"Why did you refrain, anyway? I forgot to ask. Just the reporters?"

"Things sounded - complicated. I'm smart, but I'm eleven and I haven't had any politics lessons, and I wasn't sure I could avoid making something worse."

"I am a little scared at the thought of meetings that need politics lessons."

"Well - like - people were talking about whether we should invite foreigners into Britain to help us do things since there aren't enough British wix left. If I had said any facts, I think people would have thought I was arguing for a side, and I didn't know how to control which side."

"Wait, no, I'm confused. Enough for what?"

"Oh, my parents have been complaining about that, shops are closed or understaffed and everything is harder to get ahold of. Enough to do - anything. That's why we have the American teachers I guess?"

"I mean, some things probably need magic, but if it's just shopkeepers and jobs like that, couldn't they hire Muggles?"

"That's a violation of the International Statute of Secrecy. Which is international, so breaking it would be a big deal, we can't just do it internally. I didn't hear anyone seriously proposing it, but it's an idea. It'd probably also make it easier for wixen to meet Muggles and have half-blood kids who are almost always wix."

"If the other countries don't want us to break it, they should help us not need to," Alli grumps.

"Well, they are. We have American teachers. But some people don't like that they're 'meddling'. And some people don't think they're doing enough."

"Wizards are complicated... so no Muggles, no outside help. What do the 'meddling' people want to do instead...?"

"Uh, I heard - more use of house-elves. Starting kids at Hogwarts at a different cutoff age - like how I hadn't turned eleven when I started, there would be more kids like that - and declaring us of age younger so kids could help with things. Encouraging people to have more kids with tax things I didn't understand. Ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away."

"Most of that won't do anything for years," Emma sighs.

"It really won't. I'd like to see the Statute of Secrecy set on fire, but not if it means that all the other wizarding countries get mad at us and start more wars or something."

"What's wrong with the Statute of Secrecy?" Alli asks, surprised. "We'd have to explain everything to Muggles without sounding all scary and doomlike."

"Okay, look, what's the reason you always hear for why we need the Statute?"

"Muggles would... want magic stuff?"

"Yes. And why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't we tell them 'yes, if I poke you with a stick and say episkey it'll fix your broken nose and it'll stop hurting and you won't have to get used to your face with a different nose shape for the rest of your life' - why shouldn't we tell them 'yes, I can get unlimited clean water if I wave my wand and say aguamenti' - why shouldn't they want that? Why wouldn't we want to let them have it? Especially now that they have something we want, too."

"But magic also has monsters," Jenny says in a small, small voice.

"The Muggles aren't going to be in extra danger," says Miranda. "They'll just be better informed. If we did the big reveal now then at least in Britain we could make it sound like the good guys just took over from a bad government that wanted to keep them in the dark, instead of 'yeah we decided one day you should know that Dementors exist'."

"Are they really not in extra danger? Are people getting attacked by monsters every day and we just don't know about it because it's getting covered up?"

"There aren't really that many," Miranda says soothingly. "And they tend to prefer magic places and Muggles can't see most of them, I don't think there are that many cover-ups."

"How much would we bring in Muggles, though? If they find out there's magic, do they go looking, do things just get worse because now we need more people for stuff like warding dangerous areas?"

"Muggle-repelling charms work fine when the Muggles know about magic, right? There's already loads of those around the important places."

"They need to be recast sometimes I think, but they work really well," Alli contributes.