Ch 28 The International Confederation of Witches and Wizards
I want to thank my beta readers Deb and Diane again.
Harry hated the pomp of the Opening Ceremony, but at least he did not have to wear the formal dress of the party the night before. There were the usual formalities to cover, and then Dr. Albert Salk, one of the chief healers of the Magi, was going to speak.
After he was introduced, Dr. Salk started. "Thank you Regent Potter for your words of introduction. We have a large number of things to cover today.
"First, I want to continue to encourage all Magi to receive their full series of vaccinations. I want to remind you that although we do not normally become as sick as non-magical people from contagious diseases, we do get sick, and we can transmit the diseases. In the report given to you I have listed several tragic if uncommon results of people not getting vaccinated, including two birth defects from Rubella resulting in the death of one Magi infant and the birth of one handicapped Magi infant.
"I also want to remind you that transmitting contagious diseases could be interpreted as causing harm to our non-magical neighbors, something that is finally against the law.
"Please drink your pumpkin juice. The juice and the magical spice we make it with is one of the reasons our bodies are somewhat immune to the effects of normal infectious diseases.
"We have some good news. After many decades of frustrating trials, we finally have a vaccine against dragon pox that is not worse than the disease. It has taken work with the magical genome to finally construct a vaccine that works, but this vaccine has at worst only moderate side effects. In most cases it will just be painful or cause some mild discomfort for a day or two. Please read the report you have been given to learn how and where we are rolling out the vaccination. We hope to have almost all Magi vaccinated within the year."
Harry then stood up and addressed the assembly. "Thank you Dr. Salk. Dr. Salk and a team of healers will be available if you have any questions about the Dragon Pox Vaccine or any other topic related to healing.
"The rest of this day and all of the next two days are going to be devoted to the problems we are having hiding from the modern world. With the proliferation of recording devices, with mobile devices that record their location using Global Positioning Satellites, and other No-Maj technology, it is becoming harder to hide. It is also costing more money, No-Maj money as well as Galleons, and we are having to dedicate more people to the effort. We now have Magi stationed around the world working twenty-four hours a day keeping the Satellite Global Positioning systems from spotting hidden Magi facilities. Keeping this valley hidden is an especially difficult job.
"As records are becoming more electronic, and duplicated in more places, it has become orders of magnitude more difficult to change records to hide us. Too many Magi are confident that we can fix any mistakes or lapses in the Statute of Secrecy. We know that there is evidence of us in No-Maj records that we cannot find and fix.
"I have a couple of examples from Great Britain. For years Magi have come to a train station in London to board a magical train to travel to our school in Scotland. No-Maj, what we call Muggles in Great Britain, figured out something was going on September first, and started watching the station. We now insist that almost all of our students and parents use either our Floo network or the newer Closet network to go to the train station. The few parents and students who do go to the train station enter through a couple of offices we have set up, and do not just disappear through a wall. There are too many recording devices now to do that.
"We are strongly discouraging people from living in No-Maj areas and finding so called hidden areas to Apparate. You have to figure that except for very rural areas, nothing is secret or hidden unless it is inside a building that has been magically protected. We have been buying up property around magical structures to better shield them from No-Maj eyes, sometimes at considerable cost."
"You are also making things for Muggles," one of the British wizards complained. "How can you stay hidden from Muggles and make things for them?" There was a great deal of murmuring among the crowd, and many seemed to agree, so Harry answered the question.
"Nothing we sell to No-Maj is magical," Harry explained. "It is very profitable only because we have found magical ways to do No-Maj manufacturing cheaper. Part of the secret is magically refurbishing old No-Maj machines. We can restore worn out machinery more with spells than No-Maj technology, but the machines when restored are totally or almost totally No-Maj machines. My brother-in-law Bill Weasley and his mentor, the Wizard of Omaha, will be talking later on about how to use magic to run profitable No-Maj operations."
Not all of the Magi wanted to hear that they were going to have to be more careful about revealing themselves to non-magical people, nor how magical some of the modern technology really was. There was also an undercurrent of complaint because they were not talking about Elves and house elves and Goblins, but the people running the meetings kept telling everyone that those matters were going to be covered at the end of the week.
Albus ate breakfast with Scorpius, Rose and Cleo, but spent most of the day sitting next to his father listening. Cleo and Rose continued with redecorating the castle, and as he did last year Scorpius documented what Cleo and Rose did. Albus ate lunch with the people attending the ICWW, but ate dinner with the rest of the MELL students.
Friday morning Harry arose to address the assembly. He started, "As I think all of you know, I am Harry Potter. My wife Ginny and I are the Regents, owning this valley in the name of a witch and wizard who are to come.
"I became the Regent by killing Tom Riddle. Tom Riddle killed the previous Regent family, but because he was not married and could not father children by the time he killed the previous Regents, he could not become the new Regent. The position of head of this valley, and historically head of the witches and wizards, has for as long as we have records been a couple, a witch and wizard. For at least two-thousand years we have had witches and wizards who could have become the lead couple, but the two Magi did not want to be subject to each other in a marriage beneficial to their selves and to the wider world of the Magi.
"The king and queen, or rulers of this valley, have been foretold to possess the oldest two wands of the Magi. One wand is the Elder Wand, the wand that, to my great discomfort, my son Albus wields. This does not mean that he will be the next ruler, but if he marries the witch who wields the wand now in the possession of the Pirate Witch Queen of the Caribbean then some of the necessary prophesies will be fulfilled to have them assume the position.
"I now need to turn this meeting over to Mary and John Rivendell, the head Elves of the house of the Regent, and nominally the head Elves.'"
