Dumbledore sighed and met her gaze, the twinkle for once gone from his eyes. "Part of what I am about to tell you is confidential, known only to those in the Department of Mysteries and a few senior members of the Wizengamot. Did you know that the number of new wizards and witches being born is slowly declining and that the Wizarding world is basically stagnant?"
"What are you talking about?" McGonagall knew what the word meant, but didn't see how it related to the current topic under discussion. "I know that because of the deaths caused by the last two Dark Lords that the population of the wizarding world as a whole might be down, but I had no idea the birth rate was going down."
"Inbreeding among wizards and witches has caused the birth rate of magically able children to go down." Albus told her simply. "There are more squibs being born every day."
"Surely the infusion of muggle-borns and half-bloods is able to counter that." McGonagall seemed surprised that things might be as bad as he had indicated.
"It isn't something that is obvious to the naked eye yet," Dumbledore began to explain, "but as head of the Wizengamot among other things, I can get a look at the birth statistics and I did about 40 years ago, when I started noticing, a decrease in the number of witches and wizards attending Hogwarts. I also checked with the Headmasters and headmistresses of other European schools and they were also showing small but steadily declining numbers, more than could be accounted for by the actions of Grindelwald and his followers or even now Voldemort and his followers. Even though the pure bloods will not admit it, muggle-borns and those with a mixed magical heritage far outnumber them and it is among the pure bloods that the decline is the most obvious and the children are some of the weakest magically."
After a few moments pause he continued, "Also except for a few new potions such as the Wolfsbane potion, there have been no magical advances of any kind in the last fifty years or so. It has also been noted that with each generation while our first years start out fairly powerful with the first year spells, but as they progress through their years of school, their power seems to level out by their third year and even at the point where they would normally go through their magical maturity around fifteen or sixteen, their power level doesn't increase all that much. This seems to be the case even for muggle-borns. This trend has been studied for the last twenty years, using records going back over the last one hundred years. There is some speculation among a few members of the Department of Mysteries along with several other departments that more of our kind should be capable of wandless magic given the power levels recorded for them when they start their first year of school. It has also been noted that among the pure-blood families that refuse to even consider marrying muggle-borns or half bloods that the number of Squibs is rising steadily due to inbreeding."
"Do they have any idea what is causing this?" McGonagall was caught up in what she was hearing. She had quickly realized the implications behind the fact that each generation of witches and wizards seemed to be a little weaker than the last.
"Several factors," Dumbledore told her. "Did you know that most muggle-borns, unless they have married into wizarding families or are very clearly powerful, leave the wizarding world within a few years of graduating from Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, or Durmstrang."
"Why would they want to do that?" McGonagall hadn't been aware of this.
"Discrimination." Dumbledore told her simply. "About a hundred years ago, the Purebloods of the time realizing that the muggle-borns were growing in number and would quickly outnumber them put legislation in place limiting what occupations a muggle-born could do, because they were afraid of losing their power. They managed to lock them out of most positions of power in the Ministry, so they couldn't do anything to make changes." Dumbledore told her. "Some of those who have left the wizarding community here have immigrated to America or Australia where there is very little distinction between muggle-borns and pure-bloods, so they can exercise their full potential. Others have just returned to the muggle world and for those who can not afford it the wizarding world is forced to pay for their re-education to the ways of the muggle world so they can find a job there."
"And nothing has been done to try and reverse these laws?" McGonagall couldn't believe the wizarding community could be so short-sighted.
"Every time someone has recognized what the discrimination of muggle-borns is doing to our world and tried to get legislation enacted to relax or remove those restrictions, the pure bloods step in and block it." Dumbledore shook his head over the sheer stupidity of it. "As for what is causing the magic levels to decline among our students instead of increasing, besides inbreeding, all we have are guesses. All accidental magic is wandless and while usually driven by emotion, it is quite powerful. It might be how our students are taught, the wands themselves, or maybe a combination of both. We are forcing their ability to do wandless magic to follow a path of specific words and gestures to work and for the power they use to flow through the wands instead of flowing the way it wanted to. This probably causes their wandless magical ability to weaken from lack of use if not completely atrophy."
"While all of this is indeed cause for concern," McGonagall put in, "that still doesn't explain why Mr. Potter is so important."
"There are several reasons." Dumbledore told her. "The first being that as the Destroyer of Voldemort, he has a lot of clout and though he doesn't like the idea he is in a position to make changes and even have abolished those laws that prevent the muggle-borns from being able to make any real contributions in our world so they will stay. Not to mention it would be nice to see him get married and settle down with a nice young witch"
"And possibly father some magically powerful children?"
"Yes there is that." Dumbledore agreed, as if the idea only just now occurred to him, but McGonagall wasn't fooled.
"Any other reasons?"
"Just one other, if at some point we can convince him to become a teacher at Hogwarts, he might be able to help our first years begin to harness their wandless magic, which might lead to them getting more powerful magically when they reach magical maturity. Otherwise, according to the best guesses made by those who have been studying this and also taking into account all the powerful wizarding families that were lost during the times of Grindelwald and Voldemort, we have maybe two hundred years before the only thing being born in the wizarding world will be squibs." Dumbledore's expression was grim as he said this.
"So once again we need to get Mr. Potter to become the wizarding world's salvation without telling him why." McGonagall concluded tartly.
"I'm afraid so," Dumbledore agreed. "If he knew that the existence of our entire race hinged on him remaining here, given his current level of anger, he would run far and fast and that would be the end of wizardkind."
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