Chapter 2.
"That's- That's outrageous!" Hermione fumed, throwing down the newspaper in disgust.
"Dare I ask?" a sleepy Sirius asked as he sipped his tea.
"Front page," Hermione waved to the paper, refusing to soil her hands by touching it again.
"Wandless-Muggle spelled in back by Aurors." Sirius winced at the headline. No good could come from this with the way things were right now. Even assuming it was true. This was printed in the Daily Profit after all; there was less than a 50% of anything printed there being true, but a 100% chance of them printing something sensational to try to stir up the public (and their sales).
"The man had a gun!" Hermione informed him.
"That's one of those 'fire-leg' things, right?" he asked, taking another sip of tea to hide his smile as he teased her. As if he didn't know about guns.
"'Firearms.' And yes, they fire a number of preloaded piercing spells." She took the paper back and started re-reading. "And yes, it looks like he was shooting as he ran away, but that just makes him more dangerous. He could have easily hit a bystander."
"Why were they trying to arrest him in the first place?" Harry asked.
"Statute of Secrecy. He was drunk and stumbled into Diagon Alley."
"See, they should have just hit him with a silencing spell and let him go," Ron said. At least that's what everyone though he said around his half-chewed breakfast.
Hermione rubbed her temples to ward off the headache she felt coming on every time she argued with Ron or other idiots. "They're not allowed to let him go, Ronald. That's the law. They're required to hold him until the Obliviatiors arrive and determine he's no longer a threat."
"Yeah, but they spelled him in the back!" countered Ron, this time without food in his mouth, for once.
"It's irrelevant," Snape interjected before the two could start another shouting match. "Historically, Aurors have been used to suppress muggle uprisings in the 1400s. Muggles understand this on an instinctive level. That makes Aurors blatantly anti-muggle today."
"That's right!" Colin Creevey added. How he got into Headquarters or why wasn't known or important right now. All that's important is that he's a muggle-born other than Hermione. "Me mum warned me about them on my first trip to the Alley. We were buying our supplies before first year and she wandered off. She was about to wander down Knockturn Alley and an Auror stopped her and questioned her for no reason! She was so mad afterwards. It was blatant discrimination!"
"Did he arrest her?"
"Well no."
"What did he say?"
"Well, he told her that she shouldn't go down that alley dressed like a muggle." Creevey said. "Hermione, are you saying that muggle lives don't matter?"
"What? Of course not!"
Snape decided to get back to making his point. "Recently there have many intense protests and protesters have demanded, among other things, significant changes to the Auror corps. Naturally the fact that people are protesting the Aurors means there must be something wrong and in need of changing. We need to discuss," he hissed the end of the word to accentuate that he was talking about having a discussion and not wanting to throw a circular disk more than 7 inches (18 cm) in diameter and 2.2 pounds (1 kg) in weight, usually wooden with a metal rim and thicker in the center than at the edge, for throwing for distance in athletic competition. "Whether it might be time to disband the Aurors after all if they're going to go around cursing innocent muggles in the back."
"There are only two kinds of people calling for the defunding of the Aurors: Criminals and idiots they've duped. Whatever our differences, Snivelous, I don't think you're an idiot." Sirius snot back.
"Sirius is clearly confounded. Or perhaps just not woke enough yet," Snape stated.
A/N: I'm being more blatant about the paper name than Rowling.
A/N2: "Discuss" vs "discus." When you don't have logic, reason, or facts or your side; attack their spelling. I made sure to get it right this time.