Hello !

Well, I am still French and have no beta, so all mistakes are my own. If one bugs you, tell me and I'll fix it. Also, all reviews are wellcome, so if you want to say something, I'll read it! If you have ideas I can work with, I'll take them too.

This story begins some time way before the books. It's quite short, and the idea came at me at a time I should have been sleeping.

Thanks for everyone who favorited and followed, it warms my heart every time I see the notifications. It makes me want to put one more chapter and push this premises as far as I can. Having inspiration, and not rehash things already done after thirteen chapters is not easy. I'm not sure I can post a new one next week, but the week after for sure there will be something.

Revolution

When Barmy first found the book at his master's bedside table, he didn't think much of it. He just moved it to clean the surface under it, and put it back.

The book stayed a long time on the bedside table, though, and with his little master away at Hogwarts, his curiosity took the better of him. Barmy liked to learn, you see, and his fellow servants thought he was weird, because they preferred to work and obey. Barmy liked to know why, so he could be of assistance if needed. He liked to be creative.

He was dangerously close to be a bad elf according to his brethren, and he somehow agreed with them.

Like today, when he picked up this book and started to read it, instead of finishing his cleaning duties in a timely fashion. He would be the only being alive in the summer house for the next eight months anyway, so there wasn't anyone to tell him off.

How strange that such an innocuous book, printed on muggle paper with muggle's presses by muggles, could one day do so much for elves around the world.

Barmy was a strange elf, who liked to learn, and understand, and liked other things than just obeying.

The title of this book? Revolution.

It spoke about people being oppressed, and how they overthrew the regime in place in hopes of having a better one. How it didn't work so well at first, but with persistence the situation got better, even if never perfect.

Barmy was bored, alone, at the summer house, so instead of reading new cook books like he did last year, or crossbreeding sheep and chicken like the year before, or building furniture with Japanese joinery the year before that… he started to read the books his seventeen years old master left in his room. They were all muggles, left here to hide them from his parents who disapproved of anything not magical.

Some were fiction, some were real life stories, some were essays, some were pamphlets… Those books were varied in shapes and forms. They spoke of many things, but they all had a common idea.

Freedom. Acceptance. Human rights. Global consciousness.

He read them one by one, as they were stored in the shelf. All fifty-six of them. And slowly, they made their way into his mind, whispering their wisdom and making him think.

There was no one with him to make him see the errors of his ways, so he was free to think as he wished for eight blessed months, taking care of the summer house well enough but not maniacally as an elf should. Eight blissful months, when he could expand his mind and munch over the words that were laid in front of him.

When his masters came back to the summer house, with his little master as he just graduated from Hogwarts, all the duties and responsibilities of a proper elf came back crashing down on him. He had to clean and cook and serve and obey all the time, day and night, at the whims of his masters. He didn't like it much before. He abhorred it now. It grazed him, to be their slave.

That word never entered his vocabulary before, it would have never occurred to him to compare himself to the humans. When he heard his masters complain about half bloods, and mud bloods, he couldn't help but draw a parallel to those societies described in the books. They thought themselves as kings, they were oppressors, they should be stopped.

He should be free. Slowly, but surely, his mind made the leap from human rights to elves rights. He was the only one of his kind to do so, though, as far as he knew. He was more and more ostracized by his fellow slaves, as they couldn't understand his stance. He was more and more confined to the duty of taking care of young master, which suited him just fine as he was a nice young man who treated him with respect.

One day, the young master caught him staring at the books in his bedroom.

"You can read them, you know." He said.

"I already did." Barmy answered, guiltily.

"Oh nice! What did you think about…?"

Thus, began an epic conversation, where owner and property debated for hours about the merits of activism, fights for freedom and other perilous endeavours. Young master was thinking about his best friend, muggle born. Barmy was thinking about elves, and all other sorts of sentient beings that wizards sneered at.

In a bedroom, at the summer house of a wealthy Pureblood family, together they ignited the first sparks that would become the greatest revolution of the millennium in the Wizarding world.

When they stormed out the manor, fed up with its other inhabitants' inabilities to look past their noses, the tides of History were set on a new course.

They found like minded people and sentient beings to carry the torch with them. It didn't happen at once, but things happened.

They didn't see the changes they wanted, because society took a few generations to truly change, and equality was fragile and easily broken, but they saw change. New-born elves couldn't be enslaved anymore, Centaurs couldn't be hunted for sports, and muggle born had been appointed head of departments in the ministry.

When Grindelwald pointed his ugly nose all around Europe, trying to carve his path, he met a somewhat organised and powerful resistance composed of many of the underdogs of society, wizard and beings deemed creatures alike. They all had their agenda, granted, but he managed what no one had ever managed before: giving them a common enemy against any kind of supremacy.

They weren't perfect, they were far from ideal, but they were. They tried to think, to go past some of their prejudice, to outgrow their upbringing, to search for a better path. It was hard, it was messy sometimes, but it was. It was enough to stunt Grindelwald ascension, it was enough to shut down Voldemort's attempt at Lording over Britain.

It was enough for one Harry Potter to grow up with loving parents, and annoying youngers siblings. It was enough for Sirius Black to become Minister of Magic, and Remus Lupin to become his undersecretary, and pull off an Annual Summer Sunset ministry ball as the best prank ever. Not to be uppended, James and Lily Potter hosted the Freedom Union Charity Karaoke. Both were higly successful and became fixtures in the magical British culture.