Chapter 323 - 17

699Chapter 17: Second Interlude: The Young Politician

Second Interlude: The Young Politician

The politics of Magical Britain are by-and-large reactionary. Led by traditionalist Pure-blood families, they have for years been isolationist, resisting change from without as well as within. Rotten or unsuccessful actions often go unnoticed for years, even decades, and like any flower tree that isn't properly pruned in the fall, so do the wizarding politics of Britain rarely, if ever, give new blooms in the spring.

There are some movements, though. The election of Minister Nobby Leach in 1962, for instance, is one such unusual occasion. The first Muggle-born Minister for Magic, he remains to this day the only one elected to wizarding Britain's highest political post. In his six-year term, his attempts of more noticeable changes to the system were often unscrupulously as well as scrupulously blocked by the mostly Pure-blood-led Wizengamot, and he was forced to vacate his seat under shady and never-explained circumstances. What his years in office have remained most known for is the surge of left-wing, modernist outcries.

His successor, Minister Eugenia Jenkins, thus had uncomfortable shoes to fill. Her greatest test to this day are the Squib Rights marches, protests years in planning organised by the Squib Rights groups, that have become famous for the outbreak of violent riots led by extremist Pure-bloods; her actions in the aftermath of these events earned her the respect of the larger wizarding populace and gave her political trust in the early 1970s in the face of Lord Voldemort's declaration of war on Muggle-born inclusionist left-wing political tides. This trust, however, proved to be surface-deep, and by 1975, when she was voted out of office, had all but disappeared.

During her time in office, Lord Voldemort's shady organisation, divisionary goals and underhanded dealings were coming to fuller light, thought they still remain hotly contested. Voldemort himself declared 'war on the derogation of the true wizarding values and the deliberate taint that is being pushed on our society by the insistence of equality of Muggle-borns to the established wizarding populace' in 1970, garnering much political support from the Pure-bloods. Having connections through his closest associates, now believed to be largely composed of his school classmates, allowed him to establish himself as a fringe political player quickly gaining ground on the now-tired moderates having to deal with the turbulent civil rights climate.

In the six years since, however, Lord Voldemort has grown to be considered a violent threat by a great part of Wizarding Britain. There has been an ever-increasing number of vanishings of both wizarding and wizard-related Muggle populace that has exploded into the public consciousness with the now-termed 'November Disappearances' of 1975, which have resulted, firstly, in the first truly large outcry demanding that Voldemort be deemed as a violent threat to the State and his initial declaration of intent designated as a formal declaration of war, and secondly, in the swift turning of the political tide against Minister Jenkins by both the moderates and the more extreme politicians alike.

Since then, while Voldemort himself has remained largely silent as a response, his followers – the self-named Death Eaters – appear to have embraced the newly-established political opinion, with other instances and types of violence becoming more frequent since. Therefore, though this 'war' appears to still be largely played in the political arena, there is indeed a cloud of doom slowly engulfing Wizarding Britain, heralded by the green-lit, empty-eyed skull out of whose mouth a snake slithers – the Dark Mark, which has in recent months started to become a calling card of the Death Eaters, prominently marking those actions that they claim as theirs.

I firmly believe that no peaceful solution can be found to the threat that Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters represent. As a Pure-blood whose family is of high standing, to the point that we are one of the few non-British families included in the infamous Sacred Twenty-Eight list and the only one whose roots trace to the Middle East, I cannot but hold an understanding of the extremist side in this conflict. Our society is slow to change, and slower to accept that we have a need for it; in contrast, the Muggle society is becoming ever faster, waiting for no one and expecting instant action. And traditions are held very highly by each and every one of us: tracing our ancestry back through the ages and invoking the deeds of those that came before us, honouring their actions and fashioning our opinions in light of their choices, these are all the things that we Pure-bloods are not even taught to do, but are raised with them considered axioms of our existence.

