(no subject)

[alt_pansy]

Everyone's asleep and I can't sleep and I want peanut butter toast and it's getting really cold now! I should get some new pajamas. Little Snitches on them are not cool. And they will never be. I don't even play Quidditch! But they're warm, I guess.

One of my earliest memories is prowling around my grandmother's attic. My dad's mum. She had the coolest stuff up there and lots of trunks of stuff that belonged to my father. And books. So many books. So I'd read these books when I got older and there were all these people like Plato and St. Thomas Aquarius and Aristotel. I didn't understand any of it and I still don't. I hope someday I do. I asked my father who they were and he said someday he'd tell me. But then he got killed.

I remember having something read to me, and I don't know if I have it right: "We hold these truths to be evident, that all men are [something I can't remember] by their creator with some [another word can't remember] rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I wrote it down but it's at home. And it's another country so I'm not sure that even applies but I still don't understand what's to fear from questions is all.

Note to Lucius: I'm talking about something of my grandmother's that I read. That's all. I won't ask questions.

But my head's all weird now.

I can't find Marie, either.

Comments

[alt_lucius]

Pansy.

ENOUGH.

Your questions grow more querulous instead of more sensible. Rather than hearing the answers of your elders, you insist upon a disrespectful and altogether insulting demeanour. Do not think you can prevaricate with me indefinitely. You are growing far too old for such frippery.

I repeat: There will be a time when you will understand better the concepts of which you are just now growing aware. For now, you must accept the wisdom of your instructors, your guardians at school, and most particularly, of Our Lord Protector. To do otherwise is tantamount to treason, even in one as young and inquisitive as yourself. And I cannot - will not - protect you if you insist upon the path of a blood traitor. It is wholly unacceptable, vulgar, and out of order.

You are too young to know what it was like when Muggles considered themselves our betters. Merlin willing, you shall never have to know, first-hand, the savagery of a Muggle when he believes he is threatened by that which he does not know or understand. That is the legacy which I, your father, our colleagues, the Ministry and even the Lord Protector himself, have striven to provide you.

You have been privileged to live in a time when we have restored order to the chaos, design to that which is inscrutable. You enjoy the rights and the endowments to which you refer - but only as a measure of your proper demonstration of the convictions which you ought to espouse. These questions of yours go nowhere, they accomplish nothing except to upset your fellows and incite disquiet beyond the confines of the journals themselves. As Professor McGonagall has already reminded you, these are public documents and may be discovered by anyone. I cannot guarantee that others will not see an opportunity in disgracing your family through your 'musings'.

As to the texts you found and read, they are complicated treatises written by men of other times. Their philosophies are laudable in places; laughable in others; but above all they are a product of far different civilisations to our current society. Jefferson's is an excellent example of late 18th-C. poetry - but do not be fooled. Even such a lofty experiment as the American Colonies had - has - irredeemable flaws. Jefferson was a hypocrite as well as a visionary, who spouted about personal freedom while simultaneously maintaining a host of slaves as was due a pureblood wizard of property at the time. He sought to achieve equality but never thought about the ability of the Muggles around him to subsume his vision into a quagmire of internal strife that continues a spiral of violence to this day. And even he never dared to reveal his true magical ability to the Muggles with whom he served, for fear of persecution at their hands.

I am most displeased that you persist in this ill-advised course. I have half a mind to allow Bellatrix to discipline you her way, if I weren't convinced it would only add to your defiance.

I shall be back at Hogwarts in two days. TRY to stay out of further trouble until then, so that I need not add to the litany of my severe disappointment in you.

[alt_pansy]

Well, see, if someone just had told me what it was like when Muggles were in charge, instead of going mental when I even mention the "M" word we wouldn't be having this problem. Adults don't tell us ANYTHING and you know, we can understand stuff if you explain it. Everyone acting all upset just makes it worse.

I'm sorry I've disappointed you.

Did Jefferson really have slaves? You're right, if that's the case: He was a hypocrite.