"And Lyra said that if anyone was giving us any trouble about it, I should contact you. I understand the House of Black has a retainer agreement."

Andromeda raised an eyebrow at the rather annoyed, slightly harried-looking muggle woman who had, rather to her surprise, managed to find her way to her office. Not that she doubted any part of Dr. Granger's account.

She was well aware of Lyra's decision to take Harry Potter on holiday anonymously. Lyra, of course, hadn't considered the legal implications of such a plan for the slightest moment, but Mirabella had consulted her regarding potential consequences and the extent to which she could safeguard against them without giving away Lyra's plans. And Andromeda had, of course, just acquired a block of Knockturn Alley (which included the property Lyra had incidentally destroyed) on behalf of the House of Black, the paperwork back-dated to avoid an arson charge — though there might still be an accusation of improper demolition on the horizon. And when it was discovered that they had 'acquired' the property only days before Lyra removed Harry, it would only serve as further evidence that Lyra was indeed responsible. But that revelation had been inevitable in any case — she and Mira had already taken steps to ensure that both the Blacks and the Zabinis would weather the storm relatively unscathed.

She was equally aware of the open letter Hermione Granger had written to Xeno Lovegood for publication in the Quibbler. It was, she suspected, an honest attempt, initially, to ameliorate the emotional damage Lyra's plan was likely to cause to the nation at large. There was certainly no indication that she intended to sabotage Dumbledore's credibility in the letter itself. But then Xeno had interviewed her, informally, from the presentation in his accompanying article, most likely just to clarify some of the points she had made. And in the course of that interview, it had come up that Dumbledore had attempted legilimency on the girl without her permission.

He'd stopped when she turned away his probe, but, as Xeno rightly pointed out, occlumency was a rarely-taught skill anymore. How many other students' minds had been casually violated, without their knowledge, let alone their permission? Muggleborns, of course, had little reason to learn the skill, or even know of its existence unless one of their more knowledgeable peers mentioned it, but it had always been a relatively rare practice among commoners in general outside of a relatively small set of occupations, and those tended to learn it as adults. The only children who could be reasonably expected to recognise and turn away a legilimency probe in this day and age were the children of nobles — and those raised in the more paranoid Houses, at that.

Xeno had printed an Emergency Issue including Miss Granger's letter, the report of his interview, a long opinion piece on the use of mind magic on children, and several articles detailing other questionable decisions Dumbledore had made over the course of the past few decades. Andromeda was aware of some of these — Nymphadora had kept her abreast of his disastrous hiring choices for the Defense professorship, for example — but the political climate had always been such that, when these decisions were brought to public attention, they quickly faded out of the news cycle, and as far as she knew no one had published a systematic review of them in the intervening years.

Xeno had obviously recognised that Miss Granger was telling the truth in her letter, realised that it was only a matter of time until the Chief Warlock's reputation as a legitimate authority shattered under the revelation that Harry Potter was not in fact dead — if he was simply on holiday, presumably he would reappear within a matter of months — and decided that this was the opportune moment to remind everyone that the illustrious Albus Dumbledore was not as infallible as he might seem when the events in his political record were examined individually.

Andromeda didn't think he had realised that Dumbledore would recant quite as quickly as he had, however.

And she was fairly certain he hadn't predicted that the Chief Warlock would proceed to attempt to undermine the credibility of Miss Granger's claims with the assistance of a bevy of more...pro-establishment reporters from the Prophet and the Herald.

Miss Granger's residence would have been registered with the DLE by the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes (as was the address of every underage muggleborn) when she'd begun to have accidental magic incidents. Andromeda would be surprised if it had taken more than an hour or two for the first enterprising young reporter to bribe a clerk into revealing it. And so the Grangers had been besieged by the paparazzi.

