#reckless speculation

[pyrohydriscence]

Listening to Hint! Ep one again and I'm going to wildly speculate that Claw and Boddy hooked up, she got pregnant and Boddy paid for her to go to Paris and have the baby out of the public eye. Eight months is a weirdly specific amount of time to be gone, they were clearly entangled once upon a time and he paid for her trip.

[perilousraven]

Natal Chart: Phineas Nigellus Black

Let’s have a little bit of fun today! I came across this poll about what zodiac sign Phineas Nigellus Black would be, and it got me thinking.

Disclaimer: I don’t do typical tropical sun-sign focused modern astrology. Details will be different if you ask a generic site. If it truly matters to you feel free to ask about my methods but be prepared to actually get an answer, I’ve been an astrologer for the last 20+ years so I do know what I’m talking about

The obvious big one is Capricorn - there’s no way that Capricorn doesn’t feature prominently in Phineas’s chart. He even looks like a stereotypical Capricorn - those eyebrows! That beard!

Which leaves two other Big Three signs (and possibly Venus since that affects personal style) that we should more or less easily be able to track down. The poll suggests Gemini, which might seem like a good idea at first glance. He isn’t all that sturdy and buff, a good deal of Mercury influence could explain it! But Gemini is the wrong way to look at for that I think, it’s way too inquisitive and learning-orientated to be a good fit for the traditionalist close-minded Phineas. Virgo though, has great potential. Modern tropical astro falsely attributes all kinds of ’helping people’ and ’health nut’ images on Virgo, but those are pure nonsense. Virgo is the sign of poking things until they fall apart, it’s all about personal truths and living up to your own high expectations. Now that sounds more like a traditional pureblood wizard! Especially combined with Capricorn, Virgo can result in all sorts of close-mindedness and casual cruelty towards others.

That leaves the third sign to identify. Poll suggests Cancer, but Cancers tend to way more plump and round bodies than Phineas has ever been depicted with. My vote for the third goes towards Leo - all the grandiosity and personal sensitivity, all the fastidious grooming, and none of the dreamy family-oriented waffing about that you get with Cancer. Phineas hates children, which is a perfect fit for Leo, which is a barren sign after all and known for its individualism. Especially combined with Capricorn, Leo has a tendency to produce typical capitalist patriarchs, with more than just a casual hunger for power and prestige.

Great, that’s three signs! But then we should assign them to a chart. We know from the Beast’s Black family tree that Phineas was born in 1847, although no further data can be gleaned from there. But we can infer from context that he was probably born at Grimmauld Place so that takes care of the location. And while the release version of Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t have anything to add, if we dive into the dats there’s this whole personality and compatibility system they were designing that was never actually implemented. And that system, incomplete as it is, assigns Phineas as a winter birth. Score! Because our first identified sign is Capricorn, and the Sun is in Capricorn every January-February.

That also gives an Aquarius Venus, which is a nice enough fit for him (one of the most prominent traits of Venus in Aquarius is unabashed enjoyment of your personal gains) but doesn’t provide enough flamboyancy to be a perfect fit. However, personal style is also affected by your Ascendant, which would suggest that’s his Leo assignment. Another perfect fit, since we originally honed in on the remaining sign Virgo for his slender build, and Moon has a strong influence on the build and physical body in general.

Then all that remains is to hunt down a time in Jan-Feb 1847 that gives Virgo Moon and Leo rising. And voila!

You might note how I placed his rising sign at the tail end of Leo, which tends to produce the Leos with worse (selfish) reputations than the ones oriented towards heroism in the beginning of the sign. It also has the effect of placing his Black Moon Lilith in the 12th house, making it hard for him to see how his own grandiosity alienates other people. With the perfect confidence his Capricorn Sun/Virgo Moon brings, he really, truly and absolutely believes he’s the pinnacle of grace and society and everyone should fall at his feet. Even more notably, it also places his Venus in the 6th house, resulting in further difficulty in interpersonal relationships, and since it’s co-present with Saturn it also gives him an unacknowledged tendency towards questionable morals. Unacknowledged in that he doesn’t see it himself, others see it plenty well!

But why would a person like this ever be as succesful as to make it as a Headmaster of Hogwarts? According to this chart, part of it comes from his political and financial acumen. He might be prone to spending big, but he can also earn big, take advantage of opportunities that come his way and do it well…when it benefits him. He also does have a way of inspiring others with grand visions (Pallas in Pisces), to get any support he needs to pull through (Pallas in 7th and Capricorn Mercury). All it really guarantees is a vision though, as well as the skill required to communicate that vision and convince others of it, the benefits might never materialize for anyone but himself.

There is of course much and more that could be said to analyze this chart. I could go into detail about his devotion to personal grooming and style, about how his sexual and relationship needs together with his surprisingly adept communication style not only guaranteed that he’d end up in a marriage living in separation but also that it was a mutual decision both parties are happy with, about how he’s perfectly happy isolating himself and concentrating solely on his personal whims as long as he does have that prestige and power outside his little den when he ventures out… not sure how interesting a more in-depth analysis of his chart would be though, it’s built on fairly flimsy canon evidence! Well, all in good fun and such.

