Notes: Here's phase one of Minister Tom's agenda (and a quick soft-M-rated scene!). It is meant to be a bit morally ambiguous, because the issue Tom is attempting to address is a difficult one: How do you deal with families that hate or fear magic?

Dec. 2016: This chapter has been slightly edited in light of the Fantastic Beasts film; Tom references Obscurials in support of his plan. (Hermione also calls him out privately for claiming that wizards never abuse their children.) As of the first film, there is excellent accord between my AU and film canon of Grindelwald, but I'm not going to edit the story if a conflict arises later (and Choosing Grey itself is finished, period). I consider film canon and book canon to be separate, but this concept was too relevant not to include here.

Chapter Eleven: Think of the Children

A selection of drinks filled the center of the table, and Tom's coterie sipped theirs, patiently awaiting his word. Hermione had given this some thought, and she was reasonably certain that she knew what he was going to propose—more or less, at least.

He had a small pad of papers in front of him, but he did not seem inclined to distribute these. Perhaps they were his own notes. He brought out his pocket watch—the very one Hermione had given him in seventh year for his birthday, she noted with a rush of pleasure—and called the meeting to order as the second hand reached the top.

"First, the restructuring is going well," he said. "I'll want to keep an eye on Caspar Crouch, though. The tone of that editorial… and judging from his air when I have to work with him, I don't think he respects me. He's very circumspect around me at the Ministry. Has anyone got any intelligence on his political leanings?"

Hermione could actually answer that one. The Crouch family had donated to her organization, so she had to meet with them and hear their opinions. "I've spoken with him. He gave my organization money, so he certainly wanted to express his thoughts. I got the impression that he has some traditional Isolationist sentiments, but that he is not like—say—Orion Black, or Abraxas Malfoy. He believes himself enlightened. Maybe even privately considers himself a Reformist," she added, "and wants to distance himself from the hardliners' views. That type."

Tom raised an eyebrow at her, apparently surprised that she had not told him that in private.

You didn't ask, she thought, meeting his eyes. I didn't realize you wanted to know.

He apparently read her thoughts, for he faced the group again. "In that case, he certainly bears watching. He and that son of his."

There were chuckles from a couple of Tom's cronies, who worked in Law Enforcement. Barty Crouch—the very same one that Hermione remembered as the International Magical Cooperation Head from her timeline—was currently a Ministry employee. He had a brusque, rigid, punctilious manner, and no one thought he had good people skills, but Hermione agreed with Tom's assessment that he bore watching. She knew what he would be capable of someday.

"Next… the policy agenda."

Everyone who was chuckling stopped at once and sat up, paying close attention.

"I had my reasons for moving certain offices under my direct authority," he began. "The plan I implemented as Law Enforcement Head to integrate Squib parents and siblings has gone well, I think we can agree." His gaze briefly shot to Geoffrey Fox, Head of the Office of Non-Magical Families. "I wanted Non-Magical Families, Social Welfare"—another quick look at someone—"and Adoption and Fostering under my direct control because I expect some opposition to my forthcoming… expansion… of the program, and I did not want the Department Heads to be able to give conflicting orders or anything else that would cause delays."

Hermione looked at her glass. Her suspicions about Tom's next plan appeared to be correct. She was determined not to appear shocked when he revealed it.

"Some of you may not know that we currently do not assimilate all witches and wizards born outside the magical community," he said.

Several people raised their eyebrows in surprise and dismay.

"It's true. We don't," Tom continued. "We never have. When the Ministry or Hogwarts representatives encountered a family resolutely opposed to magic, they would Obliviate the parents of their visit and not contact them again, except in secret to handle the child's accidental magic. It's an early Seclusion-era policy meant to protect us from Muggles who thought we trafficked with demons, and that never went away entirely in the Muggle world… but there are more, now, who would hate and fear us simply because they would think us 'freaks.'" His lips curled.

Hermione thought about Harry and the Dursleys. There had been an exception for him, but perhaps it was because the Dursleys were not his parents, or because he had been—would have been—a special case, necessary for victory in a war.

The wizards and witches at the table were murmuring amongst themselves in disapproval and outrage. Geoffrey Fox bore a look of cynical non-surprise, as did Tom and Hermione.

Tom tapped the table with his fingertips, and the rumble of noise subsided. "I think we can all agree that this is unfair to these magical children. What I propose is to change the way we handle these situations—radically so."

Hermione held her breath, waiting for it.

