Chapter 13 - Plots and Schemes

"I don't know how I didn't see it!" I said, sitting up straight.

"What?"

"The Wizengamot seats! Percy's after the seats. He's got to be!"

Harry stared at me for a moment, and I could tell exactly when the pieces snapped together for him as well.

"Fuck," he breathed out softly.

"Exactly."

As the last surviving Potter, Harry ostensibly controlled an inherited seat on the Wizengamot. As Sirius Black's named heir, he also ostensibly controlled a second inherited seat as well. He should have had two votes on the governing body, but he was statutorily prohibited from claiming them until he was 25. A wizard or witch over the age of 25 could claim an inherited seat, but until then, only a male relative over 25 could act as regent, holding the seat temporarily and voting in place of the actual heir.

Harry had no adult male relatives, and he was hardly alone in that regard. Two wars had wreaked havoc on wizarding Britain's population, hence the supposed need for this accursed marriage law. We knew other young wizards and witches who should have had voting rights on the Wizengamot but didn't because they were under 25 and without an older male relative. The patriarchal nature of the whole situation disgusted me beyond belief, as did the notion that had Sirius been given a fair trial from the start, he could have raised Harry and managed both seats.

When Harry had learned of the Wizengamot seats after the war, I'd argued with Kingsley about the unfairness of the whole situation, as it was absurd that Harry's two seats should just be left out of voting because of his age and lack of older male relatives. It had been that way for centuries, owing to a dispute around the time of the Statute of Secrecy, when several Hogwarts students inherited seats and caused enough disarray in the Wizengamot that the majority opted to set an age limit. Once power became concentrated in the hands of older wizards and witches, they were loathe to let it go, and the age limit rules had not been amended since then, despite several attempts over the years.

"If I married Ginny, Percy could claim both those seats," he said slowly, disgust creeping into his voice.

"Exactly. Well, I mean, Arthur would have a stronger claim as your father-in-law, but in practise..."

"You and I both know Percy is the only one in that family who'd actually do it. Arthur wouldn't want to impose and would only do it if I asked him."

I nodded in agreement. Arthur Weasley was a kind man, but not overly ambitious, and he preferred to spend his free time tinkering with muggle toys, tools, and technology. Even if he'd agreed to take control of Harry's seats, I couldn't see him being especially good at it.

"Charlie is off wrangling dragons and doesn't care much about British politics, and Bill is too busy with his own work and family to bother," Harry continued.

It was my turn then to breathe out a soft "fuck" under my breath at the idea of Percy Weasley having two votes in the Wizengamot for the next few years. More than anyone else in the Weasley family, Percy resented the family's poverty. He'd turned his back on his family during the war, moving away from the Burrow, and publicly denouncing the Weasleys in an attempt to get ahead and ingratiate himself with Ministry leaders.

"Surely THAT was to be his route to the Minister's office. To use the Wizengamot, plus the goodwill of the Golden Trio all of whom would have been part of his family, and my vaults," Harry reasoned.

It was a logical theory, all things considered. The fastest route to becoming Minister for Magic was usually to serve on the Wizengamot or as a Department Head in the Ministry of Magic. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility to reach the top office without being a member of the Wizengamot or a Department Head, but it was highly unlikely.

Becoming a department head could be an interminably slow process, as many wizards and witches in that role chose to work well past 125 years of age, and as such it wasn't often that head positions were vacated. As it was, Percy had a higher ranking job in the Ministry than he probably would have had if the war had not happened - enough people had died or left their jobs that he'd been able to leapfrog ahead.

Getting on the Wizengamot was just as hard because so many of the seats were passed down through families, with a minority voted on by the general public, another element of magical Britain I found vexing. Competition for the elected Wizengamot seats was fierce and campaigns were expensive. The victors were usually relatives of existing Wizengamot members who weren't in line to inherit a family seat but had connections, power, and Galleons - none of which Percy possessed.

In my time working in the Ministry, I'd begun to learn the ins and outs of how power was distributed and how to work within the system to make changes. The existing structure of the Wizengamot allowed for power to be concentrated in the hands of the few, and backroom deals were made time and again as people advanced their pet projects or protected their financial interests. It was cronyism at its worst, and the marriage law was just one of many lousy decisions they'd made in recent years.

If Harry had married Ginny, Percy, as an older male relative, would have been able to claim Harry's two seats and vote on behalf of the Houses of Potter and Black for years before Harry could take them back. In that time, someone as ambitious as Percy could potentially put together a coalition of support to vault himself to the Minister's office before Harry's 25th birthday, especially if he found a way to access the Potter or Black vaults to fund his work.