They couldn't get onto the property, as Lyra had had the foresight, apparently, to ward the house against magical intruders at some point earlier in the year — which was...somewhat unexpected, both because Bella didn't tend to care about collateral damage, and because Andromeda hadn't realised she was capable of warding a house by herself. But it hadn't taken long for the reporters to realise that it was very odd for a muggle property, even one belonging to the family of a muggleborn witch, to have wards at all.

Then someone had analysed the wards, discovered that there were elements intended to foil attention by the authorities and the detection of underage magic, and immediately stuck it in their article for today's morning edition of the Prophet.

As soon as it had been delivered to the Grangers' home, Dr. Granger had set out for London with an anti-Muggle Repelling amulet and the address of Andromeda's public offices. Which was, Andromeda thought, quite the most intelligent thing she could have done because, with Albus Dumbledore's reputation on the line, the Ministry would almost certainly have already sent representatives to examine the wards. Someone was probably organising a team of cursebreakers as they spoke. In fact, the Grangers probably ought to have contacted Andromeda as soon as they realised their daughter's claims had been reported in what was essentially a hit piece against the head of the government, but Dr. Granger could be forgiven for not realising that "go tell my solicitor that it's all my fault" extended to far more than just the existence of illegal wards on the Grangers' property.

(They should have told her when Lyra put up the bloody wards in the first place, but Andromeda decided she would blame Lyra herself for that oversight, since she was the one who was liable for circumventing muggle protection laws, here.)

"Julian!" she called. Her intern appeared in her doorway so quickly Andromeda suspected that he had been eavesdropping rather than attending to any legitimate work. "Be a love and calculate some apparition coordinates for me?"

"Uh, sure. What's the address?"

After Dr. Granger told him, Andromeda added, "It's warded. Find the nearest crossroad."

"Willow and Tilby," the muggle said promptly. After he disappeared, she added, "Dare I ask why you need apparition coordinates for my house?"

Andromeda sighed. "Unfortunately, Dr. Granger, there are likely to be Ministry representatives there already. Time is of the essence if we are to address the issue before they remove the illegal wards from your property, allowing the reporters free access to your home immediately upon the departure of the DLE cursebreakers — the Department of Law Enforcement, that is. While we wait for the coordinates, we should discuss the options we might take to address the issues at hand."

"Which are?"

"The simplest option is to legally bring your family under the protection of the House of Black," she explained, trying to keep this as straightforward as possible. "The least invasive way to do this is to issue a formal statement on behalf of the House of Black stating that your daughter has their full support, Harry Potter is on holiday with Sirius and Lyra, and any further inquiries as to his well-being should be directed to me as their solicitor."

"Can you do that? Make official statements without consulting the family? Or would we need to wait for some sort of authorisation? Because we're leaving for France in two days. I would very much like to get this little...incident cleared up before we go."

Andromeda gave her a rueful grin. "No, a solicitor on retainer cannot speak on behalf of the Head of a House they represent without their consent. But, well...you are aware that the current Acting Head of House Black is...a bit eccentric. And I have closer connections to the House than most in my position would. I presume you are familiar with the concept of a blank cheque?" Dr. Granger nodded warily, obviously thinking that Andromeda couldn't be going exactly where she thought she was going with this. "I have in my possession several blank contracts, signed and notarised this past January, which I am authorised to use however I see fit in order to protect the interests of the House. Of which your family is one, apparently."

The muggle gaped at her. "That can't possibly be legal."

"Oh, it is, I assure you." Granted, it was also phenomenally stupid, just handing off that sort of authority to anyone outside of the House. When Lyra had suggested it, Andromeda had been every bit as shocked as Dr. Granger. But it did make covering Lyra's arse considerably easier, being able to authorise herself to acquire properties on behalf of the House, for example, or issue formal statements in Lyra's name. "Consider it a sort of blanket pre-authorisation for any actions I may be required to take to clear up any...problems she might create for herself. In any case, yes, I can make an official statement on Lady Black's behalf."

