Chapter 12 Muggleborns matter / Muggleborn matters

Harry's last month in the USA had been frantic. Worse than the time after his name came out of the Goblet of Fire and in the space of a week they had decided to uproot themselves and moved to a different country, Harry had started at a different school and said goodbye to everything familiar. This time was very different, he was intimately familiar with all the details of the auror operation to take down the British smuggling ring, and the plan to set up a school immediately following that, but there were so many details. The main action in the auror operation would be in the USA, but there would be accompanying raids in 8 additional countries across the globe. Their goal was to take out the middle management, because the top management all lived in Britain where they couldn't be touched. They would be trying four different angles. The preparation Harry had done had identified a particularly skilled buyer, who as a consequence was in high demand and visited all the countries they would run raids in, arrest her and interrogate her with veritaserum. They would arrest the underlings who did the more visible grunt work and try to work their way up the organisation to get at the organisers. And they would contain all the suspects for being the middle management that they had been able to identify in each country by selectively disabling floo connections, casting anti-apparation wards, and generally trying to contain the people they most wanted to catch before the start of the operation, so that, if their investigation confirmed their suspected involvement, they would have pre-empted their flight. If they did manage to arrest any country leaders, they would use them to work their way down the organisation to arrest anyone they had missed on their way up.

To reduce the risk of the criminals getting any warning of the operation, the whole operation would take place in a 12 hour window, they would catch their first suspects outside any wards, use veritaserum to get counter-signs out of the arrestees, have a large stock of polyjuice potion to impersonate said arrestees, and mobilise a large fraction of the law enforcement in each country to try and stay one step ahead of the criminals. Harry had convinced them to use magical contracts to protect against snitching from within law enforcement. He had shamelessly used the corruption in Britain to justify this measure, despite the fact that on other occasions he had been keen to distance himself from being associated with Britain, and pointed out that the contract had been carefully formulated to be for a limited time, so there would be no risk of any unwanted magical side-effects later.

While preparation was reaching fever pitch, he was finalising his official emigration to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, buying supplies for the school, and running through scenarios of what might go wrong, and, in each case, who would be able to help doing what. One of the latter was a discussion with MACUSA about how violently he would be allowed to react to any future retaliatory attacks on Remus and Sirius. The problem was that if, despite their best efforts, the two were found outside their home wards, it would probably be over before he could travel back from Britain, while if the wards around their house were attacked, the justifiable response to an attack on the wards that was in progress was much less than once the wards were down. There was an inherent contradiction in that, because once the wards were down, there was essentially no time left to respond, and the attackers would also no longer be dividing their attention between attacking the wards and being alert for counter-attacks. Therefore, Harry concluded that if it came to that, the best bet would be to act like he had when Hermione had been attacked in Japan: attack with more violence than was legally acceptable and then hide the evidence, because the attackers would not be in a position to make an official complaint.

The operation had gone about as well as he'd hoped. In the USA, where their efforts had been concentrated, they had possibly rolled up the whole British smuggling ring, or at least a significant part of it. With criminal organisations that tried very hard to protect against wholesale arrest it was difficult to be sure. In two further countries, Portugal and Guinea, they had had similar successes. In the other six countries they had failed to arrest the country leader, but had done significant damage to the organisation. Unfortunately, the lack of complete success in those six countries had been due to the criminals managing to muster armed resistance and there had been quite a few aurors seriously wounded and two killed. In the USA they had managed to keep different cells from warning each other, so they had managed to overwhelm each, and as a consequence the aurors had only sustained minor spell damage.

Harry had made arrangements to send a report of the operation to June, who would then take it through the mastery review board. The operation had grown well beyond the minimum required for a mastery in magical defences, and he had done well on his exams, so June had told him that his presence would not be required to get the board to grant him his mastery degree. He had agreed to stay on as a reserve auror with MACUSA, indicating he would be particularly interested to help with cases involving British citizens, whether that involved expats or natives coming to the USA. He was hoping to continue running interference with Ministry-ruled magical Britain during the holidays.

When Harry left for Britain, he portkeyed to Krakow, took the floo to the West of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and from there took an illegal broomflight to Berlin to meet Hermione and hide in her shrunk trunk. The first thing that Harry did on arrival in Britain was to hire the ground penetrating radar instrument that he'd hired before again. He had engraved the magic hiding ward on four stones. Within the constraint of finding suitable stones, he had chosen stones that were arranged in an inverted pyramid. A very shallow angled pyramid, so, if they ever needed to expand the volume covered by the ward, they might have to go down rather than out, meaning he'd be using the radar from within the current wards. With the way wards strengthened over time, in a few years the wards would short out the instrument before it could find suitable stones below the peak of the pyramid. Therefore, even though they might never need to, the time to prepare for the eventuality was now.

They had started the school with five human members of staff: Hermione, Neville, Andromeda and Ted Tonks and Harry. The fact that Neville had joined had been clear from their earliest discussions. Ted and Andromeda had been the ones to complete their initial staff as the result of a number of considerations. They didn't want to charge the children fees, so they couldn't pay proper salaries, only food, board and an allowance for necessities. Harry had been adamant that a majority of adults had to be muggle-raised from the start. And they needed people who were ready to take on a number of roles, both educational and organisational, which meant that for the subjects for which they had no prior qualification, they were committed to stay just ahead of the pupils to learn as they taught, aided by the collection of memories of lessons that could be projected in the pensieves.

Harry was very glad that their small team were all very talented, with Neville taking care of cultivation of food and plant-based potion ingredients, Ted taking care of health care, Andromeda taking care of housing, and the elves taking care of the kitchen and food purchasing while the cultivation was being set up, because just in the remaining areas of safety, curriculum, finance and co-ordination there were so many details to take care of that Harry and Hermione had their hands full to be ready for their first batch of pupils.

