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lavanya_sixThese aren't whole chapters anymore but just bits and pieces. The fic had died at this point.
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"I think it's ridiculous," said the passerby, mindful of the microphone jabbed under their face. "If the government can't do anything about it, I know who I'm voting for next time."
Guy Leopold brought the bulky microphone back to his chest. "There you have it," he said to the camera. "Reporting live from Redan Lane, Lon—"
" -- SIRIUS! -- "
He shouldn't have turned his head. Hecklers were something every reporter had to deal with at some point, and nuts on the street could foul up anyone's broadcast. But this time, the sheer violence Guy heard in that cry demanded his attention. His cameraman, perhaps acting under the same instinct, tilted the viewer to the street.
It was picture perfect, what Guy saw. Two grown men, dressed a tad oddly to be fair, facing off against one another in the middle of sleepy Redan Lane. The body language of both men screamed violence. It was a like a duel in an old western.
"LILY AND JAMES, SIRIUS!" bellowed the oddly dressed, mousy little man. "HOW COULD YOU?!" Almost faster than Guy could blink, the squat man raised his arms before him and cut off one of his fingers. Before Guy could really process that scene, there was...
...light...
...heat...
...PAIN...
...and then, for Guy Leopold, there was nothing ever again.
..........................................
BRITAIN REMEMBERS: A SPECIAL BBC NEWS EVENT
Broadcast 1/11/1991 (transcript)
Moderator: Our next speaker, Detective Jonah Daniels of the Metropolitan Police Service, was an eyewitness to the aftermath of the Redan Lane Massacre. Daniels, then a patrol officer, was one of the few that escaped the memory modification sweep.
Jonah: It was chaos. At first we – myself and my partner Tommy Swales, that is – we thought a gas main had exploded. The street was cracked open, exposing a sewer pipe. There was debris strewn everywhere -- blood and fire too. I remember there was this business man, about my age then, rolled over on his side. His legs were missing. In the middle of all this carnage was Sirius Black -- I didn't know that then -- laughing like a madman.
Jonah: The first ambulances were arriving when these strange men and women showed up, dressed in night gowns. Tommy and I thought they were nutters. Then one of them walked up to us, asked us if we were in charge.
Moderator: Cornelius Fudge, the lead Ministry of Magic official on the scene.
Jonah: (nods) He asked me why we had gotten there so quickly. I informed Mister Fudge that some of the staff at the dispatcher's office had watched the explosion live on the Beeb. Once I explained what the Beeb was, Mister Fudge pointed his wand in my face.
Moderator: That's when he brainwashed you?
Jonah: That's right.
Moderator: And then?
Jonah: I went back to working the scene, only there was no talk of that laughing man or the other little man who kept shouting about how Black had betrayed Lily and James Potter. We were all befuddled when the trucks filled with soldiers arrived, let me tell you. I started to wonder if this had been an IRA bombing. I didn't believe it when they first told me about the mind-wipes, but then I saw them replay the footage on the Beeb. It was horrible -- I didn't remember, but I knew they'd done something to me. A lot of us, the officers at Reden, it felt like we'd been violated. I had trouble sleeping, and since they put all of us that were affected in the hospital the only thing I could do was watch the news reports on the war.
Moderator: When did you recover you missing memories?
Jonah: December 5th. The Yard had to bring in more men in night gowns to set me right. Even after they fixed me, my memories are more... they don't seem real. It's like somethin' I read in a book. It didn't happen to me, but it did.
..........................................
(a transcript of Margaret Thatcher's handwritten "Notice of Intent" from the Public Record Office)
'Sir',
On the afternoon of November 1st Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom witnessed an act of cruel and malicious violence against her citizens. This act, which left twelve dead and many more seriously injured, is only the latest in a string of unprovoked attacks upon free British citizens by members of the Magical Community in recent months. The Ministry of Magic, in response, has blocked all efforts by Her Majesty's Government to establish a fair and equitable investigation into the Redan Lane Massacre.
In view of these wanton acts of unprovoked aggression committed in flagrant violation of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, to which both the Ministry of Magic of Britain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are parties, I must inform you, as the duly appointed head of the Ministry of Magic, in the name of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom that a state of war exists between our two countries.
I have the honour to be, with high consideration,
Sir,
Your obedient servant,
Margaret H. Thatcher
(handwritten note in the margin, unsigned: I'd thought you above plagiarizing Churchill.)
(below, written in Thatcher's hand: I only steal from the best.)
..........................................
Much as the Germany people grabbed hold of the legend of Der Dolchstoß after their nation's defeat in the First World War and their subsequent humiliation at Versailles, the Wizarding Community in the United Kingdom and elsewhere found comfort in the ideology of the Bagmanist. Coined after the Minister of Magic at the time, Ludo Bagman, many 'Proud' wizards and witches felt the Ministry of Magic had unduly folded in the face of an easy victory over people who couldn't even use magic.
Opinion on the true root-cause of Bagman's surrender varied amongst the Wizarding Community. Amos Diggory, who served as Undersecretary in the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures until 1998, wrote in his collaboration A History of the Magical Peoples of Albion that:
"...wariness tarred every soul, and the prospect of another war so soon after the climax of the last seemed a burden too impossible to bear. On the evening of the Fourth of November, I was walking between two meetings booked atop one another only to happen upon... [an] acquaintance of mine, an Auror of no little reputation in battle, openly weeping in the hallway. This Auror confessed to me... several of their trainees had fallen to Muggle force-of-arms in a small skirmish before they'd had chance even to draw their wands. This shocked me, for even the Death Eaters had not dueled so disrespectfully." [11] [12]
This accusation, that Technologists fight unfairly and without honor, was bandied about in the Interwar Era. Critics, both within the Wizarding Community and without, counterattacked that 'Proud' wizards and witches were overlooking many of the sins of the Death Eaters, such as torture, mind-control, rape, and extrajudicial executions of those that were considered 'undesirable' under the racist Blood Classification System (BCS). [13] Other, such as Griselda Marchbanks, founder of the Society for the Preservation of Our Heritage, or as it was more commonly known, the Heritage Society, placed the onus on Minister Bagman's decision to not fight for legal independence on the behalf of the British Wizarding Community. While the Heritage Society did represent several legitimate Wizarding concerns in the Interwar Era, most notably on the Apparation Licensure Debate that dominated the 1987 General Election, it was often subject to accusations of racism and sapientism. The Heritage Society, for instance, never officially abolished internal use of the BCS, as shown on internal membership files recovered after the Society's suspension in 1997. [14]
However the most common complaint launched against Bagman and his fellow appeasers was the notion that the Wizarding World would have won an open war against the Muggles. As the Heritage Society's last director, Dolores Jane Umbridge, stated to a closed meeting of the Executive Board during the height of the 1995 Azkaban Crisis:
"The day is fast approaching, Minerva, when all of us will see the truth. You can choose, as poor Albus did, to side with the half-breeds and Muggles. Or you can side with the Light. We... are the superior race." [15]
As with Der Dolchstoß, such divisive opinions were only to be silenced by a second war; the Spectre War, or, as the British Wizarding Community prefers to name it, the Second Wizard-Muggle War.
