Fans of Alternity

I put all the Swithins quotes together, and they fit perfectly with your interpretation.

Lucius (http://alt-lucius.livejournal.com/2375.html): "There was some unpleasant business in one of the camps. Two Muggles thought to hide their Mudblood brat in an attempt to keep her being placed per the State's instructions. Sent Ari and Gaude to remove the obstacles ... and the spawn."

Minerva (http://alt-mcgonagall.livejournal.com/1242.html): "The family that Malfoy spoke of in his recent entry was the Swithins. They were almost the first family Frank and Alice approached, eight years ago, and they turned the offer of sanctuary for their daughter down."

Minerva again (http://alt-mcgonagall.livejournal.com/1242.html?thread=4570#t4570): "And I think of Divyesh Shah - it was Shah, wasn't it, who took the Swithin girl's place? - and I know that in the grand scheme of things it's all one, but it's difficult nevertheless."

So, if we add in what you said, here's what happened.

1. 8 years ago, a Muggleborn girl was born to the Swithins. Someone (Minerva?) saw the name in the magical book, and sent Alice Longbottom to offer help hiding the girl. Since this would have meant taking her away from her parents forever and having strangers raise her, the parents refused.

2. The family that would have raised the Swithin girl was instead matched with another Muggleborn child named Divyesh Shah.

3. Now, the Swithin girl has been discovered. The girl has been removed and will be a slave like Hermione, and the parents are either dead or have lost their child forever anyway. Minerva knows that, if they *had* been able to save the child, that would have meant that another child—Shah—wouldn't have been able to be saved, so it's "all one," but it is painful anyway.

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Thanks for lining up the bits and pieces about the incident at the Camp and the references to the Order's "sanctuary" program. (I had taken that to suggest that the children were sent out of the country, by the way, rather than that they were slipped into other families, but that is certainly another possibility.)

So the Order have only been doing this for eight years? So the tiny infants taken that year would now be eight and they might well have taken some who were older. For any of those to be among this year's firsties, they'd have been three (or older if they weren't found right away).

I guess I'm surprised that if we are really seeing a fostering program, it would have been possible for the same family to have secretly adopted a child name Swithin or Shah, which are ethnically different surnames. If there were an offshore orphanage, the available "place" could more plausibly be available to any child of any parentage (but then it would be harder to imagine why the available "places" seem to have been so strictly limited).

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longstrider.livejournal.com

One other interpretation of Minerva's comment about Shah is that Shah is a wizard who acted as a changeling for the Swithins. The muggleborn child is stolen and replaced by a polyjuiced (or otherwise disguised wizard) who then 'dies' awhile later. Definitely a dark take on Order operations, but possible. That would explain why it didn't matter who the second person was, they've got more than one who does it.

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The idea of an involuntary "changeling" would put a wonderful spin, here, on the whole wizard/faerie tradition. Under this theory, then, when McG says that Shah "replaced" the Swithin girl, you mean literally replaced, within the Swithin family? Rather than that she took the available Wizard-family opening originally intended for the Swithin girl.

My first thought was -- wait, the Swithins refused placement. But maybe the scenario is like this: first, a family of Muggles is approached about giving up their magical infant. Then, if they refuse, a non-voluntary "changeling" action takes place at some point. When McGonagall notes that the Swithin family "turned the offer of sanctuary . . . down," she's not just sadly regretting a missed opportunity; she's euphemistically alluding to the fact that things got more complicated and potentially uglier. And then a moment later, she and Molly recall who the "mudblood brat" that Lucius had "removed" actually was.

Would Shah be a wizard herself, though? A wizard family's child, yes, but I was speculating below (http://community.livejournal.com/alt_fen/3354.html?thread=31258#t31258) that older children might be involved in a Squib-for-Muggleborn sort of swap. Otherwise the child would grow up and be exposed when it started manifesting magic. Or else, consistent with the "changeling" theme, it could "die" and be taken back into a wizarding family, but that wouldn't solve the problem of an extra child in the records, and it doesn't seem to be the model in the Swithins' case. Still, some variation of all this seems like a tantalizing possibility here.

