Wizarding Schools - Blog Posts

Wizarding Blood-Purity is a Sham

I think that a lot of people forget that Salazar Slytherin wasn't racist.

And no, before you go all crazy on me just remember in the second book, when fear and anger and all kinds of emotions were running wild and everyone distrusted Slytherin House, students asked a teacher about what happened. And that teacher, a ghost who for all we know could have been there when it actually happened, gave an honest answer.

"Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy."

Look at the language. Look at it, and understand that Salazar didn't see Muggle-borns as inferior, as worse. He saw them as untrustworthy.

Why, you ask? Well Professor Binns answers that as well!

"[The founders] built this castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizard suffered much persecution."

Salazar didn't like Muggles because they were hunting his family, his people, and persecuting them with horrific violence. He didn't trust Muggle-borns because how could he know that they wouldn't betray the magical world and tell their families that the kid two villages over practices magic with him on Tuesdays?

And yes, witches and wizards had ways to make it look like they burned at the stake when they actually survived, such as the Flame-Freezing Charm. But young children, with little control over their magic? If they were caught or exposed, well, it probably wouldn't end well for them.

Plus, wizardkind is outnumbered by Muggles, by a huge amount. If a village of Muggles who hated and feared magic discovered that a family of wizards and witches was among them, the parents would be burdened with trying to flee from a few hundred people while protecting their kids (who can't control their magic).

Salazar Slytherin didn't like Muggles or Muggle-borns. He hated them and feared them, not because they were inferior, but because they were dangerous. And while murdering children with a giant snake is not a good way to solve this danger to his family, people, and culture, it HAS to be seen that his actions were born not from arrogance, but from fear.

And there were Slytherins who knew this, long before Muggles had become so othered from wizarding society that some families started to believe that Muggles were inferior to those with "pure blood." Like Merlin, Prince of Enchanters, arguably the greatest wizard of all time, who founded the Order of Merlin to protect and aid Muggles, whose name has become synonymous with Muggle rights activisim. Merlin, a Slytherin.

If Salazar Slytherin was alive in the 20th century, he would laugh at the idea that Muggles were inferior. He would be the first to point out that Lily Evans and Hermione Granger, the brightest witches of their age, were Muggle-born. He would scorn the idea that pure-bloods were better, saying if that's true, why is Draco Malfoy, a pure-blood, second to a Muggle-born?

Salazar had questionable morals, to be sure (anyone who doesn't think so can re-read the Chamber of Secrets, where he hid a giant snake in a school full of children to murder the ones he deemed dangerous). But he never, never once thought that Muggles were inferior to wizards.

Witching Hour: Chapter 1: The Move

Manhattan, New York

In a quiet apartment in Upper West Side Manhattan a middle aged wizard was quickly packing their ransacked apartment. The door opened revealing a young witch, to her father stuffing all of their belongings into a trunk.

“Appa, what are you doing?”

Cassiopeia “Cassie” Ryo, was looking at her father, Ryo Jeong-Ho, frantically moving around their soon to be bare apartment, not even the wallpaper remained.

“Oh, Cassie you're here, good, go pack your room we are leaving in,” Mr. Ryo checked his watch, “……thirty-five minutes, make sure Happy is in her cage, and all your books too. I don't want to go shopping at the last minute because you left your books lying around.”

Cassie looked at her dad, she didn’t know what was happening but packing seemed like the only answer. Pulling out her wand, she cast the spell and all her belongings started to miniaturize and fly into her trunk. Putting her wand away, she grabbed Happy, her traveling bag and her kibble, grabbed her wand and cast another spell to clean the litter box, gathering Happy’s toys, bed, scratcher and bowls. She grabbed the duffel bag labeled Kneazle and set it on the floor. Everything but the Kneazle’s items where in the magical trunk, Cassie placed all the items on the floor and casted the spell, making sure that Happy’s traveling bag had Happy inside, the duffle bag along with her trunk had become tiny charms, grabbing her backpack and Happy, Cassie made her way to the front door of the now bare apartment.

“Appa, why are we moving?” Asked Cassie, her father was gathering the last of their belongings, stowing them in his work bag.

Mr. Ryo looked at Cassie grimly, “They’ve come back.”

Cassie’s eyes widened, they were the Scourer families, No-Maj families descended from wizard mercenaries at the beginning of the Exploration. New England and the North East US were crawling with their descendants. It was after World War II that they had gone underground, forming a network of witch hunting groups. Cassie knew who they were, what they did and who they hurt; a housemate of hers from Ilvermorney had recently experienced an attack while riding the sub sub subway when vacationing with her family here in the city.

“Are we ready to go Cassie?” Mr. Ryo said as he adjusted his bag, grabbing his wand he held out his hand for Cassie to take.

