Magic Knows No Boundaries: Crabbes for Dinner (Patreon)

Harry never understood the obsession with dressing for dinner. Sure, Muggles used to do so as recently as a half century ago, but not to the point of putting on their Sunday best. Especially since wearing your best clothes for a meal always risked ruining said clothes with a wine spill or the omnipresent splatter of spaghetti sauce, even when paradoxically eating mashed potatoes and steak.

The eternal paradox of "When the hell did I get spaghetti sauce on my shirt?!" seemed like much less of a concern for people with cleaning charms that could find and erase even the most obnoxious of mustard stains, so there was that.

And so, he left Garrick's shop that evening in the same green and black robes as before. They were the closest thing to dress clothes he had and would impress nobody, but he was at least presentable. Dumbledore might approve of a regular dress shirt and slacks with tie, but the Crabbes wouldn't. Besides, He knew Valentine would let them know to go easy on him as n outsider to pureblood society.

And so, when he flooed from the leaky cauldron to the Crabbe estate he was pleased to see a younger, and very much alive, Vincent waiting for him in tones down dress robes.

"Welcome to the Crabbe estate, Mister Morrigan." Vincent greeted. "I will take your coat if you have one and escort you to the living room, where your date is already waiting."

Seeing as it was August and hot as hell, they skipped hanging his fictional coat and Harry let the polite young man guide him through the familiar building. He'd only been there a few times, and it was nice to see it in such decent shape. When they reached the room it was to find everyone waiting for him.

"Morrigan! Welcome." Valentine greeted, standing up from where he sat beside his son and daughter in law. "And congratulations on your interview and purchase.

He approached for another handshake as everybody else stood at his arrival and approached in time to exchange handshakes of their own.

"Vincent Crabbe senior, at your service." The Death Eater greeted with a handshake of his own.

And he was a Death Eater. Harry could feel the taint of the dark mark on his wrist through his sixth sense, and a similar one on Mrs Crabbe who offered a white satin glove hand for him to kiss, which he did. The gloves went all the way up to her elbows and was strangely all the fashion with pureblood women these days. But aside from the mark she was lovely. A chubby woman, the kind who wound up shapely with all the padding inexplicably filling her cheeks into big, soft rosy smiles.

Positively adorable, that woman.

"I hope Bellatrix didn't burn through what few interesting conversation topics I have to share while waiting for me." harry said as the woman approached him.

Again, white satin gloves. It so didn't match the black dress, honey. But ladies gotta cover for each other, don't ya know?

"Of course not, Hadrian." Bellatrix said. "I only got here a few minutes ago. All I had to tell them was that you interviewed with Dumbledore and bought a house. I'm so looking forward to you sharing the details that you barely gave me earlier."

That was fair. He had been pretty sparce, only giving her the generals of what happened. Not necessarily the why.

"Well we have an entire meal with which to get those details." Valentine said. "If you would follow me into the dining room, we can get started on that."

The entourage of purebloods, plus Harry, entered the lavish dining hall and seated themselves around one end of the table. Vincent Senior took his seat at the head with his wife to the right and son to the left of him. Valentine sat on the seat next to his grandson and Harry next to him. Bellatrix sat directly across from Harry, leaving a seat empty between herself and Mrs Crabbe.

As soon as they sat down food appeared on their plate and bowl. A simple salad and what Harry recognized as cream of potato soup. Beside each bowl was a glass of white wine.

The philosophy of pureblood dining matched the traditional European philosophy of dining. Fill up on vegetables, savor the meat afterwards. Cherish the desert at the end.

Harry was at least cultured enough to know a salad fork and soup spoon amongst the cutlery on his placemat, so he dug in.

"I understand you interviewed for a Hogwarts professorship." Valentine began the conversation. "How do you intend to juggle that along with your duties as a head of house? Being on the board of governors and wizengomat are both full time jobs themselves."

"Simple." Said Harry. "I don't. I have no business dictating how Hogwarts should be run, seeing as I'm not even an alumni. Hence the professorship. A few years or decades of that and then maybe I can take it up. Same for the Wizengamot. I'm not Dumbledore, I can't juggle three full-time jobs and a war."

"Do you intend to leave those seats vacant?" Mrs Crabbe asked. "They've remained so for long enough, don't you think?"

Translation: You're leaving a lot of power and influence on the table.

It was a sensible observation. If he put all of his focus on balancing his seat on the Wizengamot and board of governors, he could make some serious changes. Be the feather that tilts the scales as it were. But in combination with all the other things he needed to focus on that would be too many things to juggle. He would only wind up doing each poorly.

