Marietta was beginning to feel tired and hungry, and her knees were in pain for kneeling so long. She noticed one of the girls had managed to contort herself so that she could sit, but she was unable to bring herself to do the same. I have to keep my head high in this sort of scenario. Even if the others can't see me, the Death Eaters can. It occurred to her that she had responded remarkably well, despite still being filled with fear at the idea of what Rookwood and Crabbe were going to do to them. If anything, that is. They kidnapped us because they wanted to explain something. Most like, they will release us. I didn't know that when we were captured, but my mind was to occupied to worry about anything else.
To her knowledge, such was simply her general nature. She concerned herself a great deal with the future, but was no stranger to prioritizing and considered herself highly capable of rational processing, even under pressure. Everyone's good at something, I suppose.
"Is there anyone who knows where we are?" The boy next to her asked, probably oblivious to the possibility that the Death Eaters were listening in. Half a hundred charms on the room could do the job. If they're keeping with some sort of theme, they could even use a two-way radio like in the pictures.
"I think we're in a house- a nice one." It was one of the girls. "When they led us through the main area, the floor was a nice tiling. I could feel a fire going." From what Marietta could see, they were in a room specifically designed for holding captives. Not much was visible in the dark, but spikes embedded in the floor were holding them by their rope bonds. It's easier to maintain than using a spell, especially for all of us. They also wanted us to realize it was possible for Muggles to do this to us.
"That's good, that's good. In that case, it might be one of theirs. Do we know of anyone who lives not so far from Hogsmeade?" She had never kept track herself, but having been led through the fireplace, it was likely that their captors had used the Floo Network without incantation, and as a result they could be miles from Hogsmeade.
"I'm afraid no one does." Someone eventually responded, though it was a new voice, possibly emboldened by the thought of escape.
"That's quite alright. Do we have access to any wands?" Had Boot been here, we would already be out.
"I don't think so... I'm not sure if they took mine, but if they didn't, I can't reach it." The girl who had been tortured responded. "I can't move around much at all. Is there anyone who can see?" Marietta had no difficulty remaining silent. Trying to escape could get us killed. Most likely, we'll be released. If I knew anything from being able to see that would help here, I would have already used it.
"That's no different from what I expected. Is there anyone with any familiarity with Death Eaters, Blood Purists, and how they operate?" The question was an odd one, but he was justified in asking it. She doubted there were any Slytherins among them, or there would have been a less compelling need to explain Purism, yet it was too early to discount it as a possibility. Most of the students were wearing Muggle garb, as it was the weekend and they had been out at Hogsmeade, but she suspected that the reason had less to do with preferring such raiment and more to do with having a chance to get out of the school uniform. Adults, including Hogwarts graduates, as most if not all wizards in Britain passed through it at some point, generally wore what they had to depending on where they worked. Ministry employees who took the Floo Network to get to work rarely had to interact with the nonmagical, but there were those among them who worked in proximity with the Muggles, like the Department of Memory Modification and she expected it would be better not to stand out. Of course, the Blood Purists likely see it as a matter of honoring their heritage.
"I don't think anyone is. They probably wouldn't have taken us prisoner."
"I was thinking there was a chance they simply took us at random." That's possible. We don't really have any similarities, at least not visible ones. If they snatched us out of Hogsmeade, they couldn't have afforded to be picky. "All the same, there's no reason to give up hope. Do we remember where we were before we were kidnapped?" Thinking on it, the last thing she remembered before being hit with a memory charm, a sensation she had learned to recognize, was impossible to place. It was not a matter of having forgotten everything she ever knew, she was just uncertain of exactly where she started to forget. Perhaps that's the sophistication they wanted with the charm. Rather than modifying our memories completely, they made it impossible to remember what it is that we remember. When we leave, they'll most likely hit us with another one, though for a different purpose.
She had learned about memory charms from her mother, who always insisted that she learn them.
"Really, Marietta you will find the memory charm to be a quite effective spell in a pinch. It's how we keep the Muggles from darkening our doors to ask for magical favors all the time." Her father had walked into the kitchen in the middle of her speech.
"Right you are, and remember- you must be careful when using Obliviate- don't use it unless you need to."
"Of course, father." She responded. It was the summer after her second year, and as she expected her parents would once again not be doing aught with her, the time she had would be better spent in the library, though the only one to which she had access was a Muggle establishment.
