Just Words

The Dark Lord says every effort will be made to ensure children remain with parents.

The forms read Application to Adopt a Half-Blood Child.

-

Ginny is aware of the irony as she signs her name across the bottom of yet another form, her signature barely recognisable. The form is placed neatly atop all the other forms to be transferred to another department in the morning for further processing. Words have never meant so little, she thinks as she scrawls her name again. She then wonders where that thought came from.

Her name.

Ginervra Weasley.

She decides that the illegibility is deliberate and strives to make her name as unrecognisable as possible in the next form.

Briefly, Ginny wonders whether Judy Bell, girl, age 7 and 2/3 with blonde hair and dark brown eyes, will be happy in her new pureblooded family. And then she wonders whether it matters.

-

The Dark Lord says purebloods should endeavour to work alongside their Mudblood counterparts.

The forms read Request for a Waiver to the Affirmative Action Act.

-

Every Friday, Ginny does her civic duty by tracking down rogue Mudbloods. Mudbloods who have, for one reason or another, slipped out of the system. Perhaps they didn't want to work for pureblood causes. But most likely they were refused jobs and a waiver against affirmative action waved in their faces.

The whisper along the streets nowadays are that they are ungrateful. Ungrateful for the privileges they are being given. Ungrateful that they and their children are finally getting a chance to be educated in the proper pureblood way with none of the nonsense of Muggle Studies or visits to Muggle London. Simply ungrateful. There are whispers of more drastic action that ought to be taken but nobody is willing to be the first to take it. There are simply too many Mudbloods to do anything that drastic. Not to the normal Mudblood anyway.

Rogue elements however are a different story.

Rogue Mudbloods are sometimes punished as examples, but more often than not, they simply disappear. Ginny does not care to wonder about where they go. Sometimes people with too many questions disappear too.

She looks down and freezes as she sees the name on her papers.

Hermione Granger. Female. 32. Last seen at Sussex with a two year old half-blood daughter. Suspect is to be disposed of and daughter relocated.

Ginny does not think of the implication of these words as she casts the location spell.

-

The Dark Lord says violence is prohibited in our new society.

The forms read Claim for Mudblood Insubordination [Note: Mudblood Insubordination is Punishable by Torture and Execution]

-

Ginny appears in front of a moorland cottage in remote Scotland with her wand already in front of her in a defensive position. Mudbloods habitually attempt to lure purebloods into a trap she remembers her superior telling her. Always be ready for anything.

She has taken these words to heart.

Insubordination can be as little as looking away when a pureblood is speaking, Ginny thinks as she casts the Dark Mark above the house and a netting spell around it.

A Mudblood is always insubordinate.

-

The Dark Lord says Mudbloods may not be killed without due cause.

The forms read Request for the Disposal of a Mudblood Body.

-

Ginny has used so many of those forms before that she no longer needs to think as she fills them out. Her hand skims over the parchment, scribbling name, age, sex, marital status and finally place of death. The Mudbloods are no longer human, she realises.

Hermione has come out of the cottage, looks around for a second and Ginny wonders whether she will try to run and whether the spell she cast before would burn her like the last person. But then she shakes her head slowly and turns back to Ginny, staring at her with sad eyes, her thin arms clasped around her little girl.

Ginny realises she will be filling yet another form out tonight.

She doesn't think about how Hermione doesn't look like a traitor, doesn't look like a rogue Mudblood, doesn't look dangerous but just looks like a scared woman with a child. Preserving your sanity, her superior once told her. We must believe. Her superior disappeared a few months ago.

"Give me the girl," Ginny said quietly, "and you may go free."

Hermione laughs bitterly. "Do you believe that, Ginny?"

"Give me the child," she repeats. "This is for your own good."

"I won't," Hermione says. "I will not have my daughter placed in a pureblood family so that she grows up ignorant of her heritage. I won't let her grow up like that."

Ginny stares at her, not comprehending. "It is for her good too," she tells Hermione. "She will be happier. Do you think your daughter is happy living this life you have chosen? She'll be able to go to school, make friends and not be on the run all the time." She even believes her own words. It sounds so reasonable.

Hermione shakes her head and tightens her arms around the whimpering child. "I feel sorry for you," she says quietly. "You're living a lie."

"No," Ginny tells her. "You just need to accept that this is how things are."

"I can't," Hermione says helplessly. Her voice tightens. "I won't. I refuse to stand by while people with your kind of good intentions destroy my world."

Ginny knows as she lifts her wand that she will write subject has been disposed of according to regulations in her report tonight.

-

The Dark Lord says our world has never been better at preserving pureblood culture.

The forms read Appeal to Revoke the History Suppression Bill.

-

Hermione's words haunt her and Ginny wonders whether it ever could have been any other way. Her memory seems thin nowadays and she seems to be able to slip through the gaps. She can remember a time when speaking your mind was allowed, not only on paper but in reality as well, but then she wonders whether it was all a dream.

These are the way things are, Ginny tells herself.

This is the way they have turned out. It's for the best.

The past no longer matters.

She can't remember it anyway.