Previously in the Darklyverse: Reg briefly took a job caring for Azkaban prisoners as part of the Order's escape plot. Lily and Reg were elected as delegates to the Canadian Ministry.
xx
January 7th, 1983: Reginald Cattermole
After what Reg said to Lily about her diplomatic ability (or lack thereof) the last time they saw each other, he's positively dreading having to face her again tonight—not even for a meeting with the Order (which would have been more routine and less stressful), but for one with the Canadian Ministry. Honestly, Reg has too much social anxiety and too little conflict-resolution ability to be qualified as one of the de facto leaders of the Order, let alone as one of their Canadian Ministry delegates. He didn't ask for this role: he just got thrust into it because everybody started seeing him as a big hero for breaking them out of Azkaban.
Before all this, when he was working Magical Maintenance at the British Ministry and had no idea that his then-wife was a vigilante, Reg often felt frustrated by how little respect people in his career got at work. Now, Reg almost misses being seen as unimportant—feeling like the weight of the world wasn't on his shoulders.
He swings by Lily and Alice's flat about twenty minutes before they really need to leave for the Canadian Ministry, and he briefly says hello to the kids and Alice. It's not that Reg doesn't like kids, but he doesn't really know how to talk to them, especially ones he doesn't know. Neville looks even more terrified of Reg than Reg is of him, but Harry knows Reg well from months of living together at Grimmauld Place, and he gives Reg a big hug that makes Reg feel sort of—like he could have done the parenting thing, maybe, with Mary someday, if things hadn't gone the way they did.
He speculates about Mary to himself like this all the time. She didn't love him, but would she have agreed to have kids with him? Their relationship was a lie, but given that for some reason she'd wanted a husband, would she have wanted a family, too?
If Mary hadn't died, Reg probably never would have known that she was a lesbian. He wishes desperately that she were still alive for a lot of reasons, but it sickens him that that's one of them.
"Sorry, sorry!" Lily calls from the stairway; moments later, she makes her way into the living room to greet him. "I didn't realize you'd be here so early."
"No, I'm sorry," says Reg. "I just wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get there—and I didn't want to not stop and say hello to all of you for a while before the meeting, so hello."
"Hello," echoes Lily, smiling. "Have you had breakfast already? I just need to grab something in the kitchen before we can go."
"Oh, that's okay—I've already eaten—but I don't mind waiting, obviously."
It's a little after seven in the morning here in Vancouver, which means it's about nine in the morning in rural Ontario where the Canadian Ministry is located: they've specifically convened an early-morning meeting so that Lily can make it before her shift at Zoudiams starts. For his part, Reg hasn't found work yet—hasn't even really started looking anywhere.
Speaking of which, he really shouldn't put off asking what he wants to ask Lily any longer. Even if they are on opposing sides of the Order and it is awkward, they've somehow managed to stay on relatively good terms, even if they do go at it with each other in meetings sometimes. He's got no reason to feel weird asking Lily for help, not when they're supposed to be friends. After all, he helped her quite a bit by keeping her and Sirius informed about the state of Wizarding Britain and helping enact their Azkaban breakout plan over the summer.
"So, uh—" He trips over his words, clears his throat, and tries again. "There's a sort of—favor I wanted to ask you, if you don't mind."
"Sure. What's up?"
"At Zoudiams—are all of the caregiving positions designed for Healers, or is there any…? I only have a couple of N.E.W.T.s, but I was just wondering—I mean—if it weren't for the dementors, I really would have enjoyed my job in Azkaban, you know, taking care of everyone, and…"
Her face lights up as she pours herself a bowl of cereal. "You're interested in Healing?"
"I—well—yes. Yes, I guess I am, sort of. I just wanted to know if there was anything related that I could do without the… qualifications to be a Healer."
"Well, at Zoudiams, all of the inpatient care is done by Healers and their Assistants—" Reg's hopes start to sink "—but there is a market for in-home caregivers for elderly witches and wizards, and depending on their needs, you don't necessarily need to be a trained Healer to take on that job."
Oh. Oh.
