Open History Club, Y43 S1 Meeting - Historical Person of Interest

[Emmanuel Okoye]

Emmanuel had spent a lot of time thinking about what they could do in the history club, what they could cover during it. It was different than other clubs with a certain theme. After his conversation with Evie, he had decided that they should cover things that were interesting to them, people who were interesting. Historical figures. they could then discuss them and compare, stories and books on them. He had sent a note to all of the members of his little club telling them about this, and inviting them to meet in the Student lounge to discuss it. He had arranged a few tables together, letting the ones currently using the room what was about to happen and then had settled at the table, stood at the end of it. "Come on in folks, everyone put a name tag on, with your name and your historical figure and then we can discuss them together." Emmanuel's was his name and then underneath, Salazar Slytherin.

Out of Character:

The idea is that you can ask anyone about who their historical figure is and just discuss in small pairs/groups etc

[/B]

 

[Lorenzo Vero]

Enzo was pretty surprised he had found himself actually attending the History Club meeting, but it had seemed interesting, and Emmanuel seemed like a nice guy. He wanted to start making connections outside of his house, as he felt he'd grown quite a bit over the past two years in being a generally more open person, something he didn't always see from other Slytherins. And while he was cautious about it, he was starting to feel more comfortable with the idea. As Enzo made his way into the room, he picked up a nametag and had Nicolas Flamel under his name. He knew quite a bit about the man from reading on his own and found the whole idea of immortality to be a compelling idea. Taking a seat at Emmanuel's table, he shot him a kind smile before leaning forward. "So, Salazar Slytherin. I wonder what it must have been like growing up with that strong of a name. Salazar," he said again, realizing this wasn't necessarily a historical discussion persay, but he felt it might be relevant to Salazar's future character. @Emmanuel Okoye

 

[Aine Thompson]

"Maybe it explains his attitude," Aine quipped, sliding into a chair quickly once the meeting had gotten started. She'd felt pretty slack in helping out and really should've offered Emmanuel more assistance. Things were just a bit full on with school at the moment, and she wasn't sure she could really keep going with all subjects all the way until OWLs. But she didn't want to fail, as that would have been too humiliating. She had her nametag on with Grigori Rasputin as her choice - perhaps it was a little out there, and perhaps a little controversial a pick, but she supposed that suited her perfectly. After all, muggles had known of him as some sort of sorcerer. She looked at the boy who had commented, nodding at his choice. "So, do you think the Philosopher's Stone exists?" she asked, not intending to sound accusatory but really just curious as to what he thought.

@Emmanuel Okoye @Enzo Vero

 

[Dorian Fitzwilliam]

Dorian had been hesitant about actually joining the History Club after the gaggle of people who'd shown up during the club fair. If all meetings were as rowdy as that Dorian would much rather just read on his own. But he'd come to the library to scope things out just in case, and seeing the tables looked relatively quiet for now, Dorian slipped closer, frowning quietly at Emmanuel's instructions before hesitantly scrawling his name and 'Ulick Gamp' under it.

He'd been content to just sit quietly and listen for awhile, but the girl he recognized after she defended the club at the fair asked a question and Dorian couldn't help but answer. "If it existed don't you think someone else would have figured out how to make one by now? I mean, it's been hundreds of years," he said dryly, looking between her and the boy, Enzo, who'd written down Flammel on his tag. @Aine Thompson @Enzo Vero

 

[Georgia Astor]

Georgia was extremely excited for the History club so when she got a note, she right away started to think about what more could she do to bring more discussions and the best that she came up was picking a dark wizard. In her opinion, not a lot of people would decide to pick dark wizards as they were harder to explain, harder to debate about. But she found them intriguing, excellent and witted, if only they had better intentions and good ideas.

So when she came to the student lounge, she right away noticed that she wasn't going to be the most controversial one as her eyes fell on Grigori Rasputin. Georgia wrote her down with "Gellert Grindelwald" underneath her name. "Grigori Rasputin wasn't exactly approved as a wizard. Why do you think he is a wizard? Maybe he just had a wide knowledge about science?" She offered her a question, curious how she would reason about Rasputin being a wizard. She knew that they had a discussion going on about Nicholas Flammel but she decided to take make a little different direction.
@Aine Thompson

 

[Aine Thompson]

"Yeah, but development kinda stalled for a while, maybe the Ministry should put more money into research." Not that finding eternal life was really going to be a good thing. She realized she was doing exactly what she knew she shouldn't, though her mouth always seemed to have different ideas to her brain. Aine raised an eyebrow at the younger girl. And people think I'm a know-it-all, she thought, a little miffed by the girl's attitude. Probably didn't help that Aine herself was already frayed and cranky. "Sorry, I didn't know you had the list of all 'approved' wizards from all of history memorized," she retorted, making quotation marks with her fingers. Her tone did manage to be more light though, forcing herself to smile. Don't start a fight. "You're right, he might have just had an understanding of blood disorders and combined them with faith healing, and surviving several assassination attempts was probably just sheer luck, but I'm from a muggle background, and people like him have contributed to more of the fear around magic and mysticism in more recent years well after the Statute of Secrecy." Aine shook her head. "That's my thesis for my essay, it's a work in progress." She played it off as a joke, remembering what Arithmancy had told her. You take things too seriously.

