Son of the Storm

The past is another country

Albus Dumbledore was enjoying a quiet evening. He had made arrangements for the refreshing of the wards, written letters to Messrs Cassidy and Worthington, requesting that they come and detailing the arrangements that would be made, financial and otherwise, for their comfort and convenience. He had also written the mass letter to the parents, which would be sent from the Post Office the next morning, the school having only so many owls to call upon at once.

After all, they only needed to send out at any one time, at most, owls announcing the results of OWL's and NEWT's, which, if there were about sixty students in a year, meant one hundred and twenty owls.

The delivery of lists of requirements for the coming year, as sent to every student in every year before the start of each of year, was also subcontracted to the Post Office. Indeed, Dumbledore suspected that that was just about the only reason the Hogsmeade Post Office was able to remain in business. After all, Hogsmeade was barely a village, and many witches and wizards owned their own owls.

He might have said that it was subsidised by the Ministry, but in his experience, the Ministry thought that money was very valuable, and therefore it was to be collected in as grand proportions as possible, stored in very safe places (such as pockets) and only used for the public benefit as a last resort.

It was one of what Dumbledore considered far too many symptoms of the sad fact that Magical Britain was in steep decline. The rich grew richer, the poor grew poorer, and the mediocre suppressed the intelligent. It was an unspoken truth that any young wizard or witch with the sense to see what was right in front of them, the means to do so and without a burning desire to serve the public/serve themselves would slip out of Magical Britain as quickly and quietly as possible, either to Europe, or more commonly, the Americas and Australia. In recent years, Japan, Brazil, the more stable parts of Africa and China were also becoming popular destinations.

Of course, this was a matter complicated by the fact that the Ministry as an institution did not like the idea of the best and brightest witches and wizards leaving. It wasn't simply the financial cost, or even the prestige cost, though Dumbledore knew for a fact that the American Ministry was in the habit of sending their British counterparts a somewhat smug monthly bulletin on just how well the émigrés were doing, and how many were flocking in every day, a habit that they'd picked up from the French.

It was a habit which the Ministry found extremely annoying, but couldn't reasonably protest, as all they would get was looks of milky eyed innocence and puzzled questions about why they didn't want to hear about what fine young people Britain was producing, people to be proud of to be sure. People, more to the point, who were leaving as quickly as they could, and going to other countries. This habit had stepped up in recent years, along with a simplification of the immigration process for European (read, British) expatriates, leading Dumbledore to suspect that Nick Fury was taking his passive aggressive revenge on the Ministry and the British Wizarding World at large.

The Chinese and Japanese Ministries were far too polite to do such a thing, but they didn't need to. Their newspapers were perfectly happy to do it for them.

In the end, what bothered the Ministry was not being in control. They considered all wanded British magic to be their domain to do with as they pleased. Dumbledore rather uncharitably suspected that they would consider all British magic, wanded or wandless, to be their domain to do with as they pleased, if they weren't all scared stiff by Arthur Langtry and the White Council, which was based in Edinburgh.

In fairness, he couldn't blame them for that. The Merlin taken as an individual was man who wielded incredible amounts of raw personal power, and the other seven members of the Senior Council were no less formidable.