3rd October 1996 (64:06:10)
— Contact plus 01.01.01:00.45
When Beth arrived, the Office of Registration and Resettlement was quite busy — but that shouldn't be a surprise, as much of a fucking mess as things had been for a while.
The alien bombing campaign had devastated most major cities in Europe. While the damage was worse in some than in others, very few had gotten out of it intact — and even in the less thoroughly-destroyed cities, people had fled to escape danger regardless, pouring into smaller towns and even randomly into the countryside. It was even more messy on the Continent, the flood of refugees spreading out heedless of national borders in their desperate search for safety. At the time, nobody had stopped them, security forces sometimes even taking down fences and the like to let people through faster. It would require soldiers and equipment to hold borders against them, after all, soldiers and equipment that would be much more useful dealing with the active attack from literal space aliens — it was easier to just let people past, where they'd be out of the way, so various militaries were more free to move to intercept the attackers without accidentally running people over.
But just letting people go wherever meant they'd been left with something of a mess in the aftermath, refugees of various nationalities scattered all over the Continent. As things started to settle down — sooner in Europe than around the landings, only having to contend with an additional bombing run now and then — they were faced with the project of sorting out the millions of refugees, and getting them back where they belonged. Most of the time, once the fighting was over people were simply sent back to whichever country they came from, but that wasn't always feasible — especially if their home country had been hit especially hard, and wasn't in any state to organise relief for a bunch of refugees coming in. In some of those countries, especially Germany and Northern Italy and Belgium, refugees were sent in in batches as they slowly put themselves back together and could accommodate more people, and sometimes some pretty bad political sniping came up when the host country and the source country weren't particularly friendly for whatever reason. There'd been a lot of trouble along the borders with the Communist countries, Beth had heard — no real fighting, thankfully, but it got tense at times.
And not even taking into account people from other countries running around, there was the fact that so much housing had been destroyed, millions and millions of people made homeless, left unemployed by the economy instantly going to hell, with nowhere to go. Britain didn't have as much of an issue with foreign refugees, thanks to being a step removed from the Continent, but they still had millions of domestic refugees, people chased out of the cities by the bombings — they still had to go somewhere. Though, they weren't entirely without international issues: a bunch of people had fled to Ireland when they realised the bombs weren't hitting there at all, sometimes floating across on improvised boats...and often completely ignoring the border in the north, supposedly the Irish had gotten very annoyed about that...
Last Beth heard, there were rumours about negotiations to cede the North to Ireland in exchange for some concessions to refugee resettlement and help with supply issues and stuff, it was a whole thing. So maybe they weren't really that annoyed, and just using it as a bargaining tactic, or maybe both, who knows.
And then there were mages to consider — the sudden appearance of entirely separate countries that overlapped with the muggle ones, with totally different borders, had abruptly made things a little complicated, to put it mildly. Magical Britain included the UK, obviously, but also all of Ireland, and even Brittany in France, meaning they shared territory with three separate muggle governments. Deciding who the hell mages were supposed to work with and what exactly the relationship between different governments should be was a whole complicated thing, that Beth mostly just didn't pay attention to, not important. (At least not for what she was doing, anyway.) Some governments being completely fucked by the bombings had made things even more complicated, in some places. Like, according to Hermione, there wasn't a muggle Netherlands and a magical Holland anymore, they were just one government now — somewhat complicated by their borders not actually lining up, but. Similar things had happened in Yugoslavia and Illyria — not quite the same borders, but pretty close — and muggle and magical Austria, and magical Germany and Saxony were working very closely with muggle Germany (and also the Netherlands) to try to keep things running — last she'd heard they hadn't actually fused into one government, but they probably would eventually at this rate — and supposedly there'd been a whole bunch of cases of similar things happening outside of Europe. At a certain point, working together was just easier, no matter how awkward the issue with borders got at times. If they were close enough, you might as well try to make it work.
Figuring out how the relationship between muggle and magical nationals and magical and muggle governments should work was an issue, yes...but then that was made more complicated by defections.
Not technically defections, as such, but a lot of muggles had ended up seeking shelter on magical properties — meaning they were technically foreign citizens on the soil of another country, despite being entirely within the borders of their home country, which was very confusing to figure out how to handle. Beth hadn't been paying attention for this, but apparently there'd been an agreement to basically recognise each other's citizens as a special class of protected residents, so people could live and work on either side of the muggle–magical divide, and it was fine. Supposedly they'd had to do a survey of all the muggle citizens on Potter lands at some point, so the UK government would know where people were and could work up appropriate papers to legitimise the situation, it was a whole thing.
