all named and confirmed Hufflepuffs in Hogwarts Legacy 🍃
Arthur Plummly - Lenora Everleigh - Adelaide Oakes
Poppy Sweeting - Professor Bai Howin
Professor Mirabel Garlick
Evangeline Bardsley - Nurse Noreen Blainey
Charlotte Morrison - Sacharissa Tugwood - Helga Hufflepuffs cookbook
Hengist of Woodcroft (founder of Hogsmeade) - Fat Friar
Former Minister of Magic, Eldritch Diggory - Hedge maze, representing Eunon Blackwood - Former Professor Percival Rackham
All Hufflepuffs in Hogwarts Legacy, to the best of my knowledge and ability (but let me know if I missed anyone). I tried to take flattering pics of everyone (although Sacharissa was testing my patience there). If you want to see more of someone you like up there, let me know 💛
San Bakar, noticing that MC is barely paying attention to him because they're overstimulated and worn out after taking on a whole Graphorn just to please him: I am talking!
MC, finally sick of his bullshit: AND I'M. NOT. LISTENING!?
I want to try to do something a bit different today. I usually come in with some in-depth analysis of some details in the game. There is an element of speculation to everything I post but I usually try to stick as closely as possible to some canon events/elements found in the game to deliver an analysis that is as plausible as possible. And there will be in-depth analysis today too! We will be having a look at Isidora’s journal entries.
But I also have a theory. It’s perhaps a convincing theory or perhaps a completely crazy theory, hard for me to judge at this point because I’m so deep into it! So I want to try this: we’ll start with the analysis. All very reasonable and based on facts. And then we’ll plunge deep into the harebrained theory and I’ll see if you follow me or not.
Let’s go!
(Also, a warning if you’re planning on clicking that "read more" button: this is a loooooong post. So be sure you have some minutes to spare!)
The Analysis
Ok, so, we find 7 excerpts from Isidora’s journal throughout the game and, if we read them all together, they tell a pretty clear story of where she went and what she did after she graduated from Hogwarts and how she came to be able to take someone’s pain away.
First journal entry
We learn that she is at a camp treating people suffering from the bubonic plague. This, in and of itself, is fascinating because this gives us a glimpse of how things were before the Statute of Secrecy went into effect.
We don’t know exactly when Isidora lived but the Hogwarts Legacy Artbook tells us the Keepers lived during the Tudor period (1485-1603), which is in line with them being around close to the creation of Gringotts (in 1474). Anyway, this means Isidora most likely lived a century or more before 1692, when the Wizarding World broke off from the Muggle world. And we learn here that, back then, muggle doctors and witch healers worked together to heal those afflicted by the plague!
What’s also interesting in this entry is that Isidora seems more worried about the grief and mental pain these people may be experiencing than their physical ailments that can be healed. (Although we know healing these physical ailments is not as trivial as she makes it sound considering how many people died!) And here she first introduces her meeting with a man that reminds her of her father and that she wants to help get rid of his grief.
She also mentions "the others are wrong." This indicates, to me, that even back then she had already talked to the other Keepers (not just Percival) about her desire to take away people’s pain using ancient magic and they had already told her not to do it.
Second journal entry
This follows directly from the first note. She is further debating whether she should help people with their psychological pain or not.
It’s interesting here that she mentions "I travelled to learn" and also mentions some research that she is doing. Is this research the reason why she came to this camp? Is she even helping heal the patients at all (physically healing them from the plague I mean, not the taking-away-pain thing that she’ll attempt later)? Or is she just a passive observer (hence why she feels so frustrated about not doing anything)? And if so, what is she observing? For what purpose? Or is the research she mentions something completely different than what she initially came to learn at this camp? She could have more recently started to research the possibility to take away someone’s pain, after experiencing all the grief from the plague.
All interesting questions but not something we ever get any answers about and not the focus of this post. What I take away from this entry, mostly, is that we also learn that the man mentioned previously, the one who reminded her of her father, just left camp. So he’s not under the supervision of other doctors or healers anymore. She also directly mentions wanting to help him. This is important for what Isidora will do next.
Third journal entry
Now this is the pivotal entry! The first time Isidora ever attempts to remove someone’s pain.
Re-reading these journal entries after I first finished the game, I though this note described what happened with her father, how she lost control of the spell and how he came to be the empty husk we see in San Bakar’s memory. Reading the notes in order again after some time, it’s pretty clear that this is not about her father. We will see further evidence of that in future journal entries but considering that the order of the entries follows chronological events in Isidora’s life, this happened during her travels, before she came back to Hogwarts and before she healed her father.
I think it only takes a minimal amount of connecting the dots to understand that this is Isidora attempting the pain-removing spell on the man she met in the plague camp who reminded her of her father. He had just left camp, was completely alone and unsupervised. She likely followed him and, with or without his consent, attempted to heal him of his grief. Of course, we learn here that it completely failed.
