Chapter Sixteen – A History of Magic

Only very few students left Hogwarts for the Easter holidays the next day. A mere twelve carriages were enough to transport them all down to Hogsmeade station. Apart from Martin and Ramin, the students returning home for the holidays were all fourth-years and below, and once they got onto the train, they split up into twos and threes and settled themselves in different compartments. Martin and Ramin had one to themselves again, and once the train had started moving, Martin pulled off his shoes, put his feet onto the empty seat next to him and leaned against Ramin, who put an arm around him. They watched the landscape whizz by in silence for a while, still a little sleepy, for they'd had to get up much earlier than they would usually have done on their first day of the holidays. The early morning mist had not quite lifted over the Scottish highlands, and the plains were shrouded in a hazy, silver-grey cloak. Martin felt Ramin's chest rise and fall as he yawned, and at an upwards glance he saw that his boyfriend had his eyes closed and his head leaned against the window, quite obviously about to go back to sleep. But even though Martin had not slept a lot the previous night and even though he was very comfortable, leaning against Ramin, hearing nothing but the gentle rattling of the train and the occasional creaking of the wagons at a bend in the tracks, he did not feel at all tired. There was an excitement bubbling in the pit of his stomach that had kept him awake half the night and that was now increasing by the minute as they got closer and closer to London and further and further away from the school. It was, at seventeen, the first time that he was going to spend a considerable amount of time away from his father. He had never visited any of his Hufflepuff dorm mates during the holidays. They had sometimes called at the Malfoys, but his father had always been with him on these occasions. The thought of spending the entire Easter holidays at someone else's house now made him nervous, and at the same time, he was really looking forward to it.

He shifted in his seat and accidentally nudged Ramin, who started and sat up a little straighter.

"Sorry", Martin said abashed, "I didn't mean to wake you."

Ramin gave another wide yawn, then smiled down at him. "Don't worry. I wasn't really sleeping, just –" he yawned again, and Martin grinned "– do-dozing, I guess."

Their eyes met, and after a moment of smiling at each other, Ramin leaned down and kissed him.

"I'm really, really glad you're coming with me," he smiled when they'd broken apart again.

Martin smiled back at his boyfriend, but he also felt another trickle of nerves at these words. "I hope your parents will like me," he muttered, trying and failing to keep his anxiety out of his voice.

"Sure they will!" Ramin replied confidently. "They'll love you! They're always happy for me to have visitors. In America, I had friends staying with me almost every summer."

Martin nodded. He felt slightly reassured, and from the way Ramin talked about them, it sounded as though his parents were very nice. Still, when he thought of his own father, he somehow could not imagine him being happy to welcome a friend or partner of his at their house for any length of time in the holidays. But then, it was a different matter because his father was also their teacher, Martin reflected. And what was more, not every adult in the world was like his father.

Determined not to let his anxiety overpower his anticipation, Martin sat up a little straighter and said: "Tell me about America. How was the school? What was its name again, I… something?"

It was the first thing that had come into his head, and he said it partly to distract himself from his feeling of apprehension, but as the words came out of his mouth, he realised that he was genuinely interested in the answer. He wondered fleetingly how he could have failed to ask his boyfriend this before, given that they had known each other for eight months now.

"Ilvermorny," Ramin replied. "Don't ask me why it's called that. It's a weird name, but it's a great school."

"Is it very different from Hogwarts?" Martin asked curiously.

"Funnily enough, they're very much alike," Ramin answered. "Ilvermorny was founded after Hogwarts, in the seventeenth century, and it was built after its model."

"Really?" Martin asked, surprised. He'd have thought that the Americans, who were usually trying to be as un-English as they possibly could, would have designed their school of magic to be typically American and not to imitate a British model.

