Two veterans of Dumbledore's Army discuss the years since.
Your Letter
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Your Letter
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
"You ever think about your letter?"
Ernie raised an eyebrow at that.
"Get a lot of letters." he said casually.
"Right, no, that's on me. Your Hogwarts letter, your invitation." Denise clarified. Ernie gave it a long moment, then shook his head.
"Nah, not really. Only just remembered I got one, isn't like I thought I'd end up somewhere else. Why?"
"Just nostalgic, I guess." Denise said, leaning back against her chair. Idly, she made the subtlest little motion with her wand, and the cupboard across the room cracked open and one of the bottles within drifted across the room. "Thinking about what it was like."
"I guess it must be a big shock if you're muggle-born, yeah." Ernie said, snatching the bottle from the air and uncorking it. "It's hard to imagine, really."
"Well, what I've been realizing is… That was it. The high point of my life was getting a letter. It was never better than it was when I was ten years old." Denise said.
"Come on, that can't be true. Your wedding? Your kids?" Ernie poured out two glasses, whose inside rims frosted over the moment liquid touched them. He slid one over to Denise, who still couldn't help but feel impressed that the glasses felt room-temperature to the touch even as the clear liquid within cooled.
"Alright, fair." she conceded, taking a sip and only wincing a little. "Just… let me try and explain, alright? Think back to when you're ten years old, you're just sort of getting your first understanding that the world is big and complicated and out of anyone's control. That you aren't really special to the world, just to your mum. Just an inkling, right?"
"Sure." Ernie agreed, tipping his glass back, "I mean, that seems a little young, but I was pretty sheltered and, you know, privileged."
"My father was a milkman, and that wasn't exactly a growing field in the mid-90s." Denise pointed out, "Well… imagine what it's like, on the cusp of realizing all that, and getting a letter telling you that you're special after all, just like your brother. That instead of the mundane existence you're starting to realize is your future, there's magic. Instead of walking to school tomorrow to learn maths and chemistry, you'll be learning how to do miracles with a flick of your wrist."
She gave another little dismissive wave of her wand, and the bottle retreated back to the cabinet, which politely closed and locked itself.
"I guess that must have been pretty big, yeah. That's fair." Ernie said, "Justin never seemed to make a big deal of it, though."
"Your husband was about to go to Eton, that's not exactly working class." Denise pointed out, "He just switched from one exclusive public school to another. His life was always going to be that way, he wasn't ever going to have to realize he wasn't special either, you know?"
"Really softening the blow there, huh." Ernie said, and Denise chuckled to herself.
"Meetings always get me in a confrontational mood, I guess." she admitted. "This'll sound selfish, it is, but hell, sometimes I wish I could go back, you know?"
"Do some things over? I think everyone wants that, but they haven't made a time-turner that powerful yet." Ernie said absently, then paused, "I'm sorry, that was flippant."
"No, you're right." Denise said slowly, "Besides, I think even knowing what I know, I don't think I could've stopped him. But… it wouldn't really be to do much different, I don't think, just to go back to before everything got… tainted, I guess, with understanding. Back to the Garden of Eden, I guess."
"Hmm?" It was easy to forget that, for all that they celebrated Christmas, wizards weren't exactly a Christian lot.
"Nevermind, muggle shit." she said dismissively. "Like, when you first sit down in the Great Hall and food just appears in front of you, at that age, you don't know about Gamp's Law, you don't know there's a kitchen full of slaves under your feet. It's just food out of nowhere, it's just magic."
"I mean, I always knew that." Ernie said, "I just didn't know it was wrong yet… fuck, were you in school yet when Granger went on her house elf liberation tear? That was something."
"No, but I've heard about it. Fucking radlibs." Denise said, "She came into the shop two weeks back, you know? Misgendered me first thing, of course."
"Really? What happened?"
"I got misgendered at the shop."
"Why'd she do a thing like that?" Ernie asked.
"I was existing as a trans person in a society that constantly assigns gendered labels to people based on superficial characteristics without their consent." Denise explained.
"This was at the shop?"
"Yeah."
"Hell." Ernie said, "Not surprising, given her and her copper husband. It's been fifteen years and it still stings that Harry fucking Potter himself turned on us, you know? Still can't believe he threw his lot in with the bloody Ministry."
"Here we go again…" Denise said.
