Chapter Text

“Plumbimg is þe hart of civilization.” (Sic, Ancient Plummings of þe Werld, pub. 1351)

To plumb the depths of plumbing history is to plumb extremely deeply. The Temple of Bel in ancient Babylon captured rain and diverted waste with clay pipes, and Uruk, domain of the Half-blood wizard-king Gilgamesh, boasted of pipes to drain its latrines. In Europe, plumbing reached its antique height in the days of the Romans, who built a system of canals and sewers called the Cloaca Maxima, which carried away well nigh all the filth of that glorious city. Alas, upon the fall of the west wing of Rome in 476 so too fell the art of plumbing, which persisted only where it might be maintained and was expanded nowhere. For our purpose, with a sight fixed on the sanitary history of Britain, it is permissible to skip forward by half a millennium to Castle Hogwarts, where plumbing returned to our isle in the 10th century through the person of Salazar Slytherin. 

The Founders of Hogwarts came from varied places and boasted varied backgrounds—and none was more varied in his personal history than that wizard surnamed Salazar. Records of his upbringing are scant¹ but historians agree that Salazar grew to adulthood somewhere upon the Spanish Peninsula, perhaps the Basque Country or Portugalia, well-positioned to become familiar with the sophisticated sewage systems of Moorish Spain. 

By birthright or personal initiative, Salazar became a seafaring merchant and plied his trade from Norden to Constantinople—the anus of the Silk Road, for it was from this place that the fineries of the Far East were expelled into Europe—and in this course he attained a cosmopolitan wisdom that exceeded even that of Godric Gryffindor, who was born to a greater nobility but was less-travelled. It was not until he was fifty years old that Salazar turned his eyes to Britain, that country that would consume his attention and energy for the rest of his life. 

We will not here retell the story of Hogwarts’ founding when so many other accounts are available. It will be sufficient to say that it is easy to overstate Salazar’s influence on Hogwarts, and incorrect to do so: while Hogwarts was doubtless influenced by Salazar’s knowledge of Islamic madrasas and the university of Constantinople, the school also owed a debt to the cathedral school of York, the palatial academy of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the uniquely British practice of dual monasteries. The result was unlike anything else in the world at that time, and nothing less than a collective project. 

With this caveat out of the way, the original plumbing system at Hogwarts was certainly Salazar’s design alone, though the exact details were not recorded and so there is some uncertainty regarding its particulars. Some believe that Salazar installed the bathworks but that the inhabitants of Hogwarts Castle used latrines from the beginning; others say that he also installed toilets, but after Salazar departed there were none who could maintain the toilets, and so latrines replaced them. 

Archaeological analysis of the original plumbing system at Hogwarts—such as still exists—suggests that Salazar took great inspiration from the designs laid forth in Op. Cit., the multidisciplinary masterwork of that famed Roman polymath, Ibid. His most lasting contribution is the prefects’ bathroom.² As it was originally designed, water for the baths was alchemically heated by an ingenious hypocaust beneath the floor: Seven cauldrons were filled with varying amounts of Cornish pitchblende and sal viridus, and water streamed from one cauldron to another through leaden pipes after the Roman fashion, and through sieves of such fineness that not one particle of green sand would transfer from one cauldron to the next, so that from one faucet there would pour out cold water, and from the next, tepid water, et cetera, a series of silver taps from which would dispense water of lesser or greater heat, so that the perfect temperature could be achieved without delay. 

In his posthumously-published 1838 treatise, “Chamber Legend Paper ⇐ draft title rewrite later,” the historian Pantonymie Holden de la Place argued that all talk of a “Chamber of Secrets” had its roots in a misunderstanding about Slytherin’s legacy. The earliest written reference, from which all subsequent tales are derived, comes from the letters of Godric Gryffindor, who refers (in his native Old French) to “la chambre privee de Sliferne.” Later writers typically interpreted this to mean “the secret chamber of Slytherin” ³ but Holden de la Place believed that we should not discount the literal sense of “privy room,” i.e. “Slytherin’s lavatory.” Whether Gryffindor meant to refer to Slytherin’s plumbing system in general or to a particular room that Slytherin reserved for himself⁴ is not clear, though Holden de la Place believed that the prefects’ bathroom itself once belonged to Slytherin and consequently all attempts to find the so-called Chamber of Secrets had failed because it had always been in plain sight. 

