Tea With the Potters

It was Sunday afternoon just before three when Roy and Albus were waiting for Julian in the corridor outside McGonagall's office, through the fireplace of which they were to travel to the Potters.

"I wonder where he is?" said Albus.

"He told me he was going to get something important, whatever it might be – oh, here he's coming."

Julian rushed towards them with quick steps. Under his cloak he was hiding something that seemed to be quite large but not heavy. When he arrived with the two of them, he drew out a huge bouquet of flowers.

"Oh, shame, I didn't think of that," Roy said in embarrassment.

"I knew you wouldn't," Julian grinned. "But never mind, the bouquet is of course from both of us."

Julian's flowers were unearthly beautiful and did not resemble any kind of flower Roy or Albus had ever seen. They immersed themselves for a moment in admiring this overwhelming splendour. Finally, Roy tore his eyes away from it:

"Where did you get these flowers?" he asked admiringly.

"Oh, Helen Witherspoon showed me a little flower spell you can use to get ordinary meadow flowers to assume the most gorgeous shapes and colours."

"I see," said Roy.

Helen, a Ravenclaw, was an ace in Herbology and Longbottom's favourite student. She was a wallflower, but like most girls at Hogwarts (even the Gryffindors, who, as matter of course, would admit only whispering) she had a crush on Julian.

"And you probably boosted her helpfulness with your blue spotlights."

Indeed, Julian had the gift of making his blue eyes, impressive anyway, shine like spotlights when he wanted to be particularly charming.

"Well," Julian grinned, "if you can ..."

He rang the office bell and a moment later they entered Professor McGonagall's office, thanking her for allowing them to use her fireplace for the trip. Albus was the first to step into the green flames. The two teenagers left him a minute to say hello to his parents and announce them both, then they too entered the fireplace and disappeared. McGonagall, who had seen the bouquet, shook her head with a smile.

"These are my friends Roy MacAllister and Julian Lestrange," Albus introduced them with some pride to his mother as they stepped out of the Potters' fireplace. They both shook hands with her with a slight bow, then Julian drew the flower bouquet out of his robe.

"Oh, they're so beautiful!" Ginny was really delighted. "Where did you get them?"

"Self-conjured, madam," Julian replied, making his eyes shine a little. "We thought for you it ought to be something very special."

Roy gave Julian a doubtful look. Don't you think you are over-egging the pudding? Yet Ginny, still rapt away, smiled flattered.

"So I am going to get a vase. Please take a seat, my husband will be here soon. Oh yes, and my name is Ginny. My goodness, what lovely flowers ..."

While she disappeared, Albus rushed to get his father, and Roy and Julian were making themselves comfortable on the sofa, Roy murmured to his friend, not without envy:

"Is there any woman you don't twist around your finger?"

"Oh yes, there is!" whispered Julian back. "McGonagall." They both chuckled. "And Arabella, of course," Julian added with a smirk, while Roy blushed slightly.

Harry, Albus and Ginny came simultaneously back to the living room. Ginny used her wand to manoeuvre the vase, a tea set and a cake plate with the skill of a long-serving juggler so that everything found its place without an accident. The teapot filled the cups autonomously while Albus introduced Julian and Harry to each other.

When they were seated, there was silence for a moment, which was finally interrupted by Harry:

"Tell me," he addressed Roy and Julian, "how is it that Bernard Wildfellow is now a Slytherin – as he's supposed to have had ... trouble with the Slytherins?"

Roy and Julian looked puzzled. "What trouble?"

"Well," said Harry in irritation, "he's said to have been bullied?"

"Yes, but not by us," Roy protested, "by the Hufflepuffs. Have you been told anything else?"

"Well, I wasn't told exactly."

Hermione hadn't explicitly blamed the Slytherins, but cited Bernie's mistreatment as an example of the Muggle hostility still rampant at Hogwarts. It sounded as if she meant the Slytherins, but she hadn't directly said so.