She looked around the place that had been her home since her mother passed away, she was going to miss this place, all the memories and adventures her and her friends had gotten into like dumping magical water balloons at the boys downstairs or her and her dad trying to follow a dumpling recipe from her halmeoni in seventh grade or when she was trying a new wand core to growing creations and it ended up flooding the entire apartment because she used the unconventional shrake scale that she had ordered from a dark wizweb site or buying five boxes of pizza by accident when her dad wasn’t home and their non-English speaking Polish wizard neighbor was babysitting her, she remembered when her dad came home to find 3 boxes of half eaten pizza lying on the floor next to his daughter and their neighbor. Those moments of mischief, laughter and happiness were all in these walls, to see such precious memories in now a blank home, ‘Wrong, this all feels wrong’. Cassie looked at her father’s hand and nodded, it was time.

“It’s time to go, the MACUSA’s relocation department has found a location about an hour away from the city, and said it would be easier since I was an Auror and all.” Mr. Ryo took in his daughter’s worried facade and said, “Don’t worry, the town has a limited but good magical community, some of your mom’s old friends live there, as well as the Spellmans.”

At the mention of her best friend’s family, Cassie no longer looked down. If Sabrina lived close to this small town then it wouldn’t be as bad as she first assumed, maybe they could go hunting for wand cores or look at antique wizarding artifacts with her like they did when on holiday from school. The thought consoled her as she and her dad sidelong-apparated.

Woolworth Building, Broadway, Manhattan, NY

This is it, their journey started here. Cassie looked at the bustling street of Broadway, taking her dad’s hand as they walked towards the entrance. Pulling out his wand, Mr. Ryo showed it to the owl at the side entrance, pulling the door open, the Ryos walked in through the door, the guard smiled at seeing Mr. Ryo.

“Safe travel Mr. Ryo, you too Miss.” Cassie smiled at the door man, “Thanks Nieves, I’ll miss you.”

Through the door was a grand staircase leading to an open magical lobby, in front was a four sided Magical Exposure Threat Level Measurer suspended by two elevators, below the clock was a the grand staircase and the lower levels of the building, at the front center of the lobby hanged a magical portrait of the president Samuel G. Quahog, the windows allowed the lobby to look otherworldly, the upper levels went all the way to a cloudy sky like ceiling, the memorial for the Salem Witch Trials was as beautiful and solemn as it was expected. This was the MACUSA, the magical government of the United States of America.

They walked up the stairs while her dad waved at some of his co-workers, they turned left towards the elevators, pushing the elevator button and making light conversation while the elevator arrived.

“So, where are we moving?” Cassie asked, all this time she was wondering where exactly they were going.

All she knew was that it was close and it was never the Spellmans, which did not give any clues. Last she had heard from Sabrina was that they had settled in a small town ending with “dale” after her aunt found a safe house for them to live while they looked for something closer to school, that was seven months ago when they were starting the second semester.

Mr. Ryo opened his mouth to answer, when a sudden ding was heard. The elevator door opened, muttering that they would talk about it later. Boarding the elevator, Mr. Ryo pressed the fifth floor button, where the department of Aurors was located. The doors of the elevator opened to the front desk, the receptionist answering the phone looked up and smiled. She pointed and mouthed something she couldn’t read, though apparently her dad could since he turned left and started walking towards a hall of doors she followed closely behind him, watching him look at some doors saying hi to the people coming out and asking questions about some criminals she had read in the newspaper some days ago. As they walked Cassie started to notice that the space between the doors was getting bigger and bigger, they finally stopped three doors before the end of the hallway.

Mr.Ryo pushed the door open and walked, Cassie followed her dad inside and noticed it was a meeting room and that someone was presenting what appeared to be a case. The person stopped talking and looked at the father-daughter duo. They looked at one of the people sitting at the table, a colored woman of tall stature signaled the presenter to stop.

“That would be all Mr. Morris, we will let you know our decision on the execution or pardoning of Mr.Marburg. Please close the door on your way out.” The cold authorities' voice coming from this seemingly warm yet poised woman surprised Cassie, she wasn’t expecting it.

Said Mr. Morris was sweating, he was expecting an answer not to be dismissed and told to go back. Cassie thought it was funny that his anxiety was over his face, wanting to whine out a protest but being left in the dust. He opened his mouth but decided that what’s done is done, he then walked to the projector, tapped it three times and a little ball of blue light came out and was absorbed into his wand. He put away his wand and muttered a quick goodbye and thank you. He looked up and smiled at her dad. He said a quick hello, murmuring a quick good luck to her dad, pulling the door open to walk out of the room.

