Her throat constricted—that awful pressure that came before tears.
It had taken everything in her not to cry in that office. Every scrap of self-control she’d sharpened over nearly thirty-one years of being underestimated. Her Muggleborn Integration Programme. Gone. Seven years of backbreaking, soul-crushing, throat-scraping work. Obliterated. When it’d barely just come out of the womb. Effectively killed in its infancy.
Because of bloody budgets.
Her nails bit into her palms. She uncurled her fingers deliberately, one by one, and pressed them flat against her robes. Breathe.
The Ministry had no problem funding Magical Sports and Games—enough Galleons thrown at broomstick races and Quidditch pitches to rebuild half of Diagon Alley. No shortage of coin for the DMLE or International Wizard Cooperation either. But Muggleborns? Muggleborns were where they drew the line in the sand.
The action was clear—you are second-class citizens. The stepchild ruining a fresh start for the newlyweds.
She swallowed against the lump in her throat. It wouldn’t move. Stubborn thing. Like everything else in her life.
It all hinged on the lack of clear success. Not that success would’ve been an option with the shoestring budget they’d given it. It was a miracle the programme had worked at all.
Knowing the Ministry, it was launched to fail for this very reason. Racist pricks. Like a parent giving a child a mint when they’d wanted a sweet.
She reached blindly for the wine bottle on the coffee table, refilled her glass without looking, and took a long swallow. The ceiling stain still flipped her off.
She thought of the Muggleborn kids. Eleven years old, handed a letter by a stranger, told to abandon everything they knew in four weeks. A metaphorical “here, now leave”. Her own mother’s face flashed behind her eyes—blank and polite, the careful smile of a woman greeting a guest. She swallowed hard against further tears.
The statistics lived in her head like tenants who never paid rent. Muggleborns struggled harder in their first years. Landed worse jobs after graduation. Some gave up and went back to the Muggle world, only to find the exchange rate had eaten their savings. A few Diagon Alley businesses had shuttered just this month, their windows papered over with old editions of the Prophet. The pubs and bookshops were the only ones thriving.
Because people needed a means to escape.
Didn’t they bloody all.
Crookshanks pressed his head against her ribs, purring louder now, as if he could feel the frequency of her unravelling. She scratched behind his ear and felt her throat tighten again.
She’d hoped the programme would help strangle blood prejudice in its cradle. Give Muggleborns a leg up instead of a leg down. Build the case for adult programmes next. Regulations. Rights bills for her kind.
A level playing field.
Was that really so fucking much to ask?
Though she didn’t want to get ahead of herself and dismantle an entire government before the age of forty—she’d take it up in middle age. Her failed attempt at twenty notwithstanding. But she didn’t think about those times. Impulsive and stupid. Brain not fully cured.
Grabbing a navy pillow from behind her head, she pressed it to her face and screamed into it—a raw, ragged, ugly sound muffled into cotton and down. Exorcising the drunk and addled demon inside her chest. She screamed until her lungs ached, until the sound thinned to nothing.
Until Crookshanks’s purr was the loudest thing in the room.
Due to a budgetary shortfall, we are unable to continue funding your programme as it did not meet the full requirements its first year. In order to proceed with the 2009 school year, the remaining funds must be supplemented by a donation, anonymous or otherwise. If not, the programme will be discontinued.
