Chapter 15

October 11th

A week after the first meeting of the DADA class led by Harry, Hagrid finally sent a message listing of the creatures that he would be able to procure as well as the times he needed to get them. Looking over the list and comparing it to the schedule Harry had listed for his course schedule he noticed that only the Red Caps wouldn't be available in time, so he was forced to readjust his schedule. In addition to this Harry alongside Professor Flitwick were also finally able to talk Hagrid into teaching the class about the creatures.

On October 13th Harry along with the rest of everyone at Hogwarts was sitting down ready to eat supper when Dumbledore stood up and announced "it has come to my attention that there is a student here that has unceasingly petitioned me, along with his family, to be sorted into another House. It has not come up in recent times, but according to the laws of Hogwarts the Headmaster has the power to resort a person into another House after seven weeks have passed. So without further ado I ask that Ronald Bilius Weasley come forth."

Ron stood up from the end of the Slytherin table and stood in front of the entire Hall. There he took the Sorting Hat from Dumbledore hand and jammed it onto his head. Harry heard in his head 'milord Dumbledore has stated correctly that Ronald must be resorted into another House. In searching his mind he has made some contacts with those considered Pure Blood Supremacists and feels that they would make splendid allies. I fear that if he stays on the course he is now, that he would quickly become a Death Eater with little if no regret. Since he must go into another House which House would you recommend?'

'Put him into Gryffindor then. Hufflepuff wouldn't know what to do with him and I personally want him as far away from me as possible. He would never fit into Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff anyway as he has no intelligence and has no work ethic. I always felt he was a reverse image of Malfoy, with Malfoy espousing the so called "Dark" and Ron espousing the "Light".'

'Very well milord. I quite agree with your assessment.' With these words relayed to Harry the Hat shouted "Gryffindor."

Ron took off the Hat and handed it back to a beaming Dumbledore, then made his way to a boisterous Gryffindor table and sat next to his brother Percy. Dumbledore beamed and announced "now that has been done with let the feast commence!"

Starting the DADA class later on that day Harry was relieved that Ron had not attended. After the class was done with he carried out his normal schedule until supper where he was broken out of his conversation with Hermione when a tawny colored owl came in and delivered a letter for him. After thanking the owl and offering some of the bread he opened it and found out that was was a joint letter from Samuel Greengrass and Augusta Longbottom. The letter said:

Dear Lord Harry Potter,

I write this to you to inform you of the upcoming celebration that will be carried out on the night between October 31st and November 1st at the standard place. As you may know this is a day that is known as Samhain and is practiced to remember the passing of those who have recently died as well as our ancestors. Our group has made plans to start the ritual starting at midnight of the night on the 31st. When Lady Longbottom was informed of this, she asked me to send on her bequest that her grandson be admitted at this time. Now I know that you have been doing various activities alongside him for some time and request that you give all due consideration to having him attend. In addition to this I will also be inviting my daughters Tracey and Daphne as well. Now I know of the requirements to have them join and feel that they would be able to join at this time. I have enclosed in this missive a letter from Lady Longbottom for you to pass on to her grandson. As for my daughters I have already sent them a letter and they should be contacting you either today or tomorrow to seek your help in leaving the castle without attracting undue notice.

Samuel Greengrass-Davis

Harry extracted the folded up letter and tucked it into his robe pocket. He then burned the letter and made his way over to where Neville was sitting. Once there he whispered in his ear "I have a letter for you from your Grandmother. I will give it to you before our exercise tonight alright? I know that you will have some questions after reading it and ask that you find a way to talk to me privately after reading it."

Neville looked at him with questions brimming in his eyes but remained silent only nodding.

Harry nodded and went on to carry out his normal tasks for the day. He showed up about ten minutes early for their exercise and saw that Neville had shown up early as well. He handed on the letter and sat down waiting while Neville read it.

Once Neville finished reading it he looked over to Harry and asked "according to this letter I am to swear an oath to you that I will never betray some sort of group. There isn't much information in it describing the purposes of the group or why she is asking me to swear this oath."

