Chapter 10
The end of Harry’s seventh year also marks his entry into adulthood. “You are not moving out, don’t be ridiculous,” Voldemort sniffed ferociously over tea.
“Well, Ron and I were thinking-“
“Weasley can move here.”
“You just want to get him to cook for you,” Harry smiled knowingly.
“And if I do? I cannot subsist on Atticus’ version of food. The man thinks dandelions can be stewed!” Voldemort cried.
“Well, Hermione and I-“
“You are not living with a woman unrelated to you, it is most indecorous,” Avery muttered. “It would ruin her marriage prospects.”
“I think she’s going to marry Ron,” Harry said. “And they proposed that the three of us live together.”
“Are you three separated triplets? Are you all incapable of existing outside of a thirty meter radius of each other?” Voldemort demanded. At Harry’s cheerful grin, he threw up his hands. “Fine! But you will live between Black’s house and this house!”
“You mean, on the same block?” Harry asks, counting. “That would be between Jackdaw House and this place… so on the same block?”
“Yes.”
“The only place is the pink house across the street.”
“Precisely.”
“That grin makes you look super evil, dad.”
“Noted,” Voldemort says, but did not stop smiling.
***
Voldemort is an observant man. He sees a certain pointy Malfoy paying court to his son. This eventually leads to the traditional act of the man-trying-to-win-over-the-father.
Voldemort is having none of it.
“You are not to be a cad to my son.”
“Yes, my lord,” Draco says, and nearly does a wee, so scared is he.
“You are to support him unequivocally in his career aspirations.”
“Yes, my lord,” Draco grovels, though he has never had a career aspiration in his life.
“You are not to influence his decisions when he takes his family seats in the Wizengamot.”
“Yes, my lord.” Then, “Seats? Plural?”
“Potter and Slytherin, my seat,” Voldemort says slowly. “Eventually, he will take mine, because given time, I am liable to murder Muriel Prewett for being a loathesome bandicoot in human form. Not in the next fifty years, but in time.”
“Harry will… lead House Slytherin.”
“The irony is not lost on me. You will also not antagonize Harry’s friends in politics.”
“Weasley does not have a seat.”
“Weasley’s eldest brother will take the Prewett seat in time. You cannot bully him into anything, he is a formidable man and would turn you into a scarab beetle before squishing you underfoot. I am referring to Granger - the future Lady Black.”
Voldemort, true to evil form, takes a genteel sip of tea as he watches Draco writhe on the floor in pain at the prospect of Granger outclassing him in every way possible. Voldemort is just eager to see the obvious written into the history books.
***
Voldemort is even more nervous for Harry’s formal introduction to the Wizengamot than even Harry himself. Hours and hours of coaching on political alliances, new bills, laws, and etiquette have done little to quell the moths in Voldemort’s stomach fluttering as Harry takes his seat as Lord Potter.
Harry does a splendid job of it - he is composed, attentive, and follows Hermione’s notes, voting on the bills that come through in a manner that represents his Houses proudly.
Voldemort - Lord Thomas Gaunt of the Elder House of Slytherin in these hallowed halls - is beyond proud, and receives his son in the antechamber after the meeting with a smile and a proud handshake, as befits two lords of their stature.
Sirius ruins everything by bursting into tears and wrapping his godson in a wet hug, crying proudly the entire time, emerging from tears every so often to kiss Harry’s forehead.
***
If Lucius bows any lower, the man will crack his vertebrae, Voldemort is certain. “For Circe’s sake, man, get up,” he mutters. Honestly, it was one bill that Voldemort proposed - one that apparently held a lot of importance to Malfoy.
Across the way, several other Lords and Ladies from the traditional bloc smile at him as well for championing their cause in allowing more freedom to practice their ancient blood majicks.
Dumbledore had tried the time-honored “but think of the muggleborns! They may dabble in arts that they know not about and will invariably be drawn into the dark arts” excuse.
Voldemort’s counter to that was to turn to Hermione, sitting with Sirius in the Black seats, and ask, “Granger, have you, with your insatiable thirst for knowledge, ever participated in a blood ritual?”