[alchemicink25]

I went to rewatch bits of Zeztz episode 18 (the basketball bits actually 😁) and I'd forgotten that Baku calls Kureha by name at the beginning of the dream without any introduction, like he knows her just as well as he knows Nasuka. And I remember thinking on my first watch "huh, that's kinda weird" but I chalked it up to being a little hint that it's Kureha's dream and not Nasuka's, like he originally assumes.

But on the rewatch, now I'm trying to piece together when Baku and Kureha met and if they knew each other well 🤔 They were both at the cram school/secret agent training as kids, but after that...? I wonder...

OR I'm just overthinking 😅

[perilousraven]

The Hogwarts Thestrals, in Detail

After writing down a few thoughts about the missing Hogwarts magical menagerie last time, it still left a few things on the topic completely untouched - namely, the thestrals. So let's take a curiously detailed look at the thestrals and the effects of their addition to Hogwarts grounds.

Just so that we're all on the same page, a little summary on the basics: thestrals look like reptilian and skeletal horses with wings and blank white eyes, although are invisible to anyone who hasn't seen someone die. They are described as carnivores on Pottermore, but it's unknown whether they're scavengers or predators. Additionally, they are larger than horses and have far more stamina and speed than a horse - the last we know because Harry & co rode thestrals from Hogwarts all the way to London without stopping, and in a few hours at that.

The Stagecoaches

What's this then, you might ask. What exactly do the Hogwarts stagecoaches have to do with thestrals, beyond the fact that thestrals pull them? They can tell us quite a bit as it turns out, as that particular word is not just a random synonym for 'coach' or 'horseless carriage'. This word was chosen in specific over all the other words that could have been used, and it has Implications.

A stagecoach is a horse-drawn four-wheeled public transit coach, and they were the fastest way to travel around prior to invention (and widespread availability) of railways. They were first developed sometime 13th century, although didn't become common until early 17th century, at which point it was Britain that spearheaded the revolution. Over the centuries there were different models of them of course, but we do actually know roughly what era of model Hogwarts used.

Rattling and swaying, the carriages moved in convoy up the road.

(OotP, the convoy on its way up the carriage road from Hogsmeade Station to Hogwarts)

See those word used? 'Swaying', in specific? In all early models of stagecoaches, the motion was a jarring up and down bouncing. The swaying and rocking only became a thing in 1867 models and later, not too long before railways replaced them as the major choice for transport. This, as it turns out, is relevant in at least one nitpicky way not strictly related to thestrals, and that is the number of passengers.

An early model stagecoach had two seats inside the carriage, one front and one back, and each could seat three people. The swaying models though, expanded that with a third seat for up to nine passengers inside the carriage. Later models added even more, some rather imaginative models even expanded up to 20(!!) passengers total, but I think it's a rather safe option to go with the standard nine passengers. Furthermore...

[...] followed the rest of the school along the platform and out onto a rough mud track, where at least a hundred stagecoaches awaited the remaining students.

(PoA, Harry entering the stagecoaches for the first time)

Here stood the hundred or so horseless stagecoaches that always took the students above first year up to the castle.

(OotP, taking the stagecoaches up to Hogwarts)

As you can see, it's entirely definitive that there are just over one hundred stagecoaches sent to Hogsmeade Station every year. Perhaps 110, to pick a reasonable number that might just be discernible at a glance from an even one hundred, if you're good at estimating the number of things. That totals 990 possible passengers, perhaps even more.

Even should you find that hard to believe, the books themselves confirm at minimum six passengers for every coach, as in OotP we see Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Luna all enter one stagecoach, while Draco, Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy, and at bare minimum one other Slytherin student entered another one. So should you assume that the Hogwarts stagecoaches are small like the early models, that's still space for some 660 students that they send down there.

Aside from all the other indications in the books that Hogwarts has some 800 students while Harry attends, this surely must be the final nail in the coffin of that tired old fan theory that Hogwarts has only forty students per year, or 280 total. I repeat myself here, but even if they for some reason acquired smaller old model coaches with new ('new') anti-bouncing technology, that's still space for more than 600 students. Since first years don't even use the stagecoaches they'd send space for almost 700 students when there's only some 240 passengers. Who does that?

No, it's rather certain that there are roughly 800 students at Hogwarts as stated elsewhere in the books and confirmed in interviews, the stagecoaches are the new models and thus carry nine passengers each, and the convoy of a hundred plus stagecoaches sent to Hogsmeade Station has space for some 990 students. This has space for all the students and also conveniently allows many of the stagecoaches to leave when only partially full, to eliminate long waiting times at the station while students desperately try sort themselves into coaches while still staying with all their friends...

The stagecoaches turned out to be a rather useful diversion already, wouldn't you say? But there's more.

