Birds of a Feather

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Birds of a Feather

by Telepwen

Robert Gale had a straightforward goal in life, and he thought it was a good one.

His parents had long taught him that one of the major tenets of life--the meaning of life, even--was to take the world as it was and make it a better place for future generations. After all, one did not inherit the world from one's parents; one borrowed it from one's children. All he had to do, he reasoned, was to find the thing that was most wrong with the world, and see what he needed to do in order to help fix it.

That much was easy.

Intermarriage was the problem. Intermarriage and assimilation. That was the biggest killer of heritage there was, and if he was to keep the world for his children, it was a danger that would have to be dealt with.

Birds of a feather, his father had always said. Birds of a feather flock together.

Marry your own kind, he'd been taught. Dilution of bloodlines meant death of a people. Purity was the way to keep the generations going, he'd been taught. It was the only way to ensure that as one's people existed a thousand years ago, so would it exist a thousand years hence.

It was shameful, really, the way proper wizards would marry those of Muggle descent. The way they'd have children with outsiders, creating dangerous half breeds while they had their childish love affairs. Marriage wasn't about love, really. It was about ensuring the continuation of a heritage. How could that heritage be ensured when strangers were allowed into the mix?

It was contaminating the whole of society, too. Muggle ways were being assimilated in with wizarding ways, corrupting the culture of thousands of years. With each Muggleborn, with each half breed, with each intermarriage, their legacy of millennia was crumbling before their very eyes.

Birds of a feather flock together. It once was, but no more.

Gale taught his children the necessity of marrying within one's own kind. He made sure they associated with their own kind, made sure they were well rounded in the age old wizarding customs. His children knew how the world was meant to be, and they would do their part when they came of age.

They were so young. So innocent. So happy. The words of his father came back to him: "The world is theirs, not yours. It is theirs for a time, and then it is passed on to their children, and their children, and their children after that. You must make this world liveable for them. You must make it better than I left it for you."

That much was easy.

The Muggles themselves weren't the problem, really. They didn't know better; how could they? They were simple creatures, after all. They kept to themselves as best they could, and they had their own mockery of a society. It was fascinating to watch them scurry about as though wherever they were headed dictated the life or death of the world. They loved each other, they hated each other, they laughed with each other, and they killed each other. Always trying to get that one step ahead in their short lives, always trying to do one better than the Muggle next door to them. There was no cohesiveness to their worlds within worlds within worlds; neither culture nor continuity. There were too many of them to be a cohesive whole, so they couldn't even help that, not really.

Some said they could be successfully included in wizarding society with no detriment. How was that even conceivable? How could a Muggle, a Muggleborn, a half breed fit, how could they be loyal to that which demanded loyalty? How could they dedicate their lives to the preservation of that which they did not, could not understand? How could they assimilate into a world so foreign to their own? It was unthinkable. Just as Gale knew that he could never assimilate into the Muggle world, he knew that Muggles could never assimilate into his.

Birds of a feather flock together. His father had said it best.

A bird may love a fish but where would they build a home together?

Yet they were. The sky was fading into the sea, and the sea was boiling away for it. The sea from which all life had come was boiling away into thin air. What was there to do?

Birds of a feather flock together. His father's words rang in Gale's head over and over as he walked the long road. His children were tucked safely into bed--one with his favourite toy horse swishing its tail as it protested being clutched by tiny hands, and the other with his thumb stuck firmly in his mouth. They were innocent still. They needed to be protected from the world, to be protected from the strangers' ways.

Who would do it if he didn't? Most people simply threw up their hands and said, "There's nothing for it. There's nothing we can do; it's too widespread."

Gale wasn't one to balk at a task simply because it was difficult.

The intermarriage had to stop. The assimilation had to stop. The half breeds had to stop. And he wasn't alone in realising that.

Birds of a feather flock together. The road was coming to an end, and Gale saw his destination clearly. It was an unimposing house, a comfortable-looking cottage. There he knew he'd find those of his own feather. There he knew he'd find those that wanted to preserve the world for their children as he wanted to preserve the world for his.

As he walked up the path, he whispered to himself, "Birds of a feather."

Robert Gale knocked on the door of the cottage at ten o'clock in the post meridian on the twenty-eighth of May in the year of nineteen hundred seventy-two. As the door opened:

"I am here to further the cause of Lord Voldemort. May I come in?"