And, of course, there were defections, people renouncing their magical citizenship and taking up a muggle one, or vice versa. It was pretty common for muggleborns to revert back to their birth country to help out, especially if they were younger and didn't have families yet, or were still minors and were spending all their time with their families now anyway. (Though somewhat less now, since Hogwarts had started up again — not that Beth or half of her friends were bothering to go. Ron and Gin and Luna had gone back, but Beth and Hermione and the quidditch girls hadn't, too busy with other things.) It was somewhat more rare, but sometimes a muggleborn would instead bring their family into the magical side with them. A lot of places, there were cultural or political reasons, linguistic or religious minorities swinging to whichever side they fit in better with, and in some places you'd have a Communist country overlapping with a more conservative magical country, or a more conservative muggle country overlapping with a Neocommunalist magical one, people switching allegiances one way or the other to wherever they felt more comfortable...
One of the big ones in Britain, a whole bunch of Gaelic mages had abruptly defected to muggle Ireland — practically at once, as though they'd coordinated it. At least some of them had coordinated it: Saoirse Ghaelach, a nationalist political group of some kind Beth had heard about at least a few times (she didn't pay attention to politics), had decided they preferred to work with the Irish government, most of them plus various labour and religious groups switching their allegiances pretty much all at once. Though, if Beth understood correctly, they hadn't defected to the muggle Irish government so much as rejected the magical British government. They were kind of their own thing now? Working closely with the Irish, yeah, they had mixed committees and everything, but it was more like they'd abruptly declared their independence, sort of. There'd been a whole scandal about it, Hermione had mentioned it in a letter back when Beth had still been in Vietnam — some people in the Wizengamot had wanted to force them back under their control, but Bones had beaten a reasonable sense of priorities into their heads. Bones had been handing over governing responsibilities to the Gaels bit by bit, they weren't entirely independent yet, but at this point it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Though, that did complicate matters, because there were mages in Ireland who still recognised the authority of the Wizengamot...and also plenty of mages in Scotland who didn't. The cultural borders on the magical side where different, the Highlands were still mostly Gaelic-speaking — the big exception was the Hogsmeade Valley, plus a few tiny pockets of a Scandinavian language here and there — and the Gaelic mages generally considered themselves to be one nation, regardless of which island they happened to live on. So, the British–Irish border on the muggle side was in Ireland, chopping off about a quarter of it, but on the magical side the British–Gaelic border was in Scotland, chopping off, like...a third to a half? Depends, the border was very fuzzy. So, naturally, some of the Gaels in Scotland had switched to working with the Irish government, despite being well behind the UK side of the border — the whole situation was very, very complicated.
Besides just the Gaels in general, there'd been some other controversial defections in Britain. There'd been a steady trickle of werewolves seeking asylum with the UK (or Ireland or France) ever since the invasion — which was fair enough, being a werewolf in magical Britain sucked, the legal restrictions they had to deal with were just fucking cruel. Apparently Remus had accidentally gotten asylum? He'd been working with one of the rebuilding projects when he was just informed by his supervisor that the UK was offering him protected status, telling the story he'd seemed so bemused.
See, the UK considered werewolves to be people with a particular medical disability, who just needed treatment and certain accommodations once a month, and the way the magical government treated them to be a crime against humanity. They'd been especially annoyed about the muggle werewolves — muggles bitten by a werewolf could become werewolves themselves, though the metamorphosis (fatally) failed more often — who before Secrecy ended would often have their deaths faked by the Ministry, forcibly transferred into group homes on the magical side, it was a whole thing. Now that they didn't need to keep up Secrecy anymore, the UK had demanded the Ministry hand all their citizens back (especially the children, Jesus Christ), and it was standing policy that any werewolf who promised to follow British law and their precautions on the full moon was to immediately be given protected status, and most likely a job helping with the rebuilding. Ireland and France had similar offers for British werewolves — France's programme was considered the most generous of the three, but most British werewolves didn't speak French, so.
And there'd been a trickle of other mages defecting for muggle governments, often poor people, or people who had particular skills and thought they'd be able to get a better position for themselves on the other side. There'd been a small handful of high-profile defections, known names renouncing their magical British citizenship for whatever reason. A few important professionals, in healing or warding or whatever, one Beth actually heard about was the entire Irish quidditch team — half of them were Irish muggleborns anyway, but still. Probably the most controversial, at the same time Saoirse Ghaelach left the entire House of Ingham did too. Not a big surprise, since the Inghams were pretty involved in Saoirse Ghaelach, but they were nobility, with a seat on the Wizengamot and everything. And not even just normal nobility, the Inghams happened to be one of the remaining Seventeen Founders — they'd always been on the Wizengamot, since the beginning, they were one of the oldest, wealthiest, most powerful families in the entire country, they had every reason to stay. And, instead, they'd left, abandoning their seat on the Wizengamot and helping to form the independent Gaelic government, openly allying themselves with the Irish muggles. There was an Ingham on the joint commission thing they had over there coordinating magical improvements to the country, it was a whole thing.
Another category of people leaving magical Britain, seeking asylum elsewhere, were nonhumans — and they had very good reasons for doing so, as Beth had found out.
Those reasons were what brought Beth to the Office of Registration and Resettlement, waiting for her turn to speak to someone. Glaring into the distance, fidgeting in fits and starts, trying to swallow down the rage and disgust burning through her.
