Chapter 4: The Ancient and Noble House of Bones, etc.
"Susan Bones was the last living person with Bones blood in her veins. Her mother was still alive, a half-blood, daughter of a minor pureblood house and a muggleborn. The Bones were steeped in history as well, known as fighters for the light and well regarded for their spell creation. Like House Potter, the Ancient and Noble House of Bones had families that had merged into it, specifically the House of Flanders and the House of Caldwell.
"While Tracey and I had never really interacted with Harry at Hogwarts, Susan had quietly established herself as a member of his circle, replacing the Weasley siblings after a ridiculous ordeal that we'll get into later on. She is typically loyal and friendly, but fierce in her protection of loved ones, probably because so many of them have been taken from her.
"During the First War, the Bones, like the Potters, the Longbottoms, and the Prewetts, suffered greatly fighting against the forces of Voldemort. Her family was down to just a single quartet of siblings, and their three children. The oldest was her Aunt Amelia, then the Head of House her Uncle Edgar, her father Richard, and the youngest brother Robert. Voldemort attacked them head on. Edgar, his wife, and both his kids were slaughtered. Richard and Robert, who never married, were both killed as well. This left only Amelia, who was a closet lesbian and eventually head of the DMLE, both of which made it unlikely for her to settle down and have children, Susan's mother Diana, and Susan herself as the last three to have the name Bones. Amelia was killed early in the second war and only Diana and Susan remained.
"The activation of many old families also activated a lot of their old contracts. For example the House of Caldwell had an active contract with the House of Belby, only it didn't matter for several centuries because there was no House of Caldwell. With most of these contracts, such as that one, both parties agreed to settle it without marriage, usually with a galleon going one way or the other to 'buy out' the contract. The House of Flanders, however, had a contract with the Ancient and Noble House of McLaggen.
"Lord Lochlan McLaggen and his son Cormac are two of the most awful people to be in the presence of, and you'll know they're there because they won't shut up about themselves. More importantly, Lochlan thought that Susan would have to marry Cormac because of the contract and sat out to, in basic terms, extort her. She should have clearly been able to wed without a dowry because she brought three titles with her, which is far more valuable than any amount of gold in our world. Instead, the McLaggens demanded a dowry more than 20x the average price, the lordship to all three of her titles, and 51% ownership of the Bones Family Crematorium.
"Susan had only one hope really, that whoever became the Head of resurrected family who had a contract with House Bones would be willing to save her. And Harry Potter, Head of House Denison, did just that.
"Susan announced the betrothal at the January 1999 Wizengamot session, the McLaggens claimed line theft and things got really, really fun. Susan detailed all the extortion attempts and even read a letter from Annabelle Flanders, the last of her family line, that was found in the family vault. It said that Annabelle killed herself because she would rather suffer through the shame of ending her family name forever than marry a McLaggen.
"The McLaggens were thoroughly embarrassed. Harry smacked them around in the papers for a few more weeks just to rub it in and they agreed to buyout the contract from their end. That is now the thing that Cormac McLaggen is second most well known for. As the Owner/General Manager/Coach/Captain/Keeper of the Montrose Magpies, he allowed more goals in a single season than any player in the history of organized quidditch. Isn't karma lovely?
"So in March 1999, Susan would become Lady Susan Marie Potter Denison Bones. Susan quickly put her mother in the Flanders seat and her best friend Hannah Longbottom née Abbott in the Caldwell seat. Like me, she had to push out a lot of sons to fill all the family names, but she managed to find the time to rise up through the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Susan still sits in one of the British seats on the International Confederation of Wizards and is considered Britain's most influential foreign diplomat.
"Her oldest child is a daughter named Dora Amelia Bones, she runs the family crematorium now. Edgar Sampson Bones II is currently the Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Transportation and if you give him twenty years, he'll be the Minister for Magic. Her second son, Richard Francis Caldwell, runs 394 Publishing. It's named after 394 Axminster Square, the company's address, and has focused on publishing biographies and other history texts to help our country make up for ground lost due to the years of neglect the subject has suffered from while Cuthbert Binns was teaching at Hogwarts. Rose Diana Bones is the operations manager at Winter Gardens, a company that supplies plants for potion making that our family co-owns with the Longbottoms. The third son, Robert Taylor Flanders, completed a six year contract with Gringott's doing curse breaking and has since opened his own business, Flanders Warding & Curse Breaking. And the final son is Arthur Neville Denison. He teamed up with my son, his half-brother and best friend, and owns the other half of The Serpent & The Horse, he manages the horse side of the business, unicorns, thestrals, abraxans, hippogriffs, and the like.
"Now we move on to the ones where Harry actually had a choice."