FicWad

Well ladies and gentlemen I would like to start this fic with what will likely be a rather long preface. This is mostly because I feel that I have come to a rather depressing realization regarding the state of canonical Harry Potter universe, and I want to at least try to explain it.

The realization I have made is that the “Wizarding World” is dying.

I know that there are plenty of other authors out there, who seem to have realized this as well. But I don’t think many of them have realized the true extent of the problem.

I suppose I should give a few examples and attempt to analyze my new insight, I’ll try to keep it as brief as I can, while still including relevant information.

To start with the size of Hogwarts is disproportional to the number of students and staff in its hallowed halls. Harry’s entire year, seems to have less than fifty students. Keep in mind that there are maybe a dozen students in his year that are named, and there are about a dozen staff members in the entire school.

So for a rough estimate we’ll go fifty times seven, plus twelve which gives the tentative total population of Hogwarts somewhere around three hundred and sixty two.

For reference, my grade school had more students than that, and I live in a pretty small town. And my grade school was physically about a hundred times smaller and had way more teachers per student.

That, admittedly rather roughly, estimated number includes the very rich, the very poor and the students a sizable portion of the magical society would love nothing more than to torture to death. “Aka: the muggleborns”

And it is that previous estimate, which I would use against those who would say that there are more schools in wizarding Britain than just Hogwarts. I mean, if there were schools that were cheaper or more exclusive, you wouldn’t think that everyone would go to the same place would you?

The only reason I can think of for them to use a massively oversized castle for such a tiny student population would be there not being enough students to justify smaller schools being maintained or having new ones built. Not to mention that such actions would further splinter wizarding culture.

In fact, as far as I can tell, there are only three schools in all of Europe. Hogwarts is in the UK and gets all the UK’s students. Durmstrang gets the eastern European students, as despite being described as being located in the north has students from Bulgaria, a nation far south of England. And the third is the school in France, Beauxbatons. I think there might be an all-girls school in Salem but don’t quote me on that. (Also, why would wizards build a school there? That would be like building a school for Jewish kids in Auschwitz. Seriously guys, what the Hell?)

The existence of other schools in the orient is implied but never outright stated. Unless Hogwarts gets the students from England’s former colonies, in which case India and Asia’s magical cultures are likely completely extinct considering there are less than a dozen “Foreign” students named. (Actually, there’s less than five named, but who’s counting.)

Then there is the wizarding worlds odd trend towards one to two child families. For a the English wizarding world, whose population seems to be hanging around the low thousand to high hundreds, you would think that families with dozens of kids would be the norm. (And by extension that Muggleborns and Half-bloods would be less common instead of half of the class.)

And Jesus Christ their population is low! It’s low enough that Voldemort had to travel abroad to gather an army in the hundreds to assault Hogwarts, whose defenders numbered in the double digits, despite total support from everyone who wasn’t in Hogwarts including the ruling government.

Speaking of Tom’s little civil war; these constant conflicts can’t be good for their already extremely low population. Once every fifteen years or so might not be constant for muggles whose population numbers in the billions, but for the hundred thousand or so magical people in the world, and that is an extremely generous estimate in my opinion; it must seem constant and debilitating.

 And we must remember that civil wars over mostly pointless things are a great indicator that a civilization is beginning to die. Rome had dozens before finally splintering in two and many Chinese dynasties usually had one or two before they collapsed.

The main difference however, is that the wizarding world and its culture takes such care to hide itself, that when they disintegrate there will likely be nothing left but empty ruins.

Rome fell but her culture lives on. When the hidden Wizarding World dies, it will be as though it had never been.

These things being said, there are many people who seem aware of this problem. Most see it as a minor thing like a cold or the flu. My belief however, is that the wizarding world is not merely sick, it is terminally ill.

Which would be my biggest complaints in the way the series is usually portrayed, but it isn’t my biggest problem overall.

Oddly enough my biggest issue with the series isn’t really a pothole exactly, and it is by no means unique to Harry Potter, but it is an ever-present nuisance of the so called Urban Fantasy Genre. (And to be honest, the Harry Potter universe is among the best of the genre that I’ve read.)

What I’m talking about is historical context. Anyone who has ever played one of Paradox’s games like Crusader Kings or Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun will tell you that history will never happen the same way twice.

This is because history is a huge mesh of interconnected events, all of which are governed by those preceding them. Seemingly inconsequential things can have massive impacts, that ripple down the chain to those events that follow them. Which is what the butterfly effect is.

