Alarm

N.E.W.T Examination
June 10th 2000
History of Magic 2 hours

Section A

Choose one question from this section. You should spend about 45 minutes on this section (+5 minutes reading time).

Option 1: Witch-burning in the seventeenth century.

In 1612 a woman was tried for the sin of witchcraft. A Witch-pricker was employed to discover whether or not she practiced the Craft by pricking her naked body with pins all over. He purposed to find the place where no blood could be drawn, for that was where her familiar fed. She stood before him, naked flesh puckering in the cold air, with rivulets of blood running down her skin.

Evidence had been gathered against her. The townspeople had believed she was an ordinary woman. She gathered herbs from the forest to aid the midwives, she helped them with difficult births and helped the healers brew their cures. She was to be married in the Summer to the son of the local carpenter and she and her family had been ‘accepted frely unto the harte of the townsfolke.’ On the twenty-third of April, accusations were levelled against her. She had been seen muttering as she twisted thin cord around a waxen doll and three hours later the town priest was found hanged in his chambers, with no sign of who might have perpetrated the crime. The houses she visited suffered, with lambs dying of no good reason and crops afflicted by blight. It was said she danced naked with the heathen spirits and was a vessel for Satan himself and so it was decided that she should be ‘ducked’ in the traditional manner, at the pool on the edge of the town.

She had always been a well-liked and well respected young woman from a good family and with excellent prospects but as she was lowered into the pool, it was with a spitting hatred that the villagers beheld her. It was said she had taken many lovers, all of whom had died in mysterious circumstances. She had influence over the weather and could call down a thunderstorm with a flash of her eyes. As she floated to the surface, the villagers called out in unison. Here was irrevocable proof from God himself. She was guilty.

She was burned at the stake on April thirtieth, 1612 and was heard crying out in agony for her mother as the flames licked around her ankles and her flesh began to burn. She was watched by the entire village, all of whom were chanting assurances of her eternal damnation. They were convinced that they themselves were in the right, having been clearly ordered by their Bible that they ‘shalt not suffer a witch to live’. The woman’s name was Mary, her surname having been long forgotten, and her skeleton was buried at St. Chad’s graveyard three days after her death.

Excerpt from ‘An Analysis of Muggle Hysteria’ by Professor Sky Severini.

Muggles in the seventeenth century burned supposed witches and wizards because they could not understand their practices and this bred an ethos of fear that was liable to quickly escalate when triggered. Discuss.

In the Great Hall, eighty quills began to scratch lines of black ink across their parchment, unmoved minds full of structured arguments.

The newsreader’s lips were thin and bloodless. They opened and closed around the damp hollow of her mouth, speaking words that made little sense and yet would be remembered long after she was forgotten. Harry felt each one of them like a punch in the gut.

“Today’s report is the latest in a series of startling revelations that are coming to us from all over England.” Her fingers rustled the papers and she gave a prim little cough that made Harry’s blood boil as though he was on fire. “Special correspondent, Daniel Cross, is at the scene in North Yorkshire where two people were arrested earlier this morning in conjunction with the gas-line that exploded underneath the railway station last month.”

A man appeared on the screen. Balding and enthusiastic with eyes like a child’s and skin ruddy from the cold wind.

“Thank you, Carole. Yes, it truly is a remarkable story here, this morning. I am sure viewers are aware of the recent events involving what seems to be an enormous underground occult sect that has been kept concealed for many years. For those of you who have not followed the story, it was reported last week that thousands of people across the country currently belong to this enormous society that is strongly affiliated with witchcraft and the supernatural. The informant sent in this remarkable footage which has been checked for forgery and so far has been found to be perfectly genuine.”

They showed a clip of two teenage wizards taking advantage of what they thought was a private moment and were spelling objects towards each other and having a play-duel. There was something so candid about their posture and ignorance of their audience as to make it seem suddenly much more believable and since it had surfaced there had been uproar.

That news article was one of the first. They began to get steadily worse over the succeeding weeks.

