Can one injustice be justified by another?
They call them Magbobs. Nobody really knows where the term came from, but most people think it's a portmanteau of "Magic" and "bob". Because their magic came from nowhere.
Magbob.
A term of endearment.
For some reason, people like these so-called "Magbobs". Not because they're cute, bumbling around in a strange world of plumbing and magic, the former of which once amazed them as much as the latter. No, because it's an accepted fact that Magbobs are more gifted than wizards of magical descent.
And even if they don't display it, it's assumed.
She wraps her fingers around her wand until her knuckles turn white at the thought. Seven years at Hogwarts. Seven years of watching barely literate idiots stumble into Hogwarts getting praised for anything they produce. Seven years of watching those barely literate idiots turn into more literate idiots. Seven years of watching those less idiotic wizards assimilate.
Seven years of watching them not.
That's not why she hates them, though she doesn't deny that it's a factor. She doesn't really mind sitting back and letting them get all the attention, doesn't mind that Hogwarts has changed for them, doesn't even mind that some of them run back to their parents.
The latter are just stupid.
No, she doesn't hate them for the same reason the great Salazar Slytherin did.
Her nails dig into her palm. She hates them because of the ideals they bring. Because of what the wizarding world, in their respect for these bumbling incomers, has become.
A patriarchy.
Just the thought makes her want to bare her teeth and her wand. Centuries of equality. Centuries of tolerance. Centuries of believing that ability was the only thing that mattered, of a fierce pride in upholding and defending that belief, even when some other magical communities did not share it.
The "magbobs" are destroying it.
Slytherin was right all along, though perhaps not for the reasons he had imagined. When Hogwarts was first founded and for many years after, magbobs were awed by what they saw, grateful for what they were given. They tried to assimilate, exchanged their values for the new ones of the amazing world they were now in.
But the muggle world progressed.
And as muggleborns gradually became less awed at the wizarding world's higher standards of living, they assimilated less readily.
The worst are those from noble or otherwise privileged families. Those look at the magical world with a greedy and superior eye and expect the world to change for them. "Colonization" was a foreign word to wizards, but magbobs come from muggles.
Muggles with ideas of superiority that have nothing to do with ability.
And so muggleborns come in the world and see an amazing world of magic, but they also see a world where men and women are equals, where men and women wear the same clothes, have the same rights, attend the same classes. They look at the world and see something wrong with it.
Well, she sees something wrong with them.
She won't condemn them for their beliefs, as vile as they were. She is reasonable. She understands that they came from a different upbringing and they can not be faulted for it.
But that they are changing the wizarding world is unforgivable.
The differences are subtle, but undeniably there. The change in the makeup of the Wizengamot. The decrease of women in quidditch and at work. The expectation that witches should be versed in household magic. The prejudice that seemed to suffocate her and her fellow witches while wizards didn't feel a thing.
The new inheritance conventions that cheated her of what was hers.
She has to consciously loosen her grip on her wand. Before, heirs always dueled for the inheritance, with the winner receiving first pick, the rest then dueling again for second place, etc. Now? It just goes to the eldest male.
Like muggles do.
A sneer forms on her face. She knows she would have won - everyone knows, which was why Thomas showers her with gifts from afar and carefully stays away. She knows what she deserved, what she would have gotten if her parents hadn't chosen to be "modern".
Modern means inequality.
Modern means sexism.
Modern means destroying the core value that had carried their world for centuries.
Modern calls her inferior.
Her wand slashes out and she doesn't even need to think a curse, so good is her command of her magic. It responds eagerly to her desire and an expensive vase is flung across the room where it shatters into a million pieces.
She wondered if bone makes such a lovely sound when it did the same.
The temptation to find out is strong, but it would be a useless gesture.
With a lazy and wholly unnecessary twirl of her wand, the pieces vanish, though the wood it shattered on will be tainted for years by the magical residue, longer if the wood is better.
To her, a reminder.
To the subject of her anger...well, they would best stay away anyways.
She inhales, taking a moment to feel the air enter her lungs. She's indifferent to muggleborns for the most part - after all, they're magical beings like her, and many are undeniably talented. But this -
This is intolerable.
And as long as muggle-raised wizards are coming in and expect women to be demure and submissive, as long as muggle-raised witches enter and act out those expectations, as long as the wizarding world - her world - embraces these incomers and the ideals that come with them, this will only get worse.
She sets down her wand and lets her anger at the injustice fill her, even penetrate the cool reason she usually prides herself on.
They call them magbobs, a term of endearment.
Her lip curls. She calls them mudbloods.
AN: This appeared after reading yet another fanfiction where the wizarding world was a patriarchy - not not just a slight one. I don't really see evidence for this in the books (though there is some) though I couldn't argue it's a matriarchy, so that assumption annoyed me, since magic really could be the great equalizer and the Founders were evenly split. But the counterargument for that was that muggleborns might have had influence and, well, this was born. Please review!