Yet at the same time, my family stands out. Not by way of the Weasleys and Prewetts and their like – we do not embrace the foreignness that are all things Muggle, nor the Muggle-borns who are so ignorant of our traditions and values – but in that we understand the other side, as well. We are one of the rare religious wizarding families, still holding to the Greatness of Allah, and for that we are often treated as strange, though many of them celebrate pagan holidays or their Christian variants: the Samhain and Hallowe'en, the Yuletide and Christmas, the Spring festival and Easter. By the Muggle-borns, we are also sometimes seen as strange, for our differing wizarding garb and our acceptance of what they deem are socially-progressive attitudes that in the Muggle world appear to be so incompatible with one's spiritual life. We have been balancing on that edge for years, and will continue to do so until the Shafiq family is extinguished.

But in this cause, I will stand against Lord Voldemort. Not because my father believes we may be more likely to survive by siding with Albus Dumbledore, nor because to remain neutral will by the end seem detestable (though I am certain my father will attempt to hold such an appearance for as long as is feasible; after all, we have business and political allies on both sides of this conflict, and we are the only true traders with the East, which makes us invaluable for everyone). I will not even stand against him because he is a tyrant and tyranny walks hand-in-hand with misery. No; I will stand against Lord Voldemort because no one man can aspire to become God, to be worshipped as one and to crown himself as one, nor to take Death's name for his own. He is but a man, a wizard of great power, but just a wizard even so, and his voice is no more or less valuable than anyone else's. So, though I may share certain of his and his followers and supporters' convictions, in that Muggle-borns are indeed unsuited for our society, I categorically refuse his intent of segregation, subjugation and destruction. Muggle-borns need to be educated, need to be integrated in productive, effective ways. They need to be familiarised with the Magical traditions and expectations, need to be taught the proper respectful behaviours and impolite taboos; they need to be given a chance and equal opportunity to join in our society and share in our history and traditions. And when this happens, I will gladly be the first to stand by their suggestions and ideas for change and improvement, because they will have finally gotten the necessary knowledge to understand the Magical folk, the way that they instinctively understand the Muggle one, for having lived as Muggles for eleven years and more.

Lily Evans is a prime example of such a thing as I speak of – she is eager, certainly, and her mind is sharp and quick enough that she holds the potential for greatness in social justice and civil rights struggle that she appears to aspire to. But she is uneducated in the ways of our politics and society; she is naïve and mostly blind to the underlying currents of thought and deed that make up who we Magicals are on a fundamental level. When our conversation veers into the fine details of politics, she stumbles and seems lost in the murkiness of incomprehension, and nowhere has this been more obvious than in our last conversation at Hogwarts, when she asks whether there are any news on the case against Cain Mulciber for his attack on us.

When I answer her with: "Not much so far, other than the fact that both sides want it expedited. My father's already spoken with Jenkins, he'll get her to put pressure on the department if necessary, keep them from derailing it purposefully as much as she can," her follow-up question of: "Former Minister Jenkins? Did she stay within the Ministry after that fiasco last fall?" shows exactly how uninformed she still remains about the State affairs that, while not exactly fresh, are still current enough to be causing ripples.

Education is the key, though, and I gladly offer her the tools she needs to reach her own conclusions by explaining: "Minchum wants her close. His position as the new Minister for Magic isn't nearly as solid as he wants everyone to think, not with the Pure-blood extremist faction still breathing down his neck. The fact is, Eugenia Jenkins knew how to deal with them; she should have been kept in office in my opinion. Instead we're stuck with a hard-liner like Harold Minchum, who has almost no concept of delicacy. It's exactly what Voldemort wanted, and he got it."

She demonstrates her sharpness almost immediately by asking: "You think the November Disappearances were purposefully done to get her out of the position?" and I do have to say that she is managing to impress me, little by little, though I had been certain that she would not.

And speaking of this event, how appropriate is the word 'fiasco'. Calling them 'the November Disappearances' is far less sensationalist than what I'd expected of our media, though perhaps whoever came up with it had known that it would land all the harder for it, and it really is a matter of horror fiction novels – several small and somewhat isolated mixed communities decimated with no true culprit in sight and no evidence to orient the investigation, either. People literally vanished into thin air, and no one has any clue what's happened to them or where they've ended up, not even Dumbledore himself.