"I...see." Dr. Granger's tone suggested that she didn't entirely believe this, but also didn't care, so long as her problem was solved. "So, what, we just write out a statement and present it to the reporters and order them to get the bloody hell out of my garden?"

"Well...we could. We should, in fact."

"I sense a but coming," the other woman said drily.

Andromeda gave her a small smile. "But, it probably won't be enough. The reporters are not legally obligated to obey such a statement. It is essentially social pressure and little more. Yes, the House might take steps to sanction individuals should they fail to respect the expressed desire for privacy on behalf of their ally, but in the meanwhile they would still be free to harass you and your daughter, with no legal recourse other than to call the DLE and accuse them of trespassing."

Dr. Granger sighed. "And given the nature of Hermione's article, it is all too easy to believe that the authorities of Magical Britain are themselves not likely to be interested in pursuing such accusations."

She nodded. "And they'll still remove the wards 'for your own protection', and Lyra will still be liable for enacting them in the first place. The simple measure I suggested earlier is...not the least invasive. In fact, it is probably the most drastic option available. But it is, I believe, the most elegant long-term solution to the problem."

"And that solution is?"

"To register the House of Granger as a Common House, incorporating all of your lands, people, and incomes as property of the House, and simultaneously enter into a patronage agreement as vassals of the House of Black."

In fact, it would probably only be possible to register the Granger family as a Common House if they were vassals to a Noble House — the process of House registration was notoriously labyrinthine, especially when the only witch in the family was underage and held no qualifications to speak of.

Dr. Granger eyed her warily. "What exactly would such a patronage agreement entail?"

"Technically? Your patron House would have dominion over your people and property. You would be subject to your patron house's internal laws, and exempted in many ways from the laws of Magical Britain. You would tithe a percentage of your income to your patron — your patron is obliged to pay taxes on your behalf to Magical Britain, so you wouldn't need to worry about that—" The tax burden placed on newly-registered Common Houses was often a prohibitive factor for muggle families. "—and in exchange, the patron house provides protection for its vassals in whatever capacities their House Law stipulates."

"You have my attention."

Andromeda gave the muggle a coolly professional smile. "House Black takes this obligation rather more seriously than most Noble Houses — their vassals are, in effect, considered legal members of the House of Black, though obviously members of vassal Houses are not integrated into the Black Family Magic. If you require physical protection, the House of Black is obligated to provide that protection. If you are involved in a legal challenge, they provide representation. In the case of honor duels, you are entitled to name a member of the House of Black as your champion. They also provide financial support if needed, start-up capital for any business endeavors you might choose to pursue — though the Head of the House has to approve that, as they would for any member of the House — and education expenses, arrange apprenticeships and employment contracts, conduct business deals on your behalf with other Noble Houses, and represent your interests in the Wizengamot."

Over the course of her recitation, Dr. Granger's eyes narrowed into a suspicious frown. "I assume this relationship would not be so heavily weighted in our favor as you imply. What's the down-side?"

"Ah. Well. There are a couple of things that are a bit...foreign, compared to modern muggle law and convention. As a rule, members of a Noble House do not have personal property or personal wealth. You would keep most of your income as per your tithe agreement, but as far as Magical Britain would be concerned any properties you own in the muggle world would become properties of the House of Black in Magical Britain. Which would mean that Lyra was well within her rights to place wards around your house, and if the reporters refused to respect the order to get out of your bloody garden the House of Black would be able to take much stronger, more immediate measures against them. They wouldn't be able to do anything to or with your property without your permission, but you equally wouldn't be allowed to sell it to anyone outside the House of Black and its vassals without the permission of the Head of House.