Dolores Ipsum proposed a slightly different interpretation of the legend in 1912: that troubled negotiations with the merfolk of the Black Lake had led Slytherin with nowhere to discharge the excrement accumulating in the castle’s pipes, and so instead he created a Wizardspace of considerable size in which to hold the waste of Hogwarts. This could only ever be a stopgap solution, and Slytherin therefore explained to the other Founders that their school might be destroyed if they permitted this filth to remain; but all his arguments fell on deaf ears and so Slytherin sealed the Wizardspace, lest it be overwhelmed and fail in a catastrophe of contamination, and promised that one day a descendant of his would return to purge the school of the horror which lay within his chamber—long centuries of festering feculence—as emeticks may purge a wizard. The Tuscan historian Più Etalia advanced much the same view in 1938, but preferred to interpret “Slytherin’s monster” as the school’s sore relationship with the Merfolk, who were ill-pleased that the students and faculty had unloaded waste into their lake.⁵

Regardless, the record is clear that an extensive bathworks had been installed by the time that Salazar left the school in 1060, that this system was further extended (though rarely improved) in subsequent generations, and that there was yet nothing like a plumbing toilet at Hogwarts by the 12th century. For elimination, the castle’s inhabitants at this time retired to simple holes into which they conducted their business, for it to fall some distance into a cesspit below. Some had the privilege of a private garderobe, but the majority of the castle’s inhabitants were required to take to communal chambers of ten or twenty holes, antecessors to the lavatories of the modern Hogwarts.⁶

The Shite Strike

For several generations, responsibility for maintaining the latrines fell upon the students and rotated from one House to the next on a lunar basis. As the responsible House was sent out from Hogwarts to sell the night soil at Hogsmeade, they gained the label of the “outsent House,” ⁷ which was shortened to “out-House” and then, in reference to the latrines themselves, “outhouse.” ⁸

Though it was the duty of the students to “scum” the castle’s cesspits, they did not receive any payment for their labour. It should be no surprise therefore that their discontent grew until in 1152 the Gryffindors refused to porter the school’s filth to Hogsmeade for the castle’s profit. Headmaster Ballcocke threatened the offenders with expulsion, but emptily so: tuition fees still supported the school and Hogwarts literally could not afford to discard one-fourth of the student body. Instead, the staff decided to outlast their students, sure that the students would be unable to abide the situation once the cesspits overflowed and that the other three houses, rather than take more than their fair share of the workload, would (one way or another) force the Gryffindors to resume their work. But instead the Gryffindors received support, first by the Slytherins and then by the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, and the whole student body remained resolute in their unity. The cesspits did fill, but rather than take the castle’s refuse down to Hogsmeade, the students Vanished it. 

The Shite Strike ended soon thereafter when Headmaster Ballcocke granted to the students the right to manage the latrines as they saw fit. Gong-farming was too unprofitable and too disgusting for students who had come to learn the art of magic,⁹ and they continued to Vanish their waste rather than deliver it to Hogsmeade. The houses managed the duty of Vanishing among themselves, rotating on a monthly basis and assigning the duty to particular members as each house saw fit. This continued until the 13th century, when Magot Peasegood refused to clean the latrines as per her duty. Peasegood was banned therewith from using the latrines, but she Vanished her own business as it was deposited and continued in all other respects to pursue a normal student life, and other wastrels followed her example. 

Because only older students were competent at Vanishing, the number of students who used the latrines did not decrease at the same rate as the number of those that refused to share in cleaning duties. The quality of the latrines therefore fell steadily, until the whole upper student body collectively refused to use the communal latrines and forced the duty of cleaning these onto the younger students, who were thus incentivized to learn Vanishing themselves as quickly as possible and join the practice of “free evacuation.” As the students graduated and had children (not always in that order) and subsequent generations entered Hogwarts with no memory of a school that had done things differently, free evacuation entrenched itself and, here and there, some students even took the practice with them beyond graduation. Their young children might have worn nappies or used a chamberpot at first, but it was still expected that the little ones would eventually take the cleanest path of all. 

