufflepuff colors.

“I was hoping to have a word with both of you about potential candidates for Minister of Magic,” Susan said with practically no hesitation at all. “While I understand that you’ve given Granger your proxy, you must have some opinions on the candidates.”

“I’ve not even heard who they are yet,” Harry admitted. “I mean, other than your aunt and she might just gut me if I nominate her.”

Susan grinned, quick and vicious. “She might. The candidates stand at Auntie Amelia, who doesn’t want it, Lord Greenglass, who never makes a decision without his wife’s approval, and Draco Malfoy, who may or may not know that he’s been put forth as a potential candidate. And then there’s you. A fair number of people I’ve spoken to are convinced that you’ll put your name in the hat.”

Harry opened his mouth.

He shut it.

He turned to Chieftain Ragnok who started hooting with laughter at whatever Harry’s face was doing.

He turned back to Susan who started cackling at him, just like Chieftain Ragnok.

Once they managed to giggle-snort their way into relative quiet, Harry shook his head. Seriously, whoever was putting that out there was really desperate. Or maybe Theo. He could absolutely see Theo putting his name out there to sculpt people’s thoughts in the direction Theo and Hermione wanted them to go.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Harry said. “I don’t have the time for that kind of nonsense. Besides, if they made me Minister for Magic, I’d just disband the Ministry, go talk to the Queen, and set up a proper government that follows the Commonwealth’s laws.”

Laughter won out again for both Chieftain Ragnok and Susan.

“That would be so funny to watch,” Susan wheezed as she coughed into her fist as if that hid the fact that she’d laughed until she had tears in her eyes.

“Lord Peverell, I will literally pay you to say that in the Wizengamot,” Chieftain Ragnok agreed as he giggled with delight.

Real giggles. Harry wouldn’t have thought Goblins could do that. Learn something every day, apparently.

“I probably will,” Harry said. He sighed. “None of those are good candidates, Miss Bones. If you were out of Hogwarts, I’d suggest you do it. Or Miss Granger. Actually, I’m kind of planning on supporting the two of you switching back and forth between you once you’re done with your schooling. My thought was that your aunt would do it for oh, four or five years, and then she’d retire so you and Miss Granger could fight it out.”

Susan blinked. And then hummed thoughtfully. “I can see that. I’ll have to talk to Hermione about it. If I can find her.”

“She’s down in the Sanctuary,” Harry said.

He glanced over at Chieftain Ragnok who waved a hand Harry’s way, dismissing both of them. With a bit of a scowl as he’d promised Spineripper that he would get to a stack of paperwork half as high as Chieftain Ragnok was tall once lunch was over.

Before Harry and Susan even rose, Spineripper marched in with the first of the stacks of paperwork.

“Good luck,” Harry said as he urged Susan out of the room and towards the carts. Once they were out of earshot, Harry snickered. “He’s been spending a ton of time helping in the vaults. I think he’s avoiding his work. Spineripper clearly isn’t going to let that continue any longer.”

“…Wow,” Susan said as she shook her head. “I’m not used to Magi being friends with Goblins. I mean, not like you obviously are.”

Harry shrugged. “Most of the rest of the world treats “creatures” like people. It’s only Britain and a couple of truly benighted places with repressive governments that don’t.”

The ride down to the Sanctuary was a delight, as always. Harry whooped and cheered, all but dancing with joy once they arrived. He had to help Susan off the cart because nope, she obviously didn’t like rollercoasters the way Harry or the cart driver did.

“You are such a Seeker,” Susan moaned, hands on her knees as she breathed slowly and carefully.

“Guilty,” Harry agreed. “Come on. We’ll get you some ginger tea, have a nice sit down. You can chat with Miss Granger and divide the magical world up between you.”

By the time Susan was able to stand up without throwing up, Hermione was already waiting. So was Amal with a stack of paperwork for Harry to sign. Kenneth rampaged in to ask Susan a billion questions faster than Susan could answer them, not that Susan seemed to mind. She just babbled her answers right over the top of Kenneth’s questions until Kenneth beamed and then rampaged off to do whatever.

