Politics of Aligned Worlds

[Aine Thompson]

Aine really liked jokes at the expense of politicians. She might not have got all of them completely, but laughing at politics helped her get a better understanding of it. And really, after that first debate, she had to laugh, or else she'd cry. She was far too young to vote, but it didn't seem like there was any kind of support for easing relations between the two worlds. She got it, logically at least. It was risky and potentially would provoke a war to remove the statute of secrecy. She'd seen X-Men, she got it.

Didn't stop it from sucking, at least. It was all well and good for people from big cities with small families. But she was from a small town with a big family. Where did the lying begin? Was she supposed to keep it from her adult siblings, her grandparents? Everyone knew everyone in her town, too - so there was the constant lying about where she was, what school she went to, why her school had weird start and end times. Like oh, Aine's had to go to a...specialist school they'd say politely and move on without going in to detail.

It was like they just expected you to up and leave and go be a mage full time and just completely give up on your family connections, or expected everyone to lie a lot.

At least the satire was fun. Wizards might not have had TV but at least there were radio programs, and while Aine had the intention of studying while listening to the latest broadcast of Kitty in the Evening, putting down her books completely to stifle the chuckles she couldn't help but let out as the host roasted all the canditates and their policies. Somehow, it made it all feel a little better, just for a moment.

 

[Harper Alston]

Before Hogwarts, Harper had never paid attention to New Zealand politics. She still didn't, not really. Harper knew that wasn't great, but keeping up with her family and friends' lives was already hard enough, especially since she spent nine months of the year away without any means of electronic communication. How was she supposed to also keep up with current events when she didn't even have access to muggle news sources?

Magical politics was an entirely different story. Ever since learning that blood prejudice existed, Harper had taken to regularly reading the Daily Prophet. The paper had served as a good source of information about the magical world and how it worked. It had also made her realise just how big of a role politics played in her everyday life. Magical law was the reason why she had to keep so much of her life a secret, why the curriculum at Hogwarts didn't seem to be designed with muggleborns in mind, and why certain prejudices still existed.

Harper had been following the current election closely, but so far, she had been pretty disappointed. Despite one candidate being muggleborn and another promising to champion diversity, it seemed like none of them had any real plans to improve muggle-magical relations. But it was still early in the campaign season. New information was always coming out, and Harper decided to head for the student lounge to catch one of the evening news programs.

There was already someone listening to the wireless, and Harper realized it was the girl from the muggleborn support group, the one who she had tried to reassure. She cringed internally at the memory; she'd been so naive then. The wireless was already tuned into something about the election, and Harper shot the girl a small smile as she settled into a nearby armchair. It took her a second to realize something was amiss. "Wait, this isn't the news, is it?" The host was definitely talking about the candidates, but this sounded more like a talk show — not that Harper minded. The host was pretty funny.

 

[Aine Thompson]

Aine returned the smile, as she recognized the older girl as being another muggleborn - there'd been that support group last year she'd gone to that had been somewhat nice for at least knowing she wasn't alone. She'd tried to do something similar but it hadn't really worked very well and all she'd had to show for it was ink stains. At least maybe if she was older and more confident she might be able to do something more useful. It wasn't like the politicians running were doing much, from what she understood. One of them was even running on a campaign of 'everything's great but let's make it better'. How was it right to say everything was great, though? Even from her little experience with the magical world, Aine could see there were a lot of problems.

Realizing she'd said something, she quickly jolted out of her reverie. "Oh, oh yeah, sorry, I can try and change the station if you need, sorry," she apologized. Not that she really knew what station was what as yet. The radio didn't even get used much in the car at home. "It's, uh, the satire program," she added, in case she needed to explain it, quickly beating herself up mentally as she probably wouldn't need to explain that to an older student. "It's a bit of a ridiculous system, isn't it? They're mostly just saying variants on the exact same things."

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper quickly shook her head, feeling a little bad that the girl had felt the need to offer to change the station. Had it been because of the badge on her chest? She still wasn't used to the status and occasional stares the badge afforded her. "No, no, you're all good." She nodded at the girl's explanation even if it wasn't really necessary. "This is better. I could use a break from the actual news," Harper said, aiming for a light-hearted tone that wasn't quite there. Sometimes she wondered if she was devoting too much mental energy to the election, especially since she wasn't even old enough to vote.

A few seconds slipped by as Harper listened to the host, the corners of her mouth automatically quirking upward into a tired smile at each joke. She looked up, a little startled, when the other girl spoke again. This time, she let out a laugh, a genuine one. "Sorry," she apologised quickly, "I promise I'm not laughing at you. It's just... you're absolutely right." It was a relief to find she wasn't the only one who thought the candidates so far had just focused on values and platitudes, rather than actual changes. And they all seemed to share the same values. "It's weird that there aren't different parties," she mused. Harper didn't know much about politics, but she assumed the lack of different political parties might have something to do with why all the candidates sounded the same. "It kind of feels like no matter who gets elected, the next ten years are going to be pretty much the same as the last ten." Maybe that was fine for the people who liked the way things were currently being run, but as Harper got older, the magical world's flaws grew more and more apparent.

((I am so sorry this took so long))

 

[Aine Thompson]

((you're all good!))

Aine was convinced she'd put her foot in it. She usually seemed to around people. She didn't understand why she just couldn't connect with people a majority of the time. The whole gulf between 'muggle' and magical really didn't help matters. Her grandparents like to call her a little old lady, taking such an interest in things beyond her years and not running around and having fun with kids her age. She couldn't help but take an interest in the election, though. She wasn't going to be able to vote until the next one, but she felt it was important to know where she stood.

