The alliance had not met for a month, as Arabella thought it would be best not to encourage the spread of rumors among overly excited members. Even so, the meeting had started out quite energetically, and, after assuring them the Dursley child had been retransfigured and was sleeping peacefully in Petunia's house in one of Dudley's old cribs, she had been desperate to get their minds off of their small hostage. It was in this frantic state that she had agreed to Finneus and Jeremy's suggestion to talk a bit about their pasts.
Half an hour later, she was almost glad she had.
"Well, originally, it wasn't a big deal, you know. All of my muggle paperwork bore the name 'Jeanette', J-e-a-n-e-t-t-e, the muggle spelling, and my wizard papers said 'Jinnet', J-i-n-n-e-t. It was pronounced the same way. They figured they'd decide when I got old enough to read. That was right after I was born. By the time I was three, they had divorced, and my name was something of a minor war.
My dad was terrified of wizards, even before he divorced mum. He didn't want me growing up to have that much power, you see, and having to go to mum to learn to control it, and getting so far into that culture I wouldn't even know him anymore. That was about what happened, actually. My mum always worried a bit too much about me knowing my wizard heritage. In fact, I was furious at him until about two years ago, when I went back to his hometown for my grandad's funeral, and I didn't even remember why. That's how the Alliance got started, you know."
Teresa jumped in at this. "All those years, and I'd never told her about my letter. I didn't know she was magical, too; how could I have? But I couldn't help it when she was finally back and we were starting to revert to old times. What she was talking about with her parents reminded me so much of how mad my gran was when my mum wouldn't let me go to Hogwarts. And we decided no one else should be split by this sort of thing."
Amanda silently agreed. "I wish I could have brought my family here a few decades ago. We were split by a stupid chess game! I was playing one of my magical brothers, and we got into an argument over whether he could use the talking chessmen that wouldn't listen to me. It got more and more tense until my brother and I had finally worked it out, but by that time my parents were shouting too loudly to hear us, and my muggle brother, my mum and I spent the next month in a muggle hotel."
Timothy put his arm around her. "This stuff that divides us up is so stupid!"
Jill took offense to this. "My sister died, and it wasn't stupid! The wizarding world is dangerous, especially to those who weren't born there. When a muggle gets mad, he doesn't suddenly burst out in rage. Wizards just have too much power; that's the problem."
"Plenty of muggles have no trouble bursting out in rage," said Harry quietly. Petunia looked at him, as did Dudley, who was at his first meeting. They opened their mouth to say something, anything that would show him how much they had changed since those days, but Harry put up his hand to silence them.
"Don't worry, I've gotten past that. I'm not Voldemort."
"You mean this dark wizard is terrorizing muggles because one or two of them was nasty to him?" Asked Teresa.
Harry nodded.
"How do you know that?" asked Jeff in a curious tone.
"I get around," Harry responded cryptically.
"But that's no different from the Dursleys, only backwards!" Nina said, astonished.
Dominic made an observation. "The Ministry of Magic isn't as different from Voldemort as it seems. They both seem to fear muggles, even though they're stronger than them, because muggles are so numerous. Voldemort's just more radical about it. The Ministry feels safe in its walls, but the muggles have enough power to destroy the world with nuclear weapons now. What if Dorian ever pulled off his Revelation? Would we be flung into a worldwide anarchy? Voldemort would have wizards lining up to join him out of pure fear."
"Just what Dorian wants to prevent with his Revelation," Finneus noted. "Why don't we have a war, then? It might make things easier."
"We have the element of surprise. What if we restrained them with ropes all at the same time and forced them to deal with us? The Christian wackos would be powerless, and we could let everyone else go," said Jeremy.
"How can you say that?" Asked Nina. "You're a muggle yourself. And some of the Christian wackos, as you call them, are smart enough to lie. It would be even easier for them to secretly form a resistance force if we started off our Revelation like that."
"So, what do we do?" Asked Arabella.
Suddenly, Jill had an idea. "What about the opposite?"
"What, you mean restrain all the wizards with ropes?" Dominic asked.
"No! We do something really wonderful for the muggles right after Revealing ourselves. Couldn't we cure some muggle disease with potions?"
"Don't you know anything?" grumbled Jeff. "There used to be a lot more diseases before wizards started killing them."
"Well, then, natural disasters? What if the next time there's a terrible earthquake or something, we stop it? Then we could catch the public's eye as heroes and explain everything."
"I don't see why not," said Amanda. "Let someone call us the Antichrist after we've levitated a giant rockslide off of them. The only problem would be getting the rest of the wizards to go along with it. How would we convince the purebloods?"
"We don't consult them," Finneus replied. "All we need is the ministry, and after we give the Dursleys back their little hostage, that's not going to be a problem."
"Are you sure even a missing child is changing their minds?" asked Petunia. "I haven't seen any white flags yet."
"If that child's mother won't convince them to at least listen to us, then that lot is more radical than I thought."
