I finished saying what I needed to say about Slytherin and the Chamber of Secrets. The tension that had been stretched tight inside me loosened a little, and I let out a long breath.
All three of them had listened closely, even though it was a long, hardly entertaining story. Even Weasley had paid serious attention. Harry, especially, looked deep in thought.
A brief silence fell before Weasley tried to lighten the mood.
"Well, that's ancient history anyway. Pure-blood supremacy is a complete joke now."
As if an old legend had finally ended, the air in the room eased. Granger and Harry even wore faint smiles.
Unfortunately, I wasn't done. Reluctant as I was to sour the mood, I opened my mouth.
"Even so, I won't condemn pure-blood ideology… not yet."
Three sharp gazes fixed on me. Granger reacted the strongest—of course she did. I had just told her, to her face, that I would not deny those who would push her out.
She stared at me as if I were something unbelievable.
"Why? Pure-blood supremacy doesn't make sense. Plenty of witches and wizards have Muggle blood now and… you know this as well as I do—we're not inferior."
I nodded deeply. But that wasn't the axis my view turned on.
"You're right. But I'm not saying this because I think pure-blood doctrine is correct."
My ambiguity drew puzzled looks from all three.
"Then is it your family? Are you saying it because your insufferable father is a pure-blood supremacist?"
Weasley apparently hadn't considered the possibility that I might just be a hypocrite trying to fog the issue. The fact he'd trusted me this far surprised me, and I almost smiled. But I had to disappoint him. I still needed to say this.
"I won't claim my father hasn't influenced me. But that isn't the main reason. And yes—this will take a bit to explain. Is that all right?"
Honestly, I thought they might storm out in anger. It was the sort of thing one ought to share over a long time, with trust built carefully. Even so, though doubt flickered in their eyes, they listened.
I began again.
"In our world, sadly, almost no one cares for statistics, so I can't prove this. But in my view—marriages between wizardkind and Muggles fail more often than not."
"That's not true of all of them," Granger shot back, correctly and immediately.
"Of course. There are Muggles who joined hands with magical spouses and did great things for our world—James Steward, husband of Isolt Sayre, who founded Ilvermorny, for one.
"But those cases are a mere handful. Cruel as it sounds, they prove the excellence of those individuals more than they say anything about the whole.
"What about examples around you? …No, have you ever really heard how those mixed households work day to day? It may be that pure-blood families—who are used to judging by lineage—notice this warp more readily."
"Or maybe they're biased and cherry-pick patterns to prop up what they already believe?"
"I won't deny that. But in a world this small, it's impossible not to notice how many people carry the fallout of such mismatches.
"Very often it starts with a Muiggle dazzled by magic's miracles—and a witch or wizard who is, frankly, a bit naïve about the non-magical world. The marriage is crooked from the start."
Weasley, raised in a Muggle-friendly family, snorted loudly. I went on anyway.
"A Muggle can never become a witch or wizard. That fact breeds despair and a rift. At first, it's enough just to touch magic's splendor. As the months and years pass, the envy curdles into something maddening.
"The Muggle who can't bear it lets the conflict swell inside—yet they're forbidden to voice it. For the sake of our secrecy—for the Statute of Secrecy. That pressure turns inward, naturally, toward the family."
Harry's expression grew complicated. I'd heard he suffered abuse at his Muggle aunt and uncle's home. That wasn't marriage, but a similar pattern could easily arise in a Muggle household forced to live with something—someone—magical that they couldn't cast off.
"The careless witch or wizard starts to realize something: a spouse is not like one's parents or friends. Muggles are more fragile than we are, more sensitive—and yet they wield the strength of numbers.
"The person you love is, in truth, a being you've never dealt with: weak by our standards, ignorant of our world, and yet part of another society so developed it can be impossible to grasp. The alienation that brings…
"And who could you share that struggle with? Even if you're no pure-blood bigot, marrying a Muggle marks you as odd. For a witch or wizard raised in the calm of our world, taking a non-magical spouse is a deliberate surrender of that calm.
"Perhaps it's easier to see how we treat Squibs. You remember Mr. Filch just now. The shame and rage of having his 'defect' exposed reflect how wizarding society values those without magic."
Weasley's eyes dipped. Old families always have a Squib somewhere in the branches. And I, at least, have never heard of a Weasley Squib living peacefully among us. It's sad, but understandable: a wizard can dote on a Muggle who isn't one of us—but find it far harder to accept, as an equal, a child of our own blood who cannot use magic.
"And so two people who swore a future together slowly become cut off from the worlds that raised them. Neither the magical world nor the non-magical one offers a remedy to close the gap. It isn't one person's fault. It's structural.
"…And the ones who suffer most aren't the couple.
"Some bear the warp forever. Some divorce. Some married under false pretenses, hiding who they were, and live their whole life as something other than the people they were born to be. The children born into those homes grow up carrying the consequences of that union."
