Chapter Text
The cadet branch of House Bagshot had only just moved into Godric’s Hollow when the whole world went topsy-turvy. This, of course, is not to say that the world had not been topsy-turvy beforehand, only that it was significantly more apparent to the Bagshot family after their relocation. After all, it was only 1840. It was about to get worse.
They had previously lived in a three-story country house called Bagshot Lodge, which had boasted centuries of every wizarding architectural whimsy and fashion. There had been a beautiful portcullis barring the entrance courtyard, conjured by a Muggleborn who married in from the Beaufort line, a cousin of Henry Tudor. The portcullis had a tendency to come down rather quickly and occasionally trap an unlucky guest in the spikes. Someone clever had carefully cast numbing charms on every metal tooth, so the afflicted would be able to heal himself without worrying about mangling the incantation by screaming. The counterspell had been helpfully carved out in the masonry.
Behind the portcullis was a terracotta terrace with a rectangular pond in it. It had been created after great-great aunt Clemencia Bagshot visited the Superior Persian Wizarding Council for their 1607 Grand Gathering on Permanent Transfiguration, before that type of Transfiguration was deemed dark. The terrace used to be a frog and, as a result, had a bad habit of hopping around the lodge, spilling pond water everywhere. When the terrace wasn’t where it was supposed to be, the courtyard was a small rose garden, with a fountain in the middle. Inside the building there were many other such strange and charming things, as is expected of any ancient English wizarding house.
Any respectable family, including the Bagshots, kept adding to the original bones of a house, until the newest alchemical sconces shone on fourteenth century stone and positively ancient woodwork. This ended up looking quite funny, especially in the Weasley Burrow, but it was considered traditional and in good taste. Superstition said that remodelling the whole shebang was bad for the heart of the house, the whimsical magical core which keeps a building in good order. Even moving away to a different heart and house was better than remodelling.
The Malfoys, who were blow-ins from the Norman conquests and therefore the newest of the old blood in England, did remodel. Malfoy Manor had been recast in the modern style, white and cold. Nobody of any consequence approved.
Hmph, thought British pureblood witches when Madame Malfoy invited them for tea, remaking a house, how shocking! How these new French nifflers flout the old ways. Mal foi, indeed. But the Malfoys were rich, and the petit-fours were good, so off the pureblood biddies went to pretend they liked the whitewashed walls.
The Bagshots, on the other hand, had been in Britain since the Romans came a-conquering. Their great-uncle was a lord and had a seat on the Wizengamot. They were apprenticed to clever masters, and they hadn’t had a squib in the family for decades. The heart of their house was strong and beautiful, and it made sure that nothing ever spoiled in the larder and that the transfigurations kept and that the wood floor turned soft when small children fell on it. It was a perfect, traditional, strong house, filled with perfect, traditional, strong magicians.
The problem came, as most problems did at the time, with the Muggles and their Industrial Revolution. Of course, the actual problem was the status of the Bagshots, but the Muggles were blamed anyway.
Bagshot Lodge was in a wood situated in the middle of two mundane towns, Pickering and Hatton-on-the-River, and the Muggle population was getting dreadfully large in each one. The lodge had notice-me-not charms, but the woods around it did not, and the Muggles had decided that it was quite time to expand their two towns into one: Pickering-on-the-River. Rather than live in the middle of a Muggle settlement, like the cadet Blacks with their townhouse, the Bagshots had picked up and left, taking the heart of their house with them.
The heart was a small palm stone, and it was easy to carry. Bagshot Lodge collapsed into a mountain of stone, planks, and fizzing sparks behind them. The frog-that-was-a-terrace had hopped away, bewildered that it was suddenly small and no longer made of terracotta.
Bathilda Bagshot, who had only just turned twenty, had wept very loudly.
At any rate, the world had been turning topsy-turvy for a great while, but since the Bagshots had been rather isolated in Bagshot Lodge, only coming out for school and the occasional fête, they only found out about it when they moved into Godric’s Hollow. The family had sprung from their great-uncle’s younger brother, and they did not have tenants nor an excessive amount of land. They did not entertain: as a Noble family but not an Ancient one, they did not need to host rituals. Coming into society so suddenly felt like moving to a different country.
