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Muggle-Wizard Relations


September came to a close with cold rain storms as October blew in and the leaves began falling from the trees, creating piles of orange and yellow and red across the grounds. Hagrid could be seen watering his pumpkin patch, whistling and looking about, holding a pink umbrella as he worked, while Fluffy ran about barking merrily, all three heads yapping and tugging the body about in jagged little twists and turns behind him. Nobody had ever seen pumpkins as large as the ones that Hagrid was cultivating that year.

On Monday, 4 October, Minerva McGonagall’s birthday, she walked into the corridor outside of her office to a burst of confetti that rained from the ceiling and a chorus of the suits of armor bellowing out the Birthday Song in unison and on the floor a box that contained a brand new tartan shawl and brooch shaped like a cat with a sparkling ruby eye. She’d had to choke back tears as she ran her fingers across the lovely brooch.

A note within the box read simply To Minnie, with Love, Your Marauders.

James and Sirius high-fived each other from where they were spying beneath the invisibility cloak, grinning.

A notice went up that day, announcing the first Hogsmeade Weekend would be on the 9th, which were the days after the full moon. “Well, we’ll already be in Hogsmeade, won’t we?” Sirius said, “We can beat the crowds to the Three Broomsticks and get Moony a proper breakfast when he wakes up after the transformation.”

Remus worried he’d be too sore to properly enjoy the time in the village, but James said that if he was having a hard time getting about because of his muscles and bones then he, James, would carry Remus about on his back. Sirius had looked a bit jealous when Remus looked excited at the idea and he made a point of trying to tug Remus onto his own back several times during the day, showing off, only to trip and fall face first into the carpet.

On Tuesday, James and Sirius earned themselves a detention after they were caught setting a spell on the floor in the entrance hall that made each stone play a different musical note whenever somebody stepped on them so that there was a great cacophony of musical noise that assaulted the ear drums of everyone in the castle as the students walked to and from their meals or any of the Slytherins tried to get in or out of the dungeon corridors.

“Really!” said McGonagall that night in her office as she set them to writing lines, “Sixth year and I’m still dealing with this sort of nonsense.” But she said it lovingly and they snickered to themselves because even as she set them to writing I Will Not Cause Ruckuses across the parchment she set before them at the table, she was wearing that gold brooch on her chest and her shawl hung over her desk chair, recently used. James’s grin trembled over his lips as he peeked at Sirius from under the fringe that fell across his forehead.




Remus sat next to Peter in their Muggle Studies class on Thursday, uncomfortable at the desk, leaning forward, his head resting upon his arm as he took his notes. They had spent September in review, catching up the students who had newly joined the Muggle Studies classes, and now, today, moving into their second month of classes, Professor Gaunt was preparing to begin a new segment on the History of Wizard-Muggle Relations.

“Who remembers the Tales of Beedle the Bard?” Gaunt asked as he walked across the front of the room, his hands in his trouser pockets. Peter’s hand shot up. Several others did, too. Most of the students didn’t bother - Remus among them - for it was such a silly question. Of course they all remembered Beedle the Bard! Professor Gaunt nodded, “Mr. Pettigrew,” he said, looking directly at Peter, “Do you mind telling me a brief summary of The Hopping Pot?”

Peter, eager to show off his smarts, said, “Yes of course! The pot is the cauldron of a good old wizard who did loads of magic for the people who needed help in his village and his son inherits the pot and he’s a grump so he refuses to help people and then the pot starts making him do the magic anyway and finally he cuts a deal with the pot that if it stops being awful to him he’ll start making magic for the village people and they all live happy ever after.”

Remus doodled a warty old pot with a single, short, hairy leg protruding from the bottom of it, dashing little details of coarse hair over the shin. He thought of the way Sirius’s boots folded about his ankles as he drew the boot upon the pot’s leg and he wondered if Sirius was behaving without him there to make him behave.

(In fact, Sirius and James were on the balcony high up in Gryffindor tower, smoking cigarettes and magicking paper birds with stupid jokes and laughing gas folded inside. The birds rained down over the courtyards below, to the amusement of the students that found them and unfurled them to find a good laugh inside.)

“And what lesson do young witches and wizards learn from the Hopping Pot?” Professor Gaunt asked.

Maryrose Jenkins raised her hand, “To be kind to Muggles.”