They sent out letters to all 32 muggleborns who would be between 11 and 16 on 1 September, and who didn't go to a magic school abroad, reminding them that the school would start with an orientation weekend on 31 August, and that they would come and ask them for a decision whether to attend the week before. They offered both a boarding option of full-time mixed muggle and magical classes and weekend classes of magic only. They gave each pupil a time to meet them, and that after taking care of security measures they would like to come in and talk to their parents.

Five days after leaving the USA, Sirius called on his mirror with the message he'd been dreading, "our wards are under attack." It was 3 a.m. in Massachusetts, meaning it was evening in Britain.

'So predictable,' Harry growled internally. However, aloud he only asked, "plan A?"

"If you're up for it," Sirius replied, confirming that he hadn't called the aurors. When they had gone over scenarios, they had concluded that if they called in the aurors, the aurors would take their time to assemble a team, loudly announce their arrival, ask them to come peacefully to the MACUSA, and be unable to keep the attackers from portkeying away before they had established wards against escape. Then the attackers would try again another way, and eventually succeed in getting to Sirius and/or Remus. So, even though Harry was an auror, they had concluded that if the British smugglers took the law into their own hands, that their best strategy would be to respond in kind.

They had known that time would be of the essence, so they had put everything in place in advance. Harry apparated directly into the shrunk trunk, called Opal to him and told Dobby to take them to the cave in the USA. Because the cave had been their test-case for the same magic hiding ward, they thought the only thing the monitoring wards on the UK and USA borders would register would be the passage of a house-elf with unknown start and end-points. From the cave Dobby apparated to near Sirius' and Remus' house, just outside the line of sight of the people attacking the wards. Dobby used his wand to unshrink the trunk and Harry and Opal left the trunk without magic, trying to keep MACUSA from detecting the two too soon. Dobby had always been a rebel, so Harry had been unsurprised that he volunteered to take part in the plan, but he had not expected Opal to volunteer as well, while Marny, Okri and Cicely had begged off. They hadn't been able to find a wand that suited Opal yet, but Opal had agreed to train with a rifle that had been magically silenced. Winky's response had also been a surprise. She had refused to try any wands, but had also agreed to take up a rifle to protect Sirius and Remus, and she had had more time than Opal to practice with it. Winky joined them from Sirius' house, and Harry disillusioned all four of them. Winky and Opal opened fire on the people attacking the wards, shooting at thigh height, because they had agreed that they would start out trying to incapacitate them without killing them. The rifles were an experiment. As hoped, the attackers were taken by surprise, having expected spell-fire, and the first shots from the rifles hit home. The rest of them put up shields, which stopped the next round of bullets. This was the signal for Harry and Dobby to fire spells at them, also aiming for their legs. Meanwhile, Opal and Winky switched to using catapults to lob Weasley Wheezes at them, in quick succession trying to distract them with decoy detonators, Peruvian darkness powder, the untransfigured variant of Hermione's exploding potion, and even Molotov cocktails. Although there were 10 attackers, 2 had been taken down by the rifles, while under the onslaught that Harry and the three house-elves created, gaps appeared in their shields and three more were soon hit. The remaining 5 were apparently not the sharpest tacks in the box, because they panicked and took too long to try and grab their wounded, and while trying to organise themselves to portkey out they failed to keep their shields up, and Dobby and Harry managed to wound and then stun all of them.

Harry cast all the detection spells he knew to make sure that the attackers hadn't left any disillusioned cronies or other unpleasant surprises, while the elves followed him carrying the trunk. Harry petrified and bound the attackers and together they loaded them into the trunk, cleaned up the street, and then Opal and Harry followed their prisoners into the trunk. Dobby reshrunk the trunk, Winky went back into the house, and Dobby took them back the way they had come. The whole operation had taken less than five minutes.

As agreed for plan A, the moment that Dobby left, Sirius floo called MACUSA to report that their wards were under attack. When the aurors showed up, they reported that they had told the attackers that they were trespassing, followed by spells to try and discourage them, after which they had left, presumably because they had only come to test the waters and had found the wards to be stronger than they had come prepared for. They got some disbelieving looks from the aurors, but with no-one to gainsay their version of the events, the aurors left again.

"Initially, shooting them in their legs was a way to not turn the house-elves into killers," Harry confessed when they reviewed the mission with the school staff and Sirius, Remus and Winky, "but now I'm glad we did, because it turned out they really were different from Death Eaters; they were neither as quick to resort to unforgiveables, nor as competent. The question now becomes, though, what we are going to do with 10 prisoners?"

Ted had healed the prisoners without waking them up. They hadn't counted on prisoners, so they didn't have any facilities for them.

"How about we start with questioning them under veritaserum?" Hermione suggested.

"You have veritaserum?" Ted asked in surprise, knowing that it took a long time to make.

"Harry and I have been trying to be prepared for every contingency we could think of for the last five years. Making several potions that take a long time to make and store well is the least of it."

Everybody agreed that was a good place to start, and after they had some answers, they would be in a better position to think of the next step. The group had consisted of the leader, who had a relatively senior position in the smuggling ring, and his son, who were the only two Brits. There were six americans, who had occasionally worked for the smugglers and who were hired muscle. And the last two were foreigners who had had junior positions in the permanent staff of their respective countries' middle management, and who had both exaggerated their competence in an attempt to be given more senior positions now that most of the previous staff had been arrested. The British leadership of the smuggling ring had approved the mission, but not instigated it, since they knew Sirius could afford the best wards money could buy, and also suspecting that the failure of the Death Eater mission to capture Hermione 3 years before had not been thanks to the Japanese aurors.

"If the prisoners disappear without a trace," Harry concluded, "that would improve the chances that the rest of them won't try again. Can we get them to magically swear fealty to us for a number of years, and keep them from betraying us during that time?"

"It's been tried in the past," Andromeda reported, "not always successfully."

That was as good as saying they couldn't risk it. There was a long pause as everybody considered the inadvisability of releasing them, and the impracticalities of keeping them prisoners. Hermione tentatively offered, "we could try to feed them draught of living death, and inspect them for deleterious effects once a day."