It'd been over a year now since Zero Day (as people had begun calling it), and the government showed absolutely no sign of leaving Oxford — they were even breaking ground on a new Parliament building here, Oxford was just going to be the capital now. Apparently they thought fixing up London would take too long, and just be inconvenient, with everybody already settled in here. Hermione said at least part of the calculation was wanting to get back around to holding elections as soon as possible — the UK had technically been a military dictatorship ever since Zero Day, the sooner they could transition back to a legitimate democratic government the better — but moving back to London would mean pushing that back even longer, so, made sense. The centre of the government was still in and around the University campus, near the heart of the city, but various offices were spread all over the place, the city increasingly transformed with magically-accelerated construction.
Beth knew how some of that worked, thanks to Hermione frequently babbling at her about it. Actually seeing it was different from just copying bits and pieces from someone's head — the city seemed visibly different each time she visited, it was absurd.
The ORR was well away from the centre, further out in the sprawl to the southeast. (A suburb, so much as a smaller city like Oxford had suburbs.) It was an older building, pre-dating the government moving here, a sizeable block three stories high made out of reddish brick, like a lot of the buildings she'd seen around Oxford. Somewhat pleasant from the outside, with lines of trees and bushes, this part of the town more green — or it would seem pleasant, were it not for the crowds of people lingering in the car park, clumps of tents here and there, refugees waiting to be relocated. There were fewer people crowding the streets and greenspaces in the city than in the weeks after Zero Day, but there were still some, and probably would continue to be for some months yet.
The inside of the building had obviously been remodelled recently — you could tell by the magical ceramic around, the relative absence of plastics and metal. The main room had a sort of train station feel, big and open, barriers marking off long snaking queues leading up to a counter all along one wall, informational displays here and there in multiple languages, maps depicting which lines were for which services, some qualifications and rules and stuff, so forth and so on. Interestingly, the displays were illusions, drawings and text projected up into the air — they must be controlled by Hermione's computers somehow, though Beth couldn't actually see where the things were. Beth waited in line for a good half hour, at least, after a short discussion with the woman at the desk was directed upstairs to the proper office. Blandly decorated in pastel tans and blues, rows of comfortably padded chairs for people to wait their turn. The crowd here was much smaller than the one downstairs, but there were still a good couple dozen people, every once in a while one of the office workers calling back one person or another, the occupants never noticeably shrinking, new people coming in as quickly as the old people left.
Beth had been waiting here for a good hour, at least. She hadn't brought anything to keep herself occupied with, and she doubted it would matter, too tight and hot and fuming to focus on anything. People had been giving her glances, maybe because of the uniform, maybe just because she was obviously angry, a buffer left around her...
She had no idea if the people here could actually help. But she had to do something.
After however long left directionlessly simmering, she heard her name called, lurched up to her feet, stiffly walked toward the door deeper into the office. A middle-aged man was standing there, dressed in plain trousers and jumper, hair kept short and neat, looked like a perfectly ordinary muggle bloke. Giving her a formal little nod — not extending a hand, mages generally didn't do handshakes — he said, "Good afternoon, Lady Elizabeth. Is that appropriate, or is there another way you'd prefer to be addressed?"
"Just 'Beth' is fine. Or 'Lance-Corporal Potter', I guess, if you want to be formal about it." She was even in uniform — it'd been suggested more than once that she should be when in public, doubly so since she was technically active at the moment (if mostly just helping train new people) — so she guessed that wasn't inappropriate.
"I'll have to go with Corporal Potter, then," he said, sounding a little amused. "Robert Hartford. Come on this way, let's have a seat..."
There was an open office area, with a dozen desks scattered around, the constant chatter and noise of people talking or shuffling papers around, a smear of colour here and there from displays. Sorting out all the paperwork to do with people being resettled, or just getting it onto Hermione's computers, hard to say from here. Hartford didn't lead them through all that, though, took an immediate turn into an office, closing the door behind Beth once she was through. It was somewhat cramped, without a whole lot of empty space — a desk facing the door, one chair behind and three in front, bookshelves along the back, a couple file cabinets to the sides — and very busy, the shelves packed, books and loose papers in stacks across the surface. There were a few trinkets here and there, pictures of what she assumed was Hartford's family, but the place otherwise seemed purely functional. Beth was waved toward the trio of chairs, Hartford circling around the desk to the back.
"So." Hartford brushed aside some of the papers, a notebook pulled over in front of them, and then leaned forward in his chair a little, hands clasped in front of him over the notebook. "What brings you here today, Corporal?"
"I don't know what—" Her throat tight and hot, stomach squirming, Beth broke off to take a long, slow breath. She didn't know where to start, this was a whole mess, so she might as well... "I own slaves. A lot of them."