It worked at first and she did remove his pain ("I recall feeling a sense of euphoria as I watched the pain vanish.") but then she lost control of the spell and lost consciousness ("But then everything started to turn." and "The world floated back to me as if in a watery haze. How long had I been unconscious?") The result is that she completely emptied the poor man of all this emotions and perhaps even more (his soul? his spirit?) ("I only remember his eyes. Empty. Empty of sorrow, yes, but also – "). The way she writes "I only remember his eyes" even implies the man could be dead because, if he was still alive in front of her, she would not need to remember his eyes, she would see his eyes. Or perhaps he just left while she was unconscious. Unclear. It could also imply the spell had an effect on Isidora’s own memories (as well as her emotions: "I recall feeling a sense of euphoria as I watched the pain vanish."), giving her some amnesia episode which makes it hard to recall what exactly happened after she performed the spell (hence why she also asks: "How long had I been unconscious?")
We also learn that Isidora’s head hurts. She immediately supposes it is because she hit her head when she fell unconscious but it is just a supposition on her hand ("I must have hit my head"). It’s also likely her head hurts because she just attempted dangerous and powerful magic and it had an effect on her as well as her patient. Hence why she can "neither feel nor see a mark" because she never actually hit her head, the pain is caused by something else. Also, an important detail that, in my mind, confirms that this happened while she was travelling helping plague patients: she worries that her headache could be the plague (the "Black Death"). She would only worry about that if she had recently been exposed to it, ergo if this journal entry was written when she was still working in that camp.
Also, last detail I want to note, she says: "The world floated back to me as if in a watery haze." I point this out because I have another post I’ve been meaning to write for some time now about ancient magic appearing as water. We see ancient magic appearing as blue water droplets floating around the Keepers wands whenever they use ancient magic. Whenever the MC activates an ancient magic hotspot, it appears like water surging out of the ground. And when the MC crosses one of the ancient magic portals it’s like they cross a very thin watery film with little droplets following in their wake. All of that is a topic for another post but I just note the use of that vocabulary by the writers here.
Fourth journal entry
This is where everything starts to make sense. She says she had a breakthrough and finally understood exactly how to remove people’s pain without emptying them of all emotions. The key is that one must not use too much power but instead be very delicate in the application of the magic. This, to me, further confirms that the man with the empty eyes in the previous journal entry is not her father. She lost control of the spell with that first man and then worked to understand what went wrong and how to control the spell properly. She is now able to remove "the merest whisper of pain from just above the heart" which is what we see her do in all of the Keeper’s memories, including the instance where she applied the spell to her father. This is what she does to Niamh and, likely, what she did to the Hogwarts student she dragged down to the repository cave. We don’t know what harm this does to the people it is used on but it certainly does not empty them of all emotions.
And speaking of unintended side-effects, it seems that this spell, even much better controlled, could still be having some effects on Isidora’s own emotions ("I sensed a surge of peace myself, as though I knew instantly that what I was doing was right.") Although it is hard to tell what is the spell and what is just Isidora. We know this research means a lot to her and she is certainly very emotionally invested in succeeding in this so these could be entirely natural emotions. And yet, considering the strange effect inhaling that haze has on her later on and how it turns MC’s eyes red at the very end of the game, we should not discount quite yet that the spell may be doing something to the caster themselves.
I want to also again note the specific vocabulary used in several journal entries to talk about what she is extracting. "Whispers of pain." Is this a metaphor or is she hearing literal whispers? Whenever we see this spell used in the Keepers’ memories we do hear actual whispers along with it so I’m inclined to take this literally. And do you know where else one can hear whispers? Near any ancient magic portal (conjured by Percival and Charles in their trials) or any ancient magic hotspot! And the whispers heard may very well be "whispers of pain". Near the ancient magic portal, I and several other people agree we can hear a voice say "Avada Kedavra", hardly a joyous thought. And if you pause next to an ancient magic hotspot before activating it, you can hear two voices (who sound like children’s voices to me) and one of them sounds very much like moans of pain.
So is the source of the ancient magic used by the Keepers and the one we find existing in the world "whispers of pain" like the ones that Isidora extracts? And yet, ancient magic existed and was used by the Keepers before Isidora ever invented her pain-removing spell! Indeed in the memory of the Keepers using ancient magic to save Feldcroft from the drought no whispers are heard. Percival confirms directly to Isidora that there are different kinds of ancient magic (because the magic she saw them wield was : "a particular kind of ancient magic", implying there are other kind, and when he first sees her pain-removing spell be performed he says that "the traces of that magic are different from what I’ve seen before"). So, perhaps, the magic used on Feldcroft is different than the magic found in the inter-dimensional portals and the ancient magic hotspots. And yet that leaves a pretty big gaping interrogation along the lines of: why were the Keepers using the "whispers of pain" kind of magic when creating their portals?! We will come back to that but keep that in mind because it’s pivotal information!
Fifth journal entry
This is where she finally healed her father. And this happened after she had mastered the spell to avoid any complete mind-wipe.
