Chapter 3 Some Wizard History

'Wizards have been around for several thousand years, the old Egyptians knew them, the Romans had powerful wizards and witches of their own and in ancient times, non-magical humans and wizards generally did get along well. When the last Romans left Britain for good, many wizards, hags and witches stayed behind because they had grown fond of the place. It was a time, when wizards and sorceresses were often powerful princes in their own right with worldly powers to match their magical ones, think only of Morgan le Fay or Merlin. This continued after the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Under Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king, the Earl of Mercia is rumoured to have been a very powerful wizard who betrayed Harold in the end. But things changed after Hastings in 1066. William the Conqueror brought his own Norman wizards with him and from then on, our history closely paralleled yours. For their assistance, William granted them huge estates and non-landed wizards were reduced to a state of virtual serfdom. Noble wizard families sat in their powerful castles, sent their children to Hogwarts, and generally spent their days either dragon-hunting or amusing themselves by torturing muggles or otherwise meddling in their affairs, while the rest of us had to work day and night for them in all kinds of capacities. The same was true for non-human magical creatures like house-elves, for instance. In fact, my own ancestors were dragon-keepers on the estate of one such lord for several hundred years. Some few were managing to hang on to their freedom like the Weasleys of Ottery St. Catchpole, but they were generally destitute, barely able to eke out a living from the poor soil, the Normans were not interested in.

Those were grim times for humans and low-born wizards alike. But in the last centuries, things started to change. Many of the old families had become degenerate causing them to lose their hold on the suffering population. In addition, they had other things to keep them busy, for the goblins finally decided they had had enough and started a series of fierce rebellions, mostly in the 17th and 18th century, that required all their attention. So, in 1835, right after the first muggle parliamentary reform bills, we succeeded in coercing the lords into something that had not taken place for almost 1000 years – the Estates General of all wizards. Against the fierce resistance of the old families, we convened at the old meeting place, a moor in the North of Scotland, and there swore not to disband until we had given ourselves a constitution and a fairer, more just system of government. This Moor-Oath thus became the landmark of recent wizard history. We managed to draw the goblins on our side and together with them, we had the majority. The nobles then tried threatening us with the giants, but we had secretly begun to manufacture our own wands in underground workshops because a young member of the Olivander family had joined our side (wand-carrying had been up to then a privilege of the nobility). We let them know that we were quite ready for a bloodletting, if they wanted it! Faced with the prospect of an uncertain civil war they could not hope to win, the lords gave in, but still fought desperately for their privileges.

The result was a compromise, an Upper House made up of wizard nobility retained considerable powers, but the right to pass laws rested with the Common Assembly, elected by all wizards and witches of age in secret ballot. This is maybe the only difference between us and the muggles by the way. Since there are comparatively few of us, we could never afford to disenfranchise half of our brainpower and the thought of discriminating against women in any way is therefore quite alien to us. The next years saw a steady increase in the powers of the Common Assembly, while the Lords had to grudgingly surrender one privilege after the other. Finally, in 1911, the Upper House was abolished completely and in the same year the Ministry of Magic was established because things had become so complicated that we felt a more permanent body of governing our affairs was needed. This is the broad picture, Peter, now I will come to the details.

To this day, the fiercest opponents of the new system have always been members of the Malfoy family... 'Wait a second', interrupted Peter, 'Tom was telling me that a Malfoy is Minister of Magic right now'. 'That is only too true, I'm afraid', replied Dumbledore, 'but I will come to that in a second, if you let me continue. Officially, the Malfoys trace their lineage back to one "Godefroy de Malefoy", who was supposedly William the Conqueror's personal wizard and friend. If that were true, it would make them indeed one of the oldest surviving wizard families in Britain. Another story has it, however, that the first muggle king of the house of Hannover, George I, had a mistress, who was a low-born, half-muggle witch named Amanda Malfy, who had jinxed her way into his favours. He had a bastard son with her and she later – er - persuaded the king to bestow on the son a title and an estate. I would strongly advise you against mentioning this version openly in the presence of a Malfoy, however, unless you want to find out what the Cruciatus Curse feels like or wish to die of some secret dark poison. Still, most of the true noble families, like the Crabbes and Goyles for instance, are now so degenerate that their members' wits border on the imbecile, so I am personally inclined to believe the second version, but be that as it may....., the Malfoys have always loved the dark arts and never ceased in their efforts to regain those privileges, which they thought to be rightfully theirs by birth. One or several of them have always held posts in wizard government, but they were generally controlled by a fortunate succession of very able Ministers and Ministeresses of Magic.

