Ch 44 Formal Instillation
"You need to have some sort of coronation as soon as possible," Gerhart told Albus, Cleo, Galadriel and Thorin Monday May eight. "The closer to Cleo's due date the harder it will be to hold a ceremony."
"We have been talking about it," Albus replied. "I don't want to call it a coronation, but I agree we need something. We think we need the four original thrones, the oldest ones we found in the cave that takes two Magi couples and two Elf couples to get into. We are continually running into the issue of words changing meaning over time, however. One to three thousand years ago the word "King" had a meaning of sole ruler. The kingdom belonged to the king. That is still the case in a few countries, more or less. The Jewish judges were rulers, but only temporarily, and their children did not necessarily inherit the job.
"Galadriel and I and our mates agree. We do not want to be that kind of ruler. The office should not be hereditary. And I should not be able to change laws on my own. At the same time, right now Cleo and I have to agree to or reject almost two thousand years' worth of laws that have been promulgated with the provision that the king and queen have to approve or reject them.
"We think we are going to arrange the ballroom at the palace with the four thrones in a place of honor at the very back of the hall where we will sit, but up high as objects to be viewed, hanging on the wall, not in a position where anyone could sit in one."
"There is only a week between your due date June twenty-fourth and the start of the ICWW July first," Gerhardt reminded Cleo and Albus. "That makes me nervous."
"It does us too," Albus agreed. "There is not much we can do about it, though."
"I will try to make sure my next one is not due so close to the start of the ICWW," Cleo told the Prime Minister.
Gerhart rolled his eyes, thinking that Cleo had not even delivered her first and was already talking about another one.
"We will decorate the ballroom," Galadriel volunteered. "It needs to reflect both the new position of the High Elves and the position of the crown princess and prince of the Magi."
Albus suggested, "I think the ceremony should involve signing documents of understanding, some sort of covenant between the Magi and High Elves, and between the holders of the first wands and, I hate to say subjects, that's the old view of kings and queens. A covenant between the holders of the first wands and the people they serve."
There was a raised platform at the back of the great hall on the main floor of the palace, and that had been where rulers and dignitaries had always been seated. Any remaining symbols of the previous rulers were removed. Albus knew there was an ancient coat of arms for the Peverell family, but Albus did not want to use it.
"Do we even need a coat of arms," Albus asked the small group trying to design the platform and symbols.
"Both the High Elves and you two do," one of the Magi replied.
"Can it be tied to the office, and not the family?" Albus wondered.
This started a rather long and involved argument. Finally, Albus insisted, "The coat of arms will refer to the office, not to the Peverell family!"
"The High Elf coat of arms will also refer to the office of holder of the first wands, not the family," Galadriel agreed.
There were two people in Switzerland who were familiar with heraldry and coats of arms, but both couples agreed, after a couple of hours of working with them, that their attempts at designing coats of arms for the Magi and High Elf holders of the first wands were disasters.
"I thought I saw a new coat of arms for the Malfoy family," Cleo volunteered. "Rose would know who designed it for them."
"Call her," Albus suggested.
Cleo reached into one of the pockets on her dress and pulled out her mobile. She said, "Rose Granger-Malfoy," and the mobile rang Rose's Mobile.
"Hello, Cleo. How are you?"
"Oh, I'm fine. Still pregnant. How are you doing?"
"Still pregnant, if that is what you are wondering." Rose answered. "Bloody awkward with all this weight sticking out in front. Why the call?"
"Who designed the new coat of arms for the Malfoy family?" Cleo asked.
"I did. It was fun. I purchased a few books on heraldry, and find the subject fascinating. Very pretentious, but fascinating."
"Could you design unpretentious coats of arms for the Magi and High Elf holders of the first wands, Rose?"
"It would be fun to try. Have you tried to work with anyone over there?"
"We have a couple of people over here. They know all sorts of history, but all of us, Albus, Galadriel, Thorin and I agree, that they just don't get it. For one thing, they try and tie it too closely to the family, and that is something we do not want. We do not want a heredity monarchy!
"Could you come over and work with us?"
