Hermione's Enquiries

McGonagall had sent the students to their common rooms and charmed out the press, while Hermione had seen off the foreign diplomats with the greatest kindness. So the Great Hall was almost empty. Only the staff table was occupied, where the Minister had her lunch together with some V.I.P.s and the teachers. She had calmed down, the sinister expression had disappeared from her face and given way to a certain ill-temper, however restrained by good manners.

Everyone present was making smalltalk, for no one wanted to risk saying anything wrong to the disgruntled Minister. It wasn't before dessert, a fantastic raspberry cream, that Hermione suddenly fixed McGonagall sharply. It was downright bursting out of her, and quite loudly:

"How is it possible that such a guy is a Prefect?" Suddenly all conversation fell silent. "How can it be that he is even tolerated here at Hogwarts?"

McGonagall raised her eyebrows in surprise. She thought for a moment, then replied coolly:

"He's one of our best students, enjoying confidence and high authority among his fellow students – including the Gryffindors, for that matter –, and stands out by the highest loyalty to the principles of the wizarding world in general and Hogwarts in particular. So much for your question as to why he's a Prefect." Some teachers who had opposed his appointment gave her slightly indignant glances. "As for your second question – I beg your pardon, surely you were not suggesting me to expel him from the school?"

They glowered at each other.

"I wonder," the Minister replied after a moment, "if there is anything a student can do to be expelled from this school."

"He has been punished for his impertinent tone," McGonagall replied, her eyes beginning to narrow ominously. "But no one is expelled from this school just for disagreeing with the Ministry. This applies to Mr MacAllister today as well as it formerly did to you."

"This can hardly be compared. What was the point of defeating the Death Eaters, if we are now going to tolerate their ideas still or again being spread around Hogwarts?"

"Firstly, MacAllister does not spread Death Eater ideas ..."

"Oh, he doesn't?" the Minister interjected flippantly. "That our dead shouldn't be honoured, and the Death Eaters' graves are not be spat on ..."

"... he didn't say so!" McGonagall now cut across her in turn. "He just said that you cannot force their family members to do so. This is something completely different and a perfectly justifiable point of view. Secondly, it is good tradition at Hogwarts to disprove wrong views with proper arguments, not with disciplinary action."

"I'm afraid that's exactly the kind of tradition that earned us a Voldemort. That's the kind of naivety that those people easily and mercilessly exploit!"

"Naive?" McGonagall's face looked a hawkish again. "You are calling me naive? I might be called naive if I missed the fact that you made very clear that the struggle against dissent is a means to enforce your own policy, but are now behaving as if it was about preventing a return of the Death Eaters."

"You cannot separate one from the other!" the Minister snapped heatedly. "Without some openness to the non-wizarding world, we will fall back into the old bad habits. And yes, then they will return!"

"So, in plain language, what you are telling us is this: Opposing you and your policy implies being a Death Eater, doesn't it?"

"I would put it into more sophisticated words, but basically you hit the nail on the head."

"I see," McGonagall said, controlling her anger with effort. "So the educational mission of Hogwarts in the future will be to educate students to support the Ministry's policy, because otherwise the Death Eaters will necessarily return. And students who refuse to do so have to be expelled from school because of their bad influence on their fellow students. Right?"

"If you absolutely want to put it that pointedly – right."

McGonagall took a deep breath.

"Let me tell you something: Here at Hogwarts, students are taught discipline, but we don't raise them to be sycophants and yes-men. And as long as I am Headmistress, it will remain so!"

"Well," replied the Minister impassively, "you are of course free to retreat ..." "You would like that, wouldn't you?" snorted McGonagall.
"I would deeply regret it," Hermione replied in a polite phrase, "but you will have to understand that the Ministry cannot compromise on matters of vital importance to the future of the wizarding world."

"This is how a tyranny would operate!"

"No," the minister replied with stoic calm, "this is how a government determined to prevent a tyranny has to operate."

For a moment, McGonagall remained silent. Then she said in a low voice: "Mr MacAllister foretold me a few days ago that you would say exactly what you actually said today and do exactly what you are announcing to do. And I dismissed it as a phantasm! Because I had confidence in you!"

She sounded bitter when she asked her former favourite student:

"What on earth has become of you?"