"No, seriously, that was the moment. The old Ministry was gone, the fash were thrashed, he had every young person in the country lined up behind him. He'd gotten a front row seat to how broken it all was, here was a chance to make a difference, and he sold Dumbledore's Army out to Shacklebolt and the fucking Aurors."
"I know." Denise assured him. Ernie leaned back in his chair, throwing back the rest of his glass and dropping it heavy against the wooden table. "It's not surprising, though, is it? He might have been raised by muggles, but he had money, privilege, a name-"
"I had those things." Ernie pointed out.
"Yeah, but you rejected them. Potter didn't pick his side because he knew better, that was basically just luck. Hell, I feel sorry for him."
"You feel sorry for Potter?"
"It doesn't make what he's done okay, but look, his whole life was just controlled by one abuser after another. His muggle family, then the likes of Snape and Dumbledore, after all that he was probably just, um…"
"Wanting to go back to getting his letter?" Ernie supplied.
"Yes, exactly! Wanting his little magic world just as it was. Not wanting to question it anymore." Denise said, "Which, you know, is a privilege a big vault of gold will buy you, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I suppose." Ernie admitted, "And most of the folks who followed him were pretty well-to-do as well. I guess they just wanted to get back to what they were promised, you know? Still… he didn't spare a thought for anyone else, did he? Certainly not the DA comrades he put in Azkaban."
"No, he's still a prick." Denise agreed, "And he's the reason we're still sitting here having meetings and printing a party newspaper out of my flat instead of making any kind of progress."
"Maybe next election." Ernie said, and they both broke out into laughter. It was a hollow, pained sort of mirth, but it was something.
"Certainly, they'll let us vote away their power. How it's always worked." Denise said.
"I just can't believe it's 2013 and we're still having these conversations." Ernie said, "About if there should be a fascist house in Hogwarts, about blood purity, about queer rights, about secrecy, about bloody slavery. That thing you said about us being trapped a hundred years back-"
"Well… it won't last forever, you know." Denise said, "The system's loaded with contradictions, it's teetering on the brink. The muggle one too, capitalism and all. Can't last forever."
"Liberation in our lifetime." Ernie echoed by rote, raising his empty glass to the concept.
"One way or another." Denise agreed, finishing her drink and setting it down. The frosting glass inside the rim, now dry of liquid, instantly warmed with a slight hiss of steam as the glass cleaned itself. "I hate to say it, but you should get going. Early shift tomorrow."
Ernie nodded, collecting the glasses and standing with a stretch. A glance at the clock on the wall showed a much later hour than he expected, and the tiny painting of the old woman set into the clockface looked rather cross with him that he'd stayed so long.
"See you next week?" he asked, "Justin should finally have an evening off work, he'll come along."
"Of course. Looking forward to it." she said. Ernie retreated out the door, the bolts jumping into place behind him as the flat locked up, and Denise leaned back heavily in her chair, staring at the clock.
Her wife wasn't due back another two hours from her shift, and if she waited that long to see her she'd be dead on her feet tomorrow. The hours at St. Mungo's got worse every year, as the budget shrank and nurses quit without replacement, and sometimes it felt like she went weeks without talking to her. With the kids away, their first and third years respectively, sometimes it felt like she was all alone.
She should have retreated up the narrow stairs to her bedroom, but instead she popped open the little closet under them, where all the old detritus of their lives had ended up. With a bit of effort, she wrestled free her school trunk, popping the latches and opening it with care. Inside was her old school robes, trimmed red and gold, a variety of dog-eared textbooks, the dragonhide potions gloves she now knew were horrifyingly unethical, brass scales which had long gone out of balance. She hesitated to hunt deeper, certain there was broken glass from the cheap phials she'd gotten at the bottom of the trunk someplace and not wanting to find them with her hands.
She sat back at her table, opening the photo album and pouring over the pictures. A handful of unmoving ones, then slowly growing more animated with the months, showing young children smiling, waving, playing, laughing. All of them blissfully ignorant of the problems with their world, none of them having any idea what was to come, which of them wouldn't survive to graduate in the coming years.
The one person Denise wishes she could see in the pictures was the one person who was never in them.
Under the album, in a manila envelope, there was a letter. It had gotten crumpled a bit over the years, lost at the bottom of trunks and drawers more than once, but it was one thing she could never bring to throw away. Overcome with a strange nostalgia, she drew the pages out slowly and flattened them against the desk with care, pouring over it again.
Wishing, just for a moment, she was reading it for the first time.
Ernie raised an eyebrow at that.
