Three Hallows' Eve || Harmione & Jily

Chapter 7.1

Chapter Seven - The Way It Is I

Even as a boy, James had known that Wizarding Britain was somewhat backwards compared to Muggle Britain and even Wizarding Europe. His father, Fleamont Potter, had further explained that the upper echelons of their society were even more 'dodgy'. At some point during his schooling at Hogwarts, having met the children of this 'dodgy' high society, James had mentally relabelled the majority of the upper class 'morally corrupt'.

Today, he was trying to relabel them all again but found his vocabulary to be disappointingly lacking. In polite company he'd never be able to use the words needed to label them properly, and in impolite company he'd struggle with using few enough words for it to actually be a label and not a Mastery thesis.

Despite his reputation as a prankster in Hogwarts, he'd developed a strong sense of justice very early on after seeing how his Muggle-born peers were being treated. He'd carried that strong sense of justice through life with a vengeance ever since. When he wasn't planning or participating in mischief or shenanigans, he was often mentally planning what he liked to think of as a sort of peaceful societal coup d'état.

While he had worried about it initially, their fame following the end of the war had actually turned out to be a huge boon for his egalitarian new world order. The name Potter had come to be considered as almost royalty in Britain and, while neither he nor Lily cared for social standing, it had given him quite the soapbox from atop which he could push for change and have people actually listen.

Alyssa's Law was the latest and biggest of his societal reform projects, and would be a triumph if the arseholes in charge would stop arguing about it on the basis of purism. His and Albus's plan to spin the motion as a means to protect the Statute had been a resounding success for the vast majority of the Wizengamot, but unfortunately a small number had turned out to be somewhat intelligent as well as bigoted and had seen through their little white lie.

It was a small mercy that the conniving old gits didn't seem interested in trying to sway the rest of the Wizengamot away from voting in favour of the motion at the moment. Unfortunately they also happened to be the people with the deepest pockets and fingers in all the right pies to bastardise the law to be more discriminatory against than helpful for Muggle-born and Muggle-raised children. Now the energy that James and Albus should have been spending on getting the Law put in place and helping the changes happen smoothly was actually being spent trying to convince the lawmakers that changing the law wasn't, in fact, in their best interest as the bigots had told them it would be.

The entire bloody system was corrupt and it was wearing James down to the bone and all he wanted to do was spend the evening doing very little with his wife and son. After a very long day of damage limitation, he could now go home and perform a little more damage limitation with Lily after having taken the last of her chocolate with him to the office in lieu of breakfast. Thankfully, he'd actually remembered his misconduct before getting home this week, and so was going unto the breach prepared for once.

As he walked up the driveway, he noticed that all of the lights in the house were off so made his way inside as quietly as he could in case either or both of the occupants were asleep. Checking downstairs, he found the kitchen in a bit of a state and cringed when he noticed that Lily had added chocolate to the shopping list. The dining table was, as per usual, completely unfit for its intended function as a result of Lily's research being strewn across it. Judging by the haphazard piles of parchment and open books, though, it looked as though she'd made an effort to be organised which usually indicated that she'd made some kind of breakthrough. Maybe she'd be in a better mood than he thought.

He crept upstairs, checking first in Harry's room and, as expected, found him tucked into bed - fully clothed though, so he'd done something 'a little weird' again. In the master bedroom, Lily was curled up on the bed, also clothed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he gently shook her and she roused slowly.

'Good morning sleepy,' he said quietly with a smile. 'I've returned with apology food.'

'Hey,' she murmured and stretched to turn on her bedside lamp. She smiled half-heartedly at him and instantly his brow furrowed with concern; she'd obviously been crying if her red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks were anything to go by.

'What happened?' he asked, to which she replied by nodding to the chair in the corner of the room. On it, Arty was lying as usual, but he quickly realised what the issue was. 'Oh, Lily, I'm sorry.'

She sniffled a bit and leant into his hand as he caressed her cheek sympathetically. 'Harry could tell he was close to death but in pain, so he put him down this afternoon.'

'Oh, Merlin,' he muttered and closed his eyes, not wanting to think how that had gone down. Their toddler had been absolutely enamoured with Arty. 'How about I go and bury him by the tree in the garden and order in something for dinner while you freshen up?'

Lily eyed the bag that he'd placed on the drawers by the door. 'You didn't bring dinner home?'

He dropped his gaze and looked at her cautiously through his eyelashes. 'Ah, no. That's a bag full of chocolate,' he admitted sheepishly.

While she looked at him somewhat accusingly, she smirked at him slightly, clearly accepting the peace-offering-cum-apology for what it was.

'Pizza?'

Lily hummed as she stretched. 'Okay, I'll shower and get Harry up.'