We wizards watched in horror as you muggles unleashed the Great War in 1914, but as a rule took no active stand. After the war, however, we had a great Ministeress of Magic called Sybil Moody, who was in favour of improving wizard-muggle relations to prevent another such war from ever happening again. It became never official, but there are some among us who believe that she had a hand in the creation of the League of Nations by putting an agreement charm on the muggle politicians in Paris in 1919. It is also rumoured that Sybil was a close friend of the muggle prime minister Chamberlain and played a role in the 1938 Munich agreement to stop another war at the last minute and secure "peace for our time". Unfortunately, Moody was quite old by then and she was not an easy witch to get along with, was always more respected than genuinely liked, if you know what I mean. When the present war started in 1939, there was a widespread feeling that she had lost track of things. In addition, not unlike some members of the British muggle aristocracy, there were some of the old noble families with the Malfoys as usual in the lead, who secretly sympathized with the rise of the totalitarian muggle governments on the continent, especially the Nazis in Germany. As a rule, these people consider pure-blooded wizards a superior race and generally detest all muggles, but they like miserable muggles sweating under a dictatorship far better than happy muggles in a peaceful world. When the war broke out in earnest, putting an end to all of Moody's ambitious dreams for muggle-wizard relations, they executed a long-prepared plan and the more sensible of us were left with no time to react.

Lucifer Malfoy, the present head of the Malfoys and a very shrewd and able man, called for an extraordinary session of the Common Assembly, asked for a vote of no-confidence, and ousted Moody and her government from office by a landslide victory. In the very same session, him and his cronies hammered through the British Wizards' Non-Interference and Neutrality Act, which made it an offence punishable by a life sentence in the wizard prison Azkaban to interfere in the muggle war on any party's behalf. In addition, Malfoy argued that the seriousness of the situation required a firm hand and that he needed extra powers to enforce the new laws. Most importantly, he was granted the right to appoint people to the Auror Department, Magical Law Enforcement and the Wizard Court without having to consult the Common Assembly first. In less than a month, he had thrown back our democratic history by almost 100 years. He appointed only pure-blooded wizards to important posts, most notably Octavian Snake who was to head the Aurors and Philip Lestrange as Commissioner of Magical Law Enforcement. Lestrange in his turn immediately made sinister Robert McNair and William Rozier his deputies and so on. Then, they proceeded with their plan of getting rid of any officials, they suspected of muggle sympathies. Several Weasleys, Ian McGonagall -my friend Robert's father-, Edward Diggory and many others were forced into early retirement.

Soon after that, the new Aurors and members of the magical Law Enforcement Department began neglecting their traditional duties, which were to fight the dark arts, but started spying on fellow wizards and witches instead, usually under the false pretext that they had engaged in pro-muggle activities. To frighten the others, some perfectly innocent witches were put into Azkaban and released after some time. The tales these women told were so frightening that most wizards and witches will nowadays think twice before putting up any opposition to the Ministry. To the outside world, Malfoy advocated strict neutrality in the war and even succeeded in signing an agreement with the German wizards in October 1940 to do the same. This treaty gave him quite a boost in popularity, even among British wizards and witches generally opposed to the old nobility. 'He kept us out of it', was and is an often heard opinion nowadays, followed by others like 'and he even succeeded in making the other European wizards do the same. Let the muggles fight it out and we will see.'