Of course, for those who pay attention, the event didn't come as a shock, not really. It's only the people who choose to pretend that nothing's going on that have been caught unawares.

"I do," I confirm the Gryffindor's question. "People have been going missing for several years now. No one notices the Muggle disappearances, but my father has several acquaintances who've been looking into it quietly, and many of the missing Muggles had some connection to our world, whether through Muggle-born family members or just by living in an area with a high magical populace. The disappearances of Muggle-borns was being handled with surprising delicacy until last November, as well; barely any coverage whatsoever. Then, within less than a month, there's almost three hundred reported missing, and the story was picked up and given a strong no-vote-of-confidence spin shockingly quickly by the media, considering how little the frequency of such things was noted beforehand. This was purposeful and premeditated well, mark my words."

"So, does that mean Voldemort has people in the Daily Prophet, or that the anti-Jenkins faction simply used his move to get rid of her?" Lily asks. The young Gryffindor, for all her faults, does seem capable of deductive reasoning; unfortunately, she lacks the knowledge necessary to reach the correct conclusions. And, of course, political thinking is something one is taught, as much as it requires an innate tendency towards multi-layered thought and an inclination towards correct verbal framing of one's opinions and arguments.

Though Slytherins like to tout that they are the cunning ones, this is quite untrue in my opinion; theirs is a house of ambition, far more than cunning, and possessing of a sly political mind is not limited to Salazar Slytherin's elect. It is for the traits we hold as our defining ones that we are sorted, not for the traits we simply make use of.

"No;" I correct her, "I should think that Voldemort simply understood the political situation well enough to know that a massive but shadowy and thus frightening show of force would be enough to oust her from office. The anti-Jenkins faction within the Ministry was most likely responsible for the Daily Prophet turning against her so decisively. The fact is that she'd made enemies on both sides – the hard-liners disliked what they called her laissez-faire attitude towards Voldemort as a threat, and the liberals hated her for the way she handled the Squib Rights matches and the Pure-blood riots back in '69. For all that she had dealt very competently with the riots, her intervention went a long way towards lessening the impact the Rights marches could have had on our politics. Now that we have Minchum as the Minister, you can expect the war to be coming out of the shadows within the next year or so. It's what the hard-liners want, and at this point, I suspect it's also what Voldemort wants. He's certainly consolidated his army by now and if the November Disappearances mean anything, it's that he's almost ready to deliver on the true meaning of that declaration of war he made five year ago."

"You think the November Disappearances were the opening shots, don't you?" Lily realises, and it's almost fascinating to watch how the knowledge settles into dread on her face. My sisters and I have been taught from infancy not to let our emotions show, and it's truly impossible for me to imagine ever revealing them the way that Lily Evans seems to do regularly.

Clara, as ever, is the more hopeful one of us, and she demonstrates it by explaining: "He does, but I'm not certain of it yet. Amir tends towards defeatist attitudes when it comes to peaceful solutions."

"There can be no peaceful solutions when it comes to Voldemort," I counter. "And the longer we delay the acceptance of reality, the more time we give him to recruit as many unsavoury, maltreated creatures to his side, to say nothing of the conservative Pure-bloods. He should have been dealt with back in the nineteen-sixties when he first came onto the political scene."

Jasper's disagreement is, as ever, derogatory and disbelieving; he, more than any of my friends, embraces his inner cynic, and yet remains strangely positive nonetheless. His comment is a whispered: "We're British; ignoring problems is our MO. Or have you forgotten about Hitler?" in the scratchy, laboured sound that is his voice now, courtesy of Cain Mulciber and his ilk (it makes me wonder how many were needed to subdue us, because by himself, he would never have succeeded, not even with the element of surprise. It is why I know there are others walking free).