“Good that you’re here, dear,” Emily said as she came in with a big tray full of treats. “Good afternoon, young lady. I need to steal our Harrison for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Susan said as she took the cup of tea that Hermione offered. “Hermione and I are just going to plot out how to take over Britain.”

“Oh, good!” Emily exclaimed as she set the tray down and then pulled out a sheaf of notes that she gave to Hermione. “My ideas. Lacey’s ideas. These came from the kids. Interesting but probably not helpful. This stack is from Amal. Very detailed but very long-term. Oh, and this batch has all the notes from my children. Some interesting points you’ll want to consider.”

Both Hermione and Susan looked a bit overwhelmed.

“This is just what it’s like being around House Peverell,” Harry said as he signed and signed and signed.

Susan blinked several times before turning to Hermione, who nodded.

“It’s even worse than Potter moments,” Hermione admitted. “I’m kind of low-key terrified of the idea of Harry ever interacting with them.”

“He’s a good kid,” Harry said. “A lot of fun. He’d make a splendid Peverell. You know, if things were different.”

And then snickered because Hermione and Susan exchanged looks that all but shouted that no, that was not a thing that should happen.

Never going to get old. Even if Harry couldn’t tell them (maybe, yet, possibly), it was never, ever going to get old that he was a Peverell now.

Either way, once Harry finished signing his much smaller stack of paperwork, mostly requisition forms that had to be routed through the Ministry for some stupid reason, Harry let Emily pull him off to deal with requests from young Goblins for workrooms.

Susan and Hermione had their heads together over the notes with tea and treats. They already seemed to have reached an accord so that was the Ministry straightened out once the vote went through. With those two working on it, no way was the Ministry going to continue its old path.

No more Voldemort. No more Ministry stupidity. Seriously, Harry’s life was as close to perfect as it’d ever been.

49. Knowing Allies’ Goals is Vital to Proper Planning

“This is so cool!”

Kenneth’s voice echoed in from the stacks of books and mounds of stuff still in the box. Harry laughed and shook his head as Sirius grinned and waggled his eyebrows from the portrait. He hadn’t actually intended to bring everyone down into the box, but if Harry wanted to have a family meeting that included Sirius, they had to come to Sirius.

All the spells on the box would collapse if Harry took Sirius’ portrait out of the box.

Maybe someday. Possibly. From what Sirius had said when Harry suggested the family meeting, it was a distinct possibility that Sirius’ portrait would go inert permanently if it was removed from the box. Living-Sirius had apparently worked much too hard on making sure that the box never failed. Portrait-Sirius was the key to it all.

But hey, it wasn’t that big of a deal. The kids were delighted to explore for a while and Sirius’ portrait could apparently keep them from making a mess without any problems.

“You’re giggling,” Harry sing-songed at Sirius.

“No, I’m Sirius,” Sirius giggled as he craned his neck to look over his shoulder like he was right there in person watching Kenneth go rampaging up and down the aisles of stuff. “Kenneth is giggling.”

Harry shook his head, not going to admit that his face hurt from smiling so hard over the kids’ delight in the place. Not that he was going to get up and go watch Fiona and Reggie try to capture Kenneth so that they could start the family meeting.

That would interrupt Diana cuddle time.

“I think you cuddle my granddaughter more than I do,” Emily said, eyeing him like she was going to drag the sling right over his head so that she could get Diana time.

“I probably do,” Harry said. He grinned at Emily’s flat look, even if she did put her fists on her hips just like Molly Weasley did when she was horribly frustrated by something the twins did.

Harry’s twins, James and Oliver, came sauntering into the “parlor” that Sirius had set up for the family meeting. It wasn’t much. Just a bunch of comfy chairs and sofas with a nice big coffee table made out of four hip-high crates in the middle. Amal and Lacey had already laid out all the information they’d gathered up, which meant that Lacey could cuddle up with Anthony while Amal stood with Diana’s moms Gail and Maribelle over in a “corner” created by bookshelves on one side and a stack of barrels full of beans on the other.

“Where’s the adult-adults?” James asked.

Oliver rolled his eyes at James’ phrasing, but seriously, that was more accurate than Harry liked to admit. Sure, he was nearly a legal adult, close enough that the Goblins had set his new identity up to be a very young adult. Eighteen instead of sixteen, almost seventeen. James and Oliver were at their proper ages, eighteen and a half, but all three of them had already agreed that eighteen (whether real or faked) was not truly an adult.