"I've considered a couple of options for doing this, and what I have decided to do is to use Memory Charms and… other mind magic… to change their ignorant opinions."

Hermione's gaze shot to him in surprise. She had really expected him to say he was going to seize the children, put them in his foster care system, and Obliviate the families of their existence.

He met her eyes and smiled knowingly at her. "I had considered something else, but it's not politically viable, and I don't want to do it for other reasons either."

"What did—" someone started to interrupt.

Tom silenced him with a hard look. "I'll explain in a bit. Now… to do this, I'll have to make some revisions to the existing Squib laws. My laws, ironically. Squibs are protected against this very sort of mind magic now… and all parents and siblings of these children are designated Squibs. I don't want to reverse that, but the Squib laws do have to be amended to accommodate this."

Here it comes, then, Hermione thought. Of course there was a catch.

"I'm going to propose a new class: Protected Squib. All current Squibs will receive that designation immediately, but in the future, newly found Squibs will only get it if they are friendly to magic. Otherwise, they'll have Floo connection rights, housing rights, and so on—but they will not be protected against mind and memory magic, for obvious reasons."

A storm of chatter arose at the table immediately. Several people, including Fox, were frowning with concern. Hermione was concerned too. "Friendly to magic" was extremely vague. Even her own parents had been alarmed at first to hear of the existence of magic. Most people who had lived their whole lives in the Muggle world probably would be.

She decided to speak her concerns. "Tom," she began.

The din quieted at the sound of her voice. No one wanted to talk over the Minister's wife in his presence, it seemed.

He gazed at her speculatively.

"When you say that they have to be 'friendly to magic,' what, precisely, do you mean by that? Most people would be uncertain about magic when they learned about it for the first time. We can do things that they can't. We have powers they don't. It seems highly unrealistic to me to expect everyone to immediately be comfortable with magic. There should, at least, be a grace period, or something."

Geoffrey Fox nodded pointedly. Probably he had had the same experience as a child.

Tom considered. "You're right; the law would be more specific than that. I mean that they don't have ingrained bigotry. I can make allowances for initial fear and concern. The Ministry and the school know how to talk to them about that. I mean people who don't respond to what we already do." He thought a bit more. "A family that either considers it demonic, evil, disgustingly freakish, or that refuses to let their child receive a magical education—whether at Hogwarts or otherwise. I'm not going to let prejudiced Muggles or Squibs deprive magical children of their birthright," he added, his voice slightly raised.

One witch voiced another objection. "I'm not saying I disagree with you, Minister, but the Reformists won't like it one bit if we advocate to meddle with the memories of Squibs to alter their beliefs."

"Some of them probably won't," Tom agreed, "but who enfranchised Squibs? Who granted Squib rights to all these new people? Not the Reformists. And the Ministry alters Muggles' memories all the time, whenever someone has a magical accident around them."

They do, Hermione thought, but those are one-time events and short periods of memory. The Ministry doesn't change anything significant about the Muggles when they do that. This is different.

Her stomach suddenly lurched as something occurred to her. But—in the other timeline, I wiped out all my parents' memories of me. I changed their ambitions. I planted a life-altering idea in their minds that had not been there before. I meddled with their lives much, much more significantly than Tom is proposing to do, and they were not even magic-haters. I did it because I thought arrogantly that if I died, they would be better off if they did not even remember me. I'll never get to talk to them again, and that was the last thing I did when I still had them. Tom is only saying to change one opinion of people who have wrong ideas about magic.

But still. The children benefit from it, but don't their parents have the right to hold those views, even repulsive as they are? Or… does that right stop once they start depriving their children of their rights? Is magical education a right for wizard children? I think it is, since they will always have magic… it is an immutable part of them… so their rights do come first.

But where does this end if it becomes official Ministry policy to mess with people's thoughts like this? How can anyone be sure that this really will be limited to "unprotected" Squibs and anti-magic bigotry? Where do we redraw the line after we cross it?

Hermione honestly could not answer that question.

A low rumble of talk had started up again as people muttered to those sitting next to them about Tom's proposal. She was wrapped up in her own conflicted thoughts, but she was not oblivious to the chatter around her.

Neither was Tom. He cracked his knuckles and faced the table with a seemingly tolerant, patient look on his face as the chatter subsided. Hermione knew that it was a façade, and that he never liked having to explain his decisions, but it was a good façade.