Everybody turned to Ted, who, as their resident healer, would know best whether that was likely to be possible, and if so, would also end up being the main person doing the monitoring. "When the potion was first invented, a study was done that showed magically powerful people woke up after several months, while the magically weak tended to slip into a coma from which they couldn't be woken with the wiggenweld potion."

"I read that as well, and I wondered whether the latter could be mitigated with a glucose drip," Hermione suggested.

"You want to turn them into involuntary test subjects?" Ted sounded vaguely disapproving.

Harry wondered whether he was trying not to be too openly horrified at Hermione's suggestion, or whether he agreed that it might be the least objectionable of any number of dissatisfactory options. Harry didn't know him well enough to tell the difference. When Hermione neither defended nor retracted her suggestion and no-one else volunteered an opinion, Harry said, "I think it would be preferable to turning them over to MACUSA, which would get both myself and Winky, Opal and especially Dobby into trouble."

Ted nodded to acknowledge that. When Ted didn't voice any of the other dissatisfactory options, it was clear they were going to go ahead, and everybody nodded when Harry said so.

Hermione had one last point to make, "I think we should obliviate them to before Harry's raid, and when they are awake, I think we should be in disguise, so that if we ever decide to free them, we won't be implicated."

They agreed on that as well.

During dinner a week after Hermione and Harry had arrived, Neville raised a question, "I've been thinking about what you said about making sure muggle-raised adults will be in the majority to try and keep the prejudices that plague the magical society we left behind from re-asserting their stranglehold on public opinion. Does that mean you will also continue with the practice of celebrating Christian holidays rather than Pagan ones?"

"Err, what?" Harry noted that Hermione and Ted seemed to understand what Neville was talking about.

"You didn't know that many families still celebrate the ancient rituals? Especially the four marking the solstices and equinoxes, but often also the four marking the changing seasons?"

"No, I didn't know. How many families are we talking about?"

"If you include both those who emigrated and the ones that are still under Ministry rule, maybe half? All of the ancient 28 families celebrate the rituals. And, of course, the muggle-raised families celebrate the Christian holidays. The others can be a bit random. For instance, I know that Ron's parents celebrated the holidays, despite being purebloods, while Seamus's parents celebrated the rituals, despite Seamus' father being a muggle."

"You grew up with the rituals, then?"

"Yes. My grandmother complained about Hogwarts never even mentioning this issue, despite a majority of the Board of Governors being unhappy about the suppression of the rituals. It was one of the reasons that the resistance against You-Know-Who was so fractured, because it was one of several contentious topics on which Dumbledore was intractable."

"What about my parents?"

"I don't know. Your grandparents would have celebrated the rituals, but with your mother being a muggleborn, I'm not sure what your parents would have done."

After a pause to let that sink in, and what it told him about Remus' and Sirius' own disenchantments with society that they had never told Harry about this topic, he replied to the original question. "No. Personally, I don't want to enforce the holidays over the rituals. Can I delegate this to you, please? To find someone who wants to keep the holidays, and figure out between you to maintain the two at equal importance?"

"Hermione?"

"I've only ever been to church with my grandparents, so I'm hardly the person to organise Christian celebrations."

"Ted?"

"Well, my parents were active churchgoers, so I'm guessing out of the five of us I'm best placed to organise something for those pupils who would like to observe the eucharist. If they're C of E, that is. That means Church of England," he clarified, "but I've lapsed myself, so if you want an active advocate, you'd need someone else."

Hermione suggested, "I think Colin Creevey comes from an actively Christian family, and attended a bible study group at Hogwarts, so maybe Ted could do what he can for the next few years, and we could ask him when he arrives?"

They agreed to that, and to put the potential need for more active religious observance on their list of monthly reviews of pupil welfare.

They had been back for more than a week, and had been too busy to think of anything but the next problem to get ready for the school year, but Hermione thought it was time to address the question they had been avoiding. "Harry, do you love me?"

"Yes."

"And do you think I love you?"

"I do."

"Are you sure?"

"Look, I know I'm damaged goods. If you think that being with me is too much hassle, I won't be upset."

"But it's not about what I think, but about what you feel."

Harry had to think about that. Eventually he tentatively offered, "I think you'll have to decide which is more important. I rationally know that I can count on you, and I will always act on that knowledge. But what I feel is that everybody will leave me. And yes, that colours my unconscious reactions. While I was in the USA, I had a girlfriend who tried to convince me to get help, but I decided that I'd rather accept what I am than hire a psychologist to turn me into something that is more acceptable to the average person. I thought it was an attitude that is too prevalent in the USA, to present a public face that is acceptable to the average person, because their society is still dealing with the spread of cultures that all moved there and now have to try and live together. I disliked that blandness, even though it also led to more acceptance of differences. So, I'm not saying I'm unwilling to change, but that I fear that a conscious attack on my sharp edges threatens to lose something that I feel might be important to keep."

"That still leaves me worried that if we try and can't make it work, I will only succeed in confirming your feeling that everybody will leave you in the end."

"But it would be worse if you're not even willing to try."

Hermione nodded that that made sense, "do you want to get back together with me?"

Harry decided that a kiss would be less ambiguous than a verbal answer.

When they came up for air, Hermione asked, "why didn't your girlfriend join us? Did you break up over your disagreement?"

"No, we were still together, but I never talked about our plans with her. She was a quidditch player, and she tried to convince me to leave the aurors and try out for a professional quidditch career."

"Were you tempted?"

"Yes, I would have liked to stay for a few years, and live a carefree life. But only for a few years. It's tempting to ignore the problems, but there's no future in it. It may be worse here now, but across the globe, in a few decades, the whole muggle world is facing repeated wars over resources, and by that time climate change is really going to bite, and I'm not convinced that the magical populations will be able to hide while the muggles are fighting each other over oil and fresh water and lithium or whatever else is going to run out. To me, our effort to build a new society is not just about becoming free of the problems of Riddle and pureblood bigotry anymore, I also want a society that spends more time thinking about what world we leave for the future. They say that the Amerindians filtered every decision through the question 'what will be the consequences of this decision over the next 7 generations?' I don't know whether that's true, but I would like to try that. What about you?"

