The tragedy at the Mancunium textile factory is based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City, in 1911. The grisly totals: 146 workers died, and 78 were injured, because Management had ordered the doors to the stairwells and exits to be locked.

In 2012 I wrote a C programme that generates pronounceable nonsense words. In the first part of this chapter, I have fun using my programme.

This chapter is almost all infodump. It probably is boring to read; but if I put this information anywhere else in the story, I would need to write more words, and what was written would be no more exciting to read.

Chapter 12
Touring the OTHER Magical School

Tuesday, 15th August, 11:03 a.m
3 days, 3.0 hours after the start of Harry's trial
Somewhere in the city of Manchester, in England

Harry, the other four visitors and Deputy Headmaster Meadows soon were walking up to a sagging, chain-link fence, and to a huge, burnt-out ruin of a building beyond the fence.

The building was huge; it took up almost all of one double-length city block. The brick building had been gutted by fire—none of the rectangular window-holes in the wall showed glass. All of the upper-story, glassless windows showed the sky above—meaning, the building had no roof. The bricks above every window-hole were discoloured with black soot.

At the top of the long wall, just below the roof that no longer was there, were words in faded white paint: "Mancunium Cotton Thread & Cloth Co, Ltd." In many places, the faded white paint was covered with black soot.

Suddenly, Emma Granger gasped. "This place is a place of death. I sense ghosts here—many ghosts. We need to leave here—we're in danger."

Dan Granger said to Hermione, in a frightened voice, "Come, Pumpkin, we're leaving. We'll die if we stay."

"What?" said Hermione. "We can't leave, we just got here!"

Harry was puzzled by the Grangers' reactions. He felt no danger at all from yonder brick building.

Deputy Headmaster Meadows said, "Hurry, Miss Granger, take your parents' hands."

Harry saw Hermione seize her parents' hands; the change on their expressions was instantaneous. Dan Granger asked, "Where did the ghosts go, and the feeling of deadly danger?"

Meadows replied, "You've just experienced our main way of driving off nonmagical indigents and nonmagical criminals. However, the Mancunium textile factory really was destroyed by fire, in 1860, and 223 workers died in that fire. Meaning that if nonmagical ghost stories were true, this place would have 223 ghosts. Instead, we have only one ghost from that time."

Hermione asked, "Was it a magical person? Why was a magical person here when the building caught fire?"

"Emily Redley was a first-generation witch who had completed Hogwarts in the 1820s, only to discover that there was no work for her that was worth the mention in the magical world. Then she quickly discovered that she could hire on for only unskilled work in the nonmagical world."

Hermione sighed. "And 170 years later, things still haven't changed. So Emily took a position here, because she had no other choice."

"That's right," said Meadows. "Emily's sister Cecilia already was working here, so Emily took a position here too, operating a thread-spinning machine. Both sisters died in the 1860 fire, but only Emily came back as a ghost."

By now the group had walked round the corner of the fence to the street side, to a pair of gates in the fence. The gates were kept closed by a rusty chain and a rust-speckled padlock.

Meadows spoke strange words (Naintoodguerx whoapset fadsoashroort), and the chain and padlock vanished. Meadows opened the gates and gestured the others inside.

Harry and the other four had taken two steps inside the gates when—

Zzzitt.

—the visitors felt an electric shock, strong enough to be worrisome.

Hermione, who still was holding hands with her parents, looked down at their feet, then she looked round in every direction. "An electric shock? But how? I see no wires, and we're standing on concrete, not metal."

Sirius answered, "You felt a warning ward. I fear if we walk another ten feet, we'll all run into something fatal."

All the visitors looked worriedly at Meadows—

—who pulled a folded piece of paper (not parchment) out of his pocket and unfolded the paper; Meadows then held the unfolded paper in his left hand. Meadows's right hand took a wand from his left forearm and pointed the wand at the paper. "Droblairdub vlialneh," he said. Then Meadows showed the paper to the group. What Harry saw were words, printed in a large serif font—

.

Manchester Magical Academy is located where the Mancunium Cotton Thread & Cloth Co, Ltd textile factory formerly stood.

.

The burnt-out huge brick building disappeared, for the most part.

Where the brick walls of the burnt-out factory had been, brick walls still stood—but these four brick walls were only eighteen inches tall, and easily stepped over. Where the factory's main-entrance doors had been, the gap in the mini-wall was filled in with newer red bricks.