The Herd

To find out what kind of effects the addition of thestrals might have had around Hogwarts, one should be aware of the size of the Hogwarts herd. Now, taking a look at muggle stagecoaches, they were drawn by teams of four or six horses. But we can't draw exact parallels here, as we're specifically told thestrals are bigger than horses (in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them minibook), and they are also stronger so not as many would be required to pull a single stagecoach.

But what do the books say on the subject?

The coaches were no longer horseless. There were creatures standing between the carriage shafts [...]

(OotP, Harry's first time seeing thestrals)

“At the — there, between the shafts! Harnessed to the coach! It’s right there in front —”

(OotP, a bit later in the same scene)

Unwillingly, because he had half hoped they would have vanished, he turned his eyes instead upon the strange, skeletal creatures standing quietly in the chill night air, their blank white eyes gleaming.

(OotP, when getting off the carriages)

The evidence is..fairly inconclusive. The first and third quote seem to indicate that there's two or more per coach, but in the second it looks like there's only one. We're just going to have to be content with an estimate of 1 or 2 per stagecoach. I'd personally say two per coach, but the text doesn't back it up any more than it backs up one per coach.

The number does create a bit of a problem though, as there's roughly 110 stagecoaches. It then follows that the size of the Hogwarts thestral herd must be at minimum 110 or 220 adults, plus any young or elderly thestrals that can't pull carriages.

Where on earth are they stashing all of those?! Well...

A great, reptilian winged horse, just like the ones pulling the Hogwarts carriages, with leathery black wings spread wide like a pterodactyl’s, rose up out of the trees like a grotesque, giant bird. It soared in a great circle and then plunged once more into the trees.

(OotP, Harry looking out a dorm window at night)

The few individuals Hagrid introduced the CoMC class to might have been brought further away from the herd, but thestrals wandering about in the Forest at night does seem to point to them roaming the Forest freely when not working. Oh dear. So Hagrid really just...stuffed them in the Forest and called it a day. Figures.

We're missing key pieces of information here of course, such as how much a thestral eats at a time, how often they have to eat, how much of their meat is provided by Hogwarts instead of hunted/foraged for by the thestrals themselves, and how much living space each individual requires - they're herd animals but even herd animals have requirements for personal space. Regardless though, the addition of a hundreds-strong herd of carnivores to the Forest must have really done a number on its ecological balance. You can't just suddenly add that many large living things in there and expect it to work out! The prey animal populations will collapse!

And should you doubt it, the addition of the thestral herd to the Forest is a recent thing:

“Hogwarts has got a whole herd of ’em in here. […] ’Course, this lot don’ get a lot o’ work, it’s mainly jus’ pullin’ the school carriages unless Dumbledore’s takin’ a long journey an’ don’ want ter Apparate […] Yeah, so, we started off with a male an’ five females. This one,” he patted the first horse to have appeared, “name o’ Tenebrus, he’s my special favorite, firs’ one born here in the forest —”

(OotP, Hagrid during the class he introduces thestrals in)

As we can see here, the Hogwarts thestral herd was all bred and trained by Hagrid, which means the first individuals were acquired in 1943 earliest - the year Hagrid was expelled and after which he was hired on as a gamekeeper (or hopefully, gamekeeper trainee). Which is to say, they've been around at most fifty years, and a considerable time before their actual work pulling the stagecoaches they had to have been doing something else, since there wasn't enough to transport all the students. You don't go from six thestrals to hundreds in a heartbeat, it takes at least a decade or two to build up a herd of that kind of size.

It could of course be that there were wild thestrals in the Forest before Hagrid's breeding program (in fact, extra-book canon is firm that there were wild thestrals around Hogwarts before then, and even Pottermore says they're native to British Isles), those could have boosted the semi-tame herd's numbers quite fast and somewhat mitigated the ecological damage the addition of a herd that size would cause. It's still no laughing matter.

The Implications

Aside from Hagrid's careless attitude towards introducing foreign species and very large herds of carnivores to the Forbidden Forest and causing potential ecological disasters, which I'm sure we're all already familiar with (see also: acromantulas), the thestrals do raise some interesting questions.

Namely, how did the older students get from Hogsmeade Station to Hogwarts before the thestrals? The first years' boats mean that that part of the tradition has to have changed too if no transport was available for the others, as the first years would arrive at the castle a fairly considerable time before everyone else if the older years had to walk (see Harry and Tonks's trek in HBP). This leads me to believe that the stagecoaches themselves are not a new addition, even though the thestrals pulling them are. That would then necessitate the use of non-magical horses or other winged horses than thestrals, before they took over.

And lo and behold, the FB minibook provides us with aethonans - a chestnut variety of winged horse that it reports was popular in Britain and Ireland. There is absolutely no reason to think this theory has to be true, but I think a Hogwarts aethonan herd that far predates the thestral herd would explain quite a lot. It doesn't explain what happened to the aethonans of course, since we never see any and nor is their existence ever hinted at, but it would allow the students a way to travel all the way from Hogsmeade Station to the castle before the thestrals, and it would explain why the stagecoaches are a mid 19th century model if the thestrals were only added mid 20th century or later.

