11th August 2011 – New Farm, Somerset
The last vestiges of innocence that Hermione had carried within her died the moment she used the Leaping Heart Curse on the poor Muggle woman. Rowle had used a particularly evil and vile Dark spell, one which could only be broken by the death of its victim, and never by the death or disarmament of its caster – were Rowle to fall dead or be disarmed, the woman and all nine of her children would die, too.
The only method of breaking the spell and saving the life of its intended victims – the relatives of the spell's focus – was to use the Leaping Heart Curse, itself a questionable spell, or to allow its caster to end the torment.
So Hermione had made the decision in a split second, and had acted before Harry could. The Rowles were known for using spells such as these, spells which would force their enemies to do questionable things. Hermione was the only person with the requisite knowledge: she had to do what she had done.
It didn't make listening to the anguished cries of the children any easier, though, and Hermione expected that she would have more than a few nightmares.
A ripping curse tore open a wound into her left thigh, and she almost fell to the ground. She tightened up her protective charms, adding a low-intensity Regeneration Charm to her wardnet. It wouldn't heal her wounds quickly, but then, she didn't have time for a more complex or powerful spell. This would have to do.
There were too many, too skilled, Death Eaters fighting here today. She, Harry and Neville were all magically powerful, and skilled – but unlike the Death Eaters they had to protect themselves and their charges.
The next time Harry got within hissing distance – because she didn't want the Death Eaters to pick up on her plan – she spoke quickly.
"Harry, I'm going to blow up the gas line under the road," she said. "There should be a line running under where the road meets the track for the farm," she continued.
"Got it," he said, and Hermione really hoped he understand that she wanted he and Neville to corral the Death Eaters to the appropriate place whilst she located the pipe. She didn't have to worry as he let loose a torrent of curses and spells designed at knocking the Death Eaters back. Neville soon followed, and Hermione cast a modified version of a dowsing spell – not that she was, precisely, a xylomancer – to look for an appropriate place.
At least here, in the middle of the countryside, she could do such a thing without collateral damage.
With her mind projected into the ground, using the curious xylomancy charm, Hermione located the sweet spot, the place where her spell would do the greatest amount of damage.
Enough of the Death Eaters were caught within the blast radius, so Hermione acted quickly.
"Aduro," she said, and the subterranean pipe erupted into flames. "Protego flamma!" she said, erecting a shield that would protect from the burning conflagration she had caused.
"We're leaving," ordered Neville. "I've got Portkeys for the Muggles."
Hermione was ready to leave, but she couldn't – she had to wait until Neville got the targets out via Portkey, she since doubted all the Death Eaters had been killed in the explosion.
12th August 2011 – Caer Tawel, War Room
Although it had only been several hours since the night had made way for the day, Harry already wished today was over. The sheer scale of the night's operations, however, meant that debriefings of an equally colossal scale had to take place after the fact.
Of the fifty-three Unspeakables, nine had fallen to Death Eaters over the course of the night's operations. Of the Muggles, four had died – one child lost both her parents, whilst two others lost a mother and a father each. They hadn't lost any of the Muggleborns, thank Merlin, but Harry wasn't sure that that made the losses they had incurred any more acceptable, either.
Everything had been going along smoothly until the time came for Hermione's personal briefing, which he sat through because he'd sat through every other Unspeakable's briefing, as had Hermione and Neville and Luna.
Word had reached everyone else about Hermione's actions regarding the Muggle woman – whose name Harry now knew had been Kerry James – fairly early on, as the arrival of children (and one very concerned spouse) shouting 'she killed my mum' had been somewhat alarming, especially when they pointed at Hermione.
Adam James, the husband of the dead Muggle woman, hadn't been at the debriefing, of course. It would have been too raw for him, and most of it would have gone flying above his head, but Harry felt sympathy for the man. Everyone else would, too – but this was war, even if poor Mr James hadn't understood that yet.
"An unidentified Rowle cast an extremely Dark curse on Kerry James after sneaking past the defensive line we had established," Hermione said flatly, her voice betraying no emotion. "I was able to identify the curse as being a member of a class of spells using familial blood ties to bind a number of sub-victims to the primary victim of the curse. In all cases with these spells the only method of ending the curse without killing every last one of its victims is to use the Leaping Heart Curse upon the primary victim."
She paused.
"If Harry hadn't been about to cast a Disarming spell on him I would have attempted to force Rowle to end the spell himself, which can be done in some specific scenarios, but there wasn't enough time for that. I believe my actions saved the lives of at least nine children last night."
The Council of Seven, the seven Unspeakables who coordinated the efforts of the entire group, accepted her narrative without word or question. Morningstar sat at their centre, the leader in most senses of the word. Stonefoot sat to her right, and both Whitehall and Thomas had been replaced already by Vickers and Chamberly, the next most senior Unspeakables. Veritably ancient Unspeakables whose names Harry had never been told filled the rest of the spaces, interrupted from their—whatever it was they did only for occasions such as this one. They hadn't conferred among themselves once, as far as Harry could tell.
