“I’m so glad you came”, Lyra looked at aunt Andromeda with a big smile. “We are incredibly bored, now that we can’t really leave home much and go visit people because of the babies”, she adjusted Lucia’s position on her breast. “Also, Teddy is a blessing; James and Lily get bored and neglected now that we have to constantly wrap our lives around the newborns. They love to play with him”. Hermione nodded approvingly, listening to the sounds of children giggling upstairs.
“He pretends to be above those things because he’s so much older, but he can hardly wait to see them”, the older woman smiled. “I’ll let the others know when I visit; they’ll be glad to come and see you, but they didn’t know if you’re too busy with the babies”.
“Oh, we’re busy, but we’re also starved for company”, Hermione sighed. “We’re used to always being around people and visiting everybody and we miss it. I can’t even read books now because it takes too much focus away from the baby, and the men are dealing with the work and the politics for all four of us, so they are hardly ever home”.
“About that, Lucius and Narcissa have been completely socially rehabilitated after dealing with that scum”, Andromeda giggled. “Everybody loved it. They’re no longer seen as the two Death Eaters who eschewed punishment for their crimes, but rather as the tough, protective grandparents minding the babies while the parents get to stretch their legs a bit. I visited them last night, and everything is much brighter there. They no longer look depressed or anything. Rather, they like their new role as the senior protectors of their heritage”.
“I’m glad to hear it”, Hermione smiled. “I was worried about them for a while”.
“The newspapers are in a buzz about Lyra addressing the court”, the older woman nodded wisely. “They are saying that she’s the least intimidating most powerful Witch in the world”, she grinned. “They are describing you as a soft, kind young mother who casually disarmed the entire Wizengamot as a demonstration, and then excused herself to go nurse her baby”, she smiled at the young blonde. “I think they are starting to outright adore you”.
“As they should”, Hermione smiled at her blushing sister, kissing baby Igor’s head.
“They quoted you saying that it doesn’t matter what you can do, and they should rather look at what you’re actually doing, and then they remember you destroying all the dementors, hunting down the Werewolves and the Death Eaters, and dealing with murderous thugs, first as an Auror, and then as head of the Auror Office, and ended up quoting the Minister, saying that it’s perfectly right and proper for the head of the Auror Office to be the most competent magical person in the world, adding that the fact that it just happens to be an adorable young woman is a big bonus”, she grinned. “They also mentioned Harry and his treaty with the Goblins, and asked him how come you two are not Ministers with your political acumen. He told them that you are more useful as national security shields, with your skills, and one can hardly argue with that”, she nodded. “There was also a passing mention of your motherhood laws, and how well that worked – specifically now that you were giving birth and nursing, and there’s been no interruptions at work since your husband deals with things that require physical presence and your mind is still completely available when he needs your help”.
“I’m looking forward to working with Viktor like that”, Hermione sighed. “I missed him when we worked different jobs and couldn’t be together at work”.
“I cannot imagine that we used to all work like that before”, Andromeda noted. “It is all wrong”.
“Hermione was teaching me about the muggles and their ways of doing things, and how we somehow copied their foolish ways”, Lyra looked at her aunt. “Some of it looks like a societal suicide pact – things like feminism. I honestly never heard of a worse bunch of nonsense, but Hermione convinces me they are quite serious with it and say it all with a straight face, things like women actually aspiring to be strong and independent, without realising that it actually means dying alone without love. It is as if they are actively trying to achieve a state of complete failure”.
Andromeda looked at her as if trying to understand if she’s missing a joke. “You can’t be serious?”
“Oh, she is”, Hermione nodded. “I actually adopted some of that insanity briefly, so I understand how insidious it can be. Essentially, they are convincing women that men are unreliable, violent and what not, and they might eventually either leave them or abuse them, so they need to live in a state of constant wariness and readiness for such an outcome – have their own money and always be ready for divorce. That’s what that ‘strong and independent’ nonsense actually means”.
“But if you’re living that way, constantly treating your husband as a potential or actual enemy, without love and trust, you will be actively ruining your marriage and directly causing the outcome you are preparing against”, Andromeda was aghast.
“Exactly”, Hermione nodded. “Which explains the extremely high divorce rate, especially among the feminists”.
“Is that fear of abusive husbands actually grounded in fact? Did the muggles have some epidemic of spousal abuse, or men abandoning wives and children?”, Lyra was curious.
“In fact, no. I looked into the statistics. It was almost unheard of. Men who abandoned or abused their families were socially ostracised and seen as the lowest of the low, and for the most part, they lived in harmonious and loving families very much as we do. Then they started introducing all sorts of social reforms calling it progress, and messed everything up. In fact, the only statistically relevant reason for women being abandoned was when their husband died. There were work accidents and wars, and a woman with children without a man to take care of them and earn money would find herself in a terrible predicament. Society tried to accommodate for them, but all those reforms in the last two centuries seem to have caused terrible wars where huge numbers of men died and their families needed to survive somehow, and this seems to have coincided with the feminist nonsense”.
“So, basically, their reformist, progressive ideologies caused the problems that they then blamed on the traditional marriage?”, Lyra surmised.
“Pretty much so”, Hermione smiled. “They essentially employed arsonists in the fire department”.
“Fire department?”, Andromeda asked as if she never heard of it.
“The muggles, not knowing magic, can’t easily extinguish fires when they happen, so they have people who come and spray water on the fire to extinguish it”, Hermione explained. “Fire department, police and ambulance are considered the most basic services in a society”.
“Spraying water on a fire instead of an Extinguishing Charm”, aunt Andromeda gestured incredulously. “It would get all the furniture soaked and ruined”.
“It does”, Hermione laughed. “When the fire department extinguishes a fire in your house, the house is pretty much ruined, but they stop the fire spreading to other houses”.
“No wonder they invented feminism”, Andromeda was exasperated. “They are completely unreasonable people”.
“The only time in my life when I had to be strong and independent was when my parents made our ancestral home into a den of Voldemort and his minions, and Harry left me, thinking I sided with Voldemort, and kissed other girls. I thought I would die alone and never have children, and the only reason why I didn’t kill myself was to care for my parents. It was the most desperate, hopeless, darkest and terrible two years of my life and I am actively trying never to think about them because it was so horrible. Actively working on turning your life into that, as if it were somehow a worthy goal rather than the worst possible outcome, is indeed so irrational, so self-defeating and stupid, that my mind refuses to accept that there are people who would choose that”, Lyra shivered.
“And yet, there are, and this shows you what propaganda can do if applied diligently for a long time with incredible funds”, Hermione nodded. “They even convinced people that smoking cigarettes makes you cool, independent and sophisticated”.
“Cigarettes?”, the two women asked curiously.
“Small wads of some herb called tobacco, that are lit on fire on one end, so that a person inhales the smoke, which causes a mildly calming effect, but is very addictive and causes all sorts of deadly illnesses in the long run”, Hermione explained.
“Those people are completely insane”, they both nodded in agreement as Hermione broke into laughter. “Seeing it from your perspective makes it extremely hard to disagree”.