Of all of the Peverells, Harry thought that Gail and Emily were the true adults. Mostly because both of them had that calm, unflappable Mum energy.

Jonathan was just a bigger kid. Anthony was never, ever, ever going to be anything like an adult, even when he was hundreds of years old. And Amal was only adult when it came to the paperwork. The rest of the time, he was much more concerned with having fun and eating all the pastries.

“Chasing the kids, obviously,” Harry said. “Last Sirus reported, Betty and Gerald had almost collared Kenneth while Jonathan and Theresa laid a trap for Fiona and Reggie. They should get them pretty quick-like, I think.”

Everyone’s heads came up as three startled yelps echoed through the box while Sirius cackled in delight.

Shortly after that, Gerald came in with Kenneth slung limp and whining under his arm. Betty had a firm grip on Fiona’s shoulder despite Fiona’s massive pout. Reggie walked in under his own power, too cool at eleven to get carried away. Theresa, however, laughed as she marched in with Jonathan shuffling along behind her as reluctantly as Kenneth would’ve if he’d been free to walk under his own power.

“Jonathan,” Emily said in the dread Disapproving Mum voice of Doom. “Why do you have a black eye?”

A beam of light “helpfully” spotlighted down on Jonathan who groaned and tried to hide his face in his hands. Didn’t work. Just touching his hand to the right side of his face made Jonathan wince because of the huge bruise blooming under his eye.

It looked like someone had hauled off and popped him one. Or maybe like Kenneth had gotten caught and kicked wildly, catching Jonathan in the face.

Probably not. If that had happened, they would’ve heard Kenneth apologizing endlessly all the way back to the “parlor” while Jonathan reassured him that he was fine.

“…I ran into a bookshelf,” Jonathan admitted reluctantly.

Sirius howled with laughter so hard that he collapsed out of sight in his picture frame.

The twins joined him in a cackling fit appropriate for hyenas while Gail, Emily and Lacey all exchanged so-done-with-you looks. There was a moment of gestures back and forth before Lacey huffed and got up from the couch as she pulled her wand out.

Anthony made puppy eyes that Jonathan winced at while Lacey ignored them both as she was far more focused on getting Jonathan to sit down so that she could check his health.

“I love this family,” Harry said so happily that even Emily’s disapproval couldn’t stand up against it. “Though we should probably get started. I mean, Hermione is going to show up soon-ish and I know everyone’s got work to do.”

Gail smiled as she came over to peek at Diana who, thankfully, seemed to have decided that sleeping was better than anything else. “I’m not sure what we’re meeting for, actually. I mean, other than watching my big brother be a clumsy idiot, but we can do that any time.”

“True,” Jonathan said as he sat and let Lacey heal his eye for him. “So, what is up, oh Righteous Lord of the Peverells?”

Harry snorted. “Please do not call me that in public. Some idiot will take it seriously and expect me to lead a war or something.”

All the adults nodded very seriously. So did Reggie while Fiona frowned as she pulled Kenneth into her lap like a limp, depressed kid-sized doll.

“Would they really?” Fiona asked.

“Very possibly, yes,” Amal said. He shrugged at Fiona’s horror. “They did it before. They believed that a literal baby defeated Voldemort. I mean, they’re not exactly good on logic or consequences.”

“Right,” Fiona said. She shook her head. “That’s awful. So, why are we meeting?”

“Well,” Harry said, “I thought we needed to sit down and talk because we’ve pretty much accomplished everything I ever wanted already. Which means I need bigger, better goals and you all should get a say in that.”

Fiona’s frown came back. “I don’t know what you mean by that. Use more words.”

Harry grinned at her.

Not that she was wrong. Everyone looked like they were confused, even Amal who should be able to tell through the vassal bond what Harry meant. You know. Sort of. It’s not like the vassal bond gave perfect clarity with telepathy or anything.

