...is for good men to do nothing
Author: Sthrissa
Summary: In an age of inquisitions and religious fervour, a pureblood wizard contemplates.
Disclaimer: (enter standard not-mine clause here)
Another one gone. He sighed wearily, as the familiar spark of guilt tore through him, igniting once again those same arguments. 'It is not our responsibility,' he reminded himself, yet he could not shake the knowledge that indeed the responsibility was upon him and those like him, who could have interceded but did not.
He was unable to stop his mind from contemplating what that woman -girl really- would have gone through, to have those she trusted all her life turn against her, to be condemned by friends and neighbours for something she could not control and did not understand. Morbidly he wondered how long she was forced to endure the caress of the flames before blessed unconsciousness overwhelmed her.
'There is no other choice.' Hollow words when a child is condemned to facing the hell-fires of fearful neighbours. And all because of a few warts that faded within the day! Had she suspected her own nature before that day? Did she notice inexplicable phenomenon left in her wake, realised that nature moulded itself to her wishes? Perhaps not, else she would have been more guarded with her words. Or perhaps she did notice, and denied her own nature like so many of her kind, unwilling to accept the perceived darkness within them.
His own ancestors would have been such a one. Born into normal, mundane lives yet realising gradually that they were possessed of something unexplained; realising that they were irrevocably set apart from parents and siblings.
Some would certainly have exalted at the power and enthusiastically embraced their gift. Cynically, he considered that those who most ardently denounced the arcane, and wielded that fear for their own ends, would likely have grasped most keenly had the gift been granted to them.
Others -too many- must have feared what they were becoming, lived in terror of something so fundamentally a part of themselves, with the echoed whispers of damnation poisoning their thoughts. To not know what was happening to them, guided by nothing but superstitious dogma, such could have been her fate. His forefathers were fortunate enough to learn to master their gift without discovery, and eventually were able to impart the knowledge to their progeny.
"Father?" his son of eight years addressed him from the doorway, tentatively, cognisant of his sire's melancholy and anxious to uncover the cause.
"A woman in the village. She had been blessed with the gift but could not govern it, and she unleashed it at an importune moment. Many witnessed her words bringing harm to her neighbour." He met his son's eyes and said severely, "That is why it is imperative for you to attend to your studies. You must be capable of controlling your magic, or you too may unintentionally cause harm to others."
His son, like all children of that age, was far too inquisitive for his parent's convenience. "Why was she not trained, father? Could she not have been brought here and taught by Magister Celsus also?"
Why indeed? Why not welcome a child of magic, born to those who had not the gift, and raised to loath and fear the arcane. Why not bring such a child into their midst, to train their control, and upon them bestow the skills that should be their birthright; and to watch as they depart, bearing with them the secrets of wizardom.
How lonely for those children to be torn from all that was known and familiar, to have shattered, the truths of their youth. To realise that the path they walked, their families could never follow. Is it any wonder that so many eventually returned to the people of their childhood?
History had amply proven that agents of the muggle church were more than willing to utilise the forces which they condemn. Disguised as writs from heaven and the opportunity to purge abomination from their veins, these children, whom wizardom had welcomed in to its home, whom wizardom raised and nurtured, would be persuaded to turn against their friends and teachers, seeking false redemption.
How does one tell one's child that people, innocent unassuming people, who individually are feeble, could together be an angry, paranoid horde that would bring wizardom to its knees? How does one teach a child about superstition and prejudice, about politics and betrayal, about stakes and fear?
He considered the ramifications of telling such truths, the broken dreams of childhood when his son learns that there are some things daddy cannot protect him from, and for a moment he was tempted to discharge these burdens upon his child. But pride won.
"Though she had the gift, magic does not flow through the blood of her house. Those born of muggles, they are not like us. They are inferior…"
(The wizard upon whose thoughts you trespass lived in a time when wizardom was less centralised and superstitious fear amongst muggles were more politically prominent. His identity is deliberatley left ambiguous.)