Lily continues, "You'd need to complete a licensing program in order to administer certain Healing potions to patients and get a certification in infectious diseases so that you can protect yourself from contracting what your patients are sick with or carrying illnesses back into the world with you—but if the family just needs day-to-day care and someone to give them the same potions on time every day, you don't need to be a Healer to do that. Caregivers in those situations don't have to be responsible for adjusting potion doses or doing research into spell-writing or potion-making or anything that Healers at a hospital would do."
"That's it? Just two trainings, and then I'm eligible?"
"You would be in Canada, anyway," she says. "If you ever were to move back to Britain, you'd need to complete Healer training in order to get a job doing something like that, and for that, you need N.E.W.T.s—good ones—in Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, and Herbology. But if you were willing to stay in Canada—or to commute to Canada, at least—it would be doable. They don't have O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s here—Ilvermorny does it differently—but I think, to be a Canadian caregiver, you just need the equivalent of .s in Charms and Potions."
O.W.L.s in Charms and Potions—Reg has both of those. They're not very good O.W.L.s—he scored Acceptable on both—but he has them, and if the emphasis really is on physical care instead of magic…
"That's fantastic, Lily. Thank you. Really. Do you know where I should go or who I should talk to about getting the trainings done?"
"Zoudiams has programs for both. I can hook you up. The next Potions licensing program starts in a couple of weeks, actually, if you're serious about going down this road."
"Yeah, I'm serious about it," says Reg, feeling like he might pass out. "You don't know how much I appreciate this, Lily. Thank you."
"Oh, I'm happy to help," she assures him through a mouthful of cereal. "From what everyone who was in Azkaban said, you did a brilliant job there—all those skills would transfer over to this."
"Thanks. If there's any paperwork or anything that I need to complete before the licensing program, just owl me."
Lily promises, "I will. So are you ready for this meeting or what? If nothing else, we should finally get some answers about why they don't seem to want help any of us from the Order…"
"Yeah," says Reg, his stomach clenching. "Listen, about that, I just want you to know—I know we don't see eye to eye on, well, most issues, but I don't want either of us to undermine each other when we're in there. My goal is to make the Order useful to Canada and get some support in the war effort, not to—one-up you. For all we know, Canada's going to be calling the shots on what we can do, not us."
Lily hesitates, then says, "I agree. I do respect you and your views, Reg, even if I sometimes don't share them."
"Usually," Reg corrects her under his breath.
She laughs. "Okay, usually. And—even if they prove to be completely useless in there and want us to be completely useless, too, I'll try not to… antagonize them."
Reg flushes scarlet. "When I said that, I didn't mean… I know you've changed since sixth year. I mean, you ran for Minister of Magic, and you won a lot of people over when you did."
After another pause, Lily asks with a grin that tells Reg she's not mad, "You voted for Bagnold, didn't you?"
"I… yeah," he admits, figuring there's no point in keeping this a secret from her.
"It's okay. I always figured. You never did like Mary spending all of her time around us Gryffindors, let alone running my campaign."
Figuring that he may as well keep the confessions coming at this point, Reg adds, "I told her I voted for you—I didn't want her to ever think that I didn't support her—but I don't think she believed me."
"Reg, Mary knew that she had your support in life, no matter how you voted in that election. She spoke very highly of you. She always… the two of you…"
The thing is, Reg doesn't really ever talk about Mary, not to anyone and certainly not to the people who had been her best friends. He doesn't think he and Lily have even broached the subject of Mary since Lily told him last summer that Mary was gay.
xx
Reg has never been to the Canadian Ministry before, so when they arrive, he's rather caught off guard by how different from the British Ministry the whole setup is. Yes, Alice said it was a castle in the middle of nowhere, but Reg used to work Magical Maintenance at the British Ministry: he's used to government buildings having endless narrow corridors, enchanted basement windows, and architecture from around the 1920s when it moved to its current home in central London. This place, on the other hand, is sprawling and old and rural, decked out in Muggle-Repelling Charms but otherwise making no effort to disguise itself in plain sight. The corridors are wide, the weather outside is quite obviously real, and the whole castle feels kind of like Hogwarts in that it's so old that it may have fallen apart if it didn't have magic holding it together.
