Chapter 4
Rose did not yet know that the true vegan lifestyle went beyond the avoidance of killing animals outright, but rather aimed to avoid supporting any form of animal exploitation. So she did not have a problem when the Weasley grandparents sent her an invitation by owl to their house, which they called “the Burrow”, for that year’s Weasley family Christmas dinner. However, Rose hoped she would still have time to visit her Muggle grandparents and meet Mrs. Granger’s vegan friend.
Rose, Hugo, Ron, and Hermione arrived at the Burrow. Rose was pleasantly surprised when Mrs. Weasley said that the turkey she had cooked was vegan this time around; Hermione had clearly told Mrs. Weasley about Rose’s veganism. When Rose asked Mrs. Weasley how the latter made the turkey taste so meat-like, Mrs. Weasley said that she had done it using a form of magic involving her wand absorbing the taste of a food item in a neighbouring house, and then applying the taste to food that she made. Rose thanked Mrs. Weasley for doing this for her; even Ron, who Hermione claimed was not any more supportive of Rose’s veganism than he had been of S.P.E.W. when Hermione first began it, was impressed by the taste of the turkey.
Mrs. Weasley said, “You may have learned from your mother not to make any extra demands on house-elves…” “That’s true,” Rose interrupted. “I wouldn’t have known if not for her that there were a bunch of them at Hogwarts–oh wait, I would have, with all those stories that Dad and Uncle George told of sneaking down to the kitchens. What were you doing in the kitchens again, Dad? I thought that was Uncle George and Fred’s job.” “Your mother had roped me and your Uncle Harry down there…Do you need help setting up the table outside, Mum? We haven’t had this many people in this house since Charlie and Bill were here for the 1994 Quidditch World Cup final.” Mrs. Weasley said that with so many people, she would really appreciate some help setting up the outside table; there would still be some people sitting on the ground, she said. Now that Mrs. Weasley had so many grandchildren as well as her seven children, the guest list was as follows:
- Uncle Percy, his wife Audrey, and their daughters Molly II and Lucy
Note: The Weasley family had temporarily been estranged from Percy during the Second Wizarding War, as he retained his loyalty to the Ministry of Magic which had refused to believe that Lord Voldemort had returned. However, Percy had seen the error of his ways; the Ministry of Magic was far less corrupt now, and Percy was still working in it.
- Uncle George and his wife Angelina (née Johnson), a former classmate of his–and their children, Roxanne and Fred II
- Ron, Hermione, Rose, and Hugo
- Aunt Ginny, James, Albus, and Lily Luna
Mrs. Weasley mentioned that Uncle Harry would have come to the Burrow, were it not for the fact that he was hosting his own Christmas dinner with his godson Teddy Lupin and Teddy’s maternal grandmother Andromeda Tonks (who was distantly related to the Weasley family through the Black family). Also, Rose’s cousin Victoire, the daughter of Bill and Fleur, was dating Teddy; therefore, Uncle Harry had invited Uncle Bill, Aunt Fleur, and Victoire to his, Harry’s, house. “We would have invited them all,” Mrs. Weasley explained, “but this place is crowded enough with just our family.
“Anyway…come outside with me, Rose, I want to continue telling this story,” Ron continued. “We discovered, to our surprise, that Dobby–a house-elf Uncle Harry knew, because he had formerly been owned by Albus’ friend Scorpius’ father and grandparents, you know, the Malfoy family–had come to work at Hogwarts after Uncle Harry had tricked Mr. Malfoy into freeing Dobby, and Dobby was still as loyal to Uncle Harry as he ever was! Dobby’d had trouble finding work, he said, because he wanted to be paid–which is considered a sinful desire by almost all other house-elves…” “Well, that just shows you how brainwashed they all were, doesn’t it?” interrupted Hermione as she came outside with the vegan turkey that Mrs. Weasley had made.
Mrs. Weasley herself then came outside and sat down at one end of the table; she said to Rose, “As I was saying before you and your father interrupted me, you may have learned from your mother not to make any extra demands on the house-elves…but if it’s a question of whether you can truly get enough to eat, I’d say it’s okay.” Hermione, who was also supportive of Rose’s veganism, did not know how to respond to this, as two of Hermione’s most fundamental instincts came into conflict. Her lack of reaction made Rose equally conflicted…but Rose finally chose her veganism over her mother’s beliefs on elf rights.