Hermione put her napkin aside, stood up and said coldly:

"I don't think I need to listen to that. Before I Disapparate to London, I would like to go to the Gryffindors' common room. Neville," she turned to Longbottom, "I don't know the current password. Will you take me there?"

"Yes, of course," Neville said and stood up as well.

Hermione bade farewell to all people, including McGonagall, with a handshake, then left the Great Hall with Neville, her security wizards escorting them.

"It's been high time to care of this school," Hermione immediately grumbled after the security wizards had closed the door behind them. "All the reports say that everything is fine with Slytherin, that the house is on the best way, that it has cleared its character and so on. Then I come here and what do I find? An Augean stable full of Death Eaters!"

Neville wanted to say something, but Hermione kept talking:

"I believed our people in Slytherin had everything under control. No way! I've now seen who really has a grip on Slytherin! McGonagall is getting old. Old, naive, narrow-minded and maudlin. You just need to be a good student to get a jester's licence. Wasn't Voldemort a good student, too? Ha! The only thing that matters is a student's achievements! Seems to be a professional disease of teachers!"

She paused. "I'm sorry, Neville, that was unfair. Please consider the last sentence as not said!"

"No problem," Neville muttered. He hesitated before asking: "Why do you want to visit the Gryffindors?"

"Firstly, I want to take care of my fans and please them. Secondly, once before I leave, talk to people who don't criticise me incessantly. Thirdly, make enquiries. And until we get there, maybe you too can give me some information."

Neville, who had trotted along beside her during her monologue, looked at her a little uncertainly from the side: "What, erm, do you want to know?"

"For example everything you know about this MacAllister."

"Well, he's Muggle-born, er, I mean, his family are no wizards. Comes from pretty, um, precarious backgrounds. His mother used to work as a waitress in a nightclub, as far as I know, but is said to have been unemployed for years. The father is unknown ..."

"Unknown?" Hermione frowned. "If his father is unknown, how does he know he's no wizard?"

"He doesn't. But if he claimed he was, his peers would ask questions about the family he comes from. After all, our world is quite small. But as he says his father is a Muggle, no one asks. That way he won't be embarrassed to admit that he doesn't know him."

"I see," Hermione murmured.

"Look, Hermione, you're keeping this to yourself, aren't you? Apart from the Headmistress and some teachers, nobody knows and it's nobody's business."

"Of course!" said Hermione emphatically. "I have no intention of digging through other people's dirty laundry. I'm only interested in the background. Is he the only one stirring up the Slytherins, or is it a group?"

"He's not the only one," said Neville, "he's rallied a small group of friends around him. They are said to call themselves The Incorruptibles."

"Oh, so everyone else is supposed to be corrupt?" Hermione snorted. "What arrogance!"

"Anyway, they are very tight-knit, and as a group they have an enormous influence. Many Slytherins adore them and accept their leadership."

"Of course, just like they did with young Tom Riddle." Hermione's face showed a kind of grim satisfaction, as if she had said it all along. "Who are these people?"

"Well, you can't lump them together, they are very different from each other ..."

"I didn't ask what they are like, I asked who they are. I want to know the names!"

Neville swallowed. Hermione, noticing his hesitation, stopped dead and grabbed him by the arm: "You are on my side, aren't you?"

"Of course I'm on your side!" answered Neville, obviously aggrieved. They had been friends since their first year at Hogwarts. How could she ask him such a question!

"Well," started Neville as they slowly made their way up the first stair, "first of all, there's his closest friend Julian Lestrange ..."

"Lestrange?"

"Bellatrix's grandson."

Hermine was visibly digging through her excellent memory. "The Lestranges had children? There was no mention of one on the Blacks' family tree at Grimmauld Place."

"I think Bellatrix was already underground when she gave birth to her son," Neville commented. "Maybe old Mrs. Black never heard of his existence. Or maybe she didn't want to register her grandnephew's name after his relatives had abducted him to France in a cloak-and-dagger operation, and she had to expect that she would once have to delete the name, just like Sirius'. In any case, Bellatrix had a son, whose son is Julian."

"And you poor thing have to teach him like anyone else?"

"I do," Neville replied, "and I am treating him fairly. It is not his fault to have these grandparents."

He was on Hermione's side, and yet he confided her less than he had told Albus.