Gaunt shook his head, “That’s what some scholars will have you to believe, and yes, in a way, that is the moral, I suppose. But let’s delve a bit deeper into the tale.” He turned and walked up to the desk. “Who is the hero of the story? The father who died, the wizard whose heart was changed, or the pot who persisted?”

“The pot,” answered Harry Warbeck. “Without the pot, the father wouldn’t have had the magic to share and the wizard’s heart would never have changed,” he reasoned.

“To some, perhaps,” Gaunt said.

Harry looked at Alabaster Jackson, who sat at his elbow, and Alabaster shrugged.

“The Pot was encouraging the greed of the muggles, however. Encouraging them to use the poor wizard who only wished for peace and quiet. But the Pot persisted and forced him to perform the tricks his father once had, forced him to give and give and give unto the muggles that never gave back, but only take away. This poor wizard, in order to gain peace, had to try to hide his identity from the muggles or else he would never be left alone again…” Gaunt said.

“They only wanted help,” said Maryrose with a bit of a pleading, sad tone to her voice. “The people who asked the wizard for help needed the help and because he was magic he was able to help them!”

“And what if he really had refused? Really had turned away? What if the Hopping Pot had never forced the wizard to do the magic? Would the people, who already knew him to be magic because of his father’s legacy, have ever let him be? Or would they have risen up in anger at his so-called selfish ways of keeping the magic to himself?” Remus looked up.

“This is the thinking that led to some of the early manifestations of muggle hatred toward the wizarding community. Witches and wizards who could not brew antidotes or else refused for other, perfectly acceptable reasons - reasons that they should not have to defend or explain as the magic is theirs to do with as they see fit - were considered evil, were burned alive by those who said they were worthless if they could not help and do the magic that was wanted…” Gaunt turned to the blackboard. “This term, we will be learning about the Trials and Torture of famous witches and wizards through history at the hands of the muggles - the first recorded Obscrurial, caused by muggle hatred…”




“I know muggle-wizard relations are rocky, especially in early times, but I mean isn’t that something Binn ought to be covering?” Remus was saying later that evening as the Marauders walked down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower to dinner. He’d told them about the long winded lecture given by Professor Gaunt earlier and Sirius’s mouth had twisted into a sour expression.

“I mean it’s true, the things he said, Rey,” Peter said, shrugging, “He’s just teaching facts about the past, you know?”

“But that cultivates hatred toward muggles,” Remus answered. “Anything that cultivates hatred is in poor taste, especially right now in this current political anti-muggle timebomb we’re all sitting upon, what with Voldemort and everything...”

Peter said, “I don’t think he meant it like an anti-muggle thing, he just was teaching history and like it or not, Rey, that lot did happen!”

Remus frowned.

“Gaunt’s a git,” Sirius announced. They looked at him. “I don’t like him. There’s something about his beady eyes. He reminds me of something. An Ostrich perhaps.”

“Oh I don’t like ostriches,” Peter shivered. “They’re just so tall.”

“Tall? You’re afraid of tall things now?” James teased. “Remus, Pete’s afraid of you.”

“Bloody should be, Remus could wreck him,” Sirius said, thinking of the time when Remus had blasted half the boy’s bathrooms apart in retaliation against the bully Evan Rosier last year.

Remus laughed. He didn’t deny it.

Peter flushed, “It’s not just that they’re tall, it’s just that they’re tall and very… beaky.”

“BEAKY!” Sirius snorted, “Beaky, you say?” and he commenced poking at Peter with a folded hand as though his arm were an ostrich and Peter squealed and ran ahead of them as Sirius laughed meanly.

“I just felt very… defensive… for muggles when he was talking,” Remus said with a shrug, ignoring Peter’s squeals ahead of them in the corridor as he reached the bottom of the stairs, looking back at the other three as Sirius mimed a beak snapping at him with his hand. “It just felt a bit uncomfortable.”

“Perhaps talk to McGonagall about it,” James suggested, “See what she says.”

“Yeah,” Remus agreed, “Perhaps.”




Charlus Potter knocked on the door of Bartemius Crouch’s office. Bartemius waved the door open with a flick of his wand, barely looking up from the paperwork he was filling out. A sour expression flickered over his face when he saw Charlus standing there holding a pouch of parchments. “What do you want, Potter?” Bartemius questioned.

Charlus held up the pouch then put it down on the desk. “To deliver you with this.”

“What is it?” Bartemius asked, nudging the pouch away from the parchment he was writing furiously upon.

“Evidence in support of Jasper Odair’s release and a formal request for a retrial.”