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On second thought, of course, if Shah was the changeling who replaced the Swithins baby, she eventually did start manifesting magic; that's how she was caught. But I don't see why a wizarding family would place a magical baby into a muggle household where it was going to be exposed eventually. Could it have been a mistake -- maybe the sort of mistake that inevitably happens now and then, where they assume a child is a squib but it turns out to be magical after all? Or, the changeling theory could just be wrong, but I really really like it and want to save it! :)

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That seems plausible. I like your idea that it is magically updated so that what it contains cannot, perhaps, be controlled by McGonagall. Otherwise, one would think that the general enrollment census would not contain information she wishes to keep secret from the Lord Protector.

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I like your idea that it is magically updated so that what it contains cannot, perhaps, be controlled by McGonagall. Otherwise, one would think that the general enrollment census would not contain information she wishes to keep secret from the Lord Protector.

I would imagine that if she could, McGonagall would keep a "double set of books," as it were.

So why can't she?

And.

If the Hogwarts enrollment list updates magically -- and if the Ministry wants to monitor that information -- why wouldn't the book have a magical double in the Ministry's archives? Or why wouldn't that information appear in whatever population census the Ministry *does* surely keep?

I guess I have difficulty with the notion that the Order has managed to insert Muggle-born children undetected into wizarding foster families without the real parentage appearing automatically in the Ministry's records -- especially if there's some enrollment book at Hogwarts that can't be prevented from recording that same true information. In other words, if McGonagall can't keep the true biographical information for those students out of a book she has in her own keeping, how can the Order possibly have kept it out of the Ministry's census records? --

Because the game says so, perhaps, but I'd love to see them work out this wrinkle if it is one.

Is there more to be inferred about the book and the information it contains?

Malfoy has asked in the past to see the book

Prophet

~~snoop and pressure~~

I can live with this explanation of the bits and pieces, but it still somehow feels as if there are pieces that strain or pieces I'm not seeing.

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The book is real, and I think we should assume it's one-of-a-kind, like Harry's invisibility cloak or other such artifacts.

From the wikipedia entry for Hogwarts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogwarts):
"A magical quill at Hogwarts detects the birth of wizard children and writes their names into a large parchment book.[13] Every year, a teacher (in recent years, Minerva McGonagall) checks this book and sends a letter to the children who will have turned eleven years old by 31 August."

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Thanks: that's a bit of canon (or JKR-revelation) that I'd missed altogether, but it stands to reason as an explanation of how Hogwarts knows which children should receive invitations.

I have a hard time, though, accepting that the Ministry has no magical census on the Wizarding population. Of course, JKR's magical world has always had some simply bizarre holes.

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Just casting a net, here, for some possible related evidence on the book issue:

1. Interesting that on the 17th, the day of Lucius' visit and McG's deception, was the same day Sally-Anne Perks reported that business with the biting book that escaped from Madame Pince -- and Pince was angry when Sally-Anne tried to look at the title.

2. If you want to temporarily hide books, maybe sending them out for re-binding offers a good excuse. And Hermione is -- or was -- responsible for rebinding. So is this another way she is being used, here, and is she aware of what's going on?

3. The more I think about it, the odder it seems that Pince would share, and Hermione would post, that picture (http://alt-hermione.livejournal.com/2051.html) of a page of Runic text on the 10th. I mean, it's pretty, but it's the only graphic post like that so far. Could it contain some sort of code or secret announcement, that couldn't be shared (or wouldn't have had the same authority) as a simple posting under Order Only?

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I like your #3!

I've no idea what to do with it, though.

This seems to be the RL text from which that image was borrowed for the game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Runicus).

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I've no idea what to do with it, though.

Me neither, but that's never stopped us before . . .

Maybe the quill writes in runic, so the page is from The Book. Per your wikipedia entry, the codex includes a list of names, Danish Kings in the real version. A list of magical names might look similar to a casual observer. Who would look twice?

If there's a Hermione-Library-Book connection, I wonder what that says about Lupin's interest in Hermione. I had assumed Lupin was benevolent and Sirius was being paranoid, because I couldn't think of anything that would make Hermione specifically of interest to a spy. But if she's a key player in the child-substitution operation, that's different.

And now I wonder about Hermione's parents' role -- don't they move from camp to camp as dentists? (I'm sorry, I can't find that cite and may be mis-remembering, though Hermione talks about "the camps" (http://alt-hermione.livejournal.com/2398.html) they lived in.) If so, would that have made the whole Granger family perfect agents for this sort of business as well?