"Thank you, Julian," she added, glancing at the slip of parchment he had handed her, and the coordinates written upon it. They seemed to be reasonable enough. She assumed the delay was due to his checking them thoroughly. Apparating based on an abstract understanding of where exactly your destination was, as with the coordinate system, was difficult. All the more-so if you were envisioning the wrong point on the theoretical grid overlying the country. It was, however, much faster than (and therefore preferable to) any other method of travel at their disposal. He slipped back out with a nod, probably to continue listening at the door. He really was incorrigible, but it was as good a way for him to learn as any, she supposed.

"Noble Houses and their members," she continued, considering how best to wrap up her explanation, "including, in this case, members of vassal Houses, have more rights and privileges in Magical Britain than individuals with no House affiliation and Houses unaffiliated with the nobility. Their representatives also make up the overwhelming majority of the legislative and judicial aspects of our government. Individual members of Noble Houses, however, have far less autonomy and fewer individual rights than individuals in the United Kingdom, or unaffiliated mages, or members of most Common Houses, depending on the specifics of their House Laws. Individual members of the House of Black do not have the right to make legally binding contracts without the approval of the Head of the House, for example. This runs the gamut from selling your house to arranging your daughter's marriage, and the degree of autonomy granted to individuals is dependent almost exclusively on the discretion of the Head of the House.

"Lyra is hardly likely to disapprove of anything you decide to do. Sirius almost equally so. Lyra's immediate predecessor, however, was not nearly so lenient. In the interests of full disclosure, I did leave the House of Black for exactly that reason. The rights and responsibilities of the Head of House and subordinate members of the House and vassal Houses are outlined specifically in the House Laws, of course, and vassal Houses may choose to leave or be disowned under certain circumstances, as can individuals, but... When mages refer to the Lord of a House, they mean it in a very feudal manner."

The muggle woman swallowed hard, had to clear her throat before she spoke. "That— I would need to discuss such a decision at length with my husband, and Hermione. We couldn't possibly—"

Andromeda smirked. "Such a contract would be a long-term solution, Dr. Granger. If nothing else, you'd want to look over the House Law first, and we hardly have the time to write a proper agreement today. I can, however, extend the offer, in writing, signed by the Acting Head of the House and back-dated well before your house was warded. If we don't come to an official agreement by the date we specify, the offer becomes void. In the meanwhile, however, your family and your property fall into a sort of grey area, legally speaking. Technically, Lyra would have been overstepping her legal bounds by putting up those wards, but if it's understood that you're in the process of negotiating a vassalage agreement, it would be seen as...being a bit overzealous and premature, but not the sort of thing really worthy of prosecution, especially under muggle protection laws. And they would only have to be reversed if the vassalage offer fell through."

Dr. Granger relaxed considerably at that suggestion. "Right, so we stall, then. That I can certainly agree to."

"Excellent." She grinned, unlocking the box containing the blank contracts Lyra had signed back in January. "Give me five minutes, and then we can go evict the squatters in your garden." This was going to be fun.


"Hey, Meda," Lyra said, collapsing into one of her sister's visitors' chairs.

Meda startled, looking up from an ancient tome which was presumably fascinating, if she really hadn't noticed Lyra coming into her office. She had cracked the wards a while ago and exempted herself so they wouldn't ping when she came in, but just for practice, she hadn't really been trying to be sneaky.

"Lyra? I thought you— Why aren't you in California?"

"Well, because Zee's in California. Which means her house is empty right now. Which means this is pretty much the best time to strip out her old wards and implement the system I designed over Easter." She let her head fall back, closed her eyes.

She'd overestimated her ability to implement her design. (Again. Ciardha would never let her live it down, if he was alive in this timeline.) She had designed the system so that she could empower it in sections and rest for a day or so between them without the active parts destabilising and ruining everything, but the sections were just a little too complex to be comfortable to hold in her head all at once, just a little too extensive to activate without edging dangerously close to knocking herself out. Which was better than it could be, her first major solo project she actually had passed out in the middle of empowering the runes, collapsed the whole thing on top of herself and very nearly died (according to Ciardha, he might have been exaggerating). It was still kind of annoying, though, because she knew she'd considered this at some point, she distinctly remembered thinking that it wouldn't be a problem. Which, if she were as mad at the moment as she had been when she'd been writing the thing, it probably wouldn't be, but.

