Falling Empires
Matt remembers the wonder he had felt when he had first heard that he had magic. He can recall in perfect detail how it all happened: Professor McGonagall, coming to his parents' house and turning a chair into a pig to prove her point, his parents, astounded as they read the letter the Professor had brought with her, and finally, the excitement and happiness bubbling in his stomach.
Finally, he remembers thinking, finally I will have a place to belong, with people who can do the same wonderful things I can do, finally an explanation for these powers I have.
It had seemed so perfect then, like a dream come true.
And oh, how quickly that dream shattered.
.x.
It starts before he even gets to Hogwarts, while Professor McGonagall brings him to Diagon Alley to shop for everything the list that came with his letter says he'll need.
It's like stepping into another world, and at first it looks amazing. The Alley is magical, the street buzzing with life, colors and the sound of people conversing about all kinds of subjects Matt doesn't know anything about yet. There are shops selling things he doesn't recognize, and shops selling things he only thinks he recognize, like an antique shop where the antiques seemed to possess a life of their own, or the Apothecary where he learns that it is actually possible to purchase bits of dragons.
It should be perfect but instead there's something in the air that makes him shiver, a pervasive cold that sticks to his skin like an oily second skin and makes him uncomfortable. The Professor tugs him along, tries to keep him interested in all the new things he can discover, but something doesn't sit right with him. It reminds him of his grandfather's stories about World War Two, only not quite.
He just can't put his finger on it, ad while it's not enough to completely douse his enthusiasm at finding out that magic exits and that there's a whole magical world out there, it still lingers in the back of his mind.
It's not until he's back home, mind full of wonderful magical images, that he that some of the people in the Alley had behaved oddly around him, and that Professor McGonagall's pursed lips weren't there just because she didn't like the crowd or wanted him to hurry along.
Not everyone had sneered upon noticing the way he looked at everything new that showed he hadn't been born in this world, and not everyone had avoided him as he passed like he was a leper, but enough of them had that it painted his interactions with the magical world that day with a much harsher light.
Matt doesn't say a word to his parents about it. They've been out of their depth since they were handed the Hogwarts' letter, for him to tell them about those things he only suspects happened would only serve to worry them, and his parents deserve better than that.
He thinks about it a lot though. He goes back to Diagon Alley and buys as many books as his budget allows on magical society: laws and regulations, children's books to give him a better idea of what there people grew up with – everything he can get his hands on. He takes a subscription to the Daily Prophet on a suggestion, and spends most of his summer reading about the world he's about to join.
He doesn't like what he finds. It reminds him too much of the stories his grandfather used to tell him about Nazi Germany, about what their family had to endure before they had to flee.
"It's important that he knows the history of his people!" His grandfather used to say whenever Matt's mother came to protest that these stories weren't for children. Matt still remembers how those were the only times he could ever remember his grandfather getting angry about anything enough to yell, and how his mother always got very quiet before she relented and let her father tell Matt all the stories he wanted.
Matt thinks it wouldn't take much for the magical world to turn on the muggleborns. Everything Matt's read already seems to designate them more or less discreetly as scapegoats for every problem that magical world has, while painting them as lesser than the pureblood and halfblood wizards and witches.
That too, this concept of blood purity, sits ill with him, and scares him more than a little. He's only eleven, and already he realizes that this magical world, for all of its apparent wonders and shine, maybe be nothing more than a beautifully crafted trap.
Matt wants to run the other way, to pretend that none of this is real, that he never found out about any of the prejudices that come with this new world. But he can't. He has magic, real magic – like the heroes in the novels he likes so much – and there are others like him.
He thinks about the hundreds of other muggleborns just like him, finding that magic isn't all it was made to be. He thinks about them and how unfair it is that no one tries to help them, truly help them, and by the time he has to leave for Hogwarts he has decided that if no one is going to, then he'll just have to be the one to change that, won't he?
