Dark Hogwarts

Author's note: any reflections on politics, other countries and ideological orders are an invention of the author and have nothing to do with the real world. This chapter does not analyze political and religious systems, does not try to offend or belittle anyone, does not deny the good and does not justify the bad.

***

 Clouds of gloom are above us — grace has disappeared,

 It is high time for those who are responsible for us to understand.

 It is high time for those who are responsible for us to understand,

 — We are small children, you can't kill us!

***

The biggest advantage of the beginning of the summer holidays for me was the opportunity to get more detailed information. About the intertwining of the lives of the magical and Muggle worlds, about the laws by which these very worlds existed and interacted with each other, and about the events of the past that led everything to what was happening in the foreseeable present.

Our company had four cute Muggles at its disposal, who, although they were not completely honest with me, did not refuse my annoying questions about their lives, rights and restrictions.

As it turned out, they were just employed by Lockhart as housekeepers. There was no slavery, no forced service, which I imagined in the first days of my stay here. At least, from their words, and I understood that they certainly would not have told the children of wizards about such a thing, so as not to provoke the displeasure of their patron.

However, with the help of my irrepressible curiosity and assertiveness, I managed to learn a lot from young girls about the lives of ordinary people in the existing realities.

Muggles who lived in countries with wizards who seized power were going through hard times. Money flows were controlled by the magical world, globalization has seriously rolled back due to the polar confrontation between two completely different approaches to who should be at the helm of a country. Well, scientific and technological progress lagged behind both because of the current situation and because of the magical analogues of this or that innovation that appeared on the market.

It turned out that if the average Muggle was somehow connected with the magical part of the world, then he had all the necessary benefits of civilization thanks to this. By the way, these included all those who wore the same red armbands that my parents had in public.

If a person with magic was in no way connected and lived an ordinary life, then he invariably experienced a huge amount of repression and difficulties — whether it was Muggle segregation attributed in the law, or banal unemployment, given that no social support from the state existed here, and taxes, as in all times were predatory.

I was able to delve more deeply into the economic, political and historical differences between the world I know and the world of the present, thanks to the whole stacks of magazines and filed newspapers that Lockhart kept in one of the rooms for some reason. Mostly, however, they had, albeit indirectly, but still related to his fame, however, the description of other events, coupled with mentions here and there of the rules of the magical world, was found in the waste paper often enough to derive some benefit from reading them.

And most importantly, I had the opportunity to communicate with an adult wizard, which, with some manipulations with an emphasis on his popularity and activities, allowed me to casually touch on other topics, receiving, albeit biased and limited, but still answers to my questions.

Moreover, in the depths of the guardian's bookcases, I managed to find a most interesting edition of a book entitled: "The Fall of the Statute of Secrecy. Changes." From its very first pages, the reading managed to surprise me: the annotation said that it was co-authored by American and British magic writers, which was very rare in the realities of this world and, perhaps, such an edition could be undesirable for the current Ministry of Magic. Which, of course, didn't stop me.

I did not dare to ask Lockhart's permission regarding this book. After all, he himself allowed us to use his collection of works and treated it quite carelessly, so all I had to do was find a secluded place and immerse myself in the historical excursion of the world of alternative Potteriana.

It all started, as I learned thanks to Hermione's knowledge on the day I got there, with the disappearance of the Statute of Secrecy, which was clearly hinted at by the very title of the book. And it did not happen with a fleeting snap of the fingers of one white-bearded wizard, but was accompanied by a whole layer of events from the Second World War.

Great Britain was actively at war with the Third Reich at that time, and its magical part opposed the German Ministry of Magic headed by Grindelwald, and did it in parallel with the Muggle war. Dumbledore, according to what is written in the book, was in serious opposition with the Ministry, and even created his own coalition, which grew and strengthened over time, gaining supporters tired of the war from all over the country.

The book did not mention the fact that it was Grindelwald who unleashed the Second World War. On the contrary, it casually stated that he tried to prevent it in every possible way, but was bound by the International Confederation of Magicians and the restrictions of the Statute of Secrecy, which eventually led to the magical war. Grindelwald was not going to destroy the Statute itself, but openly wanted to win over all other Ministries of Magic of other countries with his opposition, and only then deal with the "Muggle issue". He couldn't do it, so events went according to a completely different scenario.

When the United States was already preparing to carry out its landing in Normandy, and things began to get worse on the Muggle fronts of Germany, the starting point began when everything changed. To be more precise, everything just exploded in all directions.

Muggle Prime Minister Winston Churchill was assassinated, Adolf Hitler was assassinated, and the two events happened on the same day.

