"Did you know the muggle government of Britain employs over a hundred thousand officers of the law?" I wasn't sure I'd precisely invited the platinum-blond-haired man onto this topic, but he obviously enjoyed it. "About the same again in the military. Their population is approximately a thousand times ours, so if we needed policing in the same numbers we'd need over 100 aurors. Perhaps 200 if you consider them our army as well…"
He paused to take a sip of his wine, waiting for me to prompt him. "I'm guessing there are significantly fewer?" I said, just to keep this from drawing out.
"Indeed. Only a tad over fifty, at last count, with a few retirees that can be called in for emergencies." Lucius Malfoy clearly thought this was a slam dunk condemnation of something.
I thought about it from his point of view, as someone very involved in the ministry. But I also knew that the majority of wizards tried to stay out of the way of the ministry. "What about crimes against muggles that go unreported? Maybe wizarding criminals are just picking easier targets. It's not like muggle criminals have a whole giant population of their own outsiders to steal from."
A slight glimmer in his eyes like I'd caught the man out, then he turned it back to his own purposes. "And yet, with this whole population of opportunity, so many muggleborn turn their attention to trying to make changes to the wizarding world."
"It might have something to do with having to spend at least five years of their lives immersed in wizarding culture or they'll have their magic bound," I argued. "Also, that aurors can show up from nowhere at any time and throw them in prison. I suspect most muggleborn would be happy to ignore the wizarding world if it would ignore them." I wasn't exactly getting agitated, but after we'd finished an admittedly nice lunch in a private room, all of which he'd paid for, it seemed like Malfoy had started trying to recruit me or something. Rather than him changing the subject again, I tried to focus on what he'd been getting at, "But, are you saying that you don't have a problem with muggles, you just wish they'd leave you alone?"
"Well put, Mr. Dresden," he allowed. "I'm simply trying to dispel the notions I'm certain are still rife in Gryffindor, and likely Hogwarts in general. The push for blood purity is an important but flawed political shorthand. It's more a question of culture than birth. I understand that you're a powerful young wizard, despite being half-blood, and Draco tells me a muggleborn girl is currently first in his class. The Dark Lord himself was a half-blood, and he was killed by a half-blood after being weakened by another very talented muggleborn witch. I breed exotic animals as a hobby, and I wouldn't have much success if I didn't have an understanding of inherited genetics. Clearly, while two magical parents are more likely to breed true, once the recessive magical trait appears in any child, parentage doesn't seem to have much effect on total power.
"Unfortunately, the majority of traditional wizards don't have quite the same understanding of the sciences. They rally around being pureblood, thinking it assures power instead of just being a signifier of a shared cultural heritage. No, the problem with muggleborn and muggle-raised is not the capacity for magic, it's their capacity to understand our culture."
Right. The guy that wouldn't have looked at all out of place in an SS uniform was claiming he wasn't racist, he just found a bunch of racists to be a really useful voting base. Between the years in a Chicago orphanage seeing how my non-white peers were treated and then the not-so-warm welcome certain people in Britain had given me as a half-blood, I wasn't exactly willing to give him much credit for his tap dancing. But he still hadn't actually told me anything about my mother, so I managed to not just tell him how full of shit he was. Instead, I asked, "Did my mother fit in? I don't think McGregor is a pureblood family name."
"A half-blood," he allowed, with a slight smirk for me trying to force the conversation to what he'd invited me for. "But that makes my point exactly. She was a year ahead of me in Slytherin, so I had ample opportunity to observe her. Rather than railing against wizarding tradition, as many muggleborn and half-bloods do, she sought to grow within them. I think you will find that the non-purebloods who have problems in our society are precisely the ones that bring in radical muggle ideas and expect our world to accommodate them. Those that decide to embrace their magic and the culture that entails fit in so fully that only tell-tale last names would let a casual observer tell a difference from long-established families."