If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, I would advise you to look for an after action report of someone who played a linked game through all four of Paradox’s titles. The end results are usually almost completely inconceivable and irreconcilable with the modern view of the word, and of the normal historical events that we look back on.

What I am getting at, is that any even extremely slight change to the timeline, even something as seemingly minor as some random eleventh century peasant getting water from the well a day later than he would have otherwise could easily spiral outward and have an impact that echoes through time.

That means that adding something to the world, in JK’s case it’s having magic and a bunch of fictional animals, people and events being real. This should have almost completely changed the entire course of, at the very least more modern history.

And I mean that. It would alter the entirety of at least the last few thousand years of history and have significant impacts in religion, culture, science, technological development, and a thousand other factors for everyone, everywhere!

There should still be some similarities, cultures might still be similar because they are largely developed early and shaped by the environment. But other subjects like technological development would likely be stunted heavily in areas where magic is very common. Many of the modern religions of today would also likely have much smaller influences, and they would certainly be more zealous and xenophobic where they did exist.

Many religions like Christianity and Islam might still exist, but they certainly wouldn’t have spread as far with their abhorrence of magic. Why would the pagans have given up their religions and murder the people who can make it rain on command for the empty promises that religions bring. (Unless those religions have substance too, something which would probably cause a whole host of other issues.) The major religions of today not spreading as far as they did could have far reaching consequences, like the magical peoples not having to hide to begin with. (Also, why does Hogwarts celebrate Christmas? I could understand celebrating the midwinter solstice but did they forget that they went into hiding because the Christians had been attempting to exterminate them?)

Do you see what I mean yet? It’s not really a plot hole, more like a damaged foundation.

That isn’t to say Harry Potter is bad. Like I said earlier it’s still the best example of Urban Fantasy that I can think of. It certainly does a better job at explanations than most stories in this genre, most of them go something like “There are elves stolen straight from Tolkien in the woods, or Native American spirit animals are real! Why? Because fuck you! the author said so!” And all without any attempt to explain how any of those things could even exist in the modern world without anyone knowing or having them make a major impact on history and all the other stuff I mentioned earlier.

Ok so what have I decided to do about it?

Well, the conclusion I came to was to write an Alternate Universe story wherein the consequences of the impact things like magic, mythological creatures and mythical civilizations being real are somewhat explored.

In addition I wanted explore some of the more common themes I see in fanfiction that are usually done awfully, and to make a wizarding world with more than two brain cells to rub together between the lot of them, a civilization with a primary focus on expansion in all manners, instead of the stagnation leading to a slow agonizing death that we see in canon.

That’s where things started to get really weird.

So hold on to your bootstraps gentlemen! Believe me this is about to get pretty surreal.



I would put content warnings here but it’s just easier for you to assume that pretty much every such warning you can think of will apply for this story, running the gamut from the tame stuff like incest and underage drinking to the more intense things like mass genocide, mind-rape and apocalyptic destruction. More importantly, they will be treated differently than they would be in our modern world due to differences in culture and history. Though I assure you we will start out mostly tame for the first few chapters.

But enough of my overly long rambling, let’s start the first chapter!

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Hermione would have given anything in the world to wake up. To wake up, and for the last eight hours to have been nothing more than a terrible dream.

Unfortunately, all manner of pitching had convinced her that it was indeed real. That this had to be the single worst birthday she had ever had, which she realized wasn’t exactly saying much, considering she had only had ten of them before this one. But for her to be arrested for witchcraft on her birthday, it had to be the worst luck she had ever heard of.

And what person in there right mind, who had known her even briefly would have come to such a ludicrous conclusion?

Not that the Varangian Guard cared. They served only the emperor after all, and the affairs of the merchants and their children only really mattered to them if they broke laws too blatantly.

 “Hermione Jean Granger, by the authority vested in me by Almighty God, you are under arrest for witchcraft, heresy and violation of curfew.” The leader of the squad of armored knights, which had kicked in the door to their house, had growled at her.

 Those words still echoed in her head, freezing her blood in her veins. The terrifying stories she had heard in the church, and whispered by cities various busybodies echoed in her mind.

“Suffer not the witch to live.” It was one of the more popular topics for sermons in Constantinople’s cathedrals, and it was one of the few things that the constantly warring Abrahamic faiths could agree on.

It was also pretty ludicrous thought. ‘Hermione Granger, A witch? Ridiculous!” She could hear the voice of the kindly old librarian, Madam Levis echoing the absurdity in her head.

