A Terrible Beauty
As the First Years sail across the Black Lake, they gaze in awe at the architectonical marvel that is Hogwarts: its walls stand unyielding to the strong gusts of the Scottish wind and its spirals, with the twinkling lights signalling life inside, provide a contrast to the dark clouds brought in by the night.
Most of the damage that had been done to the castle is now only perceptible to those who had known it intimately before the war. The only obvious tell-tale of the Final Battle is its partially collapsed South Tower: "A single remainder of the eventuality of unspeakable evil to generations to come." - Headmistress McGonagall's own words.
As the wide-eyed First Years are led towards the Great Hall, the stairway, upon which their small feet obligingly march, bears no marks of its total collapse it had suffered during the fighting. Only small whiffs of ghosts past - of those who fought on that staircase and died - are palpable to those who fought alongside them. And who suffered a great misfortune of having survived, some might add. It is a matter of opinion who is luckier: the dead or the surviving. For surviving we are, remembering all that has been lost, thought Headmistress McGonagall as she watched the first years make their way to the Head Table to be sorted.
The young pupils cannot help but stare at the tall, imposing Headmistress. She is, after all, one of the Leaders of the Light who showed immense bravery not in one but two wizarding wars which saw banish two of the darkest wizards in the history of the wizardkind. She is the most powerful witch whose counsel is sought by the political elite on daily basis and who is courted by the national media and publishing houses seeking a peek into her well-guarded private life and history. The enigma that is Minerva Catriona McGonagall and the seeming protection afforded by her mere presence seems absolute.
They look so fragile, thought McGonagall. All it takes to wipe these innocent children out is one evil child in their midst, evolving alongside them as a leach would feed off the unknowing host. Who, as teachers, are we trying to fool by promising security? The most hopeful ones - and the most naïve ones - vociferously argue that now that the wizarding world has seen so much innocent blood spilled in a senseless one-man-hunt for immortality that this dark history cannot and will not be repeated. "We, as humankind, have learnt the lesson." Minerva snorts at remembering these fatal words of the Minister of Magic right after the fall of Grindewald. Quelle surprise, few decades later and the history repeated itself. Only this time, the evolution in spell inventing and making made the new era of terror much deadlier. We, as humankind, have learnt zilch. At 92, Minerva is too tired of telling all these political buffoons that this is not the happy ending they all hope for.
"The evil has been banished, let the good reign forever hereon. You must be deluded, sir, for thinking so."
"But surely, Minerva, after all that we have witnessed over the last several decades..."The issue is that people tend to forget and the sheer magnitude of suffering fades in subsequent renditions of the history books. When the surviving generation dies out, no one will be left to carry the raw emotions and experiences that no book can substitute. The pain and death suffered will become trivialised. A thing of the past. It is a circuitous game that some higher being must be playing on us.
If prompted she, of course, furnishes advice but, at this old age, Minerva has given up on telling these good-for-nothing statesmen much of substance and quietly sits and listens to their predictions of the wizarding world painted in rainbow colours.
And so it begins: a new era in which the ruling elite, self-congratulatory and dismissive of any doomsday sayers, walks blindly into another dark age.
Now and in time to be, wherever green is worn, they are changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.
Easter, 1916
W.B. Yeats