I never asked to be right or to be lonely

A blessed photo.

Forest Wanderer

For my blog @elvensuggestions​

Plant Life by Owl City

I Have Friends in Holy Spaces by Panic! At the Disco

Flow by Cage the Elephant

Europe’s Skies by Alexander Rybak

Eyes as Candles by Passion Pit

Youth by Troy Sivan 

Geronimo by Sheppard

Wild Ones by You Me At Six

Float On by Modest Mouse

Moth’s Wings (stripped down version) by Passion Pit and  露天電影院

Wicker Man Song by Nature & Organisation

Fairytale by Alexander Rybak

Vanilla Twilight by Owl City

Shake Me Down by Cage the Elephant

so how about a fic where harry goes to gringotts after the fighting is all over to try to make peace with the goblin nation because this boy does not need more problems and after much hostility and some groveling and promises of future payments for damages caused a plucky goblin lass comes and shuffles harry into her tiny cube office to discuss the nature of his financial situation

(this is a grave insult among goblins. getting handled by a female, first of all, because they are supposedly less capable bankers, hello misogyny among other species, and because they consider anyone who needs help with his money to be lower than cave scum. harry doesn’t know about his. and if he did, he wouldn’t care because he does, desperately, need help)

and plucky goblin lass (who we will call PGL for short) brings out this MASSIVE tome of parchment and slams it down on her desk. a cloud of dust rises. harry sneezes and gets a terrible feeling. some of the parchment is mildewing. the stack is taller than his hand is wide. this can only end badly

PGL tells him that he’ll need to read the entire book to fully comprehend the new scope of his property and harry kind of weakly says “what??”

and it turns out that heyo, when the death eaters swore to follow voldemort with all their lives and souls and magic in their little racist hearts they actually swore a modified liege lord oath which also has the coincidental side effect of ceding all titles (and property connected to said titles) held to the lord in question too. haha how funny who knew

and that’s an ongoing thing. so voldemort was the de facto head of two dozen magical houses at the beginning of the war and he just picked up more as he gained more followers and he probably could have just voted himself and his crew into every position of the government and run the country like that if he cared to do it but voldemort was not about dat political life. he wanted change and he wanted it now. he wanted to MAKE AMERICA MAGICAL BRITAIN GREAT AGAIN. so he started a civil war and just never informed his loyal death eaters of that little fact because they didn’t need to know.

and you might think that gringotts vaults are tied into bloodlines but they’re really not. the malfoy family vault belongs to whoever is the current head of the malfoy family. normally, that’s a malfoy and his malfoy spawn becomes the next head and so it passes through the family, accumulating inherited wealth. it was a working system until voldemort got involved and exploited the ever-living hell out of it.

now this all becomes harry’s problem because it turns out that Right of Conquest is an actual thing. what was voldemort’s is now his and voldemort has has the time to accumulate A Metric Fuck Ton of stuff.

also connected to titles are votes in the wizengamot. and whoo boy, this is where harry’s problem becomes really really really problematic. because the noble families squabble over those votes like children, hoarding them and passing them down, occasionally trading them for advantageous marriages and such, but mostly jealously guarding them like the politcal gold they are. it’s such a bitterly tight-fisted market that any one family has ~maybe~ three or  four votes.

and now harry bloody potter has a hundred of the things and a completely unintentional stranglehold on the government. whoops

and then hermione would shotput harry straight into the wizengamot against his protests and things would become so hilarious i just

some jerkass attempts to increase his own salary for doing basically nothing

“how about no,” harry and his hundred votes say.

somebody attempts to tighten restrictions on where magical creatures like vampires and werewolves can work

“how about no.” harry crosses his arms. “actually, how about we repeal those bullshit laws already in place that make it almost impossible for werewolves to get a job right now, hmmmm? and how about we put something in place to catch abusive owners of house elves? and make sure they get paid? and vacation days? and healthcare? actually how about we get healthcare for EVERYBODY HOW ABOUT T H A T?”

ten generations of purebloods cry out in horror. look upon him ye mighty and despair.

the years after voldemort’s defeat don’t go down in history as The Golden Era. in fact, thanks to harry bloody potter (and some incessant nudging by hermione granger), they go down as The Decade of Frankly Astonishing Strides Toward Equality *cough* enforced by a semi-plutocracy.