“Right,” Harry said as he slouched down a bit in his seat. “I had three goals when this started. First, get rid of Voldemort. Second, stop the Ministry from being horrible. Third, deal with Dumbledore so that I could just, you know, live my life and have fun. I’ve done all three. The world is, officially, my oyster. But I’m also now Lord Peverell and according to everything I’ve learned, I’m supposed to be helping you guys figure out what you want to do with your lives so that I can help you get there.”

Neville had been pretty clear on how badly his Gran did at it. Theo was working hard on his House. Granted, most of his relatives had fled to the continent, but they still existed, and Theo was responsible for guiding them from afar.

“Huh,” Emily said as she cuddled Kenneth on her lap. “I suppose you have gotten all your goals, haven’t you? I’ve never had much that I wanted. Just taking care of my kids and Amal. Now taking care of you.”

“And working with the weaving and knitting,” Fiona said, sternly enough that Emily nodded. “I wanna learn to be the best Lady Peverell ever. So that’s lots of teaching and training and creating.”

“More kids,” Gail said slowly. “I’ve never really had huge goals.”

“Well…” Maribelle waggled a finger in Gail’s direction.

“Oh. Yeah, that,” Gail said, blinking. “I suppose the Treatise on Proper Usage of Household Spells and Their Effects on Home Construction is kind of in this range of stuff, isn’t it?”

Maribelle nodded. “She needs to do testing, and we could never afford that. And there needs to be trials at other people’s homes which Gail could never arrange on her own.”

“Writing it down,” Amal told Harry before Harry could ask him to. “I’ve got my Records Department mapping thing. That’ll need Ministry approval.”

“I wanna learn to be a circus star!” Kenneth exclaimed, throwing his hands up and nearly hitting Emily in the face.

“Can I learn to make magical furniture?” Reggie asked, looking more at Fiona than to Harry, but that was fine because Fiona nodded firmly before patting Reggie’s hand to reassure him.

Jonathan wanted to finish his PhD in Physics. Easy to arrange, probably. Might need to work with the Goblins on his previous credits, transfer them somehow, but that could be done. Theresa had a little side business brewing luck potions that she wanted to scale up. Totally doable.

All of the ideas that the others threw out were practical, sensible, and very, very doable. Harry hummed as they started talking themselves down from them as if they were impossible.

“So,” Harry interrupted before Amal and Jonathan could talk each other out of their goals, “I kind of worry about all the magical enclaves being discovered by Muggles. Their technology is really advancing quickly and, especially in Britian, no one’s paying attention to that. I mean, I’m thinking that we need to create some kind of… I don’t know. What’s Avalon? It’s a side-dimension? A pocket world? Gate to a wholly different world? Something like that. Oh, I know! We need to move all the magical enclaves to a different planet that orbits the opposite side of the solar system from Earth and then have gates back and forth so we can find any new Muggleborns. And get like, fudge. You know. We can’t go without chocolate.”

Amal opened his mouth.

Then closed it again.

In his picture frame, Sirius smiled. A proud, pleased little smile that was so unlike his normal wild grins. He looked like he might burst into tears at any moment as he sat there and watched Harry.

“Could we do that?” Fiona asked, breathless and awed.

“I dunno,” Harry said. “But how could I know? I haven’t even learned the most basic stuff about gates and enclaves and whatnot. Maybe it could. Maybe not. Either way, having a truly safe place for everyone to live and grow sounds like a good idea.”

This time when they started offering up ideas, the concepts were much wilder. Traveling to the moon and making it a living planet instead of dead rock. Floating cities just out of phase with the real world so that planes wouldn’t impact them, and no one would see them. Breeding special creatures like whales but the size of the moon with cities on or in them so that magical people could travel between the stars like whales swam in the ocean.

And more.

Wild ideas. New ideas. Crazy, impossible, incredible things that might or might not be possible.

Exciting ideas that got everyone charged up instead of resigning themselves to smaller and smaller goals.

Harry smiled as he watched them bounce ideas off each other until all of them, Sirius’ portrait included, all but vibrated with excitement at the possibilities.

Yeah, this was what they needed. It was what he needed. Hope and opportunities and dreams bigger than anyone had allowed themselves for generations.

Including Harry.

“But why not both?” Harry interrupted when Fiona and Reggie started arguing that their ideas were better. “Wouldn’t both be better? I mean, why limit yourself when you can try everything until you succeed?”