"I know that some of you are concerned about this, but it's our best option. Moderate Reformists like the current law because they think it 'respects Muggles,' and moderate Isolationists like it because it keeps hostile Squibs from knowing about magic, but we can change their minds if we explain what it really does." He regarded them with frost in his face. "Wizarding children are raised by magic-hating parents and don't go to Hogwarts. The Ministry has to monitor their every move for accidental magic. If the parents punish them for magic, we probably won't get there in time to stop it. It could be extremely abusive and even threaten the wizarding child's life. In the absolute worst-case scenario, the child may develop a parasitic magical force called an Obscurus—"

There were gasps around the table.

"—which, in addition to being a grave threat to Secrecy, will eventually kill the child." He looked deeply angry for a moment, but sipped his drink quickly and continued. "If the children do survive childhood, they go untrained and are asked at eighteen if they want to join our world. By then, most of them are prejudiced against magic themselves—especially if they know on some level that they can do it. Self-loathing can be powerful," he added darkly, glancing briefly at Hermione.

Hermione wondered if that was a private reference to the old timeline. He would have become that exact type of self-loathing zealot without her influence, but over blood purity.

"Even if they haven't adopted their parents' views, they don't want to join a community where they'll always be outsiders. No Hogwarts education, no mentors, no friends from school. So we lose them—and if they hate magic and have magical children of their own, we lose that generation too. That is our current law." He regarded his people pointedly.

There were rumblings across the table. Hermione considered what he was saying. He was good, she had to admit. She had been skeptical of this plan and had serious misgivings, but she was all but convinced now. It was wrong for these children's prospects to be blighted by narrow-minded parents. Pro-Muggle people might worry about wizards controlling Muggles with magic, but the alternative was for ignorant Muggles—or Squibs—to control magical children with fear and hate. Hermione ultimately had to take the children's side. Harry was the only wizarding child in a hostile family for whom the powers that be—the alternate powers that be—would ever make an exception, and even he had still been subjected to verbal and physical abuse.

I'll have to point that out to him, she decided.

"Now, we could take the children away from their families and adopt them out. That was my other thought. But if there are any non-magical siblings, they won't get introduced to our world, so we probably lose the potential they have to have magical offspring. If the parents have another magical infant later, we'd have to take that baby too, and the same family might not adopt it. I just don't like it. I have two children, and I don't want to separate siblings or break up families." He glanced at Hermione, an aura of uncharacteristic vulnerability passing over him that was apparently only for her eyes.

That was not a cynical appeal to sentiment. It was sincere, Hermione realized with a rush of affection for him. He really didn't want to break up a family without good reason, even if the parents were non-magical. Some of it was probably personal. He did believe, with justification, that his Muggle father had abandoned him out of hatred for magic, and he had confessed to her that he sometimes wished his mother had continued to drug him. But he had come to care about more than just his own grievances since their children were born.

"And on a pragmatic level, we'd have no support for that from moderate Reformists. We might get some Isolationists, but not many." His gaze darted from face to face, the exposed, vulnerable look in his eyes transmuting back into contempt with the turn of his thoughts. "Some of our opponents speak of another choice. The most extreme blood purists would propose murdering these children as infants—little witches and wizards."

There was a rumble of disgust at that.

Tom put his hand up. "I'm only pointing out that they say it amongst themselves, do they not, Vincent?" He looked pointedly at Vincent Rosier, who was one of the most pureblooded of the inner circle. Hermione recognized that Tom was subtly calling out his family ties.

Rosier looked unhappy, but he had no choice but to confirm. "There are people who say it."

"And it's obviously vile, but it is a way of handling the issue." He peered at his associates with a faint asymmetric smirk on his face, confident of his argument. "So. Permit the abuse and brainwashing of wizards and lose them to the Muggle world, kidnap children, or commit infanticide." His smirk widened, and he raised an eyebrow pointedly. "Or… go with my proposal and alter the families' magic-hating views."

"Well, when you put it like that," murmured Geoffrey Fox.

Hermione spoke up. "I think that removal from abusive homes still should be on the table," she remarked.

Tom looked quickly at her, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

"Not a first option, obviously," she clarified, "but in the Muggle world, children can be taken from households where they are physically abused. If that sort of thing is going on, we ought to intervene."

"I agree," Fox said. "It'd have to apply to wizarding families too, though. Otherwise the Reformists would say there was a double standard."

"I have no problem with that," Tom said. "It's not as though wizarding families actually do that. I've never heard of it happening, at least. I can privately reassure the moderate Isolationist crossover supporters that it's only there to placate Reformists."