"I know, it's shocking, isn't it?" Ramin grinned. "But Ilvermorny was actually founded by an Irish witch, Isolt Sayre. She never attended Hogwarts because her parents didn't want her to mix with half-bloods and No-Maj-borns. Her mother was a Gaunt," Ramin added at Martin's frown, and Martin nodded in comprehension. He still didn't approve, of course, but he supposed nothing better could have been expected of the Gaunts, who were not only one of the so-called Sacred Twenty-Eight, but also descendants of Salazar Slytherin himself.

"So they home-schooled her instead, but they still told her stories about Hogwarts. I guess they were mostly tirades about how No-Maj-infected the place was, but to Isolt, it sounded like paradise."

"So she didn't believe in her parents' ideals, then?" Martin asked, surprised, but impressed by the young witch's strength of character.

"No," Ramin replied. "Her parents practically imprisoned her in the house and never allowed her to get in contact with anyone but them. She hated it, and one day, when she was seventeen, she managed to escape and fled to America. There, she fell in love with a No-Maj and they had four children, two boys and two girls. They were all magical, and Isolt wanted them to go to school, but she couldn't go back to Britain because her parents were still looking for her over there. So instead of sending them to Hogwarts, she founded her own school in America and designed it to be just like the place she had always fantasised about as a child. For instance, the school building is also a castle, Ilvermorny's proper name is 'Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,' and there are four houses, just like at Hogwarts."

"Really?" Martin asked, frowning. "Are they also named after the Hogwarts founders?"

"No", Ramin replied, laughing, "I guess that would have been a little too extreme. Ilvermorny's houses are named after four American magical creatures: the Horned Serpent, the Wampus, the Thunderbird and the Pukwudgie."

"The what?" Martin asked, also laughing. He'd never heard of any of these creatures before, and the last name in particular sounded just as funny as those that were always mentioned in the magazine The Quibbler.

"The Pukwudgie," Ramin repeated, also grinning. "It's a sort of goblin, I guess. Anyway, I suppose you could say that the houses roughly match the Hogwarts houses: the Horned Serpent would be Ravenclaw, the Wampus, Gryffindor, the Thunderbird, Slytherin, and the Pukwudgie, Hufflepuff. They're not exact equivalents, though."

"Were you in Wampus, then?"

"Yeah, I was. But I was given a choice at my Sorting between Wampus and Thunderbird. It was my call to go to Wampus."

"A choice?" Martin frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the Sorting Ceremony's quite different at Ilvermorny," Ramin explained. "The entrance hall is circular with a balcony running all the way around it, and there are statues of the four creatures the houses are named after in there. First-years step into the middle of the hall one by one and are selected by the statues while the other students are watching from above. For instance, the Wampus roars when it wants you, and the Thunderbird beats its wings."

"And if more than one statue moves, the student can choose?" Martin asked.

Ramin nodded. "Every once in a great, great while, a student can choose between all four houses. It hardly ever happens, though."

"And you were given a choice?" Martin said, a little puzzled. After all, at Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat had needed no time to consider at all before he'd sent Ramin to Gryffindor.

"Yeah," his boyfriend confirmed. "They say Thunderbird's for adventurers, and Wampus for warriors. I'm sure I would have been happy in Thunderbird, too, but my mom was in there, and when I was given the choice, I thought I'd rather try something new."

Martin looked up at him and saw him smiling reminiscently out of the window. How different they were, he reflected, watching his boyfriend. If he had the choice between following in his father's footsteps or exploring an unknown way, he'd always pick the more familiar road. But Ramin was eager to see new things, to gain fresh experiences, to walk his own path. Martin could fully see why Thunderbird, the house of adventurers, would have offered him a place as well.

"I like the idea of offering a choice," he said thoughtfully, and Ramin turned away from the window to look at him again. "It shows that it's not only important what you could be, potentially, but also what you actually want to be." The latter was actually much more important than the former, he reflected as he said it.

"Doesn't the Sorting Hat ever ask the students what they'd prefer?" Ramin asked, sounding surprised.