He leaves his parents' house with a trunk full of what he'll need for school, and a mind full of ideas that'll change the world.
It takes the Sorting Hat twenty seconds to cry out Slytherin.
.x.
The students he sits beside on his first night sneer at him.
"I don't think I've ever heard your name before," a particularly bold boy says, making it sound like an insult.
"You wouldn't have," Matt replies calmly with a sneer of his own, because Slytherin might be rumored ot be a House for purebloods, but Matt will be damned if he lets anyone push him into hiding what he is. "But then again, I haven't heard yours either."
The boy snarls, a truly ugly thing, and his eyes swear revenge, but Matt isn't scared. He knows how to handle bullies: you show them you aren't scared of them until they either back off, or you get even in a way that makes them scared of you.
Matt doesn't have time to consider what he might have to do though, because an older girl shoves herself in between him and the sneering boy sitting on his right. She's not exactly pretty – her eyes are too far apart, her nose slightly too big and her skin shines a little in the candlelight – but her eyes are laughing and she looks kind.
She steals one of Matt's potatoes right from his plate, winks at him and glares down hard at the boy who thought he could demean Matt for his heritage.
"I'm Sally," she introduces herself with a deep Scottish accent, her tone falsely cheery. "I'm the fifth year prefect for Slytherin this year, and if any of you think you can look down on me for not having two wizarding parents, I'll have you in detention faster than you can say Quidditch. Got it?" She smiles, and it's actually terrifying, unveiling her teeth in a move that makes Matt's hair stand on ends.
Clearly, it has the same effect on Matt's would-be bullies, because they just scowl and ignore Matt from then on.
"Don't listen to those idiots," Sally tells him. "They don't know what they're talking about. If the Hat Sorted you here, then you're a snake, same as any of us."
Matt nods, but something of his trouble thoughts must show on his face because Sally's eyes soften a little.
"Don't worry, we're not all like that. I mean, obviously we're the lucky sods who got stuck with most of the stuck-up idiots like your little friend here, but that certainly doesn't mean they rule this House anywhere else than in their dreams."
She winks again, and this time Matt smiles back.
House of ambition, huh?
He wonders what hers is, and if she knows that in this world she'll have to work twice as hard to get even half the recognition a pureblood would. Somehow, looking in her shadowed eyes, he thinks she does.
"Thanks," he finally says.
She ruffles his hair, and tucks him against her side in a quick one-armed hug before letting him go. "Don't worry, firsty, I have your back – I'll introduce you to all the good people in our House, you'll be one of our best in no time."
She ruffles his hair again, grabs her plate, and goes back to her friends. Another girl slips in her seat, and he recognizes her as having been Sorted just a few names after his.
"I'm Lisa Thorn," the girl says, and she looks at him like she's daring him to do something. What, he has no idea, but something like amusement blooms in his chest and tugs at his lips, and he finds imself smiling.
"Nice to meet you, Lisa, I'm Matt."
.x.
Matt knows Potter isn't lying the moment he says that the Dark Lord – Voldemort – is back, just like he knows that no one will want to believe him.
Who'd want to face their greatest monster again after all? It is much easier to fool yourself into thinking that you're safe, that he'll let you live, and even if he's only spent five years in the magical world, Matt already knows how good the people there are at fooling themselves.
But Matt doesn't. He can't. Not when he's read all the articles in the Daily Prophet since he first entered this world, not when he's read so many History books Lisa joked he might as well have been Sorted into Ravenclaw, and seen the common threads in both.
Dark Lords rise much less often than recent history would have them believe, but looking at the way their society is now, it's easy to see why they've had two in the last fifty years alone, with the second making a come-back now.
It was actually James, a Ravenclaw a year ahead of him, and Christopher, his little brother Sorted in Hufflepuff three years ago, who first spotted the pattern.
