The Prince fortune was significant. Maybe not economy defining like the Malfoy fortune. But Selene Prince, having gained access to her vault key from Prince manor and submitting to a lineage matching artifact of the goblins (once she made sure she understood their precautions against keeping a sample of her blood), could trivially afford the not-quite formal but highly fashionable robes she wore. Each side matched her split hair color of whiter than platinum blonde and darker than raven black, only they animated whether she moved or not and physical pieces of cloth would attempt to overcome the otherside to wrap around her only to be immediately overtaken by the other.
Her mom and dad escorted her through the Ministry of Magic's lobby. She told them not to wear their most formal attire, and Luna in her wondrous foresight agreed. Hence, her mother and the man she called 'dad', wore clothes that seemed to state they were going to deliver a lecture on the creatures they discovered in their expeditions.
The little girl walked up to reception. "I'm here for today's meeting of the Wizengamot."
The wizard behind the desk, scoffed. "The members already know the way and it's not through the public lobby." Then he looked up. He realized the two people he could see had not spoken. He lifted himself out of his chair and looked over his desk to view the little girl that had said she was showing up to the government. He frowned and walked around his desk. Kneeling next to the girl, he asked her, "Excuse me young miss, but do you know what could happen if any of the wards refuse to let you take a seat? I mean, legally - and for your parents too. Not just what the wards will do to you?"
Selene displayed the Prince signet ring. "I am here to take my family's seat. The world has been without our counsel for far too long."
The man raised an eyebrow and took a breath. He drew his wand but Selene outdrew him. She tapped her wand to the ring. The man nodded. "That is truly impressive, particularly at your age if your were passing a forgery. May I still, milady?"
Selene considered, and he was right to suspect a forgery after two generations of absence. She held out the hand with her fingers curled and her wand ready if he tried to take the jewelry and she had to snatch her hand back. But he merely tapped it and came to the same conclusion she would demand he have.
"Alright, milady. This way. However, Miss Lovegood and Mr. Scarmander won't be able to follow us all the way to this private session."
Her dad looked puzzled. Selene simply informed, "You're an accomplished explorer and descended from the accomplished explorer. Mom was part of the Silver Trio. Of course a political employee facing the public would know exactly who you two are.
"Unless you were surprised you could not come with me. That's only because the wards would do something between and including kill you to drive you insane for attempting to break into the Wizengamot during a private session."
Luna warned her again. "Perhaps you could wait for summer before taking your seat?"
"Why?", Selene asked. "Did you see me dying?"
"Not yet."
Selene nodded. "Good, good. I hadn't either. And our agreement is a good sign."
The man led them to one of the lifts. Selene grabbed the guard rail with both hands as the adults reached upward for their hand holds; magical transport never had considered inertia or gravity. They managed to remain standing through the roundabout path to the Wizengamot dungeons, despite the lift working through the traffic of paper airplanes and other lifts. The man put out an arm to keep her mom and dad from stepping out of the lift. Selene did not have to stoop to stride over the threshold to the outer chambers.
At least she was still breathing. And now where to go?
She spotted a tall man stomping forward in dragonhide boots and teaching robes flowing behind him, headed in one direction in quite a hurry. She called out, "Professor Longbottom!"
The man turned to her. "Ms. Lov...Prince?"
Selene drew herself to her full height, as if that could possibly matter. "Please, lead the way Lord Longbottom."
He looked confused for a second. "You mean to take a seat."
"My seat.", she replied.
"Do you know/"
"Yes, thank you very much for the warning."
Neville shrugged and took off. Selene nearly had to jog to keep pace with his stride. He passed across the threshold to the actual Wizengamot chamber and quickly turned, hoping he could provide whatever medical help the child would need. He knew her mother, had served along side her in the war...for a piece of it anyway, until she was taken. But the child strode past him and to the older seats of the Wizengamot.
Heads turned at the newcomer. Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebot, preparing to serve as Chief Warlock remained quiet. One person decided to intervene before the less moral counterparts did.
"Ms. Lovegood/"
"That's the Lady Prince, Lord Potter!" the girl snapped back. She found the Prince chair under the cover of several decades of dust that was only disturbed by the use of the seats around it. She sat down.
"No, don't!", he cried out. A few others smiled...but not for long.
Selene Prince was still alive enough to lift out of her seat and then crawl into it to stand a bit higher. "I wish our acquaintance had not started with an insult, Lord Potter."
Harry frowned. "I can very well assure you that calling a person by their mother's name isn't an insult."
"It is when you use it simply to cast shade and aspersions on the Prince family's place in society.", she replied. "Lord Potter."
The man visibly repressed the urge to huff. "I did not/"
"And I suggest Lord Potter, for the sake of all involved, that the very next words from your mouth is the Potter family's acknowledgement of our retaking our seat!", the little girl yelled across the room.