At the same time, Dumbledore delivered his famous address to the wizards of magical Britain, which was published on the front page of the Daily Prophet. In it, he condemned all the decisions of the current Minister of Magic in an extremely negative way: he accused him of inaction regarding Muggle conflicts and even called it incitement, which ultimately led to a magical war.

A coup broke out, heads flew. A full-fledged confrontation never happened, since the Ministry at that time was rather loose and disunited, and also had a bad reputation due to war fatigue.

Power changed quite quickly, and magical Britain soon not only emerged from the confrontation with magical Germany, but also began to strengthen relations with it at a furious pace under the slogan of ending the Muggle war.

It is not surprising, because two old friends were at the head of the two ministries.

By their act, they caused enormous outrage from the International Confederation of Magicians. And while the ICM was convening an urgent conference of its representatives to discuss this issue, Dumbledore and Grindelwald made their new move. The kind that changed everything.

At the time when the wizards were discussing their next actions, the Muggle governments of the two most influential and opposing countries were captured by units of the Aurors. The media were taken under control, the main leaders and representatives of the parties were subordinated. In just a few days, the two wizards managed to spread their own influence in their countries from the magical world to the Muggle world.

Grindelwald would never take the risk alone to spit on the Statute of Secrecy. All the wizards of the world would have turned against him. However, with Dumbledore's support and the appropriate public pump, it happened.

It was then that the event took place, which is now remembered as an Action to Expose Deception. Hundreds of Muggle representatives of the two countries in one day gave numerous comments to both the international and domestic press, where they talked about the existence of the magical world. And next to each of them, at the moment of such unrealistic confessions for Muggles, there was a wizard who showed the most real magic to various journalists, which was captured by dozens of cameras. Invisibility, murderous curses, teleportation, mind control, mind reading — all these abilities of wizards became available to the general public in an instant, and the mass character and authority of the narrators did not allow doubts to arise among the inhabitants.

The next day, the news spread around the world like a raging fire.

"Magic exists! Wizards are real! The governments of all countries hid this from their citizens!" shouted the headlines of all reputable newspapers and publications around the world.

No censorship helped hide this from its citizens, as all civilized humanity learned about such a secret at once. The rulers simply lost the motivation to hide it from their people. On the contrary, it became profitable for them, because against the background of such an incredible discovery, it was possible to get new opportunities and react in time to the threat that appeared from within.

In the wake of such amazing Muggle news, all wars even subsided for a while, as the potential danger was revealed in the bowels of the states themselves.

Unlike other countries, Germany and the United Kingdom have prepared the ground for the destruction of the Statute. Thanks to the control of officials and politicians, generals and admirals, scientists and celebrities, the shock state of Muggles passed quite peacefully. Wizards brought promises of long-awaited peace to these countries by their appearance, which the "negligent Muggle rulers" had not been able to achieve for many years.

Any dissatisfaction or indignation among the simpletons was regulated by special bodies created specifically for such cases. The smoothing factor was the active propaganda in the media, which somehow inexplicably managed to shift the vector of public resonance from the existence of wizards to the signing of a peace treaty between two seemingly irreconcilable and warring countries in the shortest possible time.

The ideologies of modernity were crumbling before our eyes. Whether you are a classic liberal, socialist or fascist, all these social constructs fell down, crashed about the fact that there was magic in the world and the people who possessed it.

The author in the book noted that in the UK everything was not as simple as it happened with the same residents of the Third Reich, who celebrated their victory over their main opponents, albeit achieved through diplomacy. Nevertheless, they still have the territories of Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and, most importantly, the vast lands of France under control.

Great Britain, on the contrary, allowed all its threads to be cut in order to stabilize the political situation. Dumbledore may have managed to subjugate the magical and Muggle component of his country as soon as possible, but with the colonies, puppets and protectorates of the colonial power, everything turned out to be quite deplorable.

Canada, being free in fact, very soon declared its formal freedom. India took advantage of the opportunity and finally got rid of the colonialists and their long-term exploitation. South Africa was left to live without white masters. Australia and New Zealand separated from the colonial empire, severing all ties. All the other islands and African colonies were left to their own devices after the hasty withdrawal of troops and the evacuation of most of the British citizens.

Dumbledore spoke out on this point, claiming that he did not accept Muggle methods of seizing foreign lands, as this was a continuation of violence, which he opposed from the very beginning. Even if this did not fit in with the actions of his famous German friend Grindelwald, who for some time became a substitute for Hitler for Muggles, but uninformed townsfolk readily accepted the broadcast of such an opinion by their controlled politicians. The era of British colonialism has since sunk into oblivion.

