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Every British witch and wizard today grows up with the story of the four founders of Hogwarts: how Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin came together in the late tenth century to found a school for magic which still stands to this day. That they had a grand vision for the future, that each one chose the type of students they wanted to teach (the courageous, clever, kind, and cunning, respectively), and that an argument with Salazar Slytherin about the presence of Muggle-born students led to the ultimate destruction of an initially firm friendship. However, if you asked a wizard five hundred years ago to name the defining philosophies of the Founders, he would most likely stare at you blankly. The narrative of the Founders that we know today is an artefact of the seventeenth century separatist movement.

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The Early Separatists

After the advent of prosecution for witchcraft in the fourteenth century, British wizards gradually began to withdraw from Muggle society. Magic was practised behind closed doors, and friendly Muggles increasingly pretended not to know what their neighbours were doing. The Witch-Bull of 1484, in which Pope Innocent VIII accused witches of various crimes and authorised the Inquisition to prosecute them, prompted serious warding efforts on wizarding areas and a special meeting of the Wizengamot. It is in this period that the earliest discussions of separatism appear, albeit in the form of local wizard-only communities rather than on a national scale. However, it was not until the North Berwick witch trials in 1590 that the idea was given serious consideration.

The leader of the first generation of separatists was Corvus Cornelius Black, who famously published the pamphlet The Hatred of Magic in 1592. This pamphlet served as a rallying cry, and continued to be widely quoted for over a century. In it, Black painted a picture of nationwide witch-hunts targeting those with true magic and torturing them to death - a picture that was close enough to the reality of recent events to provoke a panic. Arithmancers began work on a new type of ward: the Muggle-repelling charms we are now so familiar with. Once the spells were viable, the Wizengamot commissioned warding of Hogwarts grounds, and later, Diagon Alley. Hogwarts experienced a slow population growth as wizards moved away from hostile villages, and the most radical separatists continued to press for complete isolation, but the situation remained stable until 1640.

The beginning of the English Civil War triggered enormous turmoil in Muggle society, and dealt a serious blow to the main argument of the anti-separatists: political stability. The structure of English government was changing, the entire country was at war with itself...why then, asked the separatists, should wizards subject themselves to the risk of staying in Muggle areas? "The Wizengamot," wrote Cuthbert Parkinson in a letter to Lord Willimus Nott, "has been a source of stability and guidance for English wizards for centuries, when Muggle Parliament has offered persecution and disruption. Let us cleave to the first and divorce from the second, trusting in the traditional leaders of the community of wizards." The 'community of wizards' is a phrase that appears frequently during this period, and indeed, Parkinson and those of like views were successful in persuading the Wizengamot to definitively separate from Parliament.

The Myth of the Founders

In 1652, the Wizengamot relocated to Hogwarts, bringing with them the retinues of every member, and substantially increasing the overall population. With Hogwarts as its definitive capital, the wizards of Britain began to identify themselves as a nation - and every nation needs a founding myth. Agnes Abbott was the first to recognise the potential of the school's history, and published an emotive and popular pamphlet, The Home of Magic. While Abbott focused on the tradition of children growing up at Hogwarts through the ages, the 'home of magic' became the subject of intense historical study through the 1650s and 1660s, culminating in the remarkable text, The Foundation of Hogwarts , by John Robert Longbottom.

The historiography of The Foundation of Hogwarts could easily be the subject of an entire book just on its own. A relatively slim volume, claiming to be based on previously unknown manuscripts found in a remote part of the castle, The Foundation of Hogwarts introduced the narrative of the Founders and their goals that we still tell today. Our four familiar characters appear, although missing some of their 'traditional' attributes, and together (inspired by Merlin), they decide to found a school for magical children. Their vision of the future imagines Hogwarts as a home of magic for centuries to come, somewhere isolated from the turmoil of the outside world. Slytherin, in this narrative, champions the separatist cause, drawing on his greater knowledge of the world outside Britain to argue that allowing Muggles access to the school would threaten their vision. The four argue, and Slytherin leaves, but there is an air of prophecy about his final presence in the text. "Someday, Slytherin knew that the community of magic would come under threat, and perhaps then the school would be ready to close its gates to the unworthy." For modern readers, accustomed to negative interpretations of Slytherin's deeds, the conclusion is discomfiting, but it is a telling indicator of the mid-seventeenth century political climate.

