Check first chapter for summary, disclaimer, and other warnings.
Very important disclaimers and "trigger" warning: I feel I must put that here.
The views expressed by the characters aren't those of the author.
You might read opinions based on centuries-old views, mixing freely (and badly) with up-to-date considerations. You might read about non-human fantasy biology. About teenagers trying to express their (flawed) views of the (flawed) society the adults came up with (or their ancestors). And some such.
Remember that this is a work of fiction.
This is certainly not a mandatory school book. If you want to stop reading, at any point, do so. If you want to complain about the script, do so – although I'd rather read constructive feedback than flames. If you want to complain about the author, it means that you didn't read the above.
And remember the previous chapter's additional notes, too: the kids are not kids anymore.
Optional notes: These are offered as an explanation of the above. Read if you want, skip otherwise.
Do you know how stories are written? Have you tried to write, yourself? Have you reached the point where, your fingers flying over the keyboard, your characters' dialogue seem to write themselves without a conscious thought?
It happens. Many, many, many times. Thoughtless comments add themselves, adding to the discussion's momentum, until it snowballs into a dramatic revelation, and then… you are surprised because you wrote three pages in as many minutes.
Sure, it must be re-read, and refined. Sometimes, the chat leads nowhere, or even in a direction contrary to the plot (if there is one), and must be rollbacked (sometimes being stored away in companion stories or Omakes).
Sometimes, it reaches a logical conclusion to everything that has been written before. And it stays. Even if the logic led the character to completely erroneous conclusions. Or morally wrong. Or just not politically correct.
If you want to be angry at something, because you read the character's actions and reactions, yell at them. That's it. Yell at the screen. After all, it worked so well, the last time you watched and yelled at your favourite sport team on the telly… right?
Just kidding.
Chapter 25 – Arguments
posted June 14th, 2020
Wotcher, Diary!
Re-reading what I wrote from the beginning, I sense that my writing ability gets better with time, although it feels less than a stream of consciousness and more like a story. Maybe I'm not cut of Auror cloth, and should change and become a writer. Or a journalist. Or simply take that wonderful ability and write my first reports. But we can't embellish these…
Here, I'm the queen, and can add every little detail I want from John's owls – even if I only imagine them in my mind. Such as the fact that, when McGonagall entered stealthily in John's quarters, she was surprised to find the four teenagers naked in the same bed. It is quite a realistic inference, given that her shriek of outrage almost woke the whole school.
Her mission forgotten, she brought the whole lot in Dumbledore's office.
As they were.
I struggle not to laugh at the scene I imagined when John recounted it: four teens, sharing a single sheet, faced with authority figures from the three schools. And three other hostages, too, lying unconscious on the floor in their jammies: Cho Chang (known paramour of Cedric Diggory), a boy in a Durmstrang uniform (who might be either a brother or a love interest of the Bulgarian champion), and a young girl resembling Fleur Delacour (although her age was difficult to estimate, given that her size put her at ten while her shape pushed that into her teens).
Hermione was quite dismayed at being put in this humiliating position, especially by a teacher she appreciated, and she thought long and hard before grabbing Harry's wand – yes, this one, you perverts (and I know because John has no secrets for me). The "springy" wand gave her a warm feeling (Hermione has no secret either, and all three brainiacs consider me as their slightly deranged older sister and confidant) and she actually used it to cast a spell.
A… spell?
Yes, a spell. In a night where cuddling almost led to something else, they had theorized that his Animagus shape gave his "parts" enough animalistic power to be used as such. And they tried. And it worked.
She could have used his arms instead, but he was currently shielding the two younger girls from view by hugging their front to him. And hiding their behind by placing his hands there.
If that gave her a longer wand to do magic with, all the better.
A few transfigurations later, the four of them had all the appearances of appropriate clothing – but only so, because the three younger ones (Hermione being the oldest) were still glued skin-to-skin together. And seeing that the little girl on the floor was barely clothed too, she used the "wand" a last time, targeting her, so that her nightgown grew past her thighs and thickened – she doubted that she had considered the fact that she could be kidnapped, when dressing for bed.
"What is the meaning of this?" she asked, clearly upset.
"What?" asked McGonagall, her mind too shocked by the wand-waving to register it. Instead, it stayed on its previous track. "Miss Granger, don't forget why you are here. You were the one found frolicking-"
"What we do within our private quarters is under our own purview, as outlined in the Tournament rules about the Champions' duties and privileges. And while entering in the dead of night has happened in the past, I hope you weren't there to poison us. So I repeat, what is the meaning of this… kidnapping?"
"Now, Miss Granger. Be reasonable. It's for the Tournament." Dumbledore started.
"Hostages." the girl replied. "You took people hostages without asking them before. That's kidnapping, pure and simple."
"Don't take that tone, Miss." the deputy headmistress said. "You are the one in the wrong here."
"I already outlined how what we did wasn't wrong." Hermione insisted. "And while taking hostages has precedents, even to organize retrieving events, I doubt you have thought this one out completely."
"Why, then, pray tell?" asked a clearly miffed witch.
"The Veela, for instance. The riddle said that what the champions would miss would spend an hour at the bottom of the lake – that's where the mermen village is."
"Merpeople." muttered McGonagall.
"They haven't had the same thought-locking progressive inventions our people have come up with." countered Hermione. "And even then, it's the muggles, who…" she stopped and turned towards the Deputy Headmistress, clearly curious. "Why do you use this term, actually?"
"Professor Dumbledore convinced us that this muggle invention, as you said, was good for the magical people."
"Have you asked them, before forcing muggle terms on them? How do traditional families react to this?"
