Chapter 162
In the evening, oddly dressed wizards appeared across the hotel, and Felix stood in the hotel garden, watching as several wizards made their way up a small hill.
His eyes caught a glimpse of Maxwell talking to a serious-faced woman who looked impatient.
“This is France, Celeste! Not America, and you can’t use the name of the head of your institution to get me to do your bidding!”
The witch known as Celeste had a delicate and serious face, wearing a meticulous attire that could not be picked out.
She looked like a competent government official who had just arrived from the Muggle government office building dozens of kilometers away to attend a solace event in the slums.
Especially since she stood next to various witches in puffy dresses and iris hats, who are seriously pointing at the automatic sprinklers, which further adds to the credibility of her identity.
At the moment, flame seemed to erupt from her grey pupils, and she pursed her lips to restrain herself from saying anything hurtful, but her response remained strong: “The law is a bottom line that cannot be trampled, and we have to do something about it.”
“We’ll take care of it.” Maxwell said stiffly, focusing on the word ‘we’ as if to remind the woman across the table that they interpreted the word completely differently.
The two parted ways quickly and unhappily.
Felix paced over to the French Auror, who still had an angry look on his face.
“She’s so arrogant, she thinks I’m her subordinate!”
“She is?” Felix inquired.
“A hard woman to deal with, Noel Celeste, the number one person in the MACUSA at Muggle field.”
“What does she want to do?”
“Get the American side to send Auror over here, on the grounds of assisting against possible convicts,” Maxwell said with a stern face.
Felix tsked, such a request is indeed excessive, just short of pointing straight at the French Ministry of Magic and cursing, “You’re so rubbish, I can’t trust you, I need my own people dispatched.”
“If she’s uneasy, why didn’t she just hold the meeting in the US in the first place?” Felix asked, having asked a similar question before.
“Factional strife? Hard feelings? Anyway, I understand there is quite a bit of opposition against her …”
Felix asked sensitively, “Which ones are opposed?”
“Uh … I don’t remember.” Maxwell showed an embarrassed expression as he muttered in a small voice, “The ministry prepared some information for me, among which were various newspaper clippings and whatnot, and put them in my room, but I didn’t look at them carefully … Do you want to see them?”
“If it’s convenient, thank you, Maxwell.”
“Ha, we don’t really know each other, and your taste in food matches mine, I liked the Beef Bourguignon Stew.” Maxwell joked.
Some previous bad blood just disappeared.
On the second day, the day before the official start of the meeting, more wizards came, and by rough count, there were already more than a hundred.
One of the consequences of this is that the staff at the hotel looked at them even more strangely.
“Tell me, are you some kind of strange group, such as ‘ strange dress fetish club’ or something like that?” The hotel receptionist chatted with Felix, of these people, only a few were dressed normally, and Felix is the youngest and most handsome among them.
“You can totally understand it that way.” He said, saving the trouble of her actually trying to understand and getting a shot of the Obliviate put on her.
Soon, he caught sight of Professor Burbage, and he greeted her, taking the small luggage in her hand, “You’re a little later than I expected.”
Burbage sighed, “I modified the paper for my presentation at the conference and have been struggling with it for the past few days.”
Felix led Professor Burbage to her room and the two made small talk along the way-
“You advocate wizards intermarrying with werewolves?” Felix asked, flabbergasted.
“Not just werewolves,” Burbage corrected, “I see the advantages of interbreeding, and I propose that purebloods intermarry with half-bloods, muggles, and even some humanoid creatures.”
Felix’s expression stiffened, and he leaned against the door of the room for a long time before speaking, “Do you have any theoretical justification?”
Professor Burbage said: “This is my inspiration from the muggle books, although the muggle named Mendel used peas as material for the experiment. But … I also checked a lot of wizard data, and it is true that hybrid wizards have achieved more in the last hundred years.”
Felix had some headache, he did not know how to persuade his colleague.
Once her theory is thrown out, it is just like detonating a nuclear bomb.
What’s more, whether the theory is correct or not is still a distinction between two possibilities, but it will definitely be madly resisted by pure-blood families all over the world.
“Professor Burbage,” Felix said politely, “given the current trend in the wizarding world, most wizards were not mentally prepared to accept this theory. Perhaps we can modify the topic a little and start from a safer perspective.”
Professor Burbage looked at him and asked softly, “What do you suggest?”
“Use the current self-imposed lockdown of the wizarding world as an attack point, appeal to the ministries of magic to focus on the outside world, Muggle technology, novel theories, or even start a limited cooperation with the Muggle government; or from the perspective of ordinary wizards, call on young graduates to engage in social practice in the Muggle world, so that they can at least gain a job experience …”
“Most wizards have been out of touch with society for a long time.”
Felix also gave the example of Calamy, “He graduated and enrolled in a Muggle institution for postgraduate, and maybe a few years later he will be an authority on Muggle issues in the French magic community.”
Burbage pondered.
Felix persuaded, “It fits with the theme of this meeting, and once the avalanche of snowballs forms, even the most stubborn pureblood families will be swept along by the tide of the times.”
“But …” Burbage is not very satisfied with this statement, although she is a professor of muggle studies, but does not think that the two can cooperate, or rather, there is a need to cooperate.
She simply saw the irrationality of pure-blood thinking in the wizard community and proceeded to propose her own solution.
…
The next day, July 20, the meeting officially began.
Noel Celeste, as the representative of the International Confederation of Wizards – and the initiator of the meeting – presided over the entire meeting, but she seemed distracted.
She kept looking in one direction, a tall, bespectacled man who, every few minutes, would go out and return giving her hand signals.
One by one, the representatives of each country took the stage, and Felix became somewhat drowsy.
It’s hard to imagine that these old ideas came from the mouth of the most famous group of current experts in the study of muggle issues.
The only amusement was when a wizard raised the “muggle threat argument” and was angrily accused by a German wizard of being a “Grindelwald remnant” as he threw his shoes at him.
Perhaps Burbage’s point of view will be drowned in this kind of desperately watered-down speech … Felix thought to himself.
“Professor Burbage, what is the order of your speech?”
“There are two other wizards in front of me.”
Soon, Professor Burbage stood on the stage, she cleared her throat, with a sad expression on her face, and Felix knew she didn’t listen to his advice.
But at that moment, the man with the vicissitudes of life hurried in, and he shouted, “There is an assault!!!”
“Boom!”
A huge explosion rang out behind him.