The Political Uses of the Founders

The Foundation of Hogwarts triggered an overwhelming interest in the Founders at all levels of society. Broadside ballads popularised the events of the Founding, serious scholarly works dissected Longbottom’s sources, and noble houses began claiming genealogical ties to the Four. Slytherin’s separatist stance was established from the start, but in the mid-1670s, the other Founders began to develop the characteristics we know them by today. Prominent anti-separatist Henry Brown published a moving polemic which he placed in the mouth of Helga Hufflepuff, appealing to Slytherin to remain open to the inherent potential of Muggle-kind. Other anti-separatists quickly adopted her as their sponsor, to the extent that letters from the time consistently refer to ‘Slytherin’ and ‘Hufflepuff’ factions. A third group, led by Lord Joseph Weasley, argued that discussions about separatism were making wizarding society more insular, invoking Godric Gryffindor as an advocate for greater and more active engagement in the wider world. (Rowena Ravenclaw remained a background figure until the late 1690s.) With the majority of the English magical community living at or near Hogwarts, the Founders loomed large, and being able to claim their imprimatur had significant political weight.

It is in this period that the Founders’ artefacts are ‘rediscovered’. Hufflepuff’s cup (which bears significant resemblance to a late seventeenth century loving cup) was ‘found’ by the Smith family, who claimed to be her direct descendants. They displayed it in their rooms at Hogwarts, and ‘The Cup Room’ quickly became the social centre of the Hufflepuff faction. The concept of artefacts from the Founding seized the public imagination, and there was a flurry of discoveries of material relics of the Founding period. None, however, were considered quite as believable as the Hufflepuff Cup.

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The Statute of Secrecy and its Aftermath

In 1688, Muggle England reached a turning point that had a dramatic effect on the magical community: what is known to Muggle historians as ‘the Glorious Revolution’. For a time, Muggle England had seemed politically stable, but this new invasion and disruption seemed to herald a second civil war, and the separatist faction seized on it. After almost two centuries of withdrawal from Muggle society, and close to forty years of the Wizengamot being resident at Hogwarts, separatism, they argued, was inevitable. The past century had seen Muggle England dissolve into chaos, whereas Magical England was closer than ever to the wealth of its traditions. Their argument won out, the Hufflepuff faction conceded, and in 1692, the signing of the Statute of Secrecy was celebrated by the Wizengamot sharing water drunk from Hufflepuff’s Cup in a ritual of united community.

The peace was not to last. In 1695, the still-new Statute was threatened by an outburst of accidental magic from nine-year-old Muggleborn Catherine Fletcher, and ‘the Muggleborn question’ became a central topic of Wizengamot debate. How could the community of wizards protect themselves from discovery when wizards and witches were constantly being born with no knowledge of the importance of the Statute? Once again, political groups divided themselves with reference to the Founders. The Slytherins argued that the best way to protect the wizarding community from Muggleborn children was to avoid contact with them. The Hufflepuff faction objected strongly to leaving magical children at risk from witch-hunters, and proposed to integrate them and their families. Gryffindor was not invoked in this debate, but Rowena Ravenclaw was: at last, she found her identity in the Founding myth as a dedicated scholar, devoted to promoting those with magical ability. The Ravenclaws pointed to successful Muggleborns like John Dee and argued that shunning children because of their birth would potentially rob the community of wizards of many great minds. The debate was fierce and widespread, and no one group had an entirely satisfactory solution.

In early 1697, the Wizengamot voted to continue to allow Muggleborns an education at Hogwarts, and the leaders of the Slytherin coalition (Black, Malfoy, Flint, Burke, Gaunt, and Nott) reacted dramatically. Collecting their retinues and their families (including all school-aged children), they left Hogwarts and decamped, not to their own estates, but to London. There, they proposed to tutor their children privately, rather than support their endangerment through the presence of Muggleborns. Despite initial expectations that the situation would blow over, the Wizengamot was still split in 1701, with the Slytherins being represented by proxies rather than return to Hogwarts grounds.

Reconciliation

The situation could not continue. Chief Warlock Nathaniel Diggory’s failure to effect a reconciliation resulted in a no-confidence vote, and he was replaced by ex-Headmaster Jonathan Parkinson. A middle-ground candidate, Parkinson bridged both groups, and effectively negotiated a compromise: the school would teach all magical children, but would become politically neutral. The Wizengamot moved out, and the Slytherin children moved back in.