“Yes, but that was with you yelling instructions at us,” Hermione had replied. “I would never do it on my own, I know better than that.”
“And did it, at any point, scare or scar you? Did dark forces take hold of you in any manner?”
“Well, no,” Hermione had replied unsurely, “unless you count as a dark force? You did hold my hand afterwards, because you said I was ‘a female of skinny proportions who is likely to faint daintily after shedding her blood’.”
“I am honoured to be considered a dark force,” Voldemort had beamed, his prowess with the dark arts known to all. “But no, I do not count. Can you tell the chamber what manner of ritual we performed?”
“It was a scrying ritual,” Hermione replied. “It had fallen out of use, but you needed it to find the location of your familial locket, which you used to build your power to, er, battle with the dark lord Voldemort to save Harry.”
Voldemort had beamed at the memory of his best lie, which everyone else took for fatherly love. The bill to practice blood magic with the supervision of a trained diviner had been passed, much to the jubilation of the traditionalists.
Harry, Lord Potter, had stunned everyone by voting with Voldemort. “It’s not because he’s my father,” Harry had explained to the reporters afterwards, “it’s because he made a good argument. Honestly, I disagree with him on plenty of stuff. I can love him and still see the merits of a good argument, you know.”
There never was a prouder papa than the dark lord that day.
***
Voldemort, doting and loving father that he is, is shadowing his son when Harry decides to put in an application to the Wizengamot to found a wizarding kindergarten for muggleborn children.
“We would teach arithmetic, language, and science alonside magic till they can start at Hogwarts,” Harry proposes to the gobsmacked Wizengamot. “It would do so much to ease the transition for muggleborn students, an dhelp them build a support network. As it stands, they are isolated in our community, and grow up with their abilities neglected, feared, and misunderstood.”
Harry’s voice trembles at the end, his own past flashing before his eyes. Voldemort is so incensed that he causes the Longbottom seat to melt with the sheer force of his rage.
There are several people who speak in favour of Harry’s bill, including Hermione, the Creevey brothers, Sirius, and surprisingly, Draco.
Lucius looks stunned as Draco stands, clears his pencil-like throat, and says, “There was a time in which I scorned those born outside of our community. I was, to put it lightly, a huge twat- oh, Muriel Prewett has fainted, ought someone see to her? No? Oh well. What was I saying?”
“You were a twat,” Hermione reminded him, not unkindly.
“Ah, yes. I was, that. I looked down upon the muggleborns for not being “magical-enough”, when truly, they had never had the opportunity to know our ways. Lord Potter’s bill of introducing magic to muggleborns and their families in an official capacity from thr beginning would only help integrate muggleborns into a history and culture that is foreign to them.”
“Ah! But are we then not alienating the muggleborns from their own culture?” Elphias Doge pipes up, and Voldemort nearly curses his testicles to lodge up his own orifices.
“Are we then willing to leave magical-presenting children to their own devices, to experience potentially traumatic displays of their power, with people, parents, who don’t know how to help them?” Harry countered. “Ignoring this issue does more harm, Mr. Doge.”
After a short recess, the Wizengamot was called back into session, and Voldemort abandoned all pretense of indifference and aloofness, and stood beside Harry at the Potter Seats. Harry smiled up at his father, betraying only a hint of nervousness. Voldemort’s heart twists at the sight, and he smiles back at Harry, before glaring at every single Wizengamot member who would dare vote against his son’s life’s ambition.
He glares the longest at Dumbledore, who merely smiles back, twinkling annoyingly at him, like a stray drop of wee on a toilet seat that is catching the light.
Voldemort tunes the chatter and the boys it until Dumbledore calls for order. “All in favor of Lord Potter’s bill for equal education?”
Voldemort’s heart jumps when he sees a practically unanimous raising of hands. Under the dias, Harry grips his tight in joy and disbelief. He meets his father's eyes and smiles, and in that moment, Voldemort knows that they are going to change the world.
****