"I don't know," Martin replied, realising that he had never considered this before. "I suppose he might. I was Sorted into Hufflepuff almost as quickly as you were into Gryffindor, and the Hat didn't ask me anything, but I guess if it's less of an obvious case … I mean, some people sit on that chair for ages and ages. I suppose they could be talking to the Hat about their preferences."

"I think they must be," Ramin replied. There was silence for a moment, then he asked: "What's the longest that it's ever taken to Sort a student?"

"Jeez, no idea," Martin replied, thinking that he'd quite like to know that as well. "If it takes longer than five minutes, it's called a Hatstall, though."

Ramin laughed. "Cool! Do you know any Hatstalls?"

"Yes," Martin grinned. "And so do you! It took the Hat a full five minutes and thirty-two seconds to decide whether to put Professor McGonagall into Gryffindor or Ravenclaw."

"Seriously?" Ramin replied, laughing. "How do you know?"

"I think Dad told me," Martin answered, shrugging. "It's common knowledge, though. I mean, everyone was watching."

"Weird to imagine Professor McGonagall at eleven years old, sitting on that chair with the Hat slipping down over her ears," Ramin mused, and they looked at each other and laughed.

"Not eleven years, though", Martin corrected when their laughter had subsided, "ten."

"What?" Ramin asked, startled. "But I thought Hogwarts took students at eleven! Ilvermorny does."

"Hogwarts does now, too," Martin nodded. "And it used to for centuries since it was founded. But Professor Dumbledore's pre-predecessor was one Phineas Nigellus Black. He was Headmaster almost a hundred years ago, and a pure-blood, of course. And in that time, anti-Muggle feeling was high among the pure-bloods. The list of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, those families of supposed pure wizard lineage, was created around that time. The Blacks were on it, and to separate wizards further from Muggles, Professor Black decided to accept students into Hogwarts a year earlier, at ten, not at eleven. Muggle secondary education usually starts at eleven, but Professor Black argued that Muggles come of age a year later than wizards, so it's only right for wizards to begin school a year earlier as well. Professor Black wasn't very popular as Headmaster, but many witches and wizards, and not only pure-bloods, felt he had a point in this, so the change wasn't even really opposed. When he died, Armando Dippet succeeded him, and he saw no need to change the new system. It was only when Professor Dumbledore became Headmaster and opposed the new rule that many people saw the problems of it, that it was a huge inconvenience for Muggle-borns, for instance, because they could not finish their primary education anymore before coming to Hogwarts. It took a couple of years until Dumbledore could change the system again, though. My dad's year was the last that started Hogwarts at ten, after that it was back to eleven."

"Okay," Ramin said, still sounding a little taken aback. "I didn't know that. Idiotic, really, to change a system that's worked well for hundreds of years, just because of a stupid prejudice."

"Yeah, I know," Martin answered. "But pure-bloods and Muggles, that's sort of a never-ending story, you know? I wish it wasn't, but there you are."

Ramin was silent for a moment, then he said: "That's a really big thing over here, isn't it? I mean, magical people feeling that they are better than No-Majs. That's also what the war against Voldemort was about, right? He wanted wizards to rule over the No-Majs."

Martin, who had flinched horribly at the mention of You-Know-Who's name, nodded slowly. Unwelcome thoughts were pushing their way into his head: the Dark Mark on his father's arm, Barty Crouch's conspicuous absence from work since November, the disappearance of Bertha Jorkins, the break-in into his father's office …

He could hear his father's voice echo through head, as clearly as if he was sitting right next to him: Each of these things alone might mean nothing, but all of them combined, and all in a relatively short span of time … all of these things point towards the Dark Lord getting stronger again. So much stronger, in fact, that something may happen very soon indeed.

His throat tightened, and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe as the terror he'd felt when his father had told him that You-Know-Who was getting stronger again threatened to engulf him once more.

But he was on the Hogwarts Express with Ramin, they were on their way to London, and they were going to have a wonderful Easter holiday together. This was not the time to dwell on the possibility of You-Know-Who's return.