Mary the head Elf of the Regents stood up and started. "What I am going to tell you is the truth, as far as we can understand our history. You may not like it, but facts are stubborn things, and not liking what I am going to tell you is not going to change the facts.
"Elves and totally magical creatures are not of this world, not of Earth. It is only now, at the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first, that we have the scientific tools to find the Alpha and Omega genes, and to see just how different magical beings like Elves and dragons are. Documentation proving this has been widely available, and is summarized in the documents you have all been given.
"So, where do we Elves come from? We do not know. We have found legends telling of our origins. Some say we came from a world without original sin. Not a world without sin, but a world without what Christians call Original Sin, where the rulers are mostly sinless and the rulers of our ancestors in that world rule with the assistance of the angel or spiritual ruler of that world. There are still dis-obedient children in that world. Some legends suggest that the Elf that came to earth was one of these less than obedient children, and that she took her betrothed and the magical creatures with her. Some legends say she was banished here, others that the portal between worlds closed stranding her here."
Mary the Elf stood looking at her notes, taking a deep breath.
"There are other stories, other legends, that disagree in minor or very major ways with the ones I hinted at. The one thing they all agree on is that the ruler of the Elves was female, and that the first wand is the one my granddaughter Galadriel now wields, the wand not made in this world, the first wand from which all other wands can trace their heritage.
"So far I have told you two facts that we can prove as well as we can prove anything, that many of you will have a very hard time accepting. House elves and Goblins have not accepted the facts we have discovered any more easily, but facts they are. Magi did not create magic nor most magical creatures, and magic came first from the female.
"We know, both Magi wandmakers and Elfish wandmakers, that the wand that the Goblin Thorin Oakenwand wields was made by the first wand, and that all the wands of the Magi can trace their origins back to these first two wands. I also want to emphasize that the treaty that Goblins signed that prevented us from using wands was very specific, and forbid wands descendent from the first two wands of the Magi.
"The legends suggest that the first Elves were few, maybe three couples, and they needed help, so they created the Magi. They found people who could become Magi from most of the races of the world, and for well over a thousand years they ruled together, a High Elf and her consort, and a witch with her husband. But the ruler of this world, the devil in Jewish and Christian writings, conspired against this arrangement, and caused dissent. The males were not satisfied to be ruled by a couple with a female as equal or more than equal, and the male Magi tried to dominate the female, the wizards to dominate the witches, and the rulers could not continue to rule, so Regents took over.
"Some male High Elves did not want to be partners with the female High Elves, and some of them became Goblin men, and their females became slaves, not Goblins, and the Goblins lost their ability to make wands because making wands is couple magic, so many now feel they lost more than they gained. And the High Elves that did not want to dominate became house elves, trying to make atonement for the warring Goblins, and that did not work out all that well for us Elves either.
"We think our joint history is about six-thousand years old, but even that is uncertain, and clouded in myth.
"We are discovering the original language of the Elves, and the original Elfish is very different from the Elfish we now speak. There are four genders, male, female, and neuter, and another one that is best described as beings working together. In a heterosexual couple way it describes a female and male, High Elf or Magi, working together to accomplish something. What it does not imply is the female dominating the male the way a male dominates a female in a patriarchal society. Loving sex that creates a new life is this couple gender, but rape is a male word. There are male words in Elfish for rule and ruler, but also words and phrases in the fourth gender for governing.
"Suggesting even among Elves and Goblins that we go from ruling to governing has not been an easy concept to grasp, and something that has been even harder to agree on. All the prophets and prophesies of this age, from Elven prophetesses as well as Magi prophetesses and prophets, point to my granddaughter Galadriel and the Goblin Thorin Oakenwand being the new head princess and prince of the High Elves, but they cannot take their rightful position until we have a new ruling couple of the Magi.
"Meanwhile we keep on gradually becoming less slaves, in the case of Elves or house elves, or rivals we treat with contempt, in the case of Goblins, and more like equal partners. We are attending the Closing Ball not as servants but as equals, and going back to our owners as paid servants or partners, and not as slaves.
"You are being given a much larger document outlining our history, at least as we have been able to understand it."
The hall erupted, many of the Magi yelling all at once, some at Harry and the Elves, other Magi yelling at each other. Harry tried to restore order, with little success. He finally had to set off a loud boom with his wand to restore order.
"You may speak, one at a time, as I recognize you, or the board and I will end this meeting," Harry firmly proclaimed, glaring at the crowd.
Joseph Marie DuMond Jr. arose and was recognized. "Do we get to vote on these major changes in the ruling of our world? I for one do not like what is going on, and would vote against all these changes."
Harry turned to Mary the Elf, and she answered, "Most of what we have told you is history, and one tries to change history only at their peril. A unified body of High Elves is more true to who we are than the older order of house elves and Goblins. We are not asking you for permission to be who we are, but telling you that we are in the process of becoming what we should be. This becoming what we should be is between us, Elves and Goblins, and we need to make peace among the descendants of the High Elves without interference by the Magi.
"Magi, you need to negotiate with the Elves working for you and with you."
"I have house elves who are happy with who they are," another Magi insisted.
"That may or may not be true," Mary insisted. "You need to ask them. I would guess that even if that is true, their children may be less eager to be house elf slaves than their parents and grandparents."
"Who is going to compensate me for my house elves," Joseph DuMond complained.
"You might have to pay them a fair wage if you want them to keep working for you," Harry replied. "The Potter/Weasley Elves have been gradually receiving better pay and housing, and have worked both hard enough and smart enough that we have easily been able to afford to pay them more."
The rest of the day was taken up with a great deal of complaining, that continued well into the night. Saturday morning was a Closing Session that was usually rather routine, but was interrupted by more bitching than usual.
2020