"You wouldn't want anyone to end up like that odd fellow, Lockhart."
"Not at all, father." The family had been in the city only a few days ago, when there was an excited affair about transporting the wizard to St. Mungo's, where the Healers would do what they could for him, but had low expectations. Wizarding London had been packed with rapid supporters claiming that Harry Potter had spun a yarn about their favorite author, as well as opponents, who demanded that all his books be examined for the inaccuracies and inconsistencies under this new light. Her parents had been no more surprised to find that the first crowd was mostly women than that the second crowd was mostly men.
Marietta had caught a glimpse of him, and she found him the same attractive wizard he always had been, only this time with an even more radiant smile, waving at everyone who was shouting. Why can't they just leave him like this? If he's forgotten how to use the memory charm, isn't he harmless? The Healers escorting him into the building tried to prevent it, but he managed to enter with a deep bow all the same.
She would later learn that the interest of the law was not to make him harmless, but to restore his memory so he could be properly tried, as his guilt had yet to be determined in court. Though the procedure seemed unnecessary at the time, the punishment for fraud and attempting to use memory charms on underage wizards was not the deletion of one's identity, it was a lengthy prison sentence. It had remained to be proven that Lockhart was guilty of each of his crimes, some of which he may have committed out of insanity or entrapment, and it would hardly surprise her if there were wizards who wrongfully accused him of stealing their accomplishments in his inability to defend himself. Finally, whether he was guilty or not, whether it would change anything or not, he had a right to speak in his own defense, and was unable to do that as a blathering fool. Allowed to speak at his hearing, the Ministerial Court might decide that there were aggravating or mitigating factors in one or more of the crimes he committed, or it might simply decide to exercise judicial mercy on account of something he was able to express.
The procedure and the appropriate respect for it made perfect sense to her, but the one sentence version of 'Fraud's Memory Being Restored- Why?' which made it into headlines did little to explain the decision to avid readers of The Daily Prophet. She found it oddly ironic.
The Hogwarts students around her had all but given up looking for ways out, which was essentially music to her ears. Marietta cared little for heroics, especially those simply acting heroic to put on a display. Of course, at least they're putting some thought into it. If they're not truly heroic, they must have some idea that they will prevail, or at least survive. Looking around, she noticed a boy seemed to be doing his best to remove the black hood from his head, but his efforts were, thus far, unsuccessful. She had already considered the possibility that her lie of omission would be discovered, but the chance was slight enough that there was no sense in accounting for it.
"How about we all identify ourselves?"
"Let's not." The unmasked witch insisted. "As far as we know, they don't know who we are. They may be listening to this conversation, they may not be. What is the reason you would have us reveal our identities?" He's probably hoping to find some connection, some commonality to provide a reason for why we were taken.
"Well, if we learn that we would have all been in the same place, we know where the Death Eaters penetrated our defenses." The answer came from someone else entirely, evidently in favor of the idea.
"We don't know that they had to. We might have been in Hogsmeade." On the face of it, it's only a guess, nothing that would give any doubt as to the effectiveness of the memory charm or the secrecy of their operation. "Besides, suppose we puzzle it out. Do we want them to realize we know? We're talking too much already." I'm talking too much if anyone is. They already took the cover off my head, now I'm drawing more attention to myself.
"If they could hear us, wouldn't we have learned already?"
"Not necessarily." Someone answered from the back of the room, sparing Marietta from having to continue. "We haven't really gotten any closer to getting out or anything since they've left. There's no need for them to tell us they can hear us. Once we make some tangible progress, that's when they jump us." The students in the room did not vocally respond. "I'm starting to think that we should really just wait to see if they let us go." Good boy. "They haven't indicated they mean to do anything to us, and they're probably thinking that if they don't let us go, we'll be found, which would be worse for them. I don't like it, I don't like any of it, but I'm thinking we should just listen until they're through so they release us."
"Release us? They haven't talked of feeding us to dragons, but they haven't said anything about that- even if they do release us, what might they do first? Don't tell me you're buying this rubbish about secretly being angels."
"Never said anything about being perfect. Probably far from it. Just think they may have been right about a few things."
"Right? Torturing Longbottom's parents to insanity was well-intended? It came from stable minds?"