"I think it's a good attitude. If we don't stick to it too closely. I would like us to have more respectful relationships with other magical beings, that we worry about magical race prejudice as well as blood prejudice."

"I agree. So far, the Potter elves seem happy enough being free, though I do worry that they have been so used to taking whatever we humans have chosen to dish out to them, that if they were not happy they might be hiding it."

"The Potter elves, quite possibly, but I think Dobby has really taken to freedom, and if there's anything we could do to make the Potter elves happy, that he would tell us."

"Hmm, yes." Making yet another radical change in topic, Harry remarked. "I realised two days ago that I had been in Britain for a week and that something was off. I took me a while to realise that there was this absence that always marked my visits to Britain before. My dreams of Riddle while I was in the USA never had the immediacy that they had in Britain, so I didn't pay a lot of attention when they stopped after you healed me in the USA. But to not have flashes of anger without cause while I was in Britain has been really weird. Like someone had slipped me a calming draught."

"That's great! It also reminds me, I thought of a test we could do with the Fidelius charm. As a way to hunt for the … the last inanimate part of Riddle." Hermione had obviously concluded that horcrux was another word that Voldemort might conceivably put under a taboo. "It would mostly require the house-elves to work on it, but they're so busy already that I put it on their list of tasks with a low priority. Maybe something to think about next summer. … Anyway, getting back to the first topic, we're officially back together?"

"Yes."

"Will you move in with me, then?"

"Oh, … yes, I'd like that."

In the week before the start of the school they went in pairs to speak to each prospective pupil. Harry went with Andromeda, while Hermione went with Ted. They met with the pupils first, and explained that they could either agree to attend the school and pass at least one exam of the wanded subjects in five years' time, or have their magic bound and be obliviated of the existence of magic. If they decided to attend, they would have to make an unbreakable vow not to speak of magic or the school, or to reveal the existence of magic to anyone outside their household and the school. They stressed that accidentally breaking an unbreakable vow could kill them, but that the school staff faced a choice between risking one careless pupil's life, or risking everybody's lives. That they were engaged in a war of subterfuge and attrition, and they had to make hard choices for the war not to erupt into a full-on battle, which they would be guaranteed to lose and get all of them exterminated.

With several of the older pupils they ended up in a protracted discussion about the morality of forcing the pupils into a devil's bargain, during which they often ended up explaining about the international statute of secrecy, and that, although the pureblood takeover had happened recently and the school was new, that the choice between passing an OWL in a wanded subject or being obliviated had been in place for centuries. In the end all the pupils chose to become pupils, after which they set up a floo connection, usually by transfiguring an existing cupboard in the pupils' bedrooms and fireproofing it, and told or showed them the Fidelius secret of how to get to the school, and collected their blood so that they could be allowed past the ward.

The conversations with the parents were even more difficult. Several objected that they should have had the final say in whether the pupils would attend the school, but the four magicals were adamant that, since it affected the pupils' future lives much more than the parents', that they should have the final say, and that they were making every effort to keep the options of the pupils open, so that, if they decided by the time they became adults that living in magical society was not for them, they had enough non-magical schooling that going back was an option. That they were trying to offer their children a choice, because if they had left it to the Ministry of Magic, every one of them would have had their magic bound and been obliviated without exception.

They had discussed the situation of the one muggleborn who had been discovered by the Ministry. In the end, they had reluctantly agreed that the risk of being discovered was too great if they tried to get the family to move, or tried to take down or otherwise get around whatever wards the Ministry had set up around their house. Therefore, they had left him to continue life as a muggle.

Hermione had studied the book of admittance and the quill of acceptance that wrote down the names of magicals when they did their first significant accidental magic. She had seen that the quill had a lower threshold of what constituted significant magic, and used arithmancy to derive how the quill had been enchanted. She then enchanted a new quill that, if the book wouldn't open to be written in, would write down the name and address of every new person on a separate parchment. The new system also came with two alarms. If a new muggleborn was detected in this way, one of the school staff would go to put unplottable wards around their home and school. In addition, there was also an alarm for identified muggleborns doing accidental magic outside an unplottable ward. If either alarm got tripped, they would try to get there before the Ministry obliviators, get the muggleborns to safety and cast a confundus spell on the obliviators. Depending on the situation, they would make them think that the magic had been done by a half-blood, or they had been unable to find the magical child, or they had bound the muggleborn's magic and warded their home. The latter was too complicated for a confundus, and they had agreed that it was justified to use imperio in those cases.

Despite these additional precautions, they had become even more circumspect when first approaching newly discovered muggleborns. The Ministry was bound to eventually detect another one at the same time as the Book of Admissions. Given their lack of results with the wards around the home of the pupil they had found, they might decide to use less easily detectable monitoring, possibly even round-the-clock surveillance by people. Harry had had his glasses enchanted to be able to detect disillusioned people, always went in disguise, and avoided speaking about magic while standing outside, but if the Ministry was prepared to expend enough effort, avoiding detection started to move into the grey area between skill and luck. Their best bet was continuing to apply pressure on Ministry-ruled magical Britain in other ways, so that they couldn't afford to expend too much effort on finding the missing muggleborns.

They discussed this, and concluded that their best bet was to target Riddle's allies, hoping to discourage others from joining him. They decided to kill Greyback, see if the rest of the werewolves turned away from Riddle, and if not kill the new alpha until they did. Hermione suggested that if they bought some silver wire, balled it up into a loosely packed bullet form and performed a switching spell with a bullet, they would get a bullet that was riddled with silver filaments. Then, if they attacked on the full moon, the werewolves wouldn't have any magic to defend themselves, and they would only have to contend with the speed of the wolves. By going on brooms and applying disillusionment and scent clearing spells, they could avoid getting bitten. Harry was the only one of them who was confident enough on a broom to be able to shoot a rifle while flying. He took Dobby, who would be his lookout, and who would grab Harry and apparate them away if they were spotted. Thanks to their magical maps of Britain it was no problem to locate Greyback, and soon Riddle was short one of his more vicious lieutenants.

