Dark Umbridge / Was Salazar a Bigot?

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 180036

"Goddlefrood" <gav_fiji at ...> wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180032>:
>
> This would make a certain amount of sense if they were not 
> so many enchantments on Hogwarts. We are supposed to believe 
> that a Muggle looking directly at the school would only see a 
> mouldering old ruin. 

The Founders were able to magic up a stupendously huge castle with
features like the Room of Requirement and the Chamber of Secrets, but
maybe a little light in the protection spells. No matter how good of
protection spells it started with, many more must have been added over
the centuries. Each headmaster would have added some just to prove he
could. Maybe the disguise as a ruin spell was added later; maybe it
hadn't been invented yet a thousand years ago, which as you mentioned
was well before the Statute of Secrecy, at a time when wizards might
have been more in the habit of trying to scare Muggles away than of
hiding. Maybe in those days they had a stable of Dragons to fly over
the neighborhood instead of a disguise.

> When the sight of a mouldering old ruin 
> ever put off a human from having a good look at same is a 
> question that will have to continue to plague us.
 
As Steve bboyminn keeps saying, there must be an "This is SO boring"
spell (affecting only Muggles) on it as well as the visual disguise.
Canon stated that the stadium for the Quidditch World Cup had a spell
on it that would cause any Muggle who came near to suddenly remember
that he had an important appointment somewhere else (implied: and rush
off to it).

On another tentacle, long ago a listie named Nick (this is not a
limerick) reported on a visit to the ruined castle near Tutshill, that
standing in the roofless former Great Hall and looking up at the sky
looked exactly like Rowling's descriptions of Hogwarts Great Hall's
ceiling enchanted to look like the sky, and some other part of the
ruin that resembled the Potions Dungeon... Herself may have intended
that a Muggle could climb around the 'old ruin' without ever
encountering or intruding on all the activities going on within.

> Oh, and btw, witch persecution in the British Isles was 
> not particularly fervent until quite a little later than 
> the founding of Hogwarts. It wasn't until well after the 
> Norman invasion that magical suspects started to be hounded. 
> Probably around the 14th century or so. Do provide evidence 
> should this be incorrect.

This has been mentioned on list before, usually with the theory that
Rowling had known very very little about witch hunts and therefore
simply assumed that they must have occurred in 'the Dark Ages' just
because of the name. (I assume everyone knows about 1066, but I also
assume that she wasn't thinking about whether Saxons or Normans should
be blamed.) IIRC in the 12th century it was heresy to believe that
witches exist and in the 13th century it was heresy to doubt that
witches exist.

My best efforts to reconcile history with canon on this matter is that
the 'much persecution' to which Binns referred was not the Burning
Times, but simply the usual on-going stuff ... for example, pagan
Vikings (when the Christian Era date was in three digits) feared
(strike that, any Viking would be insulted and kill me in revenge for
the insult if he heard me say 'fear') were cautious of spells cast by
troll women and human women, including but not limited to making a
shirt that caused the wearer to die that day, and would kill a 'witch'
by beating her to death, after throwing a bag over her head so she
couldn't put a dying curse on her attacker.

It appears that in canon, Merlin and Morgana were historical figures
(they're on Famous Wizards cards). To me, this suggests that King
Arthur was also a historical figure and the tales about his knights
loosely reflect historical events. Some of the tales are about knights
killing evil enchanters to rescue all their kidnapped Muggles. When
Sirius pointed at his family tree tapestry, he identified one relative
as lobbying to decriminalize Muggle-hunting (which I imagine was
outlawed to protect Secrecy, not because the Warlock Council had any
human rights objections to murder). Muggle-hunting sounds like
something those Arthurian evil enchanters would have done. And like a
good reason for Muggles to fear wizards and try to protect themselves
against wizards.

My view of wizarding history is, alas, not so flattering to the
wizards. I figure that, once they figured out that their ability was
inherited from parent to child (they would have thought any
Muggle-born was proof of its mother's adultery with a wizard) but
their skill could be taught from elder to younger, they also figured
out that they could stick together, exchange knowledge with wizards
from other tribes/villages, and use their ability/skill to rule the
rest of their tribe/village. This would have led to speedier advances
in magical knowledge.

This magic technological revolution may have been the cause of the
Neolithic technological revolution -- I'm not sure when the Magic
Revolution happened. But Muggles benefited from healing spells, new
products, increased production, and 'our wizard is stronger than your
wizard' at the same time that they feared their wizards and kept
working on means of self-defense. By the time writing was invented in
Mesopotamia, the wizards were the priests and were in a complicated
relationship with Muggle kings, who had discovered that wizards can be
beheaded like anyone else. The first school of wizardry was built in
Sumer. The second was built in Egypt

Some periods of history can be viewed as a struggle for power between
the king and the local nobility. Often periods in which the king
didn't have a big enough army nor enough traditional charisma to make
nobles obey him involved nobles fighting each other, trying to conquer
each other's territory. Wizards were also part of the struggle for
power -- some even wanted to be king, more were prime ministers and
chief advisors to a king, some wanted to be nobles with no king above
them, some were chief advisors to some noble. They had no more
compunction than the alpha Muggles did about enslaving people, taking
a pretty girl or boy into the harem by force, seizing a person's
property as 'tax', torturing captured enemy prisoners or suspected
traitors or a servant who spilled soup, etc. They were Dark enough
that Muggles of the entire alphabet would unite against them.

Let me point out that magical power doesn't depend on physical
strength or size, and shows no sign of being weakened by pregnancy. So
none of the traditional reasons why rulers are male applies to
wizards. The evil enchanters can be evil enchantresses every bit as
easily.