Author's note: I'm having a hard time finding information on where Hermione was right after Dumbledore's funeral. Presumably with her parents, but I don't know the exact timeline on when she wiped their memories and went to live with the Weasleys. I'm also having a hard time finding which book tells about when she summoned the Dark Magic books from Dumbledore's office (I flipped through end of book six and beginning of book 7 up to Fleur's wedding). I don't remember how many books she got, since Secrets of the Darkest Art is the one most prominently featured. I'm pretty sure she got plural books, I just want to confirm this.
Hermione spread the books out on the desk, careful not to spill anything over the already cluttered surface. Crookshanks was not helping, leaping back and forth from her lap to the desk, purring and butting his squashed face against her elbow. She shushed him and tried to push him off, but the half-kneazle was undeterred. Eventually he settled on her lap, purring louder than ever.
She turned back to her pile of books. She had planned to read all of them before the end of July when she was supposed to meet with Harry on his last day at his aunt's home. But she had ended up reading the Secrets of the Darkest Art three before being somewhat satisfied with the notes she took on it. It was hard to read a book and not understand it on her first sitting, but at the same time she really enjoyed a new challenge.
This isn't about enjoying yourself, her inner voice reprimanded. You're preparing for war. People will die. People have died.
She felt a knot in her chest as she remembered Dumbledore's funeral. Three weeks has passed but she still felt rather weak thinking about the Headmaster of Hogwarts, a man she had seen as wise, powerful and indestructible. Be strong. She took a deep breath. He wanted us to fight, not to wallow in anguish. Read the books, get all the knowledge. Knowledge is power.
She picked up one of the two books she had not read, and the only one she had not opened yet. It was a hardcover book with a white dust cover. The cover image was rather boring, it featured a witch's wand and some machinery cogs.
She looked at the title, which had been the primary reason she had left this book for last.
Essays on Integrated Muggle Living and how it can be Advantageous to the Magical Community by Ferdinand Solanacearum. 1972 Edition
It wasn't that Hermione thought it would be boring to read a wizard's thoughts on Muggles. In fact, sometimes she regretted not continuing Muggle studies while she had been in Hogwarts. She had the same reason for both avoiding this book and that course: time. As fascinating as she found these sort of books, there were important things she should be taking care of. She felt that it was a gamble to spend her time on a book that could turn out to have no useful information in defeated Voldemort. But she could not help but notice that this book had a lot of bookmarks in it and flipping through it she found a lot of notes. She was positive it was the Headmaster's writing.
Dumbledore wouldn't put this book with the pile of other books about Horcruxes without a reason, she speculated.
She found a small author's biography in the inside cover.
Ferdinand Solanacearum was born in 1892 in a former penal colony in Australia. His mother was a witch who had been brought as a prisoner when the colony was still active and his father was a native who was presumed to have magical abilities. He took his mother's last name, Solanacearum, out of respect for her past. The family wanted to return to Europe but they were forced to use Muggle transport as international wizarding trading routes had not been established at this time Traveling by boat, they arrived to Italy in 1907 and then settled on the Austro-Hungarian Empire to live. When the First Global Muggle War broke out, Ferdinand was forced to enlist as a soldier because his family lived in a Muggle-heavy community. After the war he moved to England, where he became a vocal activist for the adoption of Muggle systems of government and method by the Ministry of Magic. His work resulted in the creation of the Muggle Liaison Office within the Ministry and the passing of several Muggle protection laws. After writing several essays that were printed from independent tabloids, he published his first book, The Obsolete Magic, in 1954. Ferdinand was often found in Muggle universities attending lectures and talking to other students as part of his research on Muggle society. His last book, Muggle Research Methods, remains unfinished and unpublished due to his untimely death in 1979 by an unidentified group of Death Eaters. His body was laid to rest near the university of Oxford, one of his favourite stomping grounds.
She opened it at the biggest bookmark, one that was made out of phoenix feather, to the beginning of chapter seven. VII: A reason for integration. Several words were underlined.
It is one thing to dismiss Muggles as people who will never be part of our world. who will never understand it. This hypothesis has merit, as any attempt to consolidate their society with likely result to be more harmful than beneficial.
However, to think them as infantile, as intellectual and moral inferiors, is possibly the greatest mistake the magical community has done in the last three centuries.
It is a prevalent thought that all Muggle inventions are simply primitive ways to do tasks that magic solves easily. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
In the last fifty years alone, Muggles have eradicated a major virulent disease, invented a visual method of one-way mass communication and built a vehicle capable of going to the moon. Yes, the moon. Many of my fellow wizards and witches are astonished to learn that Muggles calculated the distance from our land to the moon with precision, figured out that air gets thinner the higher one gets, learned how to store air in a metal container under pressure, calculated that outside the protective layer that protects our planet there is no air, no friction and no heat and they built a suit to survive these conditions.