Not much to say about this because we see these events happen in the Keepers’ and her own memories. I do find it interesting that she says that Niamh seemed to understand what she was doing. We harldy see Niamh’s reaction either in Percival or in Isidora’s memory but, from what little we see of her face during these scenes, she looks more wary than interested. But ok.
Also, to note that all of that likely happened before Isidora started inhaling the "pain haze" that escapes when the spell is done.
Sixth journal entry
And here we have it: she started inhaling the pain-haze!
And we’re once again faced with this question: is the ancient magic affecting her emotions and thoughts or not? This "sense of purpose" that she mentions feeling, it’s hard to tell if this is an actual effect of the magic or if this is just Isidora’s hubris and her convincing herself, when faced with the opposition of the Keepers, that the magic itself is giving her signs that she is on the right path, in a sort of cognitive dissonance effect. This sentience she attributes to the magic, is it real or is she imagining it? I don’t think we ever get a clear answer to that question in the narrative.
All of that is made even more complex to disentangle by the fact that inhaling the pain-haze also makes her magic stronger. I think this effect is real and not just an illusion on Isidora’s part. We can explain that by the fact that she is absorbing a piece of someone else’s raw emotion and we know that strong emotions felt by the caster makes their magic stronger. We see that happen several times with Harry in the books. So, when she inhales these strands, Isidora stews in other people’s emotions and that lends her magic power (but also likely volatility).
And lastly, another little "vocabulary" section: often when she refers to the people she is helping, Isidora calls them "souls", even in some of her earlier journal entries ("number of souls I have been able to help" and "I have the power to help these souls" in her second entry). Does that mean that her pain-removing spell is acting on people’s souls? That would certainly explain why this magic is so dangerous and why the Keepers fear it so much. We know that splitting any part of one’s soul is extremely dark and complex magic (Horcruxes) so removing any part of someone’s soul must be equally so…
And also, does that mean that our emotions are part of our soul? The way Dementors work tends to confirm that.
Seventh journal entry
The most interesting tidbit in this entry might be that we learn that the Keepers were already calling themselves "Keepers" before Isidora died! This contradicts the explanation they give to the MC. Here is what Percival says in the last scene in the Map Chamber before opening the way to the repository:
"You see, we could not destroy the strands of emotion Isidora had stolen from so many. So we did all that we could to keep them safe.
"We also realised that until they could be destroyed, the magic used to create them was a danger to wizardkind.
"Hence, we became Keepers. Keepers of an unfathomable secret. We knew that – some day – one with the ability to see traces of ancient magic might be seduced by its power."
This strongly implies that they became Keepers after they realized Isidora’s stored strands of magic could not be destroyed, so after they discovered the repository.
This could be just a harmless simplification on Percival’s part. They could have become "Keepers" shortly before Isidora’s death, maybe after Niamh learned that she was continuing her experiments and using Goblin Silver to store that sort of evil, dangerous magic. But then, it’s strange that Isidora knew they called themselves Keepers. Surely they would not have told her that they were forming a super-secret alliance to move against her! Did Isidora find out anyway? How? This is just another one of these things that does not quite add up about what the Keepers tell the MC. I wonder if there is something else they are "keeping"? Another magic-related secret they’ve been keeping for a long time and that they, at first, asked Isidora to keep with them (hence why she knew about the name of "Keepers") before she broke away from them. Maybe they are just keeping the secret of how to wield ancient magic (because we know it can be wielded even by those who don’t see traces of magic, so, logically, there must be a way to teach it even when it does not come naturally like it does to Percival and the MC).
And this is also where Isidora mentions she left a trail to follow (much like the Keepers later did with the portkey). This trail must be the entrance to the Undercroft that lies under her house, the tryptich and canvas pieces, her memories and her portrait. I actually have a lot to say about the trail Isidora must have left behind (and how the Keepers must have actually "stolen" a part of that trail for their own purpose) but I’ll leave that for another post. Though I will still note here that it’s interesting that she had already left this trail behind very early on in her life. She says: "I confess I have begun to wonder if I will ever find another in my lifetime with whom I can share this work." And sure. But, by all accounts, Isidora still had plenty of time before her at that point in her life. Plenty of time still to teach others her pain-removing spell, plenty of time still to find a worthy successor. So why was she that worried that her knowledge would be lost? Why create a secret path to her research right now when her research had barely begun? Did she know she might soon be killed or silenced? Sure, the Keepers had made it pretty clear they were opposed to what she was doing but had they threatened her? Did she know something else that she knew she might be killed for? Isidora’s paranoia is all the more striking because she turned out to be right! She would not get to live much longer.
From San Bakar’s memory we know what must have happened shortly after she wrote this journal entry: her father was found, emptied of all of his emotions, in their cottage. The same night, Percival found out that Isidora had been removing pain from her students. This convinced the Keepers to confront her. Percival attacked first (an Expelliarmus on Isidora) and, when retaliating, Isidora hurt Niamh. San Bakar then decided to permanently neutralize her when it became apparent that she was too powerful and might overpower both Percival and Charles Rookwood. The end.
