[Harry Potter] Malfoid Stories

[Questioni]

Maybe if you didn't use the stupid name for it that includes the incel slur for women ("Femoid" becoming "Malfoid" rather than "Galfoy" or something equally fun and punny like that), they wouldn't hate it as much?

Click to shrink...

 

[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]

They had, between them, a reasonable amount of experience to draw on. The office was warm with late morning light that filtered through the high windows and caught on the silver instruments, setting several of them to a soft, irregular ticking. Fawkes dozed with his head tucked, feathers shifting now and then in the draft from the hearth. Harry and Ron sat on the edge of their chairs as if either of them might need to stand quickly. Dumbledore watched them both with the patient attention of a man who had already guessed most of what they were about to say.

But he let them say it all anyway.

"I mean, Moody is a great teacher—" Harry started.

"But the DADA teacher has tried to kill Harry every year," Ron said.

"It wasn't Lupin's fault last time—!"

"I know it wasn't! But it's like the position is cursed, and Charlie's told me no DADA teacher has ever lasted longer than a year!"

Dumbledore folded his hands on the desk. The movement was unhurried. One of the portraits behind him stirred, muttered something about exam schedules, and went back to sleep. "Gentlemen. I understand your concerns. The position may indeed have been cursed by Voldemort. It is within his capabilities."

Ron winced at the name. His shoulders drew in. Harry did not. He had heard it enough times, in enough voices, that the old flinch had worn thin.

"So… why can't you fix it?"

"We would need to find the source of the curse first. This is part of why I chose Alastor to teach. He is the most experienced and formidable Dark wizard hunter in Britain. I trust him implicitly to not only train you, but to secure the castle."

"Well, that's good." Ron shifted, the chair creaking under him. "My dad has lots of stories about Moody."

"As well he should." Dumbledore's smile was small. "Death Eaters fear him for good reason."

"Well, that's good." Harry glanced at the silver instruments ticking on the shelves. One of them had begun to spin in a slow, uneven circle. "But what about the Goblet of Fire?"

"I mean, all you've got is an Age Line around it," Ron said.

"You may be correct, Ron. I'll have Moody improve the security around it personally."

"Hope he's not too busy," Harry murmured. Dumbledore shook his head.

"A man like Alastor is happy to have things to do again. He hated retirement." Dumbledore chuckled. The sound was quiet in the high-ceilinged room. "The one thing that makes men like Alastor happy is purpose. True purpose. And so he has taken to it with gusto."

Harry nodded. Some of the tightness in his chest eased.

"I guess that makes me feel a little better."

"Yeah." Ron still looked uneasy. His fingers worried at a loose thread on his sleeve. "But I mean, the Triwizard has a lot of deaths, so you can see why we'd be worried."

"That and… you know…" Harry coughed, "everything that's happened in my life so far."

Dumbledore nodded, grave. The light caught the half-moon spectacles and turned them briefly opaque. "It is good you two are taking this seriously. Yes, I am afraid your school experience is quite outside the ordinary. But then, your life was never going to be ordinary, Harry. I am sorry for that. But embracing it, meeting it head on instead of hiding from it—that is the sign of a fine young man. And it is good you two are growing up into fine young men."

Heat climbed Harry's neck. Ron went red to the ears. Neither of them quite knew where to look. The portraits had gone still again, as if even the sleeping headmasters had decided the moment required a certain dignity.

"Oh… uh. Thank you, Professor," Harry said.

"Y-yeah, really. I'm just the sidekick, I mean," Ron managed. Harry turned to his best friend with a warm smile.

"Ron, I couldn't have gotten anywhere without you. Or Hermione."

"Aw, lay off…"

Dumbledore's smile turned faintly mischievous. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened. "And I have heard you two have grown up a bit faster in other ways?"

They stared at him. Fawkes trilled from the perch, a soft, amused sound. Dumbledore chuckled.

"In regards to Miss Malfoy and Miss Greengrass?"

Harry coughed. Ron's ears burned brighter. They both started talking at once, hands moving in half-formed gestures that canceled each other out. A silver instrument on the nearest shelf gave a sharp, protesting ping and settled again.

"W-well… um… we went on a date to Hogsmeade and… it was… nice, but I mean, I don't know what to do after this and—"

"I-I don't know what her deal is! We played some chess and she was amazing and now she's obsessed with me and Hermione is angry with me and I don't know why—!"

Dumbledore's chuckle was soft, the lines around his eyes deepening into something grandfatherly. He steepled his fingers and regarded them both with open fondness. "Well. Take care how you handle things, gentlemen. Women's hearts are fragile things. You wouldn't want to break them, would you?"

"I think they'd break us instead," Harry said.

"Yes. That can be the price of breaking a witch's heart. Do be careful."

The side door opened with a soft click. A stack of laundry appeared to float out of it, which was not especially unusual at Hogwarts. Harry registered the small, green-tinged hands underneath it a second later. The scent of clean linen and something faintly floral drifted into the room.