Hermione wanted to roll her eyes at that statement. Wizards were human too. In fact—she realized—his own mother had been abused. But whatever Tom might want to believe, or assert, if this made it into the law, it would be enforceable.

Tom sipped his drink again. "If you're concerned about the politics, I know that this is a big change, and that there will be some controversy. We can tell the public what the most extreme Isolationists would do instead—"

"Most of them don't actually want to murder babies," Vincent Rosier supplied.

"A few do, and we should make them own it. We should also attack the current law relentlessly. If the debate is about our proposal, the implication is that the status quo is acceptable. It's not. We can explain exactly what price the wizarding world pays to put 'Muggle rights' ahead of magical children's rights." He sneered in contempt for a moment before continuing. "We'll mention removal and fostering as a harsh alternative that we so reasonably aren't going to do—except for physical abuse, as my wife said. All of this will make my proposal look positively benign… as, of course, it is," he added smugly. "I think the population will see it as the option that's in everyone's best interest."

Tom was surprisingly affectionate that evening. He continued to hold her around the waist even after they had Apparated to their home and gone inside.

"I'm glad you spoke up," he murmured against the side of her ear.

She stifled a snort. "Tom, you should know that I'm going to speak up if something occurs to me that bothers me."

"Well, it's good that you did. I think you know more about the subject than I do, since you lived it."

"So did you," she said, surprised that he would acknowledge that. "That Muggle orphanage."

He planted a kiss on her cheek and began to steer her upstairs. "It wasn't the same at all. I think they wanted to be rid of me… and then, once I joined the Ministry, I looked into it and discovered that it was legal to meddle with their minds to let me attend Hogwarts. They were employees of an institution, not family members. I think wizarding law must want to 'respect families' or something of the sort, even when it means that magical children are abused by Muggles."

"Tom," she said tentatively, "about what you agreed to tonight, allowing children to be taken from physically abusive homes… you do remember that your own mother was abused, right?"

He looked startled for a moment, then embarrassed, then defensive. "She wasn't forced to suppress her magic, so she wouldn't have become an Obscurial."

"She was still abused and at risk of rape and murder by her own family. Are you prepared to have the Ministry take children out of that kind of home even if the family is magical?"

Tom glowered, pausing for a moment. "Yes," he finally spat. "Anyone who would do that to a fellow wizard is a disgrace to magic and doesn't deserve to raise magical children."

"In my old life," she said, "I had a friend who was raised by a magic-hating family of Muggles—his aunt and uncle." She thought about it. "They would sometimes lock him in his room without food, and he couldn't even use magic to escape because of the underage sorcery ban."

Tom snarled in disgust. "That's inexcusable. I see why you wanted to have that child abuse provision now. But this is why these laws have to be changed. They put Muggles ahead of wizarding children. At least the underage magic ban is gone, though." He thought for a moment. "How did you meet this boy if he was from that kind of family?"

"Dumbledore made a special exception for him," she said bitterly. "He was critical to the war effort. And even then, nobody ever tried to make the Muggles stop abusing him. He could have starved to death in his room one summer if I hadn't sent him food by owl post."

Tom's jaw twitched in anger. "Considering what Muggles did to his sister, it is astounding to me that Dumbledore would go on to allow another pack of despicable Muggle magic-haters to abuse a wizard child simply for being magical. Maybe his hands were tied by the law, I suppose," he said in a rare and surprising moment of fairness, "but that's exactly why I have to make these changes." His hands trailed to her hips. "But enough of him."

With a smirk on his face, he reached under her legs and lifted her up effortlessly. Her eyes widened in surprise. He carried her bridal-style up the stairs and into their bedroom, finally throwing aside the heavy green drapes of their canopy bed and setting her down on the mattress.

She stared back at him, astonished and pleased. "You did enjoy this evening."

He smirked predatorily, his eyes darkening with lust. "You're really my best advisor, you know." He mounted the bed and hovered partially over her, reaching for her wrists. "And I think I need to… promote you for it."

Her breath caught in her chest. "Tom—"

"Don't call me that," he said in a low hiss.

"What do you mean?"

He ran a single finger down the sensitive skin of her neck. "Think about what I just said."

Hermione suddenly realized what he likely meant. "Oh," she said. A smirk formed on her face, and she lowered her head slightly, gazing back at him from lidded eyes. "Well, in that case, Minister Riddle, I accept your promotion."

His dark eyes gleamed with approval. "Of course you do." With a single sharp movement of his wand arm, he bespelled the drapes shut.