...But I haven’t even come to my theory!
Ok. Here goes.
The Theory
What happened that night
There is one thing in this whole chain of events, an especially in light of my re-reading of Isidora’s journal entries, that does not make any sense to me: why was her father emptied of all his emotions?
We’re given to think that Isidora did this. This is certainly what San Bakar thinks when he finds her father and hence why he runs to Percival to warn him. And yet, with everything we know about Isidora, her motivations and her journey, I don’t think she could have been the one wiping her father’s mind like that.
First of all, I don’t think she would ever do that intentionally. She cared about her father too much. She wanted to see him come back to life, not become even more apathetic than before! And even if we suppose that a) she had entered a state of madness and started loosing control of the pain removing spell or b) that she became so obsessed with ridding people of their pain that she considered that wiping their mind of all emotions was the ultimate act of salvation from any negative emotions, then why did she not wipe the mind of the student she dragged down to the repository that same day? She says she is healing her students of their pain, Percival says she is using her spell on them. And yet, that student was just fine when the Keepers found them. Why would she loose control/abuse of the spell on her father, the person she cares about the most, but not on her students?
The only reason I can think of why she would wipe his mind like this is if her father had somehow turned against her. If he has started telling everyone around him that the pain-removing spell was a bad idea, then, yeah, maybe she would want to silence him. But that’s a big "maybe". We know she loved her father and all that she did, she did for him. It’s pretty unlikely she would turn against him like this.
But there might be another explanation for what happened to her father...
Ok. This is where we really leave "analysis" territory and enter into "crazy theory" territory. None of what I’m about to say is strongly supported by canon events in the game. It’s just a theory I have and you can agree or disagree but hear me out: another ancient magic user attempted the pain-removing spell on Isidora’s father.
We know from Isidora’s journal (entry 4) that this is a very difficult spell to control. What happened to Isidora’s father (empty eyes, empty of sorrow but also everything else) is exactly what happened to the first man Isidora attempted the spell on. In other words: what happened to Mr. Morganach is the work of someone that is a novice in the practice of the pain-removing spell. It cannot be Isidora. She had mastered that spell a long time ago and would have been even more unlikely to slip up with her father, considering how much she cared about him.
In fact, we know that until the very end of her life, despite all other forms of madness she exhibited, she still had precise control over the spell because she used it on Niamh and on her students without wiping their minds.
If we accept that to be true – the fact that someone else was using (and abusing) the pain-removing spell – then the list of suspects is pretty short: we only know of 4 other people that were able to use ancient magic at the time.
I don’t think it’s Bakar since he seemed honestly shocked when he discovered Isidora’s father. Of course, he could have falsified that entire memory but I think falsifying memories is something really hard to do and would usually leave some traces. So let’s take him off the suspect list for now. That leaves the other 3 Keepers. And that’s when Percival starts looking really suspicious…
It’s pretty much implied that Percival was the one to send Bakar to check on Isidora in her home. When Bakar enters Percival’s office he just says: "Isidora was not at her home," implying that Percival already knew he had gone there to look for her. And if Bakar reports like this to Percival it makes sense that Percival was the one that asked him to go check. Percival then says: "I’ve just learned that she has been wielding that magic on students." How exatly he knew that is never explained. Finally, Bakar says: "We must gather the others." So Bakar and Rackham had been investigating Isidora on their own, the other two did not know yet that anything was wrong.
Of course, there is the "innocent" explanation: Percival was looking for Isidora, perhaps to talk to her, but could not find her. He sent Bakar looking for her in the most likely location for her to be: her home. Percival, in the mean time, might have been interrogating her student to know where she was/what happened and that’s how he discovered everything. They then gathered the others and confronted Isidora, killing her to stop her madness. It’s still unclear how they even found the repository, though, again, it could have been the student who told them where Isidora was taking them to remove their pain.
But, if we go by the hypothesis that another magic user had just mind-wiped Isidora’s father (accidentally or not) while Isidora was not at her home, the story starts to look quite different. So let’s contemplate another scenario: Percival, for as-of-now unknown reasons, finds himself experimenting with the pain-removing spell he told Isidora not to use (making him quite the hypocrite). He goes to test it on Isidora’s father, either with the explicit intention to hurt him (we will explore later on some reasons why he would have wanted to do that) or just because he knew the spell had already been used on him so if there were any bad side effects, Isidora’s father would have already been suffering from them making it less risky to use the spell on him again than on someone else not suffering from any side effects yet. The spell backfires because it’s a very difficult spell to control and it requires practice. Now Percival knows he is going to be found out. He knows that as soon as Isidora gets home she might realize what happened (because of her extensive experience with that spell) so he puts his plan into motion: he goes back to Hogwarts, tells San Bakar that Isidora has disappeared and that he needs to go to her home to see if she is there. He knows Bakar will find her father and immediately think Isidora did this to him because she is already known to experiment with dangerous spells.
