[Harry Potter] Malfoid Stories

[AndrewJTalon]

United States Mage Corps:

The United States Mage Corps represents a rare institutional continuity among magical governments: a standing military force maintained in secret from the nation's founding through the present day. Most other magical polities, following the International Statute of Secrecy and the trauma of the Second World War, reduced or abolished organized armed forces in favor of specialized law-enforcement bodies and rapid-response units. The Mage Corps did not. Its retention reflects both the particular conditions of the North American magical community and the operational requirements of working in parallel with a large, technologically advanced Muggle military.

Founding and Early Role

The Corps was established concurrently with the United States itself, though its formal charter remained classified even within the magical government. Its initial mandate was defensive. Colonial magical populations faced two distinct external pressures. First, organized resistance from Native American magical practitioners who regarded European settlement as a threat to both their communities and the management of local magical fauna and resources. Second, European wizards—primarily British, but including continental mercenaries—who operated in support of Crown forces during the Revolutionary War, seeking to deny the new nation freedom and retain access to New World magical materials that had begun to interest Old World markets. Informal private instruction and the absence of a single dominant school prior to Avistrum's founding in 1697 had already produced a higher-than-average number of independent and dark practitioners; the Corps provided a counterweight to both external intervention and internal disorder. Benjamin Franklin, a wizard himself who was prominent in the Revolution, was the founder of the Corps.

Throughout the nineteenth century the Corps remained small and expeditionary. Its primary tasks were escort of magical settlers beyond the Appalachians, recovery or neutralization of dangerous artifacts and creatures encountered on the frontier, and quiet liaison with the regular U.S. Army during conflicts in which European magical interest remained active (most notably the War of 1812).

Blood-status ideology never became a dominant organizational principle inside the Corps, in part because recruitment drew heavily from families that had already accepted mixed-heritage and Muggle-born students at Avistrum and its successor institutions. It fought in the US Civil War, largely to prevent Confederate wizards from influencing the outcome of the conflict, but otherwise played a general supporting role to the United States' foreign and domestic policies.

World War II and the Decision to Retain a Military

The Second World War marked the Corps' largest expansion and the decisive argument for its postwar continuation. Nazi and Axis magical forces conducted systematic efforts to seize or destroy magical resources in the Western Hemisphere, to recruit or coerce North American practitioners, and to employ occult techniques against Allied forces. The Mage Corps operated in parallel with the U.S. military and with the Office of Strategic Services' more specialized occult research elements. Its contributions included:

-Counter-intelligence against German and Japanese magical agents operating inside the United States and in Latin America.
-Protection of critical industrial and research sites whose destruction would have had both Muggle and magical consequences.
-Limited joint operations in the European and Pacific theaters where conventional forces encountered magical interference that could not be explained by ordinary means.
-Recovery of enemy research materials and personnel after the Axis collapse, some of which were later used to justify continued investment in specialized capabilities.

Most European magical governments, having suffered direct occupation or heavy losses, concluded that large standing forces were both politically untenable under the Statute of Secrecy and unnecessary once the immediate threat had passed. The United States, whose territory had not been occupied and whose Muggle military was already global in scope, reached the opposite conclusion. The combination of residual Soviet interest in captured German occult research, the continued existence of independent dark practitioners and creature populations in the Americas, and the practical requirement to coordinate with an expanding conventional military led MACUSA to retain the Corps rather than demobilize it into a purely civilian security service.

Force Size and Composition

Given a magical population in the United States on the order of several million (consistent with the proportional scaling applied to Britain), the Mage Corps has never been a massice army. Current authorized strength is estimated at 8,000–12,000 active-duty personnel, with a larger reserve component of roughly 15,000–20,000 individuals who maintain basic readiness and can be recalled for surge operations. This represents a professional force rather than a conscript or militia structure.Rough functional distribution is as follows:

-Approximately 40 percent in combat and rapid-response formations (specialized squads and companies capable of operating independently or embedded with conventional units).
-25 percent in intelligence, counter-intelligence, and artifact recovery.
-20 percent in logistics, training, and support of concealment infrastructure.
-15 percent in specialized technical branches (advanced charms research, creature containment, medical and healing support, and limited experimental work on the interface between magical and technological systems).

