Chapter 55
"Has that boy finally left?" Jacques Greengrass asked his wife, lips curling with mild distaste over a glass of good wine. Nearly two months of hosting the new guest at their family manor had given him a certain familiarity with the famous Harry Potter — but no particular fondness.
"There you go grumbling about him again," Agatha Greengrass replied, rolling her eyes with a blend of irritation and amusement, unbothered by her husband's displeasure. "What exactly has our eldest's fiancé done to offend you?"
"I've said it before — I don't like how taken Daphna is with him. Nothing good will come of it. And the way Astoria looks at the boy is also…" He shook his head. "Wrong. As for you — I won't even start. You've already begun letting him into our family's secrets, and they aren't even married yet."
The outwardly young but otherwise unremarkable-looking man continued his complaints, privately nursing a particular grievance: preparing those extraordinarily expensive baths for some slip of a boy fell entirely to him.
"I understand your frustration, but trust me — Harry Potter is genuinely worth it." The blonde woman shook her head with calm conviction, making no particular effort to press the argument. "And I don't mean his reputation, his fame, or his potential political influence."
"Is that so? The boy's magical talent actually impressed you?" One of wizarding Britain's most celebrated potion-brewers raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise. He'd seen for himself that Potter was quite good — strong in both Charms and Transfiguration — but he'd paid almost no attention to his wife's training sessions with their daughter and the prospective son-in-law, and his surprise was entirely sincere.
"For his age, he is…" Agatha paused, mentally summoning the house-elves to bring a glass of wine for herself as well. "A genuine anomaly. Charms, Transfiguration, nonverbal spellwork at a level that would embarrass many of our acquaintances. The boy is unstoppably gifted at practically everything he touches. And he has very solid Occlumency skills — I believe he may even have something of a natural gift in that area."
"You're serious?" The devoted father of two daughters sat up with genuine attention — and genuine unease. "That boy couldn't have—"
"No. I found absolutely no trace of mental influence on either of our girls. And we weren't talking about Legilimency to begin with," the powerful witch said, with a firmness that closed off that line of inquiry before it could develop further.
"All right. If you say so, I'll put my concerns to rest." Jacques Greengrass backed down without resistance — a reflex built over many years of not opposing his wife's judgment on anything that mattered. He knew his role in this life, and was largely content with it. Mostly. "Still. Doesn't everything you've just described seem like rather too much for a boy who hasn't even started his fourth year? And before all this, he was living with Muggles."
"That is precisely where Harry Potter's real value lies." Agatha smiled with quiet certainty. She had not expected someone like this to appear among the current generation of wizards — a natural talent of this magnitude, emerging from nowhere. "I believe he could achieve mastery — or at the very least reach that level in skill and power — before he even finishes Hogwarts. And if Black shares his library with the boy in full, there will be no doubting him at all."
That was the true value of Hogwarts, she reflected privately. Maintaining contact with virtually every influential family in wizarding Britain, and holding connections across the continent — the Greengrasses even had separate branches of the family in the States, Spain, and Norway — even with all of that, Agatha had found herself until recently with almost no viable candidates for her eldest daughter's hand.
Astoria — her little angel — was a simpler matter in some respects. As the younger daughter, she could in principle be given into another family's care. Agatha wasn't in any rush, hoping to keep her within the Greengrass fold if possible, or at minimum to arrange comfortable circumstances for her, but the door remained open.
Daphna was another matter entirely. As the future head of the House, she had been raised in a very particular way — from her earliest childhood, she had been trained toward independence and self-sufficiency in almost everything. Which would serve her well when the time came to lead the family, but which also meant that Agatha had virtually no leverage over her daughter's choice of husband.
Technically, it wouldn't have been difficult. Daphna was still young enough to be under her mother's authority. But what kind of head of House would she ever become if someone else chose her husband for her? Agatha understood perfectly well that nothing good would come of such an arrangement. The Greengrass method of upbringing was meant to be followed to its conclusion.
None of which made the underlying problem disappear. Her eldest daughter's generation was simply too sparse. Not in terms of quality — that wasn't the issue. The problem was far more mundane: there were simply very few wizards born in the years 1979 through 1981. Those years had fallen at the tail end of the civil war in Britain, which had carved a devastating demographic hole in the wizarding population.
The continent had been unsettled during that period as well, which meant that the scenario in which Daphna might find a suitable partner on her own — at such a young age, no less — had until recently not even factored into Agatha's thinking. Among all the wizards of that age she knew of, not one had been both notable and unattached to a noble House of comparable standing to the Greengrasses.
With Harry, admittedly, even that aspect wasn't entirely smooth — his godfather had reminded her of this quite recently — but overall, the situation remained acceptable. Especially given the boy's magical gifts. Agatha was confident that with a son-in-law like that, she could expect fine, healthy, magically gifted grandchildren. And Daphna herself would be far from shortchanged with such a husband — even setting aside certain family rituals and traditions.