"Headmastery sir, have laundry—"

"You can just magic it away, Dobby."

"Dobby found magic socks! Wants to make sure Headmastery Dumblydore knows if they cans be teleported properly!"

"Dobby!"

The elf's face lit up. He burst into tears, flung the laundry in every direction, and launched himself at Harry. Socks scattered across the desk and floor in a soft cascade of wool and enchantment. One patterned with moving lightning bolts landed squarely on Dumbledore's head. Another, embroidered with what appeared to be sniffing human noses, settled over Fawkes's beak. The phoenix looked deeply unamused. Ron clamped a hand over his mouth and coughed with desperate concentration, shoulders shaking. Dumbledore did not bother; he laughed, quiet and warm, as Harry gently pried Dobby far enough away to look at him. The elf's ears were trembling. His eyes were enormous.

"Harry Potter, sir! Dobby happy to see you! Date go well with Mean Master's Daughter?"

"Y-yes! Everything went fine, thank you!"

"Could… could Dobby help with next date with Mean Master's Daughter?"

"Uhhhhh… I—I mean… well…"

Phantom pain twinged in Harry's arm. He remembered, with perfect clarity, every previous instance of Dobby's help: the hovering pudding, the bludger, the long nights of well-meant interference. The elf's eyes were wet and hopeful and entirely sincere. Harry sighed.

"Yes, Dobby. You can help." The elf's delighted squeal nearly knocked a silver instrument off its shelf. It wobbled, chimed once, and righted itself. "But only within limits! We don't want to go overboard!"

"Dobby understands! Will make things super romantical-like for Harry Potter, sir, and his Lyra!"

Dobby beamed, already gathering the scattered socks with frantic efficiency. Fawkes shook the nose-patterned sock free of his beak and regarded it with profound offense before dropping it onto the desk. Dumbledore removed the lightning-bolt sock from his head, examined it with mild interest, and set it neatly on the corner of the desk beside the other.

"Well," he said, eyes twinkling, "it seems your romantic education is about to become a group effort. Do try to survive it."

"It kind of already was," Harry admitted.

The main door opened. The sound was heavier than the side entrance had been. Harry and Ron turned in their chairs. Harry went pale.

Snape entered first, robes flaring in their usual dramatic sweep, face already pinched at the sight of them. The air seemed to cool a fraction as he crossed the threshold. Lucius Malfoy followed, immaculate in dark formal robes that had not a crease out of place, his expression cooling further the moment his eyes found Harry. Lyra came last. She held herself carefully upright, but the nervousness showed in the set of her shoulders and the way her fingers tightened once on the strap of her bag before she stilled them. Her gaze flicked to Harry, then away, then back again.

"Headmaster," Snape said.

"Severus. Lucius. Miss Malfoy."

"Headmaster. Potter. Weasley." Lucius's tone was precise and cold.

"H—" Lyra caught her father's look and corrected smoothly. "Headmaster. Potter. Weasley."

"Snape. Mister Malfoy. Malfoy," Harry said.

"Snape. Mister Malfoy. Malfoy," Ron echoed.

"Professor Snape," Dumbledore said, gentle and pointed.

Dobby, still clutching a handful of recovered socks, glared upward from beside Harry's chair. "Bad Ex-Master. Greasy Snapey. Harry's Lyra."

Silence settled. Lyra went bright red to the ears. Lucius's mouth thinned. Snape's glare could have curdled milk. One of the portraits cleared its throat and thought better of it.

"…Dobby," Lucius said.

Dumbledore's smile remained untroubled. He gestured and several empty chairs appeared. "A pleasure to see you all again. What brings you here, Lucius?"

"A few matters. The Triwizard, of course." Lucius's cold grey eyes settled on Harry and did not move. "And my daughter's welfare."

The office had gone very quiet. Even Fawkes had stopped shifting on his perch.

Harry held the look. He managed, for five full seconds, not to appear intimidated.

"Tell me, Mister Potter," Lucius said, his voice low and full of the promise of violence. "What are your intentions with my daughter?"

The five seconds were up.

 

[nemo1986]

All the portraits wish they had something to snack on. Probably the most entertainment they have had in years.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

Lyra's voice cut across the silence, thinner than usual but clear.

"F-Father, he is… he merely escorted me out to Hogsmeade! He was being a proper gentlewizard!"

Lucius's expression did not change. "Really? And what of the kiss?"

Color flooded her face. For a moment her eyes went distant and soft. "Oh… it was perfect and—" She caught herself, bright red, and stumbled. "I-um-wh-what kiss? Whatever is a kiss? A pure-blood maiden such as myself has no idea what that is!"

Harry reflected that this would be far funnier if it were happening to someone else.

