At the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Conversion?

It was late in the term. Exams approached.

Most students studied. Many did so in the library.

He was one of them.

He entered with his companions loyally by his side, as they had always been. He looked for a space for them. He found it, the one empty table, freshly vacated by a pair of much younger Ravenclaws. He pointed it out to his companions and they followed him to it.

It was when they got there and were sitting that they saw what the Ravenclaws had left behind.

"What's that?" one of the other two asked.

"I don't know," he said, "Give it here. Let me see it."

It was given to him.

He looked at it.

"It's Muggle!" he said, and threw it back down on the table, where it landed face up. "It's a Muggle picture."

"Why isn't the picture moving?" the third one asked.

"Because, you dolt, it's Muggle. Their pictures can't move. They're too stupid to figure out how to do it without magic, and they're far too weak to be able to use magic."

"Huh."

He shook his head. They were good friends, who had always had his back and would always stand by him, but they were both several leagues on the dumb side of smart. The couldn't even tell when something was clearly a Muggle picture.

A Muggle picture of a man and several things, he thought, glancing at the picture again. Several big, splotchy-colored things, strange masses of angles and curves, straddling two lanes of the street they were lined up on. "What are those things?" he wondered, "And why is that Muggle standing in front of them?"

He swiped the picture off the table and put it with his things. "Those two must need it for Muggle Studies," he explained to his friends. "They might lose points if they don't have it to study with." His two friends nodded, accepting the explanation, which didn't surprise him. After all, Ravenclaw was currently leading their House in points. He was just being responsible and helping his house. Nobody needed to know that he also wanted to find out what was going on in this strange picture.

The picture in his possession, he opened his History of Magic textbook and started trying to talk his two companions through an understanding of it for the upcoming exam. It was difficult to explain the boring subject to his dimwitted companions, though, and after several hours, he was severely irritated and they were still idiots. During that time, he had forgotten about the picture.

After supper, in the dormitories, he sat down to study. Flipping through his textbooks, he noticed something fall out. "Oh, that picture!"

He picked it up and stared at it, studying it closely. It was definitely a man, wearing black pants and a white shirt, and holding some bags. And the man was definitely standing in the middle of a sickeningly wide street, in front of four giant things. Whatever they were, they weren't cars. It was rare that he had any dealings with the Muggle world, but his father had made sure he knew enough to tell what a car was, the silly machines Muggles used because they couldn't move around with magic. He just didn't know what these rounded boxes, with domed roofs and tubes sticking out the front, were. They looked like they could move, though; along the sides of the machines were what looked like rows of wheels. Why was that man standing in front of them? They were huge. Was he too stupid to get out of their way? Did he want to get crushed?

The young wizard kept looking at the picture, trying to understand it. At last he sighed, realizing what he would have to do. It must be a picture from a Muggle Studies class, so the Muggle Studies Professor must be able to tell him what it was. It was a shame that he would have to let the young Ravenclaws keep their points, and it would be nice if he'd ever spoken to the Muggle Studies professor before, but he had to know what was going on in the picture. He wanted to know, and he was not accustomed to having his wants denied.

After only a little searching, he found the Professor's office. He took a deep breath, to calm himself, and knocked. A few moments later her door opened and he found himself facing her.

"May I help you?" she asked, frowning slightly.

"Yes," he said. "I found something in the library today, Professor Thatcher, and I think one of your students may have left it there. I would hate for one of them to do poorly in your class because of simple forgetfulness, but I don't know whose it was, and so I thought I ought to give it to you. And, I must admit, I was rather curious to find out what it is."

"Oh?" the Professor said. "What did you find, Mr. Malfoy?" There was a slight pause between the last two words, as though she were trying to remember who he was. "You're Slytherin's seeker, aren't you?"

"Yes, Professor," he said as he reached into his robes. "I found this Muggle picture. I was wondering what those things in front of the man are."