Harry nodded and thought for a few seconds then said "why don't you wait here for a few minutes until Hermione shows up and I will speak to you both about this tonight instead of our exercise routine as I feel that she may want to join as well." Seeing Neville nod they sat waiting in a comfortable silence for a few minutes until the saw Hermione making her way toward them. Harry stood up and greeted her saying "Hermione there are a few things I need to discuss with the both of you that I consider extremely important. This discussion will take some time so I was hoping that the both of you would agree to forgo our exercise tonight."

Neville said "I agree with this as my Grandmother has requested some things of me that I am hesitant to carry out without some sort of explanation."

Hermione bit her lip then nodded hesitantly as she said "I will listen to this as I trust you Harry, more than most of the teachers to be truthful."

Harry sighed in relief then asked "follow me please as I don't want to discuss this here, as you never know when someone might come along." Harry led them away from the front door and over to some benches sitting near the lake. Once there he took his wand and cast several privacy wards. Once they were in place he said "now before I say anything I have to ask that each of you give me a wizards oath that you will not inform anyone of what I am about to tell you as this information must remain secret. Without this oath I will not tell you anything, I'm sorry that I have to ask this of you but it is necessary as lives are depending on this remaining secret."

Neville and Hermione's jaws had dropped at this statement and they stood there in absolute silence for about two minutes until Neville nodded. He took out his wand and said "I Neville Longbottom swear on my magic that I will inform no one of what is said here to anyone without the permission of Harry Potter. So mote it be."

Harry nodded and completed the oath with a smile saying "so mote it be."

Hermione stood there and gathering all of her courage and trust in Harry to never purposefully hurt her took out her wand and said "I Hermione Granger swear on my magic that I will never inform anyone of what is said here to anyone without the permission of Harry Potter."

"So mote it be" Harry said to complete the oath. He smiled and started off by saying "I can't express the feeling I have at the show of trust you two have shown me right now and I thank you from the bottom of my heart." Taking a deep breath he continued on with "now that the Oath has been taken care of I ask that you allow me to say what I have to say without interruption until I am done. If you have any questions I ask that you hold them until I'm done, alright?"

Seeing their nods and Hermione taking out some parchment and two quills and handing one of them to Neville he started his briefing with "I feel that I need to start off with a bit of a history lesson so bear with me. Back before the advent of Christianity this land worshipped various Gods and Goddesses, in this land and much of Europe the priestly caste were witches and wizards simply because we had magic and it was felt that we were blessed by Them with the gift of magic. Now this led to some problems with some of the leaders, as they felt that they were above the common people, but in the main the religion itself was so inclusive that there wasn't much conflict because of it. Then the Romans started their conquering ways and the rulers and the leaders of the religions were divorced from each other and the religion became divorced from being a check on the rulers. This state of affairs continued on for some time until the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. What made Christianity so different from almost all previous religions is that it caused all of the other religions to become forbidden and all of their followers to be forcibly converted or be killed. Now some of the various witches and wizards in the main continued on practicing their religion while others, mainly those who could be considered muggleborns, came into this society as followers of Christianity. Now the various magical communities had begun to withdraw from society due to the non-magical inhabitants and churches discrimination of anything that they considered to be abnormal and this process continued on until the time of Merlin and King Arthur."

"Now Merlin was originally an advisor to King Arthur as well as a practitioner of the Old Religion; in addition he felt that the separation of the magical and muggle communities was a good idea and felt that the magical community needed to completely break away from the muggles and forge a nation of only magicals. This could only be done by having land granted to them as well as legal protection from the muggles administered by the muggles. So Merlin, since Arthur was facing an invasion by the Saxons at the time, offered his and his followers help in defending this country and making Arthur King of all Britain. Arthur agreed to this plan only if the magical communities ceased all adherences to non Christian religions. Merlin so strongly wanted the magical and muggle communities to separate and have their own country he agreed and converted. Merlin up until this time was the leader of the magical communities and a large percentage switched as well despite any misgivings they felt. You see Merlin and most of his followers felt that magicals were superior to muggles and felt that the only way for muggles to prosper would be for the magicals to take control. In addition to this they had been contaminated by the Christian ideal that humanity was superior to nature and should control the world with no limits whatsoever; in addition they also felt that all men should be equal and not be dictated to by an outside force that they could not control."