A dark, dangerous look settled over Lucius's face as he turned his glare fully on Harry. "Indeed. Mister Potter, once again… what are your intentions with my daughter?"

Snape's glare matched it for venom. Dobby edged behind Harry's chair. Even with the knowledge that he had once sent Lucius flying, the look on the elder Malfoy's face was that intimidating. Dumbledore rose, smile gentle, as Ron's knuckles went white on the arms of his chair.

"I'm sure Harry knows exactly what his intentions are. Don't you, Harry?"

There was a small, nasty part of him that wanted to admit to the prank. That wanted to see Lyra's eyes fill with tears, see the hurt, feel the hurt she had caused him so often when they were younger. A small, dark part that wanted to make her suffer in front of her father. That wanted to mock her for thinking he could ever care for her, to see her break. That was what a prank was for, right? To make someone deserving suffer some humiliation? A little pain?

And it would free him from this deception that was already getting way out of hand…

He looked up into her eyes. They were hopeful and warm. The affection she held for him was there, open and unguarded.

Harry hadn't seen affection for him in many eyes, that was for sure. Awe, amazement, but not… care.

Sirius's words came to him: When it comes to her father? Be bold and audacious.

He took a deep breath. He stood. He walked over to Lyra and took her hand in his. Then he turned to face Lucius and Snape.

"My intentions are… well…"

What did they say in Aunt Petunia's old BBC romantic dramas that had bored him to tears?

"To court her."

Lyra turned bright red and made the most adorable squeaking sound Harry had ever heard in his life. She covered her mouth with her free hand, staring at him as if the rest of the office had ceased to exist. He had to admit, he did like that look on her.

Lucius practically growled. His wand hand twitched. Snape's face pinched further.

"To what end, Potter?" Lucius's voice was low. "You should know full well this ends in only one of two ways: either you marry my daughter, or you break it off and you die to satisfy her honor. So which is it?"

He loomed. Magical energy crackled faintly around him; his eyes nearly glowed. Harry found what remained of his courage.

"Um… w-well—"

"To… to marry me?!" Lyra's voice cracked.

"No!"

She gasped. Hurt flashed across her face. She tried to pull her hand free. Lucius's fingers closed on his wand.

"I—I mean not now!" Harry said quickly. "Not right now! We need to finish school b-before we can think about that! But I—I just mean, you know… th-the process starts?"

Lyra stilled. The adoring look returned, cautious but present.

"Oh… oh, I—I see. I understand, Harry. It would be… it would be too soon now—" Her father's stare landed. Color rose in her cheeks. She cleared her throat. "And Potter is no good as a husband right now! He's a mess, his grades are only adequate, he—he has to work on his flying skills! All—all very important things to improve upon, Father!"

The haughtiness was back in her voice. The warmth in her eyes remained. Harry felt a small, complicated hope, and a larger, more familiar torment. One step at a time.

Lucius's mouth thinned. "Really? Is that truly the case, Potter? You're set on my daughter as your wife? Is this truly what you want?"

Harry turned to face him. Lyra's hand was still in his. He swallowed and met the cold grey eyes.

"Yes."

"Potter," Snape said, "you barely understand how to live as a wizard. How do you think you'll be as a husband to a pure-blood lady?"

"Greasy Snapey is single!" Dobby announced from behind the chair.

Snape's glare swung toward the elf. Dobby vanished behind Ron. Ron, unfortunately, did not share Dobby's survival instincts.

"And what's wrong with Harry? He'd be a—a great husband! I mean, he killed a thousand-year-old basilisk to save my little sister! And he barely knows she exists! Imagine what he'd kill for Lyra! He actually really likes her!"

Dumbledore examined a sock with careful interest, the corners of his mouth hidden.

"Well put, Ron. I do believe you don't have to worry about your daughter's safety, Lucius."

"That's just one threat to her." Lucius's snarl had lost some of its edge. Ron shook his head.

"If you're worried about that, Harry can throw off the Imperius! The only one in our class to do it!"

"Y-yes, Father, that's true! He did throw it off!"

"I mean, not even you could do that, Mister Malfoy?" Ron's smirk was tiny and suicidal. "I mean, that is what you claimed to the Ministry of Magic after the First War, right? That You-Know-Who Imperio'd you? Well, it'll never happen to Harry! He'll never be mind-controlled by You-Know-Who or anyone else!"

Lucius went very still. His eyes narrowed to slits. He regarded Ron for a long moment, then managed a slow nod.

"Yes… quite…"

Ron was not foolish enough to push further. Or brave enough. He was, however, still talking.

"And he defeated You-Know-Who as a baby anyway, and in first year, again in second, drove off a hundred Dementors in third—"

"Ron…!" Harry said, warning.

"And he's the Boy-Who-Lived, rich, handsome, athletic—what, that's not good enough for you, Mister Malfoy? Is there another boy better for your daughter?"

"I do believe Potter's head is swollen enough, Weasley." Snape's voice was dry. "No need to inflate it further."