During their tour of Britain, they had warned the pupils that magic and electronics didn't go together, so for the pupils to leave all their electronics at home. This had prompted one of the prospective pupils to remark to Harry that his schooltheir home had suffered quite a lot of electronic apparatus to perform erratically or break down. It was one of the pupils who had been part of the first group to be told about magic by Hermione, after Hogwarts had stopped offering places to muggleborns 5at one of the schools that Harry had made unplottable first, 4 years before. They would have to take down the wards. For the pupils who would come full-time to their new school they could simply at least remove the wards from their schools, but for the pupils' homes, and the schools that who would continue having magical children attend at their muggle schools, they would have to replace them while the old ones were still in place. He added changing the wards to the very long list of details to be taken care of. He would have to ask Lilian how much worse the electronics problem was likely to get if they set up new wards over an area that overlapped with the old wards, wait long enough for the new wards to become active and then remove the old wards. If the elves were not too busy, maybe they could visit the schools at night. When they discussed it later, Hermione pointed out that the schools locations were already unplottable, so they would be able to set up the new wards just inside the old wards, activate them using their wands, and take down the old wards immediately afterward. It was still a task they would have to plan around their already busy schedule, and repeat every few years, but Harry was nevertheless relieved it wasn't quite as complicated as he had thought it would be.

On 30 August, Hermione took those pupils, who hadn't been able to use one of the wands Harry had collected, and brought them to the wand shop in Germany to buy wands.

All of the 15- and 16-year-olds who still lived in Britain had opted to finish their A-levels in their previous schools and to come for one or two weekend days to learn magic. All of the 11- and most of the 12-year-olds had opted for the boarding option. Among the 12 years and older group, 16 had chosen to go to either the mixed muggle and magical school in The Netherlands or Beauxbatons, or had joined their older siblings, most of whom had gone to Ilvermorny. The human staff would all be teaching only a few classes of several subjects until dedicated staff could be brought in over the coming years. Ted was the healer and taught potions, English and science, Andromeda taught transfiguration, maths, French and music, Neville taught herbology, Portuguese and was their farmer, Hermione taught runes, English literature, geography and Japanese, and Harry taught defence, charms, history and PE. The elves cooked and were their chief excavators of additional rooms and growing spaces for the projected expansion of the school. Some of the classes that they hadn't been able to find a teacher for, like design & technology, art & design, history of magic, and care of magical creatures and some of the GCSE material for older pupils, were taught with pensieve memories. They staggered their days off on weekdays, and all worked weekends when all the older children, who had opted to stay at home and finish their muggle schooling, were visiting.

The pupils had to be similarly versatile, as they were expected to help in the food growing, to clean their rooms and do their laundry as soon as they had been taught the relevant charms, and the older children shared responsibility with the adults for teaching and entertaining the younger children.

They also had five children under 11, who were orphans, or had a bad home situation, or were unhappy in their primary schools. The two orphans had been adopted by Ted and Andromeda, and the youngest, at 4, they had abducted when their parents hadn't wanted to co-operate and the authorities were not convinced the situation was bad enough that the parents should be relieved of their guardianship. However, Harry had said the opinion of the child was conclusive, and the others had gone along with that.

The staff had agreed to collectively take on the responsibilities a head of school would have. For major decisions they would have a discussion and vote, while minor decisions would go straight to a vote, with everyone taking turns to implement what had been decided. They had acknowledged that this would place an additional burden on everyone's time to report back on actions taken and keep track of quotidian details, but the converse meant that they could all keep an eye on any early signs of trouble, and be ready to take immediate informed action if needed. And they were expecting trouble, and regularly emphasized to the pupils that they were living under siege, and not to get complacent even when everything was quiet, because there would be no middle ground between absolute secrecy and death.

They were asking their pupils to buy the books for the muggle subjects for each year as needed during the summer holidays. For the magical subjects they had brought 32 sets of books up to OWL level with them, even though over the next few years they expected the older full-time pupils to progress faster than the youngest pupils, at which point they would split the classes into different ability levels. They had also brought 20 sets of books up to NEWT level, not only because of the expected difference in ability growth, but also because pupils only took about half as many NEWTs as OWLs. But they had still brought the books, ahead of needing them in about five years' time, because they wanted as little contact with magical Britain as they could manage, and also be prepared for the eventuality that at some point the border wards might make it impossible to go abroad. The previous 10 years there had never been more than 11 muggleborns, so once their first cohort, who all started out at the same time as beginners in most subjects, had graduated, they should have enough books for several years to come. By pooling their personal libraries they had also come up with a respectable school library, especially since Harry had inherited several libraries. They even had a restricted section, in which they had put all the books from Grimmauld Place, and any other books they hadn't been sure about. One of their low priority tasks was to go through all the books and declassify any that were suitable for children.

Harry had proposed to draw lots on who would give the opening speech, but the other humans had agreed it should be Harry, after which the house-elves had joined in with that plan. Harry had grumbled that he could see Churchill's point that democracy was a terrible way of making decisions, but they could all tell that he didn't mean he wouldn't do it, so here he was for dinner on Sunday evening, talking to 29 of their first batch of 32 pupils. There were 3 who had other commitments, and who had been unconvinced by the argument they should make an exception for the opening of the school.

"Welcome to Hogwarts. We mentioned this when we visited your homes to offer you a place in this school, but it's the most important factor in why this school even exists and is the most important consideration for any decision we've made: we are in hiding. We will do everything in our power to stay hidden. That means that if you do anything that only threatens to reveal us to those outside the school we will make sure you don't get another chance, which could mean that your magic will be bound, you and your family will be obliviated and you will be sent home to live the rest of your lives as muggles. Binding someone's magic leaves one somewhat damaged, so if endangering your fellow pupils and teachers is not sufficient reason to consider the consequences of your every action, then please remember that it will also upset your own lives.