Within the mini-walls, a small orange-and-white building that had huge windows, appeared right in front of the visitors. Two other little buildings were visible behind the first building. Probably there were other buildings here, hidden from sight by the three buildings in front.

Hermione's parents gasped at the buildings' sudden disappearance/appearance.

After everyone in the group had read the paper, Meadows pointed his wand at the paper again. "Hide the words," he incanted; the text of the paper turned into random letters. Meadows folded the paper and returned it to his pocket, then restowed his wand on his left forearm.

Now that Meadows had his hands free, he pulled out two wooden bracelets, with copper runes on their surface, and handed the bracelets out to each of Hermione's parents. "Please put this on. It will give you magical power for two hours."

And if this did not gobsmack the group enough, Meadows then pulled two wands from his pocket, issued a wand to each dentist, and taught the Granger parents the Lumos/Nox Charm—which Dan and Emma each cast successfully.

Moments later, Dan and Emma, each teary-eyed, hugged their daughter. A big part of her life that they never could understand before, they now had experienced for themselves.

Then the dentists hugged Harry. "Thank you for suggesting this school to Hermione."

A transparent woman appeared then. She looked to be about fifty years old, with lines in her face and the beginnings of jowls. Her hair was pinned up in a nineteenth-century style, she was wearing an ankle-length skirt, and wore a long-sleeved and high-collared blouse.

Ghost-Emily smiled brightly at the Granger parents. "Discovering that magic is real, and that you can do it, always is a right brilliant moment, isn't it?"

Then the ghost looked seriously at Harry and Hermione. "Too bad that some of the other people who can do magic, just like you, are utter berks."

Deputy Headmaster Meadows led the visitors over a mini-wall and into the orange-and-white building, which turned out to be the Administration building. (Why was it painted orange and white? Because both colours belonged to no Hogwarts house.)

In the Administration building, Meadows led the five visitors into the office of a woman in her sixties or seventies. Immediately Meadows took from his pocket the paper that had the encrypted Secret printed on it, and laid the paper on the old woman's desk.

Meadows then made introductions. The old woman was, as Harry suspected, Headmistress Mersey Norwood—whom, it turned out, also was the founder of MMA.

Then a meeting was held. The participants: Sirius, Harry, Hermione, the dental Grangers, Headmistress Norwood, Deputy Headmaster Meadows and Ghost-Emily. Harry was surprised by what he was told.

In 1960, Mersey Norwood, who had been "in my thirties at the time," had attended the hundred-year commemoration of "the Mancunium tragedy"—and had met the ghost of Emily Redley.

An angel had told Ghost-Emily that "You have a destiny to fulfill, after your death," and for a while, it seemed that meeting Mersey Norwood was how Emily would fulfill her posthumous destiny. Because meeting the professionally frustrated, ex-Hogwarts Muggle-born ghost radicalised Norwood, whom at that time was also a professionally frustrated, ex-Hogwarts Muggle-born.

Norwood, after she had met Emily, had founded a school for "British first-generation witches and wizards" (Norwood had banished the terms Muggles and Muggle-borns from MMA). MMA had been designed to save first-generation-magical students from the trap that Emily and Norwood both had been caught in.

The decision where to build MMA had been, for Norwood, an easy one. By placing the school where Ghost-Emily had died, Norwood had become able to see her transparent friend all the time.

School-founder Norwood had quickly decided that she would help out first-generation magical children who were poor (by charging their parents much less in fees than Hogwarts charged), and she would help out first-generation magical children who were "thick" or were partly ignorant of the nonmagical world. (It had been Norwood struggling to create ideas about how to teach such children, that had led her to the idea of creating enchanted-photographs "clones" of the class instructor.)

On the other hand, Founder Norwood had decided that she would be "merciless Mersey" when it came to wizard-raised children who requested transfer to MMA. To those children, Norwood decreed, "No transfer allowed." The first-generation-magical students at MMA did not need other students in the school who believed in their own superiority and who were convinced that they were entitled to special treatment. Not to mention, MMA was not set up to teach children eleven or older, who knew less about the nonmagical world than a nonmagical seven-year old knew.

Getting MMA accredited to teach the school's nonmagical subjects, without violating the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, had been a near-impossible challenge for Norwood. Norwood had gotten round that particular roadblock only after she had been granted a personal audience with Queen Elizabeth II.

MMA had admitted its first eleven-year-olds on 1st September 1962. MMA had accepted its first Hogwarts transfer student in 1971—but some of MMA's contingency plans how to treat Hogwarts transfer students had been in place since that first meeting between Norwood and Ghost-Emily in 1960.