Firstly, they had found that Britain had become quite shut up into small non-aristocratic towns, dotted along the British leyline like currants in a bun. The junior Bagshots may not have been an actively landlording family, as they were endlessly waiting for a hex or a particularly nasty sneeze to carry off Old Uncle Bagshot, but they were still shocked at the idea of equal footing for all. It was simply not done.
“Who provides for the poorer children, then?” Sir Bagshot demanded of the stammering receptionist at the council chambers of Godric’s Hollow. “Who brings up the orphans, if not through fosterage? Who sponsors the Mudbloods?”
“The town itself. The Ministry. Just not an individual family, not anymore,” said the pretty young witch, who seemed cowed by his ire.
Sir Bagshot went to the Ministry and was not at all pleased with what he saw. Neither was Madam Bagshot.
“Who says I can’t use a bit of blood magic to help the garden,” she sniffed as she disputed her Inappropriate Use of Magic citation. “It’s my own blood, I should be able to do what I like with it.”
“Since it’s your first offence, you’ll be let off with a warning,” said the tired man at the counter. He stamped her file (By hand! A new muggle habit, to be sure, he could have just waved his wand! she thought) and called “Next!”
Bathilda Bagshot, who had been at Hogwarts seven years ago and had just finished her mistresship as a Magical Historian with the Genteel Magical Historians of Great Britain, had less trouble adjusting. This is not to say that she had no trouble at all. Though she knew what to say and what not to do, the changes that a government was bringing on magical society were shocking to someone who was brought up to act as a linear heir of a traditional family.
Someone, she thought worriedly, is going to use this for her own ends. There is a latent anger in Britain. More wizards and witches are curbed from their roots. Magic is a deep and powerful thing, and pretending like it is limited to household charms and fixing odds and ends will not erase that. The gods will not like it. The Ministry does not have ties to the land, and the leylines will become barren.
It was true. The stiff wave of pompous bureaucracy cannot replace the ritual sacrifices, the dancing, the ears going pointy and sharp, eyes bright with magic, magic, magic. Sanitized enchantments from the Department of Mysteries are nothing compared to what the ancient families do every season.
Bathilda Bagshot started writing The Decline of Pagan Magic two years after her family had settled in Godric’s Hollow. She was still writing it in 1849, by which time she had reached twenty-eight, and taken her honorary seat on the Wizengamot next to her great-uncle, who was nearly 200 years old and had not yet succumbed to any sneezes.
A quick word on the Wizengamot: it is old, which means it is stagnant. The Sacred 39 (or however many there happen to be) and other consequential houses sit in their plum robes on their velvet cushions three times a month. They call each other Lord and Lady, and incline their heads at the Sirs and Madams, and they nod very seriously at what the Chief Mugwump says, and whisper among each other when the Minister of Magic makes a point, and swear to uphold magical society as best they can. Then, as soon as it comes time to vote, they promptly forget their grand promises and settle in centuries-old coalitions.
The politics of the Wizengamot are tedious, complex, and nonsensical; based on friendships, duels, and promises. The actual bills it passes are less to do with the contents of the law, and more to do with the fact that, for example, Imeranthe Greengrass had slapped Ursus Black three centuries ago, and their grandchildren uphold the grudge.
And so, Bathilda Bagshot sat in her honorary seat, aghast, as House Fawley cast the deciding vote on whether to censor so-called dark reading material in the Hogwarts library in 1867. A vote cast solely to spite the Abbots. The majority was small enough that the bill passed with exceptions: a Restricted section was the compromise.
The older families, all of them, had begun teaching their children from their house libraries. The Muggleborns were left to draw their own conclusions on the books, without the guidance of an adult.
And so, Bathilda Bagshot sat in her honorary seat, mouth open, as the young flame-haired representative for House Prewett stuck out her tongue at House Bulstrode as she tipped the stalemate on the law which switched traditional wizarding holidays in public schools and government offices to Muggle ones in 1870. Yule and Imbolc became Christmas and Easter.
Muggle-lover became a common insult. Traditional became a synonym for dark. The laws started coming more quickly after that.
And so, Bathilda Bagshot sat in her honorary seat, scribbling on her parchment, as the Ministry took sole responsibility for orphans (the Stipend for Disadvantaged Muggleborns became the poor substitute for sponsorship by an established family) in 1881, for medicine (St. Mungo’s became the only legal place to treat complex charms damage) in 1889, and for education (OWLs became mandatory and NEWTs were encouraged) in 1894.
