A/N: Thank you so much for your reviews, favorites and follows after last chapter! Huge thanks to lanamarymack and Angela 007 for alpha/beta reading this chapter - they are such a huge help to me! You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions.
Please let me know what you thought of chapter thirty-two and be on the lookout for chapter thirty-three soon!
In the days after Dumbledore's attempted attack on her, Tom hadn't been willing to let Hermione out of his sight. Honestly, Hermione didn't blame him. She had no desire to be far from Tom either, especially not when she knew that the protective enchantments he'd put on her ring were the only thing that had stopped Dumbledore.
She just couldn't believe that the other wizard would be willing to attempt something so publicly, but she eventually decided that he must have thought he could get his charm off without anyone noticing. It was only because he'd been thwarted by the protections that what he'd tried to do was so obvious to others. She was glad that Edgar Bones had been standing next to her, otherwise she was sure she could have been convinced that it was all some imaginary interaction.
Really, it was unbelievable that a wizard of Dumbledore's character would make such an error in judgment. She didn't know him well and all her interactions with him so far had been strained, frustrating and confusing. He always insisted that she should know something that she didn't. Even though she didn't want to admit it, conversations with him always made her feel as if something...some hidden knowledge...was just tantalizingly out of reach.
However unfortunate the current predicament that Hermione and Tom found themselves in, it gave them a nice chance to reconnect as a couple. They never had a chance to take a honeymoon, as the campaign had taken precedence, so it was nice to spend some quality time with one another. They also spent a bit of time preparing the baby's room, now that she was nearing her third trimester. Hermione had decorated the room in pretty creams and felt like it was going to be perfect when they welcomed their little princess in a few months.
They also took the time to argue over getting a House Elf. Apparently the Lestranges wanted to gift them an Elf that would act as a nanny to the baby and generally help Hermione during the first year after the birth. Hermione did not care for House Elves, finding their forced servitude to be unpleasant, no matter how much people tried to argue that it was in their nature to enjoy the work. Tom seemed to think it would be a horrible affront to refuse such a generous gift, though, so it seemed they would be welcoming one anyway.
Tom could not stay by her side forever though. Eventually he had to go back to the campaign, taking this person and that to lunches, all arranged by Abraxas of course. He did, however, forbid her from leaving the house without taking one of the Knights with her. She didn't love the idea of a babysitter and so she spent most of her time holed up in the library of their home, reading this or that.
While she didn't like the idea of being forbidden from leaving her home, she wasn't entirely thrilled to go out into the open again. Dumbledore had made it clear that he could get to her if he really wanted to and while she was nearing her last trimester, she didn't fancy being accosted by him a second time.
But, even though she wasn't going to hunt Dumbledore down, she couldn't shake his words out of her head, when he talked about the kind of legislation that Tom would pass with someone like Abraxas Malfoy behind him. The earnest way he'd begged her not to be naive gave her pause. If Tom and Abraxas hadn't already been so secretive about what they were up to, she would have thought that it was merely a tactic to drive a wedge between her and her husband, but now...
She called in a favor with Philip to gather some of the bills that Abraxas had pushed forward since joining the Wizengamot. It was not easy to get the full text of the bills, as so much Wizengamot business was held behind locked doors, but her friend had gotten it for her all the same. When Tom went out for the day, she would spend her time pouring over the intricacies of the laws that he put forward, knowing that it was what he would be trying to convince Tom of, too.
What she found horrified her, to be honest.
Page after page of anti-muggleborn rhetoric, suggesting that muggleborns stole magic, that they were leading to the ruin of society, that they needed an unreasonable level of support. It turned her stomach to know that this was how he really felt about people like her. Sure, she knew that she and Abraxas had never seen eye to eye, but she didn't know that he just hated her outright because of who her parents happened to be.
She was so enthralled with the disgusting details of what Abraxas wanted to do that she didn't even hear Tom reentering the library.
"What's captured your attention so thoroughly, darling?" he asked, coming to sit in the wingback chair across from where she was splayed out on the settee.
Immediately, she sat up, eyes narrowed at him. "Oh, just reading about all the anti-muggleborn laws that Malfoy has failed to pass," she said with a sneer.
Tom immediately stiffened in his seat. "How did you get that?" he asked, his voice still.
"Please, Tom," she said, haughtily. "You think that you are the only one with connections? The only one who knows just how to press to get what they want?"
"I suppose there is no point in hiding it from you," he said, his eyes dropping to his lap.
"Please tell me that you aren't honestly entertaining this, Tom," she said, disdain dripping on every word, wondering how he could be so stupid to not read the room. None of Malfoy's legislation had been passed because it was far too extreme for the wizarding world. Not to mention, the majority were not pureblood! Why would they support something that so blatantly attacked them?
"Malfoy's faction is gaining power and I need their support," he said, squaring his shoulders up for a fight.