-From Between the Wars, McGraw-Hill, 2016
[11] The identity of this unnamed Auror has been the subject of much debate. While eyewitness accounts are varied, the Ministry of Magic's record-keeping, spotty in the best of circumstances, provides no Auror duty-roster for 4 November 1981.
[12] Amos Diggory's son, Cedric, once noted in a 1994 Guardian interview that his father had instructed him at a young age that, "Gentleman never fire the first curse, but they always fire the last."
[13] For an in-depth history and analysis of the Blood Classification System, I recommend Martin Gilbert's perennial classic Human Blood & British Magic.
[14] Primary categories included the Pureblood/Half-Blood/Muggleborn trifecta, as well as subdivisions of discerning any possible Non-Human Sapient ancestry in a candidate's ancestry going back seven generations. A special section on each file noted who the applying candidate was married to (specifically, their BCS status) and, if they possessed siblings or children, who they were married to (and their BCS status).
[15] Which is more than a bit rich, considering Umbridge's paternal grandmother was a lily-white Muggleborn American who emigrated from the South Carolina in 1896 due her family's property being confiscated by a fanatically racist town sheriff in the aftermath of the Plessy v. Ferguson court decision.
* * * *
No one, save perhaps those of the Baby Boomer generation, could have presaged the social upheaval of the Interwar Era in Britain's Wizarding Community. In hindsight, the turmoil of the early 1990s should have predicable. While witches and wizards were portrayed, not inaccurately, as eccentrics, hippies, and comparatively liberal on matters of gender and sexuality, there was and still is a deep undercurrent of reactionary conservatism among the Ruling Class even aside from the much-publicized Blood Classification System.
To put matters into perspective, consider the faculty of the crypto-fascist Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Of the sixteen faculty members in 1980, eleven were Pureblood, four were Half-Blood, and one was a non-corporeal sapient (i.e. a 'ghost'). Aside from the rotating Defense Against the Dark Arts chair, legendary for its sometimes macabre turnover, no Muggleborn had been on staff since 1952. No Muggleborn had held the title of Headmaster since Janus Abott (1819 - 1829).
Of the three non-human sapients on staff, two held strictly essential but ultimately powerless positions. Rubeus Hagrid -- a former half-giant student at Hogwarts expelled in 1943 under dubious circumstance with no chance to appeal and no due process -- was dependent entirely on the goodwill of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore for his livelihood, despite possessing an extraordinary knowledge of Magical Creatures and Beings. The true tragedy of the crypto-racist ideology underpinning Hogwarts -- and indeed all of the pre-Unmasking Wizarding 'World' -- was best embodied, however, in staff member Argus Flich.
Branded with the title of 'squib' by the society that birthed him, Flich lived a Second Class existence in perpetual service to an institution dedicated to uplifting the minds of the worthy, i.e. those that could perform magic. Flich, while officially employed as castle Caretaker, instead served as the sole contact many Hogwarts students had with squibs. Exploited by his employers, Hogwart's hidden curriculum taught impressionable witches and wizards that squibs like Argus Flich were worthy only of disrespect and mockery.
So-called 'Muggles' were no better off. Indeed, while Hogwarts created a permanent Muggle Studies class in 1939, it was never made compulsory until 1982. Yet even with the many necessary revisions made to the school's curriculum, Prime Minister Thatcher still represented an inherently corrupt counterrevolutionary system; the racism and anti-sapientism laced throughout pre-Unmasking Muggles Studies was replaced by capitalistic, anti-individualist propaganda designed to make Hogwarts students good worker bees that would labor tirelessly and quietly on behalf of their new corporate overlords.
With this in mind, it is clear that even so-called 'liberal' academic institution like the former Hogwarts School were, in truth, bastions of reactionary conservatism that talked a good game of liberté, égalité, fraternité but were in reality poisoning the minds of the next generation with half-truths and doublethink so as to perpetuate the racist aristocracy their Pre-Unmasking society was based upon.
What Thatcher, Bagman, and Dumbledore all overlooked as they blazed their Third Way was that history is an inevitable, unstoppable struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor, and just as the failed revolutionaries of 1968 advanced themselves and their chosen causes through higher education, so too would Generation-W find the means to free themselves from the shackles of centuries old system of control. To paraphrase a famous World War One era song: How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down at Hogwarts? (After They've Seen Cambridgeee).
-- excerpted from Hogwarts: A People's History, Harper Perennial, 2005
* * * *
"You're late."
Remus bowed his head slightly, acknowledging the point. "My apologies, gentlemen. I had to take care of a sudden, unexpected family matter."
"It's quite all right," said Albus Dumbledore. "Family is important. Nothing too desperate, I hope?"
"No, no."
"If we're finished with the niceties," Rufus Scrimgeour muttered, "might I ask if you secured the basilisk venom?" After Lupin fetched the small steel vial from his pocket, Scrimgeour grinned. "Excellent."
"Indeed," said Albus, hefting the Sword of Gryffindor. "Now, gentlemen, let us deal with Tom's Horcruxes once and for all."
7 February, 1982
Malfoy Manor, Main Library
They'd lost three men alone attempting to un-shelve books at Grimmauld Place, and half a dozen more putting down the bastard Elf that had sicced that hellhole's collection of antique knives on them. After that, the Home Office decided it was best if they worked alongside Wizard police -- Aurors, they called them.
"It's clean," said Mad-Eye, passing the journal back to the CSI. "Still, it's odd that Malfoy would keep a Muggle book, especially in this particular cabinet. Tag it."
"Are you sure, sir? It's blank, even."
Moody's scarred lips quirked. "Constant Vigilance, lad."
22 April, 1984
LOCATION CLASSIFIED, Lab Suite #2
Hello?
The technician startled.
My name is Tom Riddle.
The technician stared down at the name scrawled across the page by some unseen hand. "Jesus Christ," she whispered.
Hello? Sally, are you still there?
5 November, 1985
MI-13 Headquarters, London
"We bring in Albus Dumbledore."
"How can you trust him, sir?"
