Harry Potter: Reunion with the Enemy

The Daily Prophet, under the management of Rita Skeeter, always has a keen sense of smell.

As the goblins' behavior exposed the magical world to the Muggles, wizards had some new issues of concern. The "witch hunt" that was only briefly mentioned in the "History of Magic" attracted the attention of most people again. Wizards always speculated about how Muggles would react to wizards after dinner, and they even began to look up information to find out what kind of behavior Muggles used to punish wizards.

Compared to the popularity of the "witch hunt" in the Muggle world, wizards know very little about it, because not many wizard families have ever been harmed by these movements. As a knowledge point that is not often tested in "History of Magic", only a few homework assignments are related to it. For example, the savior Harry Potter once wrote a paper on this topic in the third grade, "The practice of burning witches in the 14th century is completely nonsense", in which the example cited in it was that the descendants of "Wendelin the Weird" once gave Harry Potter special training on hiding and disguise in the Auror's office.

Dennis Creevey completed this report on the Muggle "witch hunt" before he went to Malfoy Manor to do some field research. Dennis Creevey, who always disdained chasing hot topics, took the initiative to take on this topic based on his understanding of Muggle history, and expressed his attitude and research conclusions - the witch hunt among Muggles was just the result of their internal massacre and scapegoating. Although the process was extremely cruel, it could not be used as evidence of the conflict between wizards and Muggles.

Originally, Rita Skeeter preferred news with ambiguous and controversial attitudes, because such news usually had more room for discussion and fermentation, but Dennis Creevey's news was published without any changes. "Muggles are the descendants of witches who have not been killed. I feel sorry for these female scapegoats."

Dennis Creevey's "Excuse for Atrocities: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Muggle Witch Hunts" is now well known to most wizards.

"Does the hatred between Muggles and wizards have a long history? Is the witch hunt that lasted for about three hundred years in Muggle society a struggle among Muggles or a struggle against wizards?"

"Between 1450 and 1750, hundreds of thousands of people died in witch hunts in Europe. However, there is no record of real wizards implicated in this action in the official archives of the Ministry of Magic. According to statistics, 85% of the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Europe were Muggle women, while in the UK, female victims accounted for 90%. It is conceivable that if it was a hunt for the wizarding community, the gender ratio would not be so unbalanced."

"Among these female victims, elderly women and female quacks are the two major groups of victims. Elderly women no longer have reproductive value in the hemp community, and they are usually targeted as widows with considerable property. Therefore, old women wearing black clothes and raising pets are easily slandered as witches and attacked.

"Female itinerant doctors usually have a certain social experience. Although they do not have a formal medical background, they have knowledge of herbs and women, which is contrary to the expectations of female behavior during that period. The Muggle authorities of that period needed women who were brainless and characterless, absolutely obedient, and constantly created productivity and newborns. This provided a reason for the hunting of female itinerant doctors."

"And the so-called witch mark, which is a sign that Muggles use to identify witches, is even more nonsense. Because real spell damage will not leave beautiful geometric patterns. So why did the so-called witch hunts break out in that era? Was it because of the conflict between wizards and Muggles? The answer is no."

"Witch hunts themselves were not about what wizards did. Two-thirds of the witch hunts in Europe took place between 1550 and 1650, during the Muggle Wars of Religion."

"At the call of Martin Luther, the leader of the Muggles, the Western Muggle society was promoting the Protestant Reformation during that period. The original religion and Protestantism considered each other to be pagans. Because the life of the Muggles was deeply tied to religion, those who had not been baptized could not get married, be buried, or stay in hospitals, nursing homes, or various charitable organizations. Such reforms would inevitably lead to conflicts of interest."

"Therefore, under this intense conflict, wizards became an excuse for Muggles to persecute each other - in a simple way, calling people with different opinions wizards was a legitimate reason to attack this person. In addition to the crisis of faith, Muggles at that time also had to fight against hail, floods, frost, plague, the Black Death, famine and death caused by difficult childbirth. The collective hysteria caused by natural disasters and man-made disasters needed to be appeased, and wizards were the best place to divert the trouble."

"The biggest reason for the witch hunt was to direct the source of the disaster to the vague wizard group and make them scapegoats."

"At the same time, the methods of coercion used by Muggles in those days against so-called witches, such as drowning and burning, could not really kill wizards with magical abilities. Therefore, it can be inferred that most of these hundreds of thousands of victims were Muggles. They were pagans who were labeled as wizards by their compatriots and regicides who were falsely accused."

"Many Muggles also made a fortune from witch hunting - the prices of peat fuel, lard, fir wood, iron barrels, and noose all soared. The Muggle King James VI of England even wrote Demonology himself - this book became a guide for witch hunting for the whole society."

"Thus, although witch hunts were mostly carried out in Muggle villages during that era, they were a form of atrocities condoned from top to bottom: at the top, there was the promotion of the king and the church; in the middle, there was the support of the elite classes such as the nobility; and at the bottom, there was the profit-driven foundation and the uncivilized ignorance of the masses."

"Compared to the ever-improving science and technology of Muggles and the increasingly sophisticated magic and spells of wizards, it is human nature that can truly cause tragedy."

"It is ridiculous that a century-long persecution among Muggles is called a witch hunt, but as the incident has revealed, the thing that should not be overestimated or underestimated is human nature."

(This report is from our reporter Dennis Creevey. The opinions expressed in this report are for reference only and do not represent the official position of the Daily Prophet.)