"No wrongdoing is considered to have occurred," ruled Morningstar. "If you would, though, do try to avoid the James family in its entirety."
And then, for the first time in literally (well, almost) a decade, Harry heard one of the ancient Unspeakables speak.
"'The Lioness will be three in her Glories and three in her Sorrows'," they – he, Harry realised for the first time – said.
Hermione sighed. She wasn't surprised this had come up again, especially not now, but it was a bit of a bother. The Lioness could refer to practically any female Gryffindor, but then the prophecy itself predated Hogwarts by nearly five centuries. Still, despite the 'contextual information' she had been given by the Unspeakables, Hermione was not quite yet committed to herself as the Lioness of prophecy.
"And this is the first of my Sorrows, is it?" she said indignantly. "I refuse to allow you to reduce the events of tonight into a dictation of Fate. I killed an innocent Muggle woman tonight so that I could save her nine children. I made a morally questionable decision based on the information available to me at the time."
"And in doing so placed a foot upon the path to fulfilment of the prophecy," continued the aged Unspeakable. "Lady Fate is not the cosmic puppeteer."
Hermione nodded her head. That was true, assuming that one believed in the central assumptions made by the Unspeakables regarding the nature of prophecy. She supposed that the Unspeakables were the authority on such matters, being the only group with the resources and inclination to study things most witches hadn't even considered.
It was all about choices, in the end, wasn't it? If Hermione hadn't understood anything else about prophecy (but she wouldn't be Hermione if she hadn't, so she had) she at least understood that everything was bound up in the choices made by powerful actors – people who could feasibly fit into the role required of them by Fate, Destiny, God. The choices a person made throughout their life were usually insignificant, but some people were uniquely placed to make large, powerful choices.
Those choices would sometimes fulfil the terms set out by Fate, and if the person also fulfilled other terms of the prophecy then that was that. Hermione didn't want to become the Lioness, but she had no practicable way of avoiding the prophecy and taking an active role in the defeat of the most vile Dark magic practitioners in centuries.
The Unspeakables had decided to make Hermione into the Lioness. She hadn't agreed to it, but one didn't simply 'agree' to participate in a prophecy. She had two choices: fight, and perhaps fulfil the terms of a two-thousand year old prophecy as a consequence; or run away and avoid the war entirely. One path offered near-certain death and involvement in an ancient and vague prophecy. The other led to relative safety. Other people would have made a different choice than Hermione, but Hermione was a Gryffindor.
She was practically doing the Unspeakables' work for them.
"When I was nine years old my kitten was run over by a car. Is that also one of my Sorrows?"
Not that she would actually equate what she had done tonight with that, emotionally or morally, but she needed to make a sharp, clear point. The distinction between a sorrow and a Sorrow had always seemed a little murky to her, even if her particular example had been absurd. The war would likely drag on for a long time if prophecies had to be fulfilled before it could end, and there would be many more questionable and abhorrent choices to be made for everyone involved.
"No," said Stonefoot.
Hermione had expected that, but the dour woman continued.
"What you allude to is true, of course. But we must consider the matter of the Stone Circle once more."
"That's not a good idea," said Neville before he was interrupted by Hermione.
"Not after last time," Hermione hissed. "Four people died."
Shortly after their arrival on Avalon Hermione had been tasked with sorting through the Unspeakable archives related to the ring of standing stones on the north-western side of the island. Unspeakable presence on the island prior to the First War had been minimal, but records indicated that a disembodied sidhe soul had been trapped within the Stone Circle in 1926. The archives hadn't suggested why, and the locals didn't know because they hadn't been told.
Hermione and several of the Unspeakables had decided to let it out. It killed four local children before they had been able to bind it once more to the Stone Circle, the ancient sidhe artefact whose purpose nobody understood.
"What we learnt from that encounter will prevent its reoccurrence," said Morningstar confidently.
"Look," said Harry suddenly, "what do you think you'll find out about it if you go digging again now? Maybe it's just, you know, an ancient stone circle."
"When Morag Muir betrayed the Seelie Court and banished them to the Otherworld it was seen as a great betrayal by others of the sidhe, and soon after they left the world in a great exodus," said Luna. "We think that their door to the Otherworld was here, on Avalon."
What Luna said was just history, of course. Morag Muir, an immensely powerful witch active in the late Dark Ages, made a pact with the Seelie Court, representing those of the Otherworld sympathetic to mankind, to eliminate the Unseelie Court and bring stability to the Otherworld and to Britain. In what would become the preferred method to wizards for centuries to come she betrayed the Seelie Court and banished them, too. What was lesser known is that not all of the Otherworld paid allegiance to the Courts, but that they had seen this betrayal and simply left, taking their wonderful magic and beautiful artefacts with them – along with their chaos and wildness, which most wizards agreed was a fair exchange.