Hartford grimaced. "Ah, yes. That." Straightening in his chair, he nudged something out of sight — one of those illusion displays flicked on, to Harford's left and at elbow height, he reached over and started paging through something. "I'd imagine the distinction isn't particularly relevant to you, but it's not technically slavery, legally speaking. Assuming I'm remembering— Yes, here," he said, pointing at something on the display. Turning back to Beth, he continued, "The Wizengamot have declared some classes of people — 'aliens' is the legal term, in the terrestrial sense — to be universally incompetent, their custodianship invested in various persons and institutions across magical society. By the letter of the law, these indentured aliens are not property, as such, but rather individuals under a particular sort of protective custody. The Ministry's records suggest the House of Potter holds only indentured aliens — primarily nymphs, with a minority of wilderfolk and a smaller population of registered werewolves, as well as a number of elves, of course — but I don't seen any active cases of contracted corporal indenture, which is more directly comparable to the legal concept of slavery, or perhaps peonage, that we're familiar with on this side."
Beth scowled through the whole explanation — like that made it any fucking better! She didn't give a damn what the legal technicalities were, on paper, she knew what fucking slavery looked like!
It had taken her way longer than it should have to give any thought at all to where the hell her money came from. Ages ago now, when Hagrid had first brought her to Gringotts, it'd been... She'd been worried that the Dursleys wouldn't pay for shite, and Hagrid didn't exactly look like he was rolling in it (and she definitely hadn't expected him to pay for her things regardless), and the thought that her school things would be covered by some kind of charity thing had made her feel all squirmy inside, guilty. (Back then, she'd still thought she was a useless freak who didn't deserve nice things.) When she'd been shown to the vault, all the gold fucking coins in there, it'd been, just, overwhelming. Freshly-eleven-year-old her hadn't had any fucking clue what to do with that tangled up flood of emotions, so she just hadn't — she hadn't lingered over it, just did what Hagrid told her to and moved on, trying not to think about it.
Crying in public (or at all) was one of those things she used to be punished for, so, safer to push it away as well as she could.
And she continued to just not think about it, at all. It didn't even occur to her at first that there might be more than just that one vault. Hagrid hadn't explained much at the time, just said obviously your parents left you money, and left it that — she'd had no idea that vault was basically an allowance, money set aside for the heir to do whatever with until they were grown up. Fucking absurd, it was a crazy amount of money, and... When she learned that the Potters were nobility, she didn't give that much thought either, besides thinking it made sense that her parents had money, obviously the nobility would be loaded, that's just how that worked. She did wonder what colour Vernon's face might go if he learned that she was a literal noble lady, but she'd just imagined it, she never actually told the Dursleys — she'd been worried they would try to get their hands on her things somehow, hadn't seemed worth the risk.
It'd never occurred to her to wonder where that money came from. Beth didn't understand economics, really, money was complicated, just... Well, they were nobility, obviously they had money, like it was a thing that was simply true and didn't require any extra thought.
Sirius had mentioned that the Potters owned a lot of agricultural land, were a major producer of food and various potions ingredients. One of the largest in western Europe, in fact, that was where the money came from. (More the potions stuff than the food, granted.) That thought had been kind of weird...but she'd assumed that whoever was managing that shite — obviously somebody must be — was paying whoever was doing the actual work part of it. No different from the farms and stuff in muggle Britain, right? Someone was handling it, and Beth still hadn't known shite about money or how to run a bloody farm or whatever, so, she'd figured it wasn't really her problem? When she was older, and was actually expected to start taking care of this stuff for herself, then she could worry about it — but in the meantime, she had shite going on, so.
In retrospect, she seriously regretted not asking the obvious question: who's doing the work?
Where did Beth's money come from? Slavery, that was the answer — she was wealthy because the Potters had a huge share in the European apothecary market, secured with low prices they could maintain due to not paying the people who grew it all. Pretty simple, when you think about it. She'd simply never thought about it. Not until the last couple of months, anyway, and it was really a matter of circumstance that she'd ever thought to look into it at all.
There were still rumours of aliens in the Pacific somewhere, people were working on that, and of course the spaceships were still up there, but there was nothing they could about that at the moment. The uptick in domestic unrest as the food situation got worse had even been somewhat alleviated by the harvest coming through a couple months ago now — a horrifying number of people had died, so many they couldn't even begin to count, and were still dying now. Hermione said the experts thought it could be another year or two before the situation entirely stabilised, which was fast, given the destruction and the billions of displaced people, thanks to magic helping to speed things along. At this point, they were going to figure it out, it was just a matter of how long it would take, racing against the clock to save as many people as possible.
(Hermione said the official estimates were that the death toll, once all was said and done, would be over a billion — more likely over two billion, if they weren't very lucky. They were thinking, a quarter of the entire world population, maybe even a third, or more. That was, just, unimaginable. Beth didn't know what she was supposed to do with numbers like that.)
So, with the aliens going quiet for now, the priority had very quickly switched to basic needs — food, water, shelter, medical care, so on. Magic helped with all four of them, speeding things along quite a bit, but there was only so much they could do. Transfiguration was, after all, temporary, they couldn't simply conjure food and building materials out of nowhere. And even with magical assistance, crops only grew so fast, and still required at least some human labour to harvest and process. Shelter, water, medical care, those could be managed more or less well, at least enough to keep people alive without too much trouble — emergency housing could get kind of crowded, some places and people fell through the cracks, but they were working at it.
