cloudy with a Chance of freedom

chapter 4

Skull became known as the "Oddball Slytherin" due to the fact that despite being a member full of "Backstabbing snakes", he was generally upfront and honest about his intentions. It was rather baffling to the teachers why the hat would place him in Slytherin because he seemed as genial and honest as a Hufflepuff with an intelligence to rival anyone from ravenclaw. He was bright and rather cheerful, which was a distinct difference from his housemates who generally looked at everyone with suspicion and always had ulterior motives when it came to favors.

The fact that he had taken his almost-squib cousin and made her his Steward despite the fact she would have great trouble being more than a hedgewitch was one of the bigger shocks in the school. It wasn't that big a secret that "Camellia" barely managed to make the requirements to earn a spot in Hogwarts and would have to maintain a strong grade point average just to graduate at all.

Skull honestly didn't give a damn about his reputation, had little to no interest in polotics, and was generally an "an all around nice guy" which made his sorting very baffling.

He found it amusing that as a result of his "nice guy" persona, the entire school apparently decided to treat him like a gryffindor who had the bad luck of being sorted into the wrong house. Even Dumbledore lowered his guard. Keeping up the "clueless and impressionable" Harry Potter disguise was exhausting, but at least he was allowed to drop it once safely inside the walls of the Slytherin dorms.

They had quickly figured out that while most of his make was genuine, the "act" he put on in front of the school was the perfect disguise to keep the headmaster and most of the teachers from looking too deeply at what he was really doing in the shadows.

Like the fact that by the end of the first mont, he had met with nearly every muggleborns' and half-blood raised in the mundane world and explained reality to them of what they would be facing inside the English enclaves.

"I'm going to be perfectly blunt about the reality you'll be facing once outside of hogwarts. The English magical enclaves may seem backwards and outdated for you, but your simply coming at it from entirely the wrong angle and its pissing of those who have lived in it their whole lives."

"What do you mean, the wrong angle?" asked one ravenclaw.

Skull thought of how to put this, then went and got a blackboard.

He Drew two circles, one smaller than the other.

"Let's say this is Rome and this smaller one is a gypsy group that lives in the underground. Now on the surface, Rome has all the familiar laws you're use to, all nice and civilised. However on the other side is the gypsies, who have a unique culture that occasionally clashes quite violently and doesn't like ideas that seem too progressive or that step on centuries of traditions, values and religion. So when people from 'rome' are accepted into the gypsies as tentative 'fresh-blood' to keep the bloodlines and old ways from dying out..."

One ravenclaw looked rather intrigued, than offended.

"You're saying that this is a case of a smaller subculture clashing with a larger, more widespread one. Like the native Americans when the European settlers showed up and started making a message of things."

"Exactly. The magical enclaves are a small subculture that live side by side with the larger, more tech-heavy non-magical culture that your familiar with. Trying to bring sone thing like a computer or electricity here is the equivalent of trying to install such things in a sucluded old world village where the culture and people have been set in their ways for centuries. Never mind how expensive and labor intensive such a thing could be, but the locals would fight you every step of the way simply because they all have the same attitude of 'this is how it's always been done and we're not going to change because an outsider finds into outdated' mindset," Said Skull, nodding. " It really, really doesn't help that Dumbledore has been screwing over those coming in from the non-magical side for years now."