The conference room where they're meeting feels kind of like if somebody took an old ballroom and stuck a couple of long, ancient dining tables in it. It's a good thing that Reg got to Lily's flat early: it takes them so long to find the room that, by the time they find it, it's about two minutes to meeting time. The table is packed with witches and wizards chatting in low voices, but the atmosphere goes stiff the second Reg and Lily walk into the room.
"Hi there," says Reg, hoping he sounds braver than he feels. "We're here for the, uh—I'm Reginald Cattermole, and this is Lily Potter."
"We're so grateful to be here," Lily adds quickly. "On behalf of all the displaced Brits that your country has taken in, we'd like to thank your Ministry sincerely for granting us asylum. When I woke up at Zoudiams last month, I was sure I was going to be shipped back to Britain and murdered by Death Eaters within the week."
"We can't even begin to imagine what your lives have been like for the last few years," says the brunette woman sitting at the head of the table. She's in her fifties or sixties, maybe, with a gaunt face that looks younger when she smiles; she's speaking quickly and cheerfully. "I'm Riya Tremblay; I'm the Department Head for Magical Community Safety. Please, grab a seat and some pumpkin juice! Gwen—that's Gwen Attica, one of our Investigators in the Defense Department—" she jerks her head toward another woman sitting halfway down the table, who raises a hand and smiles "—spent an hour digging around in a cookbook store to find a recipe to make it; we don't drink pumpkin juice here in Canada."
Reg exchanges a look with Lily: based on the Canadian Ministry's lukewarm reaction to the Order wanting to be involved earlier, he was expecting a less welcoming reception. "That's so thoughtful of you all. Thank you," says Reg, feeling highly conscious of his own British accent.
He and Lily take their seats side-by-side at the far end of the table and help themselves to some pumpkin juice. To his surprise, considering that Canadians apparently don't know how to make the stuff, it's good—maybe even better than Madam Rosmerta's pumpkin juice in The Three Broomsticks. "Did you find the place okay?" Tremblay continues after another round of thank-yous.
"The building, yes. This room… eventually," says Lily.
A chuckle goes around the table. "Yeah, we've all been there when we were newbies," says a wizard with white ear hair, bushy eyebrows, and pink cheeks. "Harvey Trypticon, by the way. No-Maj Welfare Department."
"You have a No-Maj Welfare Department?" asks Lily, her eyes going bright. "Our Ministry only really deals with Muggles—sorry, that's what we call them, Muggles—to cover up public magical incidents and spread misinformation. I mean, we do protect them to some extent, like with enchanted objects that make it into their possession, but the purpose isn't the protection—it's maintaining the Statute of Secrecy."
"Lily, I don't know if this is the time for a lesson in international wizarding government structures," mutters Reg.
But Trypticon just laughs. "Yeah, we've got a department for that. Don't get me wrong: public sentiment toward No-Majes could be better. Most witches and wizards tend to infantilize them—see them as trigger-happy, incompetent children who can't manage their own affairs and who, before the Statute of Secrecy, hated wizardkind for being superior—but I bet that's better than the way it sounds like they're being treated across the pond."
Lily sobers. "I don't suppose anti-Muggle terrorism is something you see quite often?"
He shrugs. "We're not embroiled in a civil war right now, if that's what you mean, but there are still… incidents. You have to understand: the witch hunts were far, far worse in North America than they ever were in Britain. It's caused a certain mix of—on the one hand, you've got tons of witches and wizards who see No-Majes as the enemy and want revenge, but on the other, almost all purebloods are deathly afraid of what No-Majes would do to us if we revealed ourselves en masse and they mobilized against us. There are so many more of them than there are of us, you know, and the Statute of Secrecy is seen as the only reason we have the upper hand these days. There are isolated incidences of violence sometimes, but in the attacks that you do see, nobody's flaunting their magic the way the—what are they called again? Death Eaters?—seem to."
