Harry almost snorted. In the first place, she had glossed over this same speech the first time Draco and Harry had met with her, and in the second place, what did she expect? Hogwarts was a school designed to teach witchcraft and wizardry, not instruct everybody about the difficulties facing squibs!
"What issues are you thinking of?" asked Hermione, very politely.
Rhiannon, Harry noticed, was wide-eyed and hadn't said a single word, yet.
"First of all, there are no house elves here. The wizarding staff is permitted wands in case of emergency, but they are strongly discouraged from any use of magic around the children. In fact, everything above the ground floor is a strictly magic-free zone, not least because replacing the electronics on a regular basis would likely sap our entire budget. But also, we feel it important for the children to learn self-sufficiency. Everyone is responsible for cleaning his or her living areas and those older than age thirteen take turns helping in the kitchen as well."
Predictably, Draco sneered at that. "I can accept that too much magic might disable your telly and computators and such, but that's no reason to work the squóer, magically challenged children as though they are house elves!"
Emmeleia actually smiled. A warm smile, as if she'd just that moment begun to believe that Draco, indeed, wasn't of the same ilk as Lucius Malfoy. As if to underline the point, she called him by his last name. The right one, this time. "They're hardly overworked, Mr Snape. And you must consider the future they will face. Sending them out into the world without any idea of how to fend for themselves would be the real cruelty, surely. We try to impart the skills they'll need for non-magical employment or entrance to university, but their lives would be rather difficult if they couldn't fathom how to use a toaster or clean the loo, or find the proper Tube station."
Draco made a face, but probably more because he didn't know what a Tube station was, than because he had missed her point. At any rate, he didn't say more along those lines.
For his part, Harry thought the policy made perfect sense. He'd resented all the work the Dursleys had forced on him--what child wouldn't?--but looking back now, he felt satisfied knowing that he could do for himself.
Even if he'd never figured out the secret to finding his magic through Parseltongue--hell, even if he had lost his magic completely--he'd have managed to make his way in the Muggle world.
"Electronics?" asked Hermione, clearly intrigued.
"Oh, yes. We have a full computer lab with Internet. I'll be happy to show you as long as you don't touch anything."
Harry couldn't imagine wanting to touch them, since the computers he'd used once or twice in primary school had left him unimpressed. He vaguely remembered something about prompts and cursors and hunting like mad to find the right letters on the keyboard, just so he could type things that didn't make any sense at all . . .
He shook himself out of his reverie to realise that Emmeleia was going on about the layout of the school, now. He already remembered this information from his first visit: the ground floor was reserved for offices and storage and such; the first, for kitchen, library, and infirmary; the second for classrooms, computer room and an advanced science lab; and the third for recreation space. The building's top floor was where the children and live-in staff resided. Emmeleia described it as "divided into shared and private living space."
Harry almost snorted again. Sounded to him like she meant "common rooms and dormitories." He wondered if they had anything like a house system, but he decided not to ask.
"Truly, you fit all the kids into one floor without using wizardspace?" asked Draco, a little haughtily. "They must be packed in like the wands on Ollivander's shelves."
When Emmeleia gave Draco a blank look, Harry took over. "Tighter than tinned sardines, he means."
Emmeleia pursed her lips. Well, it had been a bit of a rude comment, now that Harry thought of it.
"Things on the top floor are perhaps a little cramped, but not as much as you might expect." She turned towards Hermione and Rhiannon as she explained further. "You see, we rarely have more than thirty children at any one time. Currently, there are twenty-two in residence."
"That few?" Evidently feeling more comfortable by then, Rhiannon swept her long hair back over one shoulder as she kept speaking. "Is it so unusual, then, for children in wizard families to be born . . . er, magically challenged?"
"I wouldn't call the incidence terribly rare, no," said Emmeleia, her voice all at once far kinder than Harry had ever heard it. Huh . . . it seemed to him that she liked squibs a lot better than wizards. But with her history, that made a lot of sense, even if it did remind him a bit of Draco preferring his "own kind" to everyone else for so long.
Emmeleia Volentier really was old enough to know better.
"Bear in mind that the Ministry doesn't transfer any orphans to this facility until they are at least eleven and confirmed to be completely magically impaired. And since we're only allowed to house them until they turn seventeen," she continued with a sigh, "we don't have many at once. The positive is that we're able to work closely with those we do serve. For example each child has private counselling once a week."
Harry tried hard to keep his expression neutral, but it was quite a challenge. Therapy once a week, just on account of being a squib? That seemed like . . . well, overkill, basically.
"And we work up a thorough individual medical profile of each child, as well--"
"The impression you gave us on our first visit was that many of the children are abandoned when they don't get their Hogwarts letters," Draco drawled. "Surely, their cowardly, degenerate parents can be forced to supply proper healing histories."
Emmeleia's eyes took on a glint. "Oh, they are, but the records often just present the beginning of the mystery." The petite woman hesitated, but only for a moment. "Rhiannon, what sort of experiences have you had with healers?"
Of course, Rhiannon's expression went rather blank and she turned to Draco, who became flushed with anger. "How dare you ask such a thing?"
The deputy head held her hands out in a placating gesture. "Oh, please do pardon me," she said, not sounding the least bit sarcastic. "I didn't mean to pry. I'll just use myself as an example, then, shall I?"
Harry let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. At times, his brother's tendency to be a bit touchy came in handy.
"Many of the children are officially turned over to Ministry guardianship when they fail to register as magical at the age of eleven, but most families are fairly certain of the disability before that. In my case, their first clue was a failed healing charm for chest congestion when I was just a baby."
"Right . . . magical healing doesn't work on er . . . non-magical people," Harry murmured to himself, thinking back to his inability to help Aunt Petunia except by Muggle means. And look at how that had turned out. His donated bone marrow had killed her, more or less.
No, not more or less. It had killed her.
Not his fault, of course. He'd meant only the best, and if he hadn't donated marrow, she'd probably have died soon in any case, but still . . . Harry felt a little icky over the whole thing.
"That's right in general," Emmeleia continued, "but the details are much more complex. After all, most magic can be applied to non-magical persons because the magical energy is generated from within the wizard or witch and applied to the outside target. However, healing magic is a bit trickier, as I'm sure you've been taught."
Yeah, I've been taught, thought Harry, wishing again that he hadn't had to learn it the hard way.
"I don't really follow," said Rhiannon, almost apologetically.