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~ I'm planning to increase the number of advanced chapters to +18 this weekend!
~ I've edited some of the previous chapters to remove anything you might consider "cringe" or "unnecessary." I'll continue reviewing them from time to time!
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The Death Eater Laws were most infamous for sanctioning the use of the Unforgivable Curses by aurors and hit-wizards against Death Eaters, but they also had provisions for secret trials, as opposed to normal criminal trials in which a quorum of the Wizengamot serves as jury. The transcripts of these tribunals were sealed to the general public, and even the aurors who stood guard over accused prisoners had to submit to Memory Charms after each trial so that they couldn't reveal the identities of any participants. Ostensibly, this was to prevent the names of witnesses and judges from being revealed publically and thus allowing Death Eaters to seek revenge. Apparently, before that law was enacted, several judges who had presided over successful Death Eater trials had later been murdered. The article on Sirius Black's trial merely said that the trial transcript had been magically certified by the Court Scribe and that the trial had been presided over by three of the twelve anonymous Wizengamot members who were eligible to sit as judges in criminal proceedings (and who had all sworn magical oaths to fairly adjudicate such proceedings). Those three anonymous judges would decide Black's fate.
The evidence against Sirius Black consisted of sworn affidavits from James and Lily Potter that he had been their secret keeper, a sworn statement from an Unspeakable (whatever that was – Harry added the term to his long list of things to research) giving expert testimony that a Fidelius Charm could only be penetrated if the secret keeper voluntarily revealed it, and a lengthy confession from Black in which he proudly admitted to being secret Death Eater, to betraying the Potters, and to placing a number of influential Wizengamot figures under the Imperius Curse. Nothing more except his sentence – a lifetime in Azkaban for his repeated use of an Unforgiveable. Ironically, his betrayal of the Potters wasn't even a major part of his sentence since no one actually died as a result of those actions. Having learned all he could about the fall of Voldemort, Harry returned the book and went back to his genealogy research. After an hour of making notes, he prepared another letter to his solicitor and sent it off with Hedwig before heading off to dinner.
The following weekend, Harry discovered the most immediate and tangible benefit of his involvement with Hermione's study group. Harry had approached Lavender Brown with some embarrassment over the topic of wizarding hair care products, but she eagerly took him in hand and answered all of his questions. On Sunday afternoon, Lavender and Parvati performed a "make-over" on him in an unused classroom and introduced the young Slytherin to the wonders of Sleekeazy. When he entered the Great Hall on the following Monday morning, it was with the first perfect coif of his entire life. Jim laughed at him, but Snape and Draco nodded approvingly. Greengrass and Davis were also quite impressed and asked him to call them Daphne and Tracie, respectively.
By the following Tuesday, Hermione's study group had indeed grown. Justin Finch-Fletchley and Susan Bones joined, as did Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil, though she made a point of sitting as far away from her twin as possible. Harry wondered whether magical twins ran hot or cold – either practically sharing a brain like the Weasley Twins or else at each others throats like the Patils or the Potters. Harry remained the only Slytherin who wanted anything to do with the group, which was perhaps for the best, as the group split its time between studying course material and discussing the relative merits of Muggle and wizarding cultures. The Muggleborn and Muggle-raised were learning loads about the wizarding world while the Purebloods were learning that a lot of their assumptions about Muggles were wildly incorrect. All of the them were greatly improving their magical skill, though Neville was becoming frustrated by his lack of progress in his wandwork.
The second session also answered a question that baffled Hermione since school had started – what was early education like for wizarding children? She realized quickly that there were no wizarding primary schools, yet all of her Pureblood and Halfblood classmates seemed able read and write several years above their age level compared to Muggles. Not compared to her, of course, but she was surprised at how effective magical home-schooling seemed to be. The answer, of course, was magic.
Anthony Goldstein, a Halfblood who'd lived abroad for several years, explained to the Muggle-raised in the group about "educational potions" and how they worked. An educational potion was, as the name implied, a potion that instantly tutored the drinker in some field of study. The number and scope of these educational potions was rather limited, as they were difficult and expensive to produce. It was easiest to create potions that taught languages, and students who took Ancient Runes in Third Year would start off with a regimen of potions that would instantly give them fluency in Elder and Younger Futhark, with more obscure runic languages coming later. Anthony had taken a potion at the age of seven that taught him German when his father had accepted a teaching position at the University of Hamburg. He said it tasted nasty and gave him a headache that lasted for a day, but when he woke up the next morning, he was completely fluent in German, albeit with a 19th century Prussian accent.
Wizarding Child Services provided a few free educational potions to all British Pureblood and Halfblood children beginning at age six so that by the time they reached Hogwarts, those children could read, write, and perform basic arithmetic on a level comparable to a fairly smart Muggle child who had completed his first year of secondary school. Understandably, the Muggle-raised children were annoyed to learn that they'd spent six years attending Muggle primary school when the same benefits could be obtained in a few days with the appropriate potions, but Anthony explained that there were some sizeable gaps in the potions' utility and availability. For example, there was a potion that covered basic arithmetic, but most wizards seemed completely unaware of higher Muggle maths like algebra and calculus or, for that matter, entire maths-dependent fields like engineering and architecture. After all, who needs an engineer to design a building when you can transfigure raw materials as you like and then magically reinforce it no matter how structurally unsound it was. Arithmancy, a Third Year elective, introduced elements of geometry and trigonometry but only to the extent relevant to the magical implications of the maths involved. There were also potions for literacy that taught wizarding children to read and write at the level of an 8th Year Muggle secondary student, but the vocabulary and syntax hadn't been updated in over a century, which was why Pureblood children who didn't socialize much had such oddly formal speech patterns.
Any potions other than the ones for literacy and numeracy had to be purchased privately and at significant cost. There were lots of options for language potions, but only a few for natural sciences. The most popular one, designed for people who wanted to pursue studies in alchemy, gave the drinker a complete understanding of the field of Muggle chemistry ... as it was understood in 1893. The physics potion was so out of date that it was actually counterproductive, leading the unwary drinker to think that fires were caused by burning phlogiston and that vacuums were actually full of ether. There were few potions for Wizarding history, and none at all for Muggle Studies – Susan Bones, whose guardian was a high-ranking Ministry official, did not know who the current British monarch was, and none of the Purebloods had a clue how Parliament worked. Finally, it was apparently impossible to brew a potion that conferred practical knowledge of any facet of actual magic, even topics as seemingly mundane as Herbology or Care of Magical Creatures, which was why Hogwarts' existence was still necessary. The prevailing explanation for this gap was that "Merlin did something and so we can't make potions that teach magic."
Understandably, both Harry and Hermione found that explanation completely unsatisfactory.
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