Chương 33: Chapter - 33 : Bloodlines and Names paet - 2

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Really, he had only one question left. "Are there any books about all this?" Harry asked the next day while he and Sirius took a break from rearranging their bedrooms. Kreacher finally seemed ready to let Harry move up to the family wing and didn't cause any trouble when Sirius cleared out his mother's old room. The elf had even deigned to serve them tea in the upstairs drawing room, where the two wizards were relaxing in front of the fire.

"Yes, but I'm not sure why you'd bother reading them," Sirius said, putting his feet up on the drawing room table and leaning back in his chair. "They're either in-depth discussions of magical theory or long lists of generations of pureblood families, and the authors expect their readers to already have a basic understanding of how it all works."

"I'll give that idea a miss then," Harry said and then sighed. "I just hate how even after years of being at Hogwarts and spending time amongst wizards, there are still things I don't know about the magical world. I mean, sure, I know my experiences weren't typical, seeing as I spent most of my time struggling just to stay alive... but even so, no one ever really teaches muggle-raised students anything about wizarding culture. We're just supposed to pick it up somehow, which I can't help but feel is unfair."

"Yes, I can imagine it must be difficult," Sirius said, leaning forwards to pour himself a second cup of tea and help himself to a biscuit. "That's another difference between muggleborns and purebloods though, and – I find anyway – a more important one than magical ability. It's cultural understanding that really matters. I mean, if you want to fit into a foreign country, you need to know the language and the manners and the belief system of the people living in it, right?"

"Right." Harry couldn't argue with that. It had taken him a long time to start feeling at home when he was living in France, and even after a year there he was still very much an outsider.

"Well, the wizarding world is a completely separate country from the muggle world," Sirius said, dunking his biscuit into his tea. "The two just happen to share some of the same geography… and often not even that."

That was something Harry knew from his old world. Hogsmeade might be the only purely wizarding village, but there were magic-only areas in most big cities and towns where the only non-magical people were Squibs or muggle family members. Even when wizards and witches lived right next to Muggles, it didn't mean they ever interacted with them. They could apparate directly to whatever magical destination they had in mind without ever stepping outside their front door.

Honestly, for the average wizard the Muggle World was as relevant to their day to day lives as, say, Australia. Meaning, not very. It was no wonder wizards were so utterly inept when dealing with anything muggle.

Sirius warmed to the subject. "What muggleborns often take a while to realise is that we wizards have our own history, our own politics, and our own way of life. Most magical countries really have nothing in common with their muggle counterparts. So why should we be judged by muggle standards?"

"We learnt a bit about that in History of Magic," Harry said. "The few times any of us managed to actually stay awake anyway." He knew Magical Russia was still ruled by a Tzar and he remembered Binns mentioning how Germany was just a rabble of independent regions that were only briefly united under Gindlewald.

Sirius gasped in mock surprise. "So you managed to learn something from Binns? I thought that was close to impossible."

Harry grinned. "Well, when you've got Hermione Granger nagging you to study and lending you her notes, then it's almost impossible not to learn something."

"So smart as well as powerful then?"

"Yep, and she was a really great friend to me over the years. She always stuck by me, no matter what danger I managed to drag us into," Harry said fondly, remembering all the times Hermione had helped him out of a sticky situation.

"Friends like that are good to have," Sirius said, his eyes becoming distant and haunted. Harry knew he was thinking of Pettigrew and desperately searched for something to take his mind off the rat's betrayal.

"So you think cultural knowledge is important?" he blurted out.

Sirius shook off his dark thoughts and exerted himself to answer. He talked about how ever since the introduction of the Statute of Secrecy in seventeenth century, the wizarding and muggle worlds had grown apart. He pointed out that Muggle beliefs regarding science and human rights were concepts that had gradually developed in response to specific historical events, but that wizards had had their own set of experiences and challenges to deal with. Wizarding society had developed differently as a result and what worked in one world wouldn't necessarily be appropriate in the other. The laws of physics were understandably less important when a flick of a wand could defy gravity, and equal rights held a very different meaning with the addition of magical beings.

"I agree with what you're saying," Harry said when Sirius paused to draw breath. "Though I have to admit I've never given it much thought before."

Sirius looked relieved. "I'm glad to hear it, but unfortunately a lot of muggle-raised children don't agree," he said. "Superficially they can look at our magical society and think the wizarding world is just what the muggle one was back in the middle ages, and that we need to 'catch up'. That's not true though, we have developed since then, just not along the same lines as the muggles have. We've invented new spells and voted in new laws and developed new ideas. Even things like music and fashion vary greatly. Admittedly, not all the changes have been good ones, but the point remains that we are changing. "

Harry had rarely seen Sirius so passionate about something. "You seem to feel quite strongly about all this…"

"I suppose I do," Sirius admitted. "It's created a lot of problems. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the cause of prejudice against muggleborns, but it definitely contributes to it. No one likes outsiders coming in and telling you that you're doing everything all wrong, and that you've got to change your whole society."

Harry thought back to the annoyed reactions of the Hogwarts students towards Hermione's SPEW campaign, and decided Sirius had a point. House Elves deserved better treatment, but that really hadn't been the right way to go about giving it to them. If changes were to be made to wizarding society, it had to come from within.

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