After the visitors were told MMA's history, they were told about MMA as it was now.

MMA was a day school, not a boarding school. MMA had no dormitories, and only a lunchtime meal was provided by the school. MMA presumed that students would eat breakfast and supper with their families. If a student was involved in something such as a pick-up game or a school play, in which a student knew he or she would be at school through suppertime, MMA had twenty time-stasis boxes available, in which a student could place food for one day. (If a time-stasis box still had food in it at midnight, an MMA house-elf vanished the food.)

MMA was nothing like Hogwarts, except when MMA had to be like Hogwarts. Norwood had hired exactly one wizard-raised professor (Ophelia Burke, teaching Arithmancy); all the other professors that Norwood hired were first-generation wizards and witches, no matter whether they taught magical or nonmagical subjects. As a result, MMA did not teach Divination, because Norwood had never been able to find a first-generation magical adult who also was a Seer.

Nor did MMA teach Care of Magical Creatures, but the reason for this omission was because of space limitations at MMA, even with expansion charms.

At MMA, Ancient Runes was a required subject. Ancient Runes was required at MMA beginning at first-level; as opposed to Hogwarts, which did not offer the subject till third year, as an elective.

MMA did not have Houses. MMA students were grouped with all the other students who were the same year in age, as of 1st September of the school year in which they started MMA. If Harry and Hermione started school at MMA on 1st September 1995, they would both be in the "Fifteen group," even after Hermione turned sixteen; Harry and Hermione would remain in the "Fifteen group" till 1st September 1996. Furthermore, Harry and Hermione would spend this year being part of the "Fifteen group," no matter whether Harry and Hermione were taking fifth-level classes, first-level classes or seventh-level classes. The seven year-groups at MMA each had their own common room; an eighth common room was set aside for "Siblings, Spouses, and Level-Mates."

(Dan Granger choked, then asked, "Is this a big problem at MMA, students marrying before they finish school?")

A few students, who always were either transferees from Hogwarts or were thick as a brick, were eighteen years old on 1st September, because they still had not completed all seven levels in all their magical subjects and in all their nonmagical subjects. But on a student's nineteenth birthday, he/she was made to leave the school, and afterwards could take MMA courses only by correspondence.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was taught by the first-generation professor, and was learnt by the first-generation students, in deadly seriousness. A Pureblood at Hogwarts might never need to know what to do if an angry wand was pointed at him, but a first-generation wizard or witch in Britain did not have this luxury.

Some words that Hogwarts used, MMA used different words for: MMA said nonmagical instead of Muggle, and first-generation magical (or first-gen) instead of Muggle-born. However, instead of inventing different words for Pureblood and half-blood, MMA did not use those words at all. As Headmistress Norwood put it, "Miss Granger, Hogwarts would describe you as a 'Muggle-born'—when they weren't insulting you with that other word—and Hogwarts would describe you, Mr Potter, as a 'Muggle-raised half-blood.' Emily, myself, and Miss Burke, the Arithmancy Professor, are the only people in this school who understand what those words mean. But what those words mean, doesn't matter in this school. Mr Potter isn't entitled to better treatment here because he has blood of more 'magical purity,' nor is Miss Granger entitled to better treatment here because her blood is more nonmagical."

All the professors at MMA had teaching credentials, regardless of whether a professor taught a magical or a nonmagical subject. If an applicant did not have teaching credentials, he or she simply would not be hired to teach, even if—hypothetically speaking—he or she was the youngest person in a century to earn a Mastery in his or her discipline.

Quidditch at MMA was an afterthought. Students at MMA—who had never even heard of the game till they came to MMA—were not taught the rules of Quidditch till fifth-level Magical History. What Quidditch games were played at MMA were pick-up games, played by fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-level students. Even then, a Quidditch game could be played at MMA only if no other MMA students were using the same plot of land to play footy, cricket or rugby; and if the Physical Education professor had not locked that land into being a running track.

To Norwood's knowledge, exactly two MMA students since 1962 had attended a professional Quidditch match. Quidditch simply was not something that MMA students got excited about.

Harry nearly fell out of his chair when he was told this. As Hermione was hugging Harry to console him, she explained to the MMA trio, "At Hogwarts, Harry has been on the Gryffindor House team since he was a first-year."

