Harry Potter: A Certain Ancient Rune Professor of Hogwarts (TL) - Chapter 702

Chapter 702: Wizarding History

The lights at Hogwarts were sparsely lit, tonight was not too different from yesterday or the day before, but it was still a sleepless night for many.

The library was very quiet and Hermione was able to immerse herself in her current task.

A thick stack of books lays in front of her, almost ten of them were open at the same time, but she didn’t read any of them, instead, she was biting her lip in deep thought, apparently after the statute of secrecy came into effect at the end of the seventeenth century, no wizard dared to openly active in the outside world, and if she intended to look for areas where wizards and muggles had interacted, it should have happened before that time.

Hermione tried to recollect what she had read, occasionally pulling over a book and turning a page to read it carefully for a short while. Gradually, a picture of a thousand years of the wizarding community was outlined in her head.

Even though the author of the History of Magic, Professor Bathilda Bagshot, had only written up to the end of the nineteenth century, Hermione managed to collect some valuable information.

During the First World War at the beginning of the twentieth century, Archer Evermonde, then Minister of Magic, chose neutrality and passed legislation forbidding wizards of both sexes from participating in the war to avoid a massive breach of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy.

At the time Harry’s great-grandfather, Henry Potter, strongly condemned Evermonde’s decision, and as a member of the Pureblood and Wizengamot, his action caused an instant stir and was widely discussed.

A few scraps of information that have survived suggest that the Potter family’s exclusion from the Sacred Twenty-Eight may well have had something to do with it. And while the pureblood families made their own choices during the war – they did not break the statute of secrecy or the laws of the Ministry of Magic by getting directly involved in the war – though the same Ministry laws did not stop the thousands of wizards who were neighbours to the civil Muggles from helping them in any way they could, with all due care and effort.

Hermione recalled as she flipped through the book –

In the nineteenth century, the Ministry of Magic agreed to entrust the Goblins with the responsibility of running Gringotts once again; in the 1850s a serious accident involving the Floo network occurred, and in the 1870s the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery was passed, after which Hogwarts students were forbidden to cast spells outside the school; at about the same time, the then Hogwarts caretaker attempted to trap and remove the Peeves from the castle, but his traps failed to produce any results and provoked fierce resistance from the Peeves in return.

Because of the peculiar birth origin of the Peeves, the Headmaster of that time made a compromise.

Idris Oakby, the founder of the Society for the Support of Squibs, was also born around this time, and it is suspected that her experience of being mistaken as a squib in her childhood may have prompted her to empathise with the real Squibs; Great Sasquatch Rebellion of 1892 happened in the United States when the headquarters of the Magical Congress of the United States of America was relocated to what is currently known as Woolworth Building; and in the last year of the century, Albus Dumbledore graduated with great distinction, and later due to the unexpected death of his mother he abandoned his graduation trip and met Grindelwald for the first time in Godric’s Hollow …

Apart from that, that century also produced some boring Quidditch titbits, and oh yes, Hermione remembered another incident closely related to her personally: the witch Eloise Mintumble used a time-turner to go back five centuries for an experiment and was trapped in 1402 for five days. Eloise died from that, whereas she was much more fortunate …

The concept of the Unforgivable Curse was first introduced in the eighteenth century, after the introduction of an act banning the private breeding of dragons.

The statute of secrecy had been in existence for nearly half a century at that time, and this law was amended and made more and more perfect, but it also oppressed some wizards, thus attracting some opposition. Gideon Flatworthy founded an anti-Muggle extremist group, a group whose way of expressing their hatred, however, was to refuse to do physical work like a Muggle (it occurred to Hermione that there was some resemblance to the professor’s theory suggesting the everyday use of magic), and to do so they developed a range of practical techniques to cast summoning charm. But Flatworthy did not use the spell in the right way and misused it to steal, and when he tried to use the summoning charm to steal treasures from the Gringotts, he was exposed and had to flee in disarray to avoid being caught; the members were deeply dissatisfied with him and left him alone in a cave, and the group disbanded.

It’s worth noting that Flatworthy didn’t end too well; trapped in the cave, injured and short of food, he made a daring attempt to summon the only source of food within his sight – a barn at the foot of the hill – and was killed by the weight of cattle and haystacks.

Quidditch titbits were never lacking in the headlines, with two groups inexplicably fighting each other; the only thing of merit in that fight was the emergence of the Repairing Charm in front of the world’s eyes for the first time.

Rappaport’s Law Officially Enacted …

The seventeenth century began with the Goblin Rebellion and the most important founder of the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the witch Isolt Sayre, headed for America eight years afterwards; Mungo Bonham founded St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries during that century.

The statement that ‘the possession of wands was prohibited for all magical beings except wizards’ was affirmed by law, together with a code of conduct for werewolves, but apparently, no werewolf volunteered to come forward and admit their identity.

The year 1692 was a very important year, it was when the International Statute of Secrecy was put fully into effect. Wizards went into complete hiding and “small communities within communities” took shape over the next hundred years; the Magical Congress of the United States of America was established.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were relatively quiet, and many wizards had spontaneously stayed away from the world, pursuing new and exciting pastimes. The first Quidditch World Cup was introduced (Quidditch again), and with it came an all-time great collection of foul play, with over 700 fouls being used. There is a special book dedicated to documenting this, and Hermione can’t believe she was bored enough to look through it …

The fourteenth century was the source that gave birth to the Statute of Secrecy, with the Black Death spreading through Europe, everything concerned with or associated with witchcraft was ostracised and some wizards who operated openly and semi-publicly were expelled, and thereafter the hate grew stronger with the increasing number of death due to Black Death, the culminating hatred resulted in witch burnings in some places and many wizards were forced to hide their identities, and go underground or stray from the crowd.

In the tenth century, Hogwarts was founded, and various schools of magic were established thereafter.

…

As the night grew deeper, Hermione looked up as a soft voice sounded from behind her, and she suddenly looked back and was startled to see Mrs. Pince, the librarian, standing behind her.

“Yes-s, sorry Mrs. Pince, are you closing?” Hermione said as she jumped up with a jolt of surprise. The stern, grumpy, vulture-looking woman had left a lasting impression on her.

Mrs. Pince shook her head and held a cup of hot cocoa in her hand that usually held a chicken feather duster. She placed the cup on the table.

Hermione stared at the hot cocoa for a moment, not even able to say “thank you” because she was too surprised, and when she realized the situation, Mrs. Pince had already left. Hermione sat down and went back to her work. She had tried to find a pattern in the history of non-wizards, but in the end, she had come up empty-handed and was a little discouraged.

Hot cocoa energised her as she wandered between the huge shelves of books, looking for inspiration from them, her eyes sliding over the titles of one book after another, unaware that she had come to an area where she normally rarely ventured, the tall shelves were piled high with all sorts of decaying smelling notebooks, all left behind by Hogwarts students.

Hermione picked one at random; it contained the observations of a Hufflepuff student on his travels, and because it was a bit old, the wording of the notes was rather difficult to read. She put the travelogue down and picked up another, this time it was a novel.

She read with interest for a while, and startled by the passage of time, she then put the book down and sighed; now was not the time to read this.

But then her eyes gradually lit up; she just seemed to have spotted the right perspective.

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[Author:]

I originally wanted to write the TV interview episode today, to try to write about some of the ideas of wizards from different perspectives, but my progress was so slow that I made up an impromptu chapter, a sort of overall review of the history of wizards to make up today’s release. The author has picked out a few interesting but non-plot-related elements that may reflect part of the wizard’s thought process.

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