It was a sobering thought. It wasn't as if Percy was evil, per se, but he wasn't someone I trusted either. Kingsley had thus far been a reasonably decent Minister for Magic, but he was constantly thwarted by the Wizengamot and their desire to protect the status quo. If Percy was in that role, I couldn't see him using his political capital to help the downtrodden, advance creature rights, or really even do much to change the host of laws that favoured purebloods over muggleborns and half-bloods.

Percy had never been impolite to me at the Burrow or at school - not like Malfoy and his Slytherin cronies - but he'd also not been remotely warm to me either. I'd been welcomed enough in Gryffindor because I was Harry Potter's best friend, and because I tended to win a lot of points for our house based on my academics, but Percy had certainly kept me at arm's length over the years. He'd pay lip service to my contributions in front of Professor McGonagall or Professor Dumbledore, but I'd also once overheard him in the library, quietly debating some of the upper year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws. No one had seen me - the little girl with too much hair hiding behind the stacks - but I'd not forgotten his disparaging words about muggles and his insistence that he was not a blood traitor.

I'd seen it in practise at the Ministry as well: I'd found myself in opposition to him over some policy changes regarding hiring and promotions within certain job classifications. The policies were frankly discriminatory against muggleborns, and I'd done my best to get rid of them. He'd presented a very carefully worded argument to Kingsley that was downright Slytherin in its execution. He'd given himself enough leeway that I couldn't come right out and argue that he was articulating a blood supremacist position, although I had no doubt that his comments were intended to be a proverbial dog whistle, his intentions perfectly clear to the old guard purebloods but not so overt that he could easily be called out for it. We'd each walked away with a partial victory that day - some changes were made and some were not.

I did not think he was genuinely a blood supremacist along the line of Yaxley or Rosier or any of the other Death Eaters who'd been willing to kill for a cause, as Harry was a half-blood and at a bare minimum Percy appeared to be okay with Ginny marrying him. But just because someone doesn't advocate for muggleborn internment camps or the other horrors perpetuated during Voldemort's last war doesn't make them a muggleborn ally either. So while the thought of Percy Weasley as Minister for Magic or a member of the Wizengamot didn't inspire fear that he'd appoint someone like Umbridge to a high post, he also didn't inspire any kind of confidence that he would bring much-needed, sweeping reform either. If anything, a desire to build personal wealth would probably make him susceptible to bribes.

I realised then that though we'd dodged a proverbial muggle bullet by marrying each other and preventing Percy from accessing Harry's seats, he surely had other options.

"If that was the plan, then I'd bet money that he pushed Ron to consider as a backup wife someone like Susan Bones, who also inherited a seat she can't claim," I said, suddenly worried for the quiet former Hufflepuff who'd lost her entire family in both wars.

"I'd bet you're right too, although if Ron didn't file a betrothal contract today, he'll be matched with whomever the Ministry deems the closest magical match. You know, it says a lot about how much of a threat he considers you that he'd apparently rather Ron end up with you than with Susan."

I frowned at that. Was I really worth more to someone like Percy than a mild Hufflepuff and her Wizengamot seat? I doubted I was truly that valuable but I decided to tuck that thought away for future consideration.

"How many seats are up for grabs in the Wizengamot?" I wondered aloud.

I was up and walking to the Black family's small library before Harry could even respond. I silently berated myself as my fingers danced across the spines of old books I'd perused over the last few years. Just as I had with the issue of domestic abuse, I'd allowed myself to be so narrowly focused on my own circumstances that I'd failed to see what was right in front of me, failed to see the big picture. How could I have forgotten about the Wizengamot seats?

By the time I found the book on the history of the Wizengamot, Harry had made his way into the library.

"You in my jersey and your knickers in the library is surprisingly hot, especially when you're all bothered about something," he admitted.

"Keep it in your pants. We can do that later," I said, my mind focused on the text on the pages in front of me.

"That's so cold. So cold. Our wedding night, and my wife prefers books to me."

"I shagged you before I turned to books," I pointed out in my own defense, ignoring Harry's quiet laugh.

"Okay, there are 55 seats on the Wizengamot, by statute, and 12 of them are elected seats. The elected ones are all full, of course. Now, of the remaining 43, how many are vacant because of situations like yours or being held by someone else because the heir is underage?" I mused.

"Does that book have a current list of members?"

"No, it's old, but I think I've got a list of members with my notes."

Harry occasionally brought work home and worked with me in the library, but for the most part the room was my domain, and I often used it for research in addition to reading for pleasure. Two years ago, Harry had very thoughtfully refinished an old desk we'd found in the attic and brought it into the library for me as a birthday present. It was one of the best gifts he'd ever given me.