"That was the Lestranges, all three of them. The Blood Purists-"
"They're on the same side, you filthy traitor. They're not using Voldemort, he's just convenient for them. They can't control him and they do what he says. They haven't even explained why people think there are Muggle-borns if there aren't any." The boy next to her argued, silencing his opponent momentarily.
"Just you wait." The other boy muttered. Ah. Here I had thought that in their fervor to use non-magical methods of spying on us, they would use Muggle technology. I had not expected an actual spy. Thinking on it, it was a reasonable plan, planting one of their own, or at least an actor into their midst. No matter how the students in the room managed to look for radios or spells, they would never but suspect the simplest plan of all, hiding among them and reporting on their conversation afterward.
As if they had been waiting, the Death Eaters entered without delay, Marietta expected the other students could hear it. The girl next to her tried to get back to her knees, but stopped moving when one of them audibly stopped while walking past her.
"As you may have expected at this point, we shall now explain exactly how this all fits together." Rookwood began, pacing deliberately. "Why have you been hearing the term 'Muggle-born' all your days?" That's something to consider, I suppose. "We don't use it to soften things for children- I should expect them to be proud to learn their true heritage, whatever time the understanding requires. In any event, there is an interest to separate magic from its distinctly genetic origin and of late we have learned its name. They call it The Greater Good, but in reality the name could not be further from the truth. By pretending that magic can simply come out of nowhere, they would have us believe there is no need for us to reproduce at all. They would have us believe that it is impossible for magic to die out. As a result, they treat every concern about the future of magic as paranoia, despite our infinitesimal population when weighed against the Muggles. The logical conclusion to the idea that we cannot, despite our very best efforts, die out, is that our future, as witches and wizards, has nothing at all to fear from the nonmagical." The Death Eater paused, staring over them, perhaps giving the the chance to think.
"Magic is not a mutation." Crabbe began, clarifying. "Mutations are rare. They happen randomly. Their expressions are inconsistent. Magic is a trait. It is passed down consistently in a predictable pattern." I would expect they've studied this. "Some say it is a recessive trait. If it were, the magic trait would have already disappeared from Muggles. Probability would favor pure Muggles over time, given their numbers." Marietta expected that many of the students were unsure of what to make of that, not having a background in genetics themselves. Essentially, recessive traits gradually disappear from the gene pool. Two carriers of a recessive gene would half the time produce another carrier and a quarter of the time a non-carrier, but a carrier and a non-carrier would half the time produce a non-carrier. Each generation would produce more non-carriers than carriers, and the more non-carriers there were, the more there would be in the succeeding generation. If magic were a recessive trait, she had even more to fear from Muggles, because the number of carriers among them, if greater than zero, was small and constantly decreasing. Relations between a witch and a pure Muggle, a non-carrier, would certainly produce Muggle children, and though they would be carriers, their future partners being carriers or magical would be incredibly unlikely. As carriers, they would have to lead lives without magic, and almost all of the people in their lives would be Muggles, and almost all of them would be non-carriers. She couldn't imagine a carrier seeking out a carrier or wizard just for the chance of producing magical children, as the most likely result in the event that they had more than one would be having some children who were objectively better than others. If I were a carrier I would deliberately seek out non-carriers. It would be one thing for magic to go extinct, but having children with unequal potential would be worse.
"For many of us, it is difficult to imagine why The Greater Good would want magic to go extinct, but we pay no undue attention to their rationale. Runcorn is of the opinion that it is simply equality gone insane, that they would make an equal population by ensuring that the superior blood dies out, but the rest of us are unconcerned. If a man is strangling you, it is patently apparent that he wants you to die. I would not expect you to ask why, I would expect you to remove him with a nonverbal and kill him. Torture the truth out if you like, but to be concerned with the rationale is to believe that there could be a legitimate reason." Rookwood walked past each student as he spoke, most likely expecting they could hear his efforts. "As the information regarding Blood Purism and its necessity in the future of magic has been available for centuries, we doubt that this is the result of any misunderstanding or good intentions gone awry. Had they aught other than our destruction in mind, they would reveal their plans, and we would easily defeat whatever argument they put forth. This is not, however, the case. There is an interest to eradicate magic, and as Muggles know nothing of it, there are wizards responsible."
"Who?" One of the students asked.
"This may be difficult for many of you, but the truth often is. Albus Dumbledore is a traitor of the worst kind."