We chose to name this school Hogwarts, even though there is also an aboveground school called Hogwarts. We think it likely to be decades yet before you are allowed to visit there. It may even be that you will never live to see it. The reason we chose to call this Hogwarts is so that when you accidentally run into other British magicals, or, after graduation, go to magical communities abroad, you can tell them where you got your education without breaking your unbreakable vows. Some of your classes will be recordings of professors at the other Hogwarts, and for classes where this is not the case, you will be shown recordings of the professors, so that you will be able to talk about them.

At the moment, facilities are rather spartan, and we have only 5 teachers for 17 subjects, which are about evenly split between magical and non-magical subjects, with the means to learn further subjects through supervised self-study. Please remember that the 10 members of staff offer you this opportunity to learn for free, that it is a privilege to be here, and that we expect you to behave responsibly. In return, we will do our best to make the experience fun and educational. Thank you."

Although there were only 32 pupils, the 10 staff members, not counting Kreacher, were kept busy. They taught defence against the dark arts, charms, potions and runes on Saturdays and Sundays, because most of the pupils who lived at home only came one weekend day and they had made these four subjects compulsory. Charms and runes were even taught three times, with a single advanced class in each subject for the pupils who had learned from the portraits in the previous three years. Transfiguration and herbology were taught once in the weekend and once during the week. The muggle subjects were all taught once during the week, but for those they had four different years to teach, and they all taught two or three subjects. None of them had any experience in teaching, and hadn't even attended muggle secondary school, so they spent a lot of time at lesson preparations. Hermione was, of course, best prepared, and had brought several books on didactics, and often brought up some advice on how to teach more effectively during meals. In addition, the facilities were spartan and would have to be extended to prepare for the next cohort, and preferably also extended from barely adequate to somewhat comfortable.

The staff told the pupils that if they wanted to play football and quidditch, they'd have to learn the spells and enchantments needed to dig out a cave, set up the light and transfigure the goal posts. They would only provide the grass seeds. It might take them several years, but everybody agreed it was a good project; the pupils got a sense of ownership of the school and learned to view magic as a quotidian tool, the way magic-raised children did, rather than a way to fight for one's life and pass exams, the way Harry had learned to view magic. Until that was finished, PE was running through the hallways, muggle self-defence, and team sports in the dining room with props that Harry transfigured from the tables and chairs. The muggle self-defence was explicitly to keep the children from retaliating with magic if they were attacked by other children during the holidays, and it tied in with lessons on de-escalation of arguments and teaching all of them to neither present themselves as easy victims or aggressors. All the teachers regularly re-iterated that their biggest risk of being discovered was accidental magic while outside any wards, and that a single careless moment could spell disaster. Every pupil was taught the identity of a Hogwarts pupil to impersonate if they ever encountered anyone from Ministry-controlled magical Britain.

Every little thing needed a decision. The pupils had called Andromeda miss. She wasn't particularly happy with that muggle appellation, but hadn't wanted to insist on being called professor, the way they did in Hogwarts castle. Hermione wasn't keen on calling the teachers professors, because they were not a university, so they had agreed that they would be Mr, Mrs and Ms with their last names. They had agreed that having a podium at the far end of the dining hall with a long table at which the teachers sat, all of them facing the pupils, like at Hogwarts castle, made sense, but that with so few pupils in each year it made no sense to split them up in houses, so they had put in five round tables that could seat 10 each. This would nominally be one table for each year of boarding pupils, and one for the older weekend pupils, but they wouldn't enforce seating arrangements.

"Abra…" Harry heard it while walking in the hallway between classes, surrounded by pupils. It wasn't said loudly, but the need for gathering one's intent tended to make the pronunciation of spells to be quite distinctive, and Harry was always primed for trouble, so he whipped around in auror mode. He registered with relief that it was a pupil. On the other hand, she had her wand in hand. Without putting it in so many words -there wasn't time- he nevertheless decided to turn it into an example and teaching opportunity, and apparated the few meters separating them, plucking the wand out of her hand before she could finish saying "…cadabra."

"Miss Moorecomb, what have we said about magic?" He spoke loudly to draw the attention of the other pupils. Not that it was needed after they had just seen, and heard, him apparate across the hallway.

For a moment she looked like a rabbit caught in headlights, but he had to give her points for rising to the occasion when she said, "'A wand in the hands of a fool is a weapon.'"

That wasn't quite what he'd asked, but it was certainly an adequate answer. "Indeed. And what did you just do?"

"I spoke an incantation, when I didn't know the spell effect."

"That's right. You'll be glad to hear that the incantation has become garbled while travelling from the magical to the muggle … side, because it is the incantation for the killing curse." "I'll be holding on to your wand. Not for very long, but I do hope it will be long enough for your mistake to sink in." He swept his gaze across everybody else, and added, "that goes for everybody else as well, magic can just as easily be turned to destructive as to constructive purposes, and is not for playing around with."

In the middle of October, four of the older pupils, one of the 15-year old weekend pupils and three of the 14-year old boarding pupils had come to the staff table, saying that they were hoping to be done with their OWLs by the time they finished their A-levels, so that they could go on to university, or whatever else they would decide to do, without having to worry about still needing to study to gain their wand-right, and could they please teach an accelerated course to OWL level? Ideally the accelerated course would be for the four compulsory subjects, but if that was too much to ask, because they could see the staff were very busy, then at least for one wanded subject.

Hermione acknowledged that, yes, the curriculum as it stood now assumed the magical education of the 12 and older pupils would remain out of step with their muggle education, because trying to squeeze OWL education into less than five years would put undue pressure on them, meaning that something would suffer, be that their muggle education, their mental health, or their ability to have their holidays. The pupils reiterated that they would understand if the teachers were too busy, but that they were willing to put in the work. Hermione told them they would discuss it during their next staff meeting.

