Protection: The Sword and the Shield

Cat and Dog Chronicles

Office of the Deputy Headmistress, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Minerva McGonagall looked at the stack of parchments and smiled to herself. Ever since she re-swore the oath to the House of Potter her Clan had been steadily pulling itself back from the brink of extinction. The idea to use her prerogative as a noble to help create new magical lines had never occurred to her and she couldn't think why.

Harry's idea was brilliant but it needed polishing. She had created the company, New Amazon, Inc., and had started to bring together the most brilliant and underappreciated muggleborn women she could find. All had been British, but all had not attended Hogwarts.

In the end she had found 100 women. She could have found more but she did not want her plan to become unwieldy and to collapse due to its own size. Harry had simply suggested swearing each woman as a Retainer, thus giving them a magical family line that they could past down to their daughters.

But magic is finicky and while it might be fun to sidestep bigotry in the ministry, one had to be careful with magic. A Retainer swore an oath that granted them protection in exchange for service. If she ended up with more Retainers than she could protect or not enough service to cover them all, magic could retaliate in unexpected ways.

Luckily at her first meeting to discuss the "tribe" she wished to form, she had a multitude of magical scholars who were all motivated to secure their and their families future in magical Britain. Creating a magical family was only the first step for these women. A step that would normally take anywhere from 3 -- 7 uninterrupted generations. In addition, such legacies had to pass from father to son or mother to daughter.

Each generation had to keep a common name in primacy and in a patriarchal culture where married women typically took their husbands names; that was hard to sustain for the average required 5 continuous generations. Swearing fealty bypassed this as a family had to exist to swear the oaths. All the women had to do was name the family in the oath and not be magically bound to another family line.

But the true boon was the opportunity to develop a family magical affinity. Once established; a family who worked in the same field for successive generations started to develop an affinity for that magic and with the first hurdle passed, the second was thought to be easier as each generation only had to practice in the field and not be expert in it necessarily.

The second problem was protection and service. Most of the magical theorist agreed that the Clan McGonagall would be offering protection from the bigotry of the wizarding world and that what was being protected was not their lives necessarily but their opportunity to advance and the service should related to what was offered.

The discussion about the Amazon tribe was long. The women were determined to flush out a robust system that covered all that they required and accounted for all the possible hurdles. In the end the Amazon program was developed.

Each muggleborn woman selected, would swear fealty to Clan McGonagall in exchange for protection and opportunity. As a magically recognized family with the backing of Clan McGonagall and the House of Potter behind that, the women would have access to apprenticeships and Masteries that have been historically almost impossible for a muggleborn to get. It would also make them eligible for political alliances and marriages. And lastly protect their achievements from being hijacked by more connected witches or wizards.

In return, the newly sworn family be responsible for building Clan McGonagall's wealth and prestige. Each oath taker was required to provide something to clan McGonagall to be released from the oath. Members would go on what would be called a pilgrimage to discover or patent a new magic which they would then hand the rights of that discovery to Clan McGonagall or they would work to re-discover an old magic for the Clan. Some could choose to work for New Amazon as their pilgrimage. They would be paid but all their research would belong to Clan McGonagall and they would make a ten year commitment to the company.