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borgin.livejournal.com

Hermione talks about her parents moving between camps in her profile (http://alt-hermione.livejournal.com/profile).

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Thanks! I knew I'd seen that somewhere. So that gives them unusual mobility for Muggles, positions them nicely for intelligence activities. Hmmmmm.

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It would be very interesting if "the book" were one of the library books that have been encountered by students -- hide in plain sight, indeed!

I'd enjoy the irony if it were Sally-Anne who'd gotten close, but I thought that the biting book was The Monster Book of Monsters, which Hermione mentions (admittedly in a circumstance that makes it seem likely that it wasn't really the book that caused the injury) (http://alt-hermione.livejournal.com/1609.html?thread=4937#t4937).

I think #2 is the more likely scenario. McGonagall might well have taken the precautionary measure of providing herself with a concrete excuse for not being able to show Malfoy the book (and then he failed to ask).

The bigger point that I think you are making is that the players are doing a fabulous job of layering in plot details that may seem irrelevant in their moment of mention, but which are beginning to have significant pay-offs.

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FWIW, Draco in Sally-Anne's biting book post suggests that "a" biting book is something you can make just to show that you can. So, there might be more than one, it might not be Monsters, especially if Hermione is good at making "special" covers like she did with Slughorn's potion book. I admit it's a reach to tie Sally-Anne in, here, but I'm leaning toward "not disproven." :)

the players are doing a fabulous job of layering in plot details that may seem irrelevant in their moment of mention, but which are beginning to have significant pay-offs

Most definitely. Which makes it great fun to be a watcher.

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but I'm leaning toward "not disproven." :)

As we all know by now, I'm a firm believer in holding in play all possibilities that have not yet been disproven. Doesn't mean I'm not glad to see the field of possibilities reduced eventually or that I can't recognize relative degrees of probability, but I'm with you in appreciating the possibilities while they remain possible.

Or something like that.

:)

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Or something like that.

I believe the technical term is "bumbling off after red herrings," and I am all for it! ;)

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jenett

(And even then you'd think neighbours and acquaintances would have noticed save in the case of a wizarding family that lived in greatest isolation from other magical people.)

I was thinking about this - the impression you get in the books is that by and large they *don't* know each other before arrival.

It's not like "Oh, Ron, how've you been since I saw you last month?" - it mostly looks like a whole bunch of new-forming friendships, with a few exceptions. (Draco/Crabbe/Goyle, for example, where it's pretty clear their parents see each other regularly.)

It's not just the Muggle-born (where it'd make sense) - but you'd think that if there was a lot of cross-family visiting, Ron would know a few people and point them out, rather than immediately falling in with Harry and Hermione sort of out of default - there's got to be friends of his brothers around somewhere, right?

And you get the sense in the Quidditch Championship that most of the younger set aren't used to the large community gathering stuff either.

Given that, I don't think it's impossible you'd have rather isolated wizarding families. Maybe there's something about not being able to use the floo network until you have your own wand or something else that's a natural age-limiter for under 11. So you'd see the people near your home, but not most others without a lot of extra effort.

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I don't think it's impossible you'd have rather isolated wizarding families.

I think this is definitely canonical. And I think you are especially right about the isolation of under-elevens. Adults seem to connect through work and other social avenues (mostly left unspecified in canon), but folks seem to know other folks when we see them out shopping in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, for instance. And we know that Hogsmeade is the only wizarding-only community, but I don't think we have a reason to suppose that most families live in isolation. (I think Rowling just left some gaps in what she described. For instance, the first chapter of Book One has Uncle Vernon travelling past clusters of people in pointy hats and cloaks on what turns out to be the day after Harry survives Voldemort's attack on Godric's Hollow. This happens near his office "in town" [which could be anywhere in greater London but seems from the text to be right in Little Whinging] -- but maybe Surrey, like London, has an unusually high density of magical people. Anyway, the point is we don't get a lot of discussion from Rowling about the pattern of Wizarding settlement in the UK and the evidence we have is mixed.)