Lucius's scowl softened a fraction as he looked at Lyra. She was watching Harry with open adoration; the expression vanished into cool propriety the instant her father's eyes found her.

"And… you would consent to being courted by Potter, Lyra?"

"…I—I would, Father."

"And if I told you the match was bad and I would disown you if you continued?"

Her eyes widened. "You—you wouldn't—you can't—!"

"I am your father, Lyra! I determine what is best for you and—"

"You wouldn't—!"

"If I had to, I would!"

Tears stood in her eyes. "I—I'd hate you forever!"

The office went quiet. Lucius looked, for the first time, pained.

"Lyra—"

"Let's all calm down, shall we?" Dumbledore stepped between them, smile gentle and immovable. "It is far too soon to think about marriage in any courting process, Lucius. And I can vouch for Harry's character: he would never take advantage of your daughter."

Harry nodded vigorously. Lyra's hold on his arm tightened.

"Let these young people explore their feelings. Indeed, Harry is a good match all around—for your daughter, and for you. Can you think of a better way to improve your standing in the Wizengamot than Harry Potter as a potential son-in-law? Especially with that unfortunate business with the Chamber."

Lucius was still tense, but calmer. "That is true, Headmaster… however, as a father… I am only looking out for my daughter's welfare."

"And she understands that. But do see things from an objective viewpoint: a date and a kiss do not endanger your daughter or your family. And once again, I can vouch for Harry's character. You have nothing to worry about… though no doubt you will, being a doting father."

"…Yes, Headmaster." Lucius turned to Lyra and Harry. "If this is your decision, Lyra… I will respect it."

"Thank you, Father," she said, quiet and grateful.

Lucius leaned in. The glare he directed at Harry was pure deadly promise. Harry held his ground, face set.

"But rest assured, Potter… if you mistreat my daughter… what I have planned for you would make what the Dark Lord would do to if he returned pale in comparison. Is that clear?"

Harry managed not to stutter. "Clear."

"Good." Lucius turned to Lyra. "If he so much as makes you cry—"

"F-Father… he won't." The haughtiness returned. "Besides… don't you think I can handle myself? Not that he ever would, but I would make him rue the day he was born if he tried anything!" She caught Harry's stare and added quickly, "Not that I think you would, Harry!" Her father's look returned. She went cold and arrogant again. "But if he does, oh… I will make him suffer."

Lucius looked, for a moment, proud. Snape looked vaguely ill. Ron and Dobby both regarded Harry with expressions of pity and disbelief.

Lucius nodded slowly. "Very well… if you'll excuse me, Headmaster… I must speak with Ludo Bagman about arrangements for the tournament. We can talk about other arrangements at a later time."

"Of course, Lucius. Severus, would you please accompany Lucius and aid him in these matters?"

"Of course, Headmaster." Snape stared at Harry and Lyra for an uncomfortably long moment, then shook his head and sneered. "This way, Lucius."

They left. The door closed. Harry exhaled. Lyra's hand stayed tight on his arm.

"I…" Her voice was low. "Thank you, Harry."

"Haaa… you're welcome…"

He had thought third year was a roller coaster. This felt like all of it compressed into a few minutes.

"Oh… we've missed Divination!" Ron brightened. "But it's lunchtime!"

"I'll write you all a note." Dumbledore's smile returned. "Yes, let's have lunch. I daresay a break and a meal would be excellent right now. Don't you agree, Harry?"

"Y-yeah… completely."

"We'll sit together," Lyra said.

"But—"

"We'll sit together."

"…Yes, Lyra."

"DOBBY SO AMAZED!" Dobby launched himself at Harry's leg. "HARRY POTTER SIR STOOD UP TO MEAN EX-MASTER! DOBBY HAPPY! HARRY'S LYRA IS GOOD GIRL!"

"Ack!"

"Dobby! Dobby, down! Dobby, heel!" Lyra shouted.

Dumbledore regarded the scene with twinkling eyes. "Enthusiastic little fellow, isn't he?"

 

[nemo1986]

"And what's wrong with Harry? He'd be a—a great husband! I mean, he killed a thousand-year-old basilisk to save my little sister! And he barely knows she exists! Imagine what he'd kill for Lyra! He actually really likes her!"

Click to shrink...

At this moment in time Ginny felt a stab of irrational rage against Ron for reasons she did not know.

 

[digcat]

Your going to make me like Dobby if you keep this up.

 

[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.

 

[TastyHuman]

"But rest assured, Potter… if you mistreat my daughter… what I have planned for you would make what the Dark Lord would do to if he returned pale in comparison. Is that clear?"

Harry managed not to stutter. "Clear."

"Good." Lucius turned to Lyra. "If he so much as makes you cry—"

Click to shrink...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LdQ48eLjk0

United States Mage Corps:

Click to shrink...

