Stand up straight, Mr. Malfoy.
And listen to me very carefully, because I’m going to speak to you right now not like teenagers, or scared students. I’m going to speak to you the way I know you want me to speak to you, like adults, like fully grown witches and wizards who are smart enough and strong enough and respectful enough to look around you at this darkening world and see it for what it is.
You all lost someone important to you recently - or at least, some of you did, and there are a lot of people around you who are going to want to coddle you for it, who are going to want to hold your hands and pet your hair and tell you how sorry they are for your loss, but that’s not what I’m going to tell you. I’m going to tell you that Professor Pomona was a beautiful person, in every way, a sparkling, beautiful, one of a kind person, and she’s dead now, and she may have been the first loss but she won’t be the last, and I’m sorry for that.
Stand up straight, Mr. Malfoy.
Did you know the average muggleborn witch and wizard has an average life expectancy that is ten years less than the average pureblood or halfblood witch or wizard? Ten years. Gone. And it’s not because of illness or stress or magical exhaustion or any of the other bullshit reasons you see offered in the Daily Prophet to explain away the reality of it,which is that muggleborns live shorter lives because Purebloods and halfbloods allow them to live shorter lives, and that’s a fact. And that fact is not going to change by sitting around or by crying or by cutting class, Mr. Tonks. That fact is going to change when you, you people, you adult witches and wizards standing in front of me stand up and make it change, and I’m here to do my part to make that change.
So no, I’m not going to hug you, or pat your head, or let you cry on my shoulder, because that is not going to bring Professor Pomona back to life and more importantly that is not going to win you all the ten years you deserve. I’m going to teach you all what it means to be muggleborn. I’m going to give you a place to go to be safe and comfortable, and I’m going to teach every single one of you in my classroom what it means to know and respect each other for who you are, so that you don’t end up stealing ten or twenty or thirty or fifty years from each other. The trend stops here. The buck stops here. The statistic stops. Here. At Hogwarts. Now.
I’m Professor Merriweather. I’m the new Muggle Studies teachers. And from now on, Muggle Studies is a mandatory class for every single student here, and missing it, missing a single class is not a punishable offense, it’s an expellable offense, Mr. Malfoy, and I will see your wand snapped into pieces if you miss so much as five minutes of it or if you don’t stand up straight. Now.
Any questions? No? Good. I’ll see you all in class.
