Tommy is at the creature bar again.
She's been going there every week for nearly a month now, and Harriet is intrigued. Wary, but intrigued. It's rare for wixen or newly turned creatures to visit without a dozen aurors nowadays, and Tommy had never seemed very accepting of her creature peers during school. Things could be different for her now, though, so Harriet will at least listen.
"My brothers and sisters, it is time for revolution! Revolt against the system that has stripped you of your rights, your humanity, has crushed you under their boots, and make them pay!"
Pretty words, admittedly, but sloppily executed. Standing on a counter and telling a dozen wartorn people to do something that's already been done, that has resulted in too many deaths, is just plain stupid. And remarkably dissimilar to the Tommy that Harriet had known in Hogwarts. The wrinkles in her robes and poorly hidden redness near her eyes are even more out of place on the once-pristine witch.
Harriet could never resist a mystery, and whatever happened to make Tommy step off of her high horse and try chatting up the lowest of the low in the wixen world is the biggest mystery she's seen in years.
No matter what anyone might say, Harriet is not stalking Tommy. She's simply considering a new route in politics where the head of the government is someone other than an old white wizard who wipes his ass with gold-leaf toilet paper and doesn't understand what the word "no" means.
"People are dead. This week alone, three werewolves have been murdered, and not one of their killers is behind bars right now! The restrictions on vampires' blood banks have only multiplied, and there are bills being passed to prevent all dark creatures from voting, legalizing invasive tests to determine employees' creature status at their jobs, justifying the prevention of creature children from participating in sports, and our politicians are facing no consequences!"
She's gotten better at finding the more important bits of news and sharing them once she's gotten on top of the bar's counter, but she's still too passionate about her cause to speak clearly and follow whatever outline she has for her speeches. Harriet almost feels bad for thinking it, but Tommy needs to relax. Women in general are unlikely to be listened to, but a hysterical woman will never even be given the chance to be heard.
"This Saturday I'll be marching through Diagon Alley in remembrance of Lavander Brown, a valuable asset to our community. If anyone here has even the barest hint of morality, they will join me."
Their march is just a small group of werewolves and their friends following Tommy down and through Diagon Alley and its connected streets. And yet, wixen still come to throw minor hexes at the few people who came, even the children. Those that can legally do magic- very few creatures at this point, what with all of the extremist anti-creature legislation- cast the best shield charms they can, and when those fail, they try to heal those who are injured. Professors are able to get away with the casual discrimination that results in creatures barely learning anything, so finding a non-wixen who can cast properly is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Tommy, of course, casts a perfect shield over them and looks at Harriet with a brow raised.
Will you heal them?
It probably says a lot about them that after nearly a decade of not talking, or even looking at one another, they're still so attuned to each other.
Harriet ignores that and heals the boils that have sprouted across a little girl's arms, hugs her and whispers comforting words until she stops crying.
After their march is over, all it takes is one too-warm look from Tommy and then they're tumbling into a floo together.
It should probably change things, but it doesn't. Neither of them mentions what has started to happen, the exchanging of floo passwords and dismantling of glamours cast, or the exchanged notes and rants between meetings.
Tommy has seen the tattered flesh and jutting bones that piles itself up and calls itself Harriet and gently kissed what few bits of her skin are large enough to be kissed.
Harriet has seen the scars, thick and crisscrossed, and lightly rubbed healing salve and whispered promises of vengeance into them.
Tommy is a revolutionary. She has a rabid fan base that goes with her on her marches, stands on the Ministry steps with signs protesting the anti-creature legislation, screams themselves hoarse chanting creature rights are wixen rights in the streets, and listens to her well-spoken arguments with rapt attention and wide, ravenous eyes.
She also has Harriet.
An Eldritch horror come to life, a gaunt figure whose movements sound like nails on a chalkboard and whose shadow whispers of danger.
A beautiful, loving woman who proofreads Tommy's essays and soothes her back to sleep after nightmares.
Between her politics and Harriet, Harriet is the more precious. But Harriet doesn't make her choose; she challenges and supports Tommy, helps her dig through old newspapers and drafts of new bills after the Ministry has closed for the night.
If love is the pressure behind her ribs when they make eye contact during her speeches, the wave of rage that courses through her when she sees Harriet's beautiful, broken body adorned with new scars, the soft feeling of contentment in the morning when Harriet's smooth bones are wrapped around her like a blanket, then she is deeply and hopelessly in love with Harriet Potter.
She couldn't care less. She loves Harriet, and that is that.
Tommy is just barely voted into office, even with all of Harriet's efforts put into pressuring the Dark and Grey wixen into supporting her. Really, leaving out dark creatures as a sacrifice won't stop the Light lords in power from coming after all Dark wixen next, and too few people understand that.
She has a lovely speech, promises equality and freedom for everyone, lays out the basic plan she has for introducing and revising legislation, and afterwards takes Harriet to a quaint little bar and promises a beautiful ring and her entire life. Harriet pouts and grabs an equally beautiful ring from her pocket to promise eternity to Tommy.
Their love is not always soft, or kind, and often ends with piles of dead bodies, but it is love nonetheless. It is a country without oppression or discrimination, a place where justice prevails, a place where there is hope and joy, which are perhaps the most important things they could have.
It is enough.