For the next five years, the Wizengamot toured the country, each session hosted on a different noble estate. The first was held on the Parkinson estate, but the second, as a concession, was held in London and hosted by the Blacks. At both, Lord Augustus Gaunt was reportedly wearing an emerald-encrusted locket, which was swiftly identified as a relic of Salazar Slytherin. Once again, a Founder’s political opinions were given physical presence at a moment of reconciliation between factions.

Meanwhile, the school made a fresh attempt to break down political divisions among the student body by the institution of the Sorting Ceremony, in which students were divided among Houses based on their character, not their family background. Rivalry between Slytherins and Hufflepuffs remained, but the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws grew more prominent, and with the students divided evenly between all four Houses, there was a sense of balance and stability. This was reflected in the outside world with the decision to establish a permanent base for the Wizengamot and the apparatus of government, which together became known as the Ministry of Magic. In 1707, the same year as the Muggle Acts of Union which made England part of the new Kingdom of Great Britain, the magical community established a political capital in London, and it has remained there ever since.

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Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and the Squib Debate

For a time, the political situation remained stable, but the magical/non-magical division that was made with respect to Muggleborns had created a new category that became a source of new conflict: non-magical Wizardborns, or ‘squibs’. The first hints of anti-squib feeling appeared as far back as the debate over Muggleborns in the 1690s (when a radical Ravenclaw group suggested swapping magical and non-magical children in infancy so they grew up surrounded by their ‘own kind’). It was in the 1710s and 1720s, however, that the exclusion of squibs shifted from an idea on the fringes to a consistent political strategy. For the Ravenclaws, who more and more included families with Muggle heritage, ability was paramount, and the non-magical should not have the same participation rights as the magical. In 1712, 1717, 1720, and 1722, the proposal was put to the Wizengamot to have squibs excluded from Hogwarts, but the proposal was shot down each time.

The strongest opposition to the Ravenclaw faction were the Slytherins. As unthinkable as it was to the Ravenclaws that a squib should take a wizard’s place, it was just as unthinkable for the Slytherins that a Muggleborn should rank higher than someone with wizarding heritage. Tension between the two factions (along with Hufflepuff and Gryffindor taking their traditional pro-inclusion and anti-isolationist stances) prevented any legal movement, but meanwhile, outside the Wizengamot, trouble was brewing.

The ‘Blood-First League’, formed in 1719 under the leadership of Marcus Burke Brown, rapidly gathered interest from middle-class wizards across political factions. Its core membership was squibs and close relatives of squibs, but it also attracted anti-Muggleborns  and hard separatists. Rather than identify directly with one of the Founders, whose politics had already been well-established, the Blood-First League claimed a new character: Slytherin’s second son. This man, they claimed, was a squib who had been erased from history due to his non-magical status, but had been at the heart of Hogwarts in its early days. (And, implicitly, had been accepted by all four Founders.) The story was potent, and a second, more radical pro-squib group formed, calling themselves ‘The Sons of Slytherin’. All this was observed by the Wizengamot without alarm, but in December 1731, the tables turned.

The Hostage Heirs

On their way back from a Quidditch match, two days before the Yule Wizengamot session, the Heirs of Black, Longbottom, Abbot, Potter, Gaunt, Lovegood, and Ollivander (all students at Hogwarts) were kidnapped and taken to an unknown location. A ransom note was delivered by owl to the Chief Warlock the next morning, claiming the mass kidnapping as the work of the Sons of Slytherin. They demanded legislation be passed acknowledging anyone with four wizarding grandparents as citizens of Magical Britain, regardless of magical status. (Intriguingly, this is the first appearance of the ‘four grandparents’ definition that in the twentieth century was frequently cited as the boundary between a half-blood and full-blood wizard.) If the legislation was not passed at the Yule session, they threatened, more hostages would be taken. The Wizengamot was thrown into uproar.

