Chapter 20 Conversations with Elves and The Other Minister
Author Note: Sorry about the long delay on this chapter, although not as long as some others, a lot of research was required to get certain facts in place. The members of the cabinet, I mention are correct according to Wikipedia, but other than that they are fictional characters and any resemble to real people is coincidental.
As I returned home from Hogwarts, where Harry and I had just helped headmistress McGonagall deal with one problem, only to give her another, I couldn't help but notice that the floodlight was on in the back garden, as this was on a heat sensor, I wondered who or what could be there. In spite of this being a bit of an old neighbourhood with only three or four of the buildings still being family homes and the rest sub-divided for letting, and being near to the centre of the city, we had a surprisingly low crime rate.
I made my way to the kitchen window and looked out, having not turned on the light so as to not alert the intruder or whatever to my presence, I was surprised to see Elrond, sat on the grass, talking for all intents and purposes to an urban fox.
I walked further into the kitchen and started to fill the kettle, at the sound of the water coming on, the fox seemed to jump, looked at Elrond, and ran off. Elrond stood, dusted himself off and made his way back into the house.
"Interesting conversation, was it?"
"Different! He was telling me, that news has come of a few eledhel being seen in the city, they work with muggle social workers, helping out the homeless. They must be using some sort of glamour charm to blend in, but that the local wildlife can see through them."
"So some of your people are choosing not to bind with a wizard family, that's a start to your becoming recognised as an individual ethnic group in the world. Next thing you know they'll be moving into one particular neighbourhood and all the residents will be getting up a petition to force you to find somewhere else to live…" I joked as I poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Elrond.
"Not going to happen, no disrespect to you, as you are my liege lord, as it stands, but eledhel would prefer not to live in houses, essentially we are creatures of nature and prefer to live in a more natural environment. I think there are some living in Hyde Park, they live in the trees, in a sort of symbiotic way. If more of my people want to become free eledhel, we may have to find some way for them to build their own communities in forest land!"
"Might be a problem there, most forests are protected or owned by the National Trust or are National Parks and I think there are laws about living there."
"I know, it's a major stumbling block to us becoming a properly recognised ethnic group in this country. Our naturally preferred habitat is open, natural country, not living in a box-like structure that humans prefer."
"Hmm! I'll have to give it some thought, I know that as a Ministry worker, it falls under my job description, and as the ambassador for your people its part of your responsibility as well."
"Wha… oh, I suppose it is, but I have no idea, how to go about achieving it, will you think about it and help me find a solution to the problem?"
"I will, and I suggest you do the same."
A few days later, Elrond came to me, with a gleam in his eyes, "I think I might have an answer to the problem of housing my people. If as you say, most forests in this country are National Parks, then isn't it a duty of the government to maintain them?"
Not seeing where this idea was going, I decided to agree, "I suppose so. Why?"
"Well, if my people lived in the forest, we could work as forest wardens, game keepers etc. and maintain the forest."
"I suppose so, but what sort of community would you want to build, I understand you wouldn't be building houses as such, but I assume you would want some sort of place to live in. you say that some of your people are living in the trees in Hyde Park, are they just kipping in the branches or what?"
"They probably are, but if we found somewhere to build a proper community we'd use some of our magic to fashion a different type of dwelling."
"How so?"
"Well, I have been learning a great deal from the goblins regarding how our magic worked, and it is similar to what I did with the oak tree in the square outside. I spoke to the tree and it agreed to donate some of its wood for our purposes, it is possible to speak the trees into growing a certain way. In essence making the tree, grow a city in the forest for us."
"Doesn't that hurt the trees?"
"No, although the trees would grow in ways that they normally wouldn't, they benefit just as we do. There's more area for them to grow leaves, we can help by directing the roots to grow in such a way as to find better nutrient sources. We can help with the animals that live in the forest, stopping them from damaging the trees and helping the forest as a whole to exist as a more, I suppose the word is eco-friendly whole. The whole forest would benefit and everything in it."
"It seems like a good idea, but you still have the problem of getting permission to live in a National Park!"
"I think it would be possible, if you and I were to speak with the Court Mage, in his capacity as Prime Minister, put the idea to him and show him the advantages we could provide."
