Chapter 11: The House of Brown
"If there's two things you should have learned about Harry at this point, it's that he protects the people that he cares about, and he doesn't care at all what you think about him doing so. I mean, the snobby British pureblood elite decided to make him marry seven wives with three goals in mind. First, they wanted to piss him off. Second, they wanted all the muggleborns to be disgusted by this and leave the magical world. Third, they couldn't imagine that he would settle for anything less than seven English pureblood princesses, as they would have done if they were in his situation. Taking seven purebloods for himself meant that all the important families with sons his age would have been furious. Harry said, 'piss off,' I'll take ten wives and I don't give a shit about your standards.
"Look at them up to this point. I was the typical pureblood princess, but he took me to essentially save the Ancient and Noble House of Greengrass from destroying itself. Tracey was a half-blood descendant of the disgraced House of Wenlock who was dead set on being an auror and not a homemaker. Susan Bones was acceptable in a sense, being of proper English stock from an impressive line, but she was still a half-blood and he saved her a lifetime of misery with the McLaggens. Katie is the half-Scottish daughter of a squib who loves flying and hates anything serious. Padma is of Indian descent and flaunts her intelligence instead of embracing the role of the meek housewife. Pansy was 'un-pure' and responsible for taking one strongly dark Ancient and Noble House and turning it to the light, and ending the Goyle line altogether, which held a Wizengamot seat. He clearly saved her from a horrible fate as well. Morag was an uppity Scottish pureblood who wasn't content to host little soirees. Megan was a Welsh half-blood. Gabrielle was a French veela. We certainly did not meet expectations.
"Here's another story which I think illustrates it perfectly. To keep track of everything that was going on financially, politically, and socially, Harry hired three separate assistants to work under Narcissa, who managed the combined calendar. For the financial assistant position, he hired Fay Dunbar.
"Fay was one of three muggleborns in our year to survive the war. None in the two years ahead of us or in the two years behind us did. Fay had family in America and fled there, Justin Finch-Fletchley comes from a wealthy family who hid in Switzerland, and Hermione Granger spent the whole year with Harry fighting. Dean Thomas survived as well, but he took a blood test at Gringott's and found out that he is actually a half-blood.
"Now, the goblins don't care about blood status, they just care about intelligence and respect and they liked working with Fay. They tried to poach her more than once, but she stayed on until she accepted a position with the Department of Tax & Finance at the Ministry. She would later become the head of the Department, then the first muggleborn Undersecretary to the Minister in history.
"For the political assistant, he hired Sarah Fawcett, she was from a light aligned minor pureblood house. She made the proper connections and ended up marrying into the House of Belby, her sister Audrey married Percy Weasley, and we all worked together to get the House of Fawcett a seat on the Wizengamot when there was an available opening.
"For the social assistant, he went down the whole saving people route again. Harry had dated Cho Chang during his fifth year, but it didn't go anywhere. Her mother was a Scottish muggleborn that her father met when he was the Chinese Ambassador. They fell in love and decided to stay here and raise their daughter in Britain. Early in the second blood war, Cho's mother was killed and her father decided to flee the country. Cho refused to go with him. He left anyway and disowned her to boot.
"Even with everything stacked against her, Cho, the daughter of a Scottish muggleborn and a foreigner, stayed and fought for the light. When the dust settled the light had won, but Cho still had no family. She was adopted into ours in a way, and after ten years of being his social assistant, Harry gave her the money she needed to open a restaurant in Godric's Hollow. She named it Eternal Glory. Harry's Tri-Wizard Trophy is on display there and there are photos of the tournament everywhere. Fleur, Harry, and Viktor Krum joined Amos and Cecilia Diggory at the grand opening. It was a beautiful gesture. She's married now and has a family of her own. I honestly don't know what happened to her father.
"So with those examples in mind it should come as no surprise at all that when there was a witch to be saved, Harry was going to do everything he could to save her.
"The House of Brown was one of twelve families to resurrect a House that didn't already have a Wizengamot seat. So when Wendell Brown claimed the House of Hammond, it was renamed the House of Brown. Wendell lost his son and daughter-in-law during the war and wife years before that, leaving only his granddaughter Lavender.
"At Hogwarts, Lavender was big on fashion, makeup, shopping, and all kinds of very girly things. She and her best friend Parvati, Padma's sister, could always tell you about the latest gossip at Hogwarts and, through their devotion to Teen Witch Weekly, the rest of the wizarding world as well. I wouldn't call it surprising when I found out that Lavender was among the group of students who followed Harry's lead in training for the war, but I did think it was a bit out of character for her.