I looked to Harry, who seemed to be chewing it over.
"Forgive me for being blunt, but in a sense you're one such example, Harry. If your mother had been born to a wizarding family—well, the chance you'd spend ten lonely years abused and ignorant of magic would have been far lower.
"You're a boy of remarkable kindness and a real sense of justice. But how many children could grow up the same way under those conditions?"
I turned to Granger.
"Granger, you're brilliantly clever and genuinely good. But isn't the fact you became who you are itself a kind of blessing?
"Your parents love you—including the part they can't understand—no, can't even perceive. Isn't that extraordinary luck? Do you think everyone gets the miracle of having a family that doesn't look at your excellence—or the faint ripples of your magic—with contempt the way some at your Muggle school did?"
Unlike Harry, Granger answered me.
"…Yes. I suppose I was lucky. But what does that have to do with pure-blood ideology?"
She was already nearing my conclusion. Her voice trembled slightly.
It wasn't pleasant to say any of this, and I was sorry to hurt them. But I wasn't saying it for the three of them alone. I was saying it for my people—including myself.
"For centuries, the non-magical world has cleared forests, built roads, and multiplied in number many times over. We can still hide with magic—but Muggles have never been closer to us than they are now. More and more people 'lose their heads,' as it were. Their children grow up within that warp, their minds twisted by it.
"How are those children supposed to embrace the stance of loving and accepting Muggles? To them, encouraging ties with Muggles is almost the same as telling them to keep living inside the broken homes that harmed them.
"Against the flow of time, wizarding attitudes toward Muggles have hardly evolved. We still rely on crude measures like 'erasing memories'—no solution at all for witches and wizards who must live among Muggles day in and day out. In that fog of misunderstanding, a vague hymn to friendship with Muggles is… irresponsible. It doesn't soothe even a sliver of the pain of those born between worlds.
"…And people who suffer under one incomplete 'justice' will look for another.
"They will seek a creed that names their pain as natural and grants them the right to scorn—that calls it good to shun contact with Muggles. They will seek pure-blood ideology."
The air went cold and still. I looked toward the window and spoke the last of it.
"Of course, many who are considered true-blooded pure-blood supremacists—including my father—didn't arrive there by this path. They use the creed to protect vague privileges and bask in groundless superiority. But even that injustice has a cause.
"…There were even rumors that the Dark Lord himself wasn't pure-blood.
"If he wasn't—if he could have shattered everything without the backing of a pure-blood line—what drove him to exalt blood anyway? I don't know. But I can imagine."
And that was the end of it.
For a while, no one spoke. The first to find her voice, again, was Granger.
"Even so—you don't think it's right to exclude Muggle-born witches and wizards, do you? Then what do you think we should do?"
Even after I'd put her through such a painful talk, she still chose to trust me.
"We're still children, and we're far too powerless to reform the world's institutions from the ground up. But there are things we can do now.
"Don't reflexively deny the people on the far side of the divide. Ask why they think as they do. Try to imagine your way into it. Search, with everything you have, for the places where their wishes and yours overlap. Think of them not as enemies—but as people who might become allies."
It sounded pretty on the tongue. But there is value in saying what's pretty, too.
"It will be hard. I can barely do it myself. But I want to hold on to that way of thinking.
"When you face a great enemy and must fight, your Gryffindor courage is beyond price. But when that isn't the case—when there's still time, and neither side is cornered yet—then try, if you can, to sheath that courage and choose cunning instead. Choose to avoid the fight."
Thinking of friends and family who might someday be snared by the Dark Lord, I finished.
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Draco's story was heavy, and to be honest, I didn't understand all of it. Ron felt the same. Hermione had her lips pressed tight, as if bracing herself.
Draco looked grave, too—until he suddenly seemed to remember something. He glanced up and spoke to Ron.
"By the way, Weasley—over the summer you flew a car to rescue Harry from that Muggle house where he was being kept, didn't you?"
"What? Do I look like I can handle another complicated lecture right now?" Ron shot back.
Draco shook his head with a small laugh.
"Well… none of us in Slytherin would have done it that way. For one thing, Harry has to go back there again when the year ends. It was a bit… flashy."
Despite the words, he sounded pleased.
"But that's just it. For all my lofty talk, my roundabout methods would never have helped Harry quickly, not while he was suffering in that Muggle house. If I'm honest, a flying car is too great a risk to pay for just two months of relief… and yet I find I still think that way."
Ron, unsure where this was going, looked suspiciously from me to Hermione.
"That's why," Draco said, "the ability to act without overthinking—to have the courage to help someone who's hurting right now—is a Gryffindor virtue."
A slow flush crept up Ron's cheeks. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then lifted his chin and said, squarely:
"What, you didn't know? We're brave, reckless Gryffindors."
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