"Good grief, Elrond, you don't make it easy for me do you? OK! I'll speak with Kingsley, and talk it over with him first, and if he's agreeable we'll speak with Mr. Blair."
I sat in Kingsley's office after just outlining the proposal that Elrond had put to me a few days ago, nervously wondering what his reaction would be…"
He looked at me for a few minutes, fumbling around his pockets, finally pulling out his wand, "I knew I should have ruddy obliviated you years ago! Yet more paperwork and upheaval." I gulped nervously. He waved his wand and a telephone appeared on his desk, he dialled a number I couldn't see and outlined the proposal I had just made to someone on the other end. "OK! Thank you Tony, Sorry to bother you with this, but your solution sounds the best way, I'll pass the message on…" he hung up the phone, which promptly vanished again.
He looked over at me, "that was the Prime Minister, he's going to set up a cabinet meeting in a couple of weeks, yourself, Elrond, and I, along with some of the elves, that are currently living in Hyde Park will be at that meeting, you will have to present your case to the whole cabinet. At the same time I will personally be introduced to the cabinet as the Minister of Magic, he will obtain the necessary dispensations about the Statute of Secrecy from her Majesty. The wizarding community is about to take its next step in coming up to date with the modern world." I nodded. "You will need to take Elrond to these free elves and talk with them, persuading some of them to come with you, with plans and proposals on paper to present to the cabinet. If you need anything at the meeting, let Mr. Blair know before hand by owl, things that he as a muggle can help with, make him part of the process, if you can, don't just barge in all guns blazing so to speak.
Over the next few days Elrond and I were out in the city, working with the local charities in the area and Social Services that helped the homeless, talking with some of the 'volunteers' that helped them with their work. To the local muggles working on these projects they just accepted these people as members of the local community helping out with the homeless in their spare time. I found that using my mage sight I could see through the illusions that some of these volunteers were employing. To my vision they looked like children with elven features, slight angular faces and pointed ears, all about twelve or thirteen years in age; without the benefit of my mage sight they varied in age from late teens to one that looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, all part of the disguise they had chosen to aid them in their work.
The muggle volunteers were under the impression I was looking into the plight of the homeless for some governmental project and that Elrond was my young stepson working with me for some school related project, he was helping this assumption by making copious notes of his own in a spiral bound notebook he carried with him. It was noted by the ordinary volunteers that he seemed to be shown some sort of deference by the others.
Whatever he had been discussing with the other eledhel seemed to be enthusiastic about the ideas, small groups of them would team up and discuss things amongst themselves in whispers and then regroup and have an equally animated whispering session in their new groupings.
I was sure that Elrond had his own ideas about how to proceed with this meeting, he had several pages of notes that he was constantly referring to and had gathered a few supplies in the form of potted plants, the largest being some sort of ornamental tree type, I didn't recognise the species, but then again what I knew about plants could be written on the back of a postage stamp and still leave room to put the address of the person you were mailing it to, so no surprise there.
Finally the meeting was here, Kingsley, Elrond, myself and four of the eledhel that had been volunteering were waiting in a small anteroom in No. 10 Downing Street, we had a small cctv monitor that we had been assured would stand any magic worked in the area and stay working; this showed a conference room next door where Tony Blair, the Prime Minister and Court Mage was about to open the special cabinet meeting.
"Gentlemen, ladies, I would like to thank you for attending this special cabinet meeting, please look at the document in front of you, read it and then sign it. This is an addendum to the Official Secrets Act that covers certain aspects of what we will be discussing later, relevant portions of the Act predate the Official Secrets Act, but I am assured that reading and signing this will have the same legal consequences if anything is divulged outside of this meeting."
We all watched anxiously as everyone read the document and signed their copy, with not a few raised eyebrows and smirks, some of them seeming to look at Mr Blair as if he was bonkers or something, obviously it must mention magic and they thought he was going round the bend.
"Thank you everybody for your understanding and patience so far, I'm sure some of you think I'm barmy or something similar having presented you with this document and are thinking about a leadership challenge or calling for a general election on the grounds of incompetence due to insanity after reading that particular document. I will now invite the other persons present outside to join us in our meeting. Kingsley if you and your colleagues would join us, please make your own door and come straight in." There were a few looks in his direction from some members of the cabinet, obviously wondering who he was talking to.
