Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: This piece is by way of an experimental attempt to nail down some details of geography and history of Hogwarts for the 'Saint Potter' alternate universe. Some details will almost certainly differ from canon. This piece is rated 'T'.

Further Note: The piece is an account dictated in the late twentieth century by an 'in universe' character, who has their own views and agenda, and may be biased, guessing, or otherwise misleading on some points. (Helga Hufflepuff comes in for the odd jab in this instalment, as the 'in universe' writer has some 'issues' regarding her...)


Extracts from 'Aquinas' Guide to Hogwarts'

Much of the early thinking going on around Godric's Keep, as the castle was initially known, appears to have in fact been shaped by the agenda of Helga Hufflepuff. She was a widely travelled witch for her era, having gone as far afield as Constantinople in the years before the founding, in which latter place she spent several years soaking up the atmosphere of one of the great cultural centres of the day. A thousand years on, there are still legends in circulation in that region about a 'madwoman from abroad' (whose description is often suspiciously similar to that of Helga) who on a semi-regular basis drank members of the Varangian guard under the table in their earliest days in that city. When not carousing, Helga was busy frequenting Constantinople's libraries, having many manuscripts copied to take back to Britain for her dear friend Rowena. And of course, she was always enquiring about and taking notes of other aspects of the city's life. The truly fanciful might even imagine that the system of houses of Hogwarts – to only one of which a pupil might belong – in some way mirrored or was inspired by the Byzantine capital's system of guilds, extant during Helga's stay there, and it is certain that seeing quite so many peoples in quite so many countries must have impacted her thinking and perhaps led to her (at times naïve) willingness to engage with almost anyone.

Yet the houses of Hogwarts and other consequences of some of Helga's ways of thinking were as yet a way off in the future; the most significant effect Helga was to have upon the early years around 'Godric's Keep' (besides her very many contributions to Rowena's book and scroll collections) was in the very nature of the castle being a stone fortress. Wood and earth were materials much easier and faster (especially for a witch or wizard) to work with and raise structures from. Indeed, across Britain, with the exception of the odd religious edifice, raised to serve muggle religious purposes, very few noteworthy stone edifices had been erected since Roman times; but Helga had been to The Orient, and seen Constantinople with its myriad of buildings and great walls. Only stone (or brick, in a pinch) would be good enough for her.

In this, at least, later centuries were to prove Helga wise. It meant extra headaches for Godric and Salazar, though, actually overseeing the task of construction, since for various reasons the immediately available local stone was deemed 'inferior quality' and in the end granite had to be sourced from a quarry some miles remote out on the edge of the Moor of Rannoch. Shipping the granite required the cutting of a track too, through the intervening stretch of forest, which no doubt contributed to the ill will of the forest's dwellers which was to culminate in and express itself in the attack of that first winter of construction.

(As an aside, it should be noted that once Helga had made it clear that only stone would do, both Godric and Salazar scoffed at the notion of transfiguring stone to use in the works. Transfigured stone could be easily restored to its original shape and form or changed into another altogether by any moderately competent witch or wizard, and if there was going to be a stone castle, then Godric and Salazar were going to 'do it properly' and use something naturally resistant to attempts to turn it into a pile of, say, slush. And whilst it is unclear if they understood the reasons that make granite so difficult to magically alter (its tightly interlocking structure of multiple crystals of different sizes, shapes, and types) they must surely have known from practical experimentation just how difficult granite is for a witch or wizard to reshape by any means other than that of sheer brute force.)


A good deal of the handiwork of Godric, Salazar, and their giant building crew is of course still available to view in Hogwarts today, to the visitor able to gain access to the castle, or at least to its grounds. It has withstood the storms of time and battle (and of occasional siege warfare). Here and there the odd statue may have lost a face, or a crenellation been replaced, and various buildings may have been added on by later builders (some more successfully than others) but the core of the castle is essentially still the same, give or take the odd internal refurbishment or repurposing.


With the keep, hall, and barracks tower completed, and with Godric's giants dismissed (for now), to return to their homes, the founders lived in peace for a number of years, alongside their (occasionally rowdy) bodyguards (Helga, perhaps harking back to her days in Constantinople, had rounded up some Norse mercenaries to serve in that capacity), before the first sign of trouble was to rear its head. The fame of two witches and two wizards who had built themselves a fortress in Northern Britain (and who moreover had a sizeable and diverse collection of written materials, likely greater than anything seen in the country since the days of Merlin) had naturally spread, as had word of their great learning.

And so, inevitably, the first wizard, desiring to prostrate himself to learn at the feet of four such great sages showed up. The age of the school was about to begin.


Author Notes:

If this instalment jumps around a bit between some sections, my excuse for that is that in the 'Guide' from which these are putative extracts, there would be long sections of material drawing the reader's attention to the particular pattern of the vaulting of the ceiling of the hall, and the possible astronomical connections and magical significance of particular measurements of lengths of the ribs and the degrees of curvature... Things which a guidebook would naturally mention for the sightseer, but which I have no intention to write. (That's my excuse, anyway, for not having one continuous smooth flow of narrative.)


Some mentions here, regarding information I've extracted from Wikipedia:

1) As far as I can determine from Wikipedia, although Varangians arrived in Constantinople in 980 AD, the actual guard was not formed until 988 AD.

2) Constantinople had a well-established system of guilds by the tenth century. Membership of one guild was prohibitive of membership of any others.

3) With the exception of churches, Anglo-Saxon buildings tended to be built from timber, with stone only ever used for foundations.


On to other stuff. There is no indication in canon, as of April 2014, of Helga Hufflepuff having ever travelled, least of all to Constantinople. It seemed to me that at least one of the founders must have travelled abroad however (otherwise where did the idea of a stone castle come from when everything else, bar the odd muggle religious building, going up in Britain for centuries has been timber?) and I went with Helga. Initially, it was in the interests of putting a character in the spotlight who gets little attention in canon (as of April 2014, she has the shortest Harry Potter wiki entry), but it later occurred to me that her 'open mindedness' might actually fit with a person who had travelled a bit in her time. And during the tenth century, Constantinople was one of *the* major centres of European learning and culture.

The comments regarding granite are as far as I know non-canonical. For the Saint Potter universe, I'm going to be operating on the basis that some transfigurations are more complicated than others, depending on the target material's 'natural' state, and that lots and lots of different types of crystals packed very tightly together are a major headache for even a master or mistress of the art.

As an aside, the notion of Godric and Salazar as building site foremen, with their crew of giants, being bossed around by Helga Hufflepuff entertained me...