William Revenous

William Revenous Chapter Three - The Sorting Hat

Chapter 3

Many hundreds of years ago the four greatest wizards of their time decided to start a school so that the future generations of wizards could obtain their magic knowledge. After many years of hard work the wizards constructed a magical castle and made it a school of witchcraft and wizardry. In the years that followed they started to write and collect books from all over the world so that they could be stored in this school. Of course, most of the spells wouldn't be available to the students. Two of the great wizards claimed that all of the spells should be available to the children so that they could define their own choices in life and become great on their own terms. The other two preferred secrecy about the dangerous spells so that no harm would come from their wisdom. This was the first time the wizards disagreed...

Godric Gryffindor wanted the students to be taught all the Magic they needed to truly rise above anyone and shine as much as he did in his age. 

Zalazar Slytherin had the same ambition as Godric, except that he claimed that pride in one's self shouldn't be stopped by anyone or anything. 

Rowena Ravenclaw wanted her students to be taught everything there was to learn so that they would be prepared to best anything they would face in their lives. 

When Helga Huffelpuff heard these frightening ambitions she thought to herself "If the students are taught like that, we’ll create an immensely competitive school. Only the ambitious would be accepted and eventually, there is a chance they would break the school down due to rivalry."

Helga told her colleagues that she just wanted her students to have a nice, quiet life with the powers they had been given at birth and control them as delicately as possible.

Shortly after the mindsets of the founders had become clear another issue emerged :  the school books for the students. It was already known to the other three founders that Zalazar Slytherin was practicing magic that they considered dark and dangerous. 

"But if we teach the children about these powers, there isn't much that could go wrong. They will be prepared if any other wizard uses dark magic on them, and trust me, not everything about this magic has cruel intentions!" Zalazar usually said when they were discussing the matter.

"But if you teach them the dark arts they will be forcing other people to weapon themselves against us as well! I think we're better off masking those spells to purge evil!" Godric Gryffindor usually replied to this. He always envied Zalazar’s ability to do anything without being punished for it. Modifying people's minds to admire him would have been so much simpler.

"Still," Zalazar said, "There should be a subject to defend people against the things I know at the very least. The things I have witnessed and sometimes had to do to keep myself alive are not to be taken lightly. I won't let any of my students be the victim of that!"

"Yes I agree. Let's at least make them aware of the things that could be done to them and prepare them for them. I wouldn't like a whole school of wizards being wiped out by a single Dementor because no one knew how to create a decent Patronus charm or turn themselves into an animal," Rowena Ravenclaw said. "But we can't actually teach them the dark arts. Arrogance and pride are our downfall. And dark magic is an easy trap to fall into for with the ambitious..."

Helga Hufflepuff sighed. "I agree with this as well. No dark magic will be taught to the children. I think we all have suffered enough from the countless dark wizards we slayed to make this school even possible. We don't want any more massacres. Especially not the massacre of a whole school of future wizards…"

With those words she reminded them once more why they were actually starting a school in the first place. The mood was quite grim after that. No one should have suffered as much as they did.