The Wizengamot had three purposes: forming government (by which they meant voting the Minister in or out and approving budgets), passing laws (which was obvious), and effectively being the judge and jury for crimes. The DMLEs Prosecution Service dealt with minor crimes and misdemeanours so only major crimes usually went before the Wizengamot (primarily use of the Unforgivables but also murder and violent assault in general).
There were fifty formal seats of which thirty had been held by the original Ancient and Noble Houses who had been part of the Wizard's Council although only twenty-two Ancient and Noble Houses remained sitting as eight had been sold on or given away after line extinction. Another thirteen seats were held by Order of Merlin First Class recipients, and five seats were held by the Minister, the Head of the DMLE, the Head of the DOM and two other Ministry appointees.
A formal seat was owned by a family and usually occupied by the Head of House or a named proxy. If a seat was empty because the Head of House was underage and there was no legal proxy named, the Chief Warlock, who presided over the Wizengamot and ensured it kept to protocol, had the authority to name one. That had happened in Harry's case and he was kind of disturbed that some unknown person was voting on laws in the name of his family without Harry knowing anything about it.
If a family line ended, the seat was 'returned to the floor.' All members of the Wizengamot could nominate a new family to take over the seat; the members voted on the nominations and the winner awarded the seat. Buying and selling seats had been made illegal as had using them to cover debts (the Weasleys had in the past lost their seat for that reason). As it was rare for the pureblooded original owners of the seats to nominate outside of their social circle, the only muggleborns who had seats had achieved entry as Order of Merlin recipients.
The third lesson had enlightened him to political agendas. Sirius had effectively created an animated drawing of a fictional Wizengamot of ten people debating a fictional law which wanted to make Dark chocolate the only chocolate available…
"See," Sirius said waving at the parchment where a rather disturbing caricature of Lucius Malfoy appeared, "Malfoy wants the law because he thinks Dark is the purest form of chocolate." An animated cartoon of Dumbledore appeared. "He opposes the law because he prefers White chocolate – light and full of milky goodness. And there's me; I oppose the law because I prefer Milk which is the best of both worlds and frankly the most popular kind." He pointed at Harry who was dismayed as a shy animated version of him waved from the parchment. "Those are our agendas: what's yours?"
"Milk," Harry replied immediately, "I don't like Dark chocolate because it's too bitter and white chocolate makes me feel sick. So I guess I oppose the law too."
The animation had then turned to political alliances. Since the animated Malfoy wanted the law to pass: he, Dumbledore and Sirius didn't; all of them needed to find others to help their point of view win. Sirius had added an animated Goyle and Nott: all were known Dark chocolate lovers and likely to side with Malfoy before he added an animated Bones and Longbottom; known White chocolate supporters, and Milk chocolate supporters, Greengrass and Abbott.
"Who wins now?" Sirius asked.
"Us," Harry said confidently, "there are more people who like other kinds of chocolate than Dark."
"Correct. If all the White and Milk chocolate supporters got together, they would defeat the Dark chocolate law by a vote of three for and seven against." Sirius agreed. "But the Dark chocolate people know this so they've amended the proposed law so Dark and Milk chocolate are OK but White chocolate will be outlawed."
"Well, that's not fair." Harry said.
"Why not?"
"Because it still discriminates against the people who like White chocolate."
"So, you're still opposed?"
Harry nodded.
"Excellent, so am I." Sirius agreed happily. "Now we have to convince Greengrass and Abbott."
Sirius had encouraged the animated Harry to talk with the animated Greengrass and Abbott with the result that Abbott bought his argument about equality; Greengrass didn't. The law was defeated but only just (six to four). It had almost been fun.
Almost.
It had also been hard work and Sirius had ended the lesson by indicating there was a lot more to alliances than simply agreeing on one particular issue. He'd pointed out that if animated Harry had offered animated Greengrass support for something Greengrass wanted, he might have convinced Greengrass too.
So, political lessons were sometimes fun, sometimes not, but always informative and even if Harry didn't want to know (he was so having a proxy for the rest of his life), Sirius was quite firm that he had to learn. Harry figured Hermione was going to love his journal. He hurriedly dragged his mind back to what he believed was going to be the latest lesson.
Actions and the action itself only telling part of the story.
"Let's look at one of your actions." Sirius declared cheerfully.
Harry grimaced. "Do we have to?"
"We have to," Sirius confirmed with a grin, "after all, you know all of the story about your own actions."
He guessed that made sense. "So what action are we looking at?"
Sirius looked at him thoughtfully. "How about your action in protecting the stone in your first year? What motivated you to protect it?"
He blinked at his godfather. "Because Voldemort would have gotten it otherwise."
Sirius hummed. "So you wanted to ensure he failed in his objective."
Harry shook his head. "I mean, yes, but more like…it wasn't so much me making sure he failed as much as it was about making sure I didn't fail to stop him."
"And why was that important to you?"
"Because…" Harry paused, unsure of his answer, and thought about it. "Well," he began again, "some of it was the Boy Who Lived stuff. I mean, I figured everyone expected me to stop him because I did before, you know? And I guess I kind of thought I had to because I was the one who'd stopped him before too. So that was part of it but I also wanted to stop him because of Mum and Dad, because he killed them and it wasn't right that he got to come back and they didn't. And because it was the right thing to do." He added. "Wasn't it? I knew he was going after the stone, I couldn't just let him get it."
"Yes, it was the right thing to do." Sirius said softly. "Although I would have preferred it if you hadn't risked your life." He poked Harry in the ankle. "But do you see how complicated your motivations were for protecting the stone? Multiple reasons and not all of them obvious or apparent."
Harry nodded.
"And the lesson is…" Sirius prompted.
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