I had a thoughtβ
So Hogwarts was founded around 990 CE, right? Up to when Harry attended, that gives us about 1000 years that Rowling didn't cover or explore. And that means 1000 year of troubles that I have questions about
1000-1300 CE: Okay, so like, medieval times. Can we talk about the sexism that would be here? How did the professors handle that? The girls would have to wear these horrid clothes and expect to have flying lessons? Or were flying lessons only for the boys? How much of Hogwarts was gender segregated? And the Holy Roman Empire was all the rage. That means ultra-Christianity. What if a kid from upper Scotland came in and worshipped polytheism? What then? Would the other kids have burned them or killed them?
1400 CE: This was when witch burnings/huntings were getting popular. I'm assuming that the kids were safe when they got to Hogwarts, but what about Muggleborns? If a guy dressed in robes came to this peasant's mudhut and said "your daughter's a witch!" you're telling me that those parents wouldn't burn their daughter at the stake? And yes, wizards/witches could easily hide their abilities once they graduated, but what if they had a kid that came out magical? How would you explain that your baby is levitating to the townsfolk? Or what if you married a muggle? Would you have to hide your identity your entire marriage? Would you have to hope your kids weren't magical like you? And what if you're a woman who then marries an awful muggle man and you know you're stronger than him and can kill him extremely easily in his sleep, but you can't because it's 1400 CE?!?!
1500 CE: We're getting to the Renaissance right now, okay? So all these kids are beginning to explore literal magic and you're telling me they didn't mix that with the new inventions of the era? Was Galileo or Michelangelo really a wizard? And if all these inventors/thinkers were wizards, who else? Magic has spanned all of time, apparently, so were the pyramids built with magic? (sorry, that was a small side tangent.) And then the Reformation came along and split everyone into different religions. Were there tensions among Catholic/Lutheran students? What about the teachers? What if a Lutheran fell in love with a Catholic at school? What then?
1600-1700 CE: Now lemme ask about social classes. How big of a problem was that? And I think we all know that this problem spanned much longer than just the two centuries I'm giving it. Imagine if a Dutch aristocrat's daughter was admitted to Hogwarts and "oh, it's just a fancy boarding school?" you tell the parents, "great! she can go" so then she gets there, all dressed to the nines with the ballgowns and big wigs and finds out she has to room with a peasant girl and an artist's daughter. Can you imagine?! And yes, maybe they would've become friends, but realistically, probably not. The daughter would demand her own room, but the headmaster couldn't do that, so what would happen? Would she order her new roommates to help her get dressed each morning? Would she look down her nose at them? Would there be different tables in the Great Hall for the upper class? I'm assuming that the professors would have different viewpoints concerning what their background was, so would the Dutch daughter be aghast when her professor (who used to be a blacksmith's apprentice) takes her down a notch and hits her in front of the whole class? And what would recreational activities be like? Yes, everyone would have the same uniforms during class, but can you imagine a guy walking up to you on a lazy Sunday dressed in his powdered wig and golden coattails with their weirdly high white socks and buckled shoes?
1800 CE: Slavery. We know that had to have been racial segregation, right? And even if Europe was all progressive and abolished slavery starting in the 1400s, some countries definitely still had slavery. And don't even get me started on America and Ilvermorny. Being a Southern belle and then having to take classes and eat in the same room from the same plates as someone that looks like the slaves your father owns? (What about the fucking Civil War?! Confederates and unionists in the same school?!) And I'm sure the same thing happened in Hogwarts! And I didn't even mention the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the 1500-1800s!! How did Hogwarts handle racism? If they just banned all non-whites from the premise, then they lost a large chunk of the next generation of wizards and witches. And those poor boys and girls they banned. Imagine having all these strange phenomenons happen your entire life and have no idea why or trying to hide them because you didn't go to Hogwarts and learned what they were or how to channel them!
1900-2000 CE: Oh my fucking god. Where to begin? The style is drastically different from the 1600s. Now students are coming in with flappers dresses and their hair slicked back and everything and professors are like, "what the fuck?" Did the Yule Ball have different types of dancing? I'm assuming so. Were their more dances because the students loved it? And then the fucking Great Depression hits and now most students can't even buy the necessary textbooks to come to school. Most are needed by their families for work (AND ALSO!!! I didn't mention, but in medieval times, did parents even let their kids go to Hogwarts? They needed them to work the fields or stuff.) Then, growing anti-semitism starts up and some of the students are discriminated against because of their religion, just like back in 1000-1300 CE. The World Wars happen and what if a German kid (who's being indoctrinated and I can go on a whole other rant about children in Germany I swear, don't get me started because I will defend the kids until my last breath) is proudly wearing a swastika just like his daddy and then sees a Jewish kid and starts yelling slurs, just like his dad does? How many kids did Hogwarts save from concentration camps? Did the magical kids beg for the muggle siblings to come and stay at Hogwarts to save them from Auschwitz? Then there were hardly any boys for a generation because they were all off fighting a goddamn war! Things started to chill out for a while until kids came into Hogwarts wearing bell bottoms and tye-die and the girls were burning their bras and were the boys cheering them on or was there serious backlash? How much fucking weed was passed around in the 70s? (This is the marauder era btw.) Did the gay wizards/witches finally feel safe enough about coming out? Or were there too many people against them still? OR, did the homophobic people learn to be more accepting because they had to be? Because they were in the same classes, same dorms, same everything as gays? What about magic birth control? Or, was everyone too worried about Voldemort to burn their bras and come out as gay? How much did Voldemort truly influence the Wizarding World? And then Harry fucking Potter came along, the 90s happened and now, his kids have just graduated! I'm assuming Hogwarts has to have changed with technology, but how much? Do professors think magic is losing the battle to technology or are Muggleborns actually still more fascinated by magic than their phones (I'm assuming if you saw someone change from a human to a cat, that'd be more cool than a TikTok, but who knows?!) Does Hogwarts have WiFi and outlets? Or are kids forbidden from technology? And how did kids from the 80s-90s keep up with technology? Did they all just trapse down to a small town by Hogsmead and have to catch up with all the blockbuster movies there?
In short, I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS
