Christabel was long-winded as always; she would find herself right at home in one of these protests. Not that Oz had actually been to any, but he imagined them to be full of women just like Christa, taking a step up onto a turned over milk carton and soliloquizing by stringing together the grandest words they remembered from their novels. Chris had the advantage on many of them, he suspected: she actually knew the definitions of the words she bandied about.

"The government doesn't claim to represent the people," he demurred. "It claims to act in their best interest. Whether they believe it to be in their best interest or not is inconsequential. Even if the ideal was that the government represented the people, it wouldn't work in practice," he continued. "Not without significant structural changes. The Minister is one man — or one woman. They represent a sample size of one. What you're talking about is something more like the Muggle House of Commons," he suggested. "And whatever you feel about it, I hardly think it likely anyone will vote for a Minister whose platform includes disbanding the office of Minister in favor of a group of representative rabble-rousers."

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