Kingsley took out his wand and waved in at the wall in front of us, "Ostium", (ostium - door, entrance, mouth, gate, exit- google translate) a door appeared in the wall in front of us and we made our way in to the Cabinet Room.
"Gentlemen, Ladies, if I may introduce you to our guests, the tall black gentleman is Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic; the blonde gentleman with him is Dudley Dursley, Minister for Social Services and Racial Equality; the young gentleman with them is Elrond, ambassador to the Wizengamot and Her Majesty for the eledhel people, they have some other colleagues in the adjacent room who will possibly be joining us later."
There was a silence as it looked as if nearly everybody was picking their jaws up from the floor, except for one man about 30 years old with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail, who seemed to be taking it all in his stride.
"I won't introduce you to everyone here by name, but I will ask them to introduce themselves by name and position if they wish to ask a question or make a comment during the meeting. I will however first introduce you to a young man who has made himself known to me since our meeting in the Wizengamot." He pointed out the young gentleman with the ponytail, "everyone I would like to make Ianto Jones(1) known to you all, he is with the security services, M.I.5¾ (2)," at this Kingsley and I sniggered, "obviously there is some joke I and yourselves are not aware of, but our esteemed magical colleagues are. I hope they will enlighten us during this meeting…"
"Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, As Mr Blair as introduced me to you as the Minister for Magic allow me to fill in a few details for you to give you some general background first. The magical world has existed alongside the muggle or non-magical world for millennia, and for the most part was in plain view of everyone until in 1692, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was signed at the International Confederation of Wizards, a Wizarding Version of the United Nations. This charged all Wizarding governments with the job of hiding witchcraft and wizardry from the general populace, and keeping the existence of our world secret, it also charges us to guard the existence of certain magical creatures, such as goblins, trolls, centaurs unicorns and many others you may have read about in your fiction. Believe me, most of them exist. We hid to escape from the persecution that was going on around that time in the form of witch hunts and the like."
"Until the time of the English Civil War the Monarch had a Court Mage on their staff and it was their job to keep Her Majesty involved in the affairs of the Magical world; when the monarchy lost, we cut ties with the government and began to govern our own affairs in isolation, only informing the Prime Minister of the day in general matters. This has recently changed and Her Majesty recently visited the Wizengamot which is our own parliament and judiciary and ties were re-established. I have to say that in some respects she was not pleased with the way we had been running things and subsequently we have been making a lot of changes to bring our world in line with her wishes. We still have a way to go, but we are progressing; I will say in our defence that some hold-ups in progress are not of our making and certain groups are ready to join the main wizarding community; for example the centaurs are still holding out, indeed considering the way we have treated them in the past I can understand their reluctance, but we are hopeful that in the future they will accept the hand of friendship we are offering."
"Now as to M.I.5¾, the British school that teaches Magic to our young is called Hogwarts and every year on September 1st, they travel from Kings Cross Station, Platform 9¾, this platform is between platforms 9 and 10 and guarded by magic to prevent accidental discovery by non-magical people and from the looks of Mr Jones, I would think he was the one to come up with the name. Tell me, Mr. Jones, are you related to Gwenog Jones of the Holyhead Harpies fame?"
"Yes, Minister Shacklebolt, twin brother to Gwenog, she's a witch, I'm a squib. In deference to our non-magical persons here, or as they are commonly referred to in the magical community muggles, a squib is a person born to magical parents that has no discernible magical talent. The word muggle is not meant to be insulting in any way, it just slips easier of the tongue than non-magical. The Holyhead Harpies are an all-female Quidditch team, which is the major wizard sport in this country, think of basketball on broomsticks and that will give you a simple idea of the game, there's a bit more to it, but that is not part of this meeting, if any of you want to understand more about it, I'll talk about it later."
"Excuse me for asking, oh, by the way. Harriet Harman, Secretary of State for Social Security. Why do not refer to us as normal, rather than this err… muggle was it?"
"Simple Ms. Harman, to wizards, we are normal, it is the non-magical who are not!"