"Get a lot of letters." he said casually.
"Right, no, that's on me. Your Hogwarts letter, your invitation." Denise clarified. Ernie gave it a long moment, then shook his head.
"Nah, not really. Only just remembered I got one, isn't like I thought I'd end up somewhere else. Why?"
"Just nostalgic, I guess." Denise said, leaning back against her chair. Idly, she made the subtlest little motion with her wand, and the cupboard across the room cracked open and one of the bottles within drifted across the room. "Thinking about what it was like."
"I guess it must be a big shock if you're muggle-born, yeah." Ernie said, snatching the bottle from the air and uncorking it. "It's hard to imagine, really."
"Well, what I've been realizing is… That was it. The high point of my life was getting a letter. It was never better than it was when I was ten years old." Denise said.
"Come on, that can't be true. Your wedding? Your kids?" Ernie poured out two glasses, whose inside rims frosted over the moment liquid touched them. He slid one over to Denise, who still couldn't help but feel impressed that the glasses felt room-temperature to the touch even as the clear liquid within cooled.
"Alright, fair." she conceded, taking a sip and only wincing a little. "Just… let me try and explain, alright? Think back to when you're ten years old, you're just sort of getting your first understanding that the world is big and complicated and out of anyone's control. That you aren't really special to the world, just to your mum. Just an inkling, right?"
"Sure." Ernie agreed, tipping his glass back, "I mean, that seems a little young, but I was pretty sheltered and, you know, privileged."
"My father was a milkman, and that wasn't exactly a growing field in the mid-90s." Denise pointed out, "Well… imagine what it's like, on the cusp of realizing all that, and getting a letter telling you that you're special after all, just like your brother. That instead of the mundane existence you're starting to realize is your future, there's magic. Instead of walking to school tomorrow to learn maths and chemistry, you'll be learning how to do miracles with a flick of your wrist."
She gave another little dismissive wave of her wand, and the bottle retreated back to the cabinet, which politely closed and locked itself.
"I guess that must have been pretty big, yeah. That's fair." Ernie said, "Justin never seemed to make a big deal of it, though."
"Your husband was about to go to Eton, that's not exactly working class." Denise pointed out, "He just switched from one exclusive public school to another. His life was always going to be that way, he wasn't ever going to have to realize he wasn't special either, you know?"
"Really softening the blow there, huh." Ernie said, and Denise chuckled to herself.
"Meetings always get me in a confrontational mood, I guess." she admitted. "This'll sound selfish, it is, but hell, sometimes I wish I could go back, you know?"
"Do some things over? I think everyone wants that, but they haven't made a time-turner that powerful yet." Ernie said absently, then paused, "I'm sorry, that was flippant."
"No, you're right." Denise said slowly, "Besides, I think even knowing what I know, I don't think I could've stopped him. But… it wouldn't really be to do much different, I don't think, just to go back to before everything got… tainted, I guess, with understanding. Back to the Garden of Eden, I guess."
"Hmm?" It was easy to forget that, for all that they celebrated Christmas, wizards weren't exactly a Christian lot.
"Nevermind, muggle shit." she said dismissively. "Like, when you first sit down in the Great Hall and food just appears in front of you, at that age, you don't know about Gamp's Law, you don't know there's a kitchen full of slaves under your feet. It's just food out of nowhere, it's just magic."
"I mean, I always knew that." Ernie said, "I just didn't know it was wrong yet… fuck, were you in school yet when Granger went on her house elf liberation tear? That was something."
"No, but I've heard about it. Fucking radlibs." Denise said, "She came into the shop two weeks back, you know? Misgendered me first thing, of course."
"Really? What happened?"
"I got misgendered at the shop."
"Why'd she do a thing like that?" Ernie asked.
"I was existing as a trans person in a society that constantly assigns gendered labels to people based on superficial characteristics without their consent." Denise explained.
"This was at the shop?"
"Yeah."
"Hell." Ernie said, "Not surprising, given her and her copper husband. It's been fifteen years and it still stings that Harry fucking Potter himself turned on us, you know? Still can't believe he threw his lot in with the bloody Ministry."
"Here we go again…" Denise said.
"No, seriously, that was the moment. The old Ministry was gone, the fash were thrashed, he had every young person in the country lined up behind him. He'd gotten a front row seat to how broken it all was, here was a chance to make a difference, and he sold Dumbledore's Army out to Shacklebolt and the fucking Aurors."