Other consequences of the disclosure of the Statute were compared by the authors with a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Riots and protests by Muggles broke out here and there. In other countries, wizards took matters into their own hands and came out of the shadows using the example of British-German wizards.

The International Confederation of Magicians was losing its own members at an amazing rate, soon ceasing to exist due to the lack of this very internationality.

Great Britain, first of all, had economic problems, which were not solved by the wholesale reduction of the military-industrial complex. The loss of colonies and allied governments around the world seriously hit the country, and the world was naturally in a fever due to the daily restructuring of existing systems. However, the UK Ministry of Magic, after settling the hot phase and establishing interactions with the Muggles of their country, was not particularly worried about the fate of the simpletons. Mass migration of the impoverished population began at once, which very quickly slammed shut along with the appearance of closed borders and control of all ships and aircraft that left the country.

And the British, as stated by the authors of this book, still got off lightly.

A hitherto unheard-of precedent has raised such a wave in world politics and economics that each country has focused all its attention on solving its own problems. At that time, no one cared about all previous agreements, agreements and alliances, and even more so, no one cared about geopolitical problems with neighboring states.

The Axis collapsed, the Allies lost almost all their members in Europe, and even the Comintern was not destined to exist for at least another year.

With the advent of wizards, the world was destined to change dramatically, or else burn up in the flames of a general war, against which the Second World War would seem like just a dress rehearsal.

Civil wars broke out, governments of countries changed, and cartographers threw up their hands helplessly, drawing new borders of the world and names of countries almost every week.

It took countries a whole decade to find their own way through all this mess with wizards, who felt their forgotten importance and power over the simpletons through magic. It was only in the fifties of the twentieth century that international relations began to revive and the first beginnings of stability appeared.

And if Great Britain had its own problems from the very beginning, then Germany, which exchanged ethnic Nazism for the Nazism of those gifted with magic, began to experience numerous problems both with its own population of simpletons who did not want to lose the privileged status they loved so much, and in the occupied governments, whose wizards were eager to return their countries back. So, based on the situation, Grindelwald had to withstand both Muggle riots and guerrilla wars with the wizards of France, Norway and Poland. It was from the book that I suddenly learned that the magic school of Charmbaton was destroyed to the ground forty years ago during one of these uprisings.

The United States is also mired in the redistribution of its own democratic system. And if in many countries wizards sought to come to power themselves, then the American Ministry of Magic decided to negotiate with Muggles on cooperation and equal partnership. Quite quickly, a system was created in which magicians became very limited by the Muggle bureaucracy, and the aurorate of wizards rapidly integrated into the US Armed Forces, thanks to which the simpletons had a means of influencing other wizards in the form of these wizards themselves.

So it turned out that American magicians were literally absorbed by the power of the Muggle government apparatus, becoming useful, but just a tool in the hands of simpletons.

In fascist Italy and Francoist Spain, after the destruction of the Statute of Secrecy, the Inquisition, long forgotten and buried under a layer of centuries, began to revive. Muggles confidently learned the methods of fighting wizards that were found in ancient church folios, caught and interrogated magicians, after which, having gathered more information, they declared magic a diabolical threat and began using their own Armed Forces to exterminate magicians.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald could not just leave it like that, and helped the Ministries of Magic of both countries to suppress and practically exterminate such radical clerics. As a result of the civil war in these two countries, their wizards were so few that they essentially became puppets of their assistants.

The Soviet Union was also bursting at the seams. The Russian Ministry of Magic began to seriously fear a potential "witch hunt", as it happened in some European countries. They could have come to terms with communism at a time when the Statute of Secrecy was in effect, but now that their existence was revealed and their capabilities were shown to the world firsthand, something had to be done about it. The Russian wizards were still dominated by the elite of the Russian monarchist era, so at the next conclave meeting they decided on a thirty-year-late counter-revolution against the Reds.

The outcome turned out to be predetermined by one simple fact. The Communists didn't have wizards. For some reason, they were not attracted by the ideas of universal equality, being themselves at least one step above any Muggle because of the possession of magic.

So, in flames, blood and treachery, the Russian Empire appeared — with its own monarch from the distant relatives of the Romanov family, but completely controlled by the magical elites.

The union of Great Britain and Germany was only glad that the wizards had come to power. The war of annihilation stopped even at the time of the disclosure of the Statute of Secrecy, and peace was soon signed with the new government, and then a treaty of friendship and cooperation.

So it turned out that the disclosure of the Statute forced humanity to go through a huge crisis on its own scale, which led the world to a confrontation between two polar axioms, according to one of which it is wizards who are at the helm, and according to the other only Muggles who use magic at their discretion.