I really appreciate the effort put into fleshing out the American magical world. Rowling's one school per continent means there's a lot of worldbuilding to do before you can travel outside Magical Britian.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LdQ48eLjk0

I really appreciate the effort put into fleshing out the American magical world. Rowling's one school per continent means there's a lot of worldbuilding to do before you can travel outside Magical Britian.

Click to shrink...

I personally feel that Rowling's population of 3000 of Wizards for Britain is way too small. It needs to be at least 300-500,000 to be sustainable. This means that Hogwarts needs to have a few thousand students total and there should be smaller schools as well. Scaled up this means that the United States would have a few million wizards, and thus that means multiple schools too.

 

[TastyHuman]

I personally feel that Rowling's population of 3000 of Wizards for Britain is way too small. It needs to be at least 300-500,000 to be sustainable. This means that Hogwarts needs to have a few thousand students total and there should be smaller schools as well. Scaled up this means that the United States would have a few million wizards, and thus that means multiple schools too.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure about the numbers being that high (that would make approximately 5% of the population wizards, and I refuse to believe that one in twenty people can be magic without breaking the Statue of Secrecy or being mostly squirreled away in pocket universes), but I agree it should be larger than 3,000.

The best comparison I've seen is that Wizarding Britain feels like a reasonably sized town (given how many people know each other personally) and it would line up with Rowling throwing out 3,000 as a total population. There's a whole bunch of other details that line up well with a single town's population (Diagon Alley as the main shopping center in Britain, a single school educating most of the children, a gang of thugs maybe 50-100 strong threatening the whole place), so that's probably what Rowling was thinking of when creating locations and culture. This only gets messed up when she has to draw on things that just don't exist in small towns (like the Ministry of Magic and Quidditch World Cup).

Personally I estimated 12,000 or so with basic napkin math (one house table is once described as 200 people cheering, makes 800 at Hogwarts, school age population is about 12% of normal population, double it for wizards living exceptionally long lives). This would make the wizarding population slightly less than 0.2% of the total population, giving approximately 500,000 wizards in the USA. This could be adjusted somewhat, as wizards are effectively an isolated population and have no real reason to follow muggle population trajectories.

Assuming that they have approximately the same genetic drift as normal populations wizards require between 1,000 and 10,000 people. Stretch the "town" to its maximum size and I'd expect a maximum population of maybe 30,000 before you need to substantially rewrite Wizarding Britain itself.

Notably, the magical population includes far more than just wizards, with goblins, centaurs, vampires, hags, and more adding to the population. This would allow for larger institutions like Gringotts and St. Mungo's (I wonder how many house elves work there?) without breaking the town population numbers that underpin a lot of locations. You can view those as neighboring British towns if you like.

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

Broke: Trying to """write Slytherin well""" will end up with a poor man's Those Who Walk Away From Omelas. Sacrificing 25% of eleven year olds into a deterministic well so the rest can live in a moralistic paradise is something canon doesn't concern itself with.

Woke: The Slytherin-Sorting Hat cartel will carry on being the hidden messiah of the Wizarding world and they will keep on winning and adapting until the return of King Arthur. Goddamn it's good to be a snake.

"Wait, it's all wuxia/xianxia cultivation in the end?"

"Always has been."

It fits though, because Voldemort is like a baby demonic cultivator. Dude secured his immortality first, then went on to invent exciting new magic in a very literal fashion. We like our flying bricks in superhero stories for a reason.

I like this plot of Harry getting nailed to the monogamy bullet train with Malfoid, while Ron gets booted onto the polygyny trenches.

Harry's a Seeker who literally goes straight to the endgame, while Ron, being a master chess player who probably defeated Minerva "Hellfire" McGonagall's pre-programmed chess skills at eleven, is stuck trying to outmaneuver harem antics.

Click to shrink...

The first two thirds of this post made me think that Salazar Slytherin was trying to make the Kwisatz Haderach.

Slytherin: "No, Godric, we don't need to have anything to do with the mud people who want to burn us for being witches. What we need is the spawn of the one shifty mage knight who is due to come with the conquerors next century, and... Well, definitely House Black and... A Peverell, but they're not going to be born for another 250 years, so the descendants are going to have to get on top of that one - hopefully they don't marry into the wrong line - anyway... yeah, perfect witches and wizards everybody."

Gryffindor: "Helga, Rowenna, it didn't work, Salazar found his bong again."

And then I thought about how the Purebloods would react to getting their hands on books like Dune or any wuxia novel.

Half of the Purebloods on discovering Muggle literature: "What a load of rubbish."

The other half: "Write that down, write that down."

But drifting further into the subject of cultivation stories and power systems.

Voldemort really is a baby demonic cultivator.

Which means that the next logical question is how far could a wizard or witch who really knows the business go?

I am now tempted to make flying Malfoid a thing. She's a natural Occlumens apparently according to the wiki.