"Why do we think this now and not ten bloody years ago then?" she said.
"We thought it might have been a little hill in south Wales," said Luna, and then she shrugged. "It still might be there. It's lovely enough."
Hermione realised then that her debriefing had turned into a general information session, and that the Unspeakables had already made decisions on what was about to occur.
"All right then," said Harry, "but what does a door to the Otherworld have to do with Voldemort?"
Morningstar shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and then realisation grew in Hermione like a tumour.
"Absolutely not. I refuse," she said.
"Refuse what?" said Harry and Neville in unison.
"'Forged in the fires of a half-forgotten dream. She will walk through the Land of Always Winter and be tempered at the Altar of Queens'," said the ancient Unspeakable.
12th August 2011 – Ty Caradoc (Pensieve Room)
? – Severus Snape's quarters
"If you are the person for whom these memories are intended then you shall have received them in person from me, whether because I have been given the chance to do so peacefully or because something undesirable has happened and I have died in the attempt to do so," said Snape, standing alone in his quarters talking to nobody.
Harry looked about the room, giving it a close and careful scrutiny. It didn't really tell him anything at all, especially nothing of Snape. He supposed that in itself told him a lot.
"This index memory was created July 31st, 2011. Happy Birthday, Potter." Snape smirked, although it was clearly something done as part of the memory—the message—he had given Harry. "To use the index you must approach each memory within this memory, this message, I am giving you."
Snape gestured towards the sole piece of furniture in the room – a dungeon, probably some adjoining room to his personal quarters – where several silver pools of memories sat in delicate crystal bowls.
"What you will find within these memories is intensely personal and is to be considered given under the strictest of confidences," continued Snape. "Nonetheless, it is necessary for you to view them. I have no desire to see the Dark Lord's victory continue – it has been almost a decade since the murder of Albus Dumbledore and the subjugation of much of the Wizarding World. A decade, almost, since you disappeared. The Dark Lord did not kill you as he claimed, and the Weasley children attest that you were kidnapped by Unspeakables."
Snape paused again.
"But you have been gone almost ten years. The Order is diminished, reduced to nothing more than a network connecting Muggleborns with safe havens abroad. The Dark Lord and Lady rule from Hogwarts now, with Lucius Malfoy acting as their puppet Minister. But do not assume this means that British Wizarding public is in any state of uproar: it is not, and it is largely complicit in the regime. Change will not be so simple as a duel, prophecy notwithstanding. It must come from within and without, and be directed so as to finally heal the scars of this world."
He sighed.
"Albus was not able to achieve this goal. It is my hope that you, and the Unspeakables, will be able to make great strides. The memories to my left," said Snape, clearly indicating the crystal bowls he meant, "contain memories which will help you understand my loyalty. Some are personal for what will become obvious reasons, and some are personal because I simply do not wish anyone else to know what is mine and mine alone. The memories to my right (the first of which will be most interesting) contain useful pieces of information, scenes of the First War, and the Second; in short, I am providing you with insight into the years you have been away, and into the Death Eaters. Do not be wasteful with what I have given you, because I shall be giving you nothing else."
"My role is, necessarily, deep-cover. You must be prepared to fight me when the time comes, because I shall not hold back; you must be capable of defending."
Snape lingered there without saying anything more, and then the memory looped.
Harry considered everything he had seen even whilst the memory played out again around him. Intelligence into past Death Eater activities would be interesting, especially if it contained things he hadn't seen before. Snape had provided much information to the Order but rarely memories. Harry would be seeing events without a filter, or at least through Snape's filter; Harry wasn't sure how much he trusted the man, yet.
But that was what the memories were for, wasn't it?
The index memory was useful, Harry decided, because it simply looped until he decided to do something with it. He'd been taught how to use Pensieves properly, but the index wasn't something he'd encountered before.
He assumed it meant that it was possible to store many, disconnected, memories within a single container. Who'd invented that, he wondered? Maybe even Snape; it could be a potions-related thing.
He wanted to look at the personal memories last because Snape sounded fairly displeased that he had to share this information with Harry in the first place, and the least Harry could do was wait until he'd viewed the others – but pragmatism won out over feelings of unease and he viewed the personal memories first, because he needed to decide whether Snape was genuine or not.
It was hard to tell when literally everything he was about to see with filtered through Snape's brain, even if he hadn't been a master Occlumens, but you could only work with the tools you had.
What followed was that Harry viewed several personal memories involving his mother and Snape as young children, as teenagers, and then at Hogwarts. Harry understand that the implications of the memories were more than the memories themselves – Snape had loved Lily, a mudblood; his love for her was a powerful piece of evidence showing that he clearly didn't believe in the pureblood ideology. For someone to love in the way Snape had – and Harry had felt the emotions, weakened as they were by the Pensieve magic – the subject of that love couldn't have been anything less than perfect.
