Chapter 92

He stood and looked at the ward line.

"So, what should we do, Albus?"

He turned towards his deputy and gave her his twinkly eyed smile. "I guess we knock and see if anyone's home."

He stuck his wand into the outer ward and pulsed a stream of pure magic into it. Next to him, McGonagall did the same.

He waited, wand still held in the ward. A few moments later he felt an answering pulse shoot up the elder wand into his body. A nod from McGonagall showed that she too had been accepted. They unlatched the gate and stepped onto the property.

Walking up to the front door, he could feel the powerful ward magics sweep over him, probing him, judging him. He never thought he'd feel this kind of magic from a muggle residence. It was eerie.

The door swung open just as they reached it. A well dressed young woman stood in the door.

McGonagall froze. "Mrs. Granger?"

He glanced backward to look questioningly at his deputy.

"Professor McGonagall," said the now identified Mrs. Granger. Her voice was light and cheerful. He turned back to the young woman.

"And Headmaster Dumbledore too. What a surprise. And to what do we owe this pleasure?" We? He looked around.

"My husband is in the sitting room. Please follow me." The woman turned and lead them away.

McGonagall seemed to unstick herself. "Mrs. Granger, may I ask how you came across those clothes?" "Twilfitt and Tatting's. Nice, aren't they?" McGonagall had no time to reply before they entered the sitting room. A man, presumably Mr. Granger, stood up from the far side of the room. The man's clothes were no less respectable than his wife's, if a bit plain for his tastes.

"Professor McGonagall," Mr. Granger announced in a strong, jovial voice, "Glad to see you again, after almost a whole year. And Headmaster Dumbledore. The chief warlock himself." Mr. Granger motioned them both to sit down in the two arm chairs opposite where he'd been sitting. He then sat back down himself, while Mrs. Granger sat on his right. "Fire whisky?" He started pouring a dram.

"No, thank you, Mr. Granger," he said, without thinking. "We're here to ask—"

"—An where did yon get that?"

He looked askance at his deputy, who stared at the bottle held in Mr. Granger's hand.

Mr. Granger looked at the bottle as if he'd only just noticed it. "Oh, Lord Ogden gifted a crate to our lord last Christmas, and he graciously passed on a half dozen bottles to us. Good thing too, this variety is tricky to find, so I'm told."

"Tricky to incredulous.

find?"

McGonagall

sounded

He looked between his deputy and the Grangers.

Mr. Granger held the tiny glass to the strait-laced deputy headmistress.

McGonagall seemed to fight a small war with herself.

"Go on, Professor," said Mr. Granger. "You only live once."

The war ended with the forces of strait-lace routed. McGonagall took the glass and slowly drank as though from the elixir of life.

"Now, Headmaster." Mr. Granger turned to him. "What do we have to discuss? I hope Hermione isn't in trouble already."

"Well, we hope not, Mr. Granger. We're a bit concerned about your choice of magical guardian."

Mr. Granger frowned. "And how does this concern Hogwarts?"

"Lord Slytherin is a man about whom little is known. No one knows what he wants or what he is doing. He keeps secrets and doesn't tell people what is really going on." Mr. Granger smiled. "Ah, I understand. Kind of like how Hogwarts didn't mention about us not having even half responsibility for our own daughter?"

He stared.

Beside him, McGonagall choked on her drink.

Mrs. Granger shifted in her seat. "Or about both us and our daughter being subject to a completely separate set of laws from the mundane government, in which we are third-class citizens and have no representation."

He stared some more.

"Or about what inevitably happens to muggleborn children who refuse a magical education?" Mr. Granger's voice was a bit more pointed now. He flinched and glanced at McGonagall, who'd paled.

"Or about how much discrimination our daughter will face in the future? About how many built-in advantages older families have? Both legal and magical?"

"Or about how only eleven years ago, Magical Britain was in the middle of a civil war, in which people like us and our daughter were hunted down like dogs and slaughtered by a guerrilla organisation, many of the members of which then skipped prison because they were rich and powerful?"

"About how if we became inconvenient for certain people, we could disappear right from our own beds in the middle of the night and nothing we did alone could stop that?" "Now that's not true." That at least he could defend.

"Oh, really? How many muggleborn families survived the last war with the dark lord?"

His stomach dropped and his shoulders slumped. He looked into Mr. Granger's flinty eyes. When his voice emerged it sounded older than he'd ever heard it. "Okay, I think you've made your point. Perhaps we aren't as open as we would like to be with muggleborn parents. But what would you have us do?" He stretched his hands, palms faced out. "The truth would simultaneously enrage and terrify them, and alienate them from their own children. Many would blame them. Families would be torn apart."

Mrs. Granger reached for the bottle and poured herself a glass. "Some would, yes. But that could be ameliorated by doing what our lord did for us. He protects us. He brought us into his family and granted us what rights and privileges it is within his power to grant."

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