"I don't. I'd have to be brain damaged to trust that bastard. But Project Alexandria is too much for us to handle on our own. We tried every logical containment procedure and that thing still brainwashed three of our agents. If it weren't for the tertiary CCTV camera system we had hidden throughout the facility, these poor bastards would have waltzed past security with it. Do you have any idea what that diary would have done had it gotten out into the wild?"
"No, sir."
"Neither do I. But it still scares the shit out of me. That thing survived a Class-4 sterilization procedure without as much as the edges of its pages singed -- and you saw what was left of everything and everyone else in that facility."
"We did found a few charred teeth, sir."
"Your men have tried everything from thermite to blasting hexes to a damn exorcism. Short of leaving it at ground zero of a nuclear explosion, or launching it into the Sun, I don't see how we can destroy it. This is unacceptable. The diary must be destroyed. We can't secure or contain it. If we just weighted it down and dumped it into the Marianas Trench, who's to say if it won't float on back up? Or teleport itself into the hands of some Dark Russian wizard?"
"Goddamn it, sir. I hate magic."
"So do I. Now get me Albus Dumbledore."
* * *
"An underwear model turned spy." Remus shook his head in utter dismay. "Madness."
"I'm inclined to agree," said Scrimgeour. "Gilderoy Lockhart is a fop, and he's guilty of at least five counts of using Unforgiveables – all Obliviate, fair enough, but that's cause for the Muggles to lock him up for a half century in New Azkaban."
Remus added, "I'd sooner believe him capable of teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts than spying!"
The representative from MI-13 shrugged. "What do you want me to tell you, Minister? Lockhart is only as good an asset as the amount of blackmail we hold over him.
* * * *
Scrimgeour scowled as he processed this new information. "Confound it, Albus. If only the Prime Minister had listened to me about slapping the Guardian with a D-Notice, we might have avoided this mess. Muggles! They find an immortal man so bloody fascinating without thinking about the implications of immortality."
"The day is not entirely without good news. With the centaurs' generous cooperation, we now possess all the necessary materials. Our preparations for the counter-spell will be complete before the Summer solstice."
"Headmaster, are you sure we have no other recourse?"
"Alas, nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse," Dumbledore quoted. "The Stone requires an opposing equal in order to be made undone, thus the Stone is a vital component of its own destruction. If we were to move it now, our preparations would be disrupted and we would have to wait for the next year's solstice to be rid of it."
* * * *
4
LOOKING FORWARDS, LOOKING BACKWARDS
.
Severus Snape despised the start of the school year. Like most teachers, he preferred order and routine in his life. The first few weeks of any school year were a hectic mix of new class schedules, new papers to grade, and, most of all, new students. While upperclassmen dispensed with all pretense of dignity in a pathetic scramble to secure a last-minute place in his NEWT-level Potions classes -- and thus a high-paying job in an increasingly lucrative profession -- Severus loathed his newest students most of all.
The firsties were ignorant of how to comport themselves as witches and wizards, the Muggleborns especially. Pampered, spoiled brats, the firsties. Once he could have counted on the Pureblooded among them possessing at least the basics of a work ethic, beaten into them by their high-price private tutors. Now, with even the richest Pureblood heirs and heiress required by law to attend Muggle-run schools during their formative years, Severus couldn't even count on them. Children, in his opinion, were treated far too softly, and the brats bleated about unfairness when real effort -- which they were perfectly capable of -- was expected of them. As if brewing a potion incorrectly was an error on par with incorrectly added sums! Snape had never known a misplaced addition sign had never killed any child.
"Abbott, Hannah!" "Hufflepuff!"
"Vasyl, Bogolyubov!"
Severus' ear perked at the odd name. Another refugee, hopefully this one actually spoke English -- no, he mused, that would be entirely too much to hope for.
Ever since the Durmstrang Institute had been burned to the ground in the anti-magic pogroms that had swept through the Warsaw Bloc, refugee children had flooded the likes of Beauxbatons, Hogwarts, and even North American schools like the Salem Institute. Between the immigrants and the charity cases that the British Muggle government hoisted on Hogwarts, the ranks of this year's class alone had swollen to over fifty students. Hardly more than Severus expected with the wartime childbirth lull still affecting Hogwarts, but a grim omen for when the post-war baby boom started arriving over the next few years. His heart shuddered at the thought of having classes again with over a hundred students per year, many of them immigrants with deplorable English speaking, reading, and writing skills. The essay grading alone! Severus did take some small comfort that, unlike Filius or Minvera, he didn't have to sit in a classroom with small children flailing their wands and badly mispronouncing spells through their noses.
"Ravenclaw!" announced the Hat. Young Vasyl hopped off the chair and hurried to the Ravenclaw table. Severus noted that Prefect Krum was waiting for the boy, greeting him with a warm smile and a slap on the back.
"Bones, Susan!" "Slytherin!"
Amelia Bones' niece wearing green and silver? Severus fought to keep himself from grinning with schadenfreude; best not ruin his first impression on them by letting the sprogs think him to be some sort of amiable, easy-going professor.
At the front of the line, a dark-haired girl now stood alone. Her body language radiated confusion and embarrassment. When she glanced around, desperate for any form of guidance, Draco realized he recognized her as the girl from the train, the one who had been looking for a toad. Pansy Ferguson, hadn't it been?
"Um," she croaked, "I-I'm next, but..."
"I see," said the old professor. "Just wait until your first name is called, Ms. Ferguson." Professor McGonagall spared a final pitying glance at the shivering Pansy before continuing on with the list.
..........................................
[Shot of a comfortable flat, decorated in somewhat dated mid-Noughties styling. Seated on a sofa are two women. The dark-haired woman on the left is dressed blue jeans and a blouse. The redhead on the left is dressed in traditional Wizarding robes.]
[Caption: Pansy Ferguson, Slytherin 1991-1998]
[Caption: Susan Bones, Slytherin 1991-1998]
PF: It was the worst moment of my life. The very worst. Even now -- oooo -- I get a pain in my stomach just thinking about it.
SB: Professor McGonagall didn't handle the situation very well. Neither did the Headmaster, Merlin rest his soul.
PF: She just left me standing there!
SB: They said it was a miscommunication, but that enrolment list is checked years -- years! -- ahead of time. There was no need to humiliate Pansy like that.
Int: You think it was intentional?
PF: Does it matter?
Int: So your parents hadn't told you were adopted?
PF: They had! They neglected to mention the little fact that my biological parents were war criminals. I... damn. They n-never figured that... excuse m--.
[Cut in footage.]
Int: Did your House assignment come as a surprise?