But that still wasn't why Snape continued to fight against Voldemort, because it would have been easy for Snape to live in the new world and cut ties with the Order. From what Hermione had said to him, Harry thought they would probably accept that. They did live as outlaws somewhere in Cornwall now, he supposed. Snape might find such a thing difficult emotionally, but he could hide that.
Harry viewed the last of the personal memories, and this time saw Dumbledore and Snape in the former's old office. It must have been decades ago, he thought, because not only was Snape far, far younger, Dumbledore's eyes were sad and tired. The First War, he assumed, although it could have been after. Voldemort's demise hadn't translated entirely smoothly to peace for Wizarding Britain, after all.
"How was the funeral, dear boy?" asked Albus lightly after offering Severus a lemon drop, which he had declined. Harry could feel the exasperation Snape felt at how Albus would always offer him sweets, echoed faintly through the mind magic.
"As expected," said Severus shortly. "Muggles expressing Muggle sentiments about death, sorely lacking in the correct metaphysical grounding to profess any such thoughts."
Harry frowned. He supposed Snape didn't have to be nice to be good.
"I do not think you are quite so disgusted by Muggles as you would have us believe, Severus," said Albus, "but I will forgive you for it today of all days."
Severus grimaced. Harry understand the impulse – he'd thought for a long time that most Muggles had been like the Dursleys deep down, but he'd had first-hand experience with Muggles who weren't. Some Muggles, when exposed to magic, were fascinated and expressed quite interesting thoughts. They couldn't use magic but they could understand it (at least as well as anybody could).
"I do not hate Muggles," agreed Severus, although Harry knew that he'd forced the words out painfully. "For most of my life I have associated Muggles with Tobias Snape. Now that man is gone, and Muggles have become irrelevant to me."
"But no less worthy of love and respect than wizards, surely," said the headmaster.
Harry got that Dumbledore was pushing for something in particular. He knew that Snape understood that too, and would have even without the deepening of Snape's frown because he could feel more or less what Snape had felt then.
He wanted Snape to verbalise it in the presence of somebody else. Dumbledore had been big on sharing, Harry remembered somewhat fondly (and with the benefit of years to temper the feelings).
"Yes, yes, yes," said Snape finally. "I believe that Muggles – in the abstract – are equal to wizards. I concede that Muggles experience joy, and pain, and hope, and love, and sadness. I am even of the opinion that specific Muggles may in some certain circumstances perfectly agreeable people, and capable of many great things. They are not inferior to, merely different from wizards," he said, clearly quoting something Dumbledore had said previously.
"It is self-evident," he added after a few moments.
"If only more wizards had thought to look," said Dumbledore, "then we perhaps might have avoided much sadness…"
The memory ended and Harry pulled himself out of the Pensieve before he could be taken back to the index memory. There was a lot more to go through, but he needed to think, and he could do that better after he'd had some sleep.
He knew he'd gained a lot of insight tonight, but then - it was more than that. Voldemort was a stain on the world, something any right thinking wizard would pause before supporting. Maybe not once, but he had become that – and Harry thought that even in spite of Tom's new (old) face. Snape showed that. Harry imagined there were other wizards and witches in Britain who had felt the same way, or who had thought what Voldemort offered was something other than what it had become. Unspeakable intelligence had indicated that some purebloods felt rather shafted by Voldemort's regime, which didn't reinforce ancient traditions and cultural practises so much as enforce as rigid dogma based on the delusional and grandiose ramblings of a disaffected young man steeped in too much and too powerful Dark magic.
Harry wasn't even sure Voldemort believed half the stuff he said he did, sometimes.
But the memories also meant something more to Harry, and the some of the insights had been more personal. The memories offered a glimpse of his mother a very long time ago, a time before anyone really feared the name Voldemort. They were children, playing, as children should be able to do.
He shook himself out of his head and took in his surroundings – he was alone in the Pensieve Room of Ty Caradoc. Safe.
Wearily, Harry stumbled into the guest suite – usually kept open for him, at least more recently – and slept.
12th August 2011 – Ysgol Ddewiniaeth Ynys Afal (Avalon School of Magic)
There was nothing Hermione wanted to do more right now than to sleep, but there were potions for that and she had things to do, so instead of sleeping Hermione had taken Minerva to see the school. It was a few miles away from Caer Tawel, but the walk was pleasant because the island was beautiful.
Or so Minerva had said, filling in the dead silence left behind because Hermione didn't quite feel like idle chatter after recent events and talking about the war would only make things worse.
