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“Good morning class. I’m your professor for this year, H. J. Potter, and I’m filling in for Binns, who’s ah, on Sabbatical.”
The class of Slytherins barely stirred at his remarks. Half of them were already asleep, expecting, undoubtedly, Binns to have come in and not paid them the slightest bit of attention.
Potter looked mildly amused. “So yes. Shall we start by reading the textbook? What have we got here…Everyone have their copy? Good. Yes. Ah…you there, Mr. Nott, please pick up on page….114, I think that’s where you left off.”
Nott looked thoroughly surprised to be acknowledged. He dug through his bag and pulled out a rather neglected looking book. “Well…” he muttered, turning to the page, and started reading very fast. “An overview of Goblin Rebellions 1700s: a bloody and violent race. In the 1740s for a period of nearly twenty years of fighting over the century, two rebellions would be burned into memory of the Wizards in that time. Ministers of Magic, Boot, Flack, and finally Gore were forced to wage war on the home-front against foes such as Urg the Unclean and the goblin rebel Vargot. In this chapter, we shall examine the bloody rebellions, where the losses on both sides were tremendous, with more than 1/3 of the Goblin population put to death or dying in battle, and losses among Wizarding Citizens was great, with more than 2,000 dying in a single year. Marwick, a leader of the Wizarding forces, wrote, ‘The Goblins were Ruthless, and they were bringing death even to talks of peace. They refused to stop their violent protests and—”
Potter interrupted, “Thank you. Yes. That’s very interesting. So, what do we know from this? Anyone?”
The classroom was filled with silence. No one had taken a single note yet.
“Right.” Harry waved his wand toward the blackboard. He seemed satisfied with the surprised, wide eyed-expressions of the students. Facts of the Goblin Rebellion. There were two sides: goblins and wizards.
There were at least 3 ministers of magic.
Ultimately, wizards believed the goblins to be suppressed.
It was a long battle, viewed as two rebellions which total 13 of 23 years.
“So what do we really know?” Harry asked with a smile. “That…goblins are violent and want to kill wizards?” He raised an eyebrow.
With an exasperated sigh, Tom Riddle finally raised his hand. “Begging your pardon, sir, but the reasons for the rebellion isn’t covered in this section. We did that before; the goblins rebelled because of the legislation about wands, isn’t it?”
Harry grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Riddle looked bored.
“Exactly. So. This narrative,” Harry closed Nott’s tome and waved it at his students’ eye level, “is painting us a story about the horrible, fearsome goblins. It rather sounds like they started rebelling against an innocent wizarding populace, don’t you think? They seem to be initiating the violence against the ‘citizens,’ not soldiers, you’ll notice. But what do we know? What did the goblins do, and how do we know that the goblins did it? Nott was just about to read Marwick’s words about how one in ten wizards’ brains were smashed in, I believe, and the treachery of goblin poisons or some such quote. But where did the historians get that information?” He paused for effect.
“…Marwick was not writing for a bunch of students in the future, you know. He was writing very specifically about the results of a squirmish, particularly of his group’s valiant efforts in a letter to an undersecretary at the Gore Ministry, which probably was shared with Minister Gore, and then the public, to lift morale. Gore couldn’t have had very high hopes in office—the previous two Ministers being forced to resign due to these very rebellions, but Marwick comes in, like a knight in shining armor and writing about the evils of the goblin attacks, and how his people put them down. Fancy that in the papers. Makes him look good, doesn’t it?”
Riddle raised his hand again. “What is your point? We all know that history is a narrative. That politics and individual players have their own agendas.”
“So you also know that it’s the winners who write the textbook, yes? But what about those unseen narratives? How do goblins explain it? How do even the teachers at school explain the rebellions? No one eve mentions Hogwarts, do they. It’s always the people on the ground, fighting for the ministry…but what did the intellectuals of the day think of the legislation? Were there wizards who didn’t approve of the rebellion being put down the way it was?”
Riddle looked exasperated. “Sir, you haven’t gotten around to your point.”
Harry looked vaguely annoyed. “Well, looking at history only through the legislation is only serving one purpose: to make you all proud of the Ministry and your role as British Wizards, and to reinforce the right of the current government and system. Suppressing goblins is good, the narrative says; they’re violent and nasty creatures. But if you look at history form a variety of perspectives, you’ll get other meanings from the same events…you’ll find that, say, not all goblins participated. Or that part of the rebellion that lasted five years might have been the goblins saying, ‘no, we won’t trade with you,’ or massive migration of goblins from historic New Castle to London, to wherever it is they live now. They won’t tell us, so I have no idea.”
Nott frowned. “Are you on the goblin’s side, sir?”
“No, actually. I haven’t met a goblin I like. They seem…all right, if they’re content to be a banker, and I’m sure there’s some lovely goblins somewhere…maybe not involved in banking…but to be frank, I don’t know anything about their culture, and that makes it hard to know them. Or like them. Or want to like them. And how good is that for Wizarding Relations? What we’re doing here today is trying to start a dialogue—not a dialogue of peace, where negotiations means goblins (or any other race) submits to legislation under threat of violence if they disobey, but something else. Maybe you lot can come up with that.”
