A Revised History of Hogwarts

A Revised History of Hogwarts
Chapter 1

The sky was a dismal gray as the students made their way up the great stone stairs, led by a slight woman in her mid-30s with long brown hair and very sharp fingernails. "Come along, now," she called back, swaying her lantern back and forth to make sure she hadn't lost any of the students. This generation of students would define the character of the entire school; this was one of the first classes to attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The school was founded in 987 when four colleagues decided that it would be in the best interest of the wizarding world to form a school in Britain for the education of young witches and wizards. It was now 990, and it seemed that the experiment might actually work, drawing on the methods of the other wizarding schools in Europe combined with their own ideas on how to develop the youth of British Wizardry. However, in the third year of operation, all was not well among the founders; Salazar Slytherin detested the other founders' acceptance of Muggle-borns into the school. He and his students increasingly drew away from the rest of the academy, and rumors spread about the castle that Slytherin might separate from Hogwarts and form his own school.

So as the students returned to school the fourth year, tension was high, especially between Slytherin and Gryffindor. The new students filed slowly through the great oak doors, shaking off their cloaks and looking around, squinting against the dim torch light. The little woman, Professor Ravenclaw, lead the children through another set of large double doors, into a huge brightly-lit hall with five long wooden tables full of waiting students. The one at the front of the room was full of prim-looking teachers, and there was a little three-legged stool stood near the head table. Bernhard's eyes took a few moments to adjust to the light, and he looked around nervously at the other students. This was his first year at Hogwarts; he had spent his first three years of school at Durmstrang, but his parents didn't approve of the curriculum there so he was transferred to the nearer school. Since he was older than the first years he was allowed to travel with the other fourth years, but he had to wait in the entryway to enter and be sorted with the other new students. He didn't seem to be alone as an older new student, though; there was a girl about his age with long black hair standing near the edge of the group, quietly chatting with a boy who looked like her younger brother.

"Good evening, everyone!" boomed a voice from the front of the room, at what Bernhard thought was the head table. Everyone was silent and turned to see a tall, broad Saxon man in a striking red tunic and red robes standing before the center chair of the head table. "I would like to welcome you to another productive year at Hogwarts. Before I bore you with my mindless blather, we will commence with the Sorting Ceremony." The older students cheered some, but all the new students just stood as if glued to the floor, as they had no idea what to expect. Prof. Ravenclaw stood, bearing a scroll and a tall, pointed black hat. She stood beside the little stood, primly unrolled the scroll and called out the first name, "Alderton, Willis!"

Willis, a boy about a year older than Bernhard, strutted toward the front of the room. He took his seat, and as the hat was lowered it barely touched his hair when it called out "SLYTHERIN!" Willis smirked as all of Slytherin cheered for him, and he found a seat at their table.

"Baddock, Bernhard!"

Bernhard barely heard his name being called. He looked quickly at the banners on the walls and had a sinking feeling. He really didn't think he'd want to be in Slytherin. He walked up slowly, shaking a little, and when the hat was set on his head he heard a little squeaky voice in his ear.

"Well, good ev'ning," the voice said, making Bernhard start.

"Who're you?" he almost said, but the voice replied just as he thought it.

"I'm the Sorting Hat. I really need to make up a song to let everyone know that, I don't want you new students to be so nervous..."

"Well, which house should I be in?"

"Well, you're very intelligent, and that's what Rowena--I mean, Prof. Ravenclaw-looks for. But then, you are also a very hard worker, a good Hufflepuff trait. I think you'll be... a HUFFLEPUFF!"

Bernhard sighed, relieved. He found a seat at the Hufflepuff table, which looked very bare with only fifteen other students, and tried to pay attention to the rest of the sorting ceremony. However, he lost track of what was happening about the time Algotte Fletcher became the newest Slytherin

In all, there were twenty-six new students this year, six other new Hufflepuffs and six to every other house except Gryffindor which had seven. The girl his age was sorted into Gryffindor, and her name was Helena.