The force is deliberately kept small enough that its existence can be concealed within ordinary U.S. military personnel systems, budget lines, and facility inventories. Most members hold dual status: formal Mage Corps rank and a parallel, usually non-combatant or specialist, billet in the regular armed forces or in a civilian agency that provides administrative cover.

Primary Focus and Capabilities

The Corps' contemporary mission set is narrower than a conventional army's but broader than that of most other magical security services:

-Defense of the continental United States and its magical population against external magical attack or large-scale internal dark activity.
-Support to conventional U.S. forces when magical phenomena or hostile practitioners affect military operations (a capability exercised at low intensity during the Cold War and in limited form during subsequent conflicts).
-Control and study of high-threat magical creatures and residual magical contamination in areas of strategic importance.
-Recovery and safeguarding of magical materials and research that would be destabilizing if obtained by hostile actors.
-Maintenance of the concealment infrastructure that allows the Corps and the wider magical government to operate without routine exposure.

Unlike Durmstrang's historical emphasis on martial magic or the more law-enforcement orientation of most European bodies, the Mage Corps places significant weight on integration with conventional military logistics, communications, and planning processes. This produces distinctive doctrinal features: greater reliance on combined-arms thinking (even if one "arm" is magical), standardized training in operational security around Muggles, and institutional caution about any action that could force a public breach of the Statute of Secrecy.

Wider Implications

Retention of the Corps has several structural consequences. It gives the United States a unique capacity for sustained, expeditionary magical operations that most other nations lack, which in turn shapes diplomatic relations inside the International Confederation of Wizards. Some governments view the Corps as a stabilizing factor; others regard it as evidence that American magical authorities have never fully accepted the postwar European preference for demilitarization. Internally, the existence of a standing force influences the curriculum and culture of Avistrum and other North American schools, which maintain stronger Defense Against the Dark Arts and practical fieldcraft programs than is typical elsewhere.

The Corps also creates a permanent liaison problem. Its members must operate effectively inside both the magical and Muggle military hierarchies without compromising either. This has produced a distinctive professional culture—highly disciplined, relatively meritocratic by pure-blood standards, and institutionally skeptical of both European blood-status politics and unrestricted civilian oversight of military magic. Whether that culture remains an asset or becomes a source of friction with the civilian magical government is an open question that recurs in periods of political tension.

In short, the United States Mage Corps is not merely a historical curiosity. It is the product of a specific sequence of threats, a larger absolute magical population, and a decision, after 1945, to preserve capabilities that most other magical nations chose to relinquish. Its size remains modest relative to the population it serves, but its combination of standing readiness, conventional-military integration, and specialized technical capacity gives it influence disproportionate to its numbers.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

Exploration of Native American and Mesoamerican Magical Traditions

The indigenous magical traditions across both American continents remained comparatively unsophisticated by European standards prior to contact. The majority of societies lacked writing systems, so spells, rituals, and cosmological knowledge were transmitted orally. Exceptions existed among the Aztec, Maya, and Inca polities and those cultures strongly influenced by them. In the American Southwest and Southeast, some groups also recorded limited magical knowledge through pictographs on animal hides and in stone.

A near-universal feature across these traditions was blood magic—one of the oldest documented forms of magical practice. Because blood rites sat only one step removed from human sacrifice, only fragmentary survivals of these systems persist in the modern magical world. Independent folk charms and localized incantations endured among many tribes, but they proved insufficient against the concentrated power the Aztecs could generate.

Aztec wizards, operating as the true power behind the throne, used large-scale blood rites and ritual cannibalism to accumulate extraordinary magical force, using staves and bells as magical mediums rather than wands. This underwrote the empire's military and political dominance until the arrival of Hernán Cortés.

The Intervention of the Catholic Miracles Department

Cortés was accompanied by a number of friars, among them two wizards attached to the Catholic Church's Miracles department: Fray Tulio de Aguilar and Fray Miguel de Salazar. Both had been trained in ecclesiastical combat magic and were specifically tasked with countering the dark practitioners serving the Aztec hierarchy. Cortés relied heavily on their abilities both to neutralize enemy wizards and to train allied indigenous magical practitioners in more structured European techniques.