She did relax a little when the older girl laughed - and clarified that she wasn't laughing at her. "I'm surprised there's no parties either. It's almost like...if you have enough money and uh, what's the word? Charisma? You can just decide you're going to make people vote for you and maybe succeed and you can probably just do what you decide." There were upsides and downsides to it, she supposed. Hopefully people wouldn't vote in a dictator or someone who was on a platform of 'purify the bloodline' but if they had the appeal maybe they would. "They kind of just want to keep things the same. I'd push to make things more modern." Aine had no idea how she'd actually do that, but surely if wizards were as great and so much smarter than non-wizards as they'd been told in Astronomy it couldn't be hard to find ways for magic and technology to work together. "Somehow."

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper nodded. "I think the Ministry might have to approve candidates—" which she supposed could bring its own issues, "—but you're right. I guess it basically just becomes a popularity contest." In some ways, she supposed that was how elections in the muggle world also worked. But she still couldn't see her parents ever voting for, say, National just because the party's candidate happened to be charismatic. When everyone was running on versions of what was essentially the same platform, then didn't it just come down to who happened to be the most likable?

"I'd vote for you," Harper said with a smile. "Sometimes the magical world feels like it's stuck in the Middle Ages." It was especially apparent at Hogwarts, where they lived in a dimly lit castle that lacked electricity and had dungeons. She listened idly as the host made fun of Victoire Fontaine before speaking again. "I used to think it was because wizards didn't know that things could be better. Like, I figured that once someone from the magical world got to experience the internet or electricity or whatever, that they'd try and figure out how to make a magical version. But it seems like a lot of muggleborns don't want change either." Learning that Fontaine wanted to keep the Statute of Secrecy in place had made Harper feel strangely lonely. Was she the only muggleborn who was struggling?

 

[Aine Thompson]

Aine supposed that was true. Where she lived had gradually become more progressive over time, but her hometown was very much stuck in its ways. Everyone voted for the same people each time because that was what their fathers and grandfathers had done before them. Aine didn't think of herself as revolutionary, but apparently the desire for modernization was in this world. She was a bit embarrassed about her spiel about running for leader, especially when the older girl said she'd vote for her, feeling rather childish in the moment. Which was fair, she supposed - she was still a kid, really.

She nodded at the comment about muggleborns - even though she'd briefly spoken to Victoire Fontaine and thought she was certainly a nice person, she'd been a bit dismayed about her resistance to change. "Right? You'd think that they certainly could be a bit more creative with magic. There's magic radio, and magic pictures move, so they could, like, make magic video. Movies and TV and stuff. I mean, I don't really know how it works, but surely there's people smart enough to work it out?" Maybe not having TV was a good thing sometimes, but she did miss it. Not to mention the telecommunication power that muggles possessed that wizards weren't keen on. "It'd be nice if they gave us more to work with before we started school too. I guess they just like keeping up the divide. Or maybe there just aren't enough of us to justify worrying about how we can balance magical and non-magical parts of our lives." She slumped. Aine's parents mostly didn't bother paying attention to any of it, but she was sure there were other muggleborn kids whose parents would so want to be properly involved and just...couldn't. It didn't seem fair at all. Then the kids who did have magical families had help after school and familial connections and somewhere to live connected to the magical world. While people like her would just have to...work it out for themselves, she supposed.

 

[Harper Alston]

As much as Harper loved her friends who came from magical families, sometimes they just didn't get it. They didn't understand why she found it so strange that an entire society could be content living with technology from the 1800s. They didn't understand why she sometimes found the magical world so isolating. So it was always nice to find someone who did get it. Harper nodded. "It seems like it wouldn't be hard to combine the two." If you charmed a flipbook to move on its own and set it to music, wasn't that basically a very rudimentary video? She paused, a little lost in thought. "Maybe they don't want to work it out. Maybe wizards just want to avoid recreating muggle technology because it's muggle." It was pure speculation, but how else did you explain an entire society that actively avoided progress? Beneath all the glitzy spells and whimsical enchantments, the magical world was surprisingly bleak, Harper realised. It was passive, satisfied with its own stagnation. As divided as the muggle world could be, there was still this concept of a shared humanity. There was a thirst for innovation, a desire to create something that could benefit mankind. That didn't seem to exist in the magical world. How could it? Wizards had long ago decided they'd rather shut themselves off from everyone else.

Seeing the girl slump down made Harper's heart ache. She recognized that feeling, the nagging worry that you were behind all of your peers and always would be. "It would," she agreed. "I don't think they realise how much prior knowledge of the magical world is assumed in classes and just, like, everyday life here." That was definitely the most charitable reading of the situation because the other option, as the girl had alluded to, was that this deprivation of knowledge was intentional. Harper considered her next words carefully. She wanted to reassure the girl, but she also didn't want to lie to her. "It does get easier, eventually, to exist in this world. Everything won't feel so strange after a while." It had taken Harper five years to feel like she actually knew what she was doing in the magical world, but she had eventually gotten there. "But the divide — that's always hard," she said with a sad smile. "And I don't think the magical world has much interest in making things easier. I think they expect us to eventually pick a side." Harper didn't say it, but she knew they were expected to pick magic. That's what Hogwarts was — seven years of preparation for a life in the magical world. Not for the first time, she wondered what she'd unwittingly given up by enrolling here.