Ephemeris Salazaris Slytherinis
Kalens Augustus, 405 Anno Merlinis*
I, Salazar Slytherin, leave this as an explanation, not as an excuse, for my actions. There is no excuse for what I have now done. This paper I leave to speak for me, as soon I will be incapable of such a deed.
For many years, I have watched the witch hunts in the villages around East Anglia. In that time I have seen countless women and men burned alive and drowned. As the dyings’ screams pervaded my sanctuary, I was forced to wonder why they were selected for this fate.
I first wondered if it had been that they had imprudently boasted that they were witches and wizards, and paranoid neighbors had exploited that statement as grounds for murder. But as the years and the murders continued, I had to rethink that hypothesis; How could everyone of those poor fools have claimed to be witches after witnessing the fate of their neighbors for just that phrase? Needless to say, I soon rejected this hypothesis as silly.
I then wondered if jealousy within the townsfolk had something to do with it. Maybe the victims of these purges had an exceptional talent, say in weaving or singing, and the other villagers couldn’t believe that gift to be natural. But, having wandered several of the concerned villages myself, and failing to see anything which struck me as magically fine, I have long since shelved this idea.
Then I came to wonder if there was a less magical, but no less jealous, reason. What if one woman had thought that her husband had slept with another woman, and then accused the other woman of witchcraft as punishment? Or, what if a man found that he was missing several sheep from his flock, and that his neighbor’s flock might have grown?
But, I finally had a break through. The individual motives of each incident did not matter at all. False confessions, wayward boasts and petty competition had little to do with the real reason that innocents were dying. The only thing that mattered was that they had been accused as witches. The stigma of magic burned them, not the private motives of their fellow muggle.
I let this worry over the plight of muggles who I had never known fall out of my worries. I truly had no point to bother with them. I had nothing to do with them, no matters of importance concerning them, when they were alive, so what did it matter to me how they died? Moving further away from muggles solved my qualms that maybe, just once, I should intervene.
This was years ago, maybe even two decades. Until one year past I could deal with this state of being, in which the muggles lived and died by their own means and I by mine. But last summer this all changed, in a catastrophe which made the stigma of magic a personal matter to me.
In late July, the Norsemen returned to the shores of England, and into East Anglia. Unfortunately, for the muggles, this was not an unusual occurrence. For over two hundred year the Norse had pillaged and raped the muggle homes, while the wizards such as myself remained hidden by our art.
Last summer, a foolish resistance had been mounted by several of the local nobles. A former student of mine, Byrhtnoth, lead this resistance. He longed to defeat the Norse, based on a twisted combination of patriotism and hubris. As a wizard, he felt little fear of failure. With a persuasive tongue and several well timed coercion spells, Byrhtnoth bound several muggle lords to his cause, accompanied with a handful of former classmates from Hogwarts.
Byrhtnoth, convinced that with a show of misguided muggle military might the Norse would flee, marched into Maldon. By the grace of the gall required to execute such a ploy, Byrhtnoth gained the honorary title of savior, or King-Arthur-Reborn. But Byrhtnoth functioned on gall and belief in magic alone. The Norse were well entrenched at Maldon. No army could oust them from their claimed fields. And yet Byrhtnoth remained determined to proceed according to plan.
Reports from Maldon after Byrhtnoth arrived are limited. Upon meeting the Norse and agreeing to battle on even ground, the army of Byrhtnoth fell prey to wondering about Byrhtnoth’s competency and sanity. They wondered how a force such as theirs could even dent a flank of the bloody Norse. Both sides receded to organize. Here Byrhtnoth revealed the plan which he had been harboring close to his breast through the raising of his army: Magic would win this victory for him. The poor fool continued, claiming that it would be his magic and that of his Hogwarts compatriots which would guarantee victory. Upon hearing the word “magic”, the already daunted muggle contingency abandoned Byrhtnoth.
Bound by loyalties to both country and fame, Byrhtnoth and his Hogwarts compatriots remained at Maldon. None returned to tell of their exploits. But towns people many miles away from the battle scene claimed later that they saw sheets of light cloak the sky, and heard whistles and blasts emitted from Maldon. These occurrences mixed with the deserters’ tale that Byrhtnoth had claimed that he would win on aegis of magic to brand Byrhtnoth in memory as a devil’s son.
I was troubled by this turn of events. The stigma of magic had finally intruded into my domain of magic. A student of Hogwarts had finally died under that stigma. With the muggle army’s accusation and abandonment of Byrhtnoth, he was doomed to perish alone and in ignominy. Byrhtnoth had been a first generation wizard, or as it is crudely called, a muggle-born. I fear that he put too much faith in the strength and the openness of the muggle minds he had intended to work with. While his family had largely accepted him and his gift, in return for the benefits he could give them, most muggles openly feared and despised the mere mention of the gift unto wizard-kind. Byrhtnoth had made the mistake of assuming that his powers in wizardry would match and master the Norse and his fellow man in muggle form.