"I plan to find proxies to take my place for both within the next year, but it will be a long time before I'm suited to do either. No, right now I need to establish myself through my own works. Whatever those works wind up being. I need to become laser focused on one or two things for now." He explained. "Besides, what's the rush? I can expect to live another century, my own capacity to get into dangerous situations notwithstanding. I can take up these other roles in five years or fifty years. I have a lot of life left to live before I'm ready to do so."

Valentine nodded with every word in approval of the wisdom in them.

"Is that why you sold off all of the Morrigan stocks and bonds? To relieve yourself of the extra work of managing so many accounts?" He asked.

"Partly. Also because all of those investments were made by people far more business savvy than me, but they did so a century ago. As such, most were very likely to be poor investments by now. But as with the wizengamot and board of governors I lack the knowledge and experience to judge them. Better to do away with all of them and use the funds they freed up for building a life for myself." Harry explained. "I can rebuild such investments at a later date. Once I start working, I can start putting money into stocks based on wise advice from a financial firm or mentor down the line."

Vincent senior stepped in.

"But what of the lump sum you just received from cashing out of the stock market?" He asked. "Why not just reinvest it using your seer abilities and drown in galleons?"

Bellatrix and Mrs Crabbe both snorted into their wine at that question.

"You mean beyond the fact that using divination for financial investments being illegal and easily tracked?" Harry asked rhetorically. "I'm not that kind of seer. I'm more of a personal seer. More postcognitive than precognitive. I can see and feel the histories of people and objects, rarely their futures. Current emotions and states too."

It wasn't lying when everything he said was technically true.

"Then what are you going to do with the sudden wealth you've found yourself with?" Mrs Goyle asked.

"Well, I bought a house." Harry said. "Can't exactly live in Ollivander's spare room forever. Besides, isn't it a requirement to participate in politics that I have to own property? Be invested in the land."

"That hasn't been the case since before I was your age." Valentine said. "Back then it was also a requirement to be married with children. The logic being that if you are both financially and genetically invested in making a better future, you will make choices they believe will ensure such. It did not always pan out that way."

Yeah, the assumption that a man or woman will actually love and cherish children and property they only created or developed out of duty was a patently incorrect one. Plenty of pureblood heirs and heiresses squandered the family wealth or took part in corruption for personal gain just to leave the children and spouses they hated with nothing but the ill-reputation the individuals responsible earned them.

"I think I want to bring that back." Harry declared after a moment of consideration. "Not by law, but as a personal standard. I think I'll wait until I've successfully raised and kept a family before getting into politics. Raise at least once child to adulthood. Should give me plenty of time to get established and build a reputation so everybody knows how to work with me. Plus seeing Hogwarts from the perspective of a parent as well as a teacher will make me all the more suited to taking my place on the board of governors."

"My goodness, mister Morrigan. You certainly do work fast." Bellatrix said in a teasing voice. "Here I was thinking we would at least date for a while, yet here you are skipping right over the courtship and marriage and going straight to putting children into me."

Harry had the good manners to blush almost as deeply as Vincent junior at the teasing and laughter it elicited. The unexpected foot rubbing against his leg, on the other hand, made him nearly jump out of his skin.

Down girl! This isn't the time for that sort of thing.

"At least you have a time frame in mind." Mrs Crabbe continued the teasing. "That gives you, what, seventeen years and nine months before you're ready for the full duties of your lordship?"

This time the joke seemed to be at Bellatrix' expense, based on the scorching glare she sent Mrs Goyle's way. It was the eldest present who came to the rescue.

"Ladies, we are at the dinner table. Let's not get into verboten topics." He asked with a placating hand gesture.

"Well, I mean. We've spent the entire time so far discussing politics and finances, so why not add sex and religion to complete the whole quarfecta of forbidden dinnertime discussion topics?" Harry said.

And with that zinger even Valentine broke from his usual stoicism to laugh.

After that the conversations sizzled down to more polite topics. They asked about his new home and he droned on about the work he had left to do on it and how he would have to spend the rest of the week repainting it and buying new furniture. Not to mention curtains, rugs, appliances and gah! They sympathized with him. His explanation for working for Ollivander, that he merely needed somebody to work the desk while he did some cutting edge research, was readily accepted. Though, the disappointment in learning that he was not, in fact, his apprentice and successor surprised everyone, especially Bella.

"I may be good at matching customers with wands and identifying issues with them, but making and caring for wands? Far beyond my ability and Garrick could tell that from the beginning. No, I really was just there for the busy summer." Harry explained.

From there Vincent junior was the chatterbox, talking his ear off about his experiences taking divination classes at Hogwarts and how he couldn't wait to have a competent teacher in the subject. The little worm was trying to weasel into his prospective teacher's good graces. Still, it was good to see the young man having a good time. not to mention alive and not reduced to ash by fiendfyre. That was nice too.