I suppose the aethonans could have been sold when the thestrals took their job, or the herd dwindled over the years naturally and we simply don't see the remaining few individuals...just like we don't see all the dozens of kneazles and puffskeins and nifflers and all the other creatures that Hogwarts should by all sense keep for its Care of Magical Creatures class. It would mean, though, since aethonans are rather more unlikely to fare well if left to themselves in a forest full of magical predators than thestrals are, that there's likely the remains of a very large paddock for grazing (winged) horses somewhere close by to Hogwarts, large enough for some 200+ individuals. A bit of research tells me that for a horse herd of that size it should be at least 201 acres. We already know that winged horses tend to be larger than non-magical ones though, so it'd probably be even larger than that. Hogwarts seems to have many mysteries we fans have yet to uncover.

Fun fact: McGonagall and Sprout both went to Hogwarts early enough that they most likely saw these hypothetical aethonans! Even Arthur and Molly Weasley (and therefore others of comparable age, like Bellatrix Lestrange and Rita Skeeter) might be old enough to have seen them before they were replaced with thestrals. The possibilities!

[perilousraven]

Hogwarts Class Divisions

I've been thinking of the Hogwarts population again, and their relation to the demographics of the wizarding world at large (main meta here, additional conversation here). To be fair, this post is entirely speculation, based on the facts that we do get as detailed in the linked posts.

Much has been made over the years about how it looks like both working class people (due to lack of working class accent among Hogwarts students we see in the books) and at least Irish but possibly also Welsh people (due to lack of accent and tell-tale names) are missing from the Hogwarts student populace. On this subject I keep returning to the division into classes/groups within Hogwarts - Harry and Ron's dorm clearly has five boys, and they attend classes together in that one dorm group and together with specific other dorm groups from their own year, all throughout their school years. So here we already have a very telling setup. Specifically, since Harry especially is unlikely to reach out across group divisions and get to know people in those other groups he doesn't come into as much contact with, if Hogwarts does divide students into those groups based on class and/or blood purity or other traits, then we'd never get to see the kind of people those other groups include. Which is exactly what happens in the books, we don't see them or we don't see enough of them to explain their absence.

For example the blood status division, as Sirius and Hermione and others claim it to be versus how we see it to be in the books. We could potentially explain this away by Harry's dorm/class group and their equivalents in other genders and houses (let's call it group A) having been specifically constructed to include a pureblood majority, and the other groups have mostly half-bloods and muggleborns. It'd make sense in that we see group A is taught by mainly the Heads of Houses and such, high status professors in other words, and we also know from decades of discourse that those teachers absolutely do not have time to teach any other groups. Therefore, other groups have professors that are not quite so high status. If this is a conscious division on the part of Hogwarts it would make perfect sense. It is in major conflict with the fact that neither the Snatchers nor the Voldemort-controlled Ministry know anyone's blood status though, they have to work off of rumors and hearsay. Therefore it's rather unlikely that Hogwarts would do this, all the blood purists would have to do to find out someone's blood status is look at which dorm/class group someone was in at Hogwarts.

Or the social class of the students. Hogwarts is supposed to educate damn near every single child in the British Isles, so where are all the working class kids? If we presume they get shunted on to group B or C or even D in times when the population is higher than the years Harry attends Hogwarts, it'd give a perfect explanation for why we don't hear those accents. They're excluded from group A, which consists of the upper class and upper middle class students. We definitely see more than enough upper class coded kids among those who attend the same Hogwarts classes as Harry does. Even the muggleborns in group A conform to this. There are three among the 40 students in group A, and two of them we have data on. Hermione is comfortably upper middle class, and Justin Finch-Fletchley is pure and straight an upper class kid. This kind of division of the demographics is much easier to integrate in canon than the blood status is, too. All anyone constructing the groups would have to do is look at the surname to be able to separate the cream of wizarding society from the rest. Or even just address, since muggleborns don't appear to be treated much differently in this regard - surely wizards also have clusters of upper class neighborhoods and working class neighborhoods and so on. This type of division does also raise interesting questions though, such as: would Snape have been in his year's group A or in another one? In other words, did his lower working class neighborhood determine his placement, or did his mother's family count for more? It isn't impossible for anyone constructing the groups to have known about his family history since his parents' marriage was announced in the Daily Prophet, but if it's mainly address-based would they have bothered checking especially since his surname is muggle?

Or what about the Irish kids. Hell, what about the Hogsmeade kids. Hogsmeade population even in its pure minimum is high enough to potentially be a quarter of all wizarding population in Britain, unless British wizarding population numbers considerably more than ten thousand. And truly, it would make no sense for the Hogsmeade kids to first travel to London and then take the Hogwarts Express back. Leaving aside the question of just how they get to Hogwarts, is there perhaps an indication included that students from Hogsmeade are not boarders but day students? And even if they're boarders like everyone else, do they still get placed in a single group of their own? After all, we don't see a single student in Harry's year group A that we'd know for sure to be from Hogsmeade. The chances of that happening naturally are extremely low. So we're looking at potentially group B or whatever for Hogsmeade natives, and group C or whatever for mainly Irish and Welsh (and working class) students. Is that how it works?