The way Fiona beamed, and Reggie sat up just a little bit straighter made Harry’s heart sing.

50. Old Ways Must Yield to New Events

September second, on Diagon Alley, appeared to be a remarkably mellow, calm, relaxed day. Harry hummed as he sauntered up the alley towards Fortesque’s to pick up an order of ice cream that Emily had insisted that they needed. Which, you know, fair.

While both of them could make ice cream, Fortesque’s was just better. And frankly, neither Harry nor Emily particularly wanted to make nineteen different flavors of ice cream for the “congratulations on passing your exams” party that Hermione had coming her way.

She’d decided to skip her seventh year at Hogwarts way earlier in the summer, but that had been predicated on the idea that she would go to a different school. After talking to Lacey, Anthony and Amal, she’d decided to just take her exams.

After studying.

Intensely.

To Hermione’s surprise (and no one else’s), she’d passed everything with flying colors.

Which meant that Hermione was now officially responsible for the Wizengamot, thank goodness. She and Amal had all kinds of plans for what laws they were going to introduce, amend, and repeal. The next couple of years would be very interesting as Hermione, with Susan’s behind-the-scenes assistance, hauled Magical Britian into the modern age.

Seriously, though, Harry hadn’t ever been to Diagon when it was this calm and relaxed. No hurrying people. No furtive looks. Not a single person did more than nod in his direction and most of that looked more like it was casual politeness than the stupid behavior he was used to.

“Lord Peverell!” Florean exclaimed as soon as Harry opened the door. “So good to see you! We’ve got your order ready for you.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, smiling with a little bit of horror at the absolute mountain of gallon ice cream tubs on top of the counter. “Wow, I didn’t think it would be that much somehow.”

Florean snickered. “I’ll just shrink them down for you, of course. Give me just a minute. I’ve got the perfect basket in the back. Designed for carrying large orders.”

He bustled into the back, leaving Harry to breathe in the sweet smells. The lime green and cream colored shop had not one person there. The little, white-painted iron tables and chairs sat quietly, waiting for customers who apparently weren’t going to show up anytime soon. Made sense. The kids were all gone off to Hogwarts and the parents were probably collapsed at home with relief that everyone made it to school safe.

They’d have gotten news of what house their kids got into by now. Well, always presuming that their kids were better at writing letters home than Ron. Hermione had written, obviously. Neville hadn’t dared not write his Gran first year. Most everyone had written home.

Reggie was still back at Gringotts, along with Fiona and Kenneth.

The idea of sending any of them off to Hogwarts had been…

…impossible.

Yes, they could have gone. McGonagall, in her role as the new Headmistress, had extended the offer to allow Fiona to transfer from Beauxbatons. She had written that she would be delighted to have both Fiona and Reggie at Hogwarts.

There’d been tiny dots of ink before “delighted”, showing how McGonagall had hesitated while she tried to find a word that would be appropriately encouraging despite the fact that Harry knew she hadn’t liked the idea of Peverell chaos being unleashed at Hogwarts.

Especially so soon after Harry Potter’s departure.

Either way, Fiona had begged not to go back. Reggie had made faces and asked if he could go anywhere else. Kenneth had tackled Harry so hard that he knocked them both to the ground as he begged for his big sister and brother to stay and take private tutoring.

How could Harry send them away when they looked so devastated?

“Ah, Lord Peverell.”

Harry blinked at the creaky old voice. He turned and then stared in shock as Mad-Eye Moody carefully tottered into Fortesque’s while leaning heavily on a gnarled old staff made from a chunk of oak.

“Auror Moody,” Harry said, wondering if he had a good enough excuse for knowing Moody’s name and then deciding that Mad-Eye Moody was notorious enough on his own to make it unremarkable. “Goodness, you look… not good, actually. What happened?”

Moody huffed as he sat in one of the white iron chairs, hands trembling around his staff. “Age is catching up with me. Age and consequences of decisions I made long, long ago.”

During the Tournament, Fake-Moody had seemed to be powerful. Inevitable, unstoppable, the sort of person who was a threat no matter what was going on.

Now he looked… old. Deeply and profoundly old in ways that made Harry’s bones ache.