The Yule session was fraught, and although the legislation demanded was not unacceptable, it was not passed. The Ravenclaws were willing to concede, but the Gryffindors put up an unexpected resistance. “If I back down today, for the sake of my son,” Lord Eugene Potter told the gathering, “then my son will forever be held hostage for the sake of my vote.” The argument was persuasive, and the conversation turned. By the first recess, no conclusions had been made, and no legislation had been passed, despite three hours of debate. During that recess, a quiet, private rescue force was assembled from the members of the affected families and their close allies, and crucially, using the blood of Lady Amelia Black (blood-magic not yet being outlawed), they were able to track the children to their location in Manchester. Armed with this knowledge, when the Wizengamot reconvened, the discussion turned from the particular incident involving the Sons of Slytherin to preventing future threats to the children living on the grounds of Hogwarts.

By the time the Yule Session closed, well after eleven o’clock that night, the children had been recovered, and sweeping changes to Hogwarts security had been planned. The castle was to become a school only, with staff carefully vetted, unauthorised adults excluded, and additional wards put up to prevent unauthorised entry to or departure from the grounds. A special group was chosen (with representatives from each of the factions) to study the question of how, exactly, the school should be warded, and where the boundaries of the grounds were to be drawn. A second, highly significant piece of legislation was made that night, of course: the establishment of the first incarnation of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, in the form of paid watchmen to patrol Hogsmeade and Magical London. The new year dawned, not to a new age of squib rights, but to increased security efforts and widespread fear.

The Sword of Gryffindor

News spread quickly. The ‘Hostage Heirs’ and the Sons of Slytherin were the subject of widespread debate, but on one point, there was consensus: squibs should not be allowed to threaten children. The security measures proposed at the Yule Session were met with relief, but many considered them insufficient. Unsatisfied by prosecution of the Sons of Slytherin, various groups began to argue for strong anti-squib legislation. Matthew Thomas Weasley (a fourth cousin of the contemporary Lord Weasley) was particularly outspoken, leading a popular group that called themselves ‘the Sword of Gryffindor’. They promised “to protect our children from the resentful and noxious presence of the squib which, like a lethifold in the linen closet, lies in wait to suffocate their future”. Sadly, this quote is indicative of attitudes which were growing increasingly common. By 1740, many families who had unashamedly supported non-magical members of their family tree a decade before were now pretending that their squib relations did not exist.

Where squib legislation had previously been a debate between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw factions (with Ravenclaw unsuccessful), the Gryffindor faction now took the stage, and the story of Godric and Salazar evolved accordingly. His warrior background had been established in the 1670s, but in the 1740s, Godric Gryffindor became the guardian of the school, devoted to protecting it from outsiders. In a notable contrast to his description in The Foundation of Hogwarts , Salazar Slytherin came to be seen as too permissive in the students he accepted. Where Salazar as seen from the seventeenth century was extremely protective of his students’ welfare, in his mid-eighteenth century incarnation, critics claimed that he ignored character in favour of bloodlines, to the detriment of the school. Salazar’s argument with the rest of the Four became an argument primarily with Godric, and his voluntary departure (awaiting eventual vindication) became an exile. The Slytherin faction attempted to rehabilitate their patron, but public opinion was against them.

In 1744, Ragnok Blunt-Nose, a goblin from the R’g Clan, revealed to Bartholomew Smith that he knew the location of Godric Gryffindor’s sword. The information was considered with scepticism, but intense interest; if it proved real, this would be a third relic of the Four, discovered four decades after the last one. In this case, unlike with Hufflepuff’s Cup and Slytherin’s Locket, the acquisition process is well documented: the matter was brought to the Wizengamot for discussion, and after examination of the sword in question, the decision was made to purchase it and gift it to Hogwarts. The members of the Wizengamot together raised the necessary funds, and the sword was presented to the Headmaster of Hogwarts at the 1745 graduation ceremony. “As Godric Gryffindor protected Hogwarts with this blade,” Chief Warlock Filius Blishwick said, on the occasion, “so does the Wizengamot swear to protect it”. Where Hufflepuff’s Cup and Slytherin’s Locket had both appeared in private hands and their use had marked moments of political compromise, Gryffindor’s Sword was gifted publically at a time of factional dominance.

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Colonial Expansion

By 1750, methods to keep magic secret from Britain’s Muggles were well-established, and the magical community was so separated from the Muggle one that it was now possible to reach adulthood without encountering Muggles at all. However, the situation in Britain’s colonies was quite different, and this was increasingly a matter of concern for the Wizengamot. It was not considered necessary for the British magical community to suppress stories of magic in other cultures; by this stage, they could rely on British Muggles dismissing such stories as native superstitions. It was, however, imperative that colonists not observe native magic working .