Someone willing to get along with conservative wizarding values didn't sound like what Hagrid had told me about my mother. "I heard she actually upset several of the professors. Left school early because she was pushy, and wouldn't accept things that were meant to be secret."
"Ah!" Malfoy exclaimed, seemingly genuinely excited by this information. "I'd wondered if anyone in the castle would have explained even that much to you. You see, this is where we come to the crux of the issue. How much do you know about British wizarding politics?" I shrugged that it wasn't much, so he continued, "The headmaster of Hogwarts heads up a political faction that he unironically refers to as 'the Light,' hoping to cast his opponents as representing darkness. It's inarguably a solid strategic move that has had Wizengamot members and voters lining up for years to side with him, even when they haven't looked closely at his policies.
"Your mother was more allied with a different political faction, one of whose tenets is that arbitrarily limiting magic study is terrible for innovation. Margaret didn't oppose wizarding culture, she opposed a philosophy that whole swaths of spells are too dangerous for students to even know about, much less learn to cast. That philosophy is, unfortunately, nearly universal in educational institutions." He paused for a beat, then added, "I suspect it has to do with seeing too many inadequate students and fearing that allowing permissions to the brightest of students would soon have incompetents casting Unforgivables in the hallways."
"I feel like I know both sides of the whole argument about what counts as a 'dark' spell," I countered. Quirrell kept bringing it up, and Justin had certainly had an attitude about it that I'd reevaluated heavily after his betrayal. I remembered how my godmother had been so interested in teaching me something that Dumbledore didn't seem to believe in, and took a guess, "What about the fae?"
With a slight grimace, Lucius admitted, "Yes, while treating with the fair folk is considered a risk even amongst those with our political leanings, we'd never seek to outright forbid it the way the self-proclaimed 'Light' would. Your mother became so invested in it that she was often referred to as 'Margaret LeFay' in a play on the name of the ancient enchantress."
That was at least a piece more information, and I gave him the feeder question he had actually been looking for. "So what you're saying is that my mother was only considered rebellious by Dumbledore's faction, but was asking perfectly reasonable questions from your side's point of view?"
"Indeed. And, to my regret, this is where her family ties did prove a limitation for her. Her friends at school who believed similarly had influential parents and other relatives who would intervene if they were treated especially unfairly by the staff, but Margaret had no such buffer in between herself and the disapproval of the staff. In fact, I understand that her magical parent was more aligned with Dumbledore's faction and made life at school unbearable for the girl. Hence, as soon as she could leave without having her magic bound, she did."
"Her magical parent?" I asked. "That would be my grandmother?"
He gave me a predatory look, one that I'd eventually realize meant he hadn't been sure no one had told me who my magical ancestors were. Now he held the ability to connect me to my family. I'd unfortunately just given Lucius Malfoy leverage, and that led him into a seeming non-sequitur. "Mr. Dresden, now that I've explained the two major political ideologies, do you think you fall more on the side of your mother, or of Dumbledore?"
Another thing I realized later was that this was a sales pitch to get me agree to being on his side. I wouldn't have taken him up on it if I'd realized, but my gut response was just, "Honestly, I don't give a damn about British wizarding politics. I'm heading back to America sooner or later. Hopefully sooner."
It was hard to figure out what he thought about that, but he'd probably take neutrality over protesting that I was solidly allied with his opponents. "Fair enough, Mr. Dresden. I so rarely get the opportunity to deal with wizards who have such good reason for being disinterested in politics. I'll think on whether I can provide assistance getting you back to your father's homeland."
He began to stand, so I realized I was being dismissed with only a tiny amount of information about my mother, but at least I got a free lunch out of the deal. I hated politicians. Trying not to sound too annoyed at his bait and switch to trying to recruit me, I managed, "I appreciate the consideration. And thank you for lunch."
"Think nothing of it, Mr. Dresden," he said as he made his way from the room, still seeming to be unsure of how to handle me in the future.
