Tom trudges inside, drops his little backpack at his feet as he passes by Harry on the couch, and then goes head-first into the wriggly pile of snakes on the living room carpet where he is then absorbed.

"Tough day?" Harry asks, having sat upright a bit too straight, trying to look like he didn't spend his time running around another continent.

Sure, World War 2 technically starts in four more years but that doesn't mean Mussolini isn't messing with Ethiopia and Harry is all for screwing that guy over. Then he heard about an earthquake in Pakistan and, well, the kids were going to come home late anyway…

Tom emerges from the snakes, lounging in his make-shift bean bag, and sighs heavily. "Gellert won't shut up."

Harry makes a sympathetic commiserating noise as he unpacks Tom's bag with a wave of his hand – lunchbox floating towards the kitchen, jacket hanging itself up on a hook in the hallway, the rest flying up to Tom's room.

Tom pauses a moment. "Have you gotten better at wandless magic?"

"I don't know, have I?" Harry wonders. "Maybe it's because people keep taking my wands." And yeah, lifting entire buildings off of trapped people without a wand really sucks.

Tom has nothing to say to that because it's not like he's giving the wand back anytime soon.

Gellert flings open the front door dramatically, hurls his bag across the room (which Harry catches and starts unpacking like Tom's) and plants his hands on his hips.

"I'm all ears," Harry announces, shifting so he's facing directly towards Gellert.

Tom groans because he heard all of this on the Knight Bus over.

"You know," Gellert begins with a huff. "One would think that the most difficult issue with my ethics application, is that the project is not at all ethical."

"Is it just taking too long to get through?" Harry asks.

"It's not going through!" Gellert cries turning to pace around. "It's going nowhere! I submitted it three months ago, it got lost in the sports department -to make no mention of why it was even there in the first place- and then they asked me to resubmit, only to come back three weeks later and say the form changed and I needed to fill out the paperwork again!"

"How ridiculous," Harry says but he's smiling because Gellert is very cute when he's huffy.

"And then it took another month for the committee to even look it over because they work one day a bloody week, and the Merlin forsaken industrial building specialist just so happened to be the woman I may or may not have cut out of a very large deal, so she denied it!"

Gellert whirls around, incredulous. "She's my competitor! Of course she said no! She doesn't even need to give a reason, I can't protest it, and now I need to resubmit the application - but it can only go through the same panel of judges, so she'll just say no again!"

"Is that allowed?" Harry asks, brows furrowing. "The committee changes depending on the subject, right? So can't you say there's a bias and ask for new people since they get changed around anyway?"

"That would be too logical," Gellert denies. "We can't have that. Morgana forbid we have any logic, or competency."

Tom lazily raises his arms. "Preach it, brother."

Gellert turns on Tom next. "You'll be doing this exact same song and dance for your trader's permit. So either you're going to be having a lot of fun in two months, or help me purge the-"

"No," Harry says.

"Fire," Gellert corrects. "All the idiots … and we'll probably also have to pick out replacements, and put in a new conflict of interest work around for the committee members." He sighs just thinking about it.

"Or I can get it done through back channels," Tom muses, petting a nearby snake that headbutts his arm.

"Blackmail runs out and I'm not paying people to be idiots through bribes," Gellert complains. "I'm not having that kind of corrupt scum -unless I put them there- in my ministry."

"My ministry," Tom corrects.

They lock eyes.

"Our ministry?" Harry tries. "And there is something to be said for fixing the problem at the root. It's not like you're only doing this once, you'll need the ethics committee for a lot more. And once you have a plan to set things in order, you can apply that to other departments."

Tom runs a hand down his face. "I'm not fixing a whole department just to get one little signature on some falsified paperwork."

Gellert is also starting to lose steam.

"You can make new contacts, and get favours," Harry offers. Theoretically, if the boys already have a ministry perfectly adjusted to them when they get older, they're much more likely to take the reigns instead of going full Dark Lord.

Neither of the boys look particularly interested.

"No park visits for four weeks," Harry begins.

"Six weeks," Tom says immediately.

"Five," Harry allows.

"Seven."

Harry blinks a few times. "What? Excuse me, is that how negotiation works?"

"That's how my negotiation works," Tom admits.

Harry throws his arms up. "Six weeks with no mandatory park visits."

Tom rolls out of his snakes and pats Harry on the shoulder. "I feel like you should know; Gellert and I already decided to do something about it, but we also felt we could get something out of you as well so we put on a scene."

Harry sits back, pretending to be shocked. He already knows; Death found them on the Knight Bus and then told Harry what the plan was. (The boys were late today, and Harry gets worried sometimes so he maybe uses literal death as a nanny.)

And besides, it's not like the boys to just let an insult slip off them. They'd want revenge for getting slapped around, even if the slapping was with paperwork, and even if that does mean they waste more time and effort shuffling around a whole department.

"Alright," Harry admits carelessly. "You win."

"We'll help with dinner," Gellert offers, snapping back into his cute, charming smile.

"Pasta!" Tom announces and races Gellert to the kitchen.

Harry gets there first because he cheats with magic.