"Then there's Ares Macnair. He was born in exile after his father had to flee the country. Speaking of it, there is something I always wanted to ask you: How is it that old Macnair wasn't immediately arrested when he returned to England with his family founded in exile?"

"We negotiated a deal with the Ministry of Magic of his country of exile at the time," Hermione recalled. "By granting Macnair immunity from prosecution, we made sure that some wizards from that country who had sought refuge in England could in turn return home without any trouble. – Well, a Lestrange and a Macnair," she sighed, "the same names over and over again. Who else belongs to the group?"

"That's it for the known Death Eater names. There's one girl among them, Arabella Wolfe. Her mother runs a small bookshop, her father left the family early. A good student, but a rather quiet nature, sometimes seeming almost a bit sad. Nevertheless, her classmates like her, she has a somewhat motherly manner. Actually, she was the girl supposed to become a Slytherin Prefect. Fortunately, McGonagall let herself be convinced that, in addition to MacAllister, the girl Prefect shouldn't also belong to this clique. That's why Patricia Higrave was appointed. – Another group member is Orpheus Malagan, an artist and poet, much like his father. You've heard of William Malagan?"

Hermione smiled. "I had to read all his books to Rose and Hugo when they were younger." Her smile was dying. "And such a poet has such a son?" she asked incredulously.

"He is dreamy and a pigheaded fellow, and the latter probably is what ties him to MacAllister. MacAllister has close, but not many friends. He is helpful, though in his gruff manner, to all his schoolmates, but only grants a few the honour of calling themselves his friends. His friends are really just the ones I just mentioned, and apart from them only ... well ..."

Hermione became curious. "Out with it, who else is he friends with?"

"With Albus Potter."

Hermione's jaw dropped.

"Albus?" she whispered, aghast.

"You know he's a Slytherin, don't you?"

"Of course I know, it was the first thing Rose wrote to me. I was even pleased to hear it. I believed he would stick with our people in Slytherin, and in a few years, when he was older, do his bit to make Slytherin finally fall in with our line, and do so out of real conviction. And now he's friends with that MacAllister! Harry's son! I don't believe it! Do Ginny and Harry know about that?"

"I don't know," Neville replied with a shrug. "Not from me."

She thought. "But how can it be that a sixteen-year-old is friends with an eleven-year-old? Friends! This requires an equal level, which cannot really exist."

"Well, I'm just saying that MacAllister obviously cares about him, and that's very unusual for him. Albus, on the other hand, seems to admire him, just like an eleven-year-old boy would admire an older boy who seems cool to him. Whether you can really call it friendship in the full sense of the word, is another question."

"That would no doubt be a catch for them," she murmured. "The son of the man who defeated Voldemort is changing sides. What about the others in the group? Is he friends with them, too?" Hermione's tone increasingly resembled that of an investigating prosecutor.

"He gets on quite well with Lestrange, as far as I can tell, but otherwise: no."

Hermione shook her head. "My own nephew ..."

"Does he have a choice?", Neville defended him. "He's in Slytherin now and that's where he has to find his friends after the Gryffindors don't talk to him at all unless it's to insult him. They're driving him straight into the arms of his dubious new friends!"

Hermione stopped dead. "All of them? All the Gryffindors?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes, Hermione, all the Gryffindors, including James." He hesitated. "And Rose."

Hermione's lips narrowed. "I think it was a very good idea to visit the Gryffindors. I'll probably have a serious word with some people. – You know the password?" she asked with a certain doubtful undertone. Neville's forgetfulness when it came to passwords was notorious.

"I got back into the habit of writing it down," he said proudly. "The note is in my, erm ..." He blushed.

Too late. They already stood in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady who guarded the entrance to the Gryffindor common room.

"Passw..." she started, then called out of her picture: "Miss Granger! Oh, excuse me, Minister! You are honouring us? I never thought I'd live to see this!" She hectically adjusted her hair.

Hermione smiled at her. "Nice to meet you again! Would you please let me in?"

"For the first time in the many centuries of my career, I am waiving the password, but you are the only person I do so for. Come in!" she called, and the portrait swung open. Neville breathed a sigh of relief.

"I appreciate this honour very much," Hermione replied mannerly, hugged Neville goodbye, and scrambled through the hole into the common room.