It is not clear when the younger students stopped using the latrines altogether, but neither they nor any others Vanished their messes. After Sir Dicard Longbottom slipped on a first year’s puddle and broke his neck in 1531, he resolved to Headmaster Undercliffe that either the school’s hygiene would improve or he would take a post at Beauxbatons. Undercliffe promptly appointed the first prefects, who, in exchange for access to the teachers’ bathroom and a daily ration of one pint of heather ale per head, were charged with attending the needs of students who were not yet proficient at Vanishing. 

Sir Longbottom remained at Hogwarts until his retirement in 1574, but the prefect system was only a half-improvement on the sanitary conditions at Hogwarts. While the hallways were made relatively pristine, the student dormitories were only subject to staff inspections twice a year, on the term days of Candlemas and Martinmas. Many negligent prefects erected Smell-tight Charms at the threshold of first- and second-year dormitories, told their charges to find a corner in their room (and maybe a good pair of wading boots), and then entered to clean just before the semiannual inspection. Some didn’t even go that far, and instead passed a mop and bucket past the doorway and threatened cruel but usual punishments if the younger students didn’t take care of it themselves. 

When professorial inspections ceased in 1655, the consequent nightmares went on to become the stuff of legend. In Slytherin it is said that the other three houses, rather than Vanish the accumulating ordure of younger years, instead built new rooms atop their old dormitories until at last each house was housed in a tower, and still the air reeked with the miasma of their unclean deeds until some nameless hero came at last to clear out their cursed vaults. This is patently untrue—Hogwarts received her towers in the 14th century, and the majority of her turrets by the 15th—but the sentiment speaks volumes. 

It should go without saying that Muggle-born students found the practice of free evacuation to be most distasteful, coming as they did from an entirely different culture. What else should go without saying is that this attitude only strengthened the practice, and eventually even Muggle-borns followed suit and freely rang the gong as soon as they developed the knack for it. Learning how to reliably cast a Vanishing Spell was considered an important milestone in life, and many students learned it as early as their second year.¹⁰

It should be noted that the connotation of the time was less about being Muggle-born per se than being of low birth: eighty or ninety per cent of the British population were peasants, and so eighty or ninety per cent of Muggle-borns were peasants, but magic was sufficiently attractive to tempt an earl or baron to marry off their third son or second daughter even to a peasant, if only that peasant was magical. This meant that most witches and wizards with magical grandparents also had noble grandparents, and no reason to look a little further back to find their lowborn ancestors. In other words, and notwithstanding the later development of the philosophy of Wizarding Isolationism, the division at this time was much more about class than blood status. 

The Guildster-Vanishers

Even some Pure-bloods were not proficient at Vanishment, however, and for many more it was an undesirable chore, and it should go without saying that, where there is a need, some enterprising witch or wizard will strive to fill it. It was the aim of many enchanters to spellbind an object, that this might effortlessly accomplish the act of Vanishment for another, but Vanishing has always been tricky to accomplish and to lay this magic down upon another object, so that it the process would be reliable and predictable and, above all, safe, was a heavy goal. For this reason, when Elineta Sooth introduced the first Vanishing Cabinet in 1643, she was regarded as a master of masters, and it was no wonder—nor any cause for suspicion—that she guarded the secret jealously. 

There was a great amount of gold to be made from Vanishing Cabinets, and innovations quickly followed: While the earliest Vanishing Cabinet was a small room (i.e., a cabin-ette), Sooth and the nascent Guild of Enchanter-Vanishers that had grown up around her progressed to mobile pieces of furniture (which retained the simplified term “cabinet”) and eventually to clothing.¹¹ All this progress was marred in 1659 by the discovery that Sooth and the Guild of Enchanter-Vanishers had enchanted their products with the capacity not to Vanish but to translocate and were profiting thereby from both ends: receiving great sums of money from the well-born customers of their enchanted artefacts and selling the rarified dung of their customers to credulous farmers and alchemists abroad, who were regaled with the special properties of a rich wizard’s faeces. 