The polarization grows with every law, and the neutral houses are cemented into the sides they chose at the beginning of this new era.
It is 1904 and Bathilda Bagshot is still writing her tome, and it is twice the width of her arm.
Who does this benefit, who does this benefit? Bathilda asks herself, ink smudging around her mouth as she chews her quill. It seems to benefit no-one but the Ministry, and the Ministry is not a singular entity. It is a machine without eyes: it seeks progress for progress’s sake but cannot see the cliff it is about to fall from.
She is putting the final touches on The Decline of Pagan Magic in 1910, sixty-eight years after she had begun. She has written countless other books, like Hogwarts: A History and A History of Magic, but this is her magnum opus. It is her life’s work. She sends it to be published, and she receives great acclaim, but little else.
It is that summer that her great-nephew comes to visit the new, now old, Bagshot home in Godric’s Hollow. Gellert seems unhappy with the house. He has heard stories of the Bagshot Lodge in the woods, with its terrace and portcullis and mis-matched insides. This building, finished less than a century ago, is a mockery. Bathilda privately agrees. Great Uncle Bagshot died in April, and Gellert is really there to help her move her things to Bagshot Manse in —shire as quickly as possible.
Gellert seems unhappy with himself as well, but then he has been just expelled from Durmstrang. He stays in the house and reads her books as she haggles with the house elf about moving the finer vintages from the cellar.
Gellert badgers her about her own manuscripts, and she shows him all the things the publisher has made her leave out. He comes with her to Wizengamot meetings, as a guest, and watches intently. He tends the plagentines in her garden; they whistle softly at him when he approaches.
The summer comes, and she introduces Gellert to Albus, and it all goes terribly from there.
They still write, she knows. Albus warded his house so thoroughly that unwelcome owls erupt in sparks. Gellert’s letters appear in her own ewes, his spiky cursive thin and scrawling: Albus Dumbledore c/o My Lady Aunt Bagshot, APWBD c/o Auntie Batty, Mein Schatz c/o Bathilda Bagshot. And she watches the responding owl fly from the Dumbledore household within the day.
In 1914, she hears about the Muggle war; in 1915, there are rumours of wizarding unrest on the mid-Eastern leyline. She hears Gellert’s name on the wind and sees it in her teacups; she almost goes to Albus to scold him for it, though it can’t be his fault, but then she remembers that he’s teaching at Hogwarts and the house sits empty, its heart weak and tired in the attic. Aberforth has moved into apartments above a pub in Hogsmeade.
Then, in 1918, the Muggle war ends and the rumours about a wizarding conflict begin. Then marches against the Statute of Secrecy. Then assassinations. Then battles, fireworks of curses you could see in France from the coast. Then, finally, in 1941, a wizarding war on the continent.
After that: a horrid duel between two lovers a few months after the second Muggle war ends. She doesn’t see it except for a bad picture in the newspaper. Gellert’s mouth opens, plaintively, like the world doesn’t exist and he’s saying sorry after a lover’s spat and Albus throws a curse at him, shoulders shaking. And again. And again.
Gellert is shut up in Nurmengard. She comes to visit her great-nephew. Blood bonds do not break easily, if at all.
The aura of the prison is unbelievably cold, and worms into the cracks of her soul. She can see how magic could be sapped from a person here.
She sits across from Gellert, bars between them, and summons a tray of pumpkin tarts from her bag. It takes her two tries, and the wards shudder as they lift slightly to let the benign spell through. They eat in silence.
“I wish you hadn’t done it. I think you went about it very badly indeed, and I wish you hadn’t done it.” she says. A pause. "The Wizengamot is lifting some restrictions. You have sympathizers in some of the older seats.”
He looks at her. Something about him suggests that he's preening. She snaps at him.
“Not entirely your doing, boy! And now you’re here, shut up without a wand! Name disgraced! Following destroyed. And thousands dead, for what amounts to nothing. What good did it do?”
“There will be others,” he says, quietly. Gods but he’s young.
Bathilda Bagshot runs her fingers over the cover of The Decline of Pagan Magic, stowed in the top of her bag. She always keeps it with her.
“I know,” she sighs. “Dear boy, I know.”