She had at the time, tried to tell them that their accusations were nonsensical, wanted to declare her innocence. She was Hermione Granger; her parents were only merchants for God’s sake! She was the girl that spent nearly all her free time in Constantinople’s great libraries, reading books and scrolls on every subject she could get her hands on, she couldn’t be a witch!

Of course it was hard to protest her innocence through a gag, but she figured that it was the principle of the thing.

And after she had been tied up, the leader of the Guards, a rather stern looking woman with greying hair pulled into a severe bun, had pulled her parents from the room. When they returned, less than a minute later, her father wouldn’t even look in her direction. Her mother on the other hand threw her a disapproving glance, and walked the knight upstairs.

Hermione had figured out what was happening before ten seconds had passed; the guard had decided to arrest her nine year old little sister for good measure.

And while she knew it was insensitive, she wished they had not been placed in the same cell, or that they had at least gagged Melody when they had bound her. Her sister had started sobbing from the second they passed their housed front gates, and continued the entire ride to their holding cell, and hadn’t seen fit to stop until she had finally passed out.

It wasn’t that Hermione didn’t like her little sister, Melody was as adorable as Hermione herself was precocious Or so all the adults she knew had always told her, but the younger girls constant wailing while she had been trying to think, wasn’t really appreciated.

Of course that had only been the start of the oddest and least pleasant day of her life so far.

Sitting tied up on cold stone floors in a darkened little cell, with her sister sprawled across her lap for several hours had been boring, but it wasn’t really unexpected. She had figured the clergy would now be arguing about how best to dispose of them, and Hermione had hoped that they would take there time.

Melody had fallen asleep soon after they had been thrown in their cell, but Hermione found she was unable to even relax, she knew well of the many fates that might await them.

Never before had she regretted her desire to learn everything beneath the sun, but in that moment the knowledge had seemed to taunt her in her darkened cell.

The tension just dragged on, and it had been killing her, would they be sentenced to be hanged, thrown down an oubliette, or burned at the stake? Or maybe if the ecclesiastical who sentenced them was feeling particularly merciless, they could be dragged down into the labyrinthine series of tunnels and dungeons beneath the massive city, to be chained, or worse walled, up and promptly forgotten about.

Not exactly the most pleasant subject for her to dwell on, while awaiting what would likely be a rather short trial, if precedence had taught Hermione anything. But  the knowledge of her immediate future made calming down impossible.

Then her day went from terrifying to exceedingly odd.

The door had opened, and the stern old guard woman from earlier entered the cell, then closed and locked the door behind her.

She flashed Hermione a small smile and knelt down and undid her gag.

Hermione immediately had jumped back into to pleading her naiveté. “I’m innocent, you have to believe me, I’m not a witch.” Hermione had whispered after the lady had motioned for her to be quiet.

That had brought an amused smile to the woman’s lips. “Well, you’re right on the first account but wrong on the last.” She had replied, and this time her voice held an unfamiliar accent.

Then she had drawn a small but ornately decorated stick from inside her vest, and flicked it in a confusing pattern over a small rock.

 “Don’t worry dear everything will be explained soon” She gave the stone a look, then a sharp nod before flicking it straight into Hermione’s forehead.

The next few moments had been a world of their own, dragged by her navel through a realm of blurring amused colors and howling wind instruments, before she had been slammed face first into a pile of straw. Not three seconds later Melody was unceremoniously dropped, still sleeping soundly, on top of her.

That was the sequence of events that had brought her to her current situation.

Nude on her stomach, and half buried in a pile of straw, with her sister who was also apparently naked, as she could feel her sister’s bare skin on her back, still sleeping on top of her shoulders.

Trapped inside what appeared to be the darkened hold of some massive wooden ship, surrounded by hundreds of other boys and girls, seemingly in a similar situation to Melody and her own, quietly whispering amongst each other.

And good God, did she hate where this day was going.

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I apologies ahead of time for the shortness of the chapter (Christ, I think the bloody introduction is longer than the actual chapter.) it’s not the longest but I see it as more of an introduction, testing the waters so to speak.

That being said I am eager to hear what people think, both about my ideas and the chapter itself. I assure you that the next chapter will be no less than twenty pages long and will have a far shorter intro, but I wanted to get this out and see what people think, before diving head first into the wellspring of madness that I have as an idea for this story.

If you want to leave comments or PM my account that’s cool, I assure you that I will read all of them and reply to any that I can. Constructive criticism is appreciated but hell, even flames show me that someone read the story, and that’s more than enough to inspire more chapters in my book.