ROTBTD Hogwarts AU: Worldbuilding
Topic: Muggles, Magics, and Squibs
Here’s the worldbuilding I’ve thought up so far concerning the relationship between the magical and non-magical communities:
Muggles can't see the magic cast by magical creatures. What more, they can't be effected by it either. A witch or wizard can be in the presence of muggles and perform spells and cast it on other objects and that's fine. But the muggle will see none of it and said witch/wizard can't cast any spells over the muggle either. Of course, a witch or wizard could cast spells on themselves while a muggle is present, like healing spells and such but on a muggle? No effect.
And any magical items held in the hands of a muggle becomes completely non-magical. Give a muggle an enchanted teapot? Ordinary teapot. Bewitched keys? Ordinary keys. If a muggle were to walk through the greenhouses in Hogwarts they'd just be met with entirely non-magical plants and nothing else, even if a witch walking through that same greenhouse would have to watch out for the creeping vines of the Venomous Tentecula.
A good comparison I could make to the thing that’s going on here is the Mist in the Riordan universe, but with some variations here and there.
The effect this has had on the magical community I've cooked up is this: muggle hate is pointless. You try to shoot a forbidden curse at one of them and it'll do absolutely nothing and you'll look like an idiot. The four houses never had this disparity on the "pureness" of blood because there exists such a large, physical barrier between the magical and non-magical world that even if a muggle-born wizard went running out into the muggle streets and started blasting spells everywhere no one would see it and the things it would effect would look like ... ordinary destruction. They’d look violent and crazy but it wouldn’t be because of the magic.
This is why it's possible for muggles and magical creatures to live side by side and interact on the daily. It's much harder for muggles to go around killing magical people and other magical entities because for them there's literally no difference.
It also makes it so that witches and wizards have little reason to physically hide themselves or their magic from muggles - unless it's, like, the Dark Ages and the church thought it would be really smart to take over the government and enact mass killings on whichever randos they want because science and logic are illegal now then yeah maybe don't go advertising that you've got magic on you even if no one can see it.
This has the effect of the magical population being much, much larger than it was in the canon universe. There's not just one magical village - there is more than one, and magical towns and even cities (not in england bc england is tiny) as well. There's more than one magical community existing in a place. In many parts of the world their populations are large and thriving.
These two worlds are so completely separate from each other, and this is exactly why Squibs are so important. Squibs cannot practice magic but they can see it and experience it. It is only through Squibs that muggles can witness magic too.
(There is a particular ceremony for this to happen. It is very secret, and as Squibs are the ones who came up with it they are the only ones who know it.
But even after this ceremony muggles still can't be effected by magic because to be effected by magic you have to be of magical descent - you have to have some percentage of magical blood in you; Squibs have that, muggles don’t. If you want to hurt a muggle really badly just go the old fashioned route and stick your wand in their eye lmao)
It is through Squibs that magical people and muggles can marry, and it is through them that the gap between the magical and non-magical communities is bridged. One of the effects this has is that there is a lot more sharing that goes on between magical and non-magical cultures, be it in clothing, inventions, media, etc. There are things integrated in magical communities that have very obvious muggle origins, and there are things that muggles use that came from magical people, even if the muggles who use these things don’t know it.
Thanks to the legends told from the end of the Great War that happened millions of years before, Squibs even have certain connotations like being seen as inherently holy, good omens, and the bringers of good fortune. For these reasons it is traditional for a Squib to be a member of the magical "religious" community - and I'm using that term very loosely. What the magical humans have got going on is a little bit different from the traditional sense of the word; you know, less cult-like qualities and all that.
(At the moment I’ve mixed some of it up with Pagan traditions as a placeholder until I’ve got more material to work with, but since these are witches/wizards we’re talking about, their culture does have strong influences from Paganism, Satanism, and Nordic beliefs.)
(If you’re wondering, this also means that Christianity is blocked from this group chat - listen, those witch burnings really made an impression, okay. Even if the muggles were confused and mostly ended up killing their own bc really all of it was just propaganda made by the government for woman hate you can’t just expect an entire society to forgive something like that.)
It is traditional for Squibs to be present for births, coming of age ceremonies, marriages, deaths, and all the festive days that are interspersed throughout. And if they get the necessary training, they are guaranteed places in the government to help with diplomatic relations - magical governments across the world consider it a necessity to have Squibs present at their meetings regarding international affairs, because it is usually Squibs who are the most knowledgeable on the various magical and non-magical societies, customs, current news, systems of law enforcement, bureaucracy, languages, and even the magical version of anthropology, and are trained in those things specifically.
They are the interlopers between the two worlds. They are ambassadors, translators, peacemakers, the givers of knowledge and enlightenment. In these societies they are important, needed, vital.
And as for how the magical communities keep the peace amongst each other ... that specific role falls onto an independent, long-standing, non-government affiliated group called The Guardians. The details that pertain to who they are and what they do will be explored in another post.
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This might come off as too personal, but the main reason I came up with a canon like this is, aside from giving a stronger and more prominent role to Squibs who are seen as the equivalent of the disabled in the HP universe, I think I just really wanted to read a story where the struggles of people like mine isn’t used as a plot device. Oh yes, I know that things like war, terrorism, prejudice, inexcusable cruelty, mass genocide, and such are all very fun concepts! Very interesting, so creative, really. I’m sure that lots of people in the western worlds are always thrilled to eat up things like that. And maybe in other circumstances I might’ve been too. Maybe I would’ve been perfectly okay with seeing all those things everywhere and anywhere since they are supposed to be such an inevitable and completely normal and necessary part of any world that’s ever been created because we can explain all of that away with it just being “human nature”, right?
But this fanfiction I’m writing ... I’m writing it to have a good time. I want some place I can go to that makes someone like me feel good, too. I just ..... I’m tired. I’m tired.
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