Harry dealing with that all these pureblood families outright hate him. They were loyal to the Dark Lord, loyal to blood supremacy, loyal to their own enrichment and empowerment via the casting down of others, and now here’s Harry Potter, who opposes all of these things, who killed the Dark Lord and vanquished their dreams: their new Lord and Master.

And they can’t do anything about it because not only is it a binding magical contract but it’s their tradition, their law, their way of doing things, and they can’t attack Harry without shattering their own foundations in the process; they can’t even really convey their dislike of Harry because it would be disloyal to their own House.

So, all these pureblood wizards from old families who both hate Harry Potter and everything he stands for but also as a point of honor are perversely proud of him. He’s a wizard; he’s a half-blood, but he’s also the scion of a House of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and he’s a powerful and talented wizard who vanquished the greatest Dark Lord history has ever seen. And he’s the Head of a dozen great and ancient wizarding Houses, he’s their Head of House so to speak, and they tie themselves in knots trying to figure out how to feel about him.

And the ones who don’t have a noble House, but only have their votes in the Wizengamot that Harry Potter owns, and you just don’t throw tradition out and start casting votes on your own inclination, well, they aren’t honor-bound and pride-bound to claim and embrace him, but they make their social standing from copying the greater Houses, and when their betters are quietly and gracefully saying “he’s a chaos-minded tyrant, but he’s our chaos-minded tyrant,” well, they buck up and agree.

Harry Potter, unlike Voldemort, isn’t lashing out at random or threatening to kill their children, so it’s sort of an improvement in many ways, even as they want to scream and throw things over all his reforms.

And after all, the old Houses value power. And Harry, above all, has power.

He goes down in pure-blood history as the Tyrant. The most powerful Lord their family lines have ever known. The man who reshaped their world. Elderly wizards tell their great-grandchildren long after his death that “I knew the Tyrant.” “I beheld him when my father took me to the Wizengamot, and he spoke to me.” “When I went to Hogwarts, he gave a guest lecture.” This far removed, at the end of their lives, the details of his rule are forgotten, the overturnings of tradition lost to history, and he is remembered with pride, even with adoration.

Their Tyrant. Their Lord. Harry Potter, the Greatest Wizard that Ever Lived.

(There are pictures of Harry at Hogwarts, at the Ministry, at St. Mungo’s, outside the Auror Office and in front of the Minister’s Office and in the entrance hall to the Wizengamot and in both the entrance hall and the Headmaster’s office at Hogwarts, and in every House he ruled. He wears stately robes and an impressive hat, gold jewelry, a beard (dark in some pictures, silver-shot in others, pure snowy white in still more, for he lived to be an old man himself, older than Dumbledore, older than Griselda Marchbanks, who lived to dance at his wedding), his glasses accentuating his brilliant green eyes, his scar more prominent in the pictures than it ever had been in life, surrounded with such trappings as the Sword of Gryffindor and the Elder Wand and a skull that purports to be that of Lord Voldemort.

Ron shrugs, eyeing Harry with what feels like an unusual sort of apathy. He’s spent the last six days kissing Hermione, and for the first time in several years there isn’t even a twinge of jealousy at his better-looking and more-famous best friend. “It might. Think Hermione’d like it if I grew a handlebar mustache?”

Harry says, diplomatically, “I think you should ask Hermione if she’d like that.”