Tom made his policy announcement the very next day in a grand room just off the Ministry Atrium. Flags depicting the Ministry of Magic emblem and the Nationalist Ouroboros stood on poles on either side of his podium, rippling faintly, as he gave a speech version of the explanation he had made at the Serpents' Chalice. Ministry bureaucrats, reporters, and interested citizens filled the room.

"That's what we do now," Tom concluded, his voice pitched to the crowd. "We lose witches and wizards to protect the 'rights' of ignorant Squibs who think we're dangerous freaks or demon-possessed monsters."

There was a low murmur among the crowd. Hermione was almost certain she caught someone muttering the phrase "blood-traitors." She was also sure that it was one of Tom's Nationalists.

"The status quo is unacceptable, and it is time to change it. My proposal is the most sensible and compassionate option we have, and I look forward to your support as we implement it."

Septimus Weasley, a leading radical Reformist in the Ministry, stood up. He put his wand to his throat to amplify his voice and called out a question. "Minister," he said, his lip visibly curling at the title, "how many Muggle-born children are actually raised by magic-haters?"

Some Nationalists were attempting to change the common usage from "Muggle-born" to "Squib-born half-blood"—or just "Squib-born." Extreme Isolationists had their own preferred term, of course, but extreme Reformists also refused to use the new phrase, which they regarded as "erasing Muggles from their heritage." Although this was not important to Tom personally, language was a weapon and he understood Weasley's implicit attack perfectly well.

He stared Weasley down. The bespectacled man blinked first and looked down at his own shoes. "One is too many," Tom said, the corners of his mouth curling slightly in triumph. "They are witches and wizards, and their parents are wrong about magic." He gazed out at the whole audience. "Whatever our political differences, we can all agree about that. Their parents are wrong. They hold views better suited to the burning times, and their ignorance should not condemn one single child to a life of lost potential."

There was a rumbling of applause from Tom's group.

He smiled, acknowledging it, and then held his hand up for silence. "But there is also a pragmatic reason why one is too many. When the present law was written, the Muggles who hated magic did so from religious intolerance, and news traveled slowly. That is not so now. They have fast communication, so any untrained witches or wizards could be discovered by Muggle governments before we could stop it, and the secret of magic might be impossible to contain. That is a risk to every one of us. The Muggles have nuclear weapons, and I assume all of you know what those can do."

Looks of disgust and contempt filled various people's faces.

"So the Muggles have a dangerous situation that is entirely of their own making, but there are some among them who would scapegoat us if they knew of our powers. They would call us national security threats, and insist on identifying, controlling, or possibly even eliminating us in fear of what we could do with their apocalyptic arsenals. We cannot afford the risk of untrained witches and wizards being exposed to hostile, fearful Muggles."

Weasley muttered under his breath in disapproval of Tom's rhetoric, but most people in the room were convinced by this argument.

In the days following Tom's announcement, other voices did come forward. The Daily Prophet carried all sides of the discussion. Abraxas Malfoy penned a piece arguing that it was a bad idea to assimilate people from families that were opposed to magic and then rely only on Memory Charms to protect Seclusion. In response, Tom had one of his people write a letter pointing out that the policy had always been to rely on Memory Charms to protect Seclusion, that it was much more dangerous to leave the children untrained, and that magic was their birthright in any case.

Predictably, Septimus Weasley made the argument that it was "creeping supremacism" to encroach upon Muggle rights in this way. He didn't mention the rights of the children, and he even quoted verbatim from some of the propaganda that Gellert Grindelwald had put out during the war advocating to use mind magic on Muggles. Weasley had been at the pinnacle of his career during the war. It did lend him some credibility, but Tom and Hermione's capture of Grindelwald—even though he had escaped—still gave them the edge. Tom's popularity didn't hurt either.

Others with Reformist leanings had, in Hermione's view, a more compelling argument. Albus Dumbledore himself wrote a piece that was very eloquent, very thoughtful, and even acknowledged Tom's points about the children's rights and wizarding safety, but still expressed concern that the Ministry was going to begin using mind magic to change people's values. Perhaps this time it was necessary, the Headmaster wrote, but the Ministry had to make it very clear that it would go no farther. This was Hermione's own concern, which none of Tom's arguments had yet addressed.

Hermione observed that a strange development seemed to be taking shape. The Nationalists were in lockstep with Tom, and as he had hoped, many moderates from both of the other factions supported them in this policy as well. But the hardliners from the Isolationist and Reformist factions were resolutely against it, though they were coming from completely different rationales.