@Dorian Fitzwilliam @Georgia Astor

((I woke up and chose violence I'm so sorry))

 

[Emmanuel Okoye]

Emmanuel smiled as the new people joined the group. He was glad when one of them made a statement about his name. "When your best friend is named Godric, I think you get used to having a strong name," he said. He was glad that people were joining in on this, but of course one of the younger students asked a valid question about Aine's pick, but before he could step in, he noted that Aine had spoken. "I also did not specify that we had to pick magical historical figures. I think it's an important element of history that we recognize the advancements of muggles in tandem with our magical ancestors." Emmanuel said, hoping to smooth things over. "Perhaps the earliest formal school was developed in Egypt's Middle Kingdom under the direction of Kheti, treasurer to Mentuhotep II, which was many centuries before Hogwarts was founded. I do believe that Aine raises an interesting point about the statute of secrecy, the person I pick would've certainly been against it,"​

 

[Georgia Astor]

Georgia was a little stunned when the girl came off as a little rude with her answer. But Emmanuel talked on after. Georgia nodded as he said that he didn't specify but Grigori Rasputin was the kind of guy that was spoken to may be a wizard, so Georgia went on based of that. Rumors but she definitely had to remember that not all of the figures could be magical, she had somehow forgotten that, so she nodded. She also agreed with him that acknowledging muggle history was important."I mean, he was a famous person in a muggle world. It would be quite a known fact in the wizarding world if he was a wizard, wouldn't it? I'm not saying he wasn't, I am just curious why do you think he is a wizard?" She tried to rephrase what she said to make it less conflictual. She just wanted to talk with people and make friends not get mad at for asking questions. She right away felt bad with the way she approached the topic, so she got a little less excited about it all. But she listened to Aine genuinely interested in how she would reason. And she had to admit it made sense. "Have you heard that two women died because of some medicine that he tried on them? People say that it was a revenge because they told everyone how and how many times he had cheated on his wife? But actually, I agree with you. For that time, this sort of knowledge in medicine sounds quite unbelievable, he could be a wizard. But as Russians say, people mostly feared him because he was used a propoganda face not for his "gift". Do you think it could be true? After all, Michael Scott was considered magical too, do you perceive him as a wizard?" Aine seemed to know what she was talking about, so she wanted to definitely develop the conversation. "To what would he have changed to statute of privacy in your opinion?" She offered Emmanuel a question after all the talking. She wanted to develop the conversation with Aine but she also wanted to involve other people too.

The information about Rasputin and those two women are from an old Russian book I have read some time ago. It's a biographical piece but I'm not sure if it has ever been translated into any other language except for Russian. So I'm not sure if there would be any way to check it in English

 

[Daria Bright-Root]

Being asked to join the history club had come as a surprise to Daria, as being noticed by her classmates always did. She enjoyed the Wild Patch club, but it was easy to hide in the garden, and she had flowers to be her friends, since none of her classmates were. The history club was different though - people here talked with one another, and she felt horribly shy at just the thought. She knew what her father's advice would be, and so she had baked up a batch of chocolate chip biscuits to share with her clubmates. It made her a little late, but she hoped the snacks would be worth it. "Sorry I'm late." She said quietly, hating that she was drawing attention as she set the plate of biscuits down. "I, um... I baked these." She mumbled, retreating behind her curtain of hair as she went to get a nametag. She wrote her own name, followed by รามคำแหง, then realised that wasn't going to be much use to anyone else. After a bit of thinking to figure out how it would be spelled in English, she added "Ram Khamhaeng". That done, she took a seat and listened quietly, not wanting to get involved in the debate that she had walked into the middle of.

 

[Lucie Vernier]

Lucie wasn't sure why she signed up for the stupid unofficial history club, but she was looking somewhat forward to the first meeting. The teen purposely didn't show up on time, mostly because she didn't want to feel awkward if nothing fun had started just yet. When she did show up, there were only a few name tags left. She wrote her name on one followed by "Ptolemy" who was going to be her historical figure. After all, he was probably the most intelligent of them all. In the centre of the room she noticed there was a debate going on, so she stood back from it with her arms folded across her chest, taking in the drama. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a much younger Ravenclaw enter with some biscuits. She seemed to be a little awkward about the debate happening as well, so Lucie decided she would go over to her. "Crazy, right?" she said to her, gesturing over to them all. "Who's your historical figure?" She looked down at the name tag, unsure who that person was.