“When she gets back.” Hermione’s in Australia, tracking down her parents and, presumably, explaining to two incendiarily furious Muggles why she rewrote their memories, sent them halfway around the world, and spent almost a year running through a war zone without them. Neither of them envy her the task. It also means that she hasn’t heard any of this; the Daily Prophet has suffered a truly impressive amount of magical vandalism in the past few days, much of it involving the sort of things that can be bought at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, and is taking a small hiatus while its staff writers and senior editors recover from the effects of multiple Bat Bogey Hexes per person.

Harry shrugs and turns away from the mirror. “So,” he says with some distaste. “Do I look like the Lord of seventeen Noble Houses?”

He doesn’t. He looks like a seventeen-year-old boy in a worn-out school robe made for someone several inches shorter and about ten kilos heavier, with wild hair that brushes his shoulders and what will perhaps someday be an impressive beard but currently looks like he’s forgotten to shave for several days. Ron thinks about the answer for a long moment. “Nope.”

Harry’s face splits into a relieved grin. “Oh, thank Merlin. I thought I was the only one who could see how much of a tosser I looked.”

“Nope. Plain as day.”

Harry looks one more time in the mirror, as though coming to a sort of peace with that he’ll probably never feel like a Lord. “Good,” is what he says.

–

That feeling lasts for all of a minute. Professor McGonagall intercepts him on the way down and drags him into her office, where she hands him a robe that hasn’t been dragged through multiple battles and a year-long camping trip, and a pair of shoes that aren’t falling apart. “I’m sure you don’t want any part of this, Harry, but you should try to look a bit more neat. It will show respect for your new position, which will make things a bit easier for you in the long run.

The shoes are leather, black, old-fashioned and fine. He has a moment’s thought of Dobby, polishing Lucius Malfoy’s boots in between being kicked, and bile rises in his throat. He puts the shoes on, and then the robe, which is not a school robe, but elegantly cut in some fine fabric, and it fits him. He finds himself standing up a bit straighter, and Professor McGonagall nods in approval. “That will do. Good luck, Mr. Potter.”

Another memory tickles at him, their conversation right after Dumbledore’s death, him declining to confide in her and her return to formality. “Harry,” he tells her.

“Harry,” she says, and gives him a hint of a smile.

–

The next person he runs into is Ginny, who runs up to him, hugs him, kisses him (Ron makes a coughing noise here, and is ignored), and steps back to look at him. “Don’t you look dashing,” she says, and Harry grins at her, feeling a bit more human. He wraps her up in a hug and is about to kiss her again when he’s hit about the head by a live chicken.

He lets go and flails about comically instead. Beside him, Ginny is doing the same thing, shoving the bird off him and in the direction of Ron, who is leaning against the wall guffawing. Ginny turns to yell down the hallway, “Just because you almost died doesn’t mean I won’t hex you!”

A pair of identical faces peek around the corner. “Good morning, dearest sister of mine!” Fred sings out, dramatically throwing one arm out towards the nearest sunlit window.

“Like our newest product?” George asks, coming up behind him; if they’re standing noticeably closer to each other than they would have done before, Harry doesn’t comment on it. He gets it.

“A chicken?” Harry asks, dubiously.

They both grin. “Not just any chicken,” says Fred.

“We started by improving our line of fake wands,” says George.

“So instead of rubber chickens and fish and parrots–”

“–They’d turn into real chickens–”

“–And squirrels–”

“–And ferrets,” George adds, and they all share a grin, knowing exactly who that particular fake wand is going to make its way to.

“But then we decided to go one further–”

“And make the spell triggered by kissing instead!”

Fred holds out what looks like a tiny, decorative egg. “We’re calling it the Cockblock, what do you think?”

Ginny smiles sweetly, though she’s toying with her wand in a way that has both brothers looking a tad wary. Then her smile turns full-on evil, and she says, “I think you should make a quill that turns into a really angry swan when someone uses it to write something untrue.”

Harry, sensing where she’s going with this, says, “Make it lime green.”