SB: Yes. I remember thinking "but I'm a good girl, why am being put with all the Death Eaters?" Hooo. I thought my family was going to disown me! Heh. And they eventually did, though not because of the snake pinned to my breast.
--Excerpted from Hogwarts: The Final Years, Documentary Prize winner at the Cannes International Film Festival, 2019.
* * *
Draco felt sick to his stomach. At least he knew who his parents were, what they had done. No one had told Pansy.
"Granger, Hermione!"
* * *
[Shot of an office crammed wall-to-wall with stacks of computer printouts, scientific journals, and the latest in modern electronic paraphernalia. Seated in the centre of all this clutter is a woman in her mid-30s. She is dressed professional business attire, with her brown hair pulled back into a bushy ponytail. Her left eye is a vivid blue, signifying a magical prosthetic.]
[Caption: Dr. Hermione Granger, Gryffindor 1991-1998*, Director of Thaumaturgical Research, SCC Laboratories, Waxahachie TX, USA]
HG: They marched us into the Great Hall and I was overwhelmed. Absolutely stricken with... well, history, as nerdy as that sounds. Here was a place that had seen students gathering for over a thousand years, a center of learning whose age outstripped Oxford and Bologna. It was too much for my little eleven year-old self. [Laughs] I still shake a little just thinking about it. I barely remember anything of detail before Minerva -- before Professor McGonagall -- put the Sorting Hat on me. Well, aside from poor Pansy.
Int: Several former students have discussed the Hat talking to them, describing their characteristic, and discussing the choice of House best suited to them.
HG: [nods] Having a strange voice in your head is certainly memorable. I've never told anyone this before, but I almost didn't end up in Gryffindor.
Int: Ravenclaw?
HG: Hufflepuff, actually.
Int: Really? Hufflepuff?
HG: Harry used to say I was a misplaced Ravenclaw, and I'm sure my parents would have called me a Slytherin if they had been Metas, but the Hat said I was a hard worker. We talked for a bit about this and that. Mostly about my parents. I think if I hadn't been so eager to stand up against them for my own education, I wouldn't have ended up in Gryffindor.
Int: Do you think you were meant to be in Gryffindor?
HG: That's a bit fatalistic.
Int: Let me rephrase -- was Gryffindor a good fit for you?
HG: The House? At eleven? No. But the people there? Eventually, yes.
--Excerpted from Hogwarts: The Final Years, Documentary Prize winner at the Cannes International Film Festival, 2019.
..........................................
"Malfoy, Draco!"
..........................................
Dora,
Hello, Dora. How are you? I hope your concert went well. I am sorry I haven't wrote you before but I have not been feeling well. If you haven't heard from Aunt Andromeda I have been sorted into Slytherin.
You said that Houses don't matter and I try to remember so. I met a girl on the train here. Well really two girls. Her-my-oh-nee went to Gryffindor with Harry and a boy named Ronald. Ronald is one of the Weasleys. But the Weasleys are not all bad people. Two of Ronalds' brothers are in Slytherin and their names are Fred and George. They are twins and no one can tell them apart. They are very funny and play tricks on a lot of people. They keep the Gryffindors away. The other girl Susan Bones (!) ended up in Slytherin with me. She is avoiding me because of mother and father.
I have to go to class soon. I will write again when I have news.
.
Best,
Draco
--Personal letter from Draco Malfoy to his cousin, Nymphadora Tonks. Dated 9/4/1991. On indefinite loan to the British Museum's The Blacks: From Dark to Light exhibit, courtesy of the Ted Tonks Memorial Library.
..........................................
"Potter, Harry!"
..........................................
[Shot of a prim, well-manicured redheaded man seated in a fine leather chair. He is dressed in expensive Norm business attire. A high-rise view of Central London acts as a backdrop to the scene.]
[Caption: Percy Weasley, Gryffindor 1987-1994, CEO Burrow Solutions Inc., London UK]
Interviewer: You were there the night of the 1991 sorting.
PW: [smirks] We got Potter. Up Gryffindor.
Int: Describe that night.
PW: It was the same as any other sorting, really: the kids marched in, the Sorting Hat sang its song, and then Deputy Headmistress McGonagall read off the children's names in alphabetical order. Everyone was focused on who would get Potter. Even the Norm-borns were caught up in the excitement. I confess, at the time, I was more worried about where my brother would end up. Traditionally, Weasleys were Gryffindors, but my younger brothers had put an end to that winning streak.
Int: Fred and George Weasley?
PW: Yes.
Int: Was it a relief when Ronald was placed in your House?
PW: Yes. If only so I could keep an eye on him for mother. Before we boarded the train that morning, she gave me three express instructions. To watch what he ate, to make sure he kept up with his studies, and to ensure he never said the word 'Voldemort'.
Int: She didn't want him to say 'Voldemort'?
PW: I was nine years old before I'd even heard the name 'Voldemort'. I had to ask my Mother who he was. She told me, speaking in a nervous hush, and then washed out my mouth with soap. My first week at Hogwarts, I overheard two Ravenclaws talking in the library about this horrible, vicious Dark Wizard called 'Tom Riddle'. It was another month before I learned that Voldemort and Tom Riddle were the same person. When I mentioned this in a letter to my mother, she sent me a Howler and a bar of soap.
Int: [laughs]
PW: It's easy to laugh about it now, but there's a reason we label people with grandiose titles like "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" and "The-Boy-Who-Lived". It's not just fear, it's respect too.
Int: Respect?
PW: Magic is fundamentally alive. At its basest, purest form, magic is merely the imposition of one's will on the universe. With apologies to the likes of Hawking and Granger, however much you twist the math you can't make an equation describing how the love of a mother for her child can withstand the Killing Curse. And names... names are Deep Magic.
Int: Like 'The Class the Stars Shined On'.
PW: I had no idea -- none of us did -- how those fifty-three sprogs would change the world. Today we call them the Class the Stars Shined On, or Dumbledore's Army, or the Traitors, or the Young Death Eaters, or the Young Guns. I personally prefer to call them the 'Last Class' -- it's to the point. But that night in the Great Hall -- they were just a bunch of timid little First Years. They had yet to do anything to earn our fear or our respect. But they would.
--Excerpted from Hogwarts: The Final Years, Documentary Prize winner at the Cannes International Film Festival, 2019.
A/N: And that's all I wrote. I had a few more scenes from near the story's ending, but I can't find them and frankly I probably wouldn't have used them. What little outline I had was blown to hell by the time I got to the Sorting scene. Like I said before, I really didn't have any idea of what to do with the children's plotlines and they didn't mesh well with anything I had planned for the adults. I could possibly have made it all work eventually but then I discovered AtLA and moved on to a different fandom.
.