She'd quit early today, because overestimating her abilities when designing the system was one thing. Overestimating herself in the middle of setting it up, committing a fundamental error because she was too mentally overextended to see straight, and ruining the entire project would be much more embarrassing. And annoying. Especially since the old wards were gone, now, so she'd have to start over on the new ones.

"And I thought I should take a break before I go back."

"Go back?"

"Well, yes, obviously. I have a portal to Ancient House—"

"Of course you do," Meda muttered.

Lyra smirked at her. "Makes for a pretty easy commute. But anyway, I saw a very interesting article this morning in the Prophet. Yesterday's Prophet, it takes a while to get the news over there, even with portal post. Did you really offer a formal alliance to Emma Granger? Or is Harris making shite up again?"

"Ah. That."

That sounded...like a yes? Maybe? She dragged her eyes open to see Meda looking at her with a rather peculiar expression. Fuck it. "That wasn't an answer."

Her sister crossed her arms defensively, glared at her. "Well, you were the one who gave me permission to do whatever I needed to in your name to fix your messes. And I have to say, this one is a bit more complicated than just burning down a building no one cared about anyway. If I'd had more time, I might have been able to come up with something less...extreme, but the DLE already had cursebreakers on the scene. And I still had to sweet-talk Amelia Bones out of pressing charges, you know, even with the vassalage offer. Why didn't you tell me you warded a muggle property?"

Lyra shrugged. "Because it didn't seem that important at the time?"

"How could it not seem important, Lyra? I— This is a major violation of muggle protection statutes!"

"Do you really expect me to be able to answer that question?" Because that sounded suspiciously like one of those explain why you don't understand questions. "In my defense, though, people don't really take that sort of thing very seriously in my universe. And, how was I supposed to know that Maïa was going to start doing things like publicly humiliating the Chief Warlock, getting attention from everybody and their mum? I have to say, I was not expecting that."

Meda's lips twitched slightly. "Well, she does spend a considerable percentage of her time with you, as I understand it. You were bound to start rubbing off on her eventually."

"I think there's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to figure it out."

"What?"

"Nothing, I've been spending too much time with Siri and Blaise, that's all." Really, she'd had no idea how many unintentional innuendos and potential puns cropped up in everyday conversation until those two were in the same room. "So, I take it you did make a formal patronage offer, then?"

"Yes, I did." That peculiar expression was back.

Do you want a hint?

No, don't tell me, I'll figure it out!

Eris laughed at her, which Lyra ignored as best she could, trying to focus. Suspicion? No, that didn't make any sense... Wariness? Trepidation? One of those vaguely-nervous emotions? ...Maybe. Eris didn't say she was wrong, so she was probably close enough, but...why? Leaving aside the fact that it was kind of silly for Meda to care about her reaction — it wasn't like Lyra would hurt her — she had considered doing the same thing herself, and she had known what she was doing when she'd given Meda permission to act in her name.

"Oh, okay. Just checking."

"You're...okay with this. You know we can't rescind the offer, if they decide to take it, we — youwill have to follow through."

"Uh...yeah? How long did you give them to think it over?"

"Well, I didn't know if you'd be okay with this—"

"Why wouldn't I be okay with it? I mean, I was going to wait and make the offer when I get Emma to be our Wizengamot proxy, but—"

"Wait — what?"

"There's precedent." Lyra couldn't quite keep a straight face saying that. There was, though. Going all the way back to Salazar fucking Slytherin, actually. His father was a muggle, voted their seat for years. Granted, they hadn't really had a strong division between muggles and mages back then, and most Houses didn't have anything approaching a reliable history from that far back, so people couldn't be counted on to know about that, but there were more recent precedents, too. "Can you see the look on Lucy's face when he finds out? Or Bletchley?"