“News just in. It appears that many of the supposed man-made tragedies that have occurred over the past fifty years have actually been as a result of the Occult society that was kept concealed for so long from the general public.” There was a definite note of panic in the newsreader’s face as he read that one out.

They began to monopolize the airways and soon it was all anyone could talk about. Wizard or muggle. Harry was surprised. He would have thought that the video footage would have been immediately dismissed as a hoax. He would have thought that the charms against muggles would always work. He would have thought that their memories could have all been modified. Surely there was something that could be done.

“No,” Dumbledore had said sadly, as he addressed the whole school before they broke up for the summer. “I am afraid it is too late for that. Once it was broadcast to all the muggles in England, it became far too well-known for it to be cleanly reversed. It was known that this might one day happen, that we could not remain a secret for very long. It has always been said.”

Time-turners, they said. Harry thought this was a very good idea as he watched reporter after reporter uncover the wizarding events that had remained so exclusively a part of his world up until then.

“The use of a time-turner is not an option at the present,” said Fudge in his speech on the Wizarding Wireless Network. “It is impossible to tell when the video footage was taken and the reversal of time has got to be a very precise calculation. Also, too much time has passed since the beginning of this crisis for the transition to be made smoothly, or at all.”

Harry didn’t see the logic to this at all. He was starting to panic. Just as everyone was. The newsreaders on television, the muggles on the street whom he heard talking about it, his friends and acquaintances, who didn’t talk about it very much at all. Everyone was waiting. Everyone was nervous. And meanwhile, the muggles were learning more and more and more.

“We must ask ourselves whether the citizens of England are in danger from these people!” The BNP in all their shaven-headed glory proclaimed from smoky beer dens, having found a new minority to persecute.

“We have been lied to over and over again!” Ian Duncan Smith, conservative leader, slammed his fist down on the mahogany bench.

“These people have been proved to have killed over the years, and for too long have we been silenced. Authority figures such as ‘Lord Voldemort’,” the name was expressed with a sneer rather than a wince, “have taken countless lives and gone unpunished! Who knows what the rest of the many thousands are capable of?” Tony Blair, Prime Minister, shouted to the parliament to a resounding applause.

Harry wandered from the Leaky Cauldron back into muggle London, a pocketful of pounds waiting to be spent on one of those rare days that Dudley needed to go shopping and Harry was left alone for a few hours. He strolled idly into a cd shop and began browsing the racks, not really paying attention to anything around him. As he picked up a cd and moved to the counter to make his purchase, he noticed the people in front of him talking.

“I know, I’ve been watching it too. Well of course, it’s on the telly all the time.”

“Shocking, how it was kept secret all these years.”

“Did you see what they could do? Terrifying to think about.”

Harry felt the unease in his stomach grow as the woman before him left and he stepped up to the counter. It was with a horrible jolt that he noticed the salesperson watching the retreating woman with an ill-disguised suspicion.

“A new hotline has been set up for anyone who thinks that there might be a wizard or witch living in their area. The government is urging people not to panic.”

The news reports were getting more desperate now. Preachers were shouting in the street, condemning witches and wizards to hell, calling out their heathen ways. Harry passed them sometimes and felt ill. People were starting to listen to them, to be afraid. That was when he started to worry for Hermione.

“Something must be done,” Dumbledore said at last. “The muggles are becoming hysterical and it’s spreading across continents. The Americans have imprisoned three teenage boys, believing them to have committed a murder with magic.”

“Did they?” was the question.

“They have the same luck capturing witches and wizards now as they ever did,” Dumbledore said sadly. “The children are muggles as well.”

“Today three American youths were tried in court and found guilty of killing a three year-old child with magic. The two youngest were given long prison sentences but the eldest, and apparent ringleader, was sentenced to capital punishment.”

Harry burned with anger and fear as he heard this. As the press fanned the flames of hysteria he wondered what would happen to them all.

He heard somewhere that the feet went first when the stake was set on fire.