Chapter XX
THE REDAN LANE MASSACRE
1 November, 1981THE REDAN LANE MASSACRE
"I think it's ridiculous," said the passerby, mindful of the microphone jabbed under their face. "If the government can't do anything about it, I know who I'm voting for next time."
Guy Leopold brought the bulky microphone back to his chest. "There you have it," he said to the camera. "Reporting live from Redan Lane, Lon—"
" -- SIRIUS! -- "
He shouldn't have turned his head. Hecklers were something every reporter had to deal with at some point, and nuts on the street could foul up anyone's broadcast. But this time, the sheer violence Guy heard in that cry demanded his attention. His cameraman, perhaps acting under the same instinct, tilted the viewer to the street.
It was picture perfect, what Guy saw. Two grown men, dressed a tad oddly to be fair, facing off against one another in the middle of sleepy Redan Lane. The body language of both men screamed violence. It was a like a duel in an old western.
"LILY AND JAMES, SIRIUS!" bellowed the oddly dressed, mousy little man. "HOW COULD YOU?!" Almost faster than Guy could blink, the squat man raised his arms before him and cut off one of his fingers. Before Guy could really process that scene, there was...
...light...
...heat...
...PAIN...
...and then, for Guy Leopold, there was nothing ever again.
..........................................
BRITAIN REMEMBERS: A SPECIAL BBC NEWS EVENT
Broadcast 1/11/1991 (transcript)
Moderator: Our next speaker, Detective Jonah Daniels of the Metropolitan Police Service, was an eyewitness to the aftermath of the Redan Lane Massacre. Daniels, then a patrol officer, was one of the few that escaped the memory modification sweep.
Jonah: It was chaos. At first we – myself and my partner Tommy Swales, that is – we thought a gas main had exploded. The street was cracked open, exposing a sewer pipe. There was debris strewn everywhere -- blood and fire too. I remember there was this business man, about my age then, rolled over on his side. His legs were missing. In the middle of all this carnage was Sirius Black -- I didn't know that then -- laughing like a madman.
Jonah: The first ambulances were arriving when these strange men and women showed up, dressed in night gowns. Tommy and I thought they were nutters. Then one of them walked up to us, asked us if we were in charge.
Moderator: Cornelius Fudge, the lead Ministry of Magic official on the scene.
Jonah: (nods) He asked me why we had gotten there so quickly. I informed Mister Fudge that some of the staff at the dispatcher's office had watched the explosion live on the Beeb. Once I explained what the Beeb was, Mister Fudge pointed his wand in my face.
Moderator: That's when he brainwashed you?
Jonah: That's right.
Moderator: And then?
Jonah: I went back to working the scene, only there was no talk of that laughing man or the other little man who kept shouting about how Black had betrayed Lily and James Potter. We were all befuddled when the trucks filled with soldiers arrived, let me tell you. I started to wonder if this had been an IRA bombing. I didn't believe it when they first told me about the mind-wipes, but then I saw them replay the footage on the Beeb. It was horrible -- I didn't remember, but I knew they'd done something to me. A lot of us, the officers at Reden, it felt like we'd been violated. I had trouble sleeping, and since they put all of us that were affected in the hospital the only thing I could do was watch the news reports on the war.
Moderator: When did you recover you missing memories?
Jonah: December 5th. The Yard had to bring in more men in night gowns to set me right. Even after they fixed me, my memories are more... they don't seem real. It's like somethin' I read in a book. It didn't happen to me, but it did.
..........................................
(a transcript of Margaret Thatcher's handwritten "Notice of Intent" from the Public Record Office)
'Sir',
On the afternoon of November 1st Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom witnessed an act of cruel and malicious violence against her citizens. This act, which left twelve dead and many more seriously injured, is only the latest in a string of unprovoked attacks upon free British citizens by members of the Magical Community in recent months. The Ministry of Magic, in response, has blocked all efforts by Her Majesty's Government to establish a fair and equitable investigation into the Redan Lane Massacre.
In view of these wanton acts of unprovoked aggression committed in flagrant violation of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, to which both the Ministry of Magic of Britain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are parties, I must inform you, as the duly appointed head of the Ministry of Magic, in the name of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom that a state of war exists between our two countries.
I have the honour to be, with high consideration,
Sir,
Your obedient servant,
Margaret H. Thatcher
(handwritten note in the margin, unsigned: I'd thought you above plagiarizing Churchill.)
(below, written in Thatcher's hand: I only steal from the best.)
..........................................
Much as the Germany people grabbed hold of the legend of Der Dolchstoß after their nation's defeat in the First World War and their subsequent humiliation at Versailles, the Wizarding Community in the United Kingdom and elsewhere found comfort in the ideology of the Bagmanist. Coined after the Minister of Magic at the time, Ludo Bagman, many 'Proud' wizards and witches felt the Ministry of Magic had unduly folded in the face of an easy victory over people who couldn't even use magic.
Opinion on the true root-cause of Bagman's surrender varied amongst the Wizarding Community. Amos Diggory, who served as Undersecretary in the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures until 1998, wrote in his collaboration A History of the Magical Peoples of Albion that:
"...wariness tarred every soul, and the prospect of another war so soon after the climax of the last seemed a burden too impossible to bear. On the evening of the Fourth of November, I was walking between two meetings booked atop one another only to happen upon... [an] acquaintance of mine, an Auror of no little reputation in battle, openly weeping in the hallway. This Auror confessed to me... several of their trainees had fallen to Muggle force-of-arms in a small skirmish before they'd had chance even to draw their wands. This shocked me, for even the Death Eaters had not dueled so disrespectfully." [11] [12]
This accusation, that Technologists fight unfairly and without honor, was bandied about in the Interwar Era. Critics, both within the Wizarding Community and without, counterattacked that 'Proud' wizards and witches were overlooking many of the sins of the Death Eaters, such as torture, mind-control, rape, and extrajudicial executions of those that were considered 'undesirable' under the racist Blood Classification System (BCS). [13] Other, such as Griselda Marchbanks, founder of the Society for the Preservation of Our Heritage, or as it was more commonly known, the Heritage Society, placed the onus on Minister Bagman's decision to not fight for legal independence on the behalf of the British Wizarding Community. While the Heritage Society did represent several legitimate Wizarding concerns in the Interwar Era, most notably on the Apparation Licensure Debate that dominated the 1987 General Election, it was often subject to accusations of racism and sapientism. The Heritage Society, for instance, never officially abolished internal use of the BCS, as shown on internal membership files recovered after the Society's suspension in 1997. [14]
However the most common complaint launched against Bagman and his fellow appeasers was the notion that the Wizarding World would have won an open war against the Muggles. As the Heritage Society's last director, Dolores Jane Umbridge, stated to a closed meeting of the Executive Board during the height of the 1995 Azkaban Crisis:
"The day is fast approaching, Minerva, when all of us will see the truth. You can choose, as poor Albus did, to side with the half-breeds and Muggles. Or you can side with the Light. We... are the superior race." [15]
As with Der Dolchstoß, such divisive opinions were only to be silenced by a second war; the Spectre War, or, as the British Wizarding Community prefers to name it, the Second Wizard-Muggle War.