"The most important thing now is to finish drawing the boy fully out of Dumbledore's influence," she said aloud, remembering suddenly the less pleasant dimension of the young wizard she found so promising — her apprentice-to-be. "And to keep our House from being dragged into another magical war, if one comes."
"A rather timely thing to remember," Jacques replied, with dry sarcasm, pulling his too-deeply-thinking wife back to the present. "The recent scandal at the Quidditch World Cup does not inspire comfortable thoughts. And that Dark Mark in the sky…" He set his glass down. "It's troubling."
"I agree. The timing couldn't be worse for us." The blonde woman's expression cooled. She had spent enormous resources and no small amount of frayed nerves during the last war with Voldemort simply keeping her House out of it. She would not have that luxury the second time around.
"Do you think the rumors can be believed? That certain… acquaintances of ours have their Mark filling with power again?" The normally composed potions master drained the last of his wine in a single swallow, looking at his wife with unusual gravity. Inwardly, he was already reconsidering a move to the continent — breaking every contract with Hogwarts and every other institution in Britain, to hell with all of it. His wife, he knew, would never agree so easily.
"Rumors sometimes remain only rumors," Agatha said, shaking her head. "But they don't arise from nothing either. I'll even allow that the recent incident may have been nothing more than a Malfoy making a preemptive show of loyalty to the Unnameable."
"That peacock is certainly capable of it," the man replied with irritable contempt. "And right now I'm almost glad you put the question of Astoria's betrothal on hold. Handing her to the Malfoys at this moment would be far from prudent. Even though I thought completely otherwise not so long ago."
"Daphna's betrothal upset all our plans," Agatha agreed, with a thoughtful nod. She understood perfectly well that without her eldest daughter and the young man she'd chosen, Lucius would almost certainly have ground her down on that matter by now. He had been extremely persistent in his search for a bride for his son, unwilling to settle for the little Parkinson girl.
"Yes. And now instead of aligning ourselves with the old aristocracy faction, we find ourselves bound to the protégé of a man who favors lemon drops and questionable decisions regarding his allies." Jacques's expression soured — he who had once borne the name Delacour-adjacent Gelée.
"Dumbledore." Agatha's voice dropped to something close to a hiss, her warmth entirely gone. "If only some heart failure would finally catch up with him. Or Grindelwald's old curses. It's not for nothing that he looks like such an ancient fossil at a mere hundred — there's something rotting at the foundation."
She remembered well the Headmaster's recent attempts to wedge himself between her family and their pocket hero. Were it not for Sirius Black — who had so unexpectedly made contact, albeit with conditions attached regarding the future marriage contract — there would have been no Potter at their manor at all. The old schemer would certainly have driven that extraordinarily gifted young man back into the thrice-cursed Muggle world, where proper training would have been impossible even to conceive of.
"I wouldn't count on his dying naturally anytime soon. But laying some groundwork — for a hasty withdrawal from Britain, or — Merlin forbid — for having to make terms with the old man himself — would be entirely sensible." The suggestion was made without much cheer, but it was a plan of sorts.
"A sound instinct," Lady Greengrass replied with a calm smile, choosing not to mention that she had already written to nearly every female relative in her extended family the previous year. The moment she had committed to a connection with wizarding Britain's most famous hero, she could not pretend not to understand the consequences.
Which meant that everything Jacques was only now beginning to consider, she had attended to before the betrothal with Harry Potter had even been formalized. Every aunt, cousin, and grandmother of Lady Greengrass had long since been informed of the situation. Escape routes had been prepared. Personal forces of hired defenders maintained steady contact with her relatives, ready to reach the islands at virtually a moment's notice.
What remained was for Agatha herself to decide where those forces would be directed, if the moment came.
Though she had no intention of deceiving herself about the extent of her power. House Greengrass was wealthy, formidable, ancient, and well-scattered across the world — qualities that secured its independence in ways most British noble Houses could not match. But even if Agatha committed the full weight of her family's influence to any conflict that erupted in wizarding Britain, it would accomplish very little. The forces deployed during the last war on these islands had been of a scale the current Greengrasses could not dream of matching.
Which meant all current preparations served one of two purposes: either emergency extraction of her family and the House's core assets from Britain, or the delivery of a single swift and brutal strike against whichever side moved against them. There was no third option. A prolonged war was beyond the House's capacity — even in the deeply unpleasant scenario in which she genuinely considered fighting under the current Headmaster of Hogwarts's banner.
Dumbledore had dreamed of that since the last war. And now, for the first time, he had something approaching a real chance at it. The prospect of Daphna's marriage to Potter made Agatha willing to consider departing from the now-visibly-weakening faction of neutrals.
But only if it truly came to that.
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