'Personally, I believe, he did this for two reasons. First, him and his followers believed that Germany would win anyway, because that country had prepared this war for a long time, though I think Malfoy and the others do not really care who actually wins. It is rather that they believe they can manipulate a dictatorship in a future Europe by magic much more easily than a democracy. Second, and more importantly, their powers are not yet total. The Common Assembly still exists and they have as yet not succeeded in controlling Hogwarts. All Malfoy managed to accomplish was to extend Armando Dippet's tenure as headmaster for the duration of the war. Now Dippet was an honest and thoroughly democratic wizard in his time, but he has become quite senile and is afraid of Malfoy, who keeps pressuring him to adopt a pure-blood policy for the admission of new students. Three years ago, there was an incident at Hogwarts where some giant spider was supposedly released by a student and killed a little muggle-born first-year girl. This did not exactly improve Dippet's position and Malfoy acted as if he let him continue out of generosity and consideration. Of course a feeble, easily manipulated Dippet as headmaster of Hogwarts instead of some young, capable witch or wizard at the height of his or her powers was exactly what Malfoy had had in mind all along' he added ruefully.

'Things appeared to look swell for Malfoy and his followers, when all of a sudden the muggle democracies and the Soviet Union began pushing the Germans back. I don't think, he has slept peacefully very often since the allied invasion last year. He knows that most of the wizarding population will only keep quiet as long as the muggle war lasts, but they will not allow him to take away everything they have fought for in the last 100 years. It was only this past august that two courageous young members of the Common Assembly, Harold Potter and Robert McGonagall, pushed through an act that made it quite clear that the Neutrality Act will be revoked the very second the muggle war is over. They even succeeded in adding an amendment that states that any member of the present wizard government, holding office under the extraordinary powers granted to Malfoy, will routinely face an inquiry into his conduct after the war. This must have shaken them up quite badly and I think, it is more than a mere coincidence that the strange things you were referring to earlier on started happening shortly after this act was passed.

Now, there are some of us who have opposed Malfoy and his gang all along and we started our own secret investigations as soon as we suspected that the war events in France had something to do with magic. First, I contacted an old school friend of mine in Germany, a witch called Arabella von Pritzewitz. She made it quite clear to me that most of the German wizard community loathed the Nazis and what they did and considered themselves honour-bound by Malfoy's neutrality treaty. She hinted, however, that a renegade dark wizard named Grindelwald was secretly approaching others to take a more active stand on Germany's behalf. Most refused him, but Arabella suspected that he had succeeded in gaining some followers. She also said that Grindelwald was very, very powerful and did not hesitate to use torture or curses on those not convinced by his arguments.

There are actually few wizards in Germany who can hope to withstand him. The reason for this is that Germany's wizard community is quite small, which is a result of the fact that German witch hunters in the 17th century, unlike anywhere else, managed to draw some narrow-minded and order-loving wizards on their side to assist them and betray their own kind. As a result, many of the more liberal and progressive German wizards and witches were actually burned at the stake in that country, because the traitors prevented their saving themselves by magic. Not that it helped them much', sighed Dumbledore, 'after the former were dealt with, the muggle witch hunters (who had learnt quite a bit of magic from them) turned on the traitors, which I think is quite typical of the Germans, but where was I?.

Yes, Arabella also mentioned a friend of hers by the name of Hartmut von Pasewalk who had been acting not quite himself lately – was always in favour of staying out of the war and suddenly he went around, telling everybody who would listen that Germany was German wizards' Fatherland after all and that wizards could not ignore the fact that it was being overrun by enemies. When I suggested that old Hartmut might be acting under the Imperius curse, however, Arabella became furious. 'Are you suggesting, Albus', she said in an icy voice, 'that a German wizard, even a dark, renegade one, will use an unforgivable curse, which has been outlawed for more than 50 years, on a fellow wizard? I do not know about your cold unpleasant island, but over here, we do obey laws because that is what they are made for!.' After this, she dried up and would say no more and we parted not the best of friends. I head learnt enough, however, and soon found out more.

