The Falling-Out of the Hogwarts Four

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 126025


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "manawydan" <manawydan at n...> wrote:
>   Steve wrote:
> >Given that Hogwarts was founded during a time of great oppression and
> >persecution of wizards, the apprentice method had probably not only
> >become impractical but dangerous. In addition, I'm sure the Founders
> >saw that under the old method, they simply could not train all the
> >available magical children. So, the idea of a central common school
> >for all magical children was born.
> > (Much snippage)


>Ffred:
> 

> 
> Consider how the material culture of the WW and the Muggle world in
> the 10th century might have differed and the implications for this 
> for the newly founded Hogwarts.
> 
> On one side of the new intake there are the wizard born kids. They 
> speak wizard-Latin as a lingua franca. They (perhaps) know each 
> other already. Their parents, being wizarding folk, have been able 
> to provide them with the robes, books, etc they needs. They are 
> literate and numerate. They understand what's going on.
> 
> On the other side are the Muggle borns. They are mostly peasants. 
> Potentially, they are just as magical as the wizard borns.
> ...edited...
> 


bboyminn:

Oooww... not quite. There is no reason to assume that all magic born
children are wealthy aristocrats while all muggle born are peasants. I
see no reason why each group couldn't represent a full cross section
of the economic spectrum of the times.

Muggle-borns could be the children of peasant, farmers, craftsmen,
scribes, landlords, businessmen, landed gentry, or aristocrats. I will
agree that the children of wizards are more likely to be educated and
have better incomes, but I hardly think that is universal. In
addition, knowing certain Latin based incantations is a far cry from
speaking Latin. Although, I admit that any educated person would be
likely to speak Latin, but that could be magic or muggle.

You do have a very good point about education though, in this time,
any books that did exist were painstakingly handwritten. The printing
press wasn't invent until the 1400's. So, anyone with the ability to
read, write, and do basic arithmetic would be highly educated. The
only way for a muggle to achieve this would be for them to join a
religious order at a very young age, or be the children of wealth
and/or nobility. 

This extreme lack of available education, and the limited availability
of educational material, combined with the prominence of Christian
religion in education would not make it easy for magical people to get
an education. Although, I do agree that many did.

Also, effective transportation was not very prominent in this day and
age. Travel was limited to available time, and how far a man could go
on a horse, on the assumption that a man even had a horse. This also
limited people's ability to communicate and by extension educate
themselves. 

Before you make the Apparation/Floo_Powered argument, we really don't
know how recent those inventions are. To Apparate, as I implied, you
would either have to discover on you own, or have someone show you,
but access to that /someone/ would have been limited. Let us also
remember that even today, Apparation is considered dangerous for
anyone who is not well trained. 

The Floo Network is just that, a sophisicated network of
interconneting chimney flues that seems to require a substantial
support network. That makes me think it is relatively new. 

Even broom travel was in it's more primitive and infant stages around
1,000A.D. Only two hundred years later in roughly 1200A.D. had
broomsticks become full developed.

Because of all this, the magical education of wizards would be very
limited. It would be limited to what they could figure out on their
own and what they could get from other people. But getting information
from other people hinged on having contact with them, and that contact
would not be an easy thing to come by.

That's why I say that everything was done by Master/Apprentice
relationships. The classic wizard's tale, starts with a Master Wizard
traveling around and coming across various enchanted children, and
enticing the parents, usually with money and promises, to allow the
child to come away with the wizard. In a sense, parents selling their
children, although usually motivated by wanting their children to have
a better life. Under this system, I suspect that one Master Wizard
would be unlikely to have more than 5 or possibly as many as 10 wizard
children of various ages (including young adults) under his control.
That doesn't open the door for may magical children to really get a
first class magical education. 

Which is exactly why I think the four finest Master Wizards of the Age
got together and created a central school where all magical children
could be educated. This centralized education was a natural
progression and is paralleled by centralized formal education in the
muggle world. 