In 1751, Lord Edward Weasley (a prominent Gryffindor) proposed a scheme that was quickly adopted and widely implemented: that any wizard interested in travelling to the colonies be offered a modest commission to act as an enforcer of the Statute of Secrecy, by discouraging native wizards or obliviating Muggle colonists as necessary. The idea was popular among the younger sons of several Houses, and within five years there were more than forty commissioned ‘Muggle-Warders’ either settled in various colonies, or travelling with Muggle merchants. To manage them, the Wizengamot appointed a representative for each main grouping (North American settlers, Caribbean settlers, Atlantic travellers, and Indian Ocean travellers). These representatives, the Chief Muggle-Warders, met annually with the Wizengamot in a session that quickly became known as ‘the Colonial Conference’. By 1760, the system was working smoothly despite ongoing warfare worldwide between almost every major European power, but it was soon disrupted.

The Seven Years War, fought primarily between Britain and France, ended in 1763 with a treaty which transferred several colonies (particularly in the Americas) to different imperial ‘owners’. This caused some consternation in the Wizengamot and its French equivalent, the Parlement de Magique. Should British wizards in a now-French colony report to the Parlement or the Wizengamot? Could the Wizengamot’s Chief Muggle-Warders enforce British magical law on French wizards in what was now British territory? Were wizards born to British parents in a French colony French, or British? Ongoing tension between France and Britain only made these questions more urgent.

Defining British-ness

In Britain, a secondary question arose around the question of citizenship and nationality: who was entitled to attend Hogwarts? It was, by this stage, well-established that wizards born in Great Britain could attend, whether their parents were magical or Muggle. Thus far, the children of British-born colonists had also been included, although no Wizengamot ruling had been made. Magical children of Muggle colonials had so far been dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with many of them served by Ilvermony School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in North America, but the situation was clearly unstable. In principle, the various factions were agreed: all British wizards could attend Hogwarts. Their definition of ‘British’, however, varied substantially.

The Slytherins defined it by bloodlines: those who could trace their ancestry to British wizarding families, or (among Muggles) to British-born parents. This excluded Muggleborns who were second-generation colonists, but the Slytherins argued that it was the responsibility of the colonies to manage their Muggles, and pointed at Ilvermony as proof that there was no need for Hogwarts to educate foreign Muggleborns.

The leading Gryffindors defined British-ness by Muggle borders: if someone owed their allegiance to King George, they were sufficiently British to attend Hogwarts. The argument was consistent with the Gryffindor’s general attitude that the magical world ought to be closely tied to the Muggle one, but the Muggle-centric definition was not broadly popular.

The Ravenclaw faction had a particularly pragmatic approach: if a magical child wished to study at Hogwarts (rather than Ilvermony, Beauxbatons, or elsewhere), then they ought to be allowed to do so. Perhaps their policy would have been different if it were not generally understood that American colonists were likely to remain on their own side of the Atlantic, and that Francophones would prefer to study in their native tongue, but as the policy was never tested, we cannot know for sure.

It was the Hufflepuffs that brought up a particularly vexing question: what was to be done with foreign native magicians? Or, more troublingly, magicians born to Britain’s growing immigrant population? Did Hogwarts have an obligation to teach Indian and African children alongside the English and Scottish ones, simply because they were born in London? Almost no-one was at ease with the possibility, and the Slytherin bloodline-based definition grew in popularity as a result. The Hufflepuff faction were themselves divided on the matter (unsurprisingly, as more than a few of them had acquired young African servants to ornament their household, according to the custom of the day). The majority were inclined to accept only white students, although they would happily take them from a broad geographic range. A large and vocal minority, however, argued that if 'coloured' magicians were willing to assimilate to British wizarding culture, giving up their native traditions in favour of civilised wanded magic, then it was the moral duty of British wizards to assist them in doing so.

For the first time, the Founders were an inadequate source of political guidance and propaganda material. While their now-established principles could offer hints, it was plain to all that they had never encountered the question of race. (Whether or not this was true is irrelevant; it was believed .) Certainly they had never needed to negotiate international treaties. A new approach was needed.