The governments of wizards spread the ideology of the superiority of magicians, and the governments of Muggles pressed the threat from the wizarding world and sought to counteract the all-powerful wizards.

During the "years of change", almost the whole of Europe joined the ideology of Dumbledore and Grindelwald to control Muggles, Africa turned into one big cauldron of continuous redistribution of power, and the Russian Empire recovered within slightly reduced borders and tried to overcome the economic and demographic consequences of endless wars on its territory.

Japan made peace with China, retreating from the continent under the pressure of the ancient sorcerers of the Middle Kingdom. Wizards accepted the power of the Emperor in exchange for their own immunity and elevation, like samurai, so that in Japan the merging of the two worlds occurred quite gently.

The United States, under the control of Muggles, annexed Canada and Mexico, after which it undertook the hasty conquest of Central and South America. They remained essentially the only force where Muggles had control over wizards, from which any favorable relations with the rest of the world were gradually interrupted and annulled. Fleeing from magical authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, Muggles migrated to the New World by the millions as soon as they were given the opportunity.

The book turned out to be a real storehouse of chronicles of those years, which I enthusiastically absorbed and realized. There was no peace of many small states here. The real modern Empires and Associations flourished in the maglo-magical world, which is why there were many times fewer countries as such than on the Land I once knew.

And all this, if I interpreted the root cause correctly, happened just because of one wizard. Because of Dumbledore, who chose the other side, and decided to act in a completely different way here…

 ***

Gradually, I discovered quite interesting facts about the magical civil war that ended almost twelve years ago.

Back at Hogwarts, I realized that Voldemort was present here, that he was still worried about protecting Lily Potter and still existed as a ghost somewhere in the Albanian forests, or wherever he was in the original story.

But what motivated him to confront Dumbledore in this version of the universe? I would rather understand his decision to side with the headmaster of Hogwarts, since the two wizards were quite similar in their actions regarding the Muggle world.

Once again, the book I found in Lockhart's mini-library helped me, and it was called: "The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord." It's amazing how this wizard managed to combine such interesting literature with his tabloid reading in the back of the farthest shelves, but it only played into my hands.

The book included the author's reflections on the causes and consequences of the confrontation between Voldemort and Dumbledore. It was not really an enumeration of the chronicles of a bygone period of time, but rather a free flight of the author's imagination, from which it was still possible to isolate interesting facts and more or less plausible theories.

To begin with, they were not afraid to say Voldemort's name out loud. They weren't afraid, that's all! Yes, he was a dangerous wizard and brought many troubles to the British magical world, even according to the author of the book, but only this world had already been under the heel of an equally dangerous magician for thirty years at that time, who also taught wizarding children at school.

By the way, as the author claimed, it was what was happening at Hogwarts that became the basis for the confrontation of the Dark Lord with the support of pure-blooded aristocrats from wizards and Dumbledore with his other supporters and controlled by the Ministry of Magic.

I reread this thesis three times, but the result did not change: it was claimed that Voldemort opposed such cruel treatment of students! The Dark Lord in the eyes of the public at the dawn of his career protected the children of wizards from the cruel director! Dumbledore, on the contrary, advocated harsh conditions for the upbringing of new generations of magicians with a truly Darwinian approach, complaining about the hasty development of Muggle technologies and the need for enhanced magical progress.

But here are the frequent deaths and disappearances of students… They had a huge impact on the British magical community. Magicians understood the need to improve magical disciplines, but no one explained to them why so few wizards have to die before they reach adulthood. In addition, the education of children at Hogwarts became mandatory and the only alternative was death, and moving to another country, even allied Germany, was strictly prohibited for underage wizards.

Before the British magicians, there were numerous examples of other countries where magic schools had a fairly standard curriculum and none of the students died there. Dumbledore remained silent on this point and still stubbornly continued to preserve the old and expand the new deadly orders of Hogwarts. While receiving full support from Grindelwald and the status of non-interference of other countries in the internal cuisine of the British Isles. All these factors, coupled with the Hogwarts headmaster's own magical power, made it impossible for any resistance from the magical families.

Fugitives were caught and publicly punished as a warning to others, the bureaucratic might of the Ministry took over open critics of the director's methods, and incipient attempts at sabotage and attempts on teachers were prevented with particularly severe consequences for both performers and organizers.

And so it all happened until the wizard returned to the UK, who called himself a descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself.

Voldemort quickly gained the huge support of many families and began actively promoting his influence on the Ministry of Magic. He asked awkward questions, pitted his magical power against Dumbledore himself, and was not at all afraid of the Aurora, the Order of the Phoenix, or the director himself.