But eventually the rocky path leading away from Caer Tawel and the Unspeakable village below it gave way to a gentle but hilly valley on a river. The group of buildings comprising Ysgol Ddewiniaeth Ynys Afal, the Avalon School of Magic, occupied a favoured position in the small valley.
Dormitories and common areas had been separated from the school proper, situated in their own, three floor tall, buildings. The school proper had been expanded greatly, and resembled something more like a grand Tudor estate than the simple village hall it had appeared before. She'd thought the architecture on Avalon strange at first, since it seemed entirely anachronistic – but then she'd learnt that although the outside world knew nothing of Avalon, its people weren't nearly so ignorant of the outside world.
She'd met one elderly wizard whose favourite book was Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and that had said it all, really.
Minerva seemed to be expressing a similar sentiment, so Hermione forced something out of her mouth. This was Morningstar's purpose in sending her here with the woman, Hermione assumed – to force her not to dwell on what had essentially been the murder of a poor woman. But how could she not?
"The islanders enjoy almost unfettered access to the outside world," she said, "but they've kept the secret of Avalon for nearly one thousand years. Most have them have never set foot off the island because everything they need, they have. But things from the outside world get brought here all the time anyway. Harry's friend has a gramophone, and he uses it to play modern Muggle music some of the Muggleborns brought with them."
"How progressive," commented Minerva. "The school is not in session yet?" she queried, looking down at the empty compound.
Hermione shook her head.
"No, they'll start up again in September. But some of the staff are here today, and they've agreed to meet with you."
"Do they speak English?" she asked.
Hermione considered it. They did, but they'd expect Minerva to teach in the medium of Welsh regardless; she'd found a spell which could teach someone else a language already known by the caster, but it wasn't without its particular problems. And she would have to learn to read the regular way.
"They do, but you'll need to learn Welsh anyway. I think I can teach it to you with a spell – I had to learn it myself, but then I found this old spell in the Unspeakable archives…"
Hermione took out her wand and rehearsed the spell – the wand movements were far more important to this spell than the incantation, which wasn't so much of an incantation as a verb phrase designed to shape the magic. It used a flourish usually seen in mental transfigurations – which she supposed this spell was – and a swish-and-flick more common to charms.
"Siaradwch cymraeg!" she said, and although there was no obvious external sign anything had happened, Hermione knew that she had performed the spell correctly.
"And now I can speak Welsh?" said Minerva dubiously.
"Sort of," said Hermione. "By the end of next month you'll be fluent, but right now you should be able to hold a conversation. Once they see you're trying they'll switch to English, but they're a little bit … protective about their language and culture. They can come off a bit rude sometimes," she said.
They hadn't had any problem with accepting the Muggles and Muggleborns into their communities. They had welcomed them with open arms. But they had remained firm on one central, crucial point: they would all have to learn Welsh and integrate wholly into their new communities. Part of the reason the ancient wizards had sealed off Avalon had been because of the large-scale eradications of their culture that had happened all across Britain in the preceding centuries, first by Saxon migrants and then by Vikings and Normans, after all.
It was still the reason why a not insignificant proportion of old Welsh purebloods refused to send their children to Hogwarts, and homeschooled them instead – or in some cases sent them to Avalon.
"Do they have everyone learn it using spells, then?" Minerva asked.
Hermione shook her head.
"No, that's an older spell. Most people don't use it – you may have noticed it was part mental transfiguration and part charm, but it also requires that the caster and the target of the spell share a mother tongue, and lots of the people here simply don't speak English." She paused. "And I don't think you could use the spell to teach anybody else Welsh either, although you could teach somebody English."
She wasn't actually sure how the spell worked, really.
With the language problem sorted out, at least partially, Hermione started to walk towards the school again. Once there they would be met by the school's executive committee – there wasn't a headmaster or mistress per se, because the islanders didn't really believe in one person being wholly in charge of everything. Instead the school was administered by a committee of its staff in conjunction with the school board, made up of parents and concerned individuals from the wider Avalon community.
This committee and the school board would ultimately decide whether Minerva would be appropriate for the school, but Hermione thought they would actually recognise this as an opportunity to learn from one of the pre-eminent transfigurers of the modern era. Especially since they wouldn't have to go to Hogwarts to get the teaching, and could still teach older, forgotten, magic alongside.
Once they had crossed the picturesque valley and made it to the school compound proper they were greeted by several of its full-time, local staff members.
"Croeso i Ysgol Ddewiniaeth Ynys Afal, Athrawes!" boomed Cynfawr ap Dyddgu, whom Hermione understood to be the most out-going of the teaching staff. He was certainly the largest, and the loudest, but privately Hermione felt the others might be rather more vocal if that giant of a man didn't talk so much.
Hermione stepped in to make introductions, because Minerva would need time to adjust before she could even attempt to speak.
"Minerva, this is Cynfawr who teaches potions and herbology, and also here today are Rhiannon Mostyn, who teaches ritual magic; and Seren Rhos, who teaches charms."