The choke point, it turned out, was food. Thanks to the disruption from uncounted millions of people being displaced, and the devastation from the landings and the terraforming bugs, much of last year's crops had been destroyed or lost. They simply didn't have enough for everyone — at least not where it was needed, when it was needed.
It was, literally, the worst famine in human history. Now that they'd had one uninterrupted growing season finished, the tropics and the south and the more temperate regions in the north moving straight into a second, the worst of it had already started to ease. But it wasn't over, not yet.
But things had started to calm down, somewhat, ordinary business starting up again, somewhat. One thing that was happening, various governments were getting around to commemorating the events of Zero Day and the war, in whatever way they felt appropriate. There had been memorials and stuff on the anniversary, yes, and there were all kinds of other things going on, Beth didn't pay that much attention — for morale reasons, she assumed. The thing that affected Beth, lots of governments were handing out medals and honours and shite like candy. That was a normal thing people did in war, she knew, just how much of a fucking mess everything had been at the time meant it'd been pushed back to when things settled down a little, and they could hold proper ceremonies and whatever else.
Beth was very certain this shite was going to be used for propaganda, like, playing up stories of heroism and teamwork and the like. Despite that she was going to be included in that, she bet, she didn't even mind that much? Being recognised for something she'd actually done was better than the stupid fucking Girl Who Lived nonsense, so, if she had to pick one. (Besides, she realised a fifteen-year-old girl doing the shite she'd done during the war seemed absolutely insane to most people, she wouldn't be shocked if the stories ended up getting around now that Hermione and her nerdy friends had solved the media problem.) Since she'd been popped around the world for a bit there, she was going to be getting tat from multiple countries, because of course. And she would be going to award ceremonies and shite — her superiors had already signed off on having her go, in a group with the rest of the SCFRS people on the list. They were a new group, after all, the feeling she got was that Langley or whoever the hell decided this kind of thing wanted them to be seen being honoured and shite, again, for propaganda purposes. This stuff was still being planned, but she was pretty sure they'd end up taking at least two trips, one to the Congo and one back to Vietnam.
Though Beth also had her own stuff independent of the SCFRS — most governments who'd seen much fighting at all had made special medals specifically for volunteers through the events of Zero Day. Since she and Sirius had popped around to half the fucking Continent, they were both going to end up with a handful of the things. They'd already been to ceremonies in Toledo — Madrid was still officially the capital, on paper, but a lot of things were being run out of Toledo for the time being — and Moscow, and they had a few more coming up in the next month or two, she couldn't remember where when. The one in France was a big deal, all the foreign fighters who'd participated in the fight with the alien ship were getting special honours, there was going to be a big thing about that in Paris next month.
And, as Hermione had jokingly suggested way back then, Beth had ended up with a knighthood for taking down those two fighter ships and rescuing the Prince Consort and the kids. That ceremony, with the kneeling and the sword and everything, had been during the anniversary memorial thing last month, in public — it'd been kind of embarrassing, honestly, but whatever.
(After the formal ceremony part, Princess Mary had tracked her down and insisted on dragging her around for the rest of the memorial, Beth feeling very out of place and intensely bemused the whole time. No idea what that was about, but apparently the Princess was just like that sometimes.)
Coming off of the anniversary, they'd also been recognising other contributions — sometimes with literal honours, more orders and medals and stuff, but not always, sometimes just talking about something someone accomplished on the radio, doing their propaganda thing. A lot of volunteer stuff, evacuating people from the cities or helping out at the refugee camps and in the resettlement, or for doctors or public servants who did something important, you know, all kinds. And it wasn't just the government catching up with this stuff — Hermione had been shocked into silence one morning a couple months ago when a letter came in informing her that the artificers' guild in Britain had decided to recognise her as a Master of Enchanting for her work with the Commission. Specifically something to do with one of the parts in the magic computers, Beth thought, she didn't understand any of that shite and didn't remember for sure. After just staring at the letter for what felt like several minutes, she'd abruptly blurted out that she'd never even taken the OWLs, sounding oddly annoyed about it, it was very funny.
(The guild had had a dinner at the beginning of the month for Hermione and a handful of other shiny new Masters of Enchanting being recognised at the same time — when the room had politely applauded after her brief, stammering acceptance speech, her face had gone so red.)
Beth had been almost as surprised as Hermione that day when one of the people being recognised for their contribution to the reconstruction efforts had been Beth herself. Sure, she'd helped out a little as long as she was in the country, volunteering for construction and landscaping projects and shite going on when she had nothing better to do. She wasn't always free to do so, since Ramsey wanted her to help out with training new recruits and shite for some unfathomable reason, and there was that time they were briefly sent back down to the Congo during the summer — nothing alien related, they'd literally had Beth's troop guarding farms (freeing local forces to focus on domestic unrest heating up, since foreign military doing that part wouldn't look good) — and when she was volunteering she was just another wand helping things go a little faster, it wasn't like she did that much to help. And that wasn't that they were recognising her for.
