Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

62

“And what would you have us do” Lady Longbottom said, turning her shrewd eyes onto Tom “Kidnap the children? Eviscerate the muggles?”

Tom’s genial smile stayed in place but Eliza caught the anger that flashed through his eyes, the brief twitch of a hand that he wasn’t able to stop. The two of them would always struggle with politics. Slytherin Machiavellian tendencies aside it was a lot easier to curse your problems that to reason with them.

“Of course not, what has happened in the past has happened – but isn’t our very purpose here to advocate for change?”

“Change” Lady Abbot scoffed “And what change do you propose” she asked snidely and Eliza couldn’t resist butting in.

“Isn’t it obvious? It should have been done years ago really. We make it illegal to stop abandoning squibs in the muggle world – that way there are no more magical children being left abandoned in the muggle world”

Silence, and then impossibly even more shouting. One voice met Eliza’s ears over the noise.

“For an idealist you seem to have taken a cruel stance Lady Potter. Keep squibs here? In our world? They can’t do magic, they would be ostracised and cast aside. They could never belong” Lord Gamp rebutted but surprisingly someone else came to Eliza’s defence.

“In case you have forgotten” Lady Parkinson cut in somewhat patronisingly “Squibs are capable of some magic. In fact I’d argue half of them are more capable than you are”

Eliza was not the only one who had to stifle a laugh at that.

“And it’s interesting that you bring up your concerns with ostracising squibs Lord Gamp” Eliza butted back in, trying to tamper down her glee “For what are we doing to muggle-borns if not abandoning them to a world they will always be separate from? Always be different and judged? You may call me an idealist but at least I have ideals – the only thing you seem to care about is prolonging our peoples suffering”

For the first time since the meeting began silence settled over the Wizengamot chamber. Lord Gamp took a seat, face pale and lips drawn. Everyone seemed to mull over her worlds and Eliza could only hope she had broken through. She hadn’t exactly intended on becoming that passionate but if it helped her cause Eliza wouldn’t complain.

Deep down you care Eliza, Remus had said to her scraggly thirteen year old self who still bared her teeth instead of giving a smile, you care so much.

“It would be impossible for us to search down the squibs out there in the muggle world at this point but Lady Potter is right” Lord Parkinson said, smiling at her across the room “It’s time for a new age, a new start”

“We would need to alter the education system” Lady Fawley chipped in and the discussion unfolded around her. No longer screaming and hollering but actual open discussion. Progress, movement forward after all this time waiting. Eliza could do it, stop any more children being abandoned in the muggle world, bring back the old traditions.

She’d change the world around her, until even the stars themselves remembered her name.

She truly had come a long way.

~

By Mid-February the bill outlawing abandoning squibs is passed. The Hogwarts curriculum was going to be reformed over the next year or so to make it ‘squib-friendly’ An increase in theory classes for squibs, extra potions or herbology where the rest of students would be in charms or transfiguration. Eliza suggested that squibs could access third year subjects earlier, things like arithmancy and care of magical creatures didn’t need magic to be studied. She also slipped in that perhaps they should get a new history of magic teacher.