They had decided that those who hadn't had a portrait teaching them last year would also be allowed into the advanced charms and runes classes. They would add advanced classes in defence and potions. They told all the students of the new scheme, stressing that the students would need to study the theory by themselves, and that they would make additional pensieves, if necessary, so that they could use the memories to attend theory classes, and that they would teach advanced practical lessons that would be geared towards passing OWL exams in June 2005.

They did end up asking Remus to organise another runes workshop to make three more pensieves. Their existing pensieves were all in use between the last class and dinner, the human school staff all had full schedules, and Lilian was scrambling to finish her mastery before the next school year. Fortunately, they had friends in the USA who were keen to help them.

During the Christmas holidays Harry went to France, Spain and Italy to talk to the aurors there about English smugglers. He had had previous contact with them while he was preparing for his mastery project to raid the smuggling ring, but the investigation hadn't advanced far enough to include these three countries in the operation. Although the visit meant he missed the holiday celebrations, their need to keep the pressure on meant that he had to make sure that the information he had gathered previously was used productively.

Ted and Hermione had achieved some success with keeping their prisoners under the draught of living death. The magically weakest of them could be kept sedated for three months, after which they needed to be given the antidote and kept awake for a month. With a glucose drip, they could be kept under the potion for six months, which made a large reduction in how much care they needed to a few daily spells to prevent bedsores and to slow muscle atrophying.

Halfway through the school year, things started to take form. Certainly, this was to a large extent about functionality: the first vegetables were being harvested, and enough of a routine had been established that the staff could occasionally actually relax during their time off, rather than take care of some task that they hadn't been able to get to during their official working hours. However, there was also a large intangible component: pupils' work from the arts, charms and transfiguration classes was relieving the monotonous look of transfigured subsoil that all walls and ceilings had started out as. Now that the pupils had learned enough to know that trying to clean under their bed and instead vanishing part of the floor wasn't a big deal, but trying to transfigure their friend's hair for a lark was a terrible idea, the staff didn't have to watch the pupils' every move anymore.

"Hermione, do you still doubt it's a good idea for us to be together?"

"No. I remembered this novel I read a few years ago. In it, a man is trying to convince a woman to marry him. So, he says that romance is overrated, because you start at the high point of your relationship and it's all downhill from there. … And then he realises he's poorly chosen his metaphor."

Harry tried to work that out, but in the end shook his head, "I give up."

"Because if you start a relationship from friendship and a compatibility of goals, but not much romance, then the road from there is uphill."

Harry laughed at that, but eventually sobered when he saw Hermione had something more to say.

"I think that we're good for now, but I'm not quite at the point where I'm willing to trust it's going to last into marriage and/or children."

Harry was the tiniest bit disappointed, but mostly he was glad that they were doing better than he had had any right to expect. He took Hermione's points though, they worked well together, but Harry was much better at making Hermione happy than at making the two of them happy.

"How does the Transfiguration mastery go?" Harry asked Hermione. Andromeda didn't have her mastery, and they had agreed it would be good for her to get it. Since it would have been difficult to go the usual route of studying under a master, since they were hidden away, she and Hermione had agreed to do masteries at the same time, so they could support each other.

"Andromeda is doing better at the exams preparation, because those are mostly more detailed versions of what she is teaching, while I'm going to have an easier time with the final project, because I already created a mastery level transfiguration with the transfigured exploding potion, even though I can't use that project, because it's illegal in Japan. Andromeda said she'd rather work at my pace than try to finish on her own, and as far as I can tell it's going to take me four or five years."

"Are you tempted to continue towards becoming a Grand Sorcerer?" The requirements for a Grand Sorcerer were five masteries, with at least one in each of the three major fields of magic: runes based (warding, enchanting and/or rituals), cauldron based (potions and/or alchemy) and wand based (charms, transfiguration and/or defence against the dark arts). In addition, it required a sixth final project that integrated the three fields of magic. Not all countries split the three fields in that way. The most frequent alternative was to have a mastery topic of duelling, in which case defence against the dark arts became a Grand Sorcery level topic. June had taught Harry defence in the latter tradition, with frequent excursions into warding, transfiguration and potions, though not up to the level of detail that a Grand Sorcerer would achieve. It had made her a harsh taskmaster, because Harry had been required to become a Jack of all trades, and a master of one, but it had helped him in his ongoing effort to dismantle the British smuggling ring, co-ordinating between various specialists, and taking some of the weight off Hermione's shoulders, who was the school's factotum, but who also needed to be protected from her workaholism.

"Tempted, yes, but it will have to take third place after growing a new society and defeating Riddle."

"I like that, growing a new society. It's more realistic than building a new society. We can try to create the right conditions, but at some point we'll have to step back and let it become its own thing."

"Not step back too much, though," Hermione suggested, "or I'm afraid it will take on many of the undesirable qualities we've been conditioned to unconsciously expect from government. I'd like to think that if we all sit down together and discuss how much freedom we're willing to sacrifice for how much mutual support, that freedom is hugely overrated."

"You want to start a communist state? I thought the collapse of the Soviet Union had made it clear that it doesn't work."

"Because they never had any discussion about what they were willing to trade off, so they ended up with a system where the powerful milked their positions for personal gain, and the powerless undermined the system as much as they could get away with. No, but look at the NHS, and compare it to the healthcare system in the USA. Don't you agree that the former is better?"

"Yes."

"I've just been wondering whether it wouldn't make sense to extend it to the other essentials, mostly housing, but maybe also food, or at least the staples."

"I see. I agree we should discuss it," Harry acknowledged, "… I guess we only really need a decision once our first graduates start making an income."

"Exactly, which might be 15 months from now if any of our older students decide to become working students, which isn't all that long."

Harry nodded, trying to think of the consequences. This decision was going to shape the future; maybe even make or break them. Why were the boring decisions, like what economic freedom they all had, always so much more important than the decisions about responsibilities, like who was going to find the horcruxes and kill Riddle?