Minerva struggled for a few moments with forming a sentence – Hermione had experienced the effects of the spell herself, when she'd asked Thomas to teach her Pictish, and forming novel sentences had been the most difficult thing at first – but eventually found the words.
"I am Minerva McGonagall, formerly of Hogwarts School," she said. "I am happy to meet you."
"We're happy to meet you, too!" declared Cynfawr. "Your Welsh is good!"
Hermione changed the subject because she knew Cynfawr would think her spell 'cheating' when used on adults, albeit good-naturedly, and she didn't want to get sidetracked. She'd taken the appropriate potions so she wasn't falling asleep where she stood, but they were still no substitute for proper sleep, and the sooner she got Minerva acquainted with the school the sooner she could be taught how to Apparate onto the island and the sooner Hermione could go to sleep.
"I once read an article of yours in an old copy of Transfiguration Today," commented Rhiannon. "From the sixties, I think it was. Our curriculum would benefit from your insight."
Hermione began to slowly corral the group towards the inside. She had watched Rhiannon stand on one foot during a three-day rain storm to ensure a good harvest that year, and knew that the others would similarly be perfectly happy to stand around all day outside chatting about magic.
"Shall we go inside?" she said, and gestured towards the school building. "It is after all where the magic happens." It wasn't the sort of joke she would usually make, but it was the sort of joke Cynfawr appreciated.
Her efforts didn't go to nothing because the big man laughed and agreed, and they were soon approaching the doorway. She left the group then, Apparating away when the others had gone inside, because Hermione Granger needed to sleep before she could even begin to properly think about anything that had recently happened.
12th August 2011 - Avalon, Little England
The Muggles had called their little enclave on Avalon 'Little England', which hadn't gone down well with the non-English residents – but as they were in the minority, the name had stuck. Neville supposed it basically summed up the area anyway, as it was the only place on the island – apart from Caer Tawel – where English was in any kind of regular use. Not that the inhabitants weren't integrated into local life – they participated in communal activities, spoke with the teachers and obviously sent their children to the school.
Still, they found it easier to cope with all the magic around them by grouping together somewhere minimally magical (although that was quite hard on Avalon), and Neville wouldn't want to take that away from them.
A fairly large number of cottages and dwellings gathered on an area of flat land, and the hills were used to graze the communal herd of sheep raised by the Muggles. Everyone on Avalon was self-sufficient with regards to food, so in addition to the sheep the Muggles tended several vegetable gardens and a small crop field.
Wizards would help build the incoming families new homes, but Neville was glad he wouldn't be among them, not now that there was finally a war to fight again. He was only here to act as a point of familiarity to some of the newcomers – Luna was already in the village, as were several other Unspeakables present for the Muggleborn extractions.
"So are you finally going to tell me where we are?" said Miss Green angrily, coming at him from out of nowhere – stepping out of somebody's house, he realised, and following him as he walked away.
"Has nobody told you?" he wondered aloud, but obviously nobody had – she wouldn't have asked otherwise. "We're somewhere called Ynys Afal. It's a Welsh island that's been hidden since the Norman Conquest."
"Someone said it was Avalon, but then I thought, that's the place with all the fairies isn't it?" she said at rapid speed. "Then again, my kids are wizards and my life is gone, so maybe this is some changeling story."
They were stood in the street (as far as the road could be called a street), and Neville did have a job to do.
"Well, that's some of the stuff I was coming to talk with you about. If you'd come with me to the meeting hall?"
The local wizards had insisted on the Muggles having a local meeting place to discuss issues relating to their small community on the island. There was a much larger meeting hall in the biggest town on the island, but all the smaller communities had them, too. The locals were way into democracy and co-operation.
It was a handy custom, he thought, because there was always somewhere to take a big group of people that wasn't somebody's house.
Once inside, he directed Miss Green – he supposed he should learn her name – to sit with the others. He was going to give a talk to them about How Things Were.
"This is going to be a difficult adjustment," he said. "I'm sorry. We're going to do everything we can to make it easier for you. This was the only safe way."
"Somebody killed my wife," said one man. "That's not safe," he spat.
"Your wife was the victim of an extremely Dark curse," said Neville. "Some magic is extremely dangerous, and some magic is practised only by people who want to hurt and cause suffering. Our world is at war. Your children are gifted with the ability to do magic. That means that the current leader of our world, who is a warlord and a malevolent Dark wizard, sees them as a target. We intervened because we wish to save you and your families, and teach your children how to use magic somewhere safe."
"And this place is safe?" said another man whose wife quickly tried to quieten him.
"It's safer than anywhere else," said Neville, "if you follow some very important rules. The posts marking the boundary of the village area aren't decorations. Because most of you can't see or feel magic you don't instinctively know when you're outside of the protective wards. Most of the time that isn't a problem, but Avalon is plagued by Dark spirits periodically. You're all safe inside the wards."