By that point, Percival might have already known what Isidora was up to below the castle (but he had not stopped her because, secretly, he was actually interested in knowing more about the pain-manipulation magic, hence why he had already been experimenting with it himself). Or he does interrogate her student in an effort to find her so he can move against her when Bakar comes back. Either way, Bakar does come back horrified by what he saw, suspects nothing of Percival’s involvement and Percival enrolls him to convince Niamh and Charles of Isidora’s evil so they can all go kill or subdue the only one who could possibly have exposed Percival’s lies: Isidora herself! Isidora being dead, Percival’s crime against Mr. Morganach is covered up and he gets away with it!
Now... I see the sceptical eyebrows raised! You might think that this makes as little sense as Isidora herself harming her father. There is nothing to support that Percival would have wanted to use the pain-removing spell. And I agree with that. But I would like to bring up the repository that sits under Charles Rookwood’s castle. Because what the hell is a repository doing there?
The Rookwood Castle Repository
I have actually already had this discussion with @superconductivebean who had some compelling arguments to explain why Isidora might have put a first test-repository under Rookwood Castle. Charles Rookwood likely wasn’t living in that castle at the time (the castle was already a ruin when the Keepers came to Feldcroft during the drought and Charles calls it his "former residence"). Buried below an abandoned ruin actually seems like a pretty good place to hide a magic repository you don’t want anyone to find. So, ok, this repository was likely built by Isidora without the Keepers’ knowledge (just like the Hogwarts repository).
But, at some point, the Keepers (or at least Charles and Percival) did find out about it. By the time they are creating their trials and their portraits to communicate with a future ancient magic user, they know about it! Charles Rookwood, talking with the MC in the Map Chamber, with Percival present, says about Rookwood Castle:
"Not only is it the location of the next trial, it is home to a source of power that would be devastating in the wrong hands."
And here is why this raised all kinds of alarm bells for me: why is the repository not as well protected as the one under Hogwarts?
This repository is not buried nearly as deep as the Hogwarts one is! Hence why Ranrok found it relatively easily once he had a vague idea of where to search. We know the Keepers cannot destroy the repositories but surely they could have moved it to a more secure location? Say, under Hogwarts with the other well-guarded repository? And if they could not move it then surely they could have devised other strong protections for it! Why not post a few of those pensieve guardians around? Another locked door that only opens to the one wielding a very special ancient magic wand? When we find that repository open, there is nothing to suggest it was strongly protected. No broken down pensieve guardian statues, no obliterated doors. It seems that repository was only hidden by a few stone wall in the Rookwood Castle basement. Sure it’s somewhere behind the door that open with the magic runes thing but those runes are activated by any old spell. And it’s just a set of doors, just one layer of protection compared to the many layers they put to protect the Hogwarts repository. None of this makes any sense!
To make matters worse, as @superconductivebean pointed out in a recent post (yes this post is in Russian. No, I don’t speak Russian. But I would encourage anyone to bust out the online translators to read these analyses, they are always so in-depth!) they left this repository just by the path to Rookwood’s trial! Even if it had not already been busted open, the chance that the one going through the trial would stumble upon it was pretty high. Why would they take that risk? Before going through Rookwood’s trial, the person doing the trials knows nothing of this magic and why they should not use it. So putting them on the path of forbidden, highly volatile magic is just stupid! This goes against everything else they do to ensure this kind of magic does not fall into the wrong hands!
@superconductivebean suggested (in a last ditch attempt to explain this madness! 🤣) that they might have left this repository here to act as a beacon to lure someone able to feel magic to Rookwood Castle so that they could find the Portkey and be set on the path. That’s a possibility. But it’s a very reckless one! Because someone did stumble upon this badly protected repository and did use it for the wrong means: Ranrok! I just don’t understand them taking this kind of risk.
Unless… Rackham and Rookwood were doing some secret experiments of their own on the "whispers-of-pain" magic from the repository.
Maybe Rackham and Rookwood did not want to lock this repository away like the other one because they were actually interested in that kind of magic. They took the risk of leaving that repository accessible in order to study (or even possibly use) it.
(Although, even if they wanted the repository accessible to study it, they could still have made sure the path to their trial was away from where the repository was buried, say… on the other side of this massive castle! This is still an inconsistency.)
'Whispers-of-pain" magic
So let’s talk about the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic I brought up earlier! This "whispers-of-pain" magic must be closely related to Isidora’s pain-removing spell. It’s the same whispers we hear during Isidora’s spell and near portals and ancient magic hotspots. And yet the Keepers use it! They use the pain-whispering inter-dimentional portals in their trials. And the pain-whispering ancient magic hotspots, were left behind by the Keepers! Charles Rookwood straight up says that these hotspots are:
"Evidence of the Keepers' efforts to manipulate the power of ancient magic during our time."
Speaking of evidence, that’s a pretty damning one against the Keepers! First of all we learn that the Keepers were experimenting on "manipulat[ing] the power of ancient magic" (something that, by the way!, they directly caution the MC against doing at the end of the trials!) but they were not trying to manipulate the power of any kind of ancient magic, this one is specifically the "whispers-of-pain" kind! I don’t know how to record video from the game so I can’t link some evidence of it but, really, go stand above an ancient magic hotspot before activating it and listen. Tell me you don’t hear the whispers! What were they even doing experimenting with that kind of magic? And what kind of experiments were they doing that left traces centuries later?