Apparently, Hermione had thought further ahead than that, because she asked, "did you know that Mrs. Weasley has a cousin who is an accountant?"

"No. I went looking for squibs at some point, but they didn't keep in touch with each other, so that never went anywhere."

"I think we could do with an economist, and an accountant might be closest we're going to get."

Harry hesitated for a moment, but then decided that he could voice his unfiltered thoughts to Hermione, even if she'd probably disagree; to be honest, even if he wasn't sure about the idea himself, "unless we're willing to break the Statute of Secrecy."

Hermione was silent for a long minute, but then reflected, "let's not get ahead of ourselves. We should discuss at the next staff meeting whether we want to write to Mr Prewett. Then, based on his reply, if any, we can decide on the next step."

The others agreed that they could do with an economist, and that Hermione would write a letter, asking if Mrs Weasley's squib cousin would be interested.

Dear Mr E. Prewett,

(Please excuse the omission of your title, as I don't know the correct one.)

Last September we started a mixed magical and muggle secondary school for muggleborns from Northern Europe. We decided to start the school after Hogwarts stopped admitting muggleborns from 1997 (which itself was precipitated by the murder of headmaster Albus Dumbledore in June 1997, and the takeover of the Ministry of Magic by followers of You-Know-Who). From September 2004, we'll need a teacher of A-level economy. In addition, we are hoping that some of our graduates will stay to form a village that is independent of and hidden from both the muggle government and the British Ministry of Magic, which means we're also looking for someone to take the lead on formulating economic policy. Our main goal is to try and form a more egalitarian alternative to the corrupt and nepotistic Ministry. We were wondering whether you might be interested in joining our staff? We realise that as an accountant, these jobs might not exactly be your specialisation, but because of the small size of the magical population and lack of muggle qualifications among them, we thought you might nevertheless be the best person to ask.

Kind regards,

Hermione Granger

Dear Ms Granger (or should that be Professor Granger? There's no need to use my title, which is chartered accountant E. Prewett FCA. I only mention it in hopes of learning your correct title.)

Thank you for your letter. I am afraid that I must decline your job offer as economics teacher. I'm intrigued by your aspirations of starting an independent village. Although you should view this as a hobby rather than a professional qualification, I'm interested in the interaction between economic systems and the political climate. This was shaped by the recognition that the way that the Ministry of Magic manages economic competition goes hand-in-hand with the political privilege of the ancient families. Although I recognise it wouldn't work on the scale of magical Britain, to me, the Scandinavian socialist democracies come much closer to the ideal of 'the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people' than either magical or muggle Great Britain. Mondragon, the Euskal (=Basque) conglomeration of co-ops might be a better role-model that could conceivably work in an economy that is too small to achieve stability when competition is not legally suppressed. If you are interested, I would welcome your thoughts and questions about economic policy while you are looking for a better candidate than myself to fill the vacancy.

Kind regards,

Efrain

Hermione showed the letter to everyone, so they could discuss it at the next staff meeting. They agreed that Hermione would ask for more details about Mondragon, and read up on British muggle laws on co-ops. Andromeda also mentioned that she had been taught a fair amount about both business and political economy. Although this had been meant for an Ancient House rather than a budding country, for the near future, the annual budget of their community would be substantially less than that of the Black family, and their decision making was also more basic than the political manoeuvring in the Wizengamot. Therefore, her education would serve them for now. She also said she would be willing to learn to teach A-level business studies once they had boarding A-level pupils, provided one of the subjects she currently taught was taken over by someone else.

"I think we need to organise something major to keep the pressure on Tom's grasp of magical Britain. Maybe some guerrilla attacks on Death Eaters?" Harry asked.

There was a pause as everyone reflected on that. When no-one else volunteered an opinion, Andromeda tentatively said, "I'm not saying that's a bad plan. If we can eliminate another criminal like Greyback, that could keep them off-balance. It would be good to check that the resistance fighters are still active, so that the blame would be placed on them. But in either case, I wonder whether extending your collaboration with law enforcement to dismantle the smuggling ring in one of the countries you didn't manage to target last year would be more effective. You, or we, could multiply our effectiveness by enlisting aurors from other countries. You'd be less likely to be killed if you act as an auror rather than a guerrilla. Taking legal action would strengthen our claim if we ever need support from the ICW. And hitting Ministry-controlled Britain economically might be more effective at stimulating emigration than escalating the violence would."

Although the elves had taken turns observing their maps to monitor the movement of magicals across the country, the only action that had resulted from that thus far was for Neville to go and dig up some rare magical plants, not only to add them to their own collection, but also hoping to deprive the Ministry-controlled society of their produce. Neville had created a quarantine cave for these imports, as he was using their isolation to try and keep the other growing areas free of weeds. These plants only grew in a few places for a reason, so they were all impressed when Neville managed to keep them alive despite having taken them from their natural habitats.

After the exams they had ended up binding the magic and obliviating two of the older pupils of the existence of magic because they had made little effort to learn, preferring to continue the lives they had had before. They had added subcutaneous magical trackers to them, in case they ever needed to find them. They were unhappy to lose them, but there were several more pupils who were skirting the edge of making the least possible effort to pass, and they knew that they were at risk of losing them if they didn't enforce the rules. The situation was particularly difficult for one of the two that had been obliviated, who had a younger sister who was a witch, so their parents had not been obliviated. Fortunately, they had managed to convince the parents of the risk of having a wizard walking around who had been insufficiently trained, so they had agreed to lie to their son about the 'trade school that had originally been part of a guild' where their daughter boarded to learn a profession, because the parents were not rich enough to claim their daughter went to a normal boarding school.

Despite this inauspicious end to the school year, during the closing staff meeting the atmosphere was positive. All the magic they had done had not been detected. They had offered the discarded muggleborns a way to make positive use of their magic, and the pupils had responded in kind to the opportunity, being careful when not at the school. Though the road ahead of them was long, they had made their first successful major step.