The next day came to Jacob differently than any had before. Jacob wasn't the same since the incident. He couldn't help but repeatedly remember the attack of the giant clearly. It was something he had never experienced before. Jacob's life had hung in the balance, a balance that hung in the hands of a monster, a monster incapable of understanding its own actions or the implications of what it could do in its deformed state. It had been clear to Jacob that the Giant couldn't respond the Fontaine's speech and commands. Instead, it acted very decisively and clearly against the school, blindly seeking to cause destruction to it and the students within. Its heart was empty and all that once filled it had been removed by something, by an outside force…by someone. Clearly, his time spent in the wizarding world had already changed him. The scar left by that hull of a creature could not have been undone by any sort of magic.
Jacob set out for the Dining Hall to eat some breakfast before he would leave for the first class of the day, Defense Against the Dark Arts. He sat down at the Thunderbird table, filled with students from end to end. They were all still discussing the Giant, but also the state of MACUSA's response to the incident, that the incident was simply caused by a lack of vigilance on Ilvermorny School's part. The Thunderbird Table, hewn from rough logs that were connected and smoothed down for comfort, was covered in plates piled high with French Toast, Pancakes, Sausages, and more, all concocted by the chefs in the kitchens. He piled bits of bacon and lumps of scrambled eggs onto his plate. He began to dig in after opening his copy of The Magical Peoples of North America. He skimmed the table of contents, sliding his finger past Sasquatch, The Little People, and Adlets, until he saw Giants. He flipped the book to this section and began to read about the Giants native to North America. He read a brief subsection on the giant Paul Bunyan and his blue Re'em, Babe, but he felt as if he could hardly look at such an iconic American figure again without remembering that horrible lack of all thought and life in that creature's eyes. It was then that Antonio arrived and sat down next to him.
"What are you doing?" he asked, glancing at Jacob's book and saw the word GIANTS listed at the top of the page. At this, his brow furrowed, and his heart turned solemn. Because of this, he quickly closed the book on Jacob and took it from him as soon as it slammed shut.
"Hey - what the heck are you doing?!" Jacob demanded. He briefly reached towards the book, but Antonio stood up from the long benches and took a step back. Jacob continued to press him. "Antonio give it back, I was reading that" he told him, a firm edge slowly seeping into his face and voice. Antonio looked at him but answered:
"Now you won't be" he answered, staring Jacob directly back into his eyes, choosing not to back down. However, Jacob stood up too and looked back at him with a cold state. He fingered his wand in his pocket before he repeated himself. "Give it back Antonio". Antonio had spent enough time with Jacob at this point to recognize Jacob fingering his wand. It was an action that had once been a fidget to Jacob, but now to Antonio, it seemed to be a threat. Antonio answered with:
"I'm trying to make a point, Jacob". They continued to stare at each other. What Antonio said slowly washed over him, along with the implications of what that meant. Some of the students from the other houses began to look at the two of them. Jacob slowly turned and at looked these other students and saw reflected on their faces what he was doing, threatening a fellow student, his friend. He let his wand go in his pocket and awkwardly sat back down, guiltily reassessing his thoughts. Antonio sat down next to him and gradually handed the book back to him. Jacob thanked him in a low mutter, laden with grief.
"Antonio, I'm very sorry" he told him. "I don't know what came over me". Antonio began to pile food onto his own plate and sighed, running his hand through his dark black hair. "I understand, Jacob…" Antonio answered. "But ever since you went through that awful experience, I realized that I needed to be there for you, for all the rest of us, to make sure we all the right choices, believe in the right ideas, and to keep ourselves together as one united family" Antonio continued. "No one else really has that innate responsibility to any single one of us while we're here. As a result, it is a responsibility that we all have to take upon ourselves for each other", he finished.
