"I'm not sure how that's made more likely by changing exclusively the thing where your marriage choices affect your siblings' prospects of getting married themselves. Direct incentives to marry Muggles might make for less happy marriages because incentives for anything other than happy marriages will do that a little, but if people are currently excessively unwilling to marry Muggles then it might do the exact opposite."

"I'm not sure there's a specific amount of willing people in general ought to be - it depends on how good they'd be at picking a Muggle, and what everyone else would think of it -"

"Yeah. I just think as a general principle that if you count all the costs and try accounting for them you end up better off than if you pretend they don't exist, and the directions you'd get pushed in by accurate cost-accounting are mostly the right directions to be pushed in - just like giving people more true information might make them make stupid decisions but the presumption's the other way -"

"How do you price in things like Rebecca having that idea to do a locket enchantment on a bunch of things to do remote concerts?"

" - I mean, if Michael figures that out then he'll sell them and they'll be very rich, that's how you price it in. I'm glad Michael married Rebecca, they're so cute together and they're happy, the point of 'keep track of costs' isn't that you'll find they're not well worth it."

"- that's not what I meant but I don't know how to say what I meant. They're really cute, yeah."

"I'll probably marry a Muggle, I don't like anyone at Hogwarts the right way. But I would be annoyed if I'd liked someone and then Michael's shenanigans meant I couldn't marry her, so I'm going to make sure not to do that."

"How are you going to get Muggles to fill out your form?"

"I'm not really sure. Maybe I'll have to pretend it's an elaborate joke."

"I'm not sure you'd get very accurate responses like that."

"Well, maybe someone'll come up with questionnaire answers I like and I won't need to bother any Muggles."

"I guess you can't just publish what answers you'd want in case somebody was willing to lie about it?"

"And one of the things I want is answers I haven't thought of."

Giggle.

Meanwhile, the Italian Ministry elects to relax its enforcement of the Statute of Secrecy in the year 1810 (presumably to give other countries a few years to threaten them if they're going to). They will not prosecute people for telling their affianced even if the engagement is subsequently broken, they will decriminalize telling immediate in-laws of magical people to know after the marriages go through, and they will not deploy magical law enforcement to Memory Charm any Muggles who see things unless they actually look likely to tell anybody.

Timothy is delighted. Britain looks potentially influenceable on the question of whether to threaten them over it.

The other countries are on the fence. France is against their declaration but doesn't want to start a fight.

Because they've been in the middle of one for the last decade, presumably. Britain definitely does not want to unilaterally pick a fight. 

He writes Elio asking what inspired the reforms and how interested they'd be in further ones, if the international community doesn't object.

Elio writes back with several sympathetic examples of wizards distraught and opportunities lost to zealous enforcement! He'd be happy to see as much rollback as he can muster political will for!

The guy's good at his job but Timothy can't quite figure him out.

He suggests to his grandfather that the Wizengamot hear a bill outlining the extent of Britain's obligation to conduct foreign interventions for Statute reasons - "which should be none at all, it's a waste of our resources towards no gain at all, the same mistake the Muggles made with their colonies -"

        "We should perhaps sanction immigration or something."

"Of informed Muggles? Then you're enforcing Muggle immigration, that's beneath us. Of wizards who might not obey local law? They manage to abide by the flying carpet restrictions, and those don't exist anywhere on the continent -"

       "You're so passionate about this."

"I want the statute gone, grandfather, you know that. But even if I didn't, harassing Italy is not in our interests. It might be worth proposing a bill to sanction immigrants, so the debate focuses there and not on whether to go pick a fight, but it's not a useful thing to do."

      "I can propose a bill that vaguely censures them, that seems easier than starting a debate over the general extent of our obligations -"

"No, see, I want it legally established that the general extent of our obligations is 'none'. Italy's been conservative with this, no one's really going to go to war over affianced Muggles. We're not going to get a better chance to set a precedent. Let's have this debate now on eminently winnable territory, then when someone else takes it further -"

      "It's very clever, Timothy, I'm just not sure it's wise."

"Plenty of flexibility to reverse course if later events persuade us against lifting the statute after all."

     "You're so young -"

"Please do share your wisdom and not just the sound judgment that results from it, how else can I learn?"

A bill is introduced to censure Italy and establish as a point of policy that Britain will restrict itself to censure of other nations over adjustments to the treaty that do not affect local security and flourishing. 

A counter is introduced to refuse to censure Italy and calling on the Wizengamot to consider the same list of policy changes itself.

The conservatives flock to the first one, and Timothy is pleased. 

So is Miranda! She doubts there is anything she can do to help from where she is but if Timothy has ideas she's all ears.

Study magic. But no, I'm mostly just keeping you in the loop because I thought it'd excite you. Elian wants to go further if he can get away with it. For now I may primarily entertain myself arranging for him to get away with it. I've also debated getting Ireland to loosen up first, as a test case, observe to everyone that the English Muggles don't take the Irish ones seriously anyway...

The maneuvering you're doing is really impressive.

It's not as fast as I'd like, honestly. But we'll get there.

I'm looking forward to it.