Order Only: Private Message to Ron and Sally-Anne

[alt_justin]

Hallo,

Look, I don't wish to seem insensitive, as I'm sure Mr Longbottom feels well shocked to suddenly lose his magic.

But, I say. The looks on your faces as we were reading that.... Well, I mean to say. It's not that terrible, is it?

He's alive, he's otherwise in good health, it sounds, and...well, millions--make that billions--of Muggles live without magic every day. They never even miss it.

Is there something I'm missing? Why does everyone seem to think it means his usefulness is at an end?

I'm quite earnest, I should add. I can tell you all think it's a dashed catastrophe but I'm at a loss as to just why.

-Justin

P.S. Do you think Harry and Hermione will finish with Cedric soon?

-J

Comments

[alt_justin]

No, of course not.

But you're all thinking it's a fate worse than death and that sort of mentality spills out. It must do.

I've been learning magic for five years. I've found it breaks down into two categories: There are spells that create effects which Muggles can't do yet and there are spells that are, essentially, short-cuts to the Muggle method. That's an over-simplification, what, but it makes the point, I think. There are other ways to do nearly any task. Where wizards have spells, Muggles invent machines, what.

And the things they can't yet do are probably only a matter of time. Magic does achieve wonderful things and makes life easier, in some ways.

But it seems to me that this...attitude.... It rather strikes at the heart of everything the Order profess to believe. If the Order really believe that Muggles are not second-class to wizards, then living as a Muggle ought not to have such a stigma as you and Ron and--well, everyone else--are attaching to it.

Perhaps we ought to make everyone with a wand live without magic for a year after they finish school, once the war's won. That way they'd appreciate the immense gift it is but they would also realise it's not the bally old end of the world to get by without it, what.

-J

[alt_sally_anne]

Yes but we don't have any of those machines here. We don't have aeroplanes or autos, we have floo and brooms and flying carpets and apparation. We don't have muggle medicines or vaxines, we have Healers. We don't have all the other things muggles use to do the things we do with magic so Mr Longbottom doesn't have access to any of them.

If you want me to try to live for a year without magic I think I could manage and it would be interesting and fun if I were in France where I could drive an auto or fly an aeroplane or go to a doctor -- well, actually, if I were ill I'd still want to go to a Healer. But I know how to plant a garden and weed it and harvest the food and cook it. But I'd bloody well want to be using a proper muggle stove to cook it, not a fire I had to build out of logs I had to cut down with an ax. I'd want to have water that came out of a faucet and not water I had to carry up from a stream in a bucket and I'd want a way to heat it up for baths because cold baths are horrid.