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October. A Hogsmeade Day
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On the edge of the village of Hogsmeade.
'It's just a tea party.' Severus grumbled under his breath as he sat down at an outdoor table in the backyard of an ordinary townhouse he hadn't even known existed.
There were already a good forty people here; this was hardly a secret meeting. Of course, he hadn't expected to be invited to a clandestine gathering of Slytherins coup plotting to overthrow the government, but this was... just a bloody social tea party!
He was almost nauseated to think how he'd had to work so hard to pander to Rosier, a senior pureblood Slytherin, with all of his condescending remarks, '-inviting a half-blood is a delicate matter of my prestige, and I'm not sure you'd be able to live up to the invitation', etc.
...But to be honest, Severus was secretly excited, as this was the first time he'd ever been invited to such a 'social tea party'. This meeting was a far cry from the school's Halloween parties, which were usually dominated by a giggling bunch of excited lower years (Severus' head ached in advance just thinking about the party at the end of October).
The invitees were fifth years and uppers, and the format of the gathering strictly followed the form of a pureblood society social gathering, unlike the Hogwarts banquet. The five types of plants that adorned the table, and the nine types of tea food that were magically shaped and plated in a neat defiance of gravity, were exactly as his mother, Eileen Prince, would sometimes reminisce about when she was in a good mood, with a clear head.
The conversation around the table - the topics of the latest Wizengamot meeting, the Prime Minister's speech at Wizengamot, policy trends on dark magic, the scandal of the newest Wizengamot member's maternal great-grandmother being identified as a muggle, the growing influence of the Ministry of Magic on the Hogwarts Board of Governors - was mostly just a rehash of what the students had heard from their parents, but it satisfied a deep need in Severus Snape's heart just to listen. It was a Slytherin need, a different kind of urge from the academic and emotional needs that were being fulfilled by his time with Lily.
Severus's only complaint was that the weather today was far too bright and sunny; it hardly suited for a 'secret meeting'!
"-They should all be removed! Do you know what the birthrate of mudbloods is? Three times that of purebloods, three times!"
"One comes in, two generations later, there are ten of them! What's the difference between them and cockroaches?"
...That is, if it weren't for the occasional bullshit like this.
"This island of Britain has belonged to us wizards since before the great Merlin. The Muggle bastards who have crept into our sacred land of Albion and now claim to be its master, pretending its government! The filthy habit of massive-spawning their offspring like worms and forcing them into our wizarding community, calling them muggle-borns! We can never eradicate them by killing only the visible bugs. You have to destroy them at the source!"
...Ah. Yes. Muggle extermination, good luck with that.
I wonder, what were the number of the muggle population in Britain? Recalling the statistics of the muggle population in Britain, which he had learned in a social studies class of the grimy muggle primary school he'd only attended for a few months and hated with a passion, Severus looked away, and then his eyes widened.
Lucius Malfoy! He was walking into the area.
The young man, now in his early twenties, had grown into a well-groomed adult, and his graceful movements were the epitome of pureblood nobility. He was like a white peacock, strolling leisurely amongst the common birds with their clumsy pheasant feathers.
At the centre of the table, sitting with a small smile on her face, seventh year Narcissa Black shot him a honeyed glance. Lucius smiled softly and approached her, bowing in an aristocratic gesture of respect for his fiancée.
The surroundings fell silent. Severus focused on Lucius without blinking.
Lucius Malfoy, the prefect of the seventh year class when he entered the school, was someone Severus, the first-year chick, would never dare to speak to. A student officer with pedigree, wealth, and good looks. He was the heir to the prestigious Malfoy family, who should have become the Head Boy in his seventh year, but (according to house belief) was actively discouraged by Dumbledore who disliked Slytherins, and remained as prefect, presiding over the house with aristocratic leadership.
That was four years ago. By the time Severus was in his second year, Lucius had graduated, entered pureblood society, and was beginning the next stage of his life as a distinguished member of wizarding nobility. There had been no news of him since, except through gossip in the house.
But here he was, face to face. Severus instantly forgave that condescending prat Rosier whom he had been furiously chewing on, for the grudging invitation he'd given him to this meeting. He'd been expecting a big name like this.
"So, what do you think of our conversation just now, sir, about the mudbloods?"
A loud, short-tempered (and stupid) voice cut through the silence. Lucius turned slowly around to face his interlocutor, giving him a somewhat bemused but unhurried smile.
"...I see you were debating on a very sensitive and difficult subject."
...If that was a debate, I must be the reincarnation of Salazar, Severus grumbled to himself.
Lucius continued with a graceful smile. "Firstly, I would like to make it clear that I do not consider muggleborns to be wrong, or morally inferior; they may be somewhat lacking in knowledge or ability, but they are not inferior to us in average morality; therefore, it is neither right nor efficient to blame them for the damage they do to our wizarding world on their personal vices; it is not because they are bad as individuals, it is simply human nature that is at fault."
The first student to speak up started to protest, but was quickly silenced. Lucius smiled calmly.
"As a newcomer to a society - an immigrant, simply put - it's only natural to try and fit in. It's not right, and it's not respectful, to demand that the society which accepted you bend itself to fit you in, instead of you adapting to the society you willingly came to. And some muggleborns do make that natural effort. I remind you, not all of you here are purest of purebloods, with eight great-grandparents and sixteen great-great-grandparents all born of magic. Some of you probably have a great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, or grandmother who was a muggleborn, and you know, because they made the effort to assimilate, they were accepted into our society and given the honour of being an ancestor of us wizards and witches."
