Glancing at her for a moment, I saw only complete support, confidence both in my decisions and her own.
"…is simple enough too — everyone there more or less understands the severity of the consequences, should they try anything."
"Watching over every little thing?" Hermione shook her head.
"Hardly," I merely smiled. "In truth, Daphne and Pansy don't need my protection at all — it's already arranged. Not every adult wizard could do them harm. As for petty squabbles and problems, I don't get involved in those. And you," I glanced at Daphne again, "do keep finding yourself in the odd minor clash between cliques within the house."
"You know about that?" Daphne looked surprised, but almost at once a faint smile crossed her face, and with a slight tilt of her head she allowed herself something she wouldn't outside the "inner circle" — she rested her head on my shoulder. "Though, why should I be surprised."
"You see, if a genuinely serious conflict ever broke out — especially over something like 'how dare you, consorting with a Muggle-born' — the Muggle-born in question would show up, and that would put an end to all questions. As would anyone fond of asking them. They're not children anymore; it's time they learned to bear the consequences of their actions."
"Darling," there was a note of laughter in Daphne's voice. "You have one major flaw — you don't know how to solve problems non-radically."
"As one dictator supposedly said, if the joke's to be believed: 'How do you make everyone happy? Shoot the ones who aren't.'"
"Right," now it was Hermione's turn to hold up a halting hand. "We've drifted much too far off topic."
"You're right, little sister. So — how exactly would your lessons and the rest of it help students within their own houses? How would it protect against sudden attacks, traps, ambushes? After those very lessons, one banal mass attack, and the whole cohort's laid up. Bathroom trips, ambushes in Hogsmeade, walks about the grounds and so on — you can't avoid those, unless every member of your little 'club' burrows underground like rats and never shows their face. You can't go everywhere, all the time, as one big group, or even in smaller ones."
The pair exchanged glances. It seemed such simple, entirely unspecific matters hadn't occurred to them at all — they'd simply wanted to start up another movement. Well-intentioned but thoughtless — a menace to any community.
"Ideally," I continued the thought, "what you'd need is total social isolation from potential enemies. Self-sufficient. Then you could protect those incapable of protecting themselves, which is a dismal state of affairs in itself."
"And how exactly is one meant to do that?!" Potter threw his arms out rather sharply. "Since you're so clever?"
"Doesn't concern me in the slightest," I waved it off. "Everyone I care about is protected. If some idiots choose to disregard that fact, that's their problem. And no, Harry, I know what you're about to say. Something like: 'Your sister's Muggle-born too, how can you not protect her?!' From reasonably sensible people, she's protected simply by being my sister. From fools, likewise. From powerful fools… well, we don't have any of those around. Plus, Hermione's a talented witch in her own right. What's more, as I see it, she's currently keeping company with you, which means she's protected by your influence, however you yourself might feel about that influence. Your one genuine rival, in the shape of Malfoy, gave up on you and the whole feud ages ago, in case you hadn't noticed. Only your good mate Ron keeps quietly slinging mud at him."
"Do you just not care about anyone else at all?" Hermione demanded, and Potter nodded along.
"And why should I?" I finally looked up from Daphne's notes and leaned forward across the table. "My dear little sister, in this world, strength decides everything. I don't mean to boast, but just look at me — no one aware of even a fraction of my capabilities is in any hurry to stand against me over anything."
"Well, yes," Daphne smirked and jotted down a couple of runes. "There's the odd exception."
"Idiots — statistical outliers. I built my reputation, established a certain 'background'…"
"I can even guess," Daphne spoke up again, "exactly who you mean."
"First I'm hearing of it."
"That's the flimsiest excuse yet."
"Either way, no one's ever dared move against me. Or rather — they would, if they thought they could wipe out all my capabilities in a single blow and secure themselves. And look at that — dead quiet in our house, our own radicals keeping their heads well down…"
"They've simply seen you in action," Daphne couldn't help adding, meaning that some of the Hufflepuff radicals belonged to Flitwick's duelling club.
"…I've built connections, or at the very least simple goodwill, with certain influential families or powerful expert wizards. And at the same time, I'm just as Muggle-born as anyone else, just like you, little sister. Yes, if push came to shove, many might turn their backs on me in a moment, but even then my own personal strength would remain. Even stripped of all support, I could easily and harmlessly step aside and live quietly, tending to my own affairs."
"And what's your point?"
"It's simple. A wizard is a wizard. Everyone has their own 'starting capital,' their own opportunities and abilities they're born with. But there's no such thing as the truly strong and the truly weak — only the result of one's development. A wizard is obliged to develop, if he wants to reach the heights, the rewards, the safety, or whatever else he's after. Safety is part of success, and everyone has to achieve their own success for themselves. Yes, there are talented exceptions who need support, but they're few and far between."
