Beggars on Diagon Alley
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| "Are you a wizard or not?"
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| Beggars on Diagon Alley | |
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- Travers: "How did it offend you?"
- Hermione (as Bellatrix): "It does not matter, it will not do so again."
- Travers: "Some of these wandless can be troublesome. While they do nothing but beg I have no objection, but one of them actually asked me to plead her case in the Ministry last week. 'I'm a witch, sir, I'm a witch, let me prove it to you!'."
- — Travers mocking Muggle-borns reduced to begging on the street in 1998[src]
Beggars filled Diagon Alley during the height of the Second Wizarding War after the Ministry of Magic was taken over by Lord Voldemort and Muggle-borns were accused of having stolen magic from "real" wizards and witches. Some were sent to Azkaban by the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, but others were apparently simply stripped of their wands and their jobs.
[edit] History
Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley came across these beggars on their way to Gringotts Wizarding Bank in the spring of 1998. They were huddled in doorways, "moaning to the few passersby, pleading for gold, insisting that they were really wizards". When they spotted Hermione, who was disguised as Bellatrix Lestrange by use of Polyjuice Potion, they turned away and hid. One, however, approached her and demanded to know what had happened to his children. When she could not answer, the beggar lunged for her throat, prompting Ron to stun him. The trio then ran into Travers, a Death Eater who mocked the beggars and then accompanied them into Gringotts, which they subsequently robbed.[1]
After Voldemort's defeat on May 2, 1998, these wizards and witches were presumably able to regain wands and resume working.