"I have to see what is going on here. My schedule is rather free at the moment. Scorpius and Narcissa are handling most of the family business, with help. They have mostly freed up my schedule so I can focus on the baby when she is born. I've changed Narcissa's old office into more of an office and small sitting room. It is a much cozier place to meet when there is a small group. The nursery is all ready for the baby. I have also created a craft and art room in the basement so I have a dedicated room to paint and work on things.
"Let me talk to Scorpius and Narcissa, and see if I can spend a day or two over there helping you."
"That would be great, Rose!"
"Cleo turned towards the others. "Rose designed the new Malfoy coat of arms, and has studied heraldry. She says she is mostly free, just waiting for the baby, and is going to see if she can come over here for a day or two."
The next morning Rose arrived in Switzerland, and Cleo took her over to the hall that could be transformed into a ballroom. Rose was dressed in what were obviously work trousers and a maternity smock, somehow looking very stylish as well as ready for work. She opened a rolling suitcase she had brought from England, and before long she had a small artist studio set up. The two Swiss heraldry experts had insisted that they should work with Rose, and they showed her their work.
Cleo soon became bored with their discussion, that was beginning to turn into an argument. Eventually Rose turned to Cleo and asked, "Can you please dismiss these 'experts.' I really don't need their help or interference."
"Please leave," Cleo told the 'experts,' her tone of voice making it clear that it was a command and not a request.
When the experts were gone Rose told Cleo, "I need to see the wands. I really ought to see all of you together."
Cleo reached into a pocket and brought out three paper airplanes, touched then with her bamboo and sandalwood wand, and they took off to find Albus, Galadriel and Thorin. "The paper airplanes are much less intrusive than a mobile or Patronus," Cleo explained.
One at a time the other three holders of the first wands came into the ballroom.
"Will you please take out the first four wands so I can examine them," Rose asked the four. "Just hold them up so I can see them."
The four wands were brought out, and Rose looked carefully at them. She then took another good look at the four who were holding the wands.
The wands had gender.
The first wand, the one made of the mysterious metal, was mostly plain, but the subtle shape was definitely female. Although Galadriel was a thin being, there was no doubt that she was female, and the subtle thinning in the middle of the wand, and the shape, just emphasized it. Maybe it was just female in comparison to other wands. Once you had all the wands together it was obvious that this was both the most powerful and the most exotic wand.
Thorin's oak wand was solid and powerful. If Galadriel's wand was in some ways not of the earth, Thorin's was all of the earth, and it radiated not only the power of the sword and warrior but also the power of the forge and of subduing the things of the earth to your will.
Rose started to draw the two, and had several sketches before shaking her head, telling Galadriel and Thorin, "The drawings are technically accurate enough. They just don't reflect the personality of the wands."
Rose looked at the wand of Circe, the first wand of the Magi. It was also feminine, but if Galadriel's wand was subtly feminine, Cleo's was in some hard to define way defiantly feminine and procreative. Rose could understand how Magi, and humans in general, could out procreate Elves. Albus's wand was not as decorated, but it was obviously a powerful masculine wand. Seeing them together there was the implication of a struggle between a masculine wand that wanted to be patriarchal and a feminine wand that was actually more powerful. Rose was beginning to understand how there had been warfare between the two holders of the first wands of the Magi over so many generations.
Albus and Cleo put the two wands together to show how they 'mated.' Rose thought seeing the wands join was erotic and not something you should casually demonstrate. Something to imply in her drawing, but not be too explicit. But very important.
Rose, as an artist, knew that a good drawing was more than an accurate representation of the physical. A good artist could bring out the personality of people and things.
Something about the two coat of arms needed to do more than show the wands. This was not an easy assignment.
Rose looked around the room. "The room needs to reflect who you are, who all four of you and your successors will be. The coats of arms cannot stand alone. The room needed to reflect both the power of the wands and their masters, and the self-imposed limits you as the new rulers want to establish.
"Can you please come back after lunch," Rose told the four. "I have much thinking and sketching to do."
The four agreed to meet again at three in the afternoon.