At some point, the political crisis escalated into direct clashes on the streets. Muggles had nothing to do with this, so the showdown took place mainly between wizards from two opposing sides.

Soon, a real civil magical war broke out, and the officials of the Ministry one by one changed sides, coming under the control of the organization of Death Eaters.

The very name of Voldemort's supporters implied the prevention of senseless deaths of wizards at school, and magicians willingly joined this movement, feeling the strength and courage of their leader. Entire magical families were part of the Dark Lord's circle, and with the onset of the hot phase at the beginning of the new school year, Hogwarts missed almost half of its students who stayed at home while their parents fought among the rebels.

Even the nickname "Dark Lord" itself originated as a stigma of the Daily Prophet, invented by marketers from the world of magic in order to discredit Voldemort. However, he successfully used the seemingly negative connotation for his own good, appropriating the newfound title as an indicator of power, which only further frightened the henchmen of the current system.

The enthusiasm for the successes of the opposition led to more and more supporters, and further forecasts were not in favor of the Hogwarts director. A serious factor in such opinions was that Dumbledore almost never left the walls of his own school, and also did not respond in any way to Voldemort's calls to find out everything "one on one". It began to seem to everyone that the Ministry was about to be defeated and the Dark Lord would finally seize power, bringing the wizard children the safety their parents so desired.

And then Grindelwald came to his friend's aid.

Three dozen trained wizards from Germany, led by the Chancellor himself, swept through magical Britain in a deadly whirlwind. Dumbledore never left his school, continuing to behave as if nothing had happened and only giving instructions to the remaining supporters and the puppet Minister of Magic.

The confrontations between Voldemort and Grindelwald were truly terrifying. Wizards died, houses were destroyed, families were captured, those involved were executed and the innocent suffered. Three times the two magicians came together in battle and three times Voldemort retreated, losing in strength and skills to such a powerful opponent.

Grindelwald's Elder Wand was well known, so no one hoped for another outcome. Except for the Dark Lord, who, battle after battle, strove to take away such a powerful artifact from his opponent with at least a single victory.

And even though the remaining weakened aurora, together with the German allies, repeatedly defeated and inexorably pushed the rebels in all directions, but time was still on the side of the eaters. Having suffered significant losses, they lay low waiting for Grindelwald to return to his country. With each passing week, more and more supporters were recruited to them, and soon they would reach their original numbers again. In the meantime, the balance of power will not change, it was decided to act following guerrilla and sabotage tactics, thereby complicating the normal functioning of the Ministry of Magic.

And then it was during this period of time that Voldemort fell. For some unknown reason, he attacked the Potter house, which was one of Dumbledore's few supporters.

With the loss of the leader, the battered aurora of the two countries intensified, and the rebels began to suffer one defeat after another. As a result, Dumbledore emerged victorious, having never participated in any battle, and the nuts of control over wizards tightened even more.

Because of the so-called Black Mark that existed on the hands of Voldemort's most loyal supporters, it was known that somehow the Dark Lord did not die completely. There were many rumors and theories about his fate. Someone claimed that the death in Godric's Hollow was nothing more than a staging, but in fact he was captured and sent to the lowest tiers of Azkaban. Some wizards even accused him of cowardice, being sure that Voldemort had fled the country far to Asia, fleeing from Grindelwald and Dumbledore.

In any case, no one had seen the Dark Lord since that night on October thirty-first, which made the hope for change weaker every year.

Many of the Dark Lord's supporters went to Azkaban, but some wizards changed sides after the defeat in the hope of leniency for their descendants. No one wanted their child to die at school, so the precedent of the nascent confrontation allowed the headmaster of Hogwarts to take control of all dissenters, without even guaranteeing the safety of their children.

And so the deaths of the students continued — merciless and senseless. On average, about thirty percent of the freshmen did not live to graduate, and no one could do anything about it, since all resistance was suppressed and destroyed.

The book cited statistics according to which almost two thirds of the dying students were Muggle-born, so this, albeit a little, but still smoothed the corners and allowed the purebloods to risk their own child in the hope that he would survive. It was possible to try to escape, but the allied countries gave the refugees back, and in the New World wizards were considered servants of Muggles, which for the conservative British magical society was to some extent even the worst alternative.

After reading this book, the crazy thought warmed my head that when Voldemort was reborn, I would consciously want to follow him. I have Dumbledore to thank for this, because even in my first year I felt all the darkness that emanated from the headmaster and spread throughout the castle. Thanks to him for the incentive.