This might have been the end of the whole affair, except that competition had already begun to arise against the Guild of Enchanter-Vanishers. When even an up-and-coming merchant’s son could don a pair of Vanishing Drawers, nobler wizards naturally looked for some other way to distinguish themselves from middle class riffraff. Therefore, some wizards had disposed of their Vanishing Cabinets in lieu of a personal Vanisher, and the Sooth-box Scandal of 1659 merely accelerated an ongoing transition. Under the new system of “Cleanser-Vanishers,” there was no need to abscond to a bit of dubiously-enchanted furniture, because the waste could be Vanished directly from one’s bowels. Saunder Oliphant, who invented the procedure, not only demonstrated its efficacy in both rats and humans in 1655 but, in the wake of the Sooth-box Scandal, promulgated its arithmantic principles so that any scholar could verify the method of its function. 

Well-to-do wizards who held a contract with a “Cleanser-Vanisher” typically imbibed great amounts of eggs, lard, and laudanum, and abstained from any kind of drink but heavy cream and fortified brandy, so that their Cleanser-Vanisher would need to appear only once every couple of days. A few wizards even boasted a diet of such rigorous stoppage that they needed no more than one visit a week. 

But if there is one thing that is worse to an aristocrat than the middling class, it is another member of the aristocracy who fails to recognize the gulf, however thin, between themselves and one’s own more vaunted position in the hierarchy. As soon as it was poor form for the noblest sort of wizard to excrete at all, it became insufficient to merely Vanish the waste away from one bowels every now and then. In 1709, the Diagonal Theatre ceased to offer intermissions because the management assumed that patrons would be cleansed while watching and have no need to relieve themselves. It was a mark of disgrace (or worse, thrift) to keep the Cleanser-Vanisher at bay for too long, and status-conscious wizards now consumed an entirely different diet—copious amounts of apple cider, coffee, senna tea, prune juice, and mineral oil, all of it piping hot, as well as fermented milk, garlic bulbs, candied figs, and peanuts in the shell—and furthermore chewed or dipped snuff multiple times a day, all this with the object to stimulate the bowels and prove to all and sundry that actual Vanishments were being conducted. 

Moreover, wizards were set apart by the frequency of their bowel-scourings: mere Hebdomads (who were Vanished clean once a week or less often) were the worst of the bunch, and in order of increasing prominence were the Semiweeklies, Crastins (cleansed every other day), Hemerals (once daily), B.D.s (for bis diem, twice daily), Trices, Hourlies, et cetera, until one reached the vaunted Time-and-agains, whose constant attendants Vanished them clean unceasingly. Of course, there were endless gradations between each of these groups, according to whether one might have four Vanishments a day but not five, or Vanishments every half an hour, et cetera, but one would generally describe such gradations with reference to their place among these categories. The modern wizard may question how a Vanisher might efficiently travel between appointments if they were required to call upon the same person every thirty or sixty minutes, but in the case of persons whose waste was Vanished very frequently, this service was usually provided to multiple members of the household, among whom the Vanisher split their attention, and of course one cannot forget the need for a Vanisher to eat, sleep, cleanse themselves, and take breaks from the strain of regularly casting a type of magic that, already complex, was further complexified by the need to avoid inflicting harm. It was insufficient for a Time-and-again to be followed forever by a single Vanisher: one would have to employ several Vanishers in shifts. 

Most Trices were Vanished clean at knocking-up, again just before supper, and once more before they retired to bed, and the time for each event would be set according to the availability of their Vanisher. Social schedules were also set in this way, as it was considered most impolite to meet another person while one’s bowels contained an appreciable degree of refuse. Many of the more rarefied members of society were known to claim that they could smell as little as a few grains of faecal matter in another person. Some natural philosophers held forth that refuse could permanently blemish the body if it were left to sit, and that a person who defecated and made water in the usual manner for too long would see a hard build-up along the intestinal lining; and others theorised that this refuse, left unaddressed for too long a time, might filter into and permanently corrupt the humours of the body. “Mudblood,” first attested in the 17th century, literally referred to the dirty blood (i.e. “shite blood”) that Muggle-borns were thought to possess, because in childhood their bowels were emptied not through prompt Vanishing but via “the Muggle method.” In such a manner it can be said that the Statute of Secrecy was responsible for finally dividing society into (as it were) “Shits” and “Shit-Nots.” 