An Elf was left to help Rose, with instructions to procure for her any supplies she might need. So late in the morning she asked for some silver leaf. She needed something other than paint to depict Galadriel's wand. She drew a couple of wands, coloring them not with paint but silver leaf. She thought she may have found a way to represent the wand.
But the people, the races of beings. That was what was at the center of what she needed to represent or reflect. And humans and Elves were different. The looked different, and they thought differently. She looked long at a couple of photographs of the four, and eventually started to sketch.
The two couples came into the ballroom to find Rose standing and drawing on two shield shaped objects. It was fascinating to watch, and they sat down, shushing each other, and watched.
There were already drawings of the four wands, two in the center of each shield.
Rose sketched in bold strokes the side view of a wizard, not a portrait but just a representation, with just a few lines leaving no doubt what it was. The short beard helped, but even without the beard you knew that the few lines represented a male.
The female was also distinctly female, with few lines somehow softer, reflecting is a subtle way the different proportions of the normal male and female. It was not Cleo, with all her distinctive features, but a generic witch.
The lines of the female Elf figure highlighted all the ways an Elf was different, from the shape and placement of the ears, to the different hairline, to significantly different eyes, to a very elfish nose. You knew it was an elf, and a female elf, even though there were not that many lines and it was not really a portrait. The male elf was also distinctly male, and the few lines highlighted the elfishness of the figure, as well as its masculinity.
When Rose was finished she turned and saw the two couples. She looked at Albus, removed the beard on the wizard figure, and added in some shading, as if to say 'this figure could grow a beard'. "It looked too much like Albus," she told the four.
Rose fussed with the coats of arms a little more, before saying, "It is a good start.
"You need to move the thrones away from the center, and put the coats of arms there. It is not because I want my work front and center. It is just that the thrones are the old, and what we are trying to represent with the coat of arms is the new."
The two couples agreed. Galadriel waved her hands, and the thrones moved several meters away from the center of the wall.
Rose levitated the shields to the center of the back wall of the ballroom, well above the stage or raised platform. She sketched the stage, and then asked, "What are you, exactly? You will be at the ICWW as something, but it is like here you are something else, something different."
Albus replied, "I know what you are trying to articulate. At the ICWW we are not the heads, exactly, but somehow the confirmers. The ICWW passes the laws and tries to come to some sort of consensus. Our position, as I understand it, is for on some of the more contentious issues to agree with the decision or, if necessary, ask for something to be reconsidered. It is a little like the prophets, that do not rule, but that try to point out the consequences of decisions.
"We could be the rulers, the administrators, of the valley, but Gerhardt Richter and his staff does an excellent job, and I don't think our position should be to administer the affairs of the valley either. We serve a more symbolic purpose, but an important one."
"You are also important to the magic, as opposed to the governing," Rose pointed out.
"The magic is changing, and the four of us are very central to that," Galadriel agreed.
Rose then sketched a couple of arrangements of furniture and furnishings for the stage. It was decided that depending on its use the stage could be as low as one step above the floor or as high as ten steps above the floor. The furnishings could be arranged in many different ways, something even No-Maj could do, although it was easier with magic.
A day later Rose left, and the eight holders of the first wands and their seconds created some sort of ritual that mostly consisted of the signing of documents.
Friday morning the stage was set for formally installing Cleo and Albus as Crown Princess and Crown Prince. All four holders of the first wands were involved, as were their designated heirs or seconds.
The stage was four steps up from the floor, high enough to make everyone on the stage visible, but not high enough to signify that they were lording over everyone. There was a podium, but also a table with documents on it.
Albus and Jesus wore suits and ties, more formal than their normal wear. Cleo was as usual in a colorful dress, not quite a ball gown but more formal than her normal dress. Ginny was also in a dress, again not quite a ball gown but more formal than normal business attire. Both Cleo and Ginny were by this time very pregnant.