Their campaigns are recorded in the contemporary magical chronicle La Conquista del Imperio Azteca Impío ("The Conquest of the Unholy Aztec Empire"). According to that account, Tulio and Miguel faced repeated trials. They destroyed an undead army raised by the Aztec high priest and dark wizard Itzcóatl Xipe, slew a Barbed Desert Dragon bound to Aztec service, and defeated Montezuma's principal warlocks and Itzcóatl Xipe himself in direct magical combat.

Operating frequently with only their wands, tactical judgment, and faith—supported by Cortés's soldiers and indigenous allies—they ultimately prevented the Aztecs from completing a Blood Curse Plague. The ritual, intended as a final measure against the invaders, required the sacrifice of one hundred children. Its interruption collapsed the remaining organized magical resistance.

Founding of the First Formal Magical School in the Americas

In the aftermath, Fray Tulio de Aguilar and Fray Miguel de Salazar established the New Spain Miracle School, the earliest formal institution of magical education in the Western Hemisphere. Originally intended to train both Spanish and allied indigenous students in controlled, non-sacrificial magic under ecclesiastical oversight, the school later took the names of its founders.

It continues to operate in the present day, preserving a curriculum that blends European wandwork with carefully delimited survivals of pre-conquest practical traditions while maintaining an explicit prohibition on blood sacrifice.

This sequence of events permanently altered the balance of magical power in Mesoamerica. The destruction of the Aztec sacrificial system removed the primary engine of large-scale indigenous blood magic, while the New Spain Miracle School introduced the first sustained, institutionalized alternative. Subsequent schools in the region, including later North American foundations, developed in a landscape already shaped by that rupture.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

School Name: Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Location: Mount Greylock, Massachusetts, United States

Founding Date: Circa 1630

Jurisdiction: United States Magical Government, under the purview of the US Secretary of Magic

Student Population: 3,500–5,000

Notable Expertise: Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Wandlore, Magical Theory

History:

Ilvermorny was founded circa 1630 on Mount Greylock in Massachusetts by the Irish witch Isolt Sayre, a descendant of Salazar Slytherin who had fled her homeland, together with her No-Maj husband James Steward and their adopted sons Chadwick and Webster Boot. The school began as a modest granite cottage intended to educate the Boot children and soon expanded to accept other local magical students, including members of nearby Indigenous communities. Isolt, James, and the Boot brothers each selected a house mascot drawn from North American magical creatures—Horned Serpent, Wampus, Thunderbird, and Pukwudgie—establishing the four-house system that persists today. The original cottage grew into a substantial castle as enrollment increased.

Because its founders were Irish rather than English, Scottish, or Dutch, Ilvermorny retained a distinct cultural character that set it apart from the later English- and Scottish-influenced institutions of Avistrum (1697), Salem (1699), and Plotinus (1791). It developed a reputation as an upper-middle and elite academy, emphasizing rigorous theoretical instruction, refined magical practice, and social polish. This orientation placed it in direct competition with Avistrum for students across the northern United States; the two schools have long contested prestige, faculty recruitment, and the allegiance of prominent northern families. Ilvermorny also sought, on more than one occasion, to absorb the much smaller Salem School of Witchcraft as a satellite or feeder institution. Salem consistently resisted these overtures, preserving its independent, technically focused identity and lower cost structure.

Relations with Plotinus Theurgy Academy in Georgia were repeatedly strained. Ilvermorny's Irish-derived emphasis on structured magical theory and controlled defensive practice clashed with Plotinus's more overtly martial culture, its tradition of swordsmanship and formal combat training, and its southern social outlook. Disputes over curriculum, standards of magical combat instruction, and the proper formation of future leaders surfaced regularly in the nineteenth century and have continued, in attenuated form, into the present.

Despite these rivalries, Ilvermorny remains one of the largest and most prestigious magical schools in North America, drawing students primarily from the Northeast and Midwest while maintaining its historic Irish institutional character within the broader framework of United States magical governance.