Then there was the feast. The long table was piled high with enough mutton and mincemeat pies, pudding, venison, breads and beer to feed the entire school enough to burst, and more kept on appearing. By the time it was over, Bernhard was quite ready to sleep off this overfilling. The headmaster made a few announcements; the forest to the east of the castle was off-limits to students. Bernhard didn't catch any of the others.

Professor Hufflepuff cheerily lead her House back to their common room, the staircase to which was off the entryway. Outside the door there was a statue of a man clad in chainmail and bearing a large battleaxe. As Prof. Hufflepuff approached, the statue started to move, startling Bernhard.

"Whart's the password?" the statue demanded.

"Faerie lights," Prof. Hufflepuff stated clearly to the statue, and the figure nodded and moved out of the way of the small oak door.

"Girl's dormitories are to the right, boys to the left," Prof. Hufflepuff said, motioning. "You'll find your things already in your rooms, and you will be with your year. Schedules will be delivered to you at breakfast! Good night, all!" she called to all the sleepy students. She giggled; this was one of the funny parts of running a school. When they had all disappeared into their stairwells, she turned and left, heading for the staff quarters.

The staff common room was fairly small, with several long wooden benches surrounding the area around the fireplace. There was only one staff member still awake, and he was sitting on the floor by the fire, huddled over his next lesson. He glanced up at her as Helga entered the room.

"Good evening, Salazar," Helga said casually, pacing toward her quarters.

"Evening, Hufflepuff," replied Slytherin.

Helga's staterooms were fairly warm when she entered, just the way she liked. After over three years, the house elves had finally learned that it was okay to use up firewood in September.

She stepped lightly to her bedroom. Her pet cat, Laurel, was curled up on her large four-poster bed. Helga shooed the cat away and closed the door behind her, pulling off her robes. Unlacing the bodice of her dress, she sat down on her bed, took her wand out of a satchel attached to her belt and said "Flamma." The lamp on her little oak bedside table lit, and she flicked her wand to cause the pitcher on the washstand to pour some water into the basin. She washed her hands, arms and face at the basin and crawled into bed, turning off the lamp.

Crawling in between her magically heated covers, Helga thought of the day she'd had. This was the largest class the school had ever had, and by some strangeness, each of the houses were equal. She had seven new students in her own house, one fourth year and six first years, and she was pleased to note that many of them were Muggle-born.

She quickly fell asleep, but a few hours later she woke, hearing the great wooden door to her room open and soft footsteps across the room to her bed. The covers near her lifted and her husband slid into bed beside her, wrapping one arm around her waist.

"Long night?" asked Helga, leaning her head back against his shoulder.

"As always. The older students' essays are, as always, sub-par," he replied, tightening his hold on her. "And the Gryffindor students are shameful."

"You always say that, but none of the houses are any better in my class than any of the others. You're just biased," she said.

He sighed. "It doesn't matter, anyway. I have control over my own house and everyone is happy that way."

The dorm room Bernhard supposed was his based on the "Third and Fourth Year" sign above the door was a square room, about as big as the cottage his parents family lived in, placed at the beginning of a long hallway on the left side of the yellow-and-black common room. There were two canopy beds, each with a desk and washstand, and Bernhard's small trunk and cauldron were placed on the floor, and the cage containing his small tawny owl named Nimuae on a desk by the window. There was also a little washstand by his bed, and a lit fireplace in the wall opposite the door.

He set to unpacking his few things; his wand was in a little pouch on his belt, along with a few coins his family had sent with him. Unpacking his books, he noticed a little note folded up on his desk with a yellow wax seal bearing the Hufflepuff crest. The note read:

Dear Mr. Baddock,
It is regretful that you are the only fourth-year young man in hour house. As such, we have placed you with the only Hufflepuff third-year, Mr. James Lockhart. I hope that you will become fast friends, and that the coming years will bless us with more young transfers your age.
Humbly yours,
Helga Hufflepuff
Head of Hufflepuff House
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

The oak door quickly creaked opened and in waltzed a young man, not much younger than Bernhard. "Well hullo there!" the boy said, stretching out his hand. "My name's James. And you are…?"

"Bernhard. Bernhard Baddock," he replied, shaking James' hand.

