Before the Imperial College meeting, Harry had an urgent summons from the Minister.
“Harry, MACUSA has sent me details of some unregulated magic happening in California. I haven’t told them about our incident. How is it going?”
“I don’t have confirmation on this, but Merryfield from the Department of Mysteries thinks he has found an outbreak of raw magic around Imperial College. It has been recorded in the old journals but has been quiet for hundreds of years.”
“That would have been there before the college was started. The Ministry and Diagon Alley were built over sources of natural raw magic, as was Hogwarts and all the wizarding settlements.” The minister looked at Harry. “We always thought that flows of raw magic were stable and were the result of having many wizards and witches staying in one place, and of course we haven’t had muggles making electronic equipment before. I’m afraid we have been far too lax in investigating muggle technology and how raw magic reacts to it. Are you going to tell Dr Zaitseva about this?”
“I want her and her technical experts to investigate everything without knowing too much about magic. If it is something that we can handle without interfering with the muggle world then that will mean fewer people to Obliviate. As for MACUSA, we aren’t sure about anything yet, I suppose we can say unregulated magic has been happening here but we aren’t sure about what it is, which is true enough.”
There was a short silence.
“There is another matter which concerns me personally. Leo Blake wants to initiate a peace settlement between the Malfoys and the Weasleys. I think the feud is getting in the way of his plans.”
Kingsley looked at Harry, “Oh! Well, that has been tried before. Time and generations passing have done nothing to reduce the intensity of it. What is he hoping to do?”
“Right now, he is getting one old family to work through their old journals, as far back as they can go. He is hoping that a search will reveal the initial event, and then something can be done to lift the curses.”
“That would be the Greengrass family, would it?”
“Yes, and through Olivia Greengrass and Astoria possibly Lucius might be persuaded to search the Malfoy journals. I had been hoping to involve the Weasleys in Leo’s education catch up plan, but the feud got in the way from the beginning.”
The owl came to Leo’s private owlery. The mirror-phone chimed and displayed a one line message. “Owl from Olivia Greengrass.”
The transfiguration homework would have to wait. The letter was short and worrying. Olivia wanted Leo to go to York for a day to discuss some difficult problems turning up in the most ancient journals.
The boardroom at Greengrass Potions was a comfortable as ever. Olivia Greengrass did not look comfortable at all. “Leo, the search has been difficult for me. Not because of all the translation of ancient texts, it is because of what was in them. What do you know about slavery in Britain?”
“Slaves were first brought into Britain in the Tudor period; it was introduced with the enslavement of black Africans.”
“That was what you were taught in your school lessons. Yes, there were black African slaves but who were the first slaves in Britain? Think about it now.”
“If that’s not right, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What about the Roman Empire?”
“That was two thousand years ago. Yes, there were slaves; but they were Roman, not British.”
“What about before the Roman Empire?”
“The Celts! They weren’t slave owners. They were druids, kindly grandfather types in long white robes.”
“That was from another page in your school-book. Haven’t you got the message yet; your school-books are works of fiction.”
“I give up. I don’t remember anybody saying anything about slavery other than that the slaves were all African.”
“OK, school is out, now for a short burst of the truth. Ancient Britons from before recorded history made slaves of other ancient Britons. It was the same in nearly every other society throughout the world. How do I know this? Wizards have recorded it in their journals which muggle historians never get to see. These slaves were real slaves, they were property, like cattle.”
The boardroom was getting stuffy. “Where are you going with this, are you saying that wizards had something to do with slavery?”
“The Dark Lord, Tom Riddle, modelled himself on wizard lords from the earliest times. They used the darkest magic to make themselves strong in battle. It was hard to kill them, if they did die, the next dark lord could be worse than the first. Muggles made slaves of muggles; wizards made slaves of other wizards and muggles. The wizard lords used their slaves to take muggles and sell them to slave traders from Europe. Those slave traders were Celts, Danes and Romans.”
Leo spoke up; “I have read history books, wizard’s history. They didn’t mention any of this.”
“You will notice that the history books are very sketchy for anything before 1066. The new Norman king, William the Conqueror, made a list of all his new possessions, land, livestock, workers, and slaves. It was called the Domesday Book. It still exists. According to the book, ten percent of the entire population were slaves. The slaves were ancient Britons and in Ireland they were ancient Irish. Wizards are just as capable of sweeping stuff under carpet as anyone else. I should know. Before 900 the Greengrass family bought slaves when they couldn’t hire anyone to work in the fields. Some of the slaves we bought were Weasleys. We bought them from the Malfoys. The Malfoys were slaves themselves, they were owned by wizard lords and had to work as slave-masters. They enslaved wizards who couldn’t pay the debts they owed to the wizard lords. The Malfoys were never lords, they were common wizards who did whatever they had to do to survive. Of course, this is exactly what they did when they were enslaved by Tom Riddle. Death Eaters were all slaves. Don’t be sorry for them, they could have made the choice my Julius made, and die rather than submit to him.”
There was no response from Leo. Olivia spoke again.
“Let’s wrap this up. The Malfoy journals will have the details we need. The curses that keep the Malfoy-Weasley feud alive come from events such as this. We need to find such things as vows by the head of the Weasley family to oppose the Malfoys forever, and curses by the Malfoys to make the Weasleys penniless servants forever.”
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