-From Between the Wars, McGraw-Hill, 2016
[11] The identity of this unnamed Auror has been the subject of much debate. While eyewitness accounts are varied, the Ministry of Magic's record-keeping, spotty in the best of circumstances, provides no Auror duty-roster for 4 November 1981.
[12] Amos Diggory's son, Cedric, once noted in a 1994 Guardian interview that his father had instructed him at a young age that, "Gentleman never fire the first curse, but they always fire the last."
[13] For an in-depth history and analysis of the Blood Classification System, I recommend Martin Gilbert's perennial classic Human Blood & British Magic.
[14] Primary categories included the Pureblood/Half-Blood/Muggleborn trifecta, as well as subdivisions of discerning any possible Non-Human Sapient ancestry in a candidate's ancestry going back seven generations. A special section on each file noted who the applying candidate was married to (specifically, their BCS status) and, if they possessed siblings or children, who they were married to (and their BCS status).
[15] Which is more than a bit rich, considering Umbridge's paternal grandmother was a lily-white Muggleborn American who emigrated from the South Carolina in 1896 due her family's property being confiscated by a fanatically racist town sheriff in the aftermath of the Plessy v. Ferguson court decision.
* * * *
No one, save perhaps those of the Baby Boomer generation, could have presaged the social upheaval of the Interwar Era in Britain's Wizarding Community. In hindsight, the turmoil of the early 1990s should have predicable. While witches and wizards were portrayed, not inaccurately, as eccentrics, hippies, and comparatively liberal on matters of gender and sexuality, there was and still is a deep undercurrent of reactionary conservatism among the Ruling Class even aside from the much-publicized Blood Classification System.
To put matters into perspective, consider the faculty of the crypto-fascist Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Of the sixteen faculty members in 1980, eleven were Pureblood, four were Half-Blood, and one was a non-corporeal sapient (i.e. a 'ghost'). Aside from the rotating Defense Against the Dark Arts chair, legendary for its sometimes macabre turnover, no Muggleborn had been on staff since 1952. No Muggleborn had held the title of Headmaster since Janus Abott (1819 - 1829).
Of the three non-human sapients on staff, two held strictly essential but ultimately powerless positions. Rubeus Hagrid -- a former half-giant student at Hogwarts expelled in 1943 under dubious circumstance with no chance to appeal and no due process -- was dependent entirely on the goodwill of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore for his livelihood, despite possessing an extraordinary knowledge of Magical Creatures and Beings. The true tragedy of the crypto-racist ideology underpinning Hogwarts -- and indeed all of the pre-Unmasking Wizarding 'World' -- was best embodied, however, in staff member Argus Flich.
Branded with the title of 'squib' by the society that birthed him, Flich lived a Second Class existence in perpetual service to an institution dedicated to uplifting the minds of the worthy, i.e. those that could perform magic. Flich, while officially employed as castle Caretaker, instead served as the sole contact many Hogwarts students had with squibs. Exploited by his employers, Hogwart's hidden curriculum taught impressionable witches and wizards that squibs like Argus Flich were worthy only of disrespect and mockery.
So-called 'Muggles' were no better off. Indeed, while Hogwarts created a permanent Muggle Studies class in 1939, it was never made compulsory until 1982. Yet even with the many necessary revisions made to the school's curriculum, Prime Minister Thatcher still represented an inherently corrupt counterrevolutionary system; the racism and anti-sapientism laced throughout pre-Unmasking Muggles Studies was replaced by capitalistic, anti-individualist propaganda designed to make Hogwarts students good worker bees that would labor tirelessly and quietly on behalf of their new corporate overlords.
With this in mind, it is clear that even so-called 'liberal' academic institution like the former Hogwarts School were, in truth, bastions of reactionary conservatism that talked a good game of liberté, égalité, fraternité but were in reality poisoning the minds of the next generation with half-truths and doublethink so as to perpetuate the racist aristocracy their Pre-Unmasking society was based upon.
What Thatcher, Bagman, and Dumbledore all overlooked as they blazed their Third Way was that history is an inevitable, unstoppable struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor, and just as the failed revolutionaries of 1968 advanced themselves and their chosen causes through higher education, so too would Generation-W find the means to free themselves from the shackles of centuries old system of control. To paraphrase a famous World War One era song: How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down at Hogwarts? (After They've Seen Cambridgeee).
-- excerpted from Hogwarts: A People's History, Harper Perennial, 2005
* * * *
"You're late."
Remus bowed his head slightly, acknowledging the point. "My apologies, gentlemen. I had to take care of a sudden, unexpected family matter."
"It's quite all right," said Albus Dumbledore. "Family is important. Nothing too desperate, I hope?"
"No, no."
"If we're finished with the niceties," Rufus Scrimgeour muttered, "might I ask if you secured the basilisk venom?" After Lupin fetched the small steel vial from his pocket, Scrimgeour grinned. "Excellent."
"Indeed," said Albus, hefting the Sword of Gryffindor. "Now, gentlemen, let us deal with Tom's Horcruxes once and for all."
7 February, 1982
Malfoy Manor, Main Library
They'd lost three men alone attempting to un-shelve books at Grimmauld Place, and half a dozen more putting down the bastard Elf that had sicced that hellhole's collection of antique knives on them. After that, the Home Office decided it was best if they worked alongside Wizard police -- Aurors, they called them.
"It's clean," said Mad-Eye, passing the journal back to the CSI. "Still, it's odd that Malfoy would keep a Muggle book, especially in this particular cabinet. Tag it."
"Are you sure, sir? It's blank, even."
Moody's scarred lips quirked. "Constant Vigilance, lad."
22 April, 1984
LOCATION CLASSIFIED, Lab Suite #2
Hello?
The technician startled.
My name is Tom Riddle.
The technician stared down at the name scrawled across the page by some unseen hand. "Jesus Christ," she whispered.
Hello? Sally, are you still there?
5 November, 1985
MI-13 Headquarters, London
"We bring in Albus Dumbledore."
"How can you trust him, sir?"