Mr. Ryo looked back at the door but immediately looked back at the table of people. He told Cassie to sit down at one end while he sat at one of the empty chairs across from the cold yet tall colored woman. He pulled out a case file and presented it to the table. Of the men at the table grabbed the file and passed it to one of the people at the side of the room. The person walked to the projector and cast a spell, a little blue light came out the folder and into the projector. Walking back, he handed the man the folder and sat back down on the chair at the side of the room.

“We have found the culprit of the attack however because they’re of no-Maj origin we can’t do anything but work or alert the no-Maj authorities.” Said the man, he looked apologetic but it wasn’t enough for cassie to feel like it was sincere.

Mr. Ryo ignored the man and directed his attention to the colored woman. He spoke with great authority, “ Is anything being done to the new location we will be moving to? We will need a wizarding house that passes as a no-Maj house.” He was worried that because Cassie wouldn’t be attending regular school that they wouldn’t be able to blend in, since that was the purpose of the move.

“As we informed you this morning we have decide to relocate you to a town one hour and half away from the city called Riverdale, we would have done Greendale but we feared because it was a larger wizarding community and background it wouldn’t be as safe thanks to the recent scourer attacks,” said the colored woman as she looked at Mr. Ryo, he just nodded agreeing that it would be safer.

“It would definitely be better for us to be closer to the city and school is starting in three days for Cassie so it would be preferable that we start our move today,” said Mr. Ryo, Cassie was touched that her dad was thinking about her this entire time and not him.

She looked at all the people around the table and noticed that her dad seemed to fit right in with the people, looking very authoritative and powerful, she was intrigued. She knew her dad had a high ranking job in the department of aurors; she just didn’t realize it would give him this type of vibe.

Daydreaming about their new house and where she would accommodate her alchemy lab of woods and wand cores, she didn’t notice that the meeting was adjourned and the people were dispersing. Her father approached her and tapped her on her shoulder, she looked up, her dad was motioning her that it was time to go. At that moment it truly became real that this was not a dream and that in a couple of minutes they would be traveling to their new house.

‘Deep breaths, Cassie, deep breaths, you will only be there for three days, thanksgiving, winter break, spring break and finally the first week of summer so I’ll be ok, yeah I’ll definitely be ok’ standing up from her seat Cassie made her way to the door. Taking her dad’s hand they walked towards the elevator, saying goodbye to the people from the meeting she pushed the lobby floor button. The sound of the elevator going down and the elevator music filled her ears, hearing the elevator ding, she and her dad stepped out, turned left and walked towards the grand staircase. Still holding her dad’s arm, Cassie and her dad walked down the staircase to the door, when they were outside she noticed her dad pulling out his wand, ‘are we going to apparate? I thought we were going by one of theMACUSA’s flying cars’.

She looked at her dad weirdly. Mr. Ryo, noticing her confused expression said, “we are going by flying car, we just have to get to the parking lot, don’t worry everything will be alright.”

She looked up ahead to the dark alley their dad was directing them to, holding tightly to her dad’s arm they apparated to the MACUSA flying car parking lot. Holding her dad’s arm, they looked for a gray 2016 Kia. They passed rows and rows of cars, getting tired of looking and walking. She told her dad she would wait for him here while he looked for the car, he agreed and muttered that he would be back soon.

Cassie stood there for about fifteen minutes looking through her tumblr feed and adding more pictures to her Pinterest boards. She heard the sound of wheels and when she looked up she saw the gray Kia coming her way, it stopped in front of her. Grabbing her stuff she walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk, loading her bags. She took Happy’s traveling bag and closed the trunk, walked to the passenger door, opened the door and sat in the passenger seat, closing the door she looked at her dad and nodded. Mr. Ryo cast a spell that activated the enchantments on the Kia. Moving the gear stick and pushing the accelerator, they moved towards the ramp and went up. Arriving at the takeoff space, Mr. Ryo reversed and stopped at the other end of the platform, moving the gear stick to six he pushed the accelerator and the car suddenly sped up. Cassie held on to her door handle while trying to plug in her phone for music, feeling the car finally stabilize she adjusted herself and saw that there was a lot of car traffic in the sky.

“Apa, there’s a lot of traffic, are we gonna get there in time?” Said Cassie, she was worried that they would have to fly at night, like she knew that the Air Marshals would try and keep the flow going but air traffic collisions were scary and risked exposure to no-Majs. She looked down at the bustling streets of Manhattan, man she really was gonna miss the city and all its glorious delicious food. She looked back at her dad, “Green” she said. She felt the car moving as the traffic started to lessen. Plugging her phone to the stereo system, she chose the song and closed her eyes, imagining what the town they would be living in would look like.

Hopefully it wouldn’t be too basic.