"Hitler?" I must ask; I know who the man is, of course, but I cannot say that I know what Jasper means by his words. After all, Britain did lead the Allies against him.

He could probably explain it much better, his interest in history is greater than that of the rest of us; Clara does it in his stead, to spare his larynx: "He means the fact that Muggle Britain seemed incapable of making up their mind as to Hitler as a threat even as late as 1936; Churchill flagellated the government in one of his speeches at the time, because he and his associates had been urging for rearmament in the face of German politics for years by that point."

"In The Locusts Years speech to the House of Commons," Jasper adds. "They go on in a strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. Has a nice ring to it."

Clara smiles indulgently, even as she continued her explanation to me: "Jasper has a point; there was that strange dichotomy in the sixties, between what looked like liberal political leanings on the surface, what with Nobby being elected the first Muggle-born Minister for Magic, and the conservative undertones with the crack-down on magical creatures suspected of forming dangerous groups. "

"They were forming dangerous groups; the werewolf packs from those years are all Voldemort's now," I must remind her.

It doesn't appear to deter her, however, as she continues: "Yes, but that's not my point. What I'm trying to say is that this sort of political climate wouldn't have allowed us to take Voldemort seriously, at least not prior to 1970, and even then, with Jenkins less than two years in office and proving herself with the Pure-blood riots handling, there was simply no way that Dumbledore's warnings about Voldemort as a threat would be heeded. It's only now that people are starting to realise that this is a potentially enormous problem that isn't going away. Minchum doesn't have the full support of the Wizengamot given that half of them are privately supporting Voldemort's agenda, and his proposal about increasing Dementor numbers in Azkaban reeks of further extremist actions, so the moderates won't have it; Ignatius Tuft got ousted quick as you please when he tried to get that idiotic idea of a Dementor breeding program passed, and that was the joint work of left- and right-winged moderates. Don't discount them, Amir."

"They're losing ground, though, Clara. Minchum's election itself shows that radicals are gaining ground, and you know as well as I that radicals prefer noticeable, controversial methods and solutions."

"Does that mean they might use Mulciber's trial as their platform, then?" Lily asks, bringing us back to her original question, and in quite a productive way for our discussion, as well.

"Not only that," I confirm, "but the outcome itself will depend on what ends up best suiting our new Minister and the Wizengamot. He'll most likely be found guilty, given the Priori Incantatem and his confession, but my father and I are expecting the length of his sentence to be anywhere from half a year to twenty; certainly not life imprisonment, as is the usual norm."

"The usual norm?"

"For adult wizards convicted of casting any Unforgivable, the punishment is life imprisonment. It is usually notoriously difficult to prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, and the cases are always made as public as possible, because the public – most of them wizarding elite, but an extremely large number of progressive middle class members as well – have been vehement about that shadow of a doubt; the last time someone was convicted for this was in 1911. As for Mulciber, within a day of his arrest, there was already an amendment to the law being considered that would reduce the sentence in cases of minors and first-time offenders. Should this pass – and it will, I have little doubt of that with the sympathy spin Mulciber's side has been giving the whole affair – he will most likely serve even shorter than anyone else in his position would have."

Lily demonstrates her ignorance by demanding to know: "What does politics have to do with a criminal trial?" and she does appear quite incredulous, which is to me in equal measure pitiful and admirable – pitiful for her disconnect with the true state of affairs, and admirable for her idealistic positive attitude, no matter how detrimental it will be for her in the long run. "I mean, I understand that it'll be politicised and get big coverage in the media, but shouldn't the court be impartial to that?"

Jasper makes a scornful noise and shakes his head sharply. "Not in our world", he says, imbuing his words with all the disgust he feels on this point, that we all share.