"David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education and Employment, I see your point Mr Shacklebolt, and as an adjunct to your statement to Ms Harman, referring to us or yourselves as normal would by a process assume the other is abnormal, not something we wish to suggest. As an aside to this particular point, is this Hogwarts School, the reason why after primary education up to 11 years of age, some children seem to drop off our educational radar so to speak?"
Kingsley turned to me with raised eyebrows, "Radar, Dudley?"
"Hmm, a technology developed in the 1940's for keeping track of the enemies' flying machines in the World War, I understand Mr Blunkett to be using the term in a metaphorical sense."
"Quite possibly Mr Blunkett, up until the age of 11, most children of magical parents are home schooled in basic literacy and numeracy and then they begin their education at Hogwarts, beginning an education in Magic before this would be detrimental to their magical development as it is not until this age that the magical core, so to speak becomes stable enough to practice magic on a regular basis, most children will experience occasional bouts of accidental magic before this, but it is by this age that they have the ability to begin disciplining their magic to work on demand and not just instinctively."
"I see your logic there, but why are all magical children home schooled before 11, why not have them in muggle education, to develop social skills and to learn about their non-magical brethren?"
"It may eventually come to that in a lot of cases, you have to understand that for a long while the magical community has been cut off from the muggle world. Indeed the Muggle Studies class at Hogwarts, has been drastically updated in the last few years, when I took over as Minister for Magic in 1998, the curriculum was still talking about horseless carriages and gas light. Most magical homes do not have electricity, we do have the Wizarding Wireless Network, powered by magic rather than electricity, which I gather is a similar type of energy, indeed given the damage that active magic can do to some electronic equipment, I can believe that."
"If I may, Mr Shacklebolt, what you need are EMP hardened devices (3) in magical homes, this should stop any interference from stray magical fields. If I may explain to you and my colleagues here, most modern electrical equipment is vulnerable to high voltage, and high intensity electrical fields such as lightning, now if an electrical item is EMP hardened it means its shielded against this type of interference, my laptop is shielded in this way, I am able to use it in magical households and indeed have even used it in Diagon Alley with no problems."
"We must speak more about this later, Mr Jones, it would help some members of our community relate a bit more to the modern world if they could interact with computers, televisions and the like, we have our own computers, but at the moment they are only able to access whiznet, the wizarding version of the internet. I do understand that in the States they have full access to both magical and non-magical sites on their computers and its possible it uses this shielding or whatever it is."
"David Cameron, Leader of the Opposition, this is all fascinating I'm sure, but I'm interested in the young man with you, who looks like a young Mr Spock, how can a boy of 13, be an ambassador to her majesty and no disrespect, but what is he, he's obviously not human with those ears?"
Elrond stepped forward, "indeed, Mr Cameron, I'm not human, I am an eledhel or to use the vernacular, an elf. We as a species have long existed alongside magical humans but for over a millennium, we have been a subjugated race. There was a battle fought a long time ago, at a place called Dymchurch, my race was defeated by the wizards and part of the terms of our defeat bound us in a magical servitude to wizards, it is only recently that this was remedied when Dudley took me into service to serve his household. Most wizard households just accepted the oaths given to them by their new elves and treated them like servants, Dudley didn't, he gave me an oath back to treat me in much the same way as a liege lord would treat a vassal of old. I don't know if he was inspired to do this by the name I chose as his wording was from the same work of fiction that I chose my name, a name which I am proud to bear, but in doing so, he broke this enchantment set on my people. We are now free to take service with a wizard household or not or if we choose to live in the outside world on our own. It was jokingly mentioned by Dudley that we'd then have groups of people objecting to my people moving into their neighbourhoods and I said this wouldn't happen because of how we preferred to live. Because of the oaths I have exchanged with Dudley and his family, I am a member of his extended family, and indeed as a result of a request he made to Her Majesty when he gave his own oath of allegiance to her in the Wizengamot, I am now a Vassal Secundus, to Her Majesty, I owe my allegiance to her through him. She made me the ambassador to my people as I was the first of my kind she had encountered."
"Vassals and Vassal Secundus, isn't that a bit archaic?"