Note: The only magical school in the US being founded by an Irishwoman? Unlikely, the cultural differences would result in multiple schools across multiple regions and cultures. But I've kept Ilvermorny out of respect to JKR and just made it fit into the larger American magical world.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

School Name: Escuela de Milagros Aguilar y Salazar

Location: Mexico City, Mexico (originally established near the former Tenochtitlan)

Founding Date: 1525

Jurisdiction: Mexican Magical Government (Secretaría de Magia), with historical origins under the ecclesiastical Miracles department of New Spain

Student Population: 4,000

Notable Expertise: Defense Against the Dark Arts, Controlled Ritual Magic, Charms, Healing, Pre-Columbian Magical History

History:

The Escuela de Milagros Aguilar y Salazar was founded in 1525 by Fray Tulio de Aguilar and Fray Miguel de Salazar, wizards attached to the Catholic Church's Miracles department who accompanied Hernán Cortés. Their primary charge was to counter the large-scale blood magic and sacrificial practices employed by Aztec high priests and warlocks, who functioned as the true power behind the imperial throne. Operating with Cortés's forces and indigenous allies, the two friars destroyed an undead army raised by the Aztec high priest and dark wizard Itzcóatl Xipe, slew a Barbed Desert Dragon bound to Aztec service, defeated Montezuma's principal warlocks in direct combat, and interrupted a final Blood Curse Plague ritual that required the sacrifice of one hundred children. These events are recorded in their contemporary chronicle La Conquista del Imperio Azteca Impío.

In the aftermath they established the New Spain Miracle School—the first formal magical academy in the Americas—to train both Spanish and allied indigenous students in structured, non-sacrificial magic under ecclesiastical oversight. The institution later adopted the names of its founders. From the outset it emphasized the replacement of uncontrolled blood rites with disciplined wandwork, containment techniques, and ethical constraints on ritual practice. Over subsequent centuries it absorbed limited, carefully delimited elements of surviving pre-conquest practical traditions while maintaining a strict prohibition on human sacrifice. However, in the modern era with advances in medicine, Aztec and other ancient blood magic rites and spells are being re-examined for use in medicine and healing magic.

The school has remained the principal center of formal magical education for Mexico. Its modern curriculum continues to reflect its founding purpose: rigorous Defense Against the Dark Arts with particular attention to residual blood-magic effects, advanced Charms and Healing, controlled ritual theory, and systematic study of pre-Columbian magical history. It serves as the primary national academy for the magical population of Mexico. Graduates enter civilian administration, healing practice, artifact conservation, regional security roles, and general magical business; the school maintains no formal military track comparable to certain North American institutions but supplies technically trained personnel for containment and investigative work when required by the Mexican magical authorities.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

School Name: Plotinus Theurgy Academy

Location: Athens, Georgia, United States

Founding Date: 1791

Jurisdiction: United States Magical Government, under the purview of the US Secretary of Magic

Student Population: 1,200–2,000

Notable Expertise: Defense Against the Dark Arts, Magical Combat, Alchemy, Magical Artifact Exploration, Herbology, Magical Creatures

History:

Plotinus Theurgy Academy was founded in 1791 in Athens, Georgia, by Achernar Carpenter, the bastard son of the head of House Black. Carpenter had emigrated to the American colonies in 1760 and became active in the magical wing of the Sons of Liberty. He fought in the Revolutionary War, defeating the English warlock Harrow Pitfall in single combat during the Battle of Yorktown, and later served as one of the first representatives to the American Magical Congress in 1788.

Dissatisfied with the educational offerings at Avistrum and the Salem School of Witchcraft, he established Plotinus with three fellow Revolutionary War veterans: Thomas A. Tallmadge, Meredith Lum, and Francina Mapes. The academy was named for Plotinus, the Greek philosopher and theurgist whom Carpenter particularly admired.

From its inception the school was conceived as an upper-class institution. In addition to the standard magical curriculum of Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, and Potions, it provided formal instruction in swordsmanship, etiquette, rhetoric, philosophy, and politics, with the explicit aim of preparing students for political leadership or prominent positions in American magical commerce and administration. Admission practices reflected class distinctions more than strict blood status: magical children of Revolutionary War veterans were accepted regardless of parentage, while commoner Muggle-born applicants frequently faced discrimination. Cherokee and other Native American wizards whose tribes had allied with the revolutionaries were admitted; those from tribes that had sided with the British were barred.