"I know." Denise assured him. Ernie leaned back in his chair, throwing back the rest of his glass and dropping it heavy against the wooden table. "It's not surprising, though, is it? He might have been raised by muggles, but he had money, privilege, a name-"
"I had those things." Ernie pointed out.
"Yeah, but you rejected them. Potter didn't pick his side because he knew better, that was basically just luck. Hell, I feel sorry for him."
"You feel sorry for Potter?"
"It doesn't make what he's done okay, but look, his whole life was just controlled by one abuser after another. His muggle family, then the likes of Snape and Dumbledore, after all that he was probably just, um…"
"Wanting to go back to getting his letter?" Ernie supplied.
"Yes, exactly! Wanting his little magic world just as it was. Not wanting to question it anymore." Denise said, "Which, you know, is a privilege a big vault of gold will buy you, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I suppose." Ernie admitted, "And most of the folks who followed him were pretty well-to-do as well. I guess they just wanted to get back to what they were promised, you know? Still… he didn't spare a thought for anyone else, did he? Certainly not the DA comrades he put in Azkaban."
"No, he's still a prick." Denise agreed, "And he's the reason we're still sitting here having meetings and printing a party newspaper out of my flat instead of making any kind of progress."
"Maybe next election." Ernie said, and they both broke out into laughter. It was a hollow, pained sort of mirth, but it was something.
"Certainly, they'll let us vote away their power. How it's always worked." Denise said.
"I just can't believe it's 2013 and we're still having these conversations." Ernie said, "About if there should be a fascist house in Hogwarts, about blood purity, about queer rights, about secrecy, about bloody slavery. That thing you said about us being trapped a hundred years back-"
"Well… it won't last forever, you know." Denise said, "The system's loaded with contradictions, it's teetering on the brink. The muggle one too, capitalism and all. Can't last forever."
"Liberation in our lifetime." Ernie echoed by rote, raising his empty glass to the concept.
"One way or another." Denise agreed, finishing her drink and setting it down. The frosting glass inside the rim, now dry of liquid, instantly warmed with a slight hiss of steam as the glass cleaned itself. "I hate to say it, but you should get going. Early shift tomorrow."
Ernie nodded, collecting the glasses and standing with a stretch. A glance at the clock on the wall showed a much later hour than he expected, and the tiny painting of the old woman set into the clockface looked rather cross with him that he'd stayed so long.
"See you next week?" he asked, "Justin should finally have an evening off work, he'll come along."
"Of course. Looking forward to it." she said. Ernie retreated out the door, the bolts jumping into place behind him as the flat locked up, and Denise leaned back heavily in her chair, staring at the clock.
Her wife wasn't due back another two hours from her shift, and if she waited that long to see her she'd be dead on her feet tomorrow. The hours at St. Mungo's got worse every year, as the budget shrank and nurses quit without replacement, and sometimes it felt like she went weeks without talking to her. With the kids away, their first and third years respectively, sometimes it felt like she was all alone.
She should have retreated up the narrow stairs to her bedroom, but instead she popped open the little closet under them, where all the old detritus of their lives had ended up. With a bit of effort, she wrestled free her school trunk, popping the latches and opening it with care. Inside was her old school robes, trimmed red and gold, a variety of dog-eared textbooks, the dragonhide potions gloves she now knew were horrifyingly unethical, brass scales which had long gone out of balance. She hesitated to hunt deeper, certain there was broken glass from the cheap phials she'd gotten at the bottom of the trunk someplace and not wanting to find them with her hands.
She sat back at her table, opening the photo album and pouring over the pictures. A handful of unmoving ones, then slowly growing more animated with the months, showing young children smiling, waving, playing, laughing. All of them blissfully ignorant of the problems with their world, none of them having any idea what was to come, which of them wouldn't survive to graduate in the coming years.
The one person Denise wishes she could see in the pictures was the one person who was never in them.
Under the album, in a manila envelope, there was a letter. It had gotten crumpled a bit over the years, lost at the bottom of trunks and drawers more than once, but it was one thing she could never bring to throw away. Overcome with a strange nostalgia, she drew the pages out slowly and flattened them against the desk with care, pouring over it again.
Wishing, just for a moment, she was reading it for the first time.