With an almighty effort, he forced himself to push away all thought of his father's revelations, and said in reply to Ramin's question: "Yes, he did. And that's what Grindelwald wanted, too. The last two really powerful Dark wizards both operated on an anti-Muggle agenda, and both had plenty of supporters. Anti-Muggle feeling has always been pretty strong among some wizards in Britain, I'm afraid."

"Looks like it," Ramin sighed. "To me, it just sounds so stupid! But then, perhaps I just didn't grow up with it." He gave a short, humourless laugh.

Martin looked up at him, frowning. "Isn't it as big a topic in America, then?"

Ramin shook his head. "Not at all. On the contrary, in America, there were always more No-Majs hunting wizards than the other way around."

"Really?" Martin asked, taken aback. "How come?"

"Well, there was this religious group called the Puritans", Ramin explained, "and they hated any sort of magic. They hunted down anyone who they thought was magical and did the most gruesome things to them because they thought there were in league with the Devil. More often than not, they just caught other No-Majs, but all witches and wizards had to watch out for them, because whether magical or not, you didn't want to find yourself cornered by a herd of angry Puritans carrying torches and wanting to burn you alive. Then there were these guys called the Scourers, who basically hunted down any criminal who was worth a handsome reward. They were wizards, but as time went on, they turned in more and more people to No-Maj authorities, passing them off as dangerous magicians. Sometimes the people they caught really were witches and wizards, sometimes they weren't. It made no difference to them, so long as the money was good enough."

"They turned in their fellow witches and wizards?" Martin asked incredulously. He was also shocked to discover that innocent Muggles had been deliberately accused of being magical just to provide these Scourers with a fat sum of money, but their own kind? That was yet another level of low.

"I know," Ramin said, grimacing. "Not nice. And then, at the end of the seventeenth century, there were the Salem Witch Trials, during which many witches and even more No-Majs were killed. Some of the judges were definitely Scourers, and after the Trials, many witches and wizards fled the country."

"Who can blame them?" Martin muttered, and Ramin nodded in agreement.

"That's also why many pure-bloods living in other countries decided against coming to America, and consequently, their anti-No-Maj-ideology never really gained much support there. The wizarding community tried to arrest and punish the Scourers who'd betrayed their own kind after the Trials, but it wasn't very well organised then and many Scourers managed to escape. They married No-Majs and passed on a belief that magic was real, but dangerous and had to be opposed wherever it was found. That was their revenge on their fellow witches and wizards who'd tried to hunt them down. That's why witches and wizards in America had to be really careful about keeping their magic secret, because there was always a danger of No-Maj descendants from the Scourers trying to arrest and punish them. Then one day, at the end of the eighteenth century, there was a huge leak about the locations of MACUSA, the American wizarding government, and Ilvermorny. It was a catastrophe, and afterwards, Rappaport's Law was introduced: wizards were forbidden to marry or even befriend No-Majs. They were to live completely separately from them, and there were harsh punishments against anyone who broke that law. It basically led to a complete estrangement of the wizarding community from the No-Majs."

There was silence for a moment, while Martin contemplated what Ramin had told him. "That's harsh," he murmured finally. He had never before considered that it was not only possible for wizards to feel unfriendly towards Muggles, but also the other way around. Then, a sudden thought struck him and he frowned at Ramin. "But didn't you say your mum's a witch, but your dad's a Muggle?"

"Yep," his boyfriend grinned.

"But if this Ra-thingy's law's in place, then how –"

"It was repealed in 1965," Ramin said. "In the end, there was no way it could be upheld. There had been mass protests for years, and there were so many problems. Take No-Maj-borns, for example. You could hardly forbid them to keep in contact with their own parents and siblings. And it wasn't fair to Missers, either, to keep them separate from the non-magical world because they'll always be considered unequal in the wizarding one."

"What are Missers?" Martin asked curiosly.