The Elves looked like Elves. Male and female Elves were very distinct. The female Elves tended to be thin small beings. Galadriel and Luthien may have been taller than most Elves, but they were still shorter than all but the shortest humans. They were all dressed in a fancy smock over earth colored leggings that looked elfish, and their shoes just looked like elf shoes. Galadriel and a few of the other Elves wore unconstructed jackets over their smock,
Male Elves were not any taller, Thorin and Beren being taller than most and as tall as Galadriel, but they were hardly thin. They had broad shoulders, and their limbs and bodies were just sturdier. You could see why a male Elf could look like a Goblin or Dwarf in the way a female Elf could not. Their male Elves dress was just as elfish, but in a sturdier masculine fashion. The only Elf armed was Thorin, who was wearing the Sword of Gryffindor, or as the Elves always called it The Sword of Ragnuk the First.
The hall had not been turned into a ballroom with a floor over the atrium, so although it was a reasonably large room it could not hold a fraction of the beings who might have wished to view the ceremony. It was carried live on the older Wizard Wireless Network and the Wizard Television Network, as well as being sent over the Wizards World Wide Web. There was of course the best security the techno-wizards could come up with to make sure no No-Maj (Muggles) could receive the broadcasts. They had also set up two large screens on the plaza in front of the palace, for people who insisted on being close to the ceremony.
A little before ten all the other beings who were going to be on stage assembled, and shortly after ten Cleo and Albus walked out from one side of the room and Galadriel and Thorin walked out from the other side. They greeted each other with hugs, and sat down. Then Albus arose.
"Greetings," he started with. "I may have been born British, but this is no coronation. Even if, God willing, we can bring the third Crystal Ball back here and become queen and king, we have no intention of becoming traditional queens and kings.
"Why am I saying queen and king instead of king and queen? Because the first and oldest wand is that of Galadriel, and the oldest wand of the Magi is the wand that Cleo wields. One can rule as equals as king and queen, but it is much harder to rule in a patriarchal style if we acknowledge the primacy of the first female wands and rule as queen and king instead of king and queen. Language is important. Saying queen and king is a way of rejecting the automatic primacy of the male.
"When you say king and queen, the assumption, always true as far as I know, is that the king is the ruler and the queen is his wife and subject. If the queen is the ruler her husband is not a king, but a prince consort or something else. That is the history of the language. So we are, if we have to have titles, queen and king or princess and prince, equals not one of us a subject.
"What are we, Galadriel, Thorin, Cleopatra, and I? We are holders of the first wands. We agree that we have been fated to possess these wands until it is time to pass them on. We also agree that some of the trouble in the world of Elves and Magi has come because of these wands.
"The first wand was put in a box when some of the High Elves became house elves. There it stayed until after the MELL students, the Elf and Magi who are the Magi and Elf Language Learners, started to meet. Before she attended Hogwarts Galadriel went to the box, it opened for her, and she took the wand. There is much more to that story and is not mine to tell. I can and must tell you that it will be passed on to another female Elf at the appropriate time, according to their rules, and not by Galadriel to her daughter.
"The wand of Thorin again will be passed on to a High Elf, a male, but not to Thorin's son. The High Elves are a much more communal race than are us humans, and I do not want to get into how they were, in their earliest history, governed, nor how they intend to govern themselves now. That again is their story to tell, and now is not the time to tell that story.
"I do want to stress that Galadriel and Thorin, Cleopatra and I, have agreed not to pass our wands on to our children, and to strongly advise that these four wands should never be passed on directly to an heir by biology, to one's child or grandchild. There are several reasons why, but the most important is that passing on a wand should be something done with a great deal of care and thought, and not be done because of an accident of birth.
"Cleopatra has always been an exceptionally powerful witch, and the Wand if Circe has only made her more powerful. She also sees what I call the magic behind the magic, a deep if hard to understand view of what happens when we perform magic. Our teachers and others in the magic world have made progress in understand what we do and how to do it better because of her. We do not know for certain, but we feel that the witches that come after Cleo, and who wield the first wand of the Magi, should continue to advance our knowledge of magic. A teacher, a counselor, an adviser, but not necessarily an administrator.