Roy now gave Albus a look of astonishment: "Didn't you tell your parents what happened?"

"No," Albus replied, blushing slightly. "I ... I didn't want to show off."

"Well, so I am going to do a bit of showing off for you, if you don't mind."

Roy turned back to Harry and Ginny: "A horde of Hufflepuffs beat up Wildfellow, and a Slytherin, namely your son" – he made a slight bow while keeping his seat – "bailed him out. Well, he tried to do so and got a terrible beating himself. From the Hufflepuffs. From McGonagall fifty points for the moral example he set."

"Really?" asked Ginny and Harry at the same time. While Harry's gaze wandered to the portrait of his mother Lily, who was beaming with pride out of her frame, Ginny hugged her son, cuddled and kissed him. "Mum, please!" In the presence of friends, such outbursts of motherly emotion were rather embarrassing to him. But the two older boys smiled sympathetically, Roy even a little wistfully – so it seemed to Albus.

"Well, and Wildfellow," Roy continued, "returned the favour by conspicuously siding with us when the other houses were bawling their Death Eater choruses. So I couldn't help welcoming him into Slytherin. It's far beyond my competence, but McGonagall fortunately approved it."

"But before that you were against it!", Albus reminded him.

"Before that, we were talking about giving him some kind of asylum out of pity," Roy replied. "Now we've taken him in because he's a great guy and for that reason alone he belongs to Slytherin. – Er, I mean ..."

He turned pink. Too late it crossed his mind that his last remark to his Gryffindor hosts might not have been very polite. "... Like each house, we want to get the best, of course."

Harry smiled. "It's all right. I've been thinking a lot about your house since Albus came to Slytherin."

"Was it really no shock to you?", Julian demanded.

"A shock? No. To be honest, I had expected it. I've kept it to myself for decades and only told Albus recently at the station." He hesitated, but why shouldn't he talk about it? "If the Sorting Hat had got its way, I too would have come to Slytherin at the time. They would have liked to get me, Draco Malfoy virtually invited me on the Hogwarts Express. Unfortunately, he did so in such a disgusting and arrogant way that I begged the hat not to send me to Slytherin. That's the only reason why I became a Gryffindor."

There was a pause.

"I sometimes wonder," Harry continued, lost in thought, "how things would have gone if I had trusted in the Sorting Hat."

"You would have had to endure Draco Malfoy," Ginny interjected, " who used to call Hermione a mudblood, don't you remember?"

"Maybe he wouldn't have done so if Harry had been a Slytherin," Roy mused. "I think in any house, and in general in any major group of people, it all depends on very few. Ninety per cent let themselves be dragged along. The character of any given group always depends on the very few who don't run with the pack. Watching Albus and seeing the favourable influence he already has not only on Scorpius Malfoy, but on all the first-years and even beyond ..."

"Me?" asked Albus. "But I'm not doing anything."

"You are like you are, and that's enough. You've already made far more of a difference than you know," Roy said, exchanging a quick glance with Harry. "What I wanted to say: Suppose you and Draco had been friends, as Albus and Scorpius are – would Draco's parents have joined Voldemort for the second time, since were only half-hearted Death Eaters anyway? And if they hadn't, as one of the leading families of the wizarding world: Might they have dragged others with them?"

"Possibly," Harry said thoughtfully. "In any case, it would be an answer to the question that has preoccupied me for years, namely why the Sorting Hat had the crackpot idea to send me of all people to Slytherin."

"The Sorting Hat doesn't have any crackpot ideas," Roy said in a tone of firm conviction. "If you look back at what kind of half-bloods and Muggle-borns have come to Slytherin over the centuries, you will always notice the same pattern: People who didn't feel at home in the Muggle world they came from, who found in Hogwarts not their second but their only home and were determined to defend that home. I think you would at least have fitted into Slytherin as well as I do myself."