I'm really starting to come to the conclusion that it's what fits what we see the most. Perhaps not the blood status division, but all the rest of it fit the evidence exceedingly well.

Somebody convince me differently before I go off the deep end ranting about the implications of all the evidence complete with my red-thread conspiracy board

[perilousraven]

Facts in Blood Politics

I am distracted, I know. That'll continue for a while yet, blame my dash that put a screenshot of another game in front of me and said they headcanon their character is a witch. What kind of game would allow that, I asked myself, and then I was lost. Oops. My wizarding OC family continues to expand.

But what I was thinking while creating my mind reader witch's background was. If it's true that muggleborns all have wizarding ancestry. And certain talents run in families and talents such as parseltongue can be preserved by continuing to have children with close-but-not-too-close relatives while the rest of the community loses that talent.

Then the blood purists, they're kind of right in part aren't they? Magic can only come from magic. You can't be a witch or wizard without inheriting that magical blood. They're just wrong about how far back it can come from. Your parents don't need to be magical to pass on that trait to you, even if their own magical talent is dormant.

If so, then the opposite is also true. Dumbledore's crowd, at least those that don't believe in muggleborns having wizarding ancestry, are factually wrong, even if they're wrong for a good cause.

Just something to think about, as I continue my exploration into the possibility of there eventually being technology that can activate certain magical talents in squibs or 'muggles' with strong magical ancestry. Or 'technology', as I'm not sure that word applies to devices that mimic muggle tech but are actually magic. I'm sure we all remember by now that muggle tech is inherently incompatible with the presence of magic and I don't have to mention it separately, right?

[perilousraven]

On Determining Wizarding Nations and Other Geography

Just as British witches and wizards do not use electricity or computers, they have never turned metric. They are not governed by the decisions of the Muggle government, so when the process of metrication (switching to metric measurements) began in 1965, witches and wizards simply ignored the change.

(Pottermore: Measurements)

....do you realize the implications of this. Any political decision - any political decision - made by the muggle government after 1692 is moot unless wizards specifically decided to change it too.

I've been drawing a map of known wizarding locations (what fascinating things you find, when you have the data laid out like that in front of you) and this certainly makes the decision of whether to use the post 19whatever counties or the old ones for the map. I mean, I know there's a map of Argyllshire in Hogwarts but that could simply be a historical map, it's not proof by itself that wizarding Britain still uses the old counties. This though? This makes it pretty damn likely. Excuse me while I gush in the distance about getting it right (most likely)!

The real question then becomes: are Scotland and Ireland and England all separate countries in wizarding legislation? They do all have their own quidditch teams in the World Cup, but so does Wales and Wales was joined to England way back in 13th century. (and in some sports they do all in fact have separate teams in the real world too, for historical reasons) That's much too early to have been affected by the implementation of the Statute and the subsequent establishment of the....British Ministry of Magic.

Let's think for a moment. Checking my facts on Wikipedia just in case, it says that 'Britain' specifically refers to the big island, does not include Ireland, and is the modern equivalent to what used to be called Albion (!!! I'm reeling at the possible implications here). What makes things murky is that Scotland was unified with England very early in the lifespan of the Statute - 1707 which is the same year the British Ministry of Magic was founded. Did they already have completely separate legislation from the muggle country at that point? Or, perhaps, was this unification and a hypothetical Scottish wizarding resistance to the idea the reason the Ministry was founded at the same time? To be able to preserve the national identity of British wizards? If so, that would make the British Ministry of Magic more akin to a federation rather than a single country's government. A bit of an abstract difference maybe, since we know basically nothing of how the MoM actually operates, but quite a curious one! Regardless, there's no further actual proof for the idea aside from the stated fact that wizarding Britain is not governed by the muggle government, not unless you count the quidditch teams being separate as proof and as already stated they're separate in football too.

Ireland though? Ireland wasn't joined with the others until a hundred years later, in the muggle world. Regardless of whether the MoM considers Scotland part of the same country as England, by all indications Ireland wouldn't be. Not unless they specifically made the decision to join the countries like the muggles did, despite the muggle governments being completely separate by then. The possibility is in fact rather high that in the wizarding world there's a united Ireland, simply because UK was never formed in the first place. Therefore, it seems pretty likely indeed that Ireland is not governed by the British Ministry. Since it’s not even in Britain.

But let's look even further.

MACUSA was modeled on the Wizards’ Council of Great Britain, which predated the Ministry of Magic. Representatives from magical communities all over North America were elected to MACUSA to create laws that both policed and protected American wizardkind.

