It was something like what typical days had become at Hogwarts. Long gone were the days of resistance, long ago were the days when Muggleborns roamed the halls and learned magic, much time had passed since any students wore red and gold; imagined, almost, it all seemed. The school that once played host to the brightest Wizarding minds of Britain had become far more selective in its admittance. With the times so too had changed laws, expectations, and the norms deemed acceptable by society. Wizarding Britain had returned to its more selective, elitist roots. Purebloods of high society ruled the day, under the order of the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. They were
Nature's Nobility.
They had forged alliances, taken the highest government posts, controlled the courts, monitored the people, and deemed what was acceptable and good. Their ideology had grown and intertwined itself with the political and social realities of Wizarding Britain.
Dumbledore had to go into hiding, as did many of the others involved in the resistance. The Order of the Phoenix had become but a whisper of what it once was. Many had paid with their lives. But the Order was still out there. Like the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters, it lives on.
Attendance at Hogwarts had become limited to students descended from Wizarding, or partly-Wizarding families. The curriculum had taken a new turn, with a Wizarding-superior slant, and greater discipline and enforcement of rules. Gone were the days of "nitwit oddment blubber tweak!" The years since the Dark Lord had placed Amycus Carrow as Headmaster of Hogwarts School had been difficult and long, wrought with difficult times through and through. It was now the Hogwarts School for Witches and Wizards, and the Dark Arts were taught to students who were basically trained in the Dark Lord's ideology. Seeing that many who had resisted him had come from Gryffindor, he abolished that house, and students were sorted into the remaining three houses. After all, without Muggleborns matriculating, a quarter of the student population was now gone.
The new school year had started just a week before, and some students were keeping up with journals that had long since become an established means of magical communication between them. But times had become darker since the death of Harry Potter, the one who the Dark Lord believed could have led to his downfall, that October night in 1981.
The headmaster cleared his voice, a slight wheeze evident as he chuckled, commanding the attention of those present as he rose behind the podium in front of the long faculty table in the Great Hall of Hogwarts. He paused and glanced around at the curious faces, his squaty, lumpy stature elevated by the steps behind the podium.
"Students," he started, "you will be pleased to know that next weekend will be a Hogsmeade weekend. Those of you who have turned in your permission forms will be able to visit the village, if you are Third Year or above. We will have security, as always, and we ask that you be careful," he finished, with a slight squeak.
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