The odd part was that both groups seemed to be forming a pragmatic coalition despite their differences. The last time it had happened was in continental Europe during the war against Grindelwald, and Hermione could not help but feel some disquiet at that.

But it was easy to ignore politics, to dismiss it as "Tom's business and Tom's problem," while she worked at her own very demanding job. She had a project of her own: planning in-house child care for the children of her employees, those who were too young to attend Hogwarts. Hermione now brought her own two children to work, leaving them with toys and books in her own spacious office, and it had occurred to her that it would be a good socialization experience for others as well. It was a good idea that she felt good about, and she had chosen to become engrossed with that rather than the Ministry business.

That changed when Caroline Prewett, her Vice President of Research, abruptly came to her office and tendered her resignation.

Hermione was shocked and unhappy. She had noticed that Caroline did not approve of Tom's Ministry restructure, and had seemed unwilling to talk about it with her own work friends if Hermione might overhear, but Hermione had not expected anything like this. Caroline stood before her desk with a pinched face, scowling as she offered a token explanation for her departure: "I feel that the goals of the organization have changed since I first began to work here, and I cannot give my best effort any longer."

Clearly, Tom's latest Ministry policy had crossed some sort of line with Caroline, and she could no longer work for Tom's wife or for an organization that she believed was a wing of Tom's political apparatus. Hermione could not disabuse her of that notion, because she could not openly acknowledge it as the subtext of Caroline's statement.

After Caroline's departure, Hermione poured herself a strong shot of Ogden's Old and began to consider her replacement options. The Director of Potions Research was probably the best choice for a promotion to Vice President, she thought, looking at her employee roster—but then she would need a new Potions director to replace him. She looked over her payroll again. A name stood out to her.

Well, why not? She had only been there for two years, but Catriona Dagworth had grown into her position well. She was a leader among researchers and got on well with most of them. Hermione finally managed a smile as she decided what she would do.

Tom spent the evening in his private study. Hermione rarely ventured into that room, because she found it cavernous and more than a little bit creepy with Tom's old-fashioned desk, cabinet of Dark items, and single heavily draped window. She stayed in the family sitting room, cuddling Madeline and Virgil close as they drifted off to sleep.

After she had put them to bed, he finally emerged from the office and poked his head into the sitting room.

"I hope your day was productive," Hermione remarked.

"It was. I've decided what I have to do next. The plan may need some perfecting, and I'll want to talk about it with the 'knights of the round table' first, but I've decided on a way to handle our biggest challenge."

"Oh?" Hermione asked, getting up. She met him at the door and took his hand, ready to go to bed. "And what is that?"

"Population decline."

Hermione's gaze snapped to his. "Decline? Really?"

"Really. I've been aware of it for a while."

"Well, yes, so have I, but that was under the old policies. It's still happening even with all these Mu—Squib families coming in now?"

"I had thought that might stop it, but in the long term, yes, it's happening even with that." He wrapped his arm around her waist. "It's late, and I'll explain more tomorrow."

"Tom, I anticipated your Squib family change in advance… it didn't surprise me that much… but I don't have a clue of what you mean right now, and I don't want to be taken by surprise in front of your people again."

He considered that. "Fair enough. I'll tell you in private before the meeting."

End Notes: There would be families who hated magic, both religious extremists and secular ones like the Dursleys whose hatred was based on fear of its power. In the books, we never met any other kids from households like that, though. Since we didn't, and since nobody used mind magic on the Dursleys even to make them stop abusing and starving Harry, I think we can safely infer that magic-haters' opinions are respected and the kids do not attend Hogwarts.

In the books, nobody actually had to grapple with this issue (or several others) due to the gross simplification of complex problems. One political faction in the Potterverse had gone crazy, and there was a void of realistic, inclusive (as opposed to pureblood-only) "pro-wizard" thinking to challenge the Muggle-protective kind. The "pro-Muggle" people (Reformists in this AU) didn't try to improve anything; they just supported the status quo because that was good enough in the face of insane opposition. It was partly Tom's fault for feeding the lunacy, of course, and this is one thing I'm trying to explore with this AU: What if he didn't ruin politics? What if wizards actually had to address their difficult problems, and Tom was offering serious, viable, inclusive "pro-wizard" ideas?

Phase two of Tom's agenda is going to be a multi-chapter plot beginning with the next chapter, and as hinted, it is going to be a lot edgier than this was.