(Pottermore: MACUSA)

In other words, there was a council of wizards that oversaw matters in Great Britain (=Albion, hint hint) - which according to other sources was founded by mid 13th century (and, if you need more tidbits, the Council explicitly doesn't include Ireland). That means the Council was at minimum two decades old when Wales was joined into England by the muggle government. Is this the reason Wales is separate in the Ministry? Because there was already a Welsh wizarding government in play even if they weren't fully separate from the muggle government yet? Provided of course the theory holds true that the British MoM is in fact a federation or loose union of sorts. Which it might just be - MACUSA seems to be (even some of the departments are explicitly called 'federal' this and that) and if MACUSA is a federation therefore the Council would have been as well since it was modeled after it. I see no reason why they'd change this for the British Ministry all of a sudden, therefore the British Ministry is likely a federation just like the other two.

I'd also like to point out that MACUSA is older than USA itself. The MACUSA page confirms that it was never associated with the USA government in the first place, let alone later. How would that affect any legislative areas MACUSA has? Would they really have formed along the same lines as the muggle government's? Is it even justified for (wizard-raised) wizards to refer to USA instead of whatever regional communities NA had back in 17th century, which are therefore part of MACUSA? As in, they have representatives in the Congress and all? We all know the Fantastic Beasts movies can be severely non-canon and lack any thought on the implications of the lore, so we can't even truly use that as evidence.

How fascinating. I haven't delved into mapping out wizarding areas outside of Britain and Ireland yet, but it looks like for that purpose you really can't rely on modern (muggle) maps.

(don't think I missed the tidbit that MACUSA is North America only. Makes you wonder if there's something similar in South America or whether that has another kind of governing structure entirely)

[perilousraven]

The Browns and Wizarding Jamaica

In the books there's only one Brown mentioned, that being Lavender obviously, but in the games there's more and they provide background to the family. For those not in the know the Browns semi-recently came from Jamaica (semi-recently back in 1890), which I found really interesting in terms of wizarding world implications. So of course I had to go look for the specifics, and this post gives some details on what I found.

Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert in African or Middle American history or racial relations. If anyone else more familiar with the matters under discussion chimes in I strongly urge you to listen to them instead of me.

What We Know from Canon

For further background reference, the other known Browns are Thomas Brown, owner of Tomes and Scrolls (bookshop) in Hogsmeade in 1890, and Belinda Brown who is a (seemingly high ranking) operative in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. We know their family has been in Britain for some decades by 1890, and that they were previously bakers. So we're going to be looking at how these African descent people ended up in Jamaica, how that reflects on the wizarding world, and how they made their way to Britain in early or mid 19th century to become respectable middle class people.

As for Lavender herself, whether you headcanon her as having darker skin (as per the early movies) or lighter skin (as per the later movies after she became a speaking part character), she might or might not be related to the Brown family in the rest of the series. That's a bit immaterial to the conclusions, but it does provide interesting possibilities for her character if they're actually related and she has Jamaican (and beyond) heritage.

Establishing Wizarding Jamaica

Jamaica was originally inhabited by the Taíno people starting maybe around the year 800 or so. They may or may not be of the Arawak language group, which gave us such words as barbacoa (barbecue), tabaco (tobacco), juracán (hurricane), hamaca (hammock), kanoa (canoe), among many others. Very influential in other words! The place itself was originally called Xaymaca, which 'Jamaica' is an approximation of. The Taíno arrived from the south, which indicates that there might have been contact with the mainland still a few hundred years later when 'Castelobruxo' was established (we know it's at least as old as Hogwarts, which was founded sometime in late 10th century). Thus, it's entirely possible that any (or some) Taíno witches and wizards attended the school from the very date of its founding. The population of the island reached up to 60,000 people in some estimates so there would have been a dozen or so wizards at least, even by fairly conservative estimates.

But that's before Columbus arrived, in May 1494, and the Portuguese took control of the island. The population of Taíno had plummeted to just some 2500 by the time the Portuguese were conquered in turn by the English over two hundred years later. Most Taíno died, although even in the real world some had escaped into the mountainous interior of the island and established refugee communities. Which is of course of interest to us because if there was any substantial number of these lucky escapees then there could have been witches and wizards among them. And of course, unless the Portuguese brought magical folk of their own then it's rather more likely for the witches and wizards among the Taíno population to have survived to escape, at least if they reacted quickly enough to the threat. Additionally, if it's indeed true that muggle diseases don't touch magical folk, that makes it even more likely that the surviving Taíno were heavily skewed towards witches and wizards. It's a complete unknown though whether they could establish contact with the mainland to attend 'Castelobruxo' if indeed they'd done so before Columbus's arrival, and we have no word on how wandless magic or indigenous American styles of magic work, let alone what type of travel and concealment spells they had developed. Depending on the specifics they might or might not have been a real help to the rest of their surviving community.

But I digress, we're looking for the Browns, which is to say people of African descent. That's where the English come in, they started bringing in huge numbers of prisoners and servants (mostly from Ireland), but also slaves, primarily of the Akan people (modern west African countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo). It's in fact fairly likely that being from Jamaica, the Browns are originally of the Akan. A fair number of these slaves also escaped and ended up living and mixing with the escaped Taíno in the mountains. Their combined communities became known as the Maroons. It's unlikely that if the slavers were muggle they would have managed to transport witches and wizards, but muggleborns, especially muggleborns born on the island, would definitely have had a good chance to be there and then manage the escape to join with the Maroon/Taíno communities. Considering even a clueless un-taught muggleborn's chances of escape compared to muggles, you could even say that muggleborn Akans might have greatly supplemented the magical population already present.