There is a possibility that these experiments were them trying to see if they could destroy or weaken the magic left in the repository. But then, why does Charles not say so? And why are the traces of these experiments all over Hogwarts Valley and the Coast, i.e. far away from where the repositories are? And why are they encouraging the MC to go and absorb them? It still does not add up.
We know that the Keepers can wield another kind of ancient magic: the one they use when they save Feldcroft, or even the one they use when building pretty pillars, which is not followed by any creepy whispers. In fact, if they wanted to create inter-dimensional portals, couldn’t they use the "crystallized stone" kind of space-bending doors? Like the ones Isidora uses on the mirror as entries to the Undercroft? No creepy whispers around those, as far as I can hear!
So when did the Keepers start using the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic? And I say "Keepers" but, really, I mean Charles and Percival. I don’t think there is any clear evidence of Niamh or San using the "whispers-of-pain" magic. There are no inter-dimensional portals in their trials and they are not present yet in the Map Chamber when Rookwood explains what the ancient magic hotspots are so it’s unclear if they really know about those or what they are. It’s just Charles and Percival! Always just those two! At the center of everything that does not make sense about the Keeper’s path! The only two Keepers that for sure knew about the repository under Rookwood Castle. The only two we know for sure used the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic in their trial in the form of inter-dimensional portals. And the only two Keepers that were present at the very end when finalizing the path for the MC to follow by hiding the container and leaving their memory in the Gringotts pensieve. Why were Niamh and San not present that day? Why always just those two?
And to all of this evidence, your honor!, I add even more!
Isidora's warning
Isidora wrote "Percival is hiding something" on the boards of the Undercroft.
Did she know that Percival was looking into the pain-removing magic he had forbidden her to use? Was Percival doing some other secret ancient magic experiments unbeknownst to the other Keepers?
Remember Isidora’s paranoia in her seventh journal entry? Her leaving a trail to follow, a path for others to learn as if her days were counted and she soon would be unable to pass on her knowledge herself? Well that would certainly explain that! If she knew some dangerous secret about Percival she might have feared that he would discover that she knew and come after her. Percival might even have mind-wiped her father as a way to plant evidence against her, and to give the other Keepers a strong enough motivation to move against her with him.
And, lastly, I bring to the stand: Niamh!
Niamh's warning
It always struck me that Niamh’s lesson during her trials applied just as much to the Keepers as it applied to Isidora. She says:
"But there is no light without shadow as there is no shadow without light. Simply because you can eliminate darkness does not always mean that you should."
Of course, we all understand how it applies to Isidora: she saw people suffering and sought to remove that pain (i.e., darkness) but did not anticipate the consequences of that. Because, as one of the writers for HL puts it: "If you take someone’s pain away, what do they feel? Can you really feel happy, then?" I think this is what we are supposed to take away from Niamh’s trial, as a first reading.
And yet, Niamh’s lesson also applies to what the Keepers did! There is no denying that ancient magic can be used for good, we see as much when the Keepers save Feldcroft from the drought using ancient magic. But when they saw ancient magic used for evil (i.e., Isidora using it to remove people’s pain without their consent, something that might be volatile soul-magic and that they think will have bad consequences and should not be done), what is their reaction? To take away ancient magic altogether! To seal it away, never to be used again by anyone! They removed the darkness entirely. But, as Niamh explains, without it the light (as in: the good that ancient magic can do) dissapears too! In that respect, in the context of the narrative of HL, Niamh’s lesson applies more strongly to the Keepers’ actions than to Isidora’s because we do not actually see any "light" that Isidora’s action has taken away. It is implied several times that taking someone’s pain away could have negative consequences but we are never shown these consequences. (The only negative effect we see is Isidora’s father’s complete mind-wipe but, in my theory, this did not actually happen because of Isidora’s actions). We are, however, clearly shown the consequence of ancient magic disappearing from the world because we have clear exemples of the good it could do (saving a village from a drought or all the protection charms that Hogwarts offers).
But what does any of that have to do with my theory? Niamh also says during her trial: "nothing is what it seems". She even says this two times! Once at the very beginning of her trial and once at the end when we are walking through the mourners before we get to her tomb. And, as I’ve already explained in that post, I don’t get what she means by this because her trial is actually pretty straightforward. There’s nothing hidden. There’s no plot twist or huge revelation. But what if she was trying to warn the MC about the Keepers (specifically Percival and Charles)? What if she had realized, at the end of her life, that Percival and Charles were hiding something? Or what if she disagreed with their decision to seal ancient magic away entirely and suspected they had hidden motives to do that? (Such as keeping all the power of ancient magic, including the "whisper-of-pain" magic, to themselves?) She might have been afraid to go against Percival and Charles herself (especially if she knew they had been playing around with repository-magic from the secret repository under Rookwood Castle and were therefore more powerful than her) so she instead tried to sneak a warning to the next person coming along with the ability to wield ancient magic, to encourage them to not take everything at face value and to not blindly trust what Percival and Charles were telling them.