Hermione felt her stomach drop. "How can you support this?" she demanded, wondering just what sort of wizard she had married. "You are a half-blood, Tom!"
"Exactly! Just look at what interactions with muggles did to my mother," he said. "I would do anything to erase the stain of my father's filth from me. Worthless, vain, cruel - he didn't deserve to breathe the same air as a witch."
"But then, you wouldn't exist," Hermione said, not following his train of thought. "And I'm muggleborn. Am I so worthless to you, too, that you would have my kind eradicated from your perfect little world."
"Well, I'm not even sure that I believe you are a muggleborn. If you'd only tell me who your parents are, I'm sure that I'd find a connection to a wizarding family, like my own connection to Salazar Slytherin!" he argued.
"Stop!" she said, frowning. "I'm not related to some pureblood family. I am muggleborn. And I refuse to be ashamed of it. Tell me, why do mistrust muggleborns so much anyway? All we want to do is be who we are. Which is witches and wizards."
"You've read Abraxas's reasoning," he answered. "They're been a great...diluting force on wizarding culture over the years, while certain groups try to make them feel more welcome amongst us, when we are the true magical beings."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Please don't tell me that you agree with the bit about muggleborns stealing people's magic," she asked, thinking that she might really doubt his intelligence if he did.
"Of course not. That's an old wive's tale to scare people like Malfoy," he said. He stood from the chair abruptly before pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace.
"So, your plan is to just cut off the wizarding world from the muggle world, then?" she asked, with a snort.
"It would be a good start," he insisted.
"Don't be ridiculous Tom. Don't you realize that this means that I never would have joined the wizarding world. You never would have joined the wizarding world for Godric's sake!" she said, hating how nearsighted he was being about this situation. "Do you wish that I wasn't here?"
"Of course not, but you get wizarding culture. You've embraced it, unlike so many others," he said, coming to kneel down in front of her. "You've opened your mind to all the possibilities that magic hold, something that so many muggleborns won't do because of some kind of muggle mortality."
"The only reason I've been able to embrace it is because you've welcomed me into your little microcosm. I never would have been able to discover this kind of magic without an invitation in," she said, gently pressing a hand to his shoulder. She could understand his kind of thinking here. It was upsetting to know that so many of the traditional rituals had been relegated to some sort of secret dangerous thing that no one could talk about it. "Why don't you just start there? Why don't you reform education? Overturn the laws that ban the practicing of the traditional rituals again? I'm sure that's something a lot of people could get behind."
"It doesn't feel like enough," he said. "How long will it be before the feelings of muggleborns are put ahead of purebloods again?"
"Not everyone has to practice magic the way that you do, Tom," she said, with a frown.
"Don't you hate the way that you didn't know about magic until you were eleven?" she asked him, gently. "I think you could even find support to bring muggleborns into our world earlier. Teach them while they are young and many will see the benefits of traditional wizarding culture. They will respect a government that educates them instead of leaving them in the dark for over a decade without answers."
It seemed as if she was swaying him for a moment. She could see the tumult in his dark blue eyes. She had to get him to see reason. Hermione pressed her hands to his shoulders, wanting him to feel connected to her, to their child.
"I don't know about that," he said quietly.
"You can't just cut off muggleborns, Tom. It's dangerous. Imagine the toll of dozens of muggleborns, never learning how to create their magic. Eventually it will be a problem...rear its ugly head and expose our world to the muggles," she begged him to understand. "There will always be more muggleborns. You can't stop them from being born."
He still seemed conflicted, like he was actually considering her words.
"And you can't just use the Hogwarts rolls to kill muggleborns, like Abraxas is salivating over. No one is ever going to accept an administration that does something as horrible as killing babies," she said, choking on her own words. "Except for horrible people like Malfoy."
"What would you have me do?" he asked.
"Try for more moderate policies that don't involve shutting my kind out of our world," she insisted, not understanding why it was such a big ask for him. "Because if you go with Abraxas's approach, you are going to come up short, Tom. It's unelectable behavior."
"I can't turn my back on my first supporters," he said, weakly. "We won't kill any children, but...I can't say no to re-examining how muggleborns are let into our world, even if that means halting accepting more muggleborns until we have a better grasp on things."
She shook her head sadly and stood up, leaving her husband on his knees. "Then you will lose, Tom," she said, sadly. "But don't worry, I won't say 'I-told-you-so' when it happens." She left him alone in the library, wondering how she was supposed to reconcile this with the wizard that she loved. She didn't want to be thought of as one of the good muggleborns and she certainly didn't want to raise her daughter in a world that hated the witch her mother was, simply because of the circumstances of her birth.
Frustrated, she vowed not to give up on Tom so quickly. He was stubborn, but mostly he was ambitious. If he really wanted power, surely he could be made to see that amassing a broad coalition was the quickest path to success.