20 October, 1893 — Dempsey Estate, Ireland

He'd stayed up late last night, for no reason whatsoever — nothing he could do at that point was going to make a bit of difference, and the polls had already closed hours before he'd finally retired — but slept fitfully and woke early (on relative terms, anyway; early for a man who had never had an occupation). He'd had the foresight to tell the servants to deliver a copy of the Prophet directly to his room, so that he didn't have to read it at the breakfast table and try to stay composed while everyone watched him. He had anticipated a finish somewhere in the middle; he'd been hoping for a competitive second; he'd been dreading finishing behind even Miss Whitledge. That would have been a devastating blow to his pride, and if it occurred he wanted ample time to compose himself before he faced the jeering of his siblings — or, possibly worse, the pity of his parents. He wasn't concerned that anyone would intrude on him before he went downstairs; they'd prefer to hone the points of their barbs and be better poised to pepper him with jibes when he arrived.

When he spotted the headline he was relieved — it had been close, and competitive, and that was probably a good thing for him — then he saw Dempsey and his stomach dropped. Of course he'd known this was a possibility, and he had been considering it more and more seriously as the campaign went on — particularly after Ross' endorsement — but he still had not actually expected to win.

Now he was worried about intrusion — he imagined Christabel storming through the floo in her dressing gown the way she'd done when the news of the endorsement had hit the papers. He grabbed for his wand to lock the door, but he didn't know where it had gotten to. Discarding the paper and scrambling out of his bed, he moved to turn the lock manually — but too late, because it burst open just as he reached it. He braced himself, then recognized his wife in the doorway.

"Oh, thank Merlin it's only you," he said, opening the door wide enough to reach out and grab her arm. "Come on, quick," he said, before tugging her inside and shutting and locking the door behind her.

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Thomasina Dempsey

  

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Thomasina had never actually expected this.

One of the servants had done her the favor of delivering a copy to her bedroom, and when she'd finally read it twice, she immediately went to her husband's bedroom and walked in without knocking. He was alone, thank Merlin — and he seemed just as relieved to see her as she was to see him.

"We've gone and done it now," Sina said. She'd talked him out of leaving the race — she could not solely blame him. And yet she was entirely unprepared for what came next. Thomasina locked the door behind her with a silent flick of her wand. She was very rarely at a loss for words — but today, this morning, she did not know what to say.

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   Ozymandias Dempsey

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"We certainly have," Oz agreed grimly. Sina's declaration just about summed it up, didn't it? They'd done it — for better or for worse. It was too late to back out. Not that backing out had been a serious option before now, anyway; Sina had forbid him and he'd gradually become too critical of his opponents to do it in good conscious — but still. The window was well and truly closed now.

"People will start congratulating me," he said, tone neutral. As soon as he left this room he was going to be met with congratulations, which would continue for weeks, probably — some more sincere than others, but still. He had never conceptualized how he would respond to someone congratulating him for winning the election.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

She stalked over to his bed and sat down at the end of it.

Sina sighed. "Are you happy?" she asked, and did not know the answer. Oz had won. He'd proven he was the best candidate — narrowly. And now the Minister would be his, and Sina — she would have to be something she had never been prepared for.

  

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set by MJ

Her words stopped him and he shot her a quizzical look. What sort of a question was that? He hadn't run for Minister of Magic because he'd thought winning would make him happy. He'd run initially mostly to prove he could — later, to prove his policies and ideas had merit — eventually, from a sense of obligation, that he would have been failing someone to drop out. Happiness did not factor.

"Will they ask me that?" he replied, as though Sina was helping him prepare for yet another debate instead of having a private conversation in his bedroom. This was the only avenue in which he could treat her question as a serious one, and it was too early for him to assume it was sarcasm. He picked up pacing again. "Humbled and honored, I suppose? That's a fitting quip for a headline."

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MJ is the light of my life <3

"You can be humbled and honored," Sina said. She sat down on the end of her husband's bed. "I want to know if you're happy." Overall, or with the election — she could not be sure. But she was sure that she would be miserable, with him being Minister, at least at first — one of them might as well be glad. (Still. She could not bring herself to say congratulations.)

  

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set by MJ

Oz let out a long breath. She knew him better than that, he thought. He'd been putting on facades during the campaign, acting the part of the dutiful prospective politician, but she would have been able to see straight through that. Except here she was asking if he was happy. Maybe acting had been his true calling, he thought cynically, because he had also convinced a significant portion of the wizarding community to vote for him. Quite the performer.