Oh, wait.

“Your magic is… frayed,” Harry said as he realized that Moody felt like Theo before the vassal bond had been confirmed. “My apologies, that was rude.”

“Not wrong, Lord Peverell,” Moody said with a tired sigh. Even sitting he seemed to need the staff to hold himself up. “Magic has been delicate since the last war. Took some nasty curses when I lost my eye and leg. Well. Longer than that, actually. The Moody family were vassals to the Potters for donkey’s years. I. Hm. I chose not to swear to Potter’s grandfather when I was young. Chose again for his father. Never got the chance with Potter himself. I’d sworn myself to the Aurors and to supporting Dumbledore as he worked for his Greater Good.”

“And now Dumbledore is gone and his Greater Good is being swept away,” Harry breathed. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

Moody nodded. “Can’t be helped. I’m old enough and wounded enough that I’m just glad I got to survive to see peace get started. Saw you on the Alley and decided to ask you to pass a message on to Potter.”

Harry blinked.

Nothing in Moody’s expression suggested that he’d seen through the identity redirects. That magical eye spun idly, looking towards the back room where Florian’s mutters echoed, then out towards the street even though no one passed by, then back to Harry. Constant vigilance, indeed, even when dying.

“Of course,” Harry said. “He may not choose to reply, but I’ll pass the message along.”

“Tell him to never, ever come back here,” Moody said, dead serious as he stared up into Harry’s eyes. “Never. He’s safe. I can feel through the stump of the vassal bond that he’s happy. Tell him to stay where he is and live the very best life he can. This place doesn’t deserve him. They never did.”

Harry blew out a breath.

Then he sat down at Moody’s table, elbows firmly planted on his knees, so that he could stare into Moody’s eyes squarely instead of like Moody was a supplicant at House Peverell’s altar.

He didn’t look any better up close. Bit of stubble on the chin that wasn’t visible at a distance because it was pure white. The shaggy ginger hair had gone stark white at the roots while Moody’s good eye just looked pure, bloodshot exhausted.

“You don’t want an introduction?” Harry asked. “I know Mr. Potter wouldn’t say no, especially if he knew that you were being affected this way.”

Moody shook his head. “No. My whole line is gone, Lord Peverell. Got no family, no kids left. Voldemort killed them during the war. I held on just so I could kill the bastard.”

“And then I went and did it before you could,” Harry said, grimacing.

“Damn fine job of it, you did,” Moody said stoutly enough that Harry blushed. “Got not just Voldemort but all his followers. We’ve got a chance to live now. Wouldn’t have had that if you hadn’t come. And you coming wouldn’t’ve made a damn bit of difference if Potter hadn’t run.”

“Fair,” Harry said.

“I had a chance to join him,” Moody said, quiet and distant as his breath wheezed uncomfortably in his chest. “After the Tournament. Got rescued. He was there. I was there. I could’ve said something. I chose not to. Albus sent the boy back to his hellish relatives. Sent me off on a mission that made no sense. And then Albus died.”

That was the key, wasn’t it?

Moody had tied his magic to Dumbledore’s and Dumbledore had, what? Used Moody much the way Voldemort had used his followers? Something like that, maybe. Dumbledore had certainly played at being the Lord of the Light despite that not being a real thing.

“I thought he’d be around for decades more,” Harry admitted.

“We all did,” Moody agreed. “He had his own curses. His own things weighing his magic down. That’s why he did so much, you know. His magic would’ve failed entirely if he hadn’t had purpose.”

“It did.” Harry laughed though there was no amusement in the sound.

Moody laughed, too, just the same way. “It did. And now my magic is failing, too, but Potter’s safe. He’s happy. The whole of Magical Britain is doing better. I’m fine. I’m better than fine, Lord Peverell. Just pass the message long.”

Harry nodded. “I will.”

Moody heaved himself up and then hobbled out of the shop, the door jangling just as Florian came out of the back room with a basket for Harry’s ice cream order.

Nothing for it other than to stand, to take his ice cream, and leave. Florian frowned at Harry as if concerned. Maybe a bit confused.

Fair.

But he let Harry go without commenting or asking questions.

Thank goodness.