After that night’s Christmas dinner, Ron and Hermione took Rose and Hugo to Hermione’s parents’ house; they did this by car. Ron could drive a car, although one would not think wizards needed such skills–unless you were Arthur Weasley, who had previously bought an old car and made it fly, much to Mrs. Weasley’s disapproval (especially after Uncle George, Fred, and Ron had used it without permission to rescue Harry from the abusive home in which he lived during the holidays; Mrs. Weasley had acknowledged that this was not Harry’s fault). Back to the present, Hermione’s parents lived in a Muggle neighbourhood, and their neighbours would undoubtedly find out about the magical world if they saw the family Apparating, even though Rose and Hugo could not do this on their own–Ron and Hermione would have used Side-Along-Apparition in this case, as it may be used by wizards to transport underage family members or those who cannot Apparate for some other reason.
The next morning, after breakfast (at which Rose only ate the bread, not the eggs and bacon that the rest of the family was eating–with the exception of Hermione, who had read pro-vegan leaflets that her mother’s vegan friend had left at the Granger home), Mrs. Granger’s vegan friend came to the house. Rose asked Mrs. Granger’s vegan friend to explain fully what veganism was: Mrs. Granger’s vegan friend replied that veganism involved not only the avoidance of eating animals, but the avoidance of the use of them by humans for any purpose.
Mrs. Granger’s vegan friend (who it turned out had been one of the Muggles protesting on Charing Cross Road; she had posted on social media right after having finished at this event) urged Rose to think about how she could apply the philosophy of veganism to other areas of her life besides her diet. Rose therefore thought that she would greatly expand her vegan lifestyle–she now realised that Care of Magical Creatures would be fundamentally anti-vegan no matter how the course was taught. Hugo disagreed, however; he thought that it could be taught in an animal-friendly way if it focused on relationships with wild magical creatures and did not advocate for their domestication. Rose saw Hugo’s point, but this nonetheless confirmed Rose’s suspicion that unless Hogwarts simply stopped offering subjects like Potions (because Rose had asked her teacher, and there are barely any potions that would be effective without animal ingredients) and Care of Magical Creatures classes, Rose could not maintain her vegan lifestyle while there. There was also Transfiguration, now taught by Professor Michael George McGonagall–Professor Minerva McGonagall’s nephew and a former schoolmate of Uncle Harry’s father, who shared his aunt’s Transfiguration skills. We will call him “Professor McGonagall the Younger” and refer to his aunt as “Professor McGonagall the Elder”. Now that Rose and all other students in her year were beginning to learn more advanced Transfiguration (though they would not get into human Transfiguration until sixth year), they were transforming animals into inanimate objects. Of course Rose had a problem with this–but it could be more animal-friendly if Professor McGonagall the Younger were to Transfigure the animals back to their original form afterwards. As has already been seen, however, Potions is a different story.
Rose had spoken to Professor McGonagall the Elder before Christmas break, and McGonagall the Elder had told her that she (Rose) was not allowed to drop a class in the middle of the year unless she was failing the class in question–unfortunately Rose was not failing Potions. She thought she might do badly in Potions on purpose when she got back–if she stayed at Hogwarts at all. Back to the present, Rose now thought of more than one common magical practice which could not be done in an animal-friendly way. Hermione brought up a good point: the entire animal agriculture industry is mostly based on slavery, and from what little Hermione had learned of Muggle (or No-Maj) history when she went to school before Hogwarts (this was before she knew of her true magical nature), slavery in the United States had been firmly opposed by those who always were against it, even when slave owners claimed to have treated their slaves more humanely than one would think. It was believed by such anti-slavery activists that being kind to a slave did not make it so they were not a slave.
After Mrs. Granger’s vegan friend left the house, Hermione said that the thing about how “being kind to a slave did not make it so they were not a slave” applied to animals as well as humans. Rose agreed with this completely, so Hermione asked her to specify those practices in the Wizarding world which could not be done in an animal-friendly way. Rose reminded Ron and Hermione of the Wizarding world’s standard practice of using owls to deliver mail; even Hermione said that there was no replacement for this, as nobody had ever seen a problem with it before Rose.