"You third year or what?" James asked, turning to unpack his trunk. He had a loud, screeching cat in a basket on his desk, who he let out. The cat immediately bolted for Nimuae's cage, and the two stared at each other.

Taking a seat on his bed, he answered, "No, I'm a fourth year."

"Uhm. What school did ye go to?"

"Durmstrang."

"Uhm."

There was an awkward pause, so Bernhard drew the curtains around his bed and took off his robes, crawling under the covers.

Bernhard mostly kept to himself the next morning. James spent is time at breakfast talking to his friends, a couple of younger guys named Zane and Marcus and one of the girls his age, Theresa. Bernhard's first two classes of the day were to be Herbology in the Sunroom with Gryffindor, then Potions in the dungeons with all his year. He didn't have any idea where these places were, so he found the girls in his house and followed them as they chattered on about various things, a couple of times trying to make small talk with Bernhard ("Have you heard about the Field Day we're having in a few weeks?"… "No…what's a Field Day?"… "I don't know…").

The girls, whose names were Elizabeth and Isabella, lead him through the Great Hall to an anteroom, and from there into a sunroom where their first class of the day was to be held. Prof. Hufflepuff was sitting in the midst of a bunch of pots with strange, purplish plants which kept on shaking, and shook harder when a student went near them.

"Good morning, students!" Prof. Hufflepuff said. "I'll ask that you all take a seat on one of those benches there," she continued, motioning to some benches down the middle row. Bernhard ended up sitting next to Helena, which was not at all to his disliking.

"Hullo," Helena whispered to him as everyone else shuffled to a find a seat. "I'm Helena Potter. What's your name?"

"B-Bernhard Baddock," he said, unable to make eye contact for more than a moment.

"Well then, now that everyone has a seat," Prof. Hufflepuff continued, her voice echoing softly through the sunroom, "our first job as a class is to prune these Flutterby plants. Everyone, take a pair of dragon hide gloves; these things can get violently angry if you don't have the right touch."

Everyone got up again and picked up a pair of gloves and Prof. Hufflepuff cheerily said, "now, everyone pair up. Our numbers are even, so I want everyone to find someone from a different house, just so we can get to know each other."

"Want to work with me?" Helena asked him, touching his arm with a dragon hide glove-covered hand. Bernhard nodded numbly, and the two claimed the nearest Flutterby shrub.

Prof. Hufflepuff stood up in front of the class beside her own pot with a shrub in it. "Now, the way you prune a Flutterby plant is this;" she began, demonstrating to the class, "you find a dead or dying, brownish- or bluish-colored leaf, grasp its stock firmly and wait for the leaf to fall off. Everybody got it?"

Helena wrinkled her nose in disgust. "That's barbaric," she said, looking at the slightly shaking bush warily.

"That's nothing, Bernhard replied, trying to sound casual. "My education at Durmstrang only advanced my knowledge of how to do things by violently severing it with a knife, eating it and hoping it doesn't kill me." Bernhard had grown up in Norse country surrounded by Vikings who were afraid of any magics they didn't believe their gods directly performed and Christian priests who called them foul and thought them to exist only to bewitch the local Muggles. This had not taught Bernhard how most European wizards operated in their daily lives.

"I see you have a lot to learn," Helena said, slipping on her gloves.

By the time class was over, their plant had put up a terrific fight against the students. Bernhard's education at Durmstrang had paid off; unlike Helena, he wasn't afraid to grab the plant and hold it firmly so that it couldn't shake its leaves violently enough for no one to see its dead leaves. Meanwhile Prof. Hufflepuff's Flutterby plant was softly cooing as she gently removed its few dying two-lobed leaves.

Now Bernhard followed the class on to the dungeons for his first Potions class. This was a subject which he'd excelled at when he attended Durmstrang, which wasn't surprising. His father was one of the great potions masters in northern Europe, and he'd invented a few of the more complicated potions, including the treatment for basins used in the new upscale novelty called Pensieves. Bernhard's father had passed much of his talent and knowledge on to his son.