The Slytherins were, to a one, awake now, and staring at Harry rather incredulously. And somewhat rebelliously, come to think of it. They did not appear to like the perspective of his first lesson. Harry went on anyway.
“I only know how to look at the past, and can tell you what points of views are missing, and how the sources are being, ah, used, to uphold the narrative of the textbook and, or, the ministry. I can also find some alternative narratives written by home makers, shopkeepers, newspapers from the time, diaries of half-goblins, and the like. I can also tell you for a fact that there were other groups functioning at the time—there were groups of wizards and goblins working together, but of course, that ended before the nineteenth century began, for the most part. These groups I’d like to bring to your attention, can be found in the sources I mentioned…you can see private wizarding library collections, individuals’ correspondences, heirlooms, and the like. History isn’t only legislation and rebellion after rebellion. It’s groups of people, talking, feeling, failing...and sometimes winning in a different sense.”
Riddle didn’t bother raising his hand this time. “How is this going to help us with the exams? It’s your role as a Hogwarts professor to prepare us for the O.W.Ls, sir, not to teach us some rubbish argument based on common people’s uninformed opinions. Sir.”
Harry sat on his desk. “Oh, we’ll read the textbook. I’ll give you sample questions from previous OWLs to hand in as essays for practice. You can write about how goblins were vicious, bloody, and rebelling against wizarding communities and citizens there…but in class we’ll discuss history in a broader context. You’ll probably remember more about the battles and context than you would have from listening to Binns read…ramble, or write pointless bullets and dates on the board…”
Nott actually laughed, an incredulous look on his face. He exchanged glances with his neighbor and whispered, not so quietly, “This professor’s nuts. He’s not going to last a week!”
Harry picked up the slightly-neglected book again. “Your textbook was written by a wizard, you know, written in the twentieth century, and we can almost tell more about what they thought about history and how they felt about the wizarding world as a community…than about any of the historical events he’s writing about. So! On with the lesson.”
“Welcome to lesson two. I’d like to pick up on our critique of the Historical Narrative; all of you have skimmed (or at least looked at the headings?) of the chapter I assigned, I assume, so. Let’s rush on in. Remember, you’ve got an essay asking you to name the reasons for the Goblin Rebellion, and that’s due in my pigeon hole by noon tomorrow, or I’ll pretend I never received it, and you’ll get zero marks for not doing your work. On time, I mean. Anyway…ah, Mulciber, read the last page for us?” He sat down at his desk this time, staring at the quills as Mulciber sped through the reading.
He practically sprang to his feet as he magicked the blackboards down again, this time with a list of quotes under the heading, Nietzsche.
“This textbook is bowing down before the altar of progress, as Nietzsche would say. But none of you know who that is, because you’re wizards who think muggles are useless. But never fear! You’ve got a muggle perspective right here in the classroom. Stop looking at your classmates; I was talking about me.”
Some of the class tittered. A few sneered at their mudblood professor. Harry pretended not to notice.
“Nietzsche said interesting things about humanity. Some of his philosophy has been appropriated in the modernist rejection of history. Historians in the muggle world, thinkers of fascists and Nazis have applied that idea of ‘a break with history’ as being noble, as though history and modernism oppose one another. What’s going on outside of these walls—outside of the Wizarding world—is a war. Some of you need to understand these lines of thinking to understand the context of the Muggle war…and not to mention, the wizarding war isn’t entirely at peace. Grindelwald has his share of modernist, avant-garde ideas being trouped about, doesn’t he? So what we can do in this history class, is to learn to think critically. See how philosopher’s ideas are being appropriated for political agendas, and see how these agendas are being used in greater context.”
“So you want us to be able to read between the lines of politics...so we can learn how to manipulate modern thinkers when…we write politics?” Nott raised his eyebrows. “How charitable of you.”
“Very funny. No, I want you to be a critical public who’s aware of what people are saying. Who can to some degree, figure out other people’s agendas so you can make an informed decision. Don’t follow people blindly.” He couldn’t help but look at Tom Riddle.
After some of Harry Potter’s students started to magically put themselves to sleep during his lectures, the other professors started to take notice of his teaching methods.
Shortly after, Harry was invited to tea with Dumbledore.
“I think you may be startling the students too much.” Dumbledore said, not unkindly. “They are woefully unprepared for this sort of discourse and resent you for it. They don’t understand why they should be skeptical of what their parents, and their parents’ parents were taught to be fact.”
Harry nodded slowly. “I’m not saying it’s all a lie. I’m just trying to bring their attention to the way ‘fact’ is used under different agendas.”
Dumbledore smiled sadly. “But why? It is as though you expect them to be under siege of nefariously radical thinkers trying to trick them into becoming Merlin-knows-what.”
“Mmm.” He took a sip of tea. “Do you think they’ve noticed?”
“Yes. I think they have. But they look no farther than you to the identity of these nefariously radical thinkers.”
“Ah. Well.” Harry looked pained.
When Harry had a private moment, he decided to pop back into the future to see how things were going…only to find that smarter Death Eaters had replaced the old ones. They appeared to be giving public speeches and rallying greater numbers of people openly under the cover of ‘modern progress.’
Harry was dismayed. “Oh. Well. That didn’t work. Can I try again?”