HP:[" the Illithid Inquisition"]

Chapter 18: Ch:18



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This met much more applause as Hagrid was already quite well liked by many students. Harry, Ron and Hermione were especially glad to see their old friend beaming with pride. The massive man, for Hagrid was taller than any man Harry had ever even heard off and almost as broad as he was tall at that, stood up and bowed to the crowd while smiling gladly at everyone. He waved to Harry and his friends in particular.

"Finally I must warn you all," The Headmaster concluded. "The ministry of magic has stationed a squadron of dementors around the school as an added security measure for the time being. I advise you all to avoid contact with them, allow them to go about their work and not to do anything suspicious around them such as trying to sneak past them in an invisibility cloak. They would see through something like that easily and be most annoyed by it."

After that the feast formally ended and everyone retired back to their house dormitories. Harry and his friends made their way up one of Hogwarts' many towers to reach the Gryffindor dorms, hidden behind a picture of a great fat lady who refused to move her picture aside unless they told her the proper password. Percy Weasley acting as Head Boy, the leader of the student prefects who helped enforce the school rules and provide aid to students in need, had already told them the password for this first term and so they made their way inside without issue.

Term started well enough for Harry. Since he had studied ahead in his transfiguration and charms textbooks he was well prepared for the early lessons, found it easy to stay on top of his homework and performed almost all of the spells expected of him without difficulty. In fact he soon found himself rated second best in school in those subjects just behind Hermione who still out performed him when it came to managing the theory, history and trivia minutiae that surrounded most spells and made up no small part of their assignments. But now she occasionally came to Harry for help when it came to actually casting something that seemed particularly tricky.

Not everything became easier this year though. History of magic lectures still proved a struggle to remain awake through thanks to the exceedingly boring and plodding lecture style of the ghostly Professor Binns. The fact that the history of magic textbook was Esharry's second least favorite textbook didn't help. He thought the thing was using its boring style to gloss over uncomfortable facts if not outright lie about them. Harry just thought it was oversimplifying things in an overly complicated way.

Take the witch burnings of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The book said that very few witches and wizards were affected by them thanks to being able to use magic like the flame freezing charm to avoid injury and execution. But Harry had talked about these events with the surprisingly knowledgeable owner of his favorite ice cream parlor who had directed him to some dedicated writing on the subject. Turns out this was only true of burnings that happened as a result of witch trials, when the local nobles decided to rob the unpopular and distrusted people in their territory by getting them convicted of witchcraft, executed and their property confiscated. A wizard could easily avoid this kind of trouble with disillusionment spells, memory altering charms or indeed faking their own deaths at the burning itself.

But other witch burnings were harder to avoid even for powerful witches and wizards. Some were caused by cases of mass insanity that broke out after plagues, marauding armies or famines had made the people desperate to lash out against anything they might be able to blame for their troubles. If a wizard didn't read the wind as it were and got out of dodge real quick they could find themselves facing down a mob of a few hundred angry muggles. By the time they were done with a wizard and ready to throw them into a fire they wouldn't be able to speak let alone cast a flame freezing charm. Assuming they hadn't already been hung and stabbed with a scythe a few times by that point.

The worst witch burnings were those organized by either the Catholic or the Spanish Inquisitions. Those knew when they were after wizards and knew about other magic creatures that could help them fight against magic. Goblins, dwarves and high elves often believed in Catholicism at that time and had little reason to love wizard kind and so were more than willing to provide magical protection for the inquisition. And that was when the Catholic church wasn't willing to call upon their holy orders of werewolf knights to take on the wizards they were after.

The idea of separating the magical and mundane world gained a lot of traction after the second attempt to mind control the Pope not only failed but was found out by the muggles and damn near led to the end of magic in Europe.

But that was some pretty heavy stuff for fourteen year olds so Harry didn't mind the book glossing over it. Esharry took any attempt to hide information from him as a personal affront. Either way it made slogging through both book and class a real chore for the both of them.

Potions was another class that Harry still had trouble with. Not because the work was hard, although Harry found the detailed instructions of potion brewing much more complicated than any spell craft, but because the class itself was not taught very well. For starters how the book called for a potion to be brewed sometimes was not the same way Professor Snape wanted it brewed. So Harry reading ahead in the book often didn't help. The other problem was Snape himself. The man loomed more than taught. His presence was a constant source of stress and intimidation. The fact the man seemed to have it out for Harry didn't help matters.

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