They have a club of sorts, you see. A meeting place for all the Muggleborns at Hogwarts, a safe haven for when the magical world gets too weird or makes no sense, for when they simply need a break – someone 'normal' to talk to (someone who doesn't struggle to say the word 'electricity', who doesn't believe Muggles never evolved past the stone age).
Sally introduced him and Lisa to it, and it probably is the only place in all of Britain where the Houses don't matter, where they're united by something else, by something greater: the purpose to show the world that they're more than what the world wants them to be.
Every year they show the new muggleborns in, and every year most of them choose to stay, choose to come back. It's bit like those networks his parents have from their college years, only more because they're not just staying in touch, they're helping each other, and in doing so, trying to help the world.
Matt is the one to call a meeting for the first time in a long while – usually people just show up in the abandoned classroom on the third floor they've modified for their purposes, and stay as long as they want to with the people they bring with. This time though, Matt asks everyone to meet him, and everyone comes.
There are two days left before the summer holidays, and there are many things Matt wants everyone to know.
They're all so young, he thinks as he watches his fellow schoolmates trickle in inside the room. It's harder to remember that they're all children still when they've spent the year watching the Champions fight dragons or dive into the Lake in winter, but it hits him again now.
War is coming, and it will be these children, himself first among them, who will have to fight it.
It's not fair, he thinks, but then he remembers the way Sally had to leave England to find someone who'd hire her for any job other than secretary and the dozens of such stories he's heard over the years. He remembers that article, buried deep in Daily Prophet archives in the Library, where the Wizengamot had pushed for a Bill that'd force muggleborns to register, and how close it had been to passing before it had been rejected.
It's not fair that they have to fight, but it's also all too clear that no one else will fight for them.
He spends a moment wondering if this is how all Dark Lord began, simply trying to change things, before the world they were trying to save chewed them up and spat them back wrong and twisted, their shining ideals smoke on the wind.
It isn't. It can't be. More than that, it won't be. He has Lisa by his side, and everyone else in the room by theirs, and if the world wants to one day label them Dark let them – at least it'll mean they lived.
He takes a deep breath, steps forward, and talks.
He starts by telling them that it doesn't matter whether they believe Potter when he says that You-Know-Who is back – someone killed Cedric Diggory, and that someone is still out there. Even if it's not You-Know-Who, it could so easily be some of his old Death Eaters, banding up the way they did at the World's Cup that it doesn't really matter in the end.
What does though, is this: they're the targets, and they need to stay safe.
They can't use magic in the summer, and those are the months where they won't be safe here, at Hogwarts, where no one would dare attack them.
They have a solution though. Matt likes being prepared – he's been drawing up contingency plans for contingency plans ever since he was eleven, and he likes to think he's gotten good at them by now, even if he hopes he'll never have to put any of them to use – and he asked his friends to think about that problem (hypothetically then) months ago.
It was Mary, a tiny wisp of a thing in Hufflepuff, who gave them their answer. Mary, as it turned out, knew people. Or rather, one of her cousin did.
"If you give me the money," she had said with sad but determined eyes, "I can get you what you need."
Not all of them would accept the offer, especially not at first, but some of them would. Some of them would be safe.
.x.
Matt is seventeen, verging on eighteen, when he kills for the first time, and some part of him is horrified by how easy it is, by the knowledge that it won't be the last time he has to kill someone either. The rest of him is detached. It feels like this – the corpse he shot and that bled out in front of him, all its magic useless against a wound it didn't know how to treat – is something he's spent his whole life getting ready for.
He thanks Merlin he moved out of his parents' place and that Lisa isn't home – his best friend isn't squeamish and would probably help him hide the body, but he'd still rather not impose on her so –before he starts Vanishing the body.
Funny thing is: you can't Vanish a living being, but once they're dead, the only problem is the size. Were he more powerful, Matt knows he could make the body disappear in a single wave of his wand. He's not though, and so it takes a few judicious applications of the cutting charm before he can Vanish the pieces, and then dispose of the bloodstains.