(And if I add to all of this my theory that Niamh is a time-traveler, I argue that she could have come back in the future (after Percival and Charles had already died and could not interfere with her actions anymore) and actually modified her trial to include this warning to the MC.)
Concluding remarks
Okay. So, that was a lot I just unloaded here. Let’s take a step back a little bit. My theory is, of course, not the only explanation for what happened to Isidora’s father.
There is a possibility that Isidora’s spell does not immediately empty people of emotions but that it happens over time. Maybe the spell opens something, creates some kind of leak and they progressively loose themselves. Her father is the first person we see her use the spell on and maybe that’s why he is the first one to get the empty eyes. Perhaps Niamh ended up just like him after some time. Isidora may have hid what was happening to her father and she was already too far in to walk back or admit that she was wrong, even after realizing her spell was not working and basically killing those she wanted to help. It could explain why she gave into the madness towards the end. But that would mean that all the students she used the spell on also ended up completely empty of emotions. Surely, if a bunch of Hogwarts students ended up as soul-less husks as a result of Isidora’s actions we would have heard about it? The Keepers would mention it, if only to even more strongly illustrate the danger of Isidora’s spell. Or someone would remember that episode form Hogwarts' history.
It’s also possible that, even when well controlled, the pain-removing spell, when used too often, would still end up wiping someone’s mind. Isidora, seing that her father was not getting better even after she removed his pain (because what could her father feel once his pain was taken away? how to fill the emotional void of all the years he spent in deep depression?) just used the spell again and again, hoping each time for a different result, until it was too much, her father was completely gone and she succumbed to madness. But I wonder then why the writers did not explicitely state that this is what happened. This could have added to the emotional weight of Isidora’s tragic story. Why leave the whole thing so vague?
And even if we find an alternative explanation for Isidora’s father’s fate, that still leaves open all the other questions I brought up: the unprotected repository under Rookwood Castle, the whispers of pain heard in the Keepers’ magic, Isidora’s inscription, Niamh’s cryptic warnings.
But, I’m sure many of you will have other ideas about what could have happened and how to resolve all these little mysteries! So please do come and argue with me!
Tl;dr because that was a very long post: I argue that Isidora couldn’t have been the one to mind-wipe her father. She had already experienced loosing her grasp on the pain-removing spell and completely wiping someone’s mind and she had found how to avoid such a consequence and I find it unlikely that she would have relapsed like this, especially with someone like her father that she very much cared about.
So I argue that another person who could wield ancient magic wiped Isidora’s father’s mind through a badly executed pain-removing spell and the one who had the strongest motive to do so is none other than Percival Rackham!
Now I want to speak about Harry Potter and the game (more specifically about house of Black), but I’m also adding here that I do not support the claims of that woman (to this day I will wonder how tf did she write Tonks, who’s has the powers to turn herself into anyone regardless the gender and is my fav female character alongside Minerva). It’s been ages since I’ve read the books, but my father got the game and I only started playing on November.
I had a lot of favorite characters, I loved Sirona (which was kinda how I found out that JKR didn’t have much or anything to do with game since Sirona is a trans woman and one of the kindest women of the game), Matilda, Phineas, Ominis, Natsai, Poppy and Professor Bakar.
Saying all that, here goes some observations and criticism:
Phineas Nigellus Black was known for being arrogant, but he also wasn’t stupid. He was hated, yes, and had a preference for slytherins (just as Albus had for the Gryffindors) but like…he wasn’t useless. Guy was the only male heir of an ancient house, by the time he was the headmaster, he was probably the head of house Black, which would take some political skills and a lot of work. In the game it’s clear that he only cares for his appearance and reputation…which is also weird bc how tf a guy that cares about his reputation would let Hogwarts be attacked while he’s the headmaster? One of the most annoying things on that game regarding this is that Black is said to pass a lot of time in the school, considering his wife asks if she could see him during the holidays or whatever, and he has portraits telling him things, but he just dismisses the Ranrok problem? The problem that could destroy the school that he is in charge, which would also destroy his own reputation bc we had Fig and Matilda telling him about it, not to mention that everyone knew about the thing that happened in Hogsmeade? Didn’t make sense at all.
Another thing that didn’t made sense, at least to me, is that to hire people at Hogwarts, you have to get the headmaster signature. How tf did Matilda convince Phineas to hire all the people she wanted? I’m seriously asking this tho bc Mirabel is a muggle born, Shah is either muggle born or half blood, there are also others who probably aren’t pure bloods…and Phineas is head of house Black. Either he was in love with that woman and let her have her way with it, which I will also take bc kinda interesting how the headmaster who hates students, teachers and school prefers to be at said school than at his house…not to mention that she’s the only one he treats with some respect and also lets her interrupt his speeches, and even says “thank you” after, OR she has a strong and persuasive power. I might take both. Turns things more interesting and dramatic, and they would also be a very hot couple.