"If there's so much hatred against Muggles here," asks Reg, unable to help himself, "then why does your Ministry have a whole department dedicated to taking care of them?"
"It's a numbers game," says Tremblay. "Purebloods may hate and fear No-Majes, but nobody around here is killing off No-Maj-borns. You've got overwhelmingly more No-Maj-borns, half-bloods, and first- or second-generation purebloods than you do the old pureblood families, and it's the masses who control the government and call the shots."
"So the amount of discrimination against Muggles is…" Lily trails off.
"It's hard to even talk about systematic discrimination against No-Majes and No-Maj-borns," says a man with a hooked nose and caramel skin. "For most of world history, No-Majes were the ones discriminating against us."
"But what we're seeing in Britain proves that the situation has been reversed," Lily argues. "It's not like purebloods are fighting for equal rights for themselves. They already have rights, at least within our world. They're fighting for superiority—for societal dominance."
"I think the difference," Tremblay says, "is that, in Britain, wizards have self-segregated—but, in Canada, that isn't the case. Ilvermorny isn't a boarding school; students attend during the day and then go home to neighborhoods that are largely populated by No-Maj families. Math and science and reading are all taught in school, and many witches and wizards go on to hold No-Maj jobs. For all intents and purposes, we live in an integrated society—one where you have to be deathly careful not to get caught violating the Statute of Secrecy because, if you do, you'll be shunned by both No-Majes and wizards. Here, the magical population is very much a minority."
"If Muggles are so superior in your eyes," Lily responds—Reg shoots her a warning look—"then why did Canada give Britain aid at all under Runcorn's administration?"
"Because a breakdown of the Statute of Secrecy is most of our people's worst nightmare," says Attica, "and it's exactly what the Death Eaters keep flaunting. We were afraid that, if Britain violates the Statute, word would spread across the world—to here—and we would be persecuted again. Of course, it's all gone to hell now that your government embezzled the money we tried to give them and subsequently got themselves taken over by the people they're supposed to be fighting."
"People are pissed," agrees another woman. "People want war."
"We're already at war," says Reg, nonplussed.
"Civil war—guerrilla warfare—isolated incidents. Canadians want—well, to be frank, they want to mobilize."
Reg and Lily trade looks again. "This is the first I'm hearing of this," Lily hedges, "and I moved to Canada and started working here months ago."
For the first time, Tremblay looks nervous. "You may be getting a—er—a skewed picture. People who know you're from Britain aren't going to… speak so freely. I'm not saying we don't empathize with your situation, because we do—it's why we granted you asylum—but nobody thinks you want to hear that Canada's going to…"
"Show up unannounced and start killing Death Eaters? We're divided on it, but that's exactly what some of us do want," Lily presses.
Tremblay fiddles with the hem of her robes. "More like… take down your whole Ministry."
"Good," says Lily immediately. "Death Eaters are controlling it."
But Reg's brain is working frantically. "You're not talking about displacing them from power," he says slowly. "You're talking about killing anybody you can get your hands on, Death Eater or not."
"Anyone working within the system is part of the problem," says Trypticon quietly.
Reg's mind jumps to Agatha Savage, the Auror who contacted Frank desperate for help the other day. Would they kill Savage, too, if given the chance? Would they have killed Frank or Alice or Moody or Kingsley if they'd still been employed as Aurors and had never gone to Azkaban? Are they "part of the problem," too?
All this time, the Order has seen Canada as some kind of mythical paradise where everything is better: Muggles live without fear, employment opportunities for werewolves are abundant, funds to aid the war effort are freely given, and refuge is granted to political prisoners under a regime as broken as Britain's is. But—what if Canada isn't what they've made it out to be? What if, under the surface, Canadians are capable of even more evil than the kind born of Lily and Sirius's desperation? What has the Order done by getting this country involved in Britain's mess?
xx
A/N: I got a new job! Unfortunately, I'm expecting this to massively cut into my writing time, and I'm almost out of stockpiled chapters to share here-so I'm going to slow down and release chapters once a week and see whether I can keep pace with that or if I'm going to run out at some point soon. Bear with me!