These social and regional tensions persisted into the American Civil War. The majority of the academy's students and alumni favored the Union and expressed little interest in the question of slavery, yet a significant minority regarded service with the Confederacy as a matter of honor and states' rights. A disproportionate number of wizards who fought against the Union were Plotinus alumni, while other graduates, together with students and alumni of Avistrum and Salem, served on the Union side. After the war the academy came under intense scrutiny from MACUSA. Admission standards were formally opened to Muggle-born students without regard to prior class or veteran status. The school's martial character, however, remained intact.

In the modern era Plotinus continues to emphasize Defense Against the Dark Arts, Magical Combat, and Alchemy. It also maintains strong programs in Magical Artifact Exploration, Herbology, and Magical Creatures, fields in which it competes directly with Avistrum given the continued presence of undocumented magical species and sites across the Americas and the world. A substantial portion of the officer corps of the United States Mage Corps is drawn from its graduates, preserving the academy's longstanding association with organized magical military service.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

avistrum.org

School Name: Avistrum Academy of Sorcery

Location: Hartford, Connecticut, United States

Founding Date: Fall 1697 (first students admitted)

Jurisdiction: United States Magical Government, under the purview of the US Secretary of Magic

Student Population: 3,000–4,000

Notable Expertise: Charms, Wandmaking, Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA), Theoretical Charms and Potions

History:

Excerpted from The Roots of Magical Society in North America, by Sigurd Quantrill, 1843

Non-magical people were not the only ones to immigrate to the New World beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. Witches and wizards also sought to improve their lives on a new continent. Many magical families from England, Scotland, and Ireland settled in the North American colonies, especially in New England. However, for several decades they had no schools of magic to educate their children.

After the so-called Salem Witch Trials in 1692, many magical folk grew concerned. While the Trials had not killed any real witches, they realized that their lack of a proper school for magical children left them vulnerable to persecution in their new home. Four in particular who saw the need for an academy were Pyramis Parador, Englebert Enigmus, Luna Lobostro, and Caterina Colubrae.

The four friends, all educated in England, decided it was time to found a school for North American magicians, in order to teach them to use their powers correctly. Quite a few magical families had taken to teaching their children on their own, thus causing a rapid increase in the number of dark wizards and witches. The four friends realized what a great danger this was to magical society in the New World.

The Avistrum Academy of Sorcery took its first students in the fall of 1697, becoming the first school of magic in the Western Hemisphere. Parador, Enigmus, Lobostro and Colubrae created four fellowships within the school, one named after each.

Today, Avistrum is still the largest and most prestigious magical school in the Americas, based in Hartford, Connecticut.Sadly, old attitudes did not disappear in the New World. Caterina Colubrae, a pureblood wizard with roots stretching far back to her native Russia, began to echo the opinions of many purebloods before her, that only pureblood wizards and witches should be taught magic. She left the new school after a bitter feud with her partners; the final straw was when Pyramis Parador was selected over her to serve as Headmaster after the death of Englebert Enigmus in 1707.

As the American frontier expanded, Avistrum grew larger and larger. Just as they had from the original British colonies, new magic families immigrated to the United States and Canada along with their non-wizard counterparts. Avistrum has taught witches and wizards who hail originally from every part of the globe.

As a bastion against dark magic, Avistrum faces its share of threats. Naturally, the school is hidden from detection by non-wizards, and only those with magical ability can find it.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

School Name: Salem School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Location: Salem, Massachusetts, United States

Founding Date: 1699

Jurisdiction: United States Magical Government, under the purview of the US Secretary of Magic

Student Population: 400-1000

Notable Expertise: Charms, Ethics, Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA), Magic Archaeology/Artefaction

History:

The Salem School of Witchcraft was founded in 1699 in the immediate aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials and a subsequent local crisis. A witch named Mercy Crowe had begun conducting escalating dark rituals in the Salem area that produced genuine magical interference, driving several non-magical families toward permanent mental damage through mind-affecting charms and coerced spirit bindings. Local practitioners, horrified by the uncontrolled experiments, confronted and killed Crowe in a magical duel.