Clara, with her inclination towards the legal practices, is the one most suited to explain, and I keep quiet and let her take over the explanation. "There's no separation between the judicial and the legislative branches of our government whatsoever. The Wizengamot acts as the Wizarding High Court of Britain, but it passes the laws, meaning it acts as the Wizarding Parliament. Even with the weak separation of power that is the norm for Muggle Britain, this would be unacceptable – can you even imagine the House of Lords acting as a lower court, or the courts acting as the UK Parliament? – yet no one seems to care because there is no such thing as a political party that would represent a unified group seeking specifically defined goals. There are groups with interests, but how can you hold accountable a group that's not defined, if they end up influencing, often shadily and without proper admittance and acknowledgment, people who've campaigned and been elected to the Wizengamot? It's judges acting as and for politicians, interpreting laws they make however they see fit, or even inventing completely new ones practically on the spot, for any specific trial, fully under the influence that no one can regulate. A complete travesty. Additionally, the trails themselves are beyond illogical. One can have a barrister, but it's primarily to serve as character witness rather than in actual defence, which falls to the accused themselves; jury trials don't even exist in thought, let alone practice; and the accused doesn't even get to be in the room for the whole duration of the trail but is brought in only to give testimony, meaning that they don't get to hear all the evidence against them. Honestly, I have no words for how utterly messed up the whole thing is, so if Mulciber ends up walking in spite of everything against him, I'd not be surprised," she finishes, and by this time she is practically spitting venom with every word, for which I blame her not at all; she is passionate about our justice system, and to be at the whims of it now and in this way is the last thing she would have ever wanted. Yet it is all we have, and it is more than many others would have had, too, for my father's political influence.

Lily stares at Clara with her mouth hanging open, seeming unconsciously, and it is the first time that I have seen this for a literal occurrence, rather than a metaphorical expression. Her level of shock is proportionate to her illiteracy on this matter, of course, but it is still quite jarring to see the extent of it – not because she doesn't deserve to feel it, but because of the grim thought that a vast number of people have the exact same level of understanding that she does. After a few moments of gave silence, the Gryffindor girl closes her mouth and swallows thickly, blinking to clear her eyes of the remnants of her shock. When she speaks, her voice is hoarse: "How is it that no one's ever done anything about this?"

Clara scoffs at that. "Ah, because living up to a hundred and fifty is the norm for magical folk and there's this ridiculous notion that age means wisdom, instead of senility. Add to that the low population number, the preference for antiquated mentality, and the general scorn for anything even remotely coming from the Muggle world, and the evolution of the country is slowed or even completely stalled. I'm not saying the Muggle world is better than the wizarding world, not in everything, but there is clear benefit to the force that modernisation and dynamic international politics exert on our internal development. Wizarding Britain's been dramatically isolated from both the other Wizarding countries and the Muggle world for years, and this was not helped in the least by both our hesitance to involve ourselves with the European Wizarding War back in the forties and Dumbledore's late-by-all-accounts resolution of that mess. And, of course, very little of Wizarding Britain cared for the Second World War; I believe we cited the Statute of Secrecy as our reason for not responding to Churchill's plea for help. So it is no wonder that no one wishes to work with us, and we are just as happy to remain as we were three hundred years ago. Given this sentiment, I always wonder how we managed to install any modernized plumbing in Hogwarts at all, to speak nothing of the Hogwarts Express!"

"So what can we do?" the Gryffindor demonstrates that forwardness that her house is known for. She does sound almost desperate, too. "There must be something!"

I find myself compelled to quell her obvious anxiety, a strange feeling that I indulge for the simple reason that I see no reason not to: "My father is doing what can be done, and what cannot be done through the system, that is what you and the others will be doing here, and we along with our older colleagues in the Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry for Magic will do out there."

The decisiveness in her nod and the fire in her eyes is what convinces me that we have not made the mistake by initiating her. I was unsure about her for a very long time; Clara has liked her from the start, and of course, Alice Ainsworth has been singing her praises, but her connection with Severus Snape did not recommend her to us given what we knew of him through Felix, and from the observations of some of the others, she left an impression of a rash person. Rashness is a trait to be harnessed in appropriate situations, but certainly to be controlled very tightly in all the rest. But Clara persevered in her insistence on this, and the incident by the lake during the exams seems to have caused her enough sting to encourage her to become more thoughtful, at least in the short term.