"During her seventh year, she fell in love with Seamus Finnigan, a half-blood Irish wizard who managed to find a way to blow up just about everything. They looked like they were well on their way to being married, and then two things happened.
"Lavender fought at Hogwarts as well as anybody. She's quite powerful when she's emotional, but she was on the wrong end of a vicious attack from a werewolf named Fenrir Greyback. Greyback was known for turning more wizards than any other werewolf in Britain, for attacking children, and for attacking when he wasn't transformed. The attack on Lavender was one of those times where he wasn't transformed. It still led to some long term side effects for Lavender, she prefers her meat rare, she gets moody and angry when the full moon was near, and she has permanent scarring on her neck, shoulders, and back, but she isn't actually a werewolf.
"That didn't stop Seamus, but his mother did. The extinct House of O'Bannon returned in the form of the House of Finnigan and Moira Finnigan was determined to see it rise in prestige and influence. Seamus didn't care about the politics so he made his mother his regent, which put her in charge of the House. She was then able to, quite legally, remove every bit of funds from the Finnigan and O'Bannon accounts at Gringott's and put it in her own personal account and use it to control Seamus's life.
"Family rules can be adopted in one of two ways. First, all of age members of the house can hold a vote on a proposed rule and the majority rules, meaning only a majority vote in the future can overturn it. The second option is for the head of the family to make a unilateral decision that must be followed unless it is overturned later by the person with the Head of House title. Well Moira invited Seamus to a family meeting that he didn't attend because he didn't care and she decreed that male family members were only allowed to marry a pureblood witch in good standing who received at least six NEWTs or five NEWTs and a mastery, who would be able and willing to give birth to a minimum of two sons, and who wasn't marked by any dark creature. That last bit was aimed explicitly at Lavender, and since there were only two members of the House of Finnigan, Seamus could never overturn the rule, even though he took the regency away from his mother.
"Seamus was devastated and eventually, in front of his mother's face, made an unbreakable vow to never have any children so that the House of Finnigan would die with him. He hasn't spoken to her since. Harry gave him a business loan that he used to buy The Hog's Head in Hogsmeade when Aberforth Dumbledore retired. Seamus tore it to the ground and built it back up into a proper pub called The Centaur's Gaze which tailors to a much wider, and less shady, audience.
"Lavender on the other hand, spiralled into a terrible depression. Everybody had been telling her that the attack by Greyback and the side effects meant nothing to them, but it cost her the man she loved and she was in the process of giving up. Parvati tried and tried to hire Lavender to work at her boutique, but the offer was rejected every time.
"Lavender was basically doing nothing with her life. She saw friends occasionally, but didn't have a job, didn't have a passion, and didn't have any source of happiness. In late 2005, Wendell came down with the Dragon Pox. He was old enough that there really wasn't any coming back. But he couldn't leave his granddaughter in that state, so he reached out to Parvati and asked for her help.
"Parvati approached Padma and I and practically begged us to let Harry take on Lavender as a consort when her grandfather died. We had known about the troubles and agreed to sit down with her, Wendell, and Harry and see what we could work out. Even though he had probably only seen her a dozen times in the past eight years, Harry said he would try, but he had one single condition. So he sat down with Lavender one on one over dinner at her grandfather's home and told her what was being offered. She was so confused and so happy.
"He looked her right in the eyes and said, 'Lavender, there are a massive number of people out there who care about you, and I can make them all line up in front of you if you want, but it won't matter if you refuse to see it. My godson is the son of a werewolf. My brother-in-law was marked in the same manner as you by the same werewolf as you and he has three beautiful kids. The only thing I want to do is for us to wait until my godson comes of age to have any children, because I want Teddy to be their godfather. If you can agree to that single term, I'll do my best to make you as happy as you can be.'
"Lavender accepted. Her grandfather passed the next summer, and soon enough she became Lavender Danielle Brown, Consort to Lord Peverell. Lavender has still not regained the confidence to be seen in public that she used to have. She became a fashion designer and worked exclusively for Madam Malkin until she retired. Now she sells her ideas solely to my daughters, but Gabrielle's mother is trying desperately to get her to sell to a shop in Paris or to get my daughters to open a second location there.
"Obviously you have both met Rylie Piper, she works for Cho as the Assistant Manager at Eternal Glory for now, but whenever she's ready she plans to open her own restaurant in Axminster Square to cater to the lunch crowd there, she wants to call in Emeralds. Her brother, Landon Edward, is the youngest of all of Harry's children. He graduated from Hogwarts last year and has been working at the Werewolf Liaison Office in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He says that his goal is to be the last employee in the office before they shut it down for good."