Among those who stopped her was Simaetha Moonwell, who concluded that the lack of organized local instruction had allowed the situation to develop. She and her colleagues converted a concealed outbuilding on the outskirts of Salem into a schoolhouse and admitted the first students in the autumn of 1699. From the outset the institution was deliberately modest in scale and cost, serving as a practical, lower-tuition alternative to the larger and more distant Avistrum Academy for families in eastern Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire.

Moonwell, who served as the first headmistress, established two enduring principles: acceptance of any student who demonstrated basic aptitude regardless of blood status, and an emphasis on controlled technical competence rather than theoretical ambition. The curriculum focused on core charms, basic defensive magic, household applications, and the safe containment of minor dark effects or residual artifacts. This technical orientation gradually sharpened; by the nineteenth century the school was known for rigorous training in charm construction, magic device repair and modification, and systematic recording of local magical phenomena.
Magic archaeology and Artefaction also grew in the curriculum, exploring the ancient magics of North America and then eventually, the world.

The school never expanded beyond a few hundred students and avoided most of the pure-blood controversies that affected larger North American institutions. It maintained a quiet relationship with the early United States Mage Corps, occasionally supplying technically trained personnel for artifact recovery and containment work. In the modern period it continues to operate from an expanded but still concealed complex in Salem. Its present curriculum retains the historical practical focus while incorporating formal study in ethics and magic archaeology, preparing graduates primarily for technical, conservation, and support roles within the regional magical community and certain Mage Corps technical branches.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

School Name: Stillwater Academy

Location: Stillwater Valley, Rocky Mountains, Colorado, United States (hidden magical community of Stillwaters; associated Burro Mountain Base)

Founding Date: 1873

Jurisdiction: United States Magical Government, under the purview of the US Secretary of Magic

Student Population: 800–1,500

Notable Expertise: Survival Magic, Magical Creature and Plant Stewardship, Combat Magic, Exploration and Construction Magic, Herbology

History:

Stillwater Academy was founded in 1873 in the Stillwater Valley of Colorado's Rocky Mountains by Ambrose Burndown, a veteran of the United States Mage Corps who had served in the Civil War, and his wife Isabel. The couple established the school to support the growing population of magical immigrants moving into the American West and to provide formal education for Indigenous magical practitioners while actively preserving their traditions. Subsequent waves of settlers from Russia, other Slavic regions, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere contributed additional techniques, producing a composite curriculum.

From the outset the academy emphasized practical skills required for life beyond established magical infrastructure: wilderness survival, management of magical creatures and plants, exploration, construction under adverse conditions, and combat magic. Amercian, German and Slavic combat and engineering traditions, Indigenous survival methods, and a deliberate ethic of stewardship toward magical animals, plants, and beings became enduring pillars.
This stewardship orientation drew in part on earlier Spanish Catholic influences transmitted through the Southwest and was reinforced by the mountaineering culture of the period. Summer programs historically included structured survival training modeled on contemporary youth organizations, and older students (typically age fifteen and above) continue to undertake supervised field exercises, including discreet navigation and extraction tasks within the nearby Bigfoot preserve.

The academy operates in close conjunction with Burro Mountain Base, a United States Mage Corps installation maintained behind layered glamours, charms, and wards and used for training and regional support. Stillwaters itself developed into a large, thriving magical community that remains largely open within the valley; the surrounding mountains and cave systems provide substantial natural concealment from non-magical observers. Local waters, enriched by the resident Soyiitapi water sprites, possess sufficient ambient magic that individuals may walk upon the surface of the creek without spells. Nearby preserves house both Bigfeet—large ape-like beings capable of magical concealment—and Slide-Rock Bolters, massive land-whale ambush predators that descend slopes to seize prey before returning to high altitude. Both populations are maintained under managed conditions that allow them to live with minimal interference.

Over time the curriculum has been standardized while retaining its distinctive regional character. Stillwater Academy continues to serve primarily students from small towns, isolated homesteads, and Western communities. It supplies practical magical education oriented toward self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship, and competence in remote settings, and it maintains its historic relationship with the Mage Corps through the adjacent base.