15. Epilogue
Dear Miss Dursley,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Filius Flitwick
Deputy Headmaster
Poppy folded the letter and tucked it back in its envelope for the fifth time in the past hour. It was unnecessary, she knew, but she had to keep checking, keep reading the letter until it sank in. She was going to Hogwarts. Some part of her still believed that she somehow wasn't magical enough to be accepted.
When she finally set the letter back on her desk, Albert scampered over to look it over. He nibbled at one of the corners before Poppy pulled him away.
"We're going to Hogwarts, Albert," she said, stroking the pygmy puff's purple hair.*
Her family already knew - both her immediate family, and cousins. Emma knew as well, for now, while the four Dursley women decided to keep her secret safe from the law. That was something that would have to change, Poppy decided. She'd always intended to do some good in the world. Maybe Hogwarts could lead her to that - a world where people with magic didn't have to live in hiding.
Poppy glanced at the most recent copy of the Quibbler that still lay open on her desk, bookmarked by a stray pencil. She'd only started getting them recently. Ginny had accepted her birthday request by helping her subscribe to the magazine for a year, with the requirement that she double check most things with Ginny.
"It's not like what it used to be when I was a kid. The articles were completely false back then, nonsense found by someone who'd had too much firewhiskey, probably. But the Quibbler isn't the news. It's full of opinions, not all of them good."
She'd quickly realized this to be true. One alright article debated the ethics behind teaching the dark arts and defense against the dark arts, taking viewpoints from two different students from a foreign school. However, there was also a persuasive article that aimed to convince the reader that Bellatrix Lestrange (a long since deceased death eater, according to Ginny) was alive and well, living in old giant caves. The article included a detailed description on where to leave "as much money as you can afford" to support the hunt for death eaters that had evaded justice.
While interesting and sometimes downright hilarious, these articles weren't what Poppy waited eagerly for. Every week she skimmed the headlines for a writer. Anything written by Merlyn Swift immediately went towards Poppy's research. Along with Dominique Weasley, Merlyn Swift had been a writer of the article in which Daisy had featured the previous year. Since then, she'd written multiple opinion pieces about wizard and muggle relations.
She didn't mention the articles to Ginny, not after the first one that Ginny had called out for "dangerous thinking," and "the type of idea that could plunge the wizarding world back into war."
It was something she'd have to bring up once she was away, somewhere the adults in her family couldn't monitor her words.
She'd find out more at Hogwarts.
*For some reason, Albert was originally described as green when pygmy puffs only come in pink and purple.
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