"I don't. I'd have to be brain damaged to trust that bastard. But Project Alexandria is too much for us to handle on our own. We tried every logical containment procedure and that thing still brainwashed three of our agents. If it weren't for the tertiary CCTV camera system we had hidden throughout the facility, these poor bastards would have waltzed past security with it. Do you have any idea what that diary would have done had it gotten out into the wild?"
"No, sir."
"Neither do I. But it still scares the shit out of me. That thing survived a Class-4 sterilization procedure without as much as the edges of its pages singed -- and you saw what was left of everything and everyone else in that facility."
"We did found a few charred teeth, sir."
"Your men have tried everything from thermite to blasting hexes to a damn exorcism. Short of leaving it at ground zero of a nuclear explosion, or launching it into the Sun, I don't see how we can destroy it. This is unacceptable. The diary must be destroyed. We can't secure or contain it. If we just weighted it down and dumped it into the Marianas Trench, who's to say if it won't float on back up? Or teleport itself into the hands of some Dark Russian wizard?"
"Goddamn it, sir. I hate magic."
"So do I. Now get me Albus Dumbledore."
* * *
"An underwear model turned spy." Remus shook his head in utter dismay. "Madness."
"I'm inclined to agree," said Scrimgeour. "Gilderoy Lockhart is a fop, and he's guilty of at least five counts of using Unforgiveables – all Obliviate, fair enough, but that's cause for the Muggles to lock him up for a half century in New Azkaban."
Remus added, "I'd sooner believe him capable of teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts than spying!"
The representative from MI-13 shrugged. "What do you want me to tell you, Minister? Lockhart is only as good an asset as the amount of blackmail we hold over him.
* * * *
Scrimgeour scowled as he processed this new information. "Confound it, Albus. If only the Prime Minister had listened to me about slapping the Guardian with a D-Notice, we might have avoided this mess. Muggles! They find an immortal man so bloody fascinating without thinking about the implications of immortality."
"The day is not entirely without good news. With the centaurs' generous cooperation, we now possess all the necessary materials. Our preparations for the counter-spell will be complete before the Summer solstice."
"Headmaster, are you sure we have no other recourse?"
"Alas, nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse," Dumbledore quoted. "The Stone requires an opposing equal in order to be made undone, thus the Stone is a vital component of its own destruction. If we were to move it now, our preparations would be disrupted and we would have to wait for the next year's solstice to be rid of it."
* * * *
4
LOOKING FORWARDS, LOOKING BACKWARDS
.
Severus Snape despised the start of the school year. Like most teachers, he preferred order and routine in his life. The first few weeks of any school year were a hectic mix of new class schedules, new papers to grade, and, most of all, new students. While upperclassmen dispensed with all pretense of dignity in a pathetic scramble to secure a last-minute place in his NEWT-level Potions classes -- and thus a high-paying job in an increasingly lucrative profession -- Severus loathed his newest students most of all.
The firsties were ignorant of how to comport themselves as witches and wizards, the Muggleborns especially. Pampered, spoiled brats, the firsties. Once he could have counted on the Pureblooded among them possessing at least the basics of a work ethic, beaten into them by their high-price private tutors. Now, with even the richest Pureblood heirs and heiress required by law to attend Muggle-run schools during their formative years, Severus couldn't even count on them. Children, in his opinion, were treated far too softly, and the brats bleated about unfairness when real effort -- which they were perfectly capable of -- was expected of them. As if brewing a potion incorrectly was an error on par with incorrectly added sums! Snape had never known a misplaced addition sign had never killed any child.
"Abbott, Hannah!" "Hufflepuff!"
"Vasyl, Bogolyubov!"
Severus' ear perked at the odd name. Another refugee, hopefully this one actually spoke English -- no, he mused, that would be entirely too much to hope for.
Ever since the Durmstrang Institute had been burned to the ground in the anti-magic pogroms that had swept through the Warsaw Bloc, refugee children had flooded the likes of Beauxbatons, Hogwarts, and even North American schools like the Salem Institute. Between the immigrants and the charity cases that the British Muggle government hoisted on Hogwarts, the ranks of this year's class alone had swollen to over fifty students. Hardly more than Severus expected with the wartime childbirth lull still affecting Hogwarts, but a grim omen for when the post-war baby boom started arriving over the next few years. His heart shuddered at the thought of having classes again with over a hundred students per year, many of them immigrants with deplorable English speaking, reading, and writing skills. The essay grading alone! Severus did take some small comfort that, unlike Filius or Minvera, he didn't have to sit in a classroom with small children flailing their wands and badly mispronouncing spells through their noses.
"Ravenclaw!" announced the Hat. Young Vasyl hopped off the chair and hurried to the Ravenclaw table. Severus noted that Prefect Krum was waiting for the boy, greeting him with a warm smile and a slap on the back.
"Bones, Susan!" "Slytherin!"
Amelia Bones' niece wearing green and silver? Severus fought to keep himself from grinning with schadenfreude; best not ruin his first impression on them by letting the sprogs think him to be some sort of amiable, easy-going professor.
At the front of the line, a dark-haired girl now stood alone. Her body language radiated confusion and embarrassment. When she glanced around, desperate for any form of guidance, Draco realized he recognized her as the girl from the train, the one who had been looking for a toad. Pansy Ferguson, hadn't it been?
"Um," she croaked, "I-I'm next, but..."
"I see," said the old professor. "Just wait until your first name is called, Ms. Ferguson." Professor McGonagall spared a final pitying glance at the shivering Pansy before continuing on with the list.
..........................................
[Shot of a comfortable flat, decorated in somewhat dated mid-Noughties styling. Seated on a sofa are two women. The dark-haired woman on the left is dressed blue jeans and a blouse. The redhead on the left is dressed in traditional Wizarding robes.]
[Caption: Pansy Ferguson, Slytherin 1991-1998]
[Caption: Susan Bones, Slytherin 1991-1998]
PF: It was the worst moment of my life. The very worst. Even now -- oooo -- I get a pain in my stomach just thinking about it.
SB: Professor McGonagall didn't handle the situation very well. Neither did the Headmaster, Merlin rest his soul.
PF: She just left me standing there!
SB: They said it was a miscommunication, but that enrolment list is checked years -- years! -- ahead of time. There was no need to humiliate Pansy like that.
Int: You think it was intentional?
PF: Does it matter?
Int: So your parents hadn't told you were adopted?
PF: They had! They neglected to mention the little fact that my biological parents were war criminals. I... damn. They n-never figured that... excuse m--.
[Cut in footage.]
Int: Did your House assignment come as a surprise?