Grindelwald has maybe one or two true followers, but he controls at least twenty by way of the Imperius Curse. He was indeed the mastermind behind the things happening in France and Belgium and at the moment he is sitting at castle in the Black Forest, plotting new strategies to thwart the allied war effort, which might be even more dangerous than those he used last year. Still, things could be worse because we are not up against a powerful organization of German wizards that has decided to scrap the treaty with Britain, but only a score of people. Furthermore, wizards have grossly underestimated the muggles' technical capabilities. There is only so much damage, a few wizards and witches can do to a modern, heavily mechanized army as they found out to their lasting chagrin at the Bulge. There are just too many muggles opposing them now, nothing compared to battles in medieval days, when one well-placed wizard could decide the day by bewitching the opposing leader. My guess is that this has been the reason for their new tactics, which are aimed at sowing discord - by the clever use of Polyjuice potion, for instance-, rather than actual destruction! Just think of the incident involving Marshal Montgomery or the American soldiers in Belgium. But Grindelwald and his followers remain very, very dangerous and if they are clever, they might still cause a different and not very pleasant outcome of the war. Therefore, he must be stopped at all costs and the sooner the better.

With my owls to your War Office, I have tried to enlist muggle support for putting him out of action, but you know the result. That's why I have brought you here, Peter! I have found out that this castle in the Black Forrest is not only guarded by Grindelwald's followers, but also by a whole regiment of crack German troops and we wizards have no experience in dealing with them. You, on the other hand, have been conducting clandestine operations as an SAS officer first in Africa and later in Italy since 1942, if my information is correct.'

'That is true', replied Peter in protest, 'but there is no chance in the world that the two of us will get past several hundred well-trained men who are armed to the teeth!' 'We will be more than two', said Dumbledore, 'but I suggest you first look at this map I have managed to obtain'.

What he saw on the map did not lift Peter's spirits. 'Impossible', he muttered, 'look, there are three guard perimeters around the castle, starting here in the village of Schiltach, controlling every access road to the castle. We may manage to penetrate one or two, if we are lucky, that is, but three is out of the question, these German soldiers know their business too well!'. Smiling, Dumbledore touched the map with his wand. 'You keep forgetting that we are not ordinary people, but grown-up wizards', he said.

Peter did not believe his eyes. All over the map, moving little red dots suddenly appeared. There were at least 700 of them! Next to each dot, there was a little sign in miniscule writing. Most said "Private or Soldier on guard duty" but some read "Colonel Klauss, in staff conference", "Hauptmann Schmidt, asleep after last night's party" or "Leutnant Meyer, on the loo". 'It takes some elaborate magic to modify a map like that', grinned Dumbledore, 'but I hope you agree with me that it will make your task considerably easier.' Peter nodded weakly. 'What are these blue dots without any signs?', he asked Dumbledore. 'They give the positions of Grindelwald's wizards guarding the castle' answered Dumbledore, 'but they are a lot less reliable than the muggle dots, I'm afraid, since alert wizards can prevent themselves from being spotted on a map like that. Look there at the castle itself! Grindelwald and some of his followers should be inside, but there are no blue dots anywhere near it, just this fog-like haze on the map. Still, you need not concern yourself with the wizards, let me and my friends worry about them. What I need from you is a plan on how to enter the castle!'

'We have to put as many soldiers out of action as possible, if we are to have any chance of success', Peter mused. 'and we cannot have bodies strewn all over the place either', he added. Looking at the map once more, he saw something that gave him an idea. 'I've got it', he exclaimed. 'See that regimental kitchen in the village of Gutach there, Albus, yes, right here where it says "Field cooks, preparing lunch"? If we can add something to the food that will put them to sleep for a day or two, we stand a chance. Look here, they have a lorry delivering meals from headquarters to the various posts! If we can intercept that and add something to the ingredients..., I think this might actually work!' he said excitedly. 'Very good!', replied Dumbledore, 'I knew you would come up with something, I had first thought about using invisibility cloaks, but we have only the one belonging to Harold Potter at our disposal, all others have been confiscated by the ministry and anyone inquiring about them would draw suspicion. Still, we will take that one, I'm sure it will come in useful. But now, it is time for you to meet my friends and then we go to work' said Dumbledore. He turned his head to the fireplace and Peter, following his gaze, was again dumbfounded as the flames first roared up and then suddenly turned green.