The pair slumped a little, but the disagreement still living in their hearts wouldn't let them simply give up, though they clearly had no intention of pressing the conversation further.
"And to close out the conversation. There's no protecting everyone from bullying and every other bit of filth out there — that's simply impossible. Outright violence needs to be stamped out in such a way that the troublemakers either have no means of returning to their old tricks, or no desire to. And as for personal capability…"
I looked Hermione straight in the eye.
"You failed to sell me on your idea, which, to my mind, is a weakness on your part. Find something you can use to buy my time — of which I have precious little as it is — if you want me spending it protecting the weak and inexperienced."
"I'm your sister!" Hermione burst out.
But there was an answer for that too, however impolite or ungracious.
"And is that reason enough for me to throw myself into your recklessly pointless schemes?"
Hermione shot up from the table and stormed off out of the library. Potter looked at me with mild reproach.
"You could have… you've got the strength…"
"Could have 'what'? Hacked them into bloody mincemeat?" I turned my gaze on Potter now, fixing him with a fairly aggressive stare. "What? Beaten everyone black and blue and bloody? Turned the school into a slaughterhouse? That wouldn't change idiots' opinions one bit, and the fear would only breed a fresh desire to do away with me and everyone else — I've been through this before. That idiot Nott still hasn't grasped the pointlessness of his own efforts."
Potter said nothing, but his manner clearly betrayed at least the urge to shake his head, though I don't understand his drive to defend absolutely everyone who might merely fit the description of "innocent." I even found myself wondering whether the lad would switch sides entirely, if life ever revealed that the families and wizards he currently considered evil incarnate turned out to be innocent after all.
"But surely…"
"That's beside the point, Harry. And I understand perfectly well what the pair of you are thinking. As Daphne already said," I even allowed myself a small, involuntary nod in her direction, "I don't know how to solve problems non-radically. Or at least, not very radically. Are you quite certain you want me carving up with a sword everyone who treats Muggle-borns badly?"
In Potter's eyes I saw my own reflection, and for a moment it seemed to me that what I glimpsed in that very reflection wasn't myself, the "splendid and mighty" knight without fear or reproach that some students apparently saw me as — I have no idea where they got that notion — but rather some manner of horseman of the apocalypse. It seemed Potter's journey trailing after me had left its mark on how he viewed the world at large, and me in particular. Though, could I really have expected otherwise?
Potter shook his head, but however much he might have wished to voice his displeasure at my answers and remarks, there was, behind the lenses of his glasses, some measure of understanding as to why I'd answered their proposal the way I had, rather than some other way. Of course, I harbour some hope that he or Hermione will come to fully understand, since I hadn't laid out my thoughts in full either, nor sketched out the various ways things might unfold, for there could be a great many such details. But something had taken root, all the same. It seemed Potter wasn't quite so principled as my sister.
Potter left, leaving me alone with Daphne in the library's reading room, alone with our research and other notes, free to return once more to studying the new and probing the unknown, though the conversation itself couldn't help but leave plenty to talk about.
"And you won't help them?" Daphne asked me the moment the reading room emptied out — the recent whirlwind of younger students having vanished off into the depths of the repository of knowledge somewhere.
"Right this moment? No. I don't see the point. Though I do have a couple of ideas."
"Such as?"
"Well, for one obvious thing, discipline's suffering at Hogwarts."
"There is that," Daphne decided her head on my shoulder wasn't the most convenient position for conversation. "House points are a fair bit of nonsense, honestly."
"Exactly. Which is why there's a fairly simple solution to the problem, though it'd bring plenty of administrative and practical headaches. Setting up some sort of disciplinary committee made up of sensible, capable students. Or opening a general duelling club, so the especially eager can burn off their appetite for a fight."
"I'm not sure the second one would help."
"Well, more often than not, the ones who love knocking others about are after dominance, rankings, that sort of thing. A club would give them an outlet for that. And a group of students capable of hammering any troublemaking fringe element straight back into the hole they crawled out of — that's reason enough to mind one's discipline."
"That won't stop the fools," Daphne shook her head.
"Well, I feel for their parents, then. The magical world isn't a fairy tale."
"Our runic project, on the other hand, is quite the fairy tale. Look here…"
Daphne began showing me one of the most troublesome runic chains in the project, at which I couldn't help but smirk.
"Fine," I allowed myself the audacity of putting an arm round her, though Daphne, it seemed, had been waiting for exactly that. "Masterful change of subject — I barely even noticed. And the chain really is quite something…"
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