Or Hellfire McGonnagal, the badass former/sort of current soldier witch.

Or Competent Lockhart who is also a PE Teacher!

Click to shrink...

Competent Lockhart gamed the curse by quitting halfway through the term and reapplying for a different position.

Lockhart: "I've dealt with this sort of thing before. Curses cast by humans, those you can escape by being trickery and using caveats and contingencies or language games that the caster didn't think or didn't mean. Curses cast by other things… not so much, but I do have a story about that one."

Hermione worked with the tight, furious focus of someone determined not to look at the table two rows over. Every few minutes she failed. Ron and Daphne sat with their heads bent over a shared cauldron, and each time Hermione's gaze drifted that way her stirring grew sharper. Pansy rolled her eyes, sighed, and continued guiding Neville through the careful chopping of the roots. The summer growth spurt had left him broad enough that both witches had shifted their stools outward to give him room.

"Really, Granger," Pansy said, low. "You could not be more obvious."

"I—I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you don't." Pansy nudged the newt eyes closer to Neville's hand. "Here. Put them in like this."

"Oh. Thanks, Pansy."

Hermione's knife paused. "Wha—since when were you two on a first-name basis?"

Neville flushed. "Well… uh… we kind of grew up together."

Pansy shrugged, unbothered. "Our houses formed an alliance after the war. Neville's gran demanded a lot of concessions from mine since we were Imperio'd on the side of You-Know-Who, and Neville's gran is my…" She screwed up her face, calculating. "Fourth cousin removed? I don't know. In any event, we visited at each other's houses as children several times."

"I…" Hermione stared. "But you were always bullying him."

"Yeah." Neville's smile was small and genuine. "It's nice you're being nice this year."

"I was always nice, Neville." Pansy's tone was almost fond. "You're the scion of a Great House. You need to toughen up."

Hermione groaned and pressed her fingers to her temples. "The world has gone mad."

Pansy leaned in, voice dropping further. "Well. If it helps ease your mind, Lyra made clear that we need to treat you better. Gryffindors, I mean."

"Oh?"

"She even brought her case to Snape. Said that with the Triwizard, we need to present a united front."

Neville blinked. "Ohhh. I thought it was just because she's dating Harry."

Pansy's smirk was quick. "Well, obviously it is like that. But you know Lyra. She can't admit to that."

"Ohhh."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "Is that why Greengrass is so ardent?"

"Daphne is just weird, Granger." Pansy returned to the roots. "Weasley being a challenge to her in chess is more than enough reason for her to pursue him."

Hermione grumbled. Then Ron laughed—short, surprised, and unmistakably pleased. She looked over. He was smiling, nervous and bright, while Daphne watched him with an expression that was simply warm. Hermione's jaw tightened. She drove her knife into the bubotuber with more force than the task required.

"Um… Hermione?" Neville said carefully. "Are you okay—?"

"I'm fine."

Pansy did not look up from the cauldron. "You don't look fine."

"Well I am!"

"Snape," Neville whispered, as the professor approached. All three went back to their potion. Snape sneered over them, as Longbottom flinched a bit. He then moved on, content, it seemed, to allow his mere presence to speak for him.

"I'm fine," Hermione hissed.

"We're just concerned about you, Hermione," Neville murmured. Hermione scowled.

"Well, don't be! Ron and I… We're just friends, that's all! I just don't think Greengrass has good intentions for him!"

Pansy smirked knowingly. Hermione turned bright red.

"Shut up!"

---

Ron was, against every expectation he had carried into the dungeon, almost enjoying himself. Daphne knew what she was doing. She had laid the ingredients out in the order they were needed, corrected the angle of his knife without comment, and set a small timer charm that chimed softly each time something had to go into the cauldron. The work moved cleanly. The cauldron did not smell like anything was about to explode.

"You chop the ingredients well," she said.

"Oh. Well, uh. I had to help Mum with potions growing up a lot."

"Really? That's useful experience. I only got taught by my tutor. My parents didn't teach me much directly, save for spellwork."

"Oh. I'm sorry…"

"It's all right." She measured a careful pinch of powdered root. "My father did teach me chess. I am very fond of it because it was one of the few times we could get together, between his work and the Wizengamot."

"Oh… oh, uh, yeah…"

When she was simply talking, without the deadpan proposals or the sudden declarations, it was easier to notice that she was pretty. Blonde, a little more willowy than Lyra, with deep blue eyes and high cheekbones. She was usually cold to the point of stillness. The small, genuine smile that appeared when she spoke about chess was not.

"I'm sure if you defeat my father in chess and a duel," she said, still in the same even tone, "he will give you my hand in marriage."

"Urk!"

"Just kidding."

"Bloody hell!" Ron laughed, short and startled. "Don't scare me like that!"

"He'll probably just ask for the chess match."

"Ack!"