One will ask: how is such an accomplishment possible? It seems almost fictional that Muggles, people who to this day die from lack of access to clean water because they cannot magically purify it, could achieve such a thing.
Their success can be explained threefold.
First, Muggles outnumber magical folk by a vast margin. Verhult's famous equation [Chance of magical child = closest magical relative(((total magical family members x 4 - magical children born to this generation x 2) x SquibRate)/ number of magical parents)+Magical Status of maternal grandfather +1] tells us that for every wizard or witch there are at ten Muggles by rate of birth. According to a recent Muggle worldwide census, there are three billion thirty nine million Muggles on this planet (there is a margin of error for magical folk who participated on the census because they live with a Muggle or Squib relative/spouse). This leads directly into my second point: the magical community is not globally organized in any way that even compares to the systems of Muggles.
There is no such census for the worldwide population of magical folk and one has never been attempted. It's a sad state of affairs when one can get a more accurate estimate of the global magical population by extrapolating data from Muggle statistics rather than have our own reliable numbers. The root of this problem is ironically the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy that was instituted in 1689. It created an atmosphere where wizarding communities were less trusting of foreign folk and less likely to share their progress in magical affairs.
Going back to my example of the moon vehicle, such a quest was only possible thanks to the collaboration of countries working together. United States (the former British colony turned independent) and the USSR (stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a Muggle-made combination of countries such as Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and others. Read chapter 9 for further details) worked tirelessly on a team effort to complete what became known as the "Space Race" (space being what Muggles call the vast nothingness that lies beyond our atmosphere).
Thirdly, the magical community vastly underachieves when it comes to teaching adults higher education. Once a witch or wizard becomes an adult, formal education stops. If this person wants to continue learning, they must rely on their own wits to do so. Muggles have colleges and universities to which they encourage their young people to go to. Universities are places where Muggles who have taken a keen interest in a certain subject can meet their like-minded peers and discuss ideas. These sort of institutions lead to faster progress, since all the smart and dedicated people are gathering in the same place. By comparison, the closest the magical community has are guilds, which as we all know are based more on the hereditary or financial status of the member rather than her actual skill. Universities rely a lot on the scientific method (recall chapter 4) to consider data true or not. Those familiar with my writings will know how worrying I find it that any unqualified wizard can do field research by himself and publish a book without substantiating his claims with evidence. An intellectual community should not accept anything as a fact without having proof.
Some have claimed that Muggles are too hard-headed and violent to be taken seriously as a source of knowledge. In a rare instance of magical folk recognizing Muggle ingenuity, most of the wizarding community was shocked to learn about the atomic bomb (the weapon used to completely destroy Japanese cities at the end of the Russo-Germanic conflict 1945, see chapter 10) with a good reason. Muggles spend as much time making terrible weapons as they do building clever little gadgets
But to claim this is a trait inherent to Muggles alone is vastly hypocritical. Wizarding folk be just as malevolent and cunning. Recall that the most serious of Unforgivable Curses, the Killing Curse, was invented to stop one of the most infamous wizards of our recorded history: Matthäus Sárkányfi. Malice can be said to be an inherent human trait, not a magical or non-magical one by nature.
It is entirely possible for us to adapt the positive things from Muggle progress, such as the scientific method, while intentionally avoiding the negative aspects like the weapons of mass destructions. Out discrimination has put us decades if not a complete century behind in progress compared to out non-magical brethren. We should strive to adapt our knowledge without compromising our secrecy.
Case study: Muggles changed the name of the Kingdom of Siam to Thailand in 1949 and have used it consistently ever since. Despite the fact that this happened over two decades ago, magical folk from that area continue to refer to themselves as Siamese. It is this kind of stubbornness that poses our biggest obstacle to creating a path to progress.
Further readings: Chapter II: The Fallacy of Considering Muggles a Separate Biological Species
Chapter IV: the Scientific Method
Chapter IX: Muggle Forms of Government Explained: from Communism to Fascism to Democracy and what it means for the Magical Community
Chapter X: the Art of War: How Muggles Fight and Why we Should Never Ignore it
Chapter XI: the Ethical Dilemma of Letting Human Beings Die for the Sake of Magical Secrecy
Hermione put down the book, her brain soaking what she just read. Part of her wanted to analyze this man's perspective on Muggles and all his mistaken assumptions next to his correct ones, but she knew she needed to focus on her mission.
He looked back at the chapter. The paragraph talking about the Killing Curse was underlined in its entirety and the name Matthäus Sárkányfi was circled emphatically. She had heard the name before, or rather read it. Taking out a fresh piece of parchment, she wrote down the name carefully.
"Research time, Crookshanks." She whispered. The ginger cat flicked his ears in approval.