@Daria Bright-Root

 

[Dorian Fitzwilliam]

Dorian raised an eyebrow at Aine’s suggestion that maybe the Ministry needed to fund research into the Philosophers Stone, certain that was a terrible idea. “For all we know the department of Mysteries is already working on it,” he countered, a little put out when the conversation turned to discussion of muggle historical figures, which Dorian knew a lot less about. He’d been emboldened to speak up by Aine’s question earlier but now they were talking about figures Dorian didn’t know as well and he could feel his hackles rising. “It’s not like recording keeping is the best from back before and after the statute anyway, muggle and wizard history got all tangled in places and bled into muggle mythology too, it’s very frustrating,” he admitted, having already encountered such a problem with some subjects they’d covered in history of magic. Sure, they had books and records they knew were definitely kept by wizards to rely on, but how did they know bits from muggle account where also true in places? Wasn’t that what Professor Montcreiffe had been trying to warn them about, historical bias?


Dorian was almost relieved when someone else arrived, letting Georgia and Aine go at it about muggle stuff while Dorian took a cookie, squinting at the new girl, Daria’s name tag. He knew her from Ravenclaw but could count on one hand the times he’d heard her speak. He was glad Lucie showed up and asked the question he hadn't wanted to, not liking how many names he was seeing he didn't recognize. @Aine Thompson @Georgia Astor @Enzo Vero

 

[Aine Thompson]

Aine shrugged at the younger boy. "Okay, maybe not the whole eternal life and transforming things in to gold thing for research, probably would backfire. Could use another period of advancement, though, like with the alchemists." Nicolas Flamel was a pretty good choice, the era of alchemy was pretty cool even to someone like her with a preference for modern technologies. It seemed like it did a lot for science and for medicine, muggle and magical. She didn't pretend to know everything about medicine - being a doctor or nurse had never been a career path she'd consider taking - but she knew little bits and would run with that, as was her prerogative.

She couldn't help but narrow her eyes at the younger girl. "You could phrase it in a way that doesn't make me sound stupid," she mumbled, barely audibly, knowing she was being childish. Aine felt extremely defensive, as though this kid had just shown up to make a point about her not knowing anything about the magical world. And logically, Aine knew that the girl wouldn't realize that was kind of a sore spot with her. It shouldn't have been, after all, she was born into a non-magical family and had a much better understanding of the world outside than many students seemed to. But she couldn't help but feel put out, it felt like a targeted attack, a reminder that she was lesser than others. And she felt like only she could put herself down (and did, frequently). When anyone else did, she put up her heckles. "It's like how you probably wouldn't say Joan of Arc was a witch, else she might have cheated being burned at the stake, but she's associated with witch hunts so she's kinda tied in to wizard history as it is." She did appreciate Emmanuel taking more of a peacekeeper role. Aine was terrible at that sort of thing. But she didn't want to make more of a scene. Plus, she didn't know that much about ancient history, so she was keen to learn. "People allege Merlin was in Slytherin, but he was pro-muggle rights, and Slytherin seems like the kind of guy who...wasn't. And the timeline's a bit off."

@Dorian Fitzwilliam @Georgia Astor @Emmanuel Okoye

 

[Emmanuel Okoye]

Emmanuel considered the younger girl's question, "Not necessarily. A famous wizard in the muggle world could easily keep to themselves, so long as they didn't break rules of the period, then, who would anyone be to question it," he replied. He hadn't the story of the man, but given it was an earlier time period he wouldn't be too surprised by the fact that he had killed some people with medicines and cheated on his wife. Emmanuel glanced back at Aine and nodded in agreement. "The old muggle legends of arthur and merlin, say that merlin was immortal, that he roams the earth still awaiting the return of the king, and though he might've been slytherin, it's important to remember than not all slytherins have to hold the exact views that Salazar holds," he motioned to himself. "And with records being a little sketchy then, maybe he attended later, or was sorted as a professor," he posited. ​

 

[Daria Bright-Root]

The debate going on was far too intense for Daria and she kept quiet, shoulders hunched a little, hiding behind her hair. She didn't know all too much about the people the others were talking about, and though it was interesting it went over her head a bit. She was distracted when an older girl spoke to her, blinking slightly. "Oh, um, Ram Khamhaeng..." She said quietly, tucking her hair behind her ear softly. "He, um, he invented the Thai written language." Daria explained. "And he established Buddhism as our state religion."
@Lucie Vernier