These dungeons were very much like most of the Durmstrang castle; damp and cool with low ceilings, and for some strange reason torch light didn't carry as well as it did in any other part of the castle. The students filed into the Potions classroom chatting quietly. Bernhard was glad to see that his cauldron had been brought here and was sitting with a bunch of others in the back of the classroom, since he'd forgotten it, and he had heard of snippets of conversations which didn't make him think their Potions master would be very forgiving of slackers.

Bernhard took a seat near the front of the classroom. He placed his mortar and pestle in the upper-right-hand corner of his desk, his very sharp knife in the middle, and his plain pewter cauldron to the left.

A door on the right side of the room, probably leading to the professor's office, creaked open, and a tall, dark man in a white shirt, black trousers and a black vest with long black robes appeared. He walked behind his desk and looked around the classroom. "Ah," he began with his smooth, slightly hissing voice, "I see we have new students for the fourth years this year." He looked to a parchment on his desk. "A miss... Helena Potter, and Mr. Bernhard Baddock." The teacher looked to each of them as he said their names. "I am to be your Potions master, Professor Salazar Slytherin."

Bernhard nodded and looked the professor in the eye. He wasn't sure he trusted this man, but he wasn't sure why he shouldn't.

"Mr. Baddock," Prof. Slytherin said, "would your father happen to be Sherman Baddock?"

Bernhard nodded his head and said briefly "Yes."

Touching his narrow chin, Professor Slytherin said, "Ah, your father is an acquaintance of mine. But on to our lesson." He continued, "This morning we will be learning the properties of a basic wit-sharpening potion. Please remember to take notes, all, I do not wish to repeat myself..."

Bernhard felt a poke in his back, and he reached behind him to take the note when Professor Slytherin looked away. The note read:

>Excuse me, but what are you doing reading notes in class?

"Mr. Baddock," Professor Slytherin said, sharply hitting his wand against Bernhard's desk, "but if you will not give me the courtesy of paying attention in class, would you please answer a simple question?"

"O-of course, Professor," Bernhard said, a little nervous.

"What are the main ingredients of the wit-sharpening potion we are supposed to be learning about today?"

"Ground scarab beetle, uhm, armadillo bile and g-ginger root," Bernhard answered, a little nervous, trying to look the professor straight in the eyes.

Slytherin looked a little surprised, but didn't break his unpleasant stare. "Thank you, Mr. Baddock," he said simply.

After class Bernhard headed off for lunch. He was followed there by a bunch of girls who were all chattering and giggling behind him; this was another thing Bernhard wasn't used to. In the village where he grew up, no one really liked to be near him, probably because they believed he would bring about the wrath of their various gods.

Bernhard reached the Hufflepuff table and took his seat away from everyone else. He didn't really mind eating alone, that was just routine for him; at Durmstrang, everyone made fun of him for being Nordic, and he never thought himself to have a dynamic enough personality to have any actual friends.

After lunch he found his way back to the common room, where he claimed a comfortable seat by the fireplace. He spread out his parchments in search of his schedule, which said that his afternoon class would be Bestiary with Slytherin. He stayed there until he saw the other fourth-years start to leave, and he followed them out. They again tried to talk to him, but he was preoccupied.

This class was to be held outside, in a little barn just outside the forest. Bernhard waited just on the edge of the tiny group of students. He saw all the Slytherin kids glancing his way while they talked in their little circle. There were only three of them, like Hufflepuff; two boys, one fairly stocky and dark, with very hairy strong-looking arms, one smaller with yellow hair and sharp blue eyes, and a girl with long plaited black hair tied with a silver ribbon. The blond boy seemed fairly keen on the girl, so Bernhard tried not to look at her much in fear that the little one might sick the big one on him.

The little door to the barn opened and the teacher, whose features Bernhard couldn't make out in the dimly-lit room beckoned them in. They all entered and took seats in a semicircle surrounding a cage covered with a heavy cloth, and standing in the break of the circle was a little woman, about as tall as a seven-year-old girl. "Good afternoon, class," the woman began with her voice which was much deeper than one would expect from her. "Today we will be studying the Pogrebin. Does anyone know what a Pogrebin is?"