Outside, the air smelled like freedom. Fresh and clear. Sparrows swooped overhead while pigeons cooed before going up in a squawking explosion of feathers when a kneazle made a leap out of the shadows at them. The kneazle growled, feathers decorating its mouth, before stalking back into the shadows to hunt for different, less wary birds.

Harry made his slow, thoughtful way back to Gringotts.

The Goblins nodded as he climbed the stairs. Harry knew their names, Bracken and Sharpclaw. The tellers in the front lobby bobbed their heads at Harry as he bypassed the lines, heading towards the carts as he now had permission to do.

Chieftain Ragnok waited at the cart, leaning against the side of it with a smirk for the way Harry raised his eyebrow. “It’ll melt if you don’t hurry.”

“It’s spelled,” Harry replied. “Coming to visit Diana?”

“Of course,” Chieftain Ragnok said. His smirk could’ve taken a cart all by itself; it was that wide and that proud.

They both cheered for the swoops and drops. They both laughed and clapped each other’s backs once they arrived at the Sanctuary.

Harry pushed open the great boulder door and breathed in the smell of…

Green growing things. Water. The faint hint of fire and iron that came from the workrooms to the right. There was distant splash as one of the kids leaped into the pond. Emile poked her head out of the tunnel into the kitchens, waving for Harry to bring the ice cream over.

“You’re back,” Hermione said as she marched out of the tunnel that lead to the offices that Amal had insisted on. “Good lord, how much ice cream did you get?”

“Enough,” Harry replied.

Apparently his grin wasn’t as bright or as wide as Hermione, Emily or Chieftain Ragnok expected because they all frowned at him.

“Are you all right?” Hermione asked.

He looked down at the ice cream. None of them were lemon sherbet, what Dumbledore would’ve chosen if he was still alive.

If Dumbledore was still alive, Harry wouldn’t have been having this celebration.

He looked across the cavern. Across his home which was filled with his family. Where he and they were all perfectly safe.

“Yeah,” Harry said and smiled again. “Yeah, I’m fine. Had an interesting encounter at Florean’s though.”

Hermione hummed. “Well, let Emily take the ice cream and tell me all about it.”

“Anything I need to worry about?” Chieftain Ragnok asked as he spotted Gail heading their way with Diana in a sling around her chest.

Harry laughed. “No, nothing urgent. I’ll tell you later. Go get baby time.”

He passed the basket full of ice cream over to Emily who kissed Harry’s cheek before bustling off to the kitchen to continue setting up Hermione’s party. With Hermione by his side, Harry slowly strolled towards her office.

“Really, is it anything I should worry about?” Hermione asked once they were in the tunnel where people were less likely to overhear them.

“No,” Harry said. He huffed a little laugh. “Just… well. The old guard is giving way, is all. Did learn something interesting about Moody. Did you know that his family were Potter vassals?”

“What?” Hermione gasped. “No, really? What happened?”

Harry smiled as he told Hermione about the whole encounter. Which he sort of wanted to go verify somehow.

Later.

Once Hermione had gone back home. Maybe tomorrow or something. Later, Harry was going to go to the Department of Records to see just what actually happened.

There had to be records. Letters, receipts, invoices for bills that House Potter paid for Moody’s ancestors. Marriages and houses, wages and trips to Healers. If Moody turned down being a vassal, for whatever reason, it would’ve been recorded and he would’ve gotten some sort of settlement. Harry couldn’t imagine that his relatives would send one of their vassals off without a proper trust fund to make sure that they and their kids were taken care of.

Something about the whole thing didn’t feel right. It hardly mattered now, obviously. The entire Moody line was going to go extinct while Dumbledore’s line was on the verge of being wiped out entirely. The Potter line was, effectively, gone.

Sort of. In a way.

So yeah, it didn’t actually matter. He was just curious.

What mattered was that Harry was finally free. Truly and completely free. With Dumbledore gone and every last shred of his power being swept away, the final threat to Harry’s freedom was gone. He would never, ever have to go back to Privet Drive. He wouldn’t ever have to fight for Magi society like a child soldier. No Voldemort. No Ministry.

No Dumbledore.

Not anymore.

Harry finally got to live.

#

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