Dear Mr. Creevey,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
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- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Erika
Erika this owns
Erika this owns
Subrosian_Smithy
endless
- Location
- Washington
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
This is wonderful.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I wonder how magic interacts with Marxist economic theory.
tankdrop24
Tread First into Hell
- Location
- The Center of the Universe: Toronto, Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Now I want to see what happened to that poor little girl who got pressured into join the Order of the Pheniox by her friend, then got pressured by the authorities in her life into confessing, leading to her being disfigured for the rest of her life, and is treated by the narrative as this great betrayer for it.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Someone please tell me at least the Shacklebolt Ministry was able to push through some of the more whiggish liberal Order of the Phoenix reforms even if the DA was betrayed. I mean Merlin's balls, the Wizengamot under the old Ministry of Magic was basically the 18th-19th century House of Lords but also the High Court of Justice, and under its medieval statutes accused "dark witches and wizards" could be apprehended by any means by Aurors, including Unforgiveable Curses, and be held before trial by the Dementors in Azkaban, or even just in extraordinary detention forever as Couch Sr. did, all for a day in court where your jury of peers was also your tribunal of judges which was also the legislative committee that empaneled your case and paid for your investigation and prosecution. And this is what they did to fellow Purebloods!
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- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
the shacklebolt ministry explicitly deployed the aurors to crush the DA.
Harry had a heated Ebert moment, it is vanishingly unlikely they did jack or shit to fix anything at all.
Harry had a heated Ebert moment, it is vanishingly unlikely they did jack or shit to fix anything at all.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
It causes bankers.
IIRC, the goblins utilize some distortion of the labor theory of value to argue that they should be paid rent on everything they ever made.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
I think that might just be Wizarding Britain (partly deliberately) misinterpreting the demands of Brotherhood of Goblins activists for reparations and lost royalties for the Ministry of Magic ignoring Goblin legal codes and all their fairy tale three-part magical oath stuff when deciding wizards just own everything.
Wait, is that canon? (i, uh, have not looked at any of the expanded universe materials)
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Canonically they vanish in a puff of epilogue, never to be mentioned again.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's a reason why there's literally 9.4K stories on Ao3 tagged "Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE ".
And why some also suspect post 2nd War, there's a lotta muggleborns running for the hills because after two wars aimed at them, and no sign of the Ministry reforming, I'm getting the fuck out before round 3 comes up.
- Location
- California
Rowling's WOG is like "Hermione totally reformed the ministry guys…"
And while I'm inclined to believe that things did improve, ultimately we also know:
House Elves are still enslaved (But we totally gave them more legal protections guys)
Slytherin, breeding ground for wizard nazis, named after a murderous bigot, into which students are still picked by an immortal magical artifact according to his will, still exists.*
The Malfoys dodged significant consequences.
*This deserves special consideration. Forget naming a school after a Confederate general, imagine if a school used magic hat making major academic decisions based on the will of a Confederate general with no end in sight. Nobody without proven white ancestry in my house!
And while I'm inclined to believe that things did improve, ultimately we also know:
House Elves are still enslaved (But we totally gave them more legal protections guys)
Slytherin, breeding ground for wizard nazis, named after a murderous bigot, into which students are still picked by an immortal magical artifact according to his will, still exists.*
The Malfoys dodged significant consequences.
*This deserves special consideration. Forget naming a school after a Confederate general, imagine if a school used magic hat making major academic decisions based on the will of a Confederate general with no end in sight. Nobody without proven white ancestry in my house!
RoboRenee
Trans of gender
- Location
- FFXIV, probably
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly I'd kind of always assumed another revolution was incoming. Whole generation of kids who got to see in their formative years that the Ministry hates them, is terrible, will not change, can and will absorb attempts to reform it with minimal impact, and folds like a house of cards if you come up to it with boatloads of A) Money or B) Violence. And they don't have money.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wait what?
After all-
Lots of bribes. Lots and lots of fuckign bribes.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
I mean, that's just the American justice system, isn't it. No need to look into anything past the 21th century to find this in liberalism. So yeah they probably moved on towards liberalism, there's elections and nothing changed except the nobility is now the bourgeoisie.
How many actually saw it though? If you weren't born to non magical parents and kept your head down during the one year of occupation at Hogwarts, you probably put it out of your mind as something defeated and gone. And you weren't too likely to follow politics at the time, most of them are a bit young for that.
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10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
They defected right before the ultimate battle, which apparently frees them of any prior wrong doing.
- Location
- California
And by "they" you mean Narcissa. Lucius did jack shit (and probably didn't kill people only because Voldemort took his wand), Draco literally led fellow students to capture Potter.
So, even worse.