"Then what am I? What position do I have, and what position do I need to accept here in this ceremony? I am not now, nor do I want to be, the sovereign, the ruler or a ruler of the Magi. Cleo and I wield the first wands, so I guess we are princess and prince not of the worldwide Magi, but only of the first wands. As such we must wield the first wands for the service of the worldwide communities of Magi and Elf.
"'We are also committed to wield the first four wands together.
"First of all we are going to sign a document of understanding between Magi and Elf, promising to confer with each other when it comes to passing on the wands, and to work as four equal beings in whatever we are called to do in governing and aiding our communities.
"Second, Cleo and I are going to promise that we will do what we are called to do as holders of the first wands. I cannot tell you exactly what that will be, although I know we are going to have to confirm, or refuse to confirm, some decisions of the International Confederation of Witches and Wizards.
"Finally, we have inherited at least the use of part of the palace, and the expectation that we will be living there."
Documents were brought out, read, and signed with very little ceremony. When all the documents were signed the four couples shook hands. Albus then announced, "Copies of the documents will be available Monday in many of the common languages of the Magi, as well as in elfish. Please note that there are places in the elfish document where translation may be difficult, and there are notes where this is the case.
"It may take until the end of the week for translations for a few of the less common languages.
"Thank you."
Everyone walked off the stage. As they were leaving reporters yelled at them, but all the beings on the stage ignored them, to the utter frustration of the reporters.
Rich Hudson came out and announced, "I really don't have any more information for you. I will take written questions, and try to get answers."
Rich spent the next hour receiving and reading pieces of paper or parchment with questions on them, which he acknowledged but did not answer. He listened but did not respond as reporters shouted at him trying to get him to answer their questions.
The reporters were for the most part unsatisfied, not having the documents immediately available, and not receiving any more information from Rich Hudson.
It was no coronation, and although something had happened it was hard to tell just what it was.
Except that the fountain outside the palace had water flowing from the lowest tier, and Cleo and Albus were obviously Crown Princess and Crown Prince, whatever that meant.
Albus, Cleo, Jesus and Ginny sat down to dinner after the ceremony.
"Do you have any idea what we need to do next?" Jesus asked.
"It is roughly five to seven weeks until the babies are due," Ginny noted. "Our apartments are all set up, and there seems to be some sort of household office set up so we have money. I'm not quite sure how it works, though."
Albus explained, "I understand that when my father became the Regent he found the household finances in somewhat of a mess. There was money, but not a good inventory of the assets or a very good idea of what the income and expenses were. Dad is not interested in managing money, but he is interested in being a good steward of resources, so he called Uncle Bill, and eventually Uncle Bill transferred his two best financial people, Boris and Natasha, to help manage the money."
"Belinda and Boris deCarlo's parents?" Ginny gasped.
"They call themselves Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale on the continent, but that is some sort of inside joke that has to do with how they look," Albus replied. "They mostly sound like the Americans' they are now, but I guess when they were dealing with much of the semi-legal things Dad inherited from Tom Riddle being Boris and Natasha with a horrible maybe Russian accent confused people, actually frightened some of them, and helped them find out the truth. Most of that is taken care of, and they are mostly just good managers and financial people now."
"So money will not be a problem?" Ginny wanted to confirm.
"Money and finances and taxes and governing is going to be a huge problem, but one that will be dealt with a little at a time working with the governing bodies of Switzerland, Magi and Elf, and with the ICWW," Albus let the other three know. "That will not take most of our time."
"Jesus, Ginny, you and I are going to have to read through all of the laws or standards or proclamations that needed the royal approval, or not.
"Cleo is scheduled to meet with the children of the valley in small groups, and she is going to be working with the college here on spells and charms, trying to advance what we are calling the science or practice of magic. I need to be with her for some of those sessions."
"We need to meet with as many of the people who govern the valley as we can," Jesus suggested. "You know many of them, and most of them know you because you have been coming here with your father for years, Albus, but I think it would be good if we met with as many of them as we can. Meet and listen, not try and tell them anything."
"I think that is an excellent idea," Albus replied. "I am sure Gerhart can assign someone to work with you two on that."
The couples would remember the next weeks as reasonably productive, without much drama, which they all appreciated.
2022