Antonio took out his wand (Applewood, Wampus Cat Hair, and 13 inches with an unyielding flexibility) and fiddled with it in his hands, choosing not to meet Jacob's eyes. Jacob took this unforeseen advice inwards and began to think on it, but they shortly had to leave for Defense Against the Dark Arts. They trudged off into the Western Wing of the school, eventually meeting up with Felix, Jessica, and Alan on the way. They reached the classroom, a long room with a low flat ceiling that curved into the walls on either side. A large, ornate window sat in the wall behind Professor Fae's desk, letting the early morning sun that peaked over the Appalachian Mountains through dark velvet curtains. They all sat at their desks, two students to each one (Jacob chose to sit with Alan), and they took out their parchment and quills as Professor Fae began her lecture.
Professor Fae began with a discussion concerning a branch of Dark Magic practiced in the southern states on the Gulf coast, a magic known as "Voodoo". With a large amount of people practicing this magic, they generally practice in a "Grey Area", where the practice of it is hardly frowned upon by the magical governments of states like Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, but it was technically outlawed by the magical governments of most other states. Still, even though most witches and wizards in the south hardly utilize the darker side of Voodoo, it was determined by the Ilvermorny teachers that they needed to know how to combat it, should they be faced with a Dark Wizard well-versed in Voodoo. The discussion slowly turned to other types of Dark Magic that exist in the world, like the Dark Arts in Europe. A student in the back of the class raised their hand.
"Professor Fae, I was wondering, were the witches put to death during the time of Salem guilty of the crimes they were killed for?" he asked. The student's name was Derek Deckle, a squib turned wizard like Jacob was. The Salem Witch Trials were taught regularly to children of magical families, but in recent years the wizarding public's perception of the trials almost always placed the blame on the No-Majs responsible for it, not on the others hidden in their ranks, the ones who pulled the strings, the ones who were truly responsible. Professor Fae stopped in her tracks and studied him, wondering how to respond. It was a reaction akin to how a parent would respond to its child asking about something that was out of its depth. Her voice softened before responding.
"Well… no" she answered quietly. "Their supposed 'crimes' were only fabrications supported by fraudulent evidence. These fabrications were the work of what our historians call Scourers" the name hung over each student. "That name was given to them to represent the reason they came to the United States in the first place: to apprehend criminal wizards or witches, scouring the US from those criminals" she closed her book and stood in front of her desk. "It was after being separated from their home governments for such a long time that they began to grow corrupt in their hearts and lost sight of their goals" she told them. "They resorted to handing over innocent No-Majs to the Puritans if it meant that they could profit off it". She stopped. "However, while this is certainly a big part of our history, and the plague of Scourers was never truly cured, or how our lives changed because of them, but this topic is normally reserved for your History of Magic class by Professor Gridderick later this semester. Now, since we've covered Voodoo, we're going to be moving on to the Protego charm and a bit of practice" With that, they moved on and didn't bring up the topic again.
Jacob left the room with his friends into the hallway outside the classroom. As they turned the corner to go back to their free period, however, a stone brick in the wall at Jacob's feet jutted out slightly right as he walked by, causing him to trip and fall. He wasn't hurt, as his friends made sure of, but in the process, he dropped all his parchment onto the ground and Jessica stooped down to help him. As he did, the stone that tripped him slid back into place, but a small glint caught his eye in the crack between the bricks. As Jessica kept working to put his parchment back together, he quickly pried a small metallic object from the crack. He saw that it was a One-Dragot, an octagonal, silver coin that appeared to be hundreds of years old, since the date it was minted said 1708. He looked at it and put it into his pocket for later inspection. As Jessica stood up, she got swept up in a crowd of people leaving Charms. Jacob, slightly disgruntled by the fact that he had to leave for the Common Room by himself, waited until the crowd left and then made his way behind the crowd towards Thunderbird Tower.