They were safe, so long as they didn't step outside of the wards, because the Unspeakables and some of the locals were outside them fighting. He'd asked Huw, Luna's friend, why the locals lived here even with the constant Dark creature attacks.
He'd asked why Neville hadn't moved to 'the Colonies' to escape Voldemort, and then Neville understood. The problems facing Avalon were smaller than that posed by Voldemort, after all, and not insurmountable.
"This is safe, and there's still bloody evil monsters here?" continued the man who had asked the question. "Can't we just go back home and not teach our children magic? How will they go to school if we're here?"
"We have a school here," said Luna warmly. "We won't be teaching all of the subjects you'd be used to, but we will be teaching magic. Your children all have a wonderful opportunity here, but we're also afraid it is impossible to let you go back home. The Dark wizard we fight against will find you, kill you, and take your children from you. This place is hidden from him, and there is nobody alive who knows its secret who would ever tell it. But you absolutely cannot go back home, not once. He knows where you live."
Neville relaxed. Luna had given the hard news, and from her it would be softer. Not by much, but anything better than what he would have managed.
"You're absolutely safe and there's no reason to worry unless you step outside of the wards. Don't test them – some of the others who've been here longer than you will tell you what will happen if you do, if you don't believe a word we've said. You're stuck here until we've won this war, just like we are. Nowhere else in Britain is safe."
"What if we go away?" asked one woman. "Leave the UK, I mean – I have family in Paris, we could just go there…"
"You could do that, yes," agreed Neville, "but the Dark Lord's going to go there, too. He isn't going to stop at Britain. He's going after the Irish now, and when he's done – and he'll be done faster than ever this time – he'll move against the French, then Flanders, then Luxembourg… He's literally worse than Hitler," said Neville, using an historical figure they would recognise. 'Grindelwald' wouldn't shock them at all. "He believes your children are impure, but that they could provide good breeding stock for his armies. He will take your children, prevent them from learning magic, and use them to raise an army. We think he intends to grow a vast army of wizards to take over as much of the world as he can, and unless we do something fast, he's going to do it."
"How can we help?" said Miss Green. "Can we even help?"
"You can help us by allowing your children to learn magic. When this war is done they'll be the future of our world. They're all too young to fight. We don't need them to do that. We just need them to live their lives, and we want to keep you safe, too – that's why we can't keep them and send you back. It's radical, but that's the point we're at I'm afraid."
He paused.
"Any questions?"
Luna smiled. There would be a cacophony of questions, all rooted in fear and concern and love. It would be chaos, but eventually the more vocal parents would get their voices heard, and a frank, open discussion would be had. It would be helpful for everyone involved, because it would allow the Muggles to air their concerns, and would allow the Unspeakables to take the best care possible of their guests.
She knew that Neville hated this particular part, because although he was just comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people, he didn't think he was particularly good at dealing with people.
Luna knew that Neville was wrong about that, though. She thought he was, in fact, very good at dealing with people – some people listened, and then still didn't soothe concerns. Neville listened to a problem and thought about why it was a problem, and considered how to answer. Most people would just dismiss the issue with its actual answer, which was often not the true concern.
And when he floundered, well – she was there to help, wasn't she? She was good at helping.
"What's your world like?" said Mrs Edwards. "I understand we're not getting a proper representation of it, on a hidden island in the middle of a horrible war, but what world will our children grow into?"
"We have some huge, gaping structural problems with our society and culture," remarked Songflower, an Unspeakable who had been at Hogwarts just before Luna had arrived. "Your children will face some prejudice in the world we seek to build, but we hope that such prejudice will no long be exercised by institutions and power structures."
"You said this man who rules you is worse than Hitler," said one man suddenly. "It seems like he's been in power for a while – the other families said they've been here ten years… how did it get this bad? Does nobody else in your world care?"
"The Dark Lord is a very powerful wizard," said Neville. "He's made himself immortal, and even if he hadn't, there's a prophecy. Only one person in the world can kill him, and then only after lots of other things have happened. He ordered the murder of a man who fought against Hitler, and Hitler's Dark wizard ally, a man we know as Grindelwald. That man was the most powerful wizard of an era, and he was murdered by Dark Lady Valmira, who is a powerful Dark witch in her own right. They conquered our world with an army larger than we could have ever hoped to fight, and we lost."
"Our splinter group has been here for the last ten years devising a strategy to fight the Dark Lord and Lady," continued Luna, "and we've now started to take the fight to them. We believe we can fulfil the terms of prophecy and bring light to the world again, and when we do…" She smiled. "When we do it will be beautiful again. There are unicorns, and fairies, and so many beautiful, wonderful things. Magic is a gift, and a blessing, but wizards and witches are still people, and people are people."