Besides all this there were great strides made in the development of Vanishment Theory. It was at this time that Theoretical Vanishers determined that Vanished matter was sent (or rather transfigured) into non-being, which is to say, everything. This idea met great criticism, not least because it meant that Vanishing waste did not dispose of it so much as embed it in a person more fundamentally than before, and indeed that, from the invention of the earliest Vanishing Spell, all manner of loathsome substances had been embedded into the structure of all being. Nyclis Sharp, a student of the Muggle philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza, wrote that “[a]ll things being in God and moving in God, it is therefore the case that the substance of all our matter is part of the substance of God. If the ill-mannered Edmond Gamp claims that Vanished waste is spread into all things, he must mean not only that our bodies are full of shit, but so is God.” 

Less controversially, the Theoretical Vanishers and Fecalchemists of the day also conclusively determined that waste, for all its unsavoury properties, partook in the Form of Food, for which reason farmers could not conjure or transfigure the manure for their fields except from nutriment, et cetera. Though this fact interests most of today’s students not at all, it was one of the three crucial discoveries that made it possible for alchemists of the following century to theorise and then map out the web of “Intra-Forms” that explained how a given substance could be good food for one kind of creature and unfulfilling or even toxic for another. 

The Great Shit-Vanishing Cock-Up

Nevertheless, developments in the field of Vanishment were not all to the good. Oliphant had not intended to revolutionise an industry, but only to go forth boldly and make a fortune for himself. That other Cleanser-Vanishers arose was largely a consequence of the fact that he had revealed the basic facts of his method, which he had done to guarantee the faith of his clients. He was also willing to take on students, at first because he could charge a fee for lessons, and later because he realised that he could charge one per cent of each student’s own income (included from similar deals made with their own students) in perpetuity, with the initial tuition fee serving as an advance payment and deposit in case the student proved indolent or simply stupid. Oliphant fiercely opposed every other development in the direction of organising a Guild of Cleanser-Vanishers, and once his tutelary revenue stream was greater than his income from clients, he retired in 1691 to pursue his two great loves: performing magical medical experiments of questionable value, and dictating vexatious Howlers to anyone who tried to organise the industry in a way that might threaten his place of power within it. 

For so long as most clients were cautious and most Cleanser-Vanishers were not too far removed from Oliphant, there was little trouble, but by 1736 this was not so. The lack of a credentialing system had become a serious problem in Wizarding Britain, which was afflicted with a plague of ill- and un-trained Vanishers. At the height of the terror, the enterprising Avitia Jackdaw employed no wizards at all. Instead, she transfigured ducks into the semblance of a man and trained them to speak and act as necessary in exchange for whole loaves of white bread (whence the term quack, “medical charlatan”). Their power of speech was as poor as one might expect, but the Quacks were passed off as Yorkies in every part of Britain but (of course) Yorkshire, where instead Jackdaw claimed that they were Welsh. These incredulous tales were believed for many reasons, not the least of which is that people in the past were prone to more and stupider prejudices than we are. 

The first major incident was the death of Blocke Longbottom¹² after three months of constipation, by which time his intestines had filled up, pushed out of alignment the other organs of his body, and even deformed his spine. Throughout his long, painful, and utterly disgusting affliction, Longbottom had been attended by a Quack Cleanser-Vanisher of the truest kind, who could not cast a Vanishing Spell at all, let alone well, but was reported as being able to honk quite suggestively and indeed persuasively. Public outrage mounted as other people—by the terror’s end, twenty-one in all—died at the hands of incompetent Cleanser-Vanishers and enraged geese (which were easier to transfigure but less tractable and more prone to inopportune resumptions of their original shapes). 