He eventually reached the hallways towards the entrance to Thunderbird Tower, which was empty and alone, but as he started walking down the hall, he felt the Dragot in his pocket slowly warm up. Suddenly, halfway down the hall, a large stone wall jutted out from his left and slammed the hallway to a dead-end. Jacob fell back onto the floor, mouth agape, while two small wall braziers popped from the wall. Anyone who had come to the hallway at that point may not have even realized that the hallway had extended any further. Jacob, sat there in awe. The Dragot in his pocket was unnaturally hot now. He took it from his pocket and looked at it. On one side was the general logo for the National Dragot Treasury along with the minting date, while on the other side was instead the Ilvermorny Seal. A small subscript sat below the logo, reading "One Last Gift for my new Home". As Jacob read this, another portion of the wall slid away to reveal a stairway descending into darkness. Almost as if beckoned by some unknown force, Jacob slowly walked down the staircase and into the darkness.
Magical Creature Profile, The Snow Snake:
Originally native to Siberia, the Snow Snake migrated over to North America across the Bering Strait hundreds of years ago, resulting in two species of Snow Snake developing in the world simultaneously, one in Siberia and one native to Canada and the Northern United States. The North American Snow Snake is bright white in color and has a scale texture and appearance like snow. It sits in the snowbanks on the sides of hills during the winter waiting for its prey to come by. The only reason they can catch their prey is thanks to their appearance alone since they are notoriously bad actors. Snow Snakes prefer to go for smaller prey but have been known to bite witches and wizards on occasion, which results in a frost-bite at the area of the bite, a condition only known to be remedied by Tanglefoot Oil.
Answer to Reviews:
Guest (November 2nd):
When will you continue?
- Now :) but in all seriousness, I just sometimes struggle to have the time, but I have a lot of new ideas that I hope to implement in this story at some point in the future, so even though I may not be able write all the time, I have a lot in the works.
Guest (October 20th):
When will you continue?
- See above :)
Anonym (September 23rd):
Please continue writing!
- Thanks, I have plenty of plans to :)
Ika (September 16th):
Are you going to change the title to something more recognizable like "Return of the Second Salemers" or "Wizarding World: Exposed" or something?
- That was something on my mind for a while, because I knew that the future installments would need to have individual titles, so the general format will be "Ilvermorny and _", which I already know the next title, but I won't tease it until the end of this story ;)
SJKSs (September 15th):
When is the next chapter going to be released?
- See the first review :)
Guest (September 2nd):
How big do you personally think Ilvermorny is? I myself imagine it to be way larger than Hogwarts. One Ilvermorny house is presumably bigger than all of Hogwarts.
- Very good question! I honestly have thought about this in the story quite frequently, because I knew that in order to make Ilvermorny more believable and more realistic. In all honesty, I think that Ilvermorny may have something close to 750 students. Anything greater than that, in my opinion, would make Ilvermorny's size unbelievable, but as I have come to realize, there is most likely a school for each region of the US, such as the East and West Coast, Middle East, and South, since there are probably tens of thousands of magical students in the US to teach, so it isn't possible for them all to be taught at Ilvermorny. Jacob and his friends were determined to go there specifically because of their situation, and for MACUSA and other powerful wizards like Headmaster Fontaine to watch over them.
Guest (August 18th):
Will there be any Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts characters in this story?
Yes ;) in this one and future installments. Hopefully the character I'm thinking of won't take too long to appear in this story :) I won't include them in the story's settings or properties, however, because a big purpose for this story is to be new and completely original (while being based off of Ilvermorny and North American folklore.
Guest (August 4th):
Thanks for answering my previous question about Greenland and Iceland! Do you consider children from the Caribbean Isles and Central America to be taught at Ilvermorny like Canadians and Mexicans?
- Of course :) I really like answering these reviews. The thing about the Caribbean and Central America is that they're such a unique region in it of itself that I feel like there must be some sort of school for those islands and Central America. (Mageilan School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?) ;) feedback is appreciated XD
Hi (August 4th):
Never stop writing you talent!
- Thanks so much :D I won't :) believe me
-JT