"Excellent flying you did against Hufflepuff in that last match," she said, taking the picture from him. "Ah! One of the Fourth-Years left this," she said. "Those are tanks," she added, then noticed the blank expression on Draco's face. "You do know what tanks are?" she asked. Most Muggle-born students knew what they were, having grown up with boys who thought they made excellent toys, but Draco had never been in her class, and the Malfoys were notoriously pure-blooded.

"Aren't tanks what Muggles use for holding water and other liquids?" Draco answered. He was dismayed when Professor Thatcher giggled.

"Oh no!" she said. "Well, tanks can be that. But these are a different sort of tank. They're war machines," she said. "Here, come in to my office, I'll show you." She turned back into the office, beckoning Draco to follow.

The office was what he expected of a Muggle-lover: full of Muggle artifacts. He had no idea whatsoever what the majority of the odds and ends were. Several shelves were packed with books, which he supposed must be Muggle literature.

"I can't show you Muggle video here on the school grounds, because there's so much magic going on the electronics won't work," Professor Thatcher said, leading him over to a device that looked vaguely like a pair of glasses fixed over a teacup, with several tubes leading up to the lenses. "Fortunately, there is a way of transferring Muggle video into a form much like the extracted memories for a pensieve, and this projector lets us watch it much as Muggles would. Now, it's a difficult process that requires a great deal of skill in Transfiguration, so I don't have a lot of video converted this way. Fortunately for you, understanding Muggle warfare is crucial to understand Muggles as a whole, so I do have some combat footage converted." As she said this, she opened a box next to the projector and began to rummage through it. "Here it is."

The witch took an egg-shaped crystal out of the box. Draco could see that it appeared to be full of a swirling grey stuff, as though the crystal had a liquid center slowly being stirred. She set the crystal in the projector's cup, then waved her wand and said a spell Draco didn't know.

The room went dark, and a shaft of light shot out from the projector, hitting a wall and forming an image that started moving as Draco expected. What Draco didn't expect was the sound that started coming from the projector.

"Let me find something that makes it clear what tanks can do," Professor Thatcher said, poking the projector with her wand. A moment later, she stopped, appearing satisfied. "This will do. This is relatively recent, it's from Russia, in 1993."

Draco simply watched. He saw a group of machines similar to the ones in the picture point their tubes towards a large white building. He jumped back slightly as smoke and flame came out of the tubes and the projector emitted an awful noise, then saw what happened to the building a moment later: fire, smoke, and debris.

"The Russian Parliament rebelled against the President," Professor Thatcher explained. "He ordered the army to shell the Parliament Building. That's what the tanks were doing. Those things pointing out the front are large guns, that fire explosive shells." She turned off the projector and the room lit up again. "They're big, and they have lots of armor to protect them if they get shot at."

Draco was amazed. "Do many Muggles know about those?" he asked.

Professor Thatcher nodded. "Of course. They were invented a long time ago, and every army in the world has at least a few. Muggle children have toys that look like them, they're in movies, they're in history books, and in the news. Most Muggles will never see one in person, but they all know what they are, what they look like, and what they can do."

"But, in that picture, that man is standing in front of them. Why? Doesn't he know it can kill him."

"Oh, he knew the tanks were there to kill him. That's a picture from Tiananmen Square."

"From what?"

"Tiananmen Square. What do you know about China?"

"China? Not much."

"No, I didn't think so. Well, in 1989, there were huge protests against the government. Millions of people joined them. Eventually, the government ordered the army to disperse them, and hundreds of people were killed. That picture's from the next day. I have video, too. Here, let me put in the projector."

Moments later, Draco was watching with fascinated horror as the projector showed on the wall what he was used to: a moving picture. It was as though his Muggle picture had come to life and was acting as Wizards' photos did. That was not what horrified him. What horrified him was what the man in the picture did.

"What's wrong with him?" Draco demanded as the man took several steps to stay in front of the tank, which was trying to around him. "Are Muggles all insane? Why won't he stop!" The tank had tried to go around the man again, to the other side this time. He had again moved to stay in front of it.