"Which wouldn't have necessarily prevented you from falling in love with a Gryffindor girl," Julian interjected, having noticed that Ginny didn't seem pleased at all with Roy's reflections. Now she smiled, reconciled.

"Do you know," Roy now asked, "that there are still people at Hogwarts who believe you to be the true heir of Salazar Slytherin?"

"Is that nonsense still going around?" Harry shook with laughter. "Unbelievable!"

"How did that come about?"

"It was because Voldemort set free the Basilisk that Salazar Slytherin had imprisoned in the Chamber of Secrets a thousand years ago. Only the true Heir of Slytherin was supposed to be able do that. I was suspected at the time because I was the only Parselmouth at the school. But the truth was that the 'Heir of Slytherin' was just a myth. Slytherin had locked the Chamber of Secrets so that only a Parseltongue speaker could open it – me as well as Voldemort. That was all. It had nothing to do with any magical heritage. Voldemort, of course, was fascinated by it and firmly convinced he was the heir himself."

"Well ..." said Roy. "Perhaps you were really Salazar's heir and the only reason you couldn't take up your legacy was because you weren't a Slytherin ..."

"Come on, Roy, it wasn't me and it wouldn't have been me even if I had been a Slytherin. Salazar Slytherin would only admit pure-blood wizards ..."

"... which didn't prevent the Sorting Hat, who has been representing and administering the four founder's legacy, from sending half-bloods and even pure Muggle-borns to Slytherin."

"Nevertheless, his agenda was exactly the same as that of the Death Eaters a thousand years later. So if ever there was an 'Heir of Slytherin', it really was Voldemort."

"I'm afraid I have to disagree," Roy replied, leaning forward: "The same agenda, applied to completely different and incomparable situations, is not the same agenda."

Harry was surprised. "What do you mean?"

"A thousand years ago, the wizarding world and the Muggle world were not separate, both communities lived in the same world, and in this world witches and wizards were persecuted. It was imperative to cut the thousand threads that connected wizards and Muggles. Salazar wanted the separation as soon as possible. Under this condition, that is, in order to draw a clean line, it made sense to grant access only to pure-blooded wizards and leave all others outside. This was the background for the rift with the other founders, who did not want the separation, at least not so quickly and thoroughly. In the end, Slytherin turned out to have been right: The worlds have been separated since 1689 at the latest, but in the centuries that had passed before, witches and wizards have almost been wiped out."

Roy paused and then continued:

"The situation was completely different when Voldemort appeared on the scene. Our historians have spilled a lot of ink to condemn the Death Eaters, but hardly anyone feels the need to ask, let alone answer the question of why Voldemort was able to find followers."

"Sounds like you have an answer," Harry asked curiously, not mockingly.

"I think," Roy said, "this entire Death Eater thing was basically a kind of flight forward. In the twentieth century, anyone who wanted could see that the Muggles were increasing their technological advance a little more with each day. Muggle technology was developing much faster than magic, Muggle civilisation was gradually becoming a threat. In this situation, the Death Eaters did the very opposite of what Salazar Slytherin had called for. They didn't say: We defend the borderline between the wizarding world and the Muggle world. They said: We erase the borderline, we restore contact between the two worlds, but in such a way that we, the wizards, are controlling the Muggles before they are able to control us. Thus, the borderline between two worlds was to be replaced by a borderline between superior and inferior, masters and slaves, and since such a dictatorship could only have been exercised by a caste of wizards with outstanding magical skills, they came up with the idea of breeding a kind of magical super race. This had absolutely nothing to do with Slytherin's goals and ideas. It was a pure anachronism on the part of the Death Eaters to refer to him. Slytherin didn't want to subjugate the Muggles, but to defend the wizards. – Do you now understand why I would consider you a much more legitimate heir to Slytherin than Voldemort?"

"I never thought of it like that before ..." said Harry. My goodness, with his sixteen years, this guy could outthink many a professor!