Lucius's eyes sharpened. "But most muggleborns, as you know, don't make that effort. When muggleborns are first discovered and offered a place at Hogwarts, the Ministry gives them a choice. The choice to have their magical cores controlled and unable to manifest, the choice not to come into our world. Thus those who do come into this society do so purely of their own volition, of their own desire to have magic. But once they're in, they make no effort to conform!"
Lucius chuckled, without a hint of amusement. "They want to be wizards, but they don't like the rules of the wizarding world. They think of magic merely as a convenient and curious tool, and dismiss our customs and manners and laws as barbaric, pre-modern, incomprehensible, and us wizards as eccentric and bizarre. They even go so far as to impose their customs and rules on our society, proclaiming that our social customs are superstitious and must be changed. But is this because muggleborns are inherently immoral and uncaring? No!"
There was silence around them. Lucius spoke up.
"Their morals are no different to ours. They behave the way they do because that's what humans do. They come into our society, put the Muggle government behind them, and think they've never left the Muggle world. They think that as long as the wizarding government is here on the Isle of Britain, we - we wizards! - are supposed to bow down and submit to their Muggle sovereignty. With that kind of mindset, would they make any effort to integrate into our wizarding society? Ha! Of course not!
"...So, to encourage muggleborns to integrate, as some wizards proclaim, to actively educate them in our customs and rules, to appeal to their pride and morals to learn our culture, are ultimately futile. Individual muggleborn may be highly social or have a keen sense of decency and actively seek to fit into our wizarding world, but muggleborns as a group, as long as they have a Muggle government backing them up, will never integrate to our satisfaction. They will only band together and try to paint our world in their colours, their Muggle colours, and turn us into normal humans who only happened to have useful tools of magic, which is their own goal : becoming a muggle with magic, rather than a wizard like us.
"Under the circumstances, it's a legitimate and effective exercise of self-defence on our part to try and exclude muggleborns from our society as much as possible. They don't respect us, so why should we cater to them, preaching about respecting Muggle culture in our political scene?"
Lucius smiled sharply. "Take the Changeling jinx, for example. It's a time-honoured tradition of the wizarding community, documented in texts dating back a thousand years, and yet the current magical government has not only officially declared it a 'superstition' and removed it from the Hogwarts curriculum, but has made it an embarrassment to even mention it in public, including in Wizengamot. It was a political decision to officially state that muggleborns never steal magic, and I can find no record of even one fair and systematic study, with our Slytherin wizards as participants, being conducted prior to this decision to determine if it was indeed a superstition!"
"I'm going to be brave and say it : you all try to hide it, but I'm sure many of you have someone in your family, your relatives, your acquaintances, who has been removed from our world because they turned out to be a squib. Think about it : if even one of them became a squib because their magic was stolen by a muggleborn? I'm not saying that any muggleborn child deliberately stole their magic. It's just that through a mystery of Magic we haven't figured out yet, their infant magical cores may have been tampered with, without anyone knowing why or how. Then it would be through the negligence of the Ministry, because they irresponsibly declared it as 'superstition', that a poor child became a squib! And in return, a muggleborn child, perhaps several, somewhere, who knows nothing, will become a wizard in our children's place and enter our world with jaunty steps and attend Hogwarts as if it's their birthright!"
The mood in the room fell silent. Some people were shaking with anger, some were with fear, some with grimness, some with deep thought. Someone spoke up harshly. "So...so, what do we do, what do you suggest we do about it?!"
Lucius gave an leisurely smile. "I'm afraid there are some who would accuse me of being a political agitator, so I can't give you a specific answer to that in public at the moment; but I think we can all agree that the current situation is undesirable, and that some of the people at the top of our Ministry and Wizengamot are not providing the best leadership."
With these words, Lucius coolly cut off his speech and took the empty seat next to his fiancée. Students near him asked him to continue his speech with half flattery and half sincerity, but he declined with an aristocratic expression, declaring that as the heir to the Honourable House of Malfoy, he was not a professional politician and was only reluctantly expressing his personal opinion. He then locked eyes with his fiancée and began a lovers' conversation.
The students gathered there tried to stifle their throbbing hearts and engaged in polite conversation. As they listened to Lucius's speech, they became increasingly agitated, and then, just as they were about to stand up and shout something, they felt as if their emotions were forcibly cut off by Lucius' abrupt stop.
After a few minutes, the atmosphere in the social centre returned to normal, albeit a little awkwardly. The loud voices of the students were drowned out by the music, which was perfect for a sunny tea party.
In the midst of their casual conversation, the words 'a mud-half' caught Severus' ear. He turned his head reflexively in the direction it had come from. The direction Lucius was sitting. But, of course, Lucius wasn't looking at him, calmly chatting to a pureblood student next to him.
But Severus had a hard time shaking the feeling that the words had been referring to him. Purebloods weren't the only ones in this social event, but amongst the half-bloods, few were as low in the blood hierarchy as he was. A half-blood with a Muggle father who knows nothing of magic, and a mother who had been disowned by her family. In Lucius's eyes, Severus would be hardly distinguishable from a mudblood.
Severus glanced in Lucius's direction from time to time after that, but could not make eye contact with him until the social hour was over.
As the meeting drew to a close, Lucius and Narcissa strolled away, hand in hand, with a lovers' gait. The male and female students watching them sighed with a mixture of jealousy and admiration.
"They look like a couple of noble birds. A couple who were made for each other."
"Yes, a Malfoy and a Black. Well, even if they say the Potters are doing well these days, you know the Malfoy is the real deal. Besides, the Heirs' prospective marriages are so far apart in class."
"Marriages? I didn't hear that the Potter Heir was engaged?"
"Huh, you're slow on the uptake, aren't you? Well, I couldn't believe it either when I heard it. Listen; apparently, the next Lady Potter would be a mudblood."
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