"Of course, but in its own way the wizarding world is also a bit archaic, a lot of our old noble houses can trace their lines back to the time of William the Conqueror, these are the Ancient and Noble Houses, if a wizarding family was elevated to the nobility by the Monarch, they became Noble Houses. These noble families are the ruling families in Britain, a bit like the House of Lords, the exception is that at the same time there are serving elected members in the same assemblage, this is the Wizengamot, a bit like the House of Lords and Commons combined. At this point in time all members are Purebloods, that is to say they have both parents for at least three generations of magical descent; this is will be changing shortly I hope in about 18 months when elections are next held, for the first time in our history, muggleborn, or as her majesty described it first-generation purebloods will be eligible to stand for election to the Wizengamot. Our nobility is styled as Lords of the Wizarding Court of Charlemagne, if we as the Wizengamot decided to give some individual status and recognised their family as one of our Heads of family and as such position to stand they would have just a head of family, not a Noble family, we as the Wizengamot have never had that privilege of ennobling our subjects. Incidentally there is another way for an individual to become a Wizarding Lord, such as happened with Dudley here. Through some circumstances which are not fully recognised or understood, he was ennobled by Magic itself, something which last happened about 500 years ago with a gentleman by the name of Nicholas Flamel."
"Good Lord, is this the Nicholas Flamel, who is purported according to popular myth to have created the Philosopher's Stone?"
"It is, he sadly passed away a few years ago, aged about 670 or thereabouts!"
"Do all wizard folk live that long?"
"No, generally speaking we live about twice the time muggles do, it has something to do with how our magic holds of some of the more debilitating effects of aging, we aren't affected by some of the more common diseases either, but there are ones we can be affected by because of our magic!"
"Does this mean if you integrate more into our society you would be bringing more diseases with you?"
I didn't like the sound of that question, so decided to take over from Kingsley in the conversation. "No, there's no chance of that happening, these magical diseases can only effect someone with magic, probably genetic, a bit like Sickle Cell Anaemia can only affect those of black descent. (4)"
"This is all exceedingly interesting, and I'm sure we could debate about the differences in our two societies until the cows come home and probably went back out in the morning, but for what reason has this meeting been called now, the memo we received mentioned something about re-designating status on certain types of land, which did make me wonder why I, as Leader of the opposition was called in, but given the other fascinating topics in tonight's debate I can see why I'm here, as no disrespect to our host, Mr Blair here, I hope to put him out of a job at the next election?"
There was a slight chuckle from everyone present at this and Elrond waited for it to finish so he could make his points, "ladies, Gentlemen, I believe that is my portion to tell, as has previously been mentioned my people have recently been freed from a long period of servitude to wizardkind and as such would like permission to make a community of our own in our natural habitat. We are creatures of the natural and arboreal world and deep in our ancestry lived in forests. As today all or most forests are in national parks or green belt land, we wish to have permission to set up communities in these areas."
"Excuse me for butting in here; err Charles Clarke, Home Secretary, but are you asking to build a city or something in the middle of a national park (5)?"
"Yes and no, before you honourable gentleman decide to ban this without the full facts, perhaps I should invite some of my colleagues in from the other room, they have some things with them to put your minds at ease so to speak that no harm will come to the national park areas we settle in and that we can indeed be of service to these areas. If I may call them in?" He received nods of agreement and several yeses from those present and he spoke something in a strange tongue, I didn't recognise and the rest of our party about a dozen elves appeared in the room with a crack. Several members started at this but after a few mumbled comments stopped to find out what new and fascinating facts they were about to learn.
One of the elves with a small potted plant that looked dead to me, handed it to Elrond with a slight bow of the head and stepped back. He held it in his hands and addressed the room again, "I wonder if any of you are gardeners or keep potted plants in your home, if you could look at this and tell me what you would do with it if it were in your home!"
There were several nods and Elrond passed it to the nearest person to him who had nodded their assent. "Well, in all honesty if I had this in my house, I would have binned it, in my opinion it's obviously dead!" Elrond took the plant back and planted a finger from each hand in the pot and covered the plant with one of his hands and mumbled under his breath, a few seconds later, he handed it back. "Are you sure this is the same plant, I mean you haven't pulled some hocus-pocus trick and changed it, have you?"