Snape, who had been looming over Parvati and Lavender's station, turned. "Five points from Gryffindor, Weasley."

"I provoked him, Professor," Daphne said.

Snape regarded her for a moment. "…Very well, Greengrass. Five points from Slytherin."

He resumed his circuit, black robes trailing, sneer intact. Ron stared at Daphne.

"Wow. Thanks."

"The House Point system is a joke anyway." She stirred once, precise. "Your reward at the end of the year is just the banners in your house colors, and your Head of House holding an empty cup in their office."

"But… it's pretty nice, right?"

"It's entirely arbitrary. If the Headmaster wants to, he can just give one house enough points on a whim to win."

"Hey! We earned those House Points in first year!"

"I know. But you do realize the only reason we've been winning before you came was because Professor Snape is just as biased. So why get points for sucking up?"

"Huh." Ron turned that over. "I never thought about it that way…"

A prickle ran up the back of his neck. He looked, slowly, toward the other table. Hermione was glaring at them. Her hair had begun to puff outward in a way he associated with incoming lectures and, occasionally, hexes. He swallowed.

"She seems jealous," Daphne observed.

"Well, she's not!"

Hermione's knife hit the cutting board with a sharp, decisive crack. Ron decided, for the sake of survival, to keep his eyes on the cauldron.

---
The corridors on the way up to Divination were colder than they had any right to be-Though that wasn't because of the temperature. Hermione walked several paces ahead, bag clutched tight, spine rigid. Ron and Harry followed at a distance that kept shrinking no matter how carefully Harry tried to manage it.

"I said I was sorry!" Ron called.

"I'm not mad!" Hermione growled.

"You are!"

"How would you know?!"

"'Cause I know how you are when you're mad!"

"No, you don't!"

She disappeared around the next corner without looking back. Harry set a hand on Ron's shoulder and slowed them both.

"Let her go. She'll get over it."

"I dunno, mate." Ron glanced after her, uneasy. "She's awful mad."

"Well… I mean… maybe she just worries about you and Daphne."

"What? I like her." Ron's ears went pink. "Mostly. She's scary and weird and… great. Why would Hermione feel jealous of that?"

Harry laughed under his breath. "I dunno… Snuffles says that's all girls."

Ron looked at him hopefully.

"Think he could give me some advice?"

Harry shrugged.

"I'll ask…"

Ron's expression changed. He looked past Harry's shoulder and went pale. Harry turned. Snape was advancing up the corridor, cloak flaring, face set in a deeper sourness than usual. Harry did not know what had put him in that mood and had no interest in finding out. His eyes caught on a familiar gargoyle a few feet ahead.

"Uh… lemon sherbet?"

The gargoyle sprang aside. Harry grabbed Ron's sleeve and pulled him through. The stone slid shut behind them with a soft, final sound.

Ron stopped. His eyes widened at the Headmaster's office: the sleeping portraits of former headmasters, the delicate silver instruments ticking and turning on every surface, the phoenix dozing on its perch, and the man himself behind his desk. Dumbledore looked up from the parchment in front of him and smiled, eyes bright behind the half-moon spectacles.

"Well. Harry. Ron. What a pleasant surprise. What brings you two by?"

"Uhhh…" Harry tried. Ron answered first.

"W-we… we think someone's gonna try to kill Harry again this year!"

A few years ago Harry might have frozen. He was fourteen now, and wiser in the particular way that came from repeated experience. When a friend said something outrageous and entirely true in front of the Headmaster, the correct response was to roll with it.

"Ah, yes, Headmaster. I mean… there's a big tournament and international intrigue and all sorts of mysterious terrible things happening… so we wanted to know how you would handle things?"

Dumbledore's expression settled somewhere between amusement and mild exasperation. "Thank you for bringing your concerns, gentlemen. Shall we discuss them at length?"

Fawkes chirped from the perch. Dumbledore shook his head.

"The expense reports can wait, old friend."

The phoenix trilled, exasperated, then shrugged in a distinctly avian way and returned to his food. Dumbledore set his quill down and folded his hands.

"Now then. Tell me what has you both so certain that this year will be more dangerous than the last."

Click to shrink...

For a minute I thought Hermione was mad about learning that the House Points system was a joke.

I think the only person who would take it worse is Percy.

And Ron, there is not enough magic in the world for you to beat the favoritism allegations.

Nevertheless, thank you for writing this.

Glad one person realizes that arbitrary point systems that pit children against one another is the real issue. For a society that fears maladjusted wizards their mandatory school system sure loves to induce social isolation and mistrust of your peers.

Click to shrink...

Hogwarts: The idea is that we put all of the screwy kids, or the kids who are going to turn out screwy, together in one place. And then we pit all of the children against each other so everybody else can learn suspicion and contempt for the serial killers early in a safe and controlled environment.