SB: Yes. I remember thinking "but I'm a good girl, why am being put with all the Death Eaters?" Hooo. I thought my family was going to disown me! Heh. And they eventually did, though not because of the snake pinned to my breast.
--Excerpted from Hogwarts: The Final Years, Documentary Prize winner at the Cannes International Film Festival, 2019.
* * *
Draco felt sick to his stomach. At least he knew who his parents were, what they had done. No one had told Pansy.
"Granger, Hermione!"
* * *
[Shot of an office crammed wall-to-wall with stacks of computer printouts, scientific journals, and the latest in modern electronic paraphernalia. Seated in the centre of all this clutter is a woman in her mid-30s. She is dressed professional business attire, with her brown hair pulled back into a bushy ponytail. Her left eye is a vivid blue, signifying a magical prosthetic.]
[Caption: Dr. Hermione Granger, Gryffindor 1991-1998*, Director of Thaumaturgical Research, SCC Laboratories, Waxahachie TX, USA]
HG: They marched us into the Great Hall and I was overwhelmed. Absolutely stricken with... well, history, as nerdy as that sounds. Here was a place that had seen students gathering for over a thousand years, a center of learning whose age outstripped Oxford and Bologna. It was too much for my little eleven year-old self. [Laughs] I still shake a little just thinking about it. I barely remember anything of detail before Minerva -- before Professor McGonagall -- put the Sorting Hat on me. Well, aside from poor Pansy.
Int: Several former students have discussed the Hat talking to them, describing their characteristic, and discussing the choice of House best suited to them.
HG: [nods] Having a strange voice in your head is certainly memorable. I've never told anyone this before, but I almost didn't end up in Gryffindor.
Int: Ravenclaw?
HG: Hufflepuff, actually.
Int: Really? Hufflepuff?
HG: Harry used to say I was a misplaced Ravenclaw, and I'm sure my parents would have called me a Slytherin if they had been Metas, but the Hat said I was a hard worker. We talked for a bit about this and that. Mostly about my parents. I think if I hadn't been so eager to stand up against them for my own education, I wouldn't have ended up in Gryffindor.
Int: Do you think you were meant to be in Gryffindor?
HG: That's a bit fatalistic.
Int: Let me rephrase -- was Gryffindor a good fit for you?
HG: The House? At eleven? No. But the people there? Eventually, yes.
--Excerpted from Hogwarts: The Final Years, Documentary Prize winner at the Cannes International Film Festival, 2019.
..........................................
"Malfoy, Draco!"
..........................................
Dora,
Hello, Dora. How are you? I hope your concert went well. I am sorry I haven't wrote you before but I have not been feeling well. If you haven't heard from Aunt Andromeda I have been sorted into Slytherin.
You said that Houses don't matter and I try to remember so. I met a girl on the train here. Well really two girls. Her-my-oh-nee went to Gryffindor with Harry and a boy named Ronald. Ronald is one of the Weasleys. But the Weasleys are not all bad people. Two of Ronalds' brothers are in Slytherin and their names are Fred and George. They are twins and no one can tell them apart. They are very funny and play tricks on a lot of people. They keep the Gryffindors away. The other girl Susan Bones (!) ended up in Slytherin with me. She is avoiding me because of mother and father.
I have to go to class soon. I will write again when I have news.
.
Best,
Draco
--Personal letter from Draco Malfoy to his cousin, Nymphadora Tonks. Dated 9/4/1991. On indefinite loan to the British Museum's The Blacks: From Dark to Light exhibit, courtesy of the Ted Tonks Memorial Library.
..........................................
"Potter, Harry!"
..........................................
[Shot of a prim, well-manicured redheaded man seated in a fine leather chair. He is dressed in expensive Norm business attire. A high-rise view of Central London acts as a backdrop to the scene.]
[Caption: Percy Weasley, Gryffindor 1987-1994, CEO Burrow Solutions Inc., London UK]
Interviewer: You were there the night of the 1991 sorting.
PW: [smirks] We got Potter. Up Gryffindor.
Int: Describe that night.
PW: It was the same as any other sorting, really: the kids marched in, the Sorting Hat sang its song, and then Deputy Headmistress McGonagall read off the children's names in alphabetical order. Everyone was focused on who would get Potter. Even the Norm-borns were caught up in the excitement. I confess, at the time, I was more worried about where my brother would end up. Traditionally, Weasleys were Gryffindors, but my younger brothers had put an end to that winning streak.
Int: Fred and George Weasley?
PW: Yes.
Int: Was it a relief when Ronald was placed in your House?
PW: Yes. If only so I could keep an eye on him for mother. Before we boarded the train that morning, she gave me three express instructions. To watch what he ate, to make sure he kept up with his studies, and to ensure he never said the word 'Voldemort'.
Int: She didn't want him to say 'Voldemort'?
PW: I was nine years old before I'd even heard the name 'Voldemort'. I had to ask my Mother who he was. She told me, speaking in a nervous hush, and then washed out my mouth with soap. My first week at Hogwarts, I overheard two Ravenclaws talking in the library about this horrible, vicious Dark Wizard called 'Tom Riddle'. It was another month before I learned that Voldemort and Tom Riddle were the same person. When I mentioned this in a letter to my mother, she sent me a Howler and a bar of soap.
Int: [laughs]
PW: It's easy to laugh about it now, but there's a reason we label people with grandiose titles like "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" and "The-Boy-Who-Lived". It's not just fear, it's respect too.
Int: Respect?
PW: Magic is fundamentally alive. At its basest, purest form, magic is merely the imposition of one's will on the universe. With apologies to the likes of Hawking and Granger, however much you twist the math you can't make an equation describing how the love of a mother for her child can withstand the Killing Curse. And names... names are Deep Magic.
Int: Like 'The Class the Stars Shined On'.
PW: I had no idea -- none of us did -- how those fifty-three sprogs would change the world. Today we call them the Class the Stars Shined On, or Dumbledore's Army, or the Traitors, or the Young Death Eaters, or the Young Guns. I personally prefer to call them the 'Last Class' -- it's to the point. But that night in the Great Hall -- they were just a bunch of timid little First Years. They had yet to do anything to earn our fear or our respect. But they would.
--Excerpted from Hogwarts: The Final Years, Documentary Prize winner at the Cannes International Film Festival, 2019.
A/N: And that's all I wrote. I had a few more scenes from near the story's ending, but I can't find them and frankly I probably wouldn't have used them. What little outline I had was blown to hell by the time I got to the Sorting scene. Like I said before, I really didn't have any idea of what to do with the children's plotlines and they didn't mesh well with anything I had planned for the adults. I could possibly have made it all work eventually but then I discovered AtLA and moved on to a different fandom.