"Indeed not, the plant was not completely dead, it was mostly dying, due to lack of nutrients, water etc., having purposely been neglected since this meeting was first set up, but my kind are able to encourage life in plants, not exactly like but consider it like an organic wonder plant-food. He gestured to the three elves who had the small tree in a pot and they brought it forward. He looked at the rest of the room, we are also able to affect change in plants in ways that can aid them and us, if someone would assist me in a small demonstration to show it's not an illusion or something similar. As this is only a small tree, there can only be a small change made, but I think you can see the potential in larger trees."
Mr Cameron stood up and said, "I'm willing, this is fascinating, and what do I need to do?"
"If you just place your hand into the tree about two or three inches and keep it there, in spite of what you might feel, you won't be hurt in any way by this." Mr Cameron did so and Elrond nodded and leaned towards the tree and placed his hands on the slender trunk, a few seconds passed and there was a gasp from everyone seated round the table, the small slender branches of the tree could be seen to be moving and encased Mr Cameron's hand in a small cocoon. "Mr Cameron is your hand truly held by the tree or is it just a trick of the light?"
"Oh! It's held alright, he moved his hand as if to pull away from the tree and the tree leant towards him as he tugged at it.
Elrond nodded, "thank you, I'll free you in a couple of minutes, now imagine everyone if this was a full sized tree, that could be a room that someone could live in, now I'm sure you're thinking that you don't want that sort of thing to be seen in the forest, as it would give the game away about magic so to speak." He waved his hand and the tree looked exactly as it had before the demonstration began. "Now, Mr Cameron is your hand still held, has anything changed except the fact that we can all see your hand as if it were just reaching in to pluck a leaf?"
"No! I can see my hand there quite plainly, but I can still feel it held by the twigs and leaves as it was a few seconds ago." He pulled his hand away and again the tree leaned towards him.
Elrond nodded and placed his hands on the trunk again and Mr Cameron gasped and pulled his hand free. There had been no visible change in the tree, but Mr Cameron had been able to free himself, "what did you feel as you were released?"
"The opposite of when I was first trapped I could feel the branches and twigs moving around my hand, if I understand from this small demonstration, you plan to build a city in the trees making the trees provide the shelter and in some way aiding the trees as you do this, much like I read in a fantasy book a few years ago, Magician, I think it was called where the elves lived in a forest city, Elvandar I think they called it (6)?"
"That's more or less what we are asking, we would act the part of park rangers as I understand it, but would live in the forest and indeed could act as guides for the general public in the park."
"Wouldn't your appearance give away the existence of magic, you obviously look like elves from fiction or Vulcan children from the popular science fiction TV series?"
Elrond nodded to all his fellow eledhel and suddenly there were a dozen different people in the room, ranging from teenagers to middle-aged men and women," there were several gasps from the rest of the room. "Excuse me for asking, but I recognise one gentleman here, the one with the ginger hair, I saw someone who looked like you working with the homeless a few days ago, are you copying someone else's features or was it you helping the homeless?"
"That was me, if you tell me where you saw me, I could tell you, the day of the week it was, I do voluntary work with the local charity for the homeless, as do most of the others here."
"No need for that, I believe you, so you are saying that some of your people are already living in and around London and nobody knows about it. Where do you live now, couldn't you live there?"
"Most of us are living in Hyde Park at the moment, we sleep out in the open or the trees there, we are fine with this at the moment in the summer, but would prefer a better solution for the colder months. We employ a slight illusion at the moment whilst we sleep so we are invisible and don't get moved on by the police; this means we need to sleep a little longer so as to recuperate the energy we spend maintaining the illusion."
"Wouldn't you need to expend even more energy to hide your tree city?"
"No! The trees would supply the energy to maintain the illusion, a slight side-effect of creating a large room in one of the trees is they more space to grow leaves so they would benefit here as well."
There was a slight muttered conversation that started amongst everyone round the table,
"Just a slight point, what about creatures that already live in the trees and forests, won't your settlement affect them adversely, I mean you will be changing their environment for your benefit, and that is part, some of the reason behind national parks to provide for wildlife?"
