Seventh Years: Lesson 3

Professor Killian Borisyuk knew that this lesson would be rather controversial, but he was a neutral party when it came down to the group. But the seventh years needed to know this stuff. After all, it would not be long until these students were out in the real world. Either they would succeed, fail, or just survive. Either way, it was no skin off his back nor did he hold any sort of attachments toward the students. Once the seventh years were in, he gestured at the door with his free hand to close the door. Killian did not know much about this topic, but he would not let it be known since he only heard about them when he moved to New Zealand. "Good morning, seventh years. I'm going over a rather controversial topic. But when you witnessed the Unforgivable curses in Defence Against the Dark Arts as fourth years, so let's get into it." To him, not much could compare to that.

He sat down behind his desk and leaned back in the chair, looking down at the students as he started, "You are all aware of who the Death Eaters were and what sort of things they had done under their leader, Voldemort. The followers of that snake-like man have either been imprisoned, retired, or just plain dead. Good riddance considering what they were responsible for. Anyway, there are others out there that seek chaos that aren't followers of a man that was obsessed with a teenager and scared of an old man, which will go to show that you may encounter these people as they are thriving to this day." Killian gave a small shrug of his shoulders. "The group I am referring to remains active to this day named the Scitorari. The Scitorari means 'those who seek knowledge', roughly translated from Latin. From my understanding, the Scitorari believe that the wizarding community is not using magic to its full potential overall."

Killian could not say right off the bat on their common beliefs or goals because the Scitorari were so much more complex than the simple-minded Death Eaters. "I didn't say immediately what they believe is hindering magic because the Scitorari have different groups that all believe something different, allegedly, from what I have heard. Maybe they are just one group, or hundreds of smaller groups united under one name. The best way to identify this group is a ring they all wear." Killian took out his wand and tapped the board for the the chalk to draw up a circle, but then finished off with an Ouroboros, which was a dragon in a circle swallowing its own tail. "This is their symbol. It is called an Ouroboros. Now, the Scitorari didn't come up with this symbol on their own as it has been seen in history. However, with how many groups there are, maybe they had. Maybe they have been around much longer than we know."

Killian let that sink in their heads before he tapped the board again to erase the drawing of the dragon to replace it with the homework. "This is the homework. Due by next lesson. Class dismissed." Killian motioned toward the door to let it open and free the seventh years. The Scitorari was such a complex group, and he had no idea that his brother was involved.

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Assignment: RP the lesson.
Extra credit: Write an essay over what you think the Scitorari's origin of magic might be. Opinion only, no research needed. Worth up to 5 EC points.​

 

[Elio Boneheart]

History of magic was never going to be Elio’s favourite, especially after his initial run in with Borisyuk in his first or second lesson last year. From that point on, he was pretty convinced that the man didn’t like him. Not that he could say why, since he was pretty sure he’d been doing okay, it was mostly, apparently, his fascination with Horcruxes, not that he’d been intending to do anything with that, and he didn’t understand why the school bothered to educate them on the subject if they weren’t intending to let them learn about it. It wasn’t like he wasking for a step by step on how they were made. He didn’t care about that, he mostly just wanted to understand. Still, his career path had sort of changed since then, so he wasn’t too worried about any of it anymore.

He was quiet for most of the lesson, not really feeling like he wanted to engage too much. He had so much on his plate these days with the exams looming, wanting to know exactly what he was going to do in his career, adding this class to it was just… annoying. The history had Scitorari as far more elusive than the Death Eaters made sense too, after all, Death Eaters mainly only had one goal, from everything he’d read on Scitorari that wasn’t true, and his brief stint in thinking about joining them, as short lived as that had been, had definitely taught him a lesson about how potentially troublesome they could be. It was actually part of why he’d looked into Journalism, investigative journalism or crime, specifically. Either way, Elio didn’t like the implications of what it meant for wizarding society if people in that group ever got close to the Ministry, though he certainly had his doubts about some of the people who did work there. And in the school honestly. The lesson soon came to its end and he took a moment to mull it over, if the Scitorari actually were after knowledge, and they wanted that knowledge potentially shared, was he supposed to believe it was all bad, or just the stuff about Dark Magic? All he knew was Bryce didn’t like it, and had seen his path ending badly if he’d gone down it, and he would never want to put his family in any danger that he could avoid. That was his choice.
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The Ouroboros symbol the Scitorari groups have chosen as their emblem might give a bit of a clue as to their origins. The ouroboros has historically been linked to limitlessness and renewal, which might mean that they understand magic to be a cycle of loss and recovery. Perhaps they think there is an ability to reclaim some ancient lost power, maybe one we had before that we have since lost access to. There might be a goal to unrestricted magic, and break the societal bounds we have placed on its use. Letting it run free and be used naturally - but it's hard to say.​