If you feel like being cynical, it sort of makes the narrative message of the entire Harry Potter franchise ultimately, that it stands not for the proposition that any act or belief that nothing that Voldemort or the Death Eaters said or did was wrong in and of itself. I think, sincerely, that what that story said was that what made those beliefs and behaviors wrong was who was the target and who was the beneficiary, not any external moral principle/evaluation/criteria or negative quality inherent to the subscription to those beliefs or commission of those actions themselves. At least in practice.

But whether or not the aforesaid was what the actual message of the story of Harry Potter was meant to be, and whether the author succeeded or failed in saying what she had set out to say is beyond the scope of this discussion.

Nevertheless, my analysis remains unchanged - ironically - the Slytherins have to be changeable, they have to be the most mutable of the bunch.

Theirs is the house that requires the greatest ability to readjust and reorient to adapt to new circumstances and information.

Like I had mentioned with the Malfoys, they lost out on the British Monarchy, and just about every major money-making venture at the British Empire's height - which they would have probably loved to be a part of - thanks to the Statute of Secrecy. So the most reasonable move was to become the poster children for blood purity.

By that same logic, Malfoid falling in love with someone with Harry's pedigree is an unwitting PR masterstroke.

Like any good Slytherin, she can at least make it look like she outflanked her naysayers on their own purported values.

And that is something typical of the Slytherin mindset.

There's another idea for a story - the Pureblood Slytherin rich girls have a meeting to talk about the boys they like, but all of the positive qualities they list are weighed on PR value, their own image, and political alliance viability and ramifications.

---

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.

Click to shrink...

Grindelwald/Voldemort: tries to take over.

The Patriots: "You're not ending our plans, you're expanding them."

And I had another excerpt from an American DADA textbook:

"The magic missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subspell uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the magic missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.

In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the magic missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GSA. However, the magic missile must also know where it was.

The magic missile's guidance subspell works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the magic missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error."

So apparently one of the side plots and back story for Hellfire McGonnagal she was working for a time a solider under Big boss. So yes metal gear crossover

Click to shrink...

And Metal Gear happens in 1995, so I am toying with the idea of having Ahab's ghost show up as a guest lecturer.

---

And, @AndrewJTalon , great job on the snippets today.

Also here is the definitive version of Narcissa for me.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVI9xwOjQLY

Narcissa: "So, when is your due date?"

Lucius: - Hits the roof -

Lyra: "Mother, I'm not pregnant."

Lucius: "Oh, thank fuck."

Narcissa: "Then try harder."

Lucius: - Faints -

Narcissa: "As for names, you are a Black so I expect at least three, and that they be named for constellations and celestial bodies. At least one should be named for us, Lucius or Narcissa depending on whether that one is a boy or girl, getting us both only becomes a priority if your father and I are dead by the time you start. This is independent of how many you wish to name after your Malfoy ancestors and will not count toward that value. One of them should have your husband's name as their middle name, ideally your first or second born. Also, it hasn't been a full two generations so you won't be able to get away with naming any of your daughters Andromeda, but your children will. So, that is three constellations, plus a son named James and a daughter named Lily, plus a Lucius or a Narcissa - unless the worst should happen to your father and I and you become the new Baroness Malfoy in the interim - that puts us at... six, maybe seven. The first boy's middle name should be Harold, and you should name one after Severus in some way if you think he has proven himself worthy of the honor, so that's seven, maybe eight... Unless you get on an unlucky streak and aren't able to have enough boys and enough girls then don't stop..."

Lyra: "...I'm not the Weasel's mother..."

Narcissa: "And you will not pretend that I had insinuated otherwise Lyra Lucia Malfoy, but on that point, Bellatrix isn't a safe name either unless you want to start a blood feud. It will not even be a safe name for your grandchildren. They can name their daughters Bellatrix if they so desire, four generations is generally acceptable. But neither you, nor your children, will insult your husband's closest allies without cause. We raised you better than that and we trust that you will raise your children thusly. Anyway, he might have people that he wants to name his children after so you'll have to adjust on the ground, or the mattress *Lucius choking* as the case may be. And while I am on the subject of mattresses, if you don't already sleep on your side, start. Left side if possible, it helps with circulation and surviving attacks on your person in your sleep. And speaking of sleep and attacks on your person..."

Lyra: "What? What about attacks on my person during my sleep?!?!"

Narcissa: "Nothing..." 'I think I'll let you discover what happens when the little ones find your ribs for yourself.'

Okay, that sort of ran away with me and went from Narcissa wants grandkids to its own plot.

---

Also, congratulations everybody, Malfoid is now tied with Bowsette... on certain websites.

 

[Naming Wrongs]

Dobby edged behind Harry's chair. Even with the knowledge that he had once sent Lucius flying, the look on the elder Malfoy's face was that intimidating.

Click to shrink...

This reminds me of the one where Lucy's confrontation with Harry at the end of his second year has him throw a beaten Dobby at Harry's feet and AK him.