The House of Potter had donated tonnes and tonnes of food (she'd honestly forgotten how many) to the UK and Ireland, to be distributed by the officials in charge of that stuff, entirely on their own initiative and with no expectation of compensation of any kind.
Beth had never given much thought to where her money came from. But now that she was actually being publicly recognised for 'producing' food that she'd never even seen, suddenly she hadn't been able to get it out of her head. After a couple days sitting on it, she'd gotten in contact with Daedalus Diggle, the bloke Dumbledore had put in charge of the money stuff back when Beth had been a toddler.
The answer was slaves. The Potters — by which she meant Beth herself — owned a bunch of land. There were human mages living and working on some of it, commoners who had some kind of contract with the Potters — mostly, giving up a fraction of whatever they grew/made in exchange for legal protection and, like, paying for healers and stuff. But most of them were nymphs and wilderfolk, or werewolves, who weren't compensated.
Besides with being allowed to live, Beth guessed.
And they couldn't leave — if they tried, and they were caught, the DLE would send them straight back. And the people contracted to manage the farm for the family (for her) probably wouldn't be too happy about it.
She'd had Diggle bring her to one of the farms, it... The rows of little houses they had, it... There were children, they...
When Beth had spotted the whipping post she'd had to leave — before she fucking murdered someone.
That was where her money came from.
Ever since the visit, Beth had been, just, angry — she'd started multiple fires around the house without even meaning to, accidental magic (unusual at her age) — and ill, bad enough she'd been sick twice now. She couldn't fucking stand it, she—
But she didn't know what to do! Like Hartford had said, in magical British law some people were automatically slaves — nymphs and wilderfolk couldn't be free, they must be in the 'custodianship' of someone. Diggle had said they could swap out the managers, work at improving conditions there as much as they could, and hey, with the direction politics were going these days the law could change before too long anyway, they just had to—
No! No, that was not fucking good enough! She couldn't—
She didn't know what to do.
The only thing she could think of, after days agonising over it, was to come here. The UK didn't give a damn what species you were, they recognised people as people just the same — Hedwig would be an 'alien' on the magical side, but the UK had already formalised her status as a proper British national, no fuss. (Through an old thing to do with people from the colonies who fought for the Empire, apparently, it was kind of a weird technicality.) And there were all these defections and refugees and—
Certainly Hartford had an idea of how to fix it. He must.
If he didn't, Beth might have to run away, to France or Vietnam or Russia or some shite, and renounce any claim to anything here — she, just, couldn't fucking stand it, she couldn't.
(Not that would solve the problem, some other noble family would claim the Potter shite and the people stuck there would still be just as fucked...)
Her voice low, thick and hot and grinding, "I don't fucking care what it is on paper, I don't– I can't— There must be something we can... I can't leave it like that, I just can't."
"Yes, well..." Still scrolling through something on the display over there (Beth couldn't make out the text from this angle), Hartford let out a heavy sigh. "Unfortunately, the state of the law on their side... The status of nonhumans under the Ministry of Magic was designed to enforce Secrecy. While Secrecy has ended, of course, the laws the Wizengamot passed are not directly tied to the enforcement of the Statute, and so stand on their own — the preservation of Secrecy was considered a matter of existential importance to most governments, and so such laws are designed to be as comprehensive as possible. There are no loopholes, by design.
"The people in your custodianship cannot be emancipated — magical law simply does not allow it. Renouncing your citizenship will not solve the problem — your property would remain in magical jurisdiction, to be divided between related families or auctioned off by the Ministry. It may be possible for the population to evacuated, but that would take some significant cooperation from somewhere to accomplish. The residents would also be reduced to refugees, who would require resettlement. It is also notable that doing so would reduce the agricultural productivity of the lands under your control substantially — while our government may not approve of the circumstances of certain peoples under the Wizengamot, that productivity is badly needed, so you are unlikely to receive the necessary assistance to remove them. Regardless, I suspect you would prefer not to strip these poor souls away from the only home they've ever known, however pitiable their living conditions there might be."
Beth grit her teeth — no, that wasn't something she wanted to do, if she could help it. As shitty as their lives were, she didn't want to make them homeless on top of everything else. Especially since some of them had been living on those farms for generations, centuries by this point. Also, most of them didn't speak English at all — Diggle said Cambrian was common, some instead speaking Scots or Gaelic, depending which farm you were looking at — which would present additional issues they'd have to deal with if she kicked them out. And, they didn't exactly marry, apparently (aliens couldn't legally marry), or move out of their parents' when they grew up (they had nowhere to go), so they had weird sprawling intergenerational families, and they'd almost certainly not be able to stay together if they were resettled...
No, removing them from the farms wasn't an option. Beth had already thought of that.