Bartemius looked up. “Mr. Potter, we have been over this already and --”

“Barty, the boy wasn’t tried fairly. Evidence was overlooked,” Charlus insisted. “In that pouch is no less than four Muggle police reports against Jasper Odair’s muggle father for arrests in various bar fights. Additionally, you’ll find records showing that at the age of five Jasper Odair was temporarily removed from his parents home after he was found to be sporting bruising across his abdomen and the welts from a belting across his backside. They mysteriously appeared the day after he was sent home with a note from his teachers at the school he attended after his first burst of accidental magic had broken one of the pieces of playground equipment when a boy teased him... There are photographs cataloging years of abuse, Bartemius.” Charlus reached down and nudged the pouch back toward him, “It deserves looking into that the father was killed in self defense.” He paused. “I also continue my belief that Jasper was not the one who cast the spell.”

Bartemius pushed the pouch away again. “I’ll take a look at your evidence later and get back to you about my decision about a court date.”

“I beg your pardon, Barty, but I don’t trust you’ll really take my request into consideration unless you do it now, while I’m standing here,” Charlus said.

Bartemius looked up.

Charlus nudged the pouch again.

Bartemius reached down and tore open the pouch, grumbling to himself, and pulled out the paperwork with in. He shuffled through it a few moments, his eyes traversing over the police records and photos of a small Jasper Odair with his little face downturned, avoiding the camera’s lens. Years before the boy would have known he was a wizard, probably when he was first discovering he could do peculiar things… Charlus had nearly cried looking the records over for Jasper Odair looked such a lot like James, with black hair and brown eyes and a little smile to turn hearts… He remembered the first time James had done accidental magic, angry because Dora had made him free a gnome he had caught from their garden that he had wished to keep as a pet.

“Gnomes aren’t meant to be pets, love,” Dora had said shaking her head and prying the potatoey-looking creature from James’s grasp before it could bite him.

“But I caught him!” James had persisted, “I want him, he’s mine! He’s mine!” But Dora had got the gnome away and put him out the back door of the house -- ah that old house, Charlus missed it so much -- and James had promptly turned red as a beet and every glass on the table had burst with a series of great POPS.

The thought of belting James for his outburst would never have crossed either his nor Dora’s mind and it broke his heart to imagine the poor confused little Jasper Odair being beaten for something he could not control.

It was a wonder the boy hadn’t become an obscurial. He remembered some of the cases of them he’d read in the past - boys and girls whose magic had turned on them after being suppressed too long...

“If a wizard murdered every muggle who wronged them,” Bartemius Crouch said after several long moments of staring stoically at the pages in the pouch, “Then there would be cases like this to contend with everyday, Mr. Potter.”

Charlus frowned, “That doesn’t make it right to punish a boy for protecting himself. Take a look at his arrest photos, Barty, you’ll find that he was similarly battered the night the aurors picked him up. Fabian Prewett himself, the lead auror on the case, agrees there was an abusive situation going on and he believes that the case should be reviewed and --”

“Mr. Potter!” Bartemius interrupted, “I’m sorry. The Wizengamot sentenced the boy to Azkaban. He confessed. I cannot say that to you enough. Do you hear me, Mr. Potter? Confessed.”

Charlus said, “Elphinstone Urquart agrees with me as well that the boy should have a retrial. See here, look, he’s signed the application in support,” he shuffled the papers about.

“Elphinstone Urquart is not the head of the department anymore,” Bartemius Crouch declared.

“Technically, neither are you!” Charlus snapped, “You’re only here because Moody’s having a meltdown and bloody hell do I wish Al would get his arse back into this office and knock you down off your ruddy high horse!”

Bartemius Crouch scowled. “Well he’s not here and there is no indication that he will be any time soon. Jasper Odair is sentenced guilty and that’s that, Mr. Potter. You may go now.”

“Alright, Barty, if a confession is sooo ruddy important to you,” Charlus said, “Then what if we had a second confession? What if Edgar Odair, the boy’s child brother, not yet trained at Hogwarts, were to confess to the crime as well?”

Bartemius Crouch stared up at Charlus.

“Then you’d need a retrial. You’d need to figure out which of them did it, wouldn’t you?”

“Do you have a confession?” Bartemius asked skeptically.

Charlus hesitated.

“Do you?” Barty persisted.

Charlus’s voice shook - memories flooding him.

“Yes. We have a confession.”