Defense Against The Dark Arts

The Fault in our Slurs

1st May 2023

Sorry for the late update! (sorry about the chapter title)

I think it must have just been pure coincidence that we hadn't stumbled (is stumbled even the right word? We had almost walked past it. We probably would have too if it wasn't for the shouting) across it before. The way everyone else had just walked past as if it wasn't anything out of the ordinary - it was probably a usual morning for them.

They scarper almost as soon as we stop, realising that unlike the other teachers, we weren't just going to ignore it, but we still hear the words mudblood and filth. It's fairly easy to work out that they are insults - mudblood must be some sort of slur. (Filth is easy to work out).

We arrive at our classroom soon after, and like always, the room is empty and will be for at least ten minutes. Usually we use this time to make sure we have everything for the lesson coming or reading about anything we've heard something mentioned and had to pretend we knew what an Azkaban was. This time, it's finding out what a mudblood is, and using a magical dictionary - that speaks! - we discover the meaning.

Mudblood  (noun)- a witch or wizard born by non-magical parents.

And once we know about it, it's as though it becomes more and more persistent. It's the sort of thing that once you see it, you can't unsee, and you see it more than you ever would have. Usually it's something that Will had thought fit to tell me about during lunch, but would have been better to never have left the infirmary.

Students discriminating against each other because of their lineage is so much worse than the worm that Will had found in an infected foot, and I would genuinely be rather seeing the rotten flesh of the unlucky camper than more of the bullying. What makes it worse, is that some of the teachers even join in - Umbridge actively, and Snape doesn't bat an eyelid when he sees it. Half of the incidents Dumbledore sees are forgiven immediately, and the other half are seen as a mere case of students being kids, and they get a handful of points taken away. It's like playing a weighted gambling game, and those that bet on Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff are forgotten, leaving Gryffindor and Slytherin to bet more and more chips, with no obvious winner. Or something. 

Later in the day, I'm washing my hands - I genuinely don't know if there are separate toilets for the staff and students, it's something that Dumbledore decided to not tell us, and me and Percy have an ensuite, but Percy's having one of his giant showers, so I'm just using the closest one and hoping no one gives me weird looks - and when I reach for the soap, the graffiti scrawled on the corner of the mirror finally makes sense.

Graffiti being in school bathrooms seems to be something universal - it's as though when a school is built, the graffiti is drawn alongside it, marked in on the blueprints.

The particular graffiti I'm squinting at reads Oliver Chancy is a mudblood and he's cheating on his girlfriend. The girlfriend part isn't the bit I'm focusing on (although I hope she dumps his ass), but it's the casual slur that I've probably seen countless times without paying any attention to it. I decide to shadow travel back to our room as soon as I'm finished, and start gluing the dartboard we had found in the Room of Random Objects, using some glue I got (Stole) from a stationary shop in urban Scotland, as something to do, and also as something to distract myself with.

We head to the library at the start of lunch, after stopping off in the kitchens to get some sandwiches which we snack on in the corridors. Like usual at lunchtime, the library is almost empty - to no one's surprise, and it's probably muscle memory that brings us to our usual table, which just so happens to be the only table with someone else sitting at. Draco stiffens when we sit down opposite him, and then I distinctly realise for him it's probably very weird that we decided to ignore the empty tables and sit near him.

As an easy escape from the situation we've found ourselves in, Percy flees to the bookcase we had been perusing through last time - everything we've managed to find out about my Granddad is everything there is about him, and so we've lately just been picking up a random book (non-fiction), and went to a random page to read about whatever strange topic we can find. At the moment I can probably remember enough about matagots to present a powerpoint to our next class, but by next week, this information will have disappeared from my mind.

"Hi Draco," I say.

He sneers, and then stops halfway through the sneer, and says hello back. He's an odd guy, that's for sure. He closes his book, and looks at me expectantly, as though I had come to speak to him on purpose.

I fish around in my brain for a topic that I could mention to him about, forcing my mind to move past the fact of Although matagots are usually dark of fur, and sharp of claw, Sacharissa Tugwood had sworn to hunt them no more. (The whole book had been in rhyme, which is a great way for the most useless information to be stuck on repeat in my head forever)

"So. Uh, what's the deal with the blood purity stuff Hogwarts seems to have?"

He blinks, and I watch as he regrets ever stepping foot in the school. I wish the same, for a moment.

"What?"

"Well, there's this thing here, right. Where some people are, like being bullied? Because of their heritage?" I'm stumbling through my words, because Sacharissa's rhyme is still the only full thought my brain can think of.

"What, you mean like people being purebloods or not? You don't have that in America?"

"Sure, but not to the extent it is here," I say. "It's more - something as an afterthought. Y'know, like you wouldn't go up to someone and ask point blank if their parents are magic. It's something that isn't really mentioned. To us, it's not information that matters."

Draco pauses, considering my words. I kind of feel bad for completely making everything up, because who knows who he is going to tell my nonsense to now. "I think it has more to do with what the mudbloods. Uh, muggleborn, represent. They come into our world and expect us to change every little detail about it to suit their needs, and to make it more familiar to them."

Percy had come back during Draco's explanation, holding a small stack of books. He dumps them on the table, and then speaks, "I'll be honest, the magical community is pretty old fashioned. Where we live, it's like that as well. I think there's a balance between not getting any new input to a whole society for a couple of hundred years, and having too much change as so it only benefits some."

I nod, agreeing. "The difficult part is finding the balance in which everyone is happy."

"I think everyone else that has grown up with magical parents will be a lot harder to convince than me," Draco says.

"You mean you've been convinced?" I ask hopefully. He seems to be pretty influential, and barring that, he comes from a Very Old Family™, which is basically the same power as having one of the Big Three as a godly parent.

"No."

Word Count: 1272

Song: Gasoline by Halsey