The Slytherin girl's hand shot up. "Yes, Miss Snape..." the teacher said, as if she'd expected the girl to be the only one to answer.

"A Pogrebin is a little gray animal resembling a rock which follows people around, making them totally miserable until they give up, at which time the Pogrebin begins to eat them."

The Hufflepuff girls winced and Miss Snape's eyes flickered to them, a sadistic smile playing on her lips.

"Very good, Miss Snape. Now, does anyone know where Pogrebin can be found--except for Miss Snape?"

Bernhard raised his hand slowly. "They're native to Russia, although they can often be found as far west as Norway."

"Very good, Mr. Baddock," the teacher said.

Class continued for the next hour. At one point, the professor (who Bernhard later learned was Prof. Fudge) uncovered the cage to reveal a little gray animal covered with thin, downy fur. Fudge explained that this was a baby Pogrebin which wasn't quite powerful enough to depress people yet, but all the class was unnaturally sleepy by the end of it.

The late afternoon had no other classes, so Bernhard set out to work on his homework. The Hufflepuff common room was very quiet, since all of the first- and second-years were taking their flying lessons then. Bernhard was huddled close to the fire when Isabella and Elizabeth approached him.

"Are you, er, busy, Bernhard?" Isabella asked him with her faint Italian accent, her green eyes flickering in the firelight.

Bernhard shook his head "No."

"Well then," Elizabeth began, "might we sit with you? We're working on our Potions homework and we were practicing the potion, but something's wrong and we don't know what."

"Of course," Bernhard accepted, and he made space for the girls by shoving his papers away.

That evening at dinner, Bernhard sat between Isabella and James with Elizabeth across from him. This was a very strange thing for the boy, and they kept on talking to him, asking him questions about where he was from. Apparently all of them grew up in all-wizarding communities; Isabella was from a prefecture of Venice, James from a village outside London, and Elizabeth from some part of France. They all thought it was fascinating that any of the Christian priests would speak to him at all; where they were all from, the priests either didn't know or acknowledge that wizards and magic existed, or they believed wizards such evil spirits that if you contacted one you would be condemned.

After dinner Bernhard was very tired, so he made his way to his room without stopping to talk to the others in the common room. He made ready for bed, but as he drew his curtains James came in and looked at him strangely. "I heard tell you were passing notes with that Slytherin girl," James said.

"I didn't know who passed it to me," replied Bernhard, very confused as to why this would be such a terrible thing. "And what's wrong with her?"

"It isn't her, it's Slytherin. Anyone who gets sent to that House is bad, and even though Lucina Snape may be pretty or whatever, that's no reason to have anything to do with her, or any of them."

Bernhard could see that James wouldn't be swayed in this opinion, so he simply agreed not to talk to Lucina. He'd already decided not to invoke the wrath of the blond Slytherin boy, anyway, so it wasn't difficult.

"Salazar, please don't let him get to you," Helga said gently, holding her husband's hand. "I don't want you to have another argument with him. It isn't worth it."

"Of course you're right. But sometimes, he just--the idea that I can't even run my own part of the school!" He exhaled deeply and leaned back into the cushions on the bench. "It isn't that I hate Muggle-borns, but... well, I want our race to be able to survive without them. The Christians are turning the world against us, and if we have too many of them in our number, who knows what chaos will they bring!"

Helga leaned her head against his shoulder, sighing. "I understand, but I don't agree, you know that. Just keep calm, Salazar; everything will be okay if you just don't get yourself in more trouble with him."

Slytherin laughed bitterly. "Look at me; left to whimper at the feet of the man who turned against me, my students are for the most part hopelessly stupid, and my own wife refuses to let the others know our position. Not even her best friend."

"Well, you know how Rowena would react. She thinks you to be the embodiment of evil. That chamber you built doesn't help matters much, either; you know someone will take your message wrong and turn it against you, if anyone learns of that place and what it's there for."

"That is true, and my Basilisk going mad didn't help matters much. Three Muggle-born students in two weeks..."

"...Poor dears..."

"I hope that no one finds the way down there."