Ramin looked at him in surprise. "People born into magical families who can't do any magic. You must have heard of them before?"

"Oh, you mean Squibs," Martin said, comprehension dawning. "That's what we call them. Here in Britain, I mean."

"Oh," Ramin replied, frowning slightly. "I didn't realise there'd be a different term for that, too … But anyway, Rappaport's Law wasn't fair on Missers, and witches and wizards also just kept falling in love with their No-Maj neighbours or their local bakery salesmen or whatnot. I don't think there's a law in the world that was broken as often as Rappaport's, and in 1965, MACUSA finally saw sense. It was just in time for Mom and Dad," he smirked. "They met only a few years later."

"While your dad was trying to buy himself a cat," Martin grinned. "I remember."

"Exactly," Ramin replied. "But let's not talk about cats now, it's bad enough that we're gonna have to spend the entire vacations in a house full of them."

"I'm looking forward to that," Martin grinned, but Ramin only grimaced.

"Yeah, well … you are now. A couple of days in their company should cure you. Where's the food trolley?" he added, clearly determined to direct the conversation away from cats. "I'm starving."

"I dunno," Martin replied, looking down at his watch and once again feeling a surge of powerful emotion at the sight of his father's gift to him. "It should come by any minute."

"I hope so," Ramin grumbled, and at that precise moment, the door to their compartment opened and the trolley witch stuck her head through it. Martin sat up quickly and pulled on his shoes again, while Ramin was already ordering what sounded like half the trolley's contents from the witch. When Martin had bought himself some lunch, too, he sat down upon the seat opposite Ramin and looked out of the window as he ate, thinking about Hogwarts and Ilvermorny and pure-bloods and Muggles and Rappaport's Law, and wondering as the train approached London if Mr and Mrs Wilkinson really were as nice as Ramin had made them out to be.

Author's note:

Well, here you are … a new chapter. I'd be thrilled if it motivated some of you to (finally) write a review!

Almost all the historical information given in this chapter is quoted indirectly from what is now " ", in particular from the articles about Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, pure-bloods, Hatstalls, and the texts on wizarding America. Check these out for more detailed information, especially because Ramin wasn't a very attentive student in his History of Magic classes at Ilvermorny and got a few things mixed up: for instance, it wasn't Isolt's parents who forbade her to attend Hogwarts, but her aunt, who actually murdered Isolt's parents and "stole" her from their burning house. It is also untrue that all four of Isolt and James' children were magical: one of their daughters wasn't. There are other simplifications and inaccuracies in Ramin's account of American wizarding history; as I said, please check out the texts on for a full and accurate account.

The only term that I made up myself is "Misser" for Squib; I thought that as Americans have their own term for Muggles, they should have one for Squibs as well.

The other historical detail that I invented is the story about Hogwarts accepting students at ten years of age for a certain period of time, including the year of Severus, Lily and the Marauders. This is an interpretation that cannot by upheld when studying the books closely, but I still had to do it to rectify a major flaw in the timeline of this story: Martin was born on the 18th of March in 1978, the same year as the twins. That makes him two years older than Harry and places him in Cedric, Fred and George's year, all of which is very convenient for me in the writing of this story. Lily was 17, Severus was 18 when Martin was born, and somehow, I assumed that they'd both already be out of Hogwarts by then. I had already written ten chapters when I realised that the schoolyear 1977/78 would actually have been their final year at Hogwarts if they'd started at the age of eleven in 1971. For various reasons, I absolutely did not want Lily and Severus to still be attending school when their son was born, but if I had moved Martin's birth to 1979, I would have ripped him out of Cedric, Fred and George's year, which would have meant rewriting basically the entire story. So instead, I made Lily and Severus start school at ten, meaning they finished in 1977, which suits me perfectly. I apologise for going beyond the boundaries of the books in this point, but as I just stated, there was no better way. I hope you can forgive me for exercising the whole of my freedom as the author of this ff here ;)