To begin with, we must discuss the Warlocks' Convention of 1289 which discussed the rules and regulations of Quidditch and the initiation of a European educational system. This convention was a rather critical one, as it also popularized the idea of masking wizarding entertainment and education from prying Muggle eyes throughout Europe. Thus, it has been marked as the starting point of the Age of Purification, spanning from that year until 1437. In this period, many wizarding laws were written to purify, regulate, and control wizarding practices, including social conventions, sports and entertainment, education, and healthcare.
A Path to Acceptance
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Beginning in roughly 1343, a new disease ravaged Europe. Today we know it as the Black Death or the Plague, and it killed 30 to 60 percent of the continent's population. During its peak, between 1346 and 1353, it spread across from Central Asia. In 1348, the healer Nicholas Malfoy, a member of the ancient Malfoy family and a master potioneer and healer, heard of the Muggle disease sweeping the European mainland. As a healer, he was determined to find a cure before it hit the British Isles, trying to save the wizarding communities from what he was worried would be extinction. His family, though, never supported him in his endeavours, partially due to his disinterest in blood purity and outright power, instead focusing on more subtle achievements. However, the main bone of contention in the family was the fact that Nicholas had been sorted into Ravenclaw. While he himself was also extremely dissatisfied with the result and had wanted to be in Slytherin, his family was either unable or unwilling to forgive him for the Sorting Hat's decision.
In October 1348, he discovered a potential cure and started to hand the potion out prematurely to his family. They were not amused, stating that he shouldn't be focussing on curing a Muggle disease, but rather cure the disease called Muggles. Torn between saving his family or being accepted by them, he started adding his potion to their water supply to anonymously help out his family members. Around December 1348 -- roughly the same time as the first actual cases of the disease started appearing in the British Isles -- his family found out what he did. He was banished from their lands, thrown out, and disowned without the possibility of returning.
Enraged, dismayed, and very conflicted, Nicholas started to make the long trip from Wiltshire to London, where he set up a medical tent and tried to cure all wizards that might possibly be affected by the disease. Interestingly (or terribly, depending on the perspective) when his potion was accidentally administered to a Muggle woman, she developed the same symptoms as the Plague which he was trying to cure. She was dead within days. Shocked at first, he quickly experimented on more Muggles to see if she was an exception, but that wasn't the case. Mentally unbalanced by his emotionally turbulent family issues, Nicholas found himself a new goal. He was now determined to regain his status and be accepted into his family once again. He started handing out his potion -- or rather poison -- to unknowing Muggles. Within days, the path of death and destruction trailed behind him on his way from London to other villages made him feel powerful and accepted, but some argue the remorse he felt unbalanced him further. His overwhelming desire for acceptance from his family only fed the anger he incorrectly attributed to the Muggles and he continued to poison more and more. By March 1349, he had murdered more than 1500 Muggles across 27 different villages and towns. It is partially because of this potion that mimicked the symptoms of the Black Death that Muggle history still remains startlingly inaccurate with regards to the death toll of the disease.