"But if the Muggles' technological advantage is such a danger," said Ginny, "– and I understand you right that you agree with the Death Eaters on at least this one point, don't you? – then Hermione's policy of learning from the Muggles is just common sense, isn't it?"

"Indeed it would be," Roy conceded, "if we had the means to adopt Muggle technologies and master them on our own. But this isn't possible with only a few tens of thousands of wizards. Even large Muggle states are not technologically autonomous, and a community as small as ours would be even less so. Hermione hasn't directly admitted it yet, but to even halfway catch up with Muggle technology, we would have to give up secrecy from the Muggles. We would return to the very Muggle world our ancestors had to flee."

"Would that be so bad?" Ginny was not convinced. "Witch hunts haven't occurred in the Muggle world for a long time, have they?"

"Certainly," said Roy, "but only because the Muggles simply don't believe that there is such a thing as witchcraft. The moment secrecy is abandoned, this favourable circumstance is lost."

"Nevertheless, they wouldn't have to persecute us. Both sides could benefit from the each other's knowledge. Problems solvable by magic would be solved by magic, all others by technology. This would be a win-win for everyone!"

"I'm afraid," Roy said politely, "this is the kind of utopia that works wonderfully in theory but fails in practice. All right, let's imagine it: The wizards integrate with the Muggle world and can then also handle their technologies, causing the Muggles to lose their edge. In addition, however, we could still do magic. Most of us would make a career in the Muggle world with our skills, and more and more wizards would hold high-ranking positions in politics, business and science. Sounds good, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does," Ginny agreed, "at least I don't understand why we should have a problem with it."

"Because the Muggles will have it and they are two thousand times more numerous than we are. What happens when a foreign people – and that's what we are for the Muggles – that is weak in numbers, but establishes itself as a social elite, is something that not only Jews in Europe had to experience before us. Their experience was particularly cruel, but basically the situation of such minorities is always precarious: This is or was true for Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indians in Uganda, Whites in South Africa and other minorities. Perhaps a small elite of the wizarding community could make itself so indispensable that they would be protected from persecution. Perhaps such a small elite could make themselves virtually invisible and send Muggles forward as straw men and henchmen. The vast rest of us, however, would be in the same position as our ancestors in the Middle Ages."

"Sure," Ginny weighed her head, "there's something to that. But couldn't laws protect us – us and the Muggles? Us from discrimination and persecution, the Muggles from harmful spells?"

"This is probably pretty much what Hermie ... excuse me, Hermione has in mind," Roy replied with a grim face. "A government able to maintain domestic peace only by maintaining an omnipotent secret police to closely watch and control each citizen to know what they are saying, thinking, and doing. And be sure that this secret police will hire enough Dark wizards to tell them how to penetrate the citizens' minds as well. Probably anyone whose ideas are politically undesirable will then be driven to suicide by some magical means."

"C'mon Roy, this is very darkest Magic Fiction! That's absurd!"

Now Harry intervened: "Ginny, I'm afraid it isn't. Peter Pettigrew committed suicide before my eyes against his will when he was at one point not quite the willing henchman Voldemort needed. A government with the will and the means to apply this kind of Dark Magic on a large scale would indeed be the perfect tyranny."

"But such a tyranny is something Hermione would never want," Ginny objected.

Roy cleared his throat. "Nevertheless, she is creating a situation in which she will have no choice. Besides, it possibly doesn't matter what she wants, because she may ... no longer be the master of her decisions."

"You wanted to do some research," Harry picked up the thought. "Did you find anything about a curse she might be under?"

"No, nothing!", Julian answered hastily, before Roy could say anything. Harry's eyebrows twitched, but he said nothing.

"Nothing," Roy confirmed. "And you? Or are these official secrets?"

"If we had come across something, I might be invoking official secrets now," Harry said. "However, we simply don't know any curse by which Hermione could be controlled without her being aware of it."

There was a long silence. All five of them were lost in thought.