I found the stack of parchments I'd written when the marriage law was passed, all of the angry notes and research I'd compiled on the law and supporting statutes, and the members on the Wizengamot. I scanned through the list, counting as I went.

"I think there are eight vacancies on the Wizengamot." Eight did not sound like too many, but when there were only 55 seats total, 43 of them hereditary, we were talking about a sizable percentage of seats.

"That many?"

"I mean, we had a war just a few years ago, and one when we were babies. The Wizengamot cited that as being a source of our apparently decimated population levels."

"That and inbreeding," Harry muttered.

"That too."

"Is anyone currently on the Wizengamot holding two seats? Or holding their own seat and acting as regent for someone else?" he asked.

I looked down at my notes. "I honestly don't know. Prior to this stupid marriage law passing, my work hadn't really given me much cause to interact with them."

Harry had a faraway look on his face, and I knew he was putting pieces together in his mind. Remus Lupin had christened me the "brightest witch of her age" years ago, and the unfortunate moniker had stuck in some circles, but the truth was that Harry had an understated brilliance all his own. Had he been as keen on revising as I was in school, he would have given me a run for my money as the top student of our year each year.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

"How close was the vote on the marriage law again?"

I sifted through my parchments and a handful of newspaper clippings. "It passed by four votes," I said.

I raised my head and looked at Harry. He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Son of a bitch," I murmured.

"Exactly."

"If those seats had been filled…"

"We likely wouldn't have a marriage law because very few people our age would willingly vote for this thestral shite law."

"Now I'm wondering how many other laws were passed or legislation defeated because no one our age has access to those inherited seats," I mused.

He grimaced in response. "I don't even want to think about it."

An awful thought occurred to me then. "Harry, you don't think the marriage law was a set up, do you?"

"How so?"

"Let's say Percy figured out that he could get his hands on two Wizengamot seats if you married Ginny. Then surely someone else had a similar thought. I mean, you were heavily pursued by a lot of witches because you're Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, but how many of those witches had older male relatives looking to make a match that provided political power?"

He ran his fingers through his perpetually messy hair and paced the room.

"I don't… I don't want to even consider that. I'm now thinking about that pompous arse from the Ministry who offered me his underage daughter, wondering if he was after the Potter and Black seats too and willing to sell off a child in marriage for it."

He stopped and looked at me across the room. "Do you...I don't even know how to say this. I mean, you don't think we're reaching too much on this do you? There was a time I don't know that either of us would have made a connection between Percy, our exes, and the Wizengamot seats. Do you think war has made us both overly paranoid? Do you think we're seeing conspiracies were none exist?"

I frowned as I considered his words. Were we being paranoid? It seemed like a damned large coincidence that exes who'd broken up with us and left us to our own devices for a time suddenly came rushing back to us once the law passed, and that they and Molly were both downright stalkerish in their pursuit of us. I'd chalked it up to Ron being dense and Ginny being spoiled and both of them deciding it was better to be with an ex you knew than a stranger, but it did seem odd that none of them would take "no" for an answer.

Then again, Kingsley Shacklebolt had been vehement about the need for a drastic boost in our population, and I'd seen some of the data myself. War plus too many years of intermarriage in a small population really had caused a great deal of damage. Perhaps there were other, better, more sane options than this law, but there genuinely was a need for a baby boom.

"The concern about our population is real, but why jump straight to a marriage law? No one really even TRIED anything else. There were no public relations campaigns, no financial incentives for families to have more children until someone included them in the marriage law."

"Do you think we're being paranoid?" he repeated. "Because my gut instinct says we're not."

"What we have is a lot of speculation and circumstantial evidence," I admitted with a sigh. "It would be helpful to know exactly who is waiting to turn 25 to fill their seats, who is currently a regent for someone else, and who those people were matched to or who petitioned for them under the law."

A rather morbid thought occurred to me then. I was potentially valuable to Percy as a political opponent, but others who wanted to get to Harry might view me more as an obstacle to be removed.

I swallowed hard. "I suppose we'll know one way or another if you're being too paranoid if someone tries to break us up or tries to off me to clear a path to you."

In the span of about a second, Harry crossed the small library and crushed me to him, wrapping his arms tightly around me and tucking my head beneath his chin.

"Never," he murmured into my hair. "Don't even joke about such things. I won't lose you now."

I relaxed into his embrace and wrapped my arms around his waist.

"We're married. No one can undo our binding," I reminded him.

I felt the press of his lips in my tangle of curls and the tightening of his arms around me. "I've lost so many people I loved, who loved me. I don't want anything bad to happen to you, especially not because of me."

I wriggled in his hold enough to lift my head and press my lips to his. "You're stuck with me. I'm not going anywhere, and I've got your back as long as you've got mine."

