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Grim Truth: 94/2/9
Sep. 2nd, 2011 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_sirius2 September, 1994
Greetings, British Wizarding World!
And here you thought you were done with me. Well, with the Prophet seeing fit to splash my face in the papers again, I thought it only proper to set some rumours to rest. Yes. I’m not actually dead.
Cousin Bellatrix: Surprise! Guess you were more off your aim than you thought. (Oh, and just in case you’d like to claim I’m an impostor: I remember what hat came out of the Christmas cracker you pulled at your fifteenth (my seventh) birthday party. Do you?)
But you know, alive - and dead - and alive again, I still get my share of mail. Things like, ‘Your sainted mother turns in her grave every day just knowing she spawned you’ (clearly written by someone who never met my mother) and ‘You’re nothing more than a pustulent Pogrebin. I am sending you a curse by parcel post.’ And other invectives far more interesting but less printable here. Most of the time, though, it doesn’t really bother me, I have to admit. Because I used to read the Letters to the Editor long before I was an outlaw, and people don’t change much, no matter who’s in charge.
I did get one letter yesterday, just after the announcement of my resurrection, that troubled me very much.
It said: ‘You needn’t worry about my bothering you anymore if you’re the sort of person who sets off a bomb in a crowd.’
It said a deal else, as well, including very grim and very true things about what bombs do when they’re ignited among mobs. Especially when heavy objects fall (or threaten to fall) on helpless people below. More eloquently than I could hope to argue here, in point of fact.
As it happens, I do know what bombs do and I didn’t need this week to remind me. Monday was not the first mass conflation I’ve seen, I’m sorry to say. I had the ill fortune to be in Barcelona in 1987, when Basques killed 21 people with a bomb fitted into a car. I’ve seen more footage of the effects of Muggle warfare than my young correspondent has ever or I hope will ever see. I was at the Cup, as well, but not to set off any weapons, Muggle or wizard-made, and certainly not to harm innocent spectators.
Let’s make no mistake about that: The majority of people who died or nearly died at the Cup were not guests at the match. It was Muggleborn servants, penned up below the Lord Pretender’s viewing stands, who took the brunt of the blast, and were largely left to their fate by their wizarding ‘masters.’ Yes, I was there, but I chose to risk revealing myself in order to help them escape their deathtrap. And then there were the Muggles in the camp nearby, and we all know who’s responsible for their injuries and their deaths, even if we’ll never be able to trace all the wands.
There are a number of groups (the last count I heard was 23) claiming some responsibility for the device that detonated at the Cup. I’ve seen the article trying to blame the Irish Muggle Army; I’ve read the sickening claims that the DogStar Company have made; I’ve even heard tell that the Crimson Company is using Malfoy’s condition as a recruiting slogan.
I’ve got one thing to say about all that: Claim what you like, but leave my name off it. During the time I’ve been ‘dead’ you seem to have forgotten what I wrote back when I was alive. So let me remind you what I really support and what I don’t. Free the people who should never have been enslaved in the first place. Depose the puppets you have given control over your society, your livelihoods and even your very thoughts. Do it without taking more lives in the bargain.
It occurs to me that it’s amazing what a large group of people can do when they’ve the luxury of hiding behind the mask of the faceless mob. If you’d turned your wands in the other direction that night, what a difference it might have made.
Greetings, British Wizarding World!
And here you thought you were done with me. Well, with the Prophet seeing fit to splash my face in the papers again, I thought it only proper to set some rumours to rest. Yes. I’m not actually dead.
Cousin Bellatrix: Surprise! Guess you were more off your aim than you thought. (Oh, and just in case you’d like to claim I’m an impostor: I remember what hat came out of the Christmas cracker you pulled at your fifteenth (my seventh) birthday party. Do you?)
But you know, alive - and dead - and alive again, I still get my share of mail. Things like, ‘Your sainted mother turns in her grave every day just knowing she spawned you’ (clearly written by someone who never met my mother) and ‘You’re nothing more than a pustulent Pogrebin. I am sending you a curse by parcel post.’ And other invectives far more interesting but less printable here. Most of the time, though, it doesn’t really bother me, I have to admit. Because I used to read the Letters to the Editor long before I was an outlaw, and people don’t change much, no matter who’s in charge.
I did get one letter yesterday, just after the announcement of my resurrection, that troubled me very much.
It said: ‘You needn’t worry about my bothering you anymore if you’re the sort of person who sets off a bomb in a crowd.’
It said a deal else, as well, including very grim and very true things about what bombs do when they’re ignited among mobs. Especially when heavy objects fall (or threaten to fall) on helpless people below. More eloquently than I could hope to argue here, in point of fact.
As it happens, I do know what bombs do and I didn’t need this week to remind me. Monday was not the first mass conflation I’ve seen, I’m sorry to say. I had the ill fortune to be in Barcelona in 1987, when Basques killed 21 people with a bomb fitted into a car. I’ve seen more footage of the effects of Muggle warfare than my young correspondent has ever or I hope will ever see. I was at the Cup, as well, but not to set off any weapons, Muggle or wizard-made, and certainly not to harm innocent spectators.
Let’s make no mistake about that: The majority of people who died or nearly died at the Cup were not guests at the match. It was Muggleborn servants, penned up below the Lord Pretender’s viewing stands, who took the brunt of the blast, and were largely left to their fate by their wizarding ‘masters.’ Yes, I was there, but I chose to risk revealing myself in order to help them escape their deathtrap. And then there were the Muggles in the camp nearby, and we all know who’s responsible for their injuries and their deaths, even if we’ll never be able to trace all the wands.
There are a number of groups (the last count I heard was 23) claiming some responsibility for the device that detonated at the Cup. I’ve seen the article trying to blame the Irish Muggle Army; I’ve read the sickening claims that the DogStar Company have made; I’ve even heard tell that the Crimson Company is using Malfoy’s condition as a recruiting slogan.
I’ve got one thing to say about all that: Claim what you like, but leave my name off it. During the time I’ve been ‘dead’ you seem to have forgotten what I wrote back when I was alive. So let me remind you what I really support and what I don’t. Free the people who should never have been enslaved in the first place. Depose the puppets you have given control over your society, your livelihoods and even your very thoughts. Do it without taking more lives in the bargain.
It occurs to me that it’s amazing what a large group of people can do when they’ve the luxury of hiding behind the mask of the faceless mob. If you’d turned your wands in the other direction that night, what a difference it might have made.