–

When he finally gets down to the Great Hall, Harry’s feeling a lot better about everything. It’s hard not to, with friends like he’s got.

The Great Hall is about two-thirds full. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner these days have all had their hours extended, to better serve the influx of families, refugees, repair workers, ministry officials and assorted others who have been in and out of Hogwarts quite a bit in the aftermath of battle.

As usual, all eyes turn to Harry as he comes in. As usual, several people detach themselves from their groups and conversations and start heading his way. As usual, he contemplates turning around and leaving rather than face an invasion of questions, requests, and unsolicited advice while he eats his French toast, but then he sees Draco Malfoy, hunched over a bowl of porridge with neither parents nor remaining sycophant in attendance, and with a polite smile to the converging adults and a silent astonishment at his own audacity he goes over and sits across from Draco.

Just as anticipated, everyone who wanted to talk to him finds themselves unwilling to interrupt somebody else’s conversation with him. At least if that somebody else is a Slytherin pureblood, and one of his new vassals.

Draco looks up. “Fuck do you want, my Lord?” Bitterness, underlaid with exhaustion, resignation, and months of despair.

Harry says, “Call me Potter, you tosspot.”

Draco’s lips twitch. Harry’s willing to bet it’s the closest thing to a smile to cross Draco’s face in months. But it’s gone almost instantly. “Can’t,” Draco says. “You’re my Head of House.”

“What, you didn’t have any problem disrespecting Snape last year.”

 “Not that kind of Head of House. That’s just school. You’re head of my House, of the House of Malfoy, and that’s supposed to be my father!” This last is almost a snarl.

“And then you,” Harry reasons. “And then your kid.”

Draco nods. “And now it’s you instead, and you don’t give a shit for our traditions, or for blood, or for anything, and you look like you just escaped from Azkaban and I’ll bet somebody else chose that robe for you because you have the fashion sense of a coat rack.”

Harry giggles. Then he remembers he’s supposed to be eating breakfast here, and serves himself a slice of French toast from one of the platters. “Here I thought,” he says, looking at the traces of despair on Draco’s face, “that you were the one who just got out of Azkaban.”

Draco considers this. Harry pours his syrup and takes a bite while his longtime rival mulls this over. “Maybe, sort of,” Draco allows finally. “Still one prison to another.”

Harry frowns. That isn’t what he wants. Maybe for some of the nastier of Voldemort’s supporters, but for Draco? He casts about for something to offer that wouldn’t be rejected as empty comfort or held in contempt as though Harry were tossing him scraps.

“Maybe,” he repeats Draco’s word. At the other’s curious look, he says, “I could use someone to help me understand all this tradition and power I’ll be dealing with.” Draco looks at him, wary and yet obviously, keenly interested. Harry wonders when he got to be such an expert at reading Draco, who probably got actual lessons in not letting such things show.

Tradition, Harry thinks. Tradition, and power, or access to it. Influence. That’s what matters to pureblood Slytherins. That and lineage. He thinks back to the battle, to Draco’s mother lying to Voldemort in exchange for knowledge of her son’s survival; the image mingles momentarily with that of his own mother, standing before Voldemort, shielding him.

Family.

“For example,” Harry says, “If I adopt your firstborn as my heir to your House, do they become Head of it after me?”

The stunned widening of Draco’s eyes, the sudden blaze of naked hope, are shockingly intimate, and Harry almost nonchalantly busies himself pouring a cupful of orange juice.

“Yeah,” says Draco finally. "That … yeah.” A long, vaguely suspicious silence. “You’d do that?”

Harry nods. And feels like bursting with something like happiness when Draco straightens up, smiles genuinely, and says, “Well, then, you’ve got yourself an adviser. Have you considered growing a beard? Is that where you’re going with that?”

Harry nods, and is about to ask Draco’s advice on the matter when someone shrieks in the Entrance Hall.

The Islamic art and architecture. Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, Iraq. 2015.