But as I pointed out before, having everyone in one place creates a
degree of vulnerabity. It's much easier for individual Master Wizards
to quietly maintain their own castles with apprentices, than for one
large school with a capacity of 1,000 students to go unnoticed. And if
the school were betrayed and became noticed by muggles, that could
lead to a disaster that would come close to wiping out magic in that
part of Europe, which is, of course, exactly what the /Witch Hunters/
wanted to do. Hence, Salazar Slytherin's very reasonable and justified
distrust of muggle-borns.


> 
> As Steve says, it's quite possible that others over the centuries
> have pinned their own political theories on Slytherin. I can 
> criticise him for elitism, but, faced with the situation he was 
> faced with, how many of us today would end up with Helga and how 
> many with Salazar?
> 
> I wonder
> 
> Cheers
> Ffred


bboyminn:

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Salazar was a peachy guy. I'm sure
he had his flaws, but there are repeated references to him being well
liked and close friends with the other founders. If he was a total
jerk, I really can't see that friendship happening. Especially, his
extremely close friendship with Gryffindor, unless we are to regard
Gryffindor as something of a dolt, in which case, Salazar would
probably not be his friend.

There are a couple of troubling points regarding Salazar. First, the
Chamber of Secrets; it does seem to be something of a shrine to
himself. All the snake images everywhere, and the giant statue of
himself in the most prominent location. Also, the Chamber seems very
large. What could he have possibly have created it for? 

Well, one could speculate he intended to hold his pureblood-nazi
rallies there. But given his distrust of muggle-born and the very real
danger of muggles, one could speculate instead that it was a secret
chamber the children could hide in if the castle was ever attacked. 

Which brings us to the Basilisk. Just as I cautioned against believing
what people are now say about Salazar, I again caution against
accepting /legend-base/ opinions of what the Basilisk was for. All we
have heard comes for /other/ people, and all the /legend/ says is that
the Basilisk it to rid the castle of 'those unworthy to study magic'.
The /legend/ doesn't specifically mention muggle-born, that is assumed
by people who are buying into Salazar's alleged Pureblood=Nazi beliefs. 

But old legends are not too reliable. I could just as easly speculate
that the Basilisk was on hand to protect the school should there ever
be a mass attack by muggles. It's possible that Salazar left the
Basilisk behind to save the castle/school when the Muggle attack
finally came, just as he had predicted. When that happened and his
Basilisk saved everyone, he would be a hero, and would gain control of
how the school was run.

The path of /legend/ logic is that muggles would attack which would
imply they had been betrayed by a muggle-born, the Basilisk would save
the castle, kill all the attacking muggles, thereby proving that
Slytherin was right, muggle-born's couldn't be trusted and were
therefore /unworthy/ to study magic. That would be a sequence of
events that would 'rid the castle of those unworthy to study magic'. 

Even if the Basilisk was there for some later generation when the Heir
of Slytherin returned to Hogwarts, we still can't rely oto much on
that legend. Basilisks are indiscriminate killing /machines/. In
legend, not only do they have deadly eyes and poisonous fans, but
their breath is also considered deadly (although, that part isn't
mentioned in JKR's version) and it is frequently attributed to massive
crop failures. 

The only way a Basilisk, with so many ways to kill, could be
restrained is if a Parselmouth was controlling it. I believe that is
exactly what was happening in CoS, Tom was telling the Basilisk to do
very specific things. Left on it's own, the Basilisk, like most
animals, would only kill in defense, for food, or by accident. It's
not an animal that specifically seeks out muggles on it's own. Snake
aren't that ambitious, they are opportunistic killers; they kill
whatever happens to wander by.

So, while I'm sure Salazar was no saint, we should be very careful
about taking 100% to heart what other people, with their own obvious
agenda, are saying he said, or what some 1,000 year old legend impies.

As I read the book, I see sufficient indications, to make me believe
that modern wizards have taken some small aspect of Salazar and blown
it way up to suit their own ends.

Just a thought.

Steve/bboyminn