We shall see; she is young yet, and if war does one thing unfortunately well, it is to mature beyond their years those that it does not kill. I do find myself hoping she is of the former, rather than the latter group, when our Wizarding War truly starts in earnest.

A/N: This fully concludes Part One of this story, so I want to take this opportunity to thank all the readers, reviewers, followers and those who have favorited my story. Your beyond warm reception and positive words have boosted my confidence in this project and have made me smile more times than I can count. Aside from that, a HUGE thank you to Moon999, who has become my quasi-beta, listening to my endless ramblings on future plans, debating HP canon points and speculating on possible interpretations, giving her suggestions, and always, always being encouraging about my writing as a whole. Your help, enthusiasm and support has been invaluable to me, Lui.

Now, for a bit more background on my approach to Wizarding politics during the time of this story for those who are interested:

Nobby Leach, Eugenia Jenkins, and Harold Minchum are, in fact, pottermore-stated MoMs for the time periods that I'm working with, and as some may have noted, I've kept the sense of danger and fear perhaps lower than what would be expected five years into a conflict. There are multiple reasons for this, not least of which is that to me a full-on ten-year war sounds unsustainable given the fact that Magical Britain can't number more than 50.000 people (that can't even populate a small city), that their political and socio-economic systems appear to be relatively modern, that the degree of fear that obviously existed by the end makes more sense for urban warfare than it does for conventional warfare with battlegrounds and fronts, and that this war had to be hidden from 55 million Muggles living in the UK at the time (if it hadn't been, other Wizarding countries would have intervened, because secrecy is paramount for all wizarding folk, not just the UK ones, and I doubt even Voldemort could have gone against the whole wizarding world without some serious recruitment outside of the UK borders, which takes time and resources). Beyond this, I feel the general populace is rarely aware of the extent of shadowy actions done by certain individual groups, which I feel could have allowed Voldemort to work actively towards his supremacy goals for the first five years with his usual means (intimidation, bribery, infiltration, mind-control) without the general public becoming panicked in 1975 the way that they were in 1981, so I've done my best to establish a logical progression of the First Wizarding War taking all these facts into account. And, let's not forget, Voldemort's single biggest goal was not, in actuality, obtaining supremacy over the country, but immortality through creating and hiding Horcruxes, and given the difference in his treatment of the locket (for which he finished the beyond extensive protections in 1979) and the diary and cup (given to loyal members for safekeeping, could have been at any point after Lucius and Bellatrix had proven themselves, so let's say after 1972 but more likely to be in the later half of the decade since I doubt they could have earned this degree of trust in just a few months, even if they hadn't known what it was that they were guarding), I think he would not have felt in any hurry to actually engage in full-out slaughter that war always is. As is foreshadowed in this interlude and Ch 14, however, that open war will be breaking out soon enough (these sorts of conflicts can escalate with lightning speed, especially when both parties want them to).

I've done the best research I could on the Wizengamot and the British powers system; the only thing I've been able to find is a note under the Wizengamot HP wikia page that says the Wizengamot acts as a parliament in that it has the power to veto or pass laws, which does go a long way towards explaining Fudge's indirect implication during Harry's ridiculous trial that he can easily change laws to suit his own biased purposes, and I think it's not a big jump from there to the idea that, especially during the First Wizarding War, the Wizengamot members could be bribed and frightened by money and threats (the two most famous motivators in the world) into acting corruptly, and probably also removed and replaced if they proved to be more trouble than they were worth, as it suited any sufficiently powerful interest group (such as Voldemort, for instance, or even more generally the Pure-bloods). I have to admit that the separation of power feels far murkier to me in the UK than the US (and no wonder, when the US came into existence under the idea of no branch of government having too much power over the populace), but it is still very clear that there is, in fact, a well-established order that I couldn't even begin to find in any and all information that exists about the governance of Wizarding Britain.

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