It hits him then, just what he did – and he bursts out laughing, collapsing on a carpet that is cleaner than he's ever seen it before. He laughs until he feels sick, and then he starts packing his and Lisa's stuff. They can hardly stay here after all – that Death Eater might have been alone by some stroke of luck, but the next one won't be. Matt may be quick with his gun, but it only takes one spell to take him down.
He falls asleep sitting on the couch, waiting for Lisa to come up, and when he wakes up the next morning it's to her pale face as she reads the Daily Prophet.
Muggleborn Registration Act!, the cover read in big, tacky letters, and it twists at Matt's stomach. From the way Lisa's breakfast sits untouched, it does the same to hers.
He thinks of them all – of the ones he met at Hogwarts and the ones he corresponded with through letters, of Sally working in France and of Mary who gave him the gun that saved his life yesterday, and he thinks how dare they. How dare they think that we don't matter, that we'll just roll over and die?
Lisa sees him move and comes sit beside him. She's warm as she snuggles up to him, and not for the first time he wonders why he can't just love her. Life would be easier then, he believes.
"I know that look," Lisa mutters from where she's buried her head against, her voice coming out as muffled but still clearly amused. "You have a plan."
"Maybe," Matt admits, and in his mind's eye he can see it – it will be hard, but it could work. They could make it work.
"Hm… What are you thinking then?" Lisa perks up, interested and more than a little bit worried, and Matt pretends he's offended for a short moment before he schools his features into something more serious.
"I'm thinking I took a Death Eater down with a gun yesterday, and I was alone. How do you think they'd fare against an army?"
It takes Lisa less than a second to catch on. She smirks, but then her eyes turn sad. "Not well, I'd bet." She hesitates for a moment, but finally grabs his hands, and holds them tightly in her own, staring straight into his eyes. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I wish you hadn't had have to do that," she whispers, before leaning in for a hug.
He must stay quiet for too long, because when Lisa draws back, she looks at him with a suspicious glint twist of her mouth he's familiar with.
"That's not all you've got planned though, is it?"
Matt breathes in deeply, and then lets it out slowly. His heart is beating madly in his chest and his hands are trembling. This plan might be mad, but it's the best one he's got, the best chance they've got, and the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes it might be their only plan.
"I think," he finally answers, absurdly proud somewhere in the back of his mind of the way his voice doesn't shake, "that the Statute of Secrecy needs to come down."
.x.
It is so easy, in the end, to topple down an institution. All it takes are a handful of muggleborns determined not to let their world walk all over them, a camera and an internet access.
By the time the wizarding government is aware of the proof circulating on the web, it is far too late – Matt sends his copies of the research they did while at Hogwarts to everyone in the government. He doesn't know who, apart from the Prime Minister, knows that magic is real, but he knows that there are others. He, Lisa and whoever they manage to contact start performing magic in plain sight, in crowded places where no one can miss it, and disappear after a few minutes, leaving awed Muggles in their wakes.
He and Lisa know it worked when people start taking to the streets, when they start hearing whispers how the military assembling. The articles from the Daily Prophet he's sent get published, and they have the same effect on the public as they had on the two magicals.
It hurts, to watch how the world they'd come to love despite all its fault will come to ruin. But maybe it's for the best. All Matt had ever wanted was for everyone to have the same worth in that world, and to think that he could have changed it all by himself had been a child's dream.
He's older now, and he likes to think somewhat wiser too – he knows something you have to cut away the rot if you want to tree to survive and thrive.
The Death Eaters – Voldemort – they're all symptoms of the greater illness that is the corruption that runs through the magical world. Maybe putting it all out in the open will help cleanse it, so that it can be rebuilt better.
It will not be easy, it will not be quiet, but it will be good.
Yes, Matt thinks as he watches the world find out that magic is real, it will be good.
There is, after all, nothing like war to unite people, and this one is fought on their very soil, against an enemy that would see them all dead or little more than slaves.