There's also various other interesting tidbits from this time period, like the possibility of wizard pirates. Jamaica was home base to many pirate operations in the 17th century when the English took over. Thus, it's plausible that there were wizarding pirate crews in the area even! Or, say, wizarding Taíno/Maroon pirate crews. If the Portuguese and the English didn't have wizarding folk in their service, how would they have stopped the Taíno or the Maroons from occasionally traveling between their mountain homes and the sea for their ships? This is definitely extra, but I had to include the information. Possible wizarding pirates! Now isn't that just a grand thought.

There's one more thing I have to mention that's of interest here in the basic setting though, and that's the language. It's fairly likely that the wizarding Taíno and their surviving muggle brethren retained enough community to have kept their language, which the escaped Akan slaves that joined them could easily have picked up. If indeed Taíno and Akan wizarding community or few survived on Jamaica, there's a good chance they would have kept on speaking their original language, or at least a mixture of Taíno and Akan languages which is closer to what happened in the real world. What I'm getting at here is it's likely they kept referring to the island as Xaymaca in their own language. Whether later more organized Jamaican wizarding community (post-International Confederation of Wizards) kept the original name in the face of English conventions is anyone's guess. It's a convenient shorthand for this post though, so from here on out I'll be using 'Jamaica' to refer to the muggle side and 'Xaymaca' to refer to the wizarding side.

ICW and Xaymaca's Role in the Post-ISOS World

Next we have a problem and the name of that problem is the International Statute of Secrecy (ISOS), which came into effect in 1692. That's two hundred years after westerners arrived in Jamaica. Is it plausible to say that if a (partially or mostly) wizarding community of Taíno and later Akan was established on the island, that no wizarding officials in Europe noticed or were notified of their existence? This is a problem elsewhere in the Americas too. Just how much did the International Confederation of Wizards know of the American wizarding communities, and was there any formal contact between them? Were indigenous American wizarding communities involved in setting up ISOS? Because that's the question, isn't it. We know MACUSA at least is fully on board with it and ensures that the muggles don't find out about magic, but were indigenous communities of America part of that decision?

Impossible to say for sure, really. But there are some details that might help. The easy integration of the Jamaican (Xaymacan) Browns into wizarding Britain seems to hint that there might have been an official process of moving from Xaymaca to Britain through wizarding routes. We'll cover in more detail later why the Browns had to have come from a wizarding community instead of being muggleborn slaves raised with the muggles. Whether that ease of movement comes from Xaymacan authorities having established relations with British wizarding authorities, or from British wizarding authorities having gone fully colonial and taken charge of the Xaymacan communities, we can't say for sure. But for the ISOS to have taken effect on the island, either Xaymaca was part of the ICW by 1692 or British wizards had formally claimed Jamaica as being under their rule and thus were responsible for ISOS upkeep there. I guess in the lack of canon evidence we each need to decide for ourselves whether or not we think that wizarding Britain was fully colonialist or not. Who was in charge in the end doesn't affect the broad strokes of this meta, but it's definite that one of the aforementioned possibilities is fact.

As for me, I think that if ICW really wanted to set up ISOS on indigenous people's land, they would have faced quite a bit of resistance from said indigenous people if the decision was entirely one-sided. At the very least those people would have wanted something in return for their cooperation. Something like full independence from colonialist schmucks, say? An America full of unwilling wizarding communities would have been a nightmare to deal with when what you want is secrecy. I'm on the camp of independent indigenous wizarding communities having existed the whole time and being equal members of the ICW since 16th century or so. I don't think the Statute of Secrecy would have succeeded in the Americas otherwise.

So I repeat, while it has no concrete implications in this meta, I'll be going forward with the assumption that Xaymaca was an independent country the whole time and a member of the ICW, just the same as any other established communities of indigenous people in the Americas.

The Slavery Problem

Let's go a bit forward in history. After the Statute was implemented at the end of the 17th century, 18th century brought hundreds of thousands of (mostly Akan) slaves to Jamaica for the sugarcane industry. There were also various rebellions and even several wars against the Maroons (1728-1740 and 1795-96), the first of which the Maroons won. Of course, the English then proceeded to incite the second war and won it, and the Maroons went back to non-entities on the political map of Jamaica, and in the real world were basically eradicated in fact, but I digress. Slave trade was abolished 1808 (so no new slaves were brought in after that, although children of slaves continued to be born to slavery), slavery itself was technically abolished in 1834, although continued in practice in Jamaica until 1838. Are you starting to see the problem here? Hogwarts Legacy takes place in 1890. We've now reached times when the Browns moved from Jamaica to Britain, and were well enough off to set up a bakery and school their children enough for them to become bookstore owners and Ministry operatives. If the Browns were muggleborns or even wizarding folk hidden within the slave populace, would they have had the wealth or the skills necessary for that?