Harry noted that Norwood, Deputy Headmaster Meadows and Ghost-Emily, all three, shrugged with indifference at Hermione's revelation.

At the end of the meeting, Norwood looked at Sirius and spoke coldly: "We at MMA do not see ourselves as lucky fortunates who have been privileged to join a secret society of superior beings, despite our nonmagical contamination, and we should feel so grateful for being allowed to join that we accept all the crap that you lot who are already here, choose to dump on us. No, we first-generation magicals see ourselves as, to use your word, Muggles who can do magic. We like the fact that our parents and grandparents are Muggles, not Victorians with wands. Quite a few of us 'Muggle-borns,' back when we were eleven, if the Ministry had allowed our magic to be bound without also wiping the knowledge of magic from ourselves and our families, would have refused magical schooling and would have lost our magic, and the choice would have been easy. But we weren't given such a choice, so here we are. Our magic is unimportant to us. You look shocked, Lord Black. Don't be; have Miss Granger explain. Anyway, those of us with nonmagical parents who refused to get our memories wiped, are forced by your Ministry to come to school and to learn about magic—but we'll do the learning our way."

Sirius looked at Hermione to explain. She said to him, "Sirius, consider an analogy. Only a tiny fraction of the population has perfect pitch. Suppose I pointed out a man and said, 'See that man there? He can sing exactly on key. He expects you and me to bow and scrape when we're near him, and to treat him extra nicely, because he has perfect pitch.' What would you think? You'd think, 'That's ridiculous.' What if I then said, 'But he deserves to be treated as special, because both his parents and all four of his grandparents also have perfect pitch'? You'd think, 'What you're saying now is more ridiculous.' Well, that's how I always felt at Hogwarts, dealing with Slytherins, and snobby Ravenclaws, and Percy Weasley—that I was surrounded by perfect-pitch people who demanded I treat them as special."

MMA's Computer Literacy building was separate from all the other buildings. Carved into the inside walls of the building were magic-suppression runes, making the entire building a magic-free zone. Sirius was shocked when he drew his wand and discovered that Lumos did not work in the Computer Literacy building. Sirius also had to be told what computers were, and was shocked when something new that was called the internet, was demonstrated to him.

When Sirius was able to read a Web page that had been created near Los Angeles, California, USA, both Meadows and Ghost-Emily smiled smugly.

Of course Hermione wanted to see the MMA Library. She nearly burst out into singing and dancing when she learnt that a big part of the MMA Library was devoted to Techmagic (charms, potions, transfigurations and defensive magic that used a knowledge of nonmagical science and technology). The Hogwarts library, needless to say, held not even a pamphlet devoted to Techmagic, and Flourish and Blotts did not sell any books on Techmagic. To buy books on Techmagic, MMA had to special-order such books from the States or from Seahorse Press in Brisbane, Australia.

In the library, Deputy Headmaster Meadows demonstrated a Techmagic spell, Lux laseri. When Meadows cast the spell at the wall, a thin, bright, red line came out of Meadows's wand. When Meadows then moved his wand in a small circle, the result was a large circle burnt into the wall—with the width of the burn-line being only half a millimetre.

Meadows then conjured a suction-cup and put it on the part of the wall that was inside the burn-circle. The five visitors stared in shock, and Ghost-Emily beamed, when Meadows pulled this little part of the wall out of the wall—the magical laser completely had burnt through the wall. Then Meadows pushed the circular wall-plug back into the wall, vanished the conjured suction-cup, and cast Reparo on the wall, to blend the wall inside the circle with the wall outside the circle.

Meanwhile, Meadows said to Harry, Hermione and Sirius, "It didn't cost my magical core much more to cut through the wall with my magical laser than to repair the wall with Reparo. Speaking of which, Reparo works on what the laser cut apart only because the wall wasn't alive when I pointed my magical laser at it. When a magical laser is turned against a living person's limb, the magical laser both severs the limb and cauterises the limb—and you know what this means."

"What does it mean?" Emma Granger asked.

Hermione replied, "Magical healing normally can reattach a severed limb, if the limb was severed less than eight minutes ago, or the two parts of someone's severed body both have been put in stasis—magical time-stop. But if the two severed parts of the body have either one been cauterised, it's game over."

Harry grinned at Hermione. "Ten points to ex-Gryffindor."

"Ex-Gryffindor, definitely," Hermione said. She looked at the rest of the visitors, and at Meadows and at Ghost-Emily. "I'm eager to study here. How do Harry and I make the transfer official?"