"It's partly your fault," he pointed out as he moved to the window and glowered out at the grounds. "I was going to drop out."

Not that it did either of them any good to point it out now. He let his eyes drift over the tops of the bushes in the garden and considered her question, chewing the edge of his thumb.

"It could be worse," he offered eventually. "For Britain, I mean. Wright would have sunk the economy. Maxime's an old guard blood purist."

Of course, talking about whether this was good or bad for Britain also didn't answer her question.

"We'll have to move," he muttered. "I can't entertain anyone important with my siblings in the house." He'd never had reservations about hosting her before, because the Dempsey interruptions just came with the estate in his mind, but the stakes would be higher now.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

"It's partly your fault," Sina snapped back at him. But Oz was right — they'd done this together, with the help of some friends and magical Britain. Goddamnit. "I'm glad it's not a pureblood," she admitted after a beat.

Sina flopped back onto his bed and was studying Ozymandias' ceiling when he commented on moving. She groaned, but could not really disagree — she had been adamantly against moving a few years ago, but did not want to have to run interference between Important People and Oz's siblings. She protested: "If we're moving, I get my own study."

  

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Oz made a noise of general consternation. "What use could you have for a study?" he said, but this was just needling her for the sake of it. Obviously she could have a study. It would have been conspicuous and inappropriate for them to purchase a small house, given affairs as they currently stood, but it would just be the pair of them living there. They could only have so many guest rooms. It probably would have been difficult not to give her a study of her own, when they were coming up with purposes for all the various rooms. (Coming up with purposes for each room before they moved in would be necessary, because if they didn't clearly state what the purpose of each room was, some well-meaning servant would decide to make one of them a nursery, just in case).

"We can delegate the hiring," he said, regarding the staff for the new house they would need. He assumed Thomasina wouldn't want to do it, or wouldn't have time — she had always said she didn't want to do society wife things. Maybe his mother would be interested in taking the reins on it, or maybe they could even leave the majority of it to the head butler or housekeeper here. They might not be coming with Oz and Sina (or they might — he hadn't thought this thought enough to have an opinion, but presumably his mother and father would), but there was no reason they couldn't take the opportunity to promote a few of the staff here into suitable positions at the new house, and find acceptable hires for the remaining posts.

Thinking about this was exhausting, and nerve-racking, and he hadn't even started thinking about the actual work of governing yet. Sina had collapsed back on the bed. Oz moved towards the foot of it and let himself fall down next to her, stomach towards the bed and one arm flung loosely across her chest. "The swearing in isn't until November," he mumbled into the sheets. "Maybe I'll stay here until then." Not here, Ireland, but here, collapsed in bed with his wife pinned down next to him. It sounded far more appealing than facing reality.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

They could delegate the hiring. That was a relief; Sina had managed to spend the last six years of their marriage avoiding running her own household, which had always suited her well. She'd thought of the parties and socializing that came with being the Minister's wife, but had not contemplated the household responsibilities. She would have to be open for callers, wouldn't she? It filled her with dread.

At least Oz had her stuck to the bed. Sina shuffled a few inches closer to him. "I wish we could hide," she admitted, a shy mumble. She liked being pinned here with him, their lives their own still for at least a few more minutes.

  

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set by MJ

Oz made a half-strangled noise of laughter into the sheets. "Don't be silly," he muttered. "Someone has to run the country." Hiding sounded appealing, if he were honest, but it was clearly a fantasy. There was no where they could go to avoid the inevitable. What would happen if he did disappear in the next week? Maybe Minister Ross would be forced to stay in office long enough to conduct a second election. Probably they would just hand the whole thing over to Jude Wright. Oz would never be able to show his face in England again, if that happened; society would never forgive him for having left them to the clutches of a Radical.

Still. Someone has to run the country, he'd said, and he was still having trouble conceptualizing that someone was him. Technically he'd had months to come around to the idea, but he hadn't begun to think of winning as a very serious possibility until the night of September 14th — and at his first true encounter with it, he'd nearly dropped out of the race. After that he'd been contenting himself with the idea that it was probably unlikely he would really win, but then nominations kept coming in and each one stacked the odds slightly more in his favor. Ross' nomination had been the nail in the coffin, probably — the push that had put him in first place ahead of a candidate like Crouch or Lupin.