Ron's family may be a good test of your point. It seems that their place outside the "village" of Ottery St. Catchpole must be pretty remote, and Ron doesn't seem to know many other kids when he arrives at Hogwarts, yet the Weasleys are not alone when they reach the old boot that turns out to be the Portkey to the World Cup match -- the Diggories live close enough to join them for the journey. Still, it doesn't seem that Cedric grew up playing with the Weasley boys.

Just one of those things that canon leaves relatively open-ended.

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jenett

Yep.

The adults definitely do meet up - the stuff you cited, but also, they've just got obviously more options for transport (apparation, not just floo.)

But I seem to remember the thing with the portkey being "Oh, you know Cedric from school" not "Oh, hi, Cedric, you haven't droped in this vacation, done anything fun?" like you might if cross-connections between kids were common. (I mean, they obviously don't live *that* far away, if the port key location is in common, but it's equally clear they're not in and out of each other's homes regularly.)

It's also interesting - the Weasleys invite Harry and Hermione for vacations, but you don't really see that happening with anyone else, even in passing. Nor do you see them hosting social events, even very casual ones. (And if I'm right, the family 'clock' has settings for home and work and school and mortal danger and such - but not for "out with friends." (My copies are up in the top of my pantry shelves, and I'm in the midst of cleaning up after major cooking, so I am not going to go dig up now, but I think that's right.)

Which suggests that even the adults go out to 'neutral' ground rather than have each other over. (Wizarding pubs, etc.) A perfectly logical explanation would have to do with magical home protections: if you have a dinner party, you'd be allowing people to come inside those protections and potentially do not-great things, or manipulate future access. So even parents bringing their kids over to play would be a little tricky from that POV.

Y'know, put like this, it's a little odd the kids are as well socialised as they are: for dropping them all into a shared room living situation at the start of school, things go surprisingly smoothly. Maybe for wizarding kids, there's a special socialisation curriculum the year before they turn 11 or something. (Muggle-born kids wouldn't have that issue, since they'd presumably be used to being at school with others.)

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You have me thinking about this, and I think we have to be cautious in taking the Weasleys' experience as a model for all wizarding families -- for at least two reasons:

We don't get a clear view of this because we see everything from Harry's point of view: in the early books he does not have a clear understanding of adult social codes; throughout, he sees the Weasleys through rose-coloured glasses (he loves this big family that embraces him); and as he gets old enough to see more clearly, the political situation gets dangerous and the Order circles the wagons so its no wonder that the Weasleys rarely socialize with other families in Harry's presence.

Last thought:
One example of a big social gathering that might stand as evidence in your discussion of the dangers of letting acquaintances through your wards is the Weasley wedding in Book 7. An extreme case, but a case in point for your argument.

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If there are Muggleborn children who have slipped the Ministry's attempt to block them from being educated (Hermione and boot being examples of the Ministry's successes), then it should be interesting to consider who these fraudulent students might be.

We haven't yet met Justin Finch-Fletchley, but he seems to have a journal (

alt_justin and may turn up with a surname other than Finch-Fletchley when he does appear.) Are there other canonical Muggleborn/mixed parentage children we could name?

Some other very interesting considerations arise:

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borgin.livejournal.com

Dean Thomas? Since he's technically a half-blood, I'm curious to see where he ends up in this world. But I don't think he's at Hogwarts (or, at least, in Gryffindor) as the first-year Gryffindor boys have been named as Ron, Seamus, and Neville.

Edited Date: 2008-09-20 08:31 pm (UTC)

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Right. And he doesn't seem to have a journal, though that doesn't mean they can't include him without casting him.

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alt_moderator

Just because a character doesn't have a journal doesn't mean that they won't be appearing. Just because a character has a journal doesn't mean they'll be appearing anytime soon.

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The first of those is a tantalizing promise! (More characters to come!) As regards the second, I'm happily awaiting them.

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"So might Ginny be in this category?"

Ooh, I love it! There is the possibility that in this AU the Weasleys didn't have another child, and instead fostered one. Although, since Ginny's only one year younger than Harry, and he was already a year old when we went AU, it would have to be a pretty tight squeeze to alter the events leading to Ginny's birth. Like, Molly was probably already pregnant with her by the time the Potters were killed, and would have had to miscarry due to stress or something. Also, Voldemort would have had to take power really soon after the death of the Potters, in order for a Muggleborn baby to even need rescuing within the time period that it could have been passed off as connected to Molly's pregnancy.