When Professor Thatcher stopped the projector, right after the man had actually stepped up to the front tank and climbed on top of it, he simply stood there, aghast at the Muggle's foolish, reckless behavior. It was a clear vindication of everything his father had ever told him about Muggles.

"To answer your question, no, all Muggles are not insane. Most of them probably would not have done what he did. That's why this image is so famous in their world."

"He's famous because he tried to kill himself?"

"No, because of his courage, and because it inspires people. He's not just standing up to the tank. He's one of the protestors, standing up to the government that ordered the tank to kill him, the morning after all the killing. I don't know how much you know about Muggle nations, but the Chinese government rules a billion people, and has a philosophy that the group is more important than the individual. He's the individual, standing up for what he believes in, challenging that government's authority and daring the tank driver to murder him. It's famous because people respect him for being willing to die if he lost, and because in a way he won. He walked away from the tank, and disappeared, and China's government was hated by the rest of world for what happened at Tiananmen."

"I just can't understand that," Draco said.

"Most people have trouble understanding that sort of courage, which is why this is one of the pictures I gave to my class to study. I have plenty of copies, since still pictures are easy to get. Would you like to keep that one?"

"Yes, Professor. Thank-you."

"Well, I'm always happy when a student expresses an interest in the Muggle world. Anything else you want to know?"

"No, Professor. I need to go study now, actually. But thank-you for showing me all this," Draco said.

He was on his way out when he thought of something. "Professor," he said, "This man in the picture. Who is he? You said he was famous."

"The picture is famous, and he's famous because he's the Man In The Picture." Draco didn't like the way she said that; it reminded him of how people called Potter 'The Boy Who Lived'.

"But who is he?"

"Nobody knows. When he disappeared into the crowd after he got down from the tank, he was never seen again. He was just a man who was on the street that day. Nobody knows his name."

"Huh. Well, good evening, Professor."

Later that evening, Draco was in his room, studying the picture again and thinking about the things he'd learned in Professor Thatcher's office. He was right: the nameless Muggle had to be crazy. Standing in front of a war machine like that, facing certain death just to prove a point, it was the sort of thing a Gryffindor would do.

And yet, Draco couldn't make himself loathe the man like he'd thought he would. There was something admirable about the man's defiance. It made Draco feel small. "That would be like standing in front of someone and daring them to use the Killing Curse. Who would do that?" The answer to his question was obvious, since it was sitting in his hands. The Chinese Muggle would do it. He had done it. Whatever point he was trying to make, he cared enough about it that he would die to make it. There was no other way he could have made it, Draco realized. If the man had stayed where he was when the tank tried to pass him, his point would not have been made. It was when he shuffled to stay in front of it that he made his point. It was then, Draco realized, that he showed the courage that made his picture worth showing to Fourth-Year Ravenclaws on the other side of the world years later.

"Would I do that for anything?" Draco asked himself. A hollow feeling in his gut was his answer. He knew he wouldn't put himself in that sort of danger for anything. It was a terrible realization, that a nameless Muggle had a strength of conviction he so totally lacked.

Disgusted with himself, Draco started rip up the picture. He stopped, though, as he remembered the last thing Professor Thatcher had told him about the man. Nobody knew the man's name. He was nobody, just a random man who had been on the street that day. He had been no one special until that moment when he stood in front of the tank, and some other Muggle had taken his photograph.

He looked down at the picture, now heavily crumpled and nearly torn in half. He picked up his wand and pointed it at the picture. "Reparo!" he said, casting the spell to restore the picture to its original state. He walked over to the wall, then cast a Sticking Charm on the back of the picture and hung it over his bed. He could let the picture stay there.

After all, the Muggle had been nobody important. He was already somebody. He was a Malfoy, and he could do better than some random Muggle.

Leaving the picture on the wall, he directed his attention to his books. It was late, and he had work to do.