The connection between the death of muggles and the death of Byrhtnoth had haunted me that summer. The stigma of magic. Muggles. Byrhtnoth. Muggles. Magic. Byrhtnoth. Stigma. All of this spiraled in my mind, always demanding an answer, a resolution. There must be a connection, I thought.
Again, I used prodigious logic to find this elusive connection. As I had determined the factor which lead to the death of the muggles, I determined the link between them and Byrhtnoth.
At first, magic itself came to mind as the obvious answer. But, again, I could not accept my first hypothesis. The muggles burned and drowned had no magic, while Byrhtnoth had had magic. So, no, magic itself could not be the reason.
Then, came that bird of ill omen, the stigma of magic. This theory fared well with me for several moons, as it was the ligature connecting the immediate death of both muggle and Byrhtnoth. But, in that damnable state between stupor and true slumber, my conniving mind found a flaw in my cherished idea: I also carried the stigma of magic. I carried it among my peers, among my students and friends at Hogwarts. And yet, though I carried that brand, never once had I been threatened with death because of it.
Fully awakened from its shroud of sleep, my mind began to work full tilt on this new line of reasoning. Now, instead of attempting to find a link, I was seeking a difference. What was the difference between myself and a muggle, when we are confronted with our stigmas? The difference which I found was so simple: our audience. Muggles, and their perception of the stigma, were the connection for which I had sought.
Muggles. It all returned to them. Their own plight at the hands of rumored magic had entered into my own realm, with the death of Byrhtnoth. What had formerly been only their problem had made its full circle and returned again to me. And I now felt compelled to end the circle.
I saw and still see only one way to end the circle of death and suspicion. Muggles learn of magic from wizards, or from other muggles who have met wizards, or whose distant cousin’s sister’s friend’s dog had urinated on a wizard and been turned into a statue for its troubles. So, remove the wizard contact with muggles and the problem is solved.
Yet, currently at Hogwarts half of the student population is first generation wizard, and how can those students be completely severed from their families? The letters of admission into Hogwarts alone will let loose tales of wizards’ continued existence, and that will spawn rumors and legends or evil enough that we are incapable of living up to. Those rumors will do more harm than fact and will be twice as hard to eradicate. What muggle would care too believe that wizards are more likely to use their wands to clean their boots than to torture other hapless muggles? And these rumors spawn with each letter we send into muggle families. And then these legends lead to the stigma of magic, then to the deaths that brand demands.
So, the only way to end the circle of deaths which has now consumed muggle and magic alike, is to cease sending letters announcing our existence into muggle homes. In short, I feel Hogwarts must no longer admit first generation wizards into its halls.
As I said, this all happened last summer. I spent the past school year attempting to convince the others to see my way. But they choose to look away from the suffering which I have seen and now felt. They claim that there will only be more suffering if the first generation wizards, whom we would have admitted, fell prey to unconscious and uncontrolled magic use. Then, they say with mild chortles, the foolish muggles might get something right and actually burn a wizard. They refuse to see that no matter who is dying, they are still dying, that the deaths will not stop because they refuse to acknowledge them and that the muggles are the key to all this.
I, in contrast, see the need for action. I hereby reject the standby and observe attitude of my former comrades. I see that precautions must be taken. Too many have died for me to ignore these things any longer, and I have deduced that the reason for these deaths is the stigma of magic. I have recorded my logic and conclusions leading to that end above. I have also traced the stigma of magic to rumor and gossip about magic, the fires of which are fed by the tales told by first generation wizards and their muggle kin. The all magic families have acknowledged the value of secrecy and comply to its mores. But the first generation wizards do not. So, the only end to this stigma of magic which I can see, is to remove the gossip which causes it, and to thus remove from Hogwarts those who create the gossip: the first generation wizards.
I am ashamed of what I have done, but faced with my deductions I can see no other path. As I cannot sway Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw into agreement with me, I must act alone and without their blessing. They have refused to cease admitting the gossipers, so I have created means by which to remove the students once they arrive at Hogwarts.
I have made a chamber, hidden within the school. Inside, I have placed a basilisk. My plan is that my heirs, under my instruction and following my guidance, will open the chamber and direct the basilisk to remove those who threaten magic and muggle alike. The chamber is safeguarded so that only one who possess my gift of Parseltongue may unlock its gates. Further more, Parseltongue will be required to control the basilisk itself. In these manners, I hope to restrict the chamber’s use to those which follow my original intention. My final safeguard will be my intention which I will teach to my descendants: that this chamber is only to be opened when the amount of lives lost to the scourge of the gossip is grater than the number of first generation wizards in Hogwarts. Too much death already has been seen on account of magic. May my chamber, if used, stop the shrieks of the dying, by liberating them from the stigma of magic. . .
Now I leave this sheet of paper, in testimony to my works. I have told all the events which culminated into my current project, and shown my reasons as best I can.
* This is translated: The Records of Salazar Slytherin, dated the first of August, in the 405 year after the disappearance of Merlin, or 992.
Author’s Note: Byrhtnoth truly lived in England and died at Maldon in 991. He did face the Norse force accompanied only by a few loyal followers, being abandoned by the majority of his force in the face of the Norse’s greater numbers. I found no connections between him and magic. I made that part up.