"This force that they disliked is the magic field. Now this field permeates the cosmos and is responsible for life. Without that spark of what we call magic, life cannot exist. So everything has it up to and including muggles. Now some animals and plants have adapted themselves to being able to gather more magical power than their competitors while humans were able to gain this ability as well. Now humans had found a way to deepen their connection to this field which had the bonus of increasing their core and even a way to use the field to power their spells. Unfortunately it took some training and discipline to use the field to power their spells, in addition the boost to their cores for witches and wizards differed widely in power. So Merlin and his followers which was a sizeable percentage of the population felt that anything to do with the magic field was wrong and "unnatural"; however there was a few who stayed true to the old ways and fought Merlin and his followers. They were led by Merlin's co-ruler Morganna Le Fay. Unfortunately Morganna and her followers were defeated, but Merlin's followers were in turn betrayed by Arthur and his successors. So the magical community decided to break completely from the muggles and hide from the persecution taking place. Now the remnants that had escaped the conflict with Merlin and his followers decided to still follow their beliefs, but could no longer practice them openly amongst the general wizarding population so they began to meet in hidden places during the night, so they began to call themselves the "Children of the Dark" and the magic they practiced that drew the power from the magic field became known by the rest of the population as Dark magic and those who used it were called Dark witches and wizards. Now they remained relatively hidden from the Ministry and the people who would, if they could find them, kill them for their beliefs. Eventually the government completely discarded and outlawed any and all religious practices that were not Christian."

"Those followers of the Old Ways found out that their numbers were somewhat dwindling due to less children being born to those families that still held to their beliefs so they started selectively recruiting from incoming muggleborns that had faced persecution from muggles before discovering the magical world as about this time Hogwarts was founded by Helga Hufflepuff, Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin. Unbeknownst to the others Rowena and Salazar were followers of the Old Religion and practiced magic that was powered by the magic field. Now Salazar was descended from Roman nobility and argued that the incoming muggleborns and some of the halfbloods be taught in a separate place for a year or two due to the prejudices and unhealthy habits that they brought with them, but was overruled by the others. He grumbled but stayed on as he wanted to pass on as much of his knowledge as possible. He eventually married and fathered three daughters. His eldest married Rowena's son and their sole child reproduced and their descendant eventually married into the Potters. His second daughter married a wealthy wizard named Gaunt. His wife and youngest daughter, who was 13 at the time however were raped and killed by a band of peasants led by a priest. Salazar snapped and started slaughtering the village and those who took part in the murders. In his rage he discarded all pretenses and used spells fueled by the magic field. Godric found out about his actions and arrived on the scene and fought him to the death. When he returned he told all of the students and his fellow members as well as the Ministry what Salazar had done. So Salazar was labeled as an evil and Dark wizard. This started the feud between Gryffindor and Slytherin that still echoes to this day."

"Now some centuries passed and the Ministry mostly forgot all about the magic field and spells powered by it, but kept it as illegal to power any spells by using anything other than a wizards core, all the while they gradually grouped anything that they felt was too powerful or too risky under the heading of Dark magic. Now the practitioners were generally holding steady as far as numbers went. This is until around 250 years ago when they were betrayed by a younger son named Manny Malfoy. He betrayed his parent and his elder brother for a promise of wealth and a seat on the Wizengamot taken from a family that had previously insulted him known as the Weasleys. The ministry ambushed the gathering and decreed as punishment that all of those found there were to be executed by way of tossing them through the Veil of Death. When this happened they also ransacked and burned most of the books that they found at the same time. My ancestor, who was only three at the time, was spared this as he was not there but instead had come down with a flu and his mother was tending to him at the time. Since my ancestors parents were not living at my ancestral manor at the time and had no way of entering the premises the Ministry had no way of entering or searching the place. So when I arrived there earlier I was able to talk to some of my ancestors paintings as well as peruse my families Book of Shadows."