Draco leaned over to his sister-in-law in the Greengrass seat. "If only my predecessors had known what fun half-bloods would bring to the chamber."
"After all, you've spent your political career claiming to want to improve the wizarding world and your professional career only catching the criminals that threaten it. Not one piece of legislation or policy proposed by your Lordship.
"Allow me to help you out with that. Do you value the people? Then you should want to expand voting to as many as possible. And while it will take serious work to convince our fellows to a world in which our mothers would have just as much of a right to sit in our places, you can simply acknowledge my right to sit in mine.", Selene stated.
"Well? Lord Potter.", the little girl glared at the Boy-Who-Lived with a contempt that brought him back to his childhood days.
The man huffed. "Welcome to the Wizengamot, Lady Prince."
"Thank you, Lord Potter." And when the chamber thought the day's entertainment over, "Do any of the other Lords and Ladies have an issue they want to address with me?"
Draco's jaw dropped. Neville bowed his head into his hands and Hannah reached down over her podium to pat him. Daphne Greengrass could not help the giggle that escaped. "I'm sorry, milady. You're just as arrogant as Draco was at your age except competent enough to do something with it. It is adorable. The Greengrasses offer our formal apology in public."
"No need, Lady Greengrass.", Selene replied. "I can accept being adorable."
Mr. Shaklebot shuffled his papers uneccessarily. Again. "Are we set to start, Lords & Ladies?"
Selene touched her wand to a particular rune on the podium in front of the Prince seat.
"The Chief Warlock recognizes House Prince."
"Chief Warlock - I am making a point by stating the obvious fact that there is not a Weasely present despite their line having occupations in the Ministry as well as more of them being represented among the Trios.", Selene started.
"And what point would that be, milday?"
"That we have a nation run by family council and this chamber has made it a point of policy, let alone protocol, to not have its families represented. Lovegood. Scarmander. Shacklebot. These seats also sit empty. Why? Because look at the lack of seats for those contributing to our society!
"The great Harry Potter forced to have his influence through House Black because there isn't a seat for even the Potter name? No seat waiting for a Lupin. There's not even a seat waiting for a Dumbledore."
"The Dumbledore line is dead.", Theodore cried out.
Before even the gavel fell, Selene was out her seat and yelling back. "Like the Princes?"
After Shacklebot banged the gavel, his reprimand became "Lady Prince. I suggest you return to the seat you feel is of such import."
"My apologies Chief Warlock." The little girl sat back down.
"My point is that this chamber has done all it can to lock itself off from the populace it claims to represent. And considering the Lestranges, Blacks, Averies, Crouches, and Malfoys that have sat in this chamber/"
"House Malfoy demands/"
"Your father served as you-know-who's money man, repeatedly, while warming that chair. Your mother became his den mother in the meanwhiles. It took you to put someone with the slightest modicum of sense that our government should be something besides a psychocracy in that chair. So what do you demand?"
Draco's eyes narrowed. He sat back down. "Explanation. House Malfoy accepts what has been offered."
"Thank you for your graciousness, Lord Malfoy.", Selene replied. "Chief Warlock?"
"Time compensated as the floor is returned to House Prince."
"I have brought a Scarmander and a Lovegood here that can't make it past the wards. It took me months of diving through security records, blank spots in the books due to the war, and even employment scrolls before I bet that I could through simple doubt that I could exist to be barred.
"This is a shame, lords and ladies. The Ministry was regularly able to be corrupted because so very few counterbalancing viewpoints of the actual electorate were represented in it. While the few remaining members were calling it "agile" and "effective" there were laws passed to place muggleborns in Azkaban for stealing wands from wizards, followed by zero oversight on the people who sentenced them on the sole evidence that they had a wand.
"Now I know we're not going to see eye to eye on this until a very many teas are held where we can build trust. And I do mean teas; balls are a bit past my curfew you understand."
The most famous auror in the country stood up after touching his wand to his podium. "The Chief Warlock recognizes House Black."
"That sentiment is all fine, well, and good."
Selene tried to turn in her seat, but found herself standing in it again. "That sentiment is democracy. So does your Lordship believe that its a concept too complex for wizards and that only muggles can manage or that only some people in society are pure enough to hold position?"
The man frowned. "House Potter concedes its time."
Selene pointed at an empty spot. "Then help me put your wife in that chair, your son in yours and have this chamber accept Potter for Potter. It's the path forward."
"This is the Wizengamot.", Shaklebot declared while banging his gavel. "Not passing notes in the back of class."
"I tend to sit in the front, Chief Warlock."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Apologies."
"The Chief Warlock recognizes house Nott."
"Thank you Chief Warlock Shacklebot.", Theodore accepted. "Now, on the subject of taxing the muggle parents of muggleborn that take up state services such as but not including Hogwarts attendanc/