Hartford was partway through a sentence about maybe finding ways to restructure how the farms were managed to make things easier on them — which was Diggle's idea, and not fucking good enough — when he abruptly cut himself off. His eyes turning away from her, going a little unfocussed, his head tilted, frowning into the distance. He sat like that for at least fifteen seconds, unmoving and unspeaking. Impatient, Beth snapped, "What?"
He twitched, blinked at her. "Ah... I may have a solution to the issue. I believe it is the only possible method by which to circumvent the impediment posed by the current structure of magical law. However, it is...quite unconventional, and will generate significant controversy, even assuming everything goes according to plan."
She waited a couple seconds, but he didn't say anything, still vaguely frowning. "Well, spit it out already, then. If you actually have an idea to fix this, it's the first fucking one I've heard."
"...I'd like to confer with a colleague, to confirm I'm not overlooking anything." Hartford turned around in his chair to scan over the bookshelves, pulled one particular book off of the shelf. He stood up, walked over to one of the cabinets and slid open a drawer, retrieved a folder. "If you could wait here, Corporal, I'll return in a moment." Sidling along past the chairs, Hartford slipped out the door and closed it behind him, leaving Beth alone in his office.
The whole time he was gone, Beth silently fumed — glaring at nothing, her heel idly thumping against the floor.
Maybe four or five minutes later, the door clicked open again. Hartford wasn't alone this time, accompanied by a similarly plainly-dressed man, this one with short auburn hair, button-up collared dress shirt clean and neatly ironed. He was giving Beth strong proper businessman or stuffy bureaucrat vibes, but she didn't miss the faint tingle of potential around him — this bloke was a mage. He smiled on spotting Beth, "Ah, Corporal Potter," stepped further into the room, held out a hand. Slightly bemused — mages didn't generally do handshakes...also she was still sitting down — she took his hand, his grip leaving a faint warm prickle of light magic on her skin. "John Ramsey, pleasure to meet you."
Beth froze — Ramsey. She was aware that the Ramseys were one of the families that'd defected to the UK at some point during Secrecy, but she'd only ever met the one before. The one that she was pretty sure was the actual fucking Dark Lord — Beth still didn't know what her (his?) game was, it'd been over a year and nothing had happened yet. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that Ramsey was her superior officer (a couple levels up, but still), and was...generally good at her job? and even well-liked? A bit cold and unpersonable sometimes, but nobody Beth had talked to had any complaints. Which was, just, seriously fucking confusing, she still didn't know what was going on with that...
(Her scar had been completely quiet now, for over a year — no pain, no prickling, no more weird surreal dreams, nothing. And the Death Eaters, all of them had been cooperating with the new order of things, or, especially the ones in Azkaban, had either died or silently vanished without a trace, never to be seen since. There'd been nothing, not since Zero Day.)
(Beth was still convinced that Ramsey must be up to something, but she had no fucking clue what.)
But this was probably just some bloke — it wasn't a small family, Ramsey was just using their name, he might not even know anything about it — Beth forced herself to relax.
Hartford again circled around behind the desk, and John stayed on her side, pulling one of the chairs more to the side before sitting down, at an angle to face both Beth and Hartford. "So," John snapped, leaning forward with his hands clasped and his elbows on his knees. "Robert's explained the situation to me, and I do believe his idea has merit. Before we explain, one question: are you willing to defect?"
"Yes," Beth hissed, instantly. "If that's what it takes."
"You will lose your seat on the Wizengamot," Hartford said, firm and serious — but with an odd quirk on his voice, as though he realised that this would make absolutely no difference to her, but felt he needed to make it clear anyway. "If you go through with this, you will no longer have any official influence in the magical government whatsoever, as soon as end of business today."
"I don't care. It's fucking idiotic that I had a seat in magic Parliament before I was old enough to read, I shouldn't even have the bloody thing in the first place." Of course, the only reason Dumbledore could do shite in the government at the moment was because she was letting his use her seat. He'd probably be a bit annoyed with her for abruptly cutting his legs out from under him, but he'd have to fucking deal with it — not owning slaves anymore was far more important than tweaking the noses of those stuck-up self-righteous bastards by forcing them to deal with him despite removing him as Chief Warlock. That was the only reason she'd done it in the first place...
"I understand the sentiment, but I don't imagine trading up titles is going to seem any less absurd."
Beth turned to frown at Hartford — what did he mean trading up? — but John started talking again before she could say anything. "The window of opportunity that occurred to Robert here is due to a technicality in the formation of magical law — fortunately you do have that seat on the Wizengamot, because it wouldn't work otherwise. Magical law is somewhat peculiar in that the Noble Houses are recognised as wholly sovereign entities, which have agreed to respect decisions made in common. It is somewhat different for Common Houses, who hold much more limited privileges, but for the Noble Houses, they are governed by their consent. Of course, the laws of the Wizengamot are enforced by the Ministry, and any family who retracted their consent, historically, were forced back into line by the unified force of arms that could be presented by the rest of the nobility and the Ministry. So, while the sovereignty of a Noble House may be enshrined in the letter of the law, for some time now that has been nothing more than a legal technicality."
