Chapter 2: New Blood

Diagon Alley, the hub of Britain's commercial magical world, is representative of wizarding attitudes, beliefs and philosophies in general. It is highly hierarchical, with everyone having a more-or-less clearly defined place within it. It is the place where everything that could possibly be needed can usually to be found. There are long-established shops, where generations of shopkeepers, often from the same family, sell variations of the same types of items. There are also the usual street vendors and entrepreneurs: fringe opportunists, who make a living from hawking items of often dubious quality, functionality, legality, and ownership. There are the other areas around Diagon Alley itself, where it is best that strangers don't go or enquire about too deeply, where there are shops that specialise in Dark Magic artefacts and supplies. But there is also generally little evidence of the extremes of deprivation, or the presence of serious organised crime.

It is a market economy, but people only tend to use what they need, or need to replace, and one which doesn't favour the acquisitive excesses so prevalent in the more affluent Muggle societies. It is a culture in which the rich tend to stay rich, while the poor stay relatively poor—although there is always some movement: like Fred and George Weaseley, who recognised a need and had then virtually created their own market. As a consequence they had become prosperous; however, they appeared to be the exception.

Perhaps just knowing that most of the population has the opportunity of a good education, which will probably lead to employment of some kind, means that most witches and wizards have no need for driving ambition. Without ambition, they have no requirement to look outside of what they know is an essentially assured existence. And with this secure knowledge, why would they have any necessity for radical, ongoing social changes?

During the nine month period following the overthrow of Rufus Scrimgeour, the actions of the Ministry of Magic employees were largely controlled by means of actual or implied intimidation and the fear of reprisals, for all those who strayed from the narrow dictates of Lord Voldermort, via his puppet Minister, Pius Thicknesse. Ministry workers dared not act in any way contrary to what was demanded of them, which, for the most part, consisted of the propagation of repressive acts against anyone that the Ministry declared as undesirable. News was suppressed or distorted to support the views of Voldermort and his adherents: that is, the superiority of supposed pure blood wizards and witches, who were by right the natural leaders of both the magical and the Muggle world.

So for most of those who worked at the Ministry, the changes that they found in the days following the fall of the Voldermort administration were both refreshing and profound. For Kingsley Shacklebolt, the first task to be carried out upon becoming Minister for Magic, was to quickly quash the bullying tactics and the atmosphere of fear and mistrust engendered by the old regime. It was fortunate for him that the majority of those who worked for the Ministry were fair-minded witches and wizards who had never subscribed to the creed of racial purity peddled by Voldermort, and who were only too glad to see a return to their old, or perhaps better, ways of working.

So, within hours of the Battle of Hogwarts, on May the 2nd, the recovery process was initiated, and those workers who had previously sought to profit from such extremes of thinking and behaviour, but who had neither the time nor the good sense to flee, were quickly denounced and removed from the Ministry's employ. This meant that Kingsley Shacklebolt's ascent was achieved by largely bloodless means, as many of Voldermort's most formidable enforcers had either been killed or captured during the battle.

The new Minister was asked to accept the post because he was astute, intelligent and, it was hoped, incorruptible. He knew that it was not enough just to revise or throw out bad laws that had been introduced by his predecessors: to bring about significant and lasting changes he also had to amend certain fundamental attitudes within the Ministry, and society itself.

Although the Ministry of Magic nominally controlled only the magical elements of British life, politically, this component could best be described as an essentially autonomous one-party state; a benevolent dictatorship. The Ministry itself was certainly not democratic (with all but the Minister for Magic being unelected), and throughout most of its long history, it was seemingly bound only by its own laws, while also being prone to corruption and partiality. Ministry personnel changes often tended to be made for the sake of convenience, and not always efficiency, and were usually accepted, often without question or protest. The Ministry had also continually exerted an influence upon the most popular newspaper, The Daily Prophet, to promote it's own views and disparage its detractors.

The reason that the Ministry is not democratic, unlike the country as a whole, is that history, observation, and experience have taught it that this model of government isn't always the most appropriate, and doesn't always work in the ways intended. Democracy, as it is understood today in the Muggle world, is itself a relatively recent development in politics, which came about, over time, because of a perceived need for social change. The absence of this apparent need is one of the fundamental reasons for the differences that separates the magical from the non-magical world. Because it does not feel the need for change in the same way that the Muggle world does—where a demand is often created and driven purely by commercial considerations, rather than practical requirement—the magical world still prefers to choose its leaders and representatives on the basis of trust and personal reputation, as opposed to popular election, with all that that entails.

Muggles would probably argue that a democratic system is the fairest way (in principle) to make laws that positively affect the majority of its population; however, they might also grudgingly admit that the system is slow and unwieldy, and that it is, at best, a compromise solution that is also beset with its own inherent flaws and disadvantages.

During Cornelius Fudge's tenure, the Ministry had seemed to operate with the policy of Less is Best—or, as the Muggles say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Fudge, although essentially not a bad wizard, seemed initially to try to please everyone; which he thought could best be achieved by not changing the status quo of the wizarding world. While things appeared to be running normally, this policy worked. But as soon as things started to change for the worse, he had no real answers. He could simply not accept that some of those people, who like himself epitomized ultra-conservatism—such as Lucius Malfoy—were also the ones trying to undermine the Ministry. In the end, his inability to cope with crisis, and his refusal to accept help or advice from those that offered it—Albus Dumbledore, for example—led to his downfall.