"It seems a bit outrageous," complained one man, whose wife again tried to stop him. "Not to mention, dangerous. Our children will be facing a lifetime of prejudice, and we've had enough of that already, thank you. We're Jewish, and now my children have a gift, and there's some mad man out there – exactly like Hitler, if that wasn't some fucking joke – who wants to hurt them? For what, exactly? Nobody has explained that yet, and I'm looking for an answer."
Silence.
Luna was missing some nuance, something important about the mood of the room that the Muggles felt but she couldn't.
"I'm what's called a pureblood," said Neville. "One of the Sacred Twenty-Eight actually, the twenty eight families who have been entirely magical for generations and generations, as far back as we can remember. Songflower is a member of the Exalted One Hundred and Nine, the families who are pureblood but have some degree of mixed ancestry. To some people in our world this kind of thing is extremely important."
"There are rules," supplied Songflower. "A child with four magical grand-parents can be regarded as pureblood, but of a much lesser social standing than someone like myself, or like Longbottom, or Lovegood. The further back your magical ancestry the more acceptable you become, to those who follow this particular ideology. Once, there was a belief that 'mudbloods', which is what they refer to your children as, would dilute and destroy magical power. Even they now understand this is not true, but instead they have twisted the ideology such that their magic is unstable, weaker, but that with the proper breeding 'new' purebloods can one day be born. In three generations there will be an array of new purebloods, under the current regime's ideology, if we do not act. The system in place is warping the minds of the young and vulnerable, and our society will never recover if we allow them to continue on this path."
"And this issue of not being magical for generations is very important? I still don't understand why," queried another of the concerned parents. Luna hated not knowing names.
"That's the thing," said Neville. "It isn't important, not to anyone sensible. But this wizard, he's… he was… he was charismatic, and he seized an opportunity a long, long time ago when our world wasn't in the best of states. He was defeated once, but he came back, and then he was worse than ever. For some people it isn't really about the blood exactly, it's more about culture…"
"And that one is harder, because they do have a point," said Luna softly. "Their issue is that your children know nothing of our culture and ways, and our history – but that is because nobody ever thinks to teach them the important things. We're going to teach your children all the things they'll need to navigate our world, I can promise you that. We're building a new world, and we want you to be part of it. This is your chance to give a voice to the parents of Muggleborn children, because our world usually ignores you."
"My wife was murdered over this shit?" said the bereaved man suddenly, his anger readily apparent.
"I'm thirty-one years old," replied Neville, "and I've never met my parents. I've met what they became after the Dark Lord's forces tortured them into insanity during his first rise. My friend Harry has never met his parents at all, because the Dark Lord killed both of them himself. My friend Ron has never met his uncles because they were killed in battle against Voldemort's Death Eaters. I could go on and on and on – I guarantee you that every one of the fifty thousand wizards in Britain and Ireland has lost someone they loved to Voldemort, this time or last."
"This is war," said Luna. "This is a brutal and vicious ideological conflict yes, but it's also about so much more than that – this is about the survival of our whole society. We can't keep going like this."
"And you want us to stay here in spite of all this?" asked Mrs Edwards. "Why?"
"Because we can keep you safe here, and give your children a chance at something like normality," said Neville. "When I was younger, I went to a different school. Hogwarts. Most wizards in Britain go there as children, and your children probably would have too. It was a safe place, excepting some incidents, but those were some of the best years of my life. We want that for your children, and they'll be safe and happy here. We think you could be, too – and when the war is over you can go back to your lives."
"With all due respect," said one woman, "we can't. We have jobs, obligations, responsibilities. We can't just take off for an unspecified amount of time and then come back like nothing has happened."
"We will take care of all that," said Songflower. "We can forge anything necessary – documents showing entitlements to paid leave, sabbaticals, that sort of thing. You can send letters from here, and we can explain away any absences. We are fairly adept at dealing with certain aspects of your world," she said.
"What about the computers? Can you magic the computers? Not everything is even on paper these days," continued the woman. "Can you do anything about that?" she demanded.
"Ah, I'm not sure what a computer is," said Songflower awkwardly.
"Doesn't even know what a computer is," muttered one woman at the back of the room, although Luna could hear her because she'd cast a charm that would carry voices through the air and into her ears. "And she thinks she could make everything okay…"
"I'm sure everything will be perfectly fine," said Luna. "We have methods and contacts. We have made contact with your Prime Minister actually," she said, because that was a true thing and would probably do much to calm them down. "She is aware of your world now, even though our current government has been lax in its duties in that regard. She understands there are some things that need to be smoothed over with the Muggle authorities, and where we can't do something it is likely that she can. Is that acceptable?"
That seemed to be, and although there were many more questions, they seemed to be more about practical, immediate concerns than anything larger relating to the war effort or the myriad problems facing modern magical culture.
Sometimes simplicity was nice.