So, maybe not all that plausible. But it's an awesome thought.

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One clear possibility for a fostering system is that it was a matter of replacing infants who were still-born or died very soon after birth: that would provide the best cover of all for a fraudulent addition to a family. It would count on other witches and wizards having known of the pregnancy and would allow for a midwife or St Mungo's birth -- all solid evidence of the existence of a child within a family. It would also help account for the scarcity of spaces, though I'd think it would have made them VERY scarce, indeed. (So there must have been some other cover stories. Non-identical twins, perhaps? Or a few families that lived in remote enough locations to have had no neighbours? Or faked pregnancies?)

I'm not trying to cast a dark shadow on Ginny, but if she had been still-born, that might have provided the first opportunity and sparked the program. (You turned up the tidbit that Frank and Alice Longbottom approached the first family just eight years ago, so there would have been some time after Ginny's birth.)

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It does seem like faking pregnancy would be pretty easy for magical people. I'm sure you could do some convincing spells to give the appearance of various stages of pregnancy, and a married couple becoming pregnant is certainly not unusual enough for people to be checking your cover story too closely. And if even one St. Mungo's employee were in on the operation, the "pregnant" witch would be able to go into a room with him/her, make some baby-delivering type sounds, emerge with a baby looking tired and happy, and you would have a very tight cover story.

The scarcity of spaces in the program probably mostly has to do with the fact that there aren't that many wizarding families who can be trusted to be let in on the secret. I can imagine that it is very dangerous every time a new family is approached. Maybe Frank and Alice claim to be working alone (even disguised with polyjuice, perhaps) so that if they are ratted out, only they take the fall and the network can continue. Of course, this is why Neville hasn't heard from his parents for a long time: they are in the most constant danger of anyone, in this operation, and need to make sure that they are caught, their actions are not connected to their son.

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I'm just thinking through this -- maybe over-thinking -- but I wonder if the program would really be just for infants? On the one hand, we have the magical book which registers magical people at birth. On the other hand, canon suggests that magic doesn't manifest itself until later in childhood. I think Hermione was nine, though I think she also said that that was a little bit late.

As you've said, it would be hard enough to persuade Muggle parents to give up their children even if they knew for sure that they were magical; how much harder would it be if they have no actual visible evidence about the child. I imagine some parents only buy in to the program when the child starts manifesting signs, say at six or seven or eight. At which point it's a race against time, to do something before the authorities notice and take action.

So I wonder if a program for older children exists, and how it might work, or even if it could work.

I realize I'm being really speculative, on a thread that, by contrast, has turned up some very interesting "hard" arguments. I think it might be worth doing that anyway, just to become more attuned and to watch out closely for a range of possible clues that might turn up in the game, as evidence for or against any of this.

How would a swap of older children work? Would the only openings involve a death in a wizarding family, or could there be a swap of Squib for Muggleborn, seeing that Squibs aren't going to be treated that well, either? That kind of swap would make things even more brutal for the wizarding family that was involved. I wonder if that might be why the death of the Swithins would be so remarkably hard on Alice Longbottom -- more than just the failure of an eight-year-old recruitment program.

And how would you hide the swap, in the case of an older child? Speculating wildly, a "replacement" older child might be, say, pulled out of school and homeschooled, like Ginny, or sent to a neighboring village, like Luna, to reduce the chance that the Ministry would notice.

Again, I'm theorizing way ouside the currently available evidence, but I'm just sort of generating hypotheses with the idea that as bits and pieces emerge, certain kinds of evidence might be worth watching out for.

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"could there be a swap of Squib for Muggleborn"

Oh man, if I were in the Order, this would be the NUMBER ONE thing I'd want to make happen. For a squib, would it be better to be raised as a normal Muggle child than go to a squib camp? At least they would get to stay with the same set of parents for their entire childhoods. For a Muggleborn, obviously it would be a million times better to be raised as a pureblood wizard. Plus, this would eventually create a lot more citizens that were sympathetic to the Order and were in high-level positions. That is, of course, unless by the time they were old enough to be trusted with the secret of their parentage, they were so indoctrinated that it just made them disgusted and angry.

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