The crisis reached a head in 1787 when a fourteen-year-old Pure-blood wizard, Jasper Lamont, suffered a Manifest Whammy—a exceedingly unusual type of transfigurative calamity—under the wand of one of the family’s Cleanser-Vanishers, Alota Tripe. Rather than relieve the boy’s bowels, Tripe accidentally transfigured him into a heap of warm manure, approximately twelve feet tall at its highest point, where there stood a rooster.¹³ Witnesses were drawn to the scene by the screams of Jasper’s horrified family and the stench of Jasper himself but what sealed the scene in memory and history was the crowing of the cock up there—which event became a byword for mistakes and blunders.¹⁴

Thereafter, the Wizengamot passed the Magical Experimentation Act of 1785, which tightened the classification of “Dark magic” and prohibited the use of experimental magic on minors, non-consenting adults, and most Squibs. 

After the worst offenders had been either sent to Azkaban or turned into pillow stuffings, the next action of the Ministry of Magic was to lay down an examination regimen for Cleanser-Vanishers in order to verify that they were competent, temperate, and not disguised waterfowl. According to some estimates, fewer than one in ten Cleanser-Vanishers who presented themselves to the Ministry were worthy of a licence. 

There was moreover an increasing suspicion of the practice at large. Rumors spread of Cleanser-Vanishers that made off with the precious bodily fluids of their clients or secreted bezoars in the stomachs of the same for clandestine fermentation. The whole profession fell into deep disrepute, and even those that kept their licenses often suffered from want of work. 

Two years after the Great Shit-Vanishing Cock-Up, the Board of Governors remained locked in discussions about how to proceed at Hogwarts. The Sooth-Box Scandal, only one hundred and thirty years past, had not completely departed from living memory, and the memory of the nation yet retained terrible legends of the waste-slickened dormitories of the century before that. Toilets had by this time become thoroughly associated with Muggle contrivances, but support mounted after one of the governors, Wyrma Gaunt, drew attention to the work of Salazar Slytherin—her very ancestor—and reframed plumbing as an originally-magical infrastructure that ought to be reclaimed rather than abandoned to the Muggles. Notwithstanding the scandal when it transpired that Gaunt had arranged for Hogwarts to hire her own son, Corvinus Gaunt, all concerned parties—faculty, parents, and students alike—were desperate for the sanitation issue to simply be resolved and so work continued apace.¹⁵

The return to indoor plumbing at Hogwarts proved the death knell of Cleansing-Vanishment in Britain: Just as surely as the practice of habitual Vanishing at Hogwarts had created a national hygienic tradition that influenced the better part of Europe, the departure of Vanishment from Hogwarts spelled that tradition’s doom. Students spent nine or ten months out of twelve with the very best plumbing that the era had to offer, and this became the condition to which they were accustomed. By 1858, hiring the services of a Cleanser-Vanisher required a furtive trip to Amsterdam, and it was a great scandal in 1886 when the Daily Prophet reported that Fredericus Yaxley had managed (first through stealthy poops that were anonymously abandoned behind bathroom stalls, and then through Vanishment) to matriculate without fully availing himself of the castle’s plumbing, and still did not know how to operate a flush toilet. Such was the embarrassment that Hawesse Yaxley, his great-niece, resigned from her position as Head of the Auror Office.

Footnotes:

1. We do not even know his Christian name. [return]

2. Though there were no prefects in those days. [return]

3. From which other taletellers got “Chamber of Secrets.” [return]

4. Or, for that matter, Slytherin’s “private room,” i.e. bedroom, which is also a valid reading. [return]

5. It behoves the editor to mention that these views have garnered additional criticism since the discovery in 1993 of a literal monster in a literal secret chamber, but Ipsum, who yet lives, argues that this was in fact Slytherin’s (spacious) privy and maintains to this day that Slytherin’s talk of “filth” and “corruption” was more literal than Lord V— and others would believe, and the basilisk was merely somebody’s unfortunate pet, flushed down the toilets one day like the founding members of Manhattan Island's albino Sewer Dragon population. [return]

