wallflower in defense of

When she was small, Susie’s aunt Amelia had taken her to work whenever her parents asked her to babysit. She toddled around her office. When Susie was older, she got to sit under her aunt's desk in court and listen to her give out rulings, verdicts, decrees.

There was tradition there, scripts and structure, and Susie had felt herself lean into them, comforted, strengthened. Over the years, she saw so many ways the system could be corrupted. Umbridge used it like a blunt weapon and blood purists had snuck into it for years like burrowing termites, undermining the foundations, making it their own home.

When Susan Bones was twenty-three she would look across her steaming mug and the Ministry breakroom table, and see Hermione aching to burn it all down to ashes. Susan wanted to scour it to its roots, instead, wear it down to its rebar and concrete, and then rebuild from the old, worn foundations on up.

“Your parents died for you,” Susie told Harry Potter once. “My aunt died for this. Now either shut up and get me a fresh cup of coffee or try to drag me out of here before I finish this.”

But that was a war away. That was a childhood away from now.