I looked up numerous sources describing life and skill level of the slaves in Jamaica around that time period (such as here, here, or here), before and after they were freed, but was unable to find any mention of skilled bakers or cooks in Jamaica or the Caribbean in general. Certainly that doesn't mean that they couldn't exist, although based on the sources it seems rather unlikely. Could they have been first freed in 1838, then gained skill as bakers in Jamaica, and finally immigrated to Britain with their newly found skills? Could be. But perhaps a more likely explanation is that the Browns were part of the Xaymacan wizarding community, which would have been rather more well off being defended by magic than the muggle Maroons we know basically died out on the island. It would give them skills, it would have let them accumulate wealth for several generations which they then used to establish themselves in Britain, and Xaymacan wizarding authorities (whether indigenous or British overlords) would have made the immigration process to Britain vastly easier than it would have been for just any unskilled poverty-ridden newly released slave the kind of which Jamaica was full of at the time.

For more tidbits to help us look into this, let's look at Thomas Brown, proprietor of Tomes and Scrolls in Hogsmeade. He's by no means a spring chicken, has some grey and everything. Yet he talks of his 'family' having come from Jamaica, as if he was born in Britain himself. So how old is he? We don't know for certain, although the grey in his hair certainly helps. Google says that Black people typically start to go grey around mid-40s. So let's say the Browns arrived in Britain fifty years before Hogwarts Legacy, around 1840. That would give them only two years to between actual abolishing of slavery in Jamaica and their moving date, to gain the skills and the wealth necessary to immigrate and set up shop. Realistic? Not so much. Conclusion is they must be from a Xaymacan wizarding community, probably some kind of Maroon settlement that escaped the muggle Maroon eradication of the late 18th and early 19th century by means of magical defenses.

But what could have triggered their moving to Britain from the newly liberated Jamaica? Well. Perhaps Jamaica wasn't so liberated yet and they moved earlier than 1840, that's only the estimate for the latest they had to have moved by. Perhaps the early Browns saw the grand promises of the abolition of slavery and saw that their muggle brethren on the island still suffered, were still slaves. Perhaps they got fed up with waiting. Perhaps they did stick around to see the actual abolishing of slavery, but wanted better opportunities for their children. Jamaica was an incredibly restless and disease-ridden place by mid 19th century, anyone would have wanted out. But in the end, there's any number of reasons they could have left Jamaica, and unfortunately there's no way to tell for sure.

Xaymacan Culture, and Various Possibilities

Well. There's no use figuring out what kind of place the Browns came from geographically and historically if we still don't know anything about their culture, right? Lots of possible implications there. So let's take a brief look at the Taíno and Akan cultures and what they might have produced in a wizarding context.

The Taíno and Akan are actually fairly similar in many ways. Both societies were originally matrilineal in some ways, for the Taíno in kinship and inheritances, including inherited social status, for the Akan in kinship and inheritances including social status (Akan surnames though, are patrilineal instead). Gold jewelry was favored in both cultures, and chairs in both were traditionally reserved for the nobility only. Quite curious actually how many details they have that are the same! It's no wonder that even in the real world these two people blended so readily into the Maroons when forced into general proximity.

It unfortunately proved beyond me to find details of the indigenous Akan religion (which continued to be practiced in one form or another by almost all slaves in Jamaica regardless of their originating culture), but as for the Taíno, they worshiped (worship) deities and ancestral spirits via statues, and were led by a priest class that were also healers. I've remarked on it before I think, with the post on Salazar Slytherin's origins, but cultures like these do make it sound as if in the wizarding world it's the magical folk who might have had high status in a lot of the world. That might give a bit of insight into the social structure of their communit(ies), wizarding folk were likely highly respected. Also, traditional Taíno food was mostly vegetarian supplemented by little things like eels and lizards, since that's what was available. That might come into play if looking at traditional foods in relation to the Brown family, such as in a fic say!

But what I'm actually getting at here, is that while Thomas Brown's features do look stereotypically African in the game, it's entirely possible that his blood and cultural heritage is partially Taíno instead, since we have already established that it's most likely his family was from the Xaymacan Maroon communities.

Which leads us back to Lavender Brown. If she's related to the other Browns in the series, is she about to inherit from her mother or other female relative perhaps? Does her jewelry signify more than just a teenage girl's fancy? The patterns on her clothes? (the Akan in specific are known for incorporating mythological symbols in their art, and that includes clothing and jewelry) Has she inherited any Taíno or Akan magical practices? Does her interest in Divination tie in with her cultural heritage? Is she vegetarian or does she prefer vegetarian food that would remind her of her family's home cooking?

All very good questions! Maybe with a little further digging one could set up a quite fascinating cultural heritage for her and her family. This is where I bow out though. Go wild, should the topic of Lavender Brown and the Brown family in general interest you.