"Not so much," replied Harry. "In 1936, then King Edward the Eighth was offered the concept of marrying Missus Wallis Simpson in a Morganatic Marriage. Even after Edward abdicated and he married the woman, by royal decree she was styled 'Her Grace', for the title Duchess of Windsor, rather than 'Her Royal Highness', as was her true right. That was Morganaticism at its finest."
Still frowning in annoyance, Wendell pressed, "And this is allowed in the wizarding world?"
"It is," he nodded. "If I remember my readings right, it was brought in when the numbers of Ancient Houses began to alarmingly fall due to the wizarding wars in the late 1700s. They were dying out. Since they've never really recovered, each time the concept has been raised within the Wizengamot to be struck from the books, the motion loses. Contrarily, it's even been expanded upon to not just include the Noble Houses, but any House of Elder House and up."
"You're not considering taken on a concubine, are you?" he pressed.
"It's not something I'm aiming for, no," he honestly replied. "However, I might just find myself... 'press-ganged' into it. I'm young, fit, head a Noble and Most Ancient House, head one of the major Alliances, my family does not have a history of fathering squibs and, to top it off, I'm considered a hero of the wizarding world.
"I think, very soon, the Alliance is going to be pressuring me into taking on at least one concubine. And it's likely to be Daphne Greengrass, or her sister, or both.
"However, if it happens as I think it will, I'll make damned sure the Concubine Bond Agreement has easy escape clauses for both parties, just as mine and Hermione's does.
"I'll argue that the witches concerned will have sufficient protection just from the agreement and need nothing more. Which will be true. That will give both girls ample time to seek out suitable suitors, or Samuel... Lord Greengrass... enough time to organise a better deal for the both of them. I'm willing to protect them; I'm not willing to father children on them."
Wendell, still closed off, muttered, "I don't like it."
Harry immediately agreed, "You're not alone in that view."
XXXX
Walden MacNair was not a happy customer. It had taken him more than a week to find where the mudblood Granger lived.
He'd first had to purchase all the necessary ingredients to create a scrying potion to track down the location of the Potter brat. Then, when he'd tried it, it didn't work.
After checking all his preparations he realised he'd done nothing wrong. That meant the boy had anti-scrying wards up. That was not really a surprise.
Next, he again brewed the scrying potion and spent considerable effort in acquiring something of the mudblood, Granger, to attempt to scry her. To make sure she wasn't currently out visiting someone at the time he tried to scry for her, he waited until the very early hours of the morning.
Thankfully, it worked.
He had managed to locate her in a muggle suburb that looked, to his pureblood senses, to be quite the affluent neighbourhood.
Now, he could have just directly approached the house. However, he did not manage to attain the rank of Master Executioner for the Ministry by being an idiot.
He spent quite some time staking the place out under both an invisibility cloak and disillusionment charm, while 'camped' on the front lawn of the house across the road.
Carefully, he cast detection charms towards the house, expecting to find none, but was shocked to find that the house was quite well warded.
He detected anti-apparation, anti-portkey, anti-fire, magical signature-based, intent-based, anti-(underaged-)magic detection, various and multiple alert and even DMLE-only wards. Other than the DMLE-only and a couple of the alert wards, the rest all appeared to be fed from a ward keystone. If he was to attempt it, those would take time to be brought down. However, there was another ward, obviously tied to a well-hidden ward keystone, that made his dark mark ache when he first approached it. That told him it was a dark mark detection ward, or something similar.
But, those weren't his only problems he knew about. He had also seen aurors, who were obviously some form of protection detail, coming and going at odd times. And, his monitoring of their movements, showed him there was always at least three on the property at all times; sometimes, more.
However, he had another problem of which he was unaware. An Unspeakable was standing not too far behind him, watching him, even through the invisibility cloak and Notice-Me-Not charm he had upon himself.
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