The bullying thing. Like, people might not understand what I want to say but his method of quitting bullying was way more effective than Dumbledore’s??? Like, he screamed at the Slytherin that was burning that book, which belonged to a half-blood, and told him (the half blood) to stay out of their way. Was it right? No. I would give him detention. But it made things stop. I might be wrong bc it’s been ages since I read the books but I sincerely don’t remember Albus giving detention or screaming at any Slytherins…he also never punished Snape even tho he made Neville’s life miserable and was like “A Ravenclaw set fire on their cauldron so I’m gonna take 10 points from Gryffindor just to make sure”. Not to mention that Sirius did get away with almost killing Snape when they were teens…
There are things I really liked about the interactions and all, tho, that made things a little bit more interesting to those who like fanfiction and romance (like me): I really liked that dynamic between Phineas and Matilda, him almost dying to say thank you to other people but saying it to her kinda naturally, how he lets her interrupt him and all, his time at school…anyway, I might write something based on that.
I had a HC in my head that Ursula was a lesbian bc her name reminded me of the story of Calisto. So the HC in my head will be that she married Phineas but has an affair with Elladora, his sister who never married. And he knows all about it but doesn’t care since he has his heirs and spends most of his time thinking about a forty and something years old ginger.
Also, there are other things that doesn’t sit right with me about it: I know that the castle rejects headmasters they don’t see as legitimate or fit to the job, something like it. I remember that Umbridge was made headmaster and couldn’t get into Dumblerdore’s tower bc of it. If Phineas was as incompetent as the game tried to pass, I highly doubt he would’ve stayed much. Wouldn’t even make it pass the door.
Another romantic thing: I wanted romance options on the game. I was dying to take Natsai and Ominis out on dates. And we should’ve seen more of Sirona and Mirabel (canon lesbian)!!! I wanted them to be a lesbian couple so much. Would’ve been cool to see professor Onai and professor Shah interacting, too.
About Ominis Gaunt: I know the fandom has that old hc that pure-blood families made their children practice dark magic and/or used it on them since they were little, there are plenty of fanfictions about it, but I thought it was such an interesting thing to see it on a Gaunt bc people generally write about the Black family that way, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me considering the family is crazy and all but the Blacks that I remember that used dark magic were Bellatrix and Regulus. And they were trained by Voldemort, not by their family. Bellatrix met him when she was like 16/17.
Which led me to Sebastian Sallow and the use of dark magic! Like sorry uncle Sallow but Sebastian was truly the only one of that family who cared about Anne. His uncle destroying the fruit was so unnecessary. I do understand his anger and pain bc he was out there like “your twin sis will die mate accept it and leave her alone” but I also think it was a little bit stupid of him to use Imperius right there in front of everyone…he could’ve used any other spell and we know it. I do not feel sorry for the goblin or for his uncle, tho…I only feel sorry for Anne.
Speaking of deaths, I was STUNNED with Isidora’s death. Congrats to the actor who played San Bakar bc it was probably the best said “Avada Kedrava” of that franchise. San Bakar saw Niamh Fitzgerald hurt, rushed to her side, Isidora was almost taking two of his friends at the same time and without any effort at all, and he goes avada kedrava and rushes to Niamh again.
The sad thing about Isidora is that she’s just like Sebastian. So obsessed with taking the pain out of people that she manages to get more pain in.
Also, I find it a bit sad that we have towns of characters that should’ve been powerful but we didn’t see their powers…
I would die to see the other teachers and some students in action, we barely saw Ominis use magic and like…he is a Gaunt. He must have some powerful shit inside him. Also, I think Dumbledore should be there too bc of the timeline, but I might be wrong.
Another thing to complain about the game: our decisions don’t really impact much. We can chose to lie or say the truth, to follow Ominis or Sebastian, but we always end up on the same place.
The lack of backstory on the player character is also something. Do we have parents? We are muggle borns, half blood or pure bloods? Who are we, anyway?
Anyway, we don’t see much of important book characters and when we see, the thing that seems to be more accurate is that he doesn’t like his wife (at least it does make sense to me considering people married young at that time and he was thirty when he got married, not to mention that he was the only male heir since his little bro died in childhood) and, ofc, he hates almost everyone. His looks also are accurate considering he’s a Black who likes to have style. And that’s it. And, I might add, there’s always a connection with gingers and the Black family. And Gryffindors and Slytherins.
Oh, professor Binns also seems accurate.
And, as I said, I will probably write a fanfiction about Matilda and Phineas. There’s a fanart of them that made my head spin and now I can’t think about anything else other than him mistaking her bedroom for his while using the floo network (I could actually see it happening since they have the same blankets tho…and this is canon).
Hera two seconds before exploding this stupid statue of this stupid man who was so obsessed with himself that he put a stupid statue of himself in his own stupid home jesus why are men like this
