In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter

Chapter 299: The Witch Hunt Launched by Wizards (2 in 1)

Jon's skin was proving to be getting thicker.

Once he had shown some shame in Grindelwald's headmaster's office when he had proposed the "win-win" plan to Grindelwald and Dumbledore.

But now that he had stolen something from someone else's house and had been complimented on it by the owner, whether it was sincere or sarcastic, he was able to clear his throat as if nothing had happened.

"Well, Mr Slytherin, so does the fact that I can come through this door represent some special implication?"

Slytherin's face was calm, to the point where Jon felt it was actually an unidentified indifference.

The co-founder of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry spoke with an expressionless face.

"It only proves that that fool Godric was wrong about what he thought I was saying, and that the selection of characteristics that he thought I wanted for my students was not at all what I wanted."

Hearing these words from the Slytherin, Jon's heart sank slightly.

This portrait old man's words were clearly not kind, and as for the reason for the unkindness, Jon could actually figure it out quite plainly.

A man who had once fallen out with even his best friend over the issue of bloodline and left the wizarding school he had founded with his own hands without a word all alone; Salazar Slytherin is a person who absolutely loathes Muggle students.

Even if he could have pushed through the bronze door and walked up to him with the character traits that were supposedly necessary for a Slytherin, he would not have been able to gain his approval.

Jon had been prepared for this, but he had thought that the old man would give him at least a bit of recognition for the fact that he could open the door and walk in, but as it turned out, he was just a portrait, and if he were a real person, he might have done something to Jon.

But even though he had sensed the Slytherin's rejection and hostility, Jon had no intention of ending the conversation like that.

And since there was no longer any possibility of the two sides getting along amicably, he was even less mentally burdened about stealing the candelabra.

"So the person you really approve of is one of your descendants who came here a decade or so ago and possesses your own bloodline?"

Jon shrugged, asking the question unabashedly, and in a tone of uncertainty that feigned doubt.

"But according to rumours, which I've heard that I don't know if they're true or not, that descendant of yours doesn't seem to be Pureblood either? Has he ever told you that his real family name is Riddle?"

Slytherin, who had shown his disgust for Jon didn't look like he was going to keep his mouth shut.

After all, as a portrait kept in a room that equated to a sealed cell, he probably had very little interaction with people, and even if he didn't like him much, Jon was at least someone who could possibly talk.

"That was his mother's fault for being immature and had nothing to do with him personally. I never considered that a noble bloodline could be diluted by something like that, nor do I actually think that someone with the so-called pureblood wizard bloodline would really be much better than someone without such a bloodline."

Slytherin didn't seem angered by Jon's words, nor did he seem half upset or feel provoked, instead his words were tinged with a faint sneer, that felt like a taunt to Jon's ignorance.

"The reason I have been so adamant that only pureblood children are qualified to learn magic does not stem from my recognition that those with purebloods will be better, but that only children born to wizards are worthy of the trust of wizards as a group, and as for muggle-borns. Heh, history has proven that even after learning noble magic, this part of the population will never be able to escape their own inferior roots as commoners."

The disdain in his words was obvious, and it wasn't as if he was explaining anything by saying this to Jon, but simply answering the rhetorical question Jon had just asked regarding the impurity of Voldemort's blood.

Jon frowned, not that he was angry at the Slytherin's disdain.

Even if he was petty, he wasn't so petty that he would fight a portrait, it was just that he had heard something odd in the Slytherin's words.

Jon asked in a calm, sincere and studious tone of voice.

"What do you mean by the inferior roots as a commoner?"

"The inferior roots as a commoner?" Slytherin looked at Jon with a slightly condescending smile on his face, "If you are muggle-born, you should know this better than anyone else by now? What are these children who were born from ignorant, commoner families with the qualifications to learn magic going to be like even after they succeed in mastering noble magic?"

Jon's frown deepened, he felt as if he was a little out of touch with the Slytherin's train of thought.

"Would it be any different when these people learn magic than when someone from a wizarding family learns magic?"

"Children born and raised in wizarding families will always recognise themselves as wizards." Slytherin said coldly, "But not the muggle-born ones, even if you learn magic, you will rarely see yourselves as wizards of the same kind, you prefer to use the noble magic as a means to return to the world of the ordinary people to gain noble status and wealth for yourselves, even to the point of killing those like yourselves by the order of your ruler like a domesticated magical creature."

"A fool like Godric has never thought about this, he and the two women have always thought that if the school of witchcraft was established and these children were given a good enough education, they could avoid the birth of Obscurial and make magic flourish. But they never saw the real reason for the so-called Obscurial."

"Children who possess the gift suffer persecution and suppress their magic, causing extremely negative emotions to eat away the noble power that belongs to them, turning them into horrible monsters. The root of the problem was never the fact that these children did not have the means to control the power they possessed, even without guidance, as long as they did not suffer oppression, they could have always grown up healthy and turned into ordinary people with some special abilities."

"The fundamental reason for the emergence of the Obscurial is simply because of the oppression of those ignorant fools, but how can a group of mortals who can only wield iron swords and shields be capable of persecuting a group of wizards who have wands and can use magical powers, and those children who are already tentatively capable of using magical powers?"

Slytherin stared into Jon's eyes, the mockery in those cloudy pupils already overflowing.

"Aren't you one of the muggle-born who is still learning magic?"

Jon had never listened so attentively to a portrait speaking as he had done at this moment, even if the portrait intended to dismiss him and the group of people whom he represented.

"The inferior roots of the muggle-born have never allowed them to see themselves as part of the wizards, and before Hogwarts was founded, the vast majority of those muggle-borns who met a good wizard and learned the true magic to control their own magic ended up defecting to what they called kings and the Order."