"Are you— You're serious about this? You're going to let a muggle vote the Black seat."

"Yep. Well, I'm going to convince Siri to do it — pretty sure if I do it as the Acting Head, people will start looking into my background more closely trying to find a way to get rid of me. But yes. She's great. Reminds me of Auntie Dorea, but more ruthless."

Meda's eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn't debate the comparison. Which, she had met her, so. "Does she know anything about the political situation she'd be stepping into? At all?"

"I've filled her in on some things. She's very Slytherin, she'll pick it up. How long did you say you gave her to decide?"

"Lammas. I wasn't sure you'd approve, and she seemed wary of the idea, so—"

"—so you gave her a short deadline so she wouldn't have time to decide and, being a generally reasonable person, would say no."

Smart, if the goal was to keep the Grangers from agreeing. But it wasn't.

Emma was going to vote their seat. (It had taken all of twenty minutes talking to Sirius to realise he had no interest in politics to speak of, Emma wouldn't turn down the chance to actually have some influence in her daughter's world, and Lyra really wanted to see what she would do with that influence.) Being a vassal of the House would give her some legitimacy, not to mention a degree of standing in Magical Britain beyond the Wizengamot chamber.

And if Maïa was planning on making a habit of pissing off the most powerful people in Britain, she was going to need powerful allies. Lyra was pretty sure that formalising that aspect of their relationship would be less awkward than if she just went around fighting duels and solving problems for her without some kind of agreed-upon reciprocation. She hadn't missed how weird Maïa could get when Lyra did things like buying books for her, or warding her parents' house, or pointing Tyche in Draco's direction after he hexed her on one of the rare occasions he managed to catch her alone. (She still didn't know how he'd thought she wouldn't find out about that. Granted, Maïa hadn't told her, but there were house elves everywhere, it hadn't been hard to figure out who'd sent her to Pomfrey with a nasty case of knee reversal.)

"Well, yes."

"Eh, fine, I'll talk to her, extend it to Samhain. Did you give her a copy of the relevant sections of the House Law?"

Andromeda rubbed at her temples, shaking her head as though she couldn't believe they were having this conversation. "Of course I did. And then she asked for the rest of it. Said something about needing to know how the laws could be changed, wanting the whole picture of how the House operates."

Lyra grinned. She would expect nothing else from a Granger, honestly. "Do we even have an English translation of the whole thing?" Because the one she'd had to memorise was in Welsh.

Meda gave her a very flat, unamused look. "No. I sent it out for translation, I'm going to have to courier it to her in France."

"You sent it out? Don't you know any translation spells?"

"Of course I do. What I don't have is a spare thirty hours to sit around transcribing it."

Well, that was fair, she supposed. Even if she could get through the actual translation in a reasonable amount of time, which, honestly, Lyra didn't actually know how long it took other people to run through something like that, it would still take a while to copy it out with real ink on real paper. Enchanted quills were much faster than writing by hand, but if she had to guess, she'd say that the whole thing — even just the most recent revision, not including the historical versions of sections that had been altered over the centuries — was over three-hundred feet long on standard parchment. Conjuring a copy, though, wouldn't take more than a couple of hours, maybe one more to check it and anchor the conjuration well enough to keep it stable for a few months.

"I'll do it, I have to go talk to her about extending the consideration period anyway." While she was at it, she could get Maïa's comments on her theory treatise. That was almost done, she just needed to know whether there were any points that didn't make sense from the perspective of someone who didn't really know anything about deep magic. "You can have your copy bound for the Library. I presume she told you where they're staying?"

Meda sighed, summoned a file from the shelf behind herself, copied the address onto a scrap of parchment for her. "You're impossible, you know that, right?"

Lyra gave her a rather sleepy grin. "Usually people say insane, but yes."

Her baby sister rolled her eyes. "That too."