Septimus Malfoy, Pioneer

Lord Septimus Malfoy, son of Lord Lucius Malfoy VI and Marguerite Beaumont (daughter of Lord Jean-Claude Beaumont of the Parlement de Magique), paved a new way for Magical Britain. Approaching the colonial question pragmatically, in 1768 he successfully persuaded the Wizengamot and the Parlement to agree to a joint Colonial Convention, with the attending Chief Muggle-Warders to be chosen based on the local population of the areas they were representing. Notably, although he had sorted Slytherin, and belonged to a Slytherin family, he did not campaign as a Slytherin; instead, he reached out across factional lines to create a new alliance. His actions sufficiently impressed the Wizengamot that, when it was decided in 1771 that the Colonial Convention need not be attended by all members of its two governing bodies, it was Septimus Malfoy who was chosen to represent the Wizengamot.

Septimus and his supporters also brought new clarity to the racial question. They pointed to the goblins, vampires, and hags as examples of intelligent, human-like creatures which were nevertheless not considered for citizenship, regardless of their country of birth. Coloured people could be treated similarly: human-like, but in their own distinct category that would be exempt from the treatment offered to people of European magical and Muggle descent. The proposal was met with favour among the Wizengamot, and even the assimilationists conceded. In 1773, legislature was passed restricting Hogwarts enrollment to “those humans of both magical ability and European blood who wish to attend, with priority granted to the established magical lineages of Britain.”

Septimus’ approach set the standard for a new type of political campaign: one which targeted multiple factions, without calling on one of the Founders for legitimacy. The assimilationists, undeterred by the exclusion of coloured children from Hogwarts, used Septimus’ methods to promote hiring and purchasing coloured children of magical ability as slaves or servants. The ‘Country or Kind?’ debates during the American Revolution (in Britain and America) entirely ignored House politics, as did the discussion around amendments to the Colonial Convention in 1785 to acknowledge new geopolitical realities. When the French Revolution left the Parlement de Magique reeling, Septimus Malfoy led allies from all four Houses in the campaign to offer sanctuary to the Wizengamot’s French counterparts.

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The Long Shadow of the Founders

By the nineteenth century, the political weight of the Founders was waning, but they continued to loom large in the general cultural imagination. Prominent families, such as the Abbotts, Blacks, Ollivanders, and Weasleys, remained strongly linked with specific Houses, and took pride in their House-linked traits. Songs, stories, plays, and histories continued to be written and re-published about the Founders’ Era, and about descendants of the Founders. Even well after their graduation, people were described by the House they belonged to.

A key factor in this was the close link between a Hogwarts education and membership of the nation of Magical Britain. A wizard (of magical heritage or Muggle) who was born and raised in Britain would almost certainly attend Hogwarts. If a colonial wizard was of British heritage, and had sufficiently close ties to Britain, they might attend also. The result was that almost everyone who considered themselves a British wizard had been educated at Hogwarts, and had a personal House affiliation (if not necessarily a family one). The Sorting Ceremony was a shared rite of passage, one which annually renarrated and reinforced the centrality of the Houses and their founders in Hogwarts’ cultural life. Seven years of communal living, point-scoring, and House rivalries encouraged students to deeply integrate their House affiliation into their personal identity. The social structure of Hogwarts remained a scaffold for their future alliance-building, with intra-House friendships often persisting well into adult life. To be British was to attend Hogwarts, and to attend Hogwarts was to belong to a House.

The Ordo Liberorum Aquilarum

This shift of the Founders from political to cultural touchstones is reflected in the ‘discovery’ of Ravenclaw’s Diadem by a group with no political ties at all: the Ordo Liberorum Aquilarum (or Order of the Eagle’s Children). The nineteenth century was a period of turmoil and confusion for the wizarding world, driven by the Dragon Wars, and exacerbated by the rapid pace of change wizards discovered when they ventured into the growing Muggle cities. If the seventeenth century marked wizards’ separation from the Muggle world, the nineteenth century is when they turned their back on it entirely. These factors prompted a resurgence of interest in the imagined past, with some groups nostalgically attempting to re-establish ‘traditional’ practices, and others seeking out ‘ancient’ mystical knowledge.