"Let's Christmas in Paris," he suggested. "I think by the end of December a good week-long holiday will be in order."

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Someone had to run the country; even when she'd told him to stay in, even when she'd talked her friends into voting for him or having their husbands vote for him, Thomasina had not seriously expected that someone would be Ozymandias. Her inventor-husband on the national stage, and she'd talked him out of dropping out. She closed her eyes tight and wished they'd woken up to find a radical as Minister.

"I like the sound of Christmas in Paris," Sina said, keeping her eyes squeezed shut. "Just us, yes? No family or statesmen?" Really she meant no Locklyn Maccoinich, but she did not particularly want to holiday with her in-laws or politicians either.

  

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set by MJ

Oz smiled wryly and turned his head just a fraction towards her. "No family," he affirmed. Porphyria would be a bore in Paris, he expected. She'd find fault with all of their fashions and complain about the Frenchness of it all. Lycoris would be insufferable for other reasons; she would probably spend the whole holiday finding places to pose and wait for someone to come along and sweep her off her feet, and then Oz would have to contend with having a French brother-in-law if she succeeded. (A French brother-in-law was better than either Locke as a brother-in-law or a ghost as a brother-in-law, but still far from ideal in Oz's view). And obviously he couldn't take Endymion to the continent — if he'd managed to run afoul of more than one veela here in the Isles, just imagine the trouble he might get up to in a place that was actually meant to have them.

"We probably can't demand the French Minister vacate the capitol on our behalf," he teased. "So maybe one stateman." There wasn't any issue with him planning holidays now that he was Minister, was there? He hadn't asked Ross about that particular part of the job (and even now he wasn't sure how he would have brought it up — is all this work going to interfere with my time at the Italian spa?) He didn't know if being Minister came with certain days or times he simply couldn't miss work, but presumably so. Christmas ought to be alright, because he couldn't imagine the Wizengamot chose to work over Christmas, but would that be his last designated break for months?

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   Thomasina Dempsey

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MJ is the light of my life <3

"I'll allow one statesman," she said, "It'll give me an opportunity to use my French." Dinner with the French Minister, and then the rest of the time they could putter around the city and she could allow herself to be pampered — and maybe that would be enough to make up for the next two months. This was about Oz, she knew it was about Oz, and yet she could not alleviate her own overwhelm. Sina swallowed. She rolled onto her side under his arm, and tucked her chin onto Oz's shoulder.

"I do not think I will be very good at this," Sina admitted quietly.

  

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set by MJ

Thomasina did not think she would be very good at this. Oz leaned his forehead against hers and considered how to respond.

He could have said I don't think I will, either, but what good would it be to admit that here? It wouldn't change anything about their situation. The reassurances she could offer him were all things he could tell himself, at the end of the day. An alarmingly large portion of the wizarding community in the British Isles apparently disagreed. Minister Ross disagreed, and he was more qualified than most to have an opinion on the subject. He was intelligent, and he cared more than he let on, and he'd demonstrated in the debates that he had reasonable opinions on a number of important issues. He could tell himself all of those things, or she could; either way it wasn't going to change the feeling in the pit of his stomach. And anyway, the window for vulnerability had closed. He'd tried to tell her on the night of the fourteenth, and she had stubbornly believed in him all the same.

He could have pointed out that there was a difference between being good at things and enjoying them. Sina was not going to enjoy this, he knew, because she had never liked society things and had never aspired to be the center of society. She didn't want to host dinner parties or plan balls, and she detested making small talk. But she would still be good at it, because she was not the sort of person who allowed themselves to be bad at anything they did. She was a good healer not because she came from a family of healers, but because she couldn't possible have given less than her full effort to anything she did, and her full effort was double over what most people were capable of. But saying any of that was too earnest for them — even at a moment like this, where there was no one to overhear.

He could have said he was sorry.

What he said instead was, "No one's expecting you to be any good at it. It's you, after all."

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   Thomasina Dempsey

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina smiled, slowly and conspiratorially, her mouth just a few inches from his with their foreheads stuck together. "It's not as if I'd have to do it for very long," she said, "They'll surely be rid of you once they realize every rake in Britain is coming in so that you'll appoint him to something." This was better, than saying things that bordered on earnest - and if they got into a big enough argument, they would surely manage to chase everyone else off for another hour.

  

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set by MJ