"There was never even a tradition of wizards believing in religion, how could we, as wizards with extraordinary powers believe in some unknown God? These were the customs of the muggle-borns; some of whom became court mages (Jon looked at the Nick he carried behind his back as he said this) and some of them became devotees of the Church and swung their wands at us. To gain greater authority and wealth, and to suppress the wizards who might threaten their current position in the background if they achieved high power, the muggle-borns instigated the foolish ordinary people, prompting and aiding them in the so-called 'witch-hunt'."

Jon's face was filled with disbelief as he stared at the Slytherin in the portrait, hearing the truth about the medieval witch hunts for the first time from a wizard of that era!

"Foolish mortals had no possibility whatsoever of dealing with wizards in a direct fight, and the flames they supposedly used to burn witches to death were a mere existence that could not even be described as a joke to a true wizard. But why have so many wizards died in such large numbers over such a long period of time in a turmoil that should never have happened in the first place? It was you, the Muggle-borns, who mastered the magic that belonged to wizards, and then turned that power against the wizards themselves. The root of everything in that dark age all stems from your greed."

"The very reason Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was originally founded was to eradicate such chaos, but Godric and the rest of those fools kept insisting that if young, magically gifted muggles were brought to this school for education very early, things would change."

"There is simply no more foolish idea than that, even though they have extended the school year at Hogwarts to seven years and made all the students board and stay in school only except for holidays, the students who have not enrolled until they were already eleven years old have long been sobered and attempted to understand the foul world where they used to live before they came to Hogwarts. "

"Godric and the others tried to emotionally assimilate all those muggle-borns with the camaraderie between peers, naively believing that if all the different bloodlines lived together in one school for seven years, then when they graduated they would regard themselves as wizards and identify themselves for what they truly are. Oh, I've never been able to accept such a ridiculous fantasy of theirs."

"The inferior roots of the muggle-borns will never ever change, and while life in Hogwarts' castle may possibly be effective for a small group of people, the vast majority will still return to the world they belong to once they graduate and are no longer bound to it, continuing to become guests of the King and loyal followers of the Church for the sake of authority and then launching witch hunts."

"I can't watch muggle-born students like you study every day in that castle, the more exceptional and gifted they are, the more harm they will do in the future, and with every spell they learn, I can see a future wizard falling under that spell. But there was nothing I could do to stop either of the three who built Hogwarts with me, so I chose to leave, even if there was no way to make a difference to that school, I would not let the knowledge I acquired fall into the hands of people like them."

Jon listened to what Slytherin had to say and remained silent.

His discrimination against the muggle-borns was fundamentally different from those led by Voldemort; it was not for his own benefit, and if all that Slytherin had said was true, then he was in fact on the side of justice.

His assumptions were proved to be true, and although the circumstances and environment for wizards were greatly improved after the establishment of Hogwarts, the witch hunt was not discontinued at all.

Only after the 'Statute of Secrecy' had been implemented throughout the world, which had completely cut off the normal world's access to wizards and magic, did the survival of wizards truly improve.

The two populations became parallel worlds that did not intersect, and the memories of all Muggles who knew that magic existed were erased, except for the Muggle Lords at that time and Muggle families with wizards.

The implementation of the Statute of Secrecy has completely changed a situation that was once incredibly difficult for wizards, and because of this magical governments around the world will do everything they can to keep this law stable, and the moment someone like Grindelwald tries to completely subvert this protection, they will be antagonised by everyone.

Voldemort, who was more brutal in comparison, didn't encounter as much resistance because he never publicly expressed his intention to abolish or his discontent with the Statute of Secrecy, which gave other magical governments reason to be ambiguous.

But today was the first time Jon had heard the true story of the witch-hunting movement, which had never been written about in the history of magic, apart from when he had been lurking in Hogwarts Castle, looking through the history of the Mudbloods, there was a lot of information about ancient muggle wizards joining forces with muggles to brutally kill pure and half-bloods.

But Jon had always thought that Voldemort had made all that stuff up, but to his surprise, it seemed to be true!

There was no reason for Slytherin to lie to Jon, and it was the only explanation that could explain why wizards, who had mastered such powerful magic at that time, had been persecuted and turned into rats in the witch hunt.

Only the combination of fellow wizards with an extremely large number of Muggles could they have caused such a terrible suppression in the magical world.

And this was entirely possible before the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was founded.

At that time, there was no Statute of Secrecy, and the first thing Muggles who developed their magical talents wanted to do was to use this power to gain benefits for themselves.

It all made sense and explains why most people in the Middle Ages were convinced of the existence of witches because the people who started the witch hunts were witches themselves!

Even Nick, who is now on Jon's back, is the best proof of this; Nick was a court mage during his lifetime, a courtier in the court of King Henry VII, and this was even though he had completed seven years of studies in the school at the end of the fifteenth century when Hogwarts had been established for hundreds of years.

Slytherin's had some justification for his aversion to the muggle-born wizards, and even the exclusion of those of non-wizarding ancestry from the House he founded possessed a justifiable reason.

But it was a perception that was limited to his era, now the situation was completely reversed.

Jon heard something odd in his words, what would Voldemort have said to Slytherin if he had come here and met his ancestor a decade or so ago?

Would he have told the truth about what he was doing, and the current state of the wizarding world, all of it?

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[Author:]

The witch hunts were started by ancient muggle wizards is my hypothesis, and it makes a little more sense as to why wizards who knew all sorts of spells were persecuted in the Middle Ages when ignorance prevailed and warfare means were quite crude, and why Slytherin was so adamant about admitting only pureblood students.

Anyone who has doubts or disagrees with this explanation is free to comment and express it, but please don't insult me to death.

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