"I know that." Or, she was vaguely familiar with the idea, at least — her History marks weren't exactly great. She was terrible at learning things from books, and the omniglot thing didn't work on ghosts. "What are you getting at?"
"The only way to circumvent magical law," Hartford said, "is to retract your consent to be governed by it."
Beth frowned. "Didn't you just say anyone who tries that gets forced back into line by everyone else?"
With a crooked, sly smirk, John said, "In ordinary circumstances, yes — however, these are not ordinary circumstances. The end of Secrecy has made the Wizengamot vulnerable, to a degree it hasn't been since Frances Cromwell. They've already failed to act to prevent the secession of the Gaels, including a handful of their own membership. On the other hand, you are also vulnerable, as you are a house of one, with few enough battlemages to defend against any effort to keep you in line. But there is a means of protection which would not have been available to you before."
"...And that is?"
"The Crown, obviously."
...What? "I thought you said I couldn't just defect."
"Not in the ordinary sense, no," Hartford admitted. "What I am suggesting is, essentially, that the House of Potter, including all its people and properties, secede from magical Britain. Once you have officially notified the Wizengamot that you have broken your compact with them, and have made a public declaration to that effect, the laws of magical Britain will no longer apply on your lands — at that point, you would be operating solely on internal family law, and may do as you like.
"Immediately after your secession, our government will recognise your sovereignty as an independent state; once our diplomatic recognition is formalised, you would then swear fealty to her Majesty, and in so doing effectively enter the Commonwealth. From there, our government will be able to offer assistance in modernising the various villages within the bounds of the new microstate, in order to elevate the standard of living to something more commensurate with the rest of the Isles. Ultimately, if you wish to move in this direction, your lands may be formally absorbed by the United Kingdom and cease to exist as a separate polity, but that will take time — decades at the very least, and you may not even live to see it.
"But as soon as you've split from the Wizengamot, you will be able to determine the status of your people. If you wish to end their bondage, you may do so, without interference. What comes after that is something you will need to discuss with them, I expect."
...
That was completely fucking absurd.
So, if Beth understood this correctly, they were saying she should basically declare herself the fucking queen of a tiny little breakaway state? That— There was no fucking way it was possible for people to just do that, she didn't...
Except, she was pretty sure it was...if they were following the letter of the law, anyway. When the first Wizengamot met, the original people there had been representing what were essentially independent petty kingdoms, dotted across Brittany and the British Isles. The bit about one of the Noble Houses pulling out of the Wizengamot, yeah, that'd happened before, there'd been several...well, very brief civil wars, basically, now and then through magical British history. The people trying to pull away always lost, either forced back in or just defeated and obliterated, because these fights ended up being them against literally everyone else. The only ones who'd gotten anywhere had allied themselves with some other kingdom around, but that hadn't been an option since the Statute...
...but it was an option, now.
And, if they were just operating on internal family law, Beth had already gotten Hermione to look over that for her and tell her the important bits — Dumbledore had given her a copy but, well, reading. It wasn't great, the Lord of the House basically a tiny little dictator, their will the last word...but they could also amend or alter the family law at will. Needed the consent of their heir (first child), but Beth didn't have one of those, so she could basically do whatever she liked.
...
Beth was going to need help — her new microstate was going to need a constitution or some shite, and she was awful with politics. Hermione would know what to do, but she couldn't just do it herself, even if she knew how, the people who actually lived there should definitely be involved...which might be a problem, because she was pretty sure most of them didn't know how to read, which was going to make writing a constitution kind of difficult...
Yeah. This plan was completely fucking absurd, but it was a plan, at least. She'd take it.
The knot of rage and disgust that'd been constantly burning away in her stomach for weeks now finally beginning to loosen, Beth nodded. She took a long, slow breath, relaxing into her chair, just a little. "Okay. Okay, um...how do we do this, exactly? What's step one?"
(And that was how Beth herself also became a literal magic princess. Being the head of state of a tiny constitutional monarchy was, just, ridiculous, but it was better than being an actual literal slave owner — as absurd as it was, being able to reorganise the fucking plantations into proper agricultural communes was absolutely worth it. She could have done without the title upgrade, but it worked, so whatever.)
(Though Mary deciding she, Susan, and Beth should obviously all be friends now was very silly, in a much less exasperating sort of way.)
[That ceremony, with the kneeling and the sword and everything] — In case anyone is thinking of commenting that the irl UK doesn't do the whole accolade ceremony for women, I know that. Assume that in the alternate timeline we're in, Victoria has decided to do it specifically with women being honoured for military service. And to your other question, Royal Victorian Order.
Oops, made a new country! I'm sure it's fine, the sudden appearance of a new microstate composed entirely of a collection of discontinuous enclaves scattered across the British Isles and western Europe definitely won't cause any unexpected legal complications. Don't worry about it, someone smart will handle that.
One scene left in this section, going to do one for The Good War and then come back to finish it up. Woo.