The Ordo Liberorum Aquilarum belonged to the second category, and was devoted to the rediscovering the secret wisdom of Rowena Ravenclaw. Founded by Sylvanus Lovegood, the Order was secretive and intensely hierarchical, having much in common with contemporary Muggle occultist groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Much about the specific practices of the Order remains unknown, as they were extremely strict about the necessity of initiation for access to their ‘inner secrets’, but they are widely known for their association with Ravenclaw’s Diadem. Evidence from Lovegood’s correspondence suggests that the Orders origins may date back as far as his senior years at Hogwarts, but at first, the group was small. It was only after Lovegood and co-founder Thaddeus Trelawney returned from a trip to Egypt with the Diadem that the group’s recruitment efforts began to bear fruit.

The Loss of the Diadem

In late 1885, Lovegood and Trelawney published a catalogue of the artefacts and documents they had acquired during their travels, and the ‘Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw’ was the centrepiece. No truly believable relic of Ravenclaw had yet been found to match those of the other Founders, and while the Diadem was not accepted at once, the accompanying historical documents Lovegood provided in his catalogue went a long way to allaying the scepticism of the wizarding community. When Percival Parkinson, a respected antiquarian, examined the Diadem and endorsed it as a true ancient magical artefact, interest increased dramatically, and the Diadem’s discovery came to be interpreted as completion of the set.

At first, by restricting access to the Diadem, Lovegood was able to leverage public interest into a new wave of recruitment for the Ordo Liberorum Aquilarum, but this quickly created its own problems. Lovegood and Trelawney had built up the legend of the Diadem until it was believed to bestow wisdom on the wearer, and as members advanced up the ranks of the Order they grew more and more insistent about being allowed to examine it. In 1895, the issue was rendered moot by the theft of the Diadem as Lovegood was travelling between his London apartment and his family estate; despite posted rewards, the Diadem was never recovered.

The Founders’ Legacy

Despite being known for only a decade before its loss, the story of ‘The Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw’ remained remarkably well-known - undoubtedly because it helped make up a set of four. However implausible the Diadem’s history might seem, its association with Rowena Ravenclaw gave it cultural weight, and it joined the other Relics as a persistent presence in future depictions of the Founders, in the manner of saints with their attributes in Catholic art. From light-hearted children’s stories to weighty political allegories, such depictions proliferated rapidly as printing costs decreased, and the Founders are frequent characters in photographic ‘tableaux’ that became a popular art form after moving photographs were developed as a medium.

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In the aftermath of Voldemort’s Second War, sources from the Order of the Phoenix revealed that Lord Voldemort’s survival in 1991 was in part due to a corrupting ritual he had enacted using Hufflepuff’s Cup, Slytherin’s Locket, and Ravenclaw’s Diadem. To win the war, Harry Potter destroyed all three Relics beyond repair, leaving only Gryffindor’s Sword undamaged. His success is undeniable; whether the destruction of the Relics was truly necessary is impossible to prove. Nevertheless, the role of the Relics in the war is undeniable proof of their continuing cultural significance, a legacy which will most likely long survive their destruction.

The co-option of the Relics by Lord Voldemort was not a random act; even conducted in secret, it was a deliberate manouvere in the war over hearts and minds. With the exception of Ravenclaw’s Diadem, we have sufficiently thorough records of the Relics to indicate that they do not carry a magical legacy of their ‘original’ owners. While each is materially able to anchor strong enchantment, for magical purposes, they are no different than any other well-wrought object in that respect. Lord Voldemort’s choice to use three Relics as a focus for his ritual, therefore, must have been primarily motivated by their cultural value. By taking possession of and corrupting the Founders’ Relics, he symbolically took possession of and corrupted the nation of Wizarding Britain. As someone with an undeniable grasp on the power of symbols and belief, he is unlikely to have done so accidentally.

Whether Gryffindor’s Sword was similarly chosen for its role in the war due to its cultural value is not clear; nor can we yet foresee the cultural impact of that choice. No doubt, however, in dramatic accounts of the war, the triumph of Gryffindor’s Sword over the other Relics will have great power to symbolically reflect the prominence of Gryffindors among the Order of the Phoenix (Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter, the Weasley family, etc) and their allies. It is much too soon to say how the Founders myth will be adapted to recent events and the new political landscape they have created; what we can say with certainty, however, is that the Founders will continue to play a part in how we tell the story of ourselves.