6. Albeit without stall dividers. [return]

7. This construction works considerably better in Middle English. [return]

8. The eventual meaning of “outside latrine,” attested in the 14th century, is a notable case of semantic drift. [return]

9. Or theology, which was still a part of the curriculum at that time. [return]

10. Vanishing Spells are presently a subject of study for fourth and fifth years, but this is because modern students need not worry about the scorn of being the last in their year to not freely evacuate. [return]

11. From which we get the use of “drawers” to refer to an article of underwear, by analogy to a cabinet, which by that time had come to be used for other objects which one might place things in. [return]

12. Third cousin once removed to Sir Dicard Longbottom. [return]

13. On the grounds that the rooster was probably not constituted of Jasper’s own matter (this seemed to be restricted to the manure pile) and that she had produced the rooster (however unintentionally), Tripe claimed ownership of the same. In an attempt to conclusively end the debate, she slaughtered and ate the bird, which compounded her trouble: on top of reckless sorcery, the Wizengamot further found Tripe to be guilty of grand larceny, and the meal—which was poor nutriment, being composed of a former hat—caused her to fall ill. In sentencing her, the Wizengamot gave Tripe the option between five years and two months imprisonment at Azkaban or one year and a day’s probation as a research assistant/subject in the Department of Mysteries. Tripe chose Azkaban; the records available to us do not say whether the Unspeakables were ever able to replicate Tripe’s Whammy. [return]

14. Jasper’s parents were understandably distraught that this was all that was left of him to bury, which condition was made worse by the fact that the boy’s tombstone would be regularly vandalised for years to come. Following the inscription, “Here lies our beloved son, Jasper Lamont,” the stone often read, “who became in death what he was in life: a pile of shit.” [return]

15. Following the previously-mentioned discoveries of 1993, it has been suggested that Wyrma Gaunt had other motives than mere nepotism.  [return]

Chapter Text

Addendum: Hygienic Vanishment Abroad

There was always some cultural transmission between Britain and the Continent, but Vanishment was popularised as a hygiene method among Continental wizards in the late 17th century. Historians typically assign responsibility to Jacobus Prewett, who refused to marry his wife (the Countess de Lemarchand) except on condition that she procure for him a portable Vanishing Box for his personal use. His wedding gift was a curiosity in French society and aroused great interest in Enchantment-Vanishing, and later Cleansing-Vanishment. Lemarchand’s Box has also become a subject of debate among historians, who question whether the Countess de Lemarchand (one of the renowned magical theorists of her day) discovered and perpetuated Elineta Sooth’s ruse or, in a moment of naive genius, Lemarchand succeeded where Sooth had failed. Even as another object of deception, however, it would be a tremendous achievement, because neither Sooth nor her peers ever made a Vanishing Device of such small and intricate design.

Eventually, the Sooth-box Scandal killed Enchantment-Vanishment abroad just as it did at home. In several of the Italic States, particularly Occultus Mons, there emerged a plethora of potions whose purpose was to purge the colon of its contents. Badly-brewed concoctions could cause extreme discomfort or even kill—in the worst cases, the entire digestive system might be disappeared or displaced—but the small size of the Italic States and their general unwillingness to cooperate with each other meant that regulations were easily evaded by both sellers and purchasers. Cleansing-Vanishment was most popular in the south of Europe but also widespread in Germany, where the practice became communal and people congregated in Verschwindehaußer (literally, “Vanishing-houses”) while Cleanser-Vanishers worked on them in their masses. 

The most extreme form of Cleansing-Vanishing developed in Hispania, where “Erradicadores” cleaned both innards and outtards and cast Vanishing spells on the surface of the skin. The most adept of them also Vanished certain elements of the air, such as fixed gas, or performed alchemy in order to transmute undesirable airs into those that promote good respiration. This remains among the spiritual disciplines practised by the Hermetick Sealed Monks of Guarromán, who are better known for their habit of wearing whole-body outfits that, when soiled, are exchanged for new clothing with Switching Spells.