"Well, they fight it, of course, but they fight any change anyways, so we continue nonetheless." a smiling Dumbledore said.
"Like a steamroller. Like your muggle counterparts." she sighed and closed her eyes, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Like them, you think that the people (for whom you work, as head of the legislative body) are unfit to think by themselves. You change the language they use, whether spoken or written, so that they have no common ground anymore. Next, you'll declare as dangerous anything said outside of your own morality code. And you'll then imprison those who resist your moves because they broke the laws on "thoughtcrime", laws you'd have written yourself beforehand – or even after the fact, as I've seen a couple times. Correct?"
"Basically, yes, although we don't have laws about dangerous speech, yet." answered Dumbledore candidly. "But it has been in my mind for quite some time."
"We don't need it." Hermione declared. "Muggles pushed it because the internet allowed anyone to insult anyone else without reprisal. This grew, and led to whole groups of people pushing each other towards more and more outrageous declarations, and actions afterwards. Without such a platform, any law restricting speech will only be a government attempt at censorship, and it is one of the steps leading to dictatorship."
"To be led by a single man, a knowledgeable and enlightened one, and as preoccupied as I am with the Greater Good… would it be so bad?" asked Dumbledore softly.
Hermione looked at him with wide eyes. "YES! Of course it would! Didn't you fight Grindelwald on this very issue? No? Why did you fight him?"
"You are quite young, you wouldn't understand." the man answered. "But I'll give you the bare bones: there were many dead, whom I wanted to redeem, people I wanted to bring back to the light. Such as yourself, young lady. Your whole discourse is quite dark… and dangerous."
"I'm letting this slide for the moment." she replied, concentrating on the subject at hand. "So. Grindelwald killed, and you don't, only using Stunners against enemies, thus claiming the moral high ground because your hands are clean – no wonder you were losing to Voldemort, before Harry came along." A pause. "But apart from this, you agreed on his endgame scenario of a magical dictatorship." she concluded, before swallowing – with difficulty. It's not everyday that your beloved authority figure is, in fact, the nazi you thought he opposed.
And the man had the audacity to smile and nod, as if it wasn't unusual – well, he was of the age of people who thought that normal, so it wasn't that unusual.
Another thought struck her. "According to you, evil people deserve a second chance to redeem themselves. And when they do evil again?"
"Well… anyone deserves a second chance, even those who make mistake twice. In my vision of an ideal world, everybody is happy and working together to lead those unfortunate souls towards redemption. There's not a place for people whose heart are filled with dangerous ideas."
"That's not a second chance, then." she said flatly. "That's a third. And then a fourth. You would inflict a tyranny on regular people, shackling them with inane laws, so that true evildoers would have an unlimited number of chances of actually doing evil. You would let a killer go free, and imprison those suggesting you restrict the killer's freedom?"
A pause ensued, while the old man was visibly trying to find a polite way to say that, yes, that was what he wanted.
She didn't let him, though. "Are you mad?"
Dumbledore opened his mouth to continue the debate… or refute (or confirm, as he sometimes did) the psychiatric diagnostic, but he closed it almost immediately and shook his head. "We are not here to debate, politics or otherwise. I will remember your stance, though. Now, you were saying, about the merpeople?"
Hermione was quite shaken by the ominous declaration, and she shared a glance with John. He had followed quite easily (despite the two gorgeous girls rubbing on him) and indicated that, yes, they would soon implement their own fail-safe mechanism.
"We asked them, you know." the girl continued as if nothing momentous had been revealed about their future. "Using the best translation spells. And they call themselves "Mermen". Using any other term is derogatory to them. And thinking that they don't deserve to choose by themselves how they call their people because they are less developed… that's plainly, and literally, an attack on them as a separate race."
Dumbledore made a shooing gesture with his hand, dismissing the argument as if thinking about what people actually wanted was outside of his grasp. "And the Veela?"
"When a Veela, a creature of fire and air, is plunged in water, they lose more than their Veela abilities. They are stressed, and quickly exhausted. They are also at greater risk of dying. The Bubble-head charm is useless because they need to breath with their whole being. I saw Fleur training on the lake shore, and she didn't use this spell. Or rather, she refined it so that it would encompass her whole body. As such, she had to find new ways of propelling herself through water while keeping her whole body out of it. Not easy.
"But back on the skin needing air: it's true for humans too. When we prevent our skin from breathing, by being submerged in water or covered in paint, the skin dies in days, leaving the area damaged and the person vulnerable to infections.
"For Veelas, this delay is counted in dozens of minutes, not days. If you put this little girl underwater for an hour, you'll kill her."
"Thank you Miss Granger." Dumbledore said, standing up, his wand in hand. "You've given us your view on things, and I'll think about it. But now, we have a more pressing matter. Stupefy."
The incantation was echoed around the room, as the other adults did the same to the other teens – McGonagall was a given, as she practically worshipped the ground the old man walked on; Karkaroff was beholden to him and had no choice; and the half-giantess followed the group (as seen with Hagrid, the species is large but quite simple-minded).
Besides, she was just a teenager in her rebelling phase, and arguing to evade the fact that she was caught in a compromising situation. Right?
And the foursome, being immobilized in their own transfigured sheet, couldn't move to defend themselves and fell down.
At least, that is what I imagine the scene looked like. Remember that I can only give you, my dear Diary, the sequence of events from John's missives. From the fact that I wrote all of the above, you can infer that I have been informed, and that means that John is alive and able to communicate after his ordeal. And he is, certainly.
Hermione, though…
To be continued in next chapter: Underwater...