He kissed me again, with more desperation this time, and we were both a bit breathless when we finally broke apart.

"Are you sure I can't shag you in the library?" he asked.

"No, Harry we can't do that right now. We need-"

Anything else I'd planned to say was cut off by the sensation of his fingers tugging my knickers aside so he could stroke me intimately. I moaned and rolled my hips in response.

"That's - you're cheating."

"One shag. Right here. I want to fuck you on your desk. Hard and fast."

Something inside me spasmed at his words as he continued to touch me. God, how on earth had I truly not see how downright sexy he was before all of this?

"Yeah, okay. Hard and fast," I mumbled as I tugged his head down to the crook of my neck and shimmied out of my knickers.

Before I knew it, he'd used wandless magic to move my entire stack of parchments to a nearby shelf and had lifted me onto the desk.

It was indeed hard and fast. I didn't even get his jersey off my body before he was inside me, filling and stretching me.

"Never...going...to look at this desk...the same way again," I gasped as I clung to him and moved in concert with his thrusts.

"That's the plan," he mumbled, giving my hair a sharp tug.

"Oh fuck. Do that again!" I gasped.

He obliged, and he wrung an orgasm from my body before he came as well. Then he collapsed onto my desk chair and tugged me down with him. For a time, the only sounds in the room were our mingled breaths and the ticking of a clock.

"I can't believe you just did that." It was more than a bit mind-blowing just how much pleasure he'd brought me in the span of one evening. I didn't even know my body could produce that many orgasms in short order.

"Why not?"

"It's...it's a library."

He snorted. "It's not like we defiled your books, love. I just wanted to give you another reason to love this room," he said cheekily.

I smacked at his chest. "You're incorrigible."

"Oh without a doubt. It's a good thing I've got you to keep me in line."

I pulled my knickers back on and gestured to the desk. "I wouldn't call what we just did 'me keeping you in line.'"

He righted his own clothes and then shrugged. "Fair point. It was a nice distraction though. Okay, so we need information. Evidence. We need a list of all everyone who stands to inherit a seat."

The way he rapidly switched from playful banter and our sex life back to the issue of Wizengamot seats and the marriage law nearly gave me whiplash.

"Yes," I said as I retrieved my notes from the shelf. And we need to know what laws have been passed by narrow margins and were affected by those empty seats."

He nodded with a bit of a frown.

"I'm beginning to regret that we've not paid more attention to the political ins and outs of the Ministry," he admitted.

"Agreed."

We'd needed time to heal after the war, time to cope, time to figure out who we were and what we wanted to do with our lives in a Voldemort-free world. I couldn't begrudge either of us the time we'd devoted to beginning our careers or enjoying life - we deserved it after all we'd been through - but it seemed short-sighted of us in retrospect to just trust the older adults in positions of power.

"The Ministry library has all the Wizengamot archives. They should have the list of heirs and regents, along with all of the voting records from the last few years," I pointed out.

"And the Office of Vital Records and Registration should have the records of who matched with those heirs and who petitioned for them," he added.

"Bollocks," I said, looking at the mantle clock in the library.

"What?"

"I hate that it's far too late to go to the Ministry now. I don't relish the idea of trying to slip this research into my day tomorrow either. You know Rita Skeeter will be after us about an interview, and all of our colleagues are going to want to ask about the wedding."

Harry was quiet for a long enough moment that I looked up at him.

"What are you thinking?" I asked, uncomfortably aware that an idea of some sort was brewing in his head.

"I mean, if you want to get technical, it's only too late to go to the Ministry if you operate under normal business hours."

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Harry James Potter, are you suggesting that we break into the Ministry of Magic?"

"'Break in' is such a harsh term. Not really break in."

"Because the last time we broke into the Ministry, it didn't exactly go according to plan," I said gently, thinking of Sirius's death.

"Technically, it's not illegal for ME to be at the Ministry at any time of day. Auror," he said, pointing to himself.

"Yes, well that doesn't apply to me."

He grinned. "True. I guess then it's lucky for you that I have an invisibility cloak."

~oOo~

Note: Rowling has previously said the Wizengamot has about 50 members, but we don't really know a whole lot about their structure, responsibilities, membership, etc. Given that the UK has both a House of Lords with inherited seats and a House of Commons with elected seats, it made sense to me that the magical world would have a similar structure that allowed for the concentration of power in the hands of some of the old families. Obviously I took some creative liberties with the Wizengamot for this story and will continue to do so in future chapters.

Thank you to everyone who continues to read and comment on this story, and thank you to Frumpologist for talking me through some of this chapter and the next one.

Cheers,

Elle