"Not much, we can to a small extent communicate with animals. I'm not saying we speak cat or badger or anything like that anymore than I was speaking tree earlier during my little demonstration with Mr Cameron and the tree. It's more of an empathy thing, a bit how one person can get on with a particular animal and the next hates it, and the same with animals being comfortable with one person and not another."
"I can understand that, the cat loves my wife and children, loathes me; tends to use me as a scratching post." This got a laugh from everyone present, "so how would this talent help with your management, I suppose you would call it of the forest area?"
"Encouraging the local wildlife to respect each other is one way of putting it, you could say. I've personally talked the local urban foxes in my area into not attacking pets, or causing too much damage when they forage around our neighbourhood, not to throw everything around if they check out a bin-bag. Makes it lot tidier come rubbish days." Again a laugh from everyone present, except Kingsley who was looking a bit puzzled about the references to bin-bags, I would tackle that with him later. (7)
"I must say you put an excellent case forward for your presence in the national park and for myself I cannot see any problems with you acting as rangers for the area, I'm just wondering if there would need to be any changes in the law required to allow you to live in the area. You've adequately shown for myself and I presume the others present that you can successfully live in the area without adversely affecting the natural beauty of the area."
"If I may, everyone," Mr Blair interrupted at this point. "From my understanding of the law there should be no changes needed, there is already a provision for rangers and indeed for those rangers to reside in the area for short periods when their work requires it, if Elrond and his people could build a visitor centre in the area and have someone stay in this visitor centre, as a permanent fixture so to speak, to generally liaise with the general public and provide a contact point for officials of the national parks, I don't think there is any further need for debate on this. It has been shown that they can live in the area without affecting it adversely or allowing the general populace to know about magic; the reasoning behind which was shown in the documentation you read and signed earlier." There was a murmur of or agreement at this comment. "now onto a follow up point, Mr Kingsley is the Minister for Magic, and is non-partisan in this, and will remain so, in all likelihood if Mr Cameron has his wish and takes my job in the next election, we have Mr Jones and MI5¾, to act as a communications link between us, so I would hope we can all agree to do the necessary here today."
At this everyone could be seen to be nodding and chatting quietly amongst themselves. Mr Blair looked at us and gave an encouraging smile as this was happening. It took about half an hour longer but in the end, the eledhel had the permission to become rangers in the New Forest national park, all in all a good day's work.
Author Notes
I just like the name Ianto Jones, he is not the character in the BBC TV series Torchwood, by Russel T Davies, and no copyright infringement is intended, but being a Welsh name, it fitted in with my character being the squib twin of Gwenog Jones of Harpies fame, a fact which will have no further importance to the story.
I first read of M.I.5¾ in an excellent story, Muggle Summer, Wizard's Fall by canoncansodoff, the name appealed to my sense of humour, and I knew I would have to use it in the course of this story. I subsequently sent a PM to the author and asked for permission to use it in my story. He agreed; if you enjoy Harry/Hermione stories I encourage you to read this and others of his.
From what I understand from canon reading, magic tends to act like an electro-magnetic force, hence the interference with technology, a bit like trying to use a mobile phone underground or how using something like an electric drill can disrupt the television picture, so EMP hardening from what I understand of the idea would shield technology from magic.
No insult is meant or inferred by my mention of Sickle Cell Anaemia here and to the societal group it can affect. I offer apologies if anyone is insulted by this. My sympathy goes out to anyone suffering or has family suffering from what even in my own ignorance I understand to be a terrible disease.
The New Forest was designated a National Park in March 2005, so the timeline for finding wardens/staff for the newly formed park would fit in with this story which is taking place mid-August 2005 at this point.
The story mentioned here is Magician by Raymond Fiest, part of his Riftwar Saga, set on the magical world of Midkemia, if you enjoy Elves, dwarves, and magic, a very good series, indeed there are several sequel series to this story. I personally recommend them. Again no copyright infringement in is intended.
In Britain at the time of this article, each household would have a rubbish bin, into which a large black bag would be placed and all rubbish placed in this bag; on the day in which the rubbish was collected these bags would be tied up and placed on the kerbside for the bin men to collect. A lot were broken into by local wildlife to forage for scraps.