The night before Rose and Hugo were due to return to Hogwarts, however, Hermione suggested that Rose could put some Floo powder into the Gryffindor common room fire and call her (Hermione) into it if Rose wanted to talk to her. Hermione could only guess that the Hogwarts owls had been bewitched so that they were prevented from releasing any droppings while delivering everyone’s mail at breakfast every morning. Hermione worked in the Ministry, and her father-in-law and coworker Arthur Weasley told her–as he had told Uncle Harry many years ago–of the reason that interdepartmental memos in the Ministry were bewitched to fly to their recipients of their own accord: because the Ministry had once used owls for this purpose, but (in sharp contrast to the Hogwarts owls, for some strange reason) this system had not worked out because owl droppings would get all over people’s desks. Rose speculated that one possible reason that Hogwarts did not have this problem was because it had an Owlery with an open window, whereas the Ministry did not have this option as it was literally and figuratively underground (and also in the middle of London). Of course owls would be a possible way to expose the Wizarding world, with the special way in which wizards use them. This was not a problem at Hogwarts, as it was in a remote location; in addition, any Muggles who got near the castle could not see it for what it really was.
Rose and Hugo went back to Hogwarts the next day; the day after that, classes started up again. The first one Rose had was Herbology, taught by her Head of House and one of her parents’ old classmates, Professor Neville Longbottom–who also had not done very well in Potions, partially because of how impatient the instructor at the time, Professor Snape, had been. Rose worked diligently in Herbology and thought that once she chose a more specialised path after her O.W.L.s, she should specialise in Herbology as it could possibly be used to make the Wizarding world more accommodating of vegan ethical choices. Certainly, for the rest of the year, Herbology was Rose’s best subject; neither Care of Magical Creatures nor Potions–the two classes that Rose saw as being fundamentally anti-vegan–went so well. Even though Ron, Hermione, and Uncle Harry had done their best in Care of Magical Creatures out of respect for their instructor, Professor Rubeus Hagrid, Rose was not sure that this was enough to keep her doing well in such an anti-vegan activity.
One might wonder why Care of Magical Creatures was so anti-vegan; this was because it involved capturing wild magical creatures and domesticating them, ostensibly for academic purposes. As Rose had realised after talking to Grandma Granger’s vegan friend, this was similar to anti-vegan misinformation circulating among the Muggles to the effect that zoos were educational. Much to Rose’s surprise, the day after she had discussed this with Ron and Hermione, Uncle Harry’s head had appeared in the fireplace; clearly Hermione had asked him to go talk to Rose. Uncle Harry could see right through any misinformation that zoos were educational, he said, as he had–perhaps subconsciously–seen how cruel they really were when he and the Dursleys had gone to the London Zoo for Dudley’s birthday once. Harry did not yet know of his magical nature, but his magical powers were still there–though he did not have much control over them then, as this was before he went to Hogwarts. In any case, Harry had made the glass of a snake’s enclosure vanish, enabling the snake in question to escape. (However, even Harry himself had not known that this was significant until more than a year later, at Hogwarts, when he had demonstrated to everyone at a duelling club his ability to talk to snakes in a language known as Parseltongue.)
When Rose announced to Professor Longbottom that she would specialise in Herbology to the extent possible (unlike her mother, who needed the power of time travel to take every class offered at Hogwarts that she could), Professor Longbottom asked why Rose had decided to do this. Rose said that it was because of her veganism and how, while there are many Wizarding specialties that were fundamentally anti-vegan, Herbology was the one specialty that could help the vegan movement in the Wizarding world—at least with regard to food. Neville agreed with this, partly because of an experience he had had when he went to Hogwarts. The potions master at the time, Professor Snape–impatient of a teacher as he was–had threatened to poison Neville’s toad because he (Professor Snape) did not believe that Neville had prepared the right potion–a mistake which Hermione had helped Neville fix, though Professor Snape had then punished her. Neville said that he would never do that, even on the off-chance that he had done well enough in Potions that he could teach the subject. As a matter of fact, Neville’s specialty had also been Herbology (as evidenced by his teaching the subject now), though this was not as much of a choice on his part as it now was for Rose.