8 Chapter 8 - Once done, visiting grandma
After lunch, Ash guided the first years outside to get some fresh air.
It was a little hard for 70 people to all hear each other, while walking through the halls of Hogwarts, but Ash repeated every good question out loud and answered them with a simple Sonorus charm.
Once they reached outside, Ash started a short trivia session about magical myths from the wizarding world.
Most of them knew by now that Merlin was very much real, though that he was a Slytherin surprised most of them. It wasn't a very well known fact even for those raised in the magical world.
Talking about Merlin, they learned that Excalibur was 'most likely' an artifact forged in Goblin silver, just like Gryffindor's famous sword that is rumored to have been found once more after 800 years by Harry Potter.
They talked about how the Loch Ness monster was actually an astonishingly intelligent kelpie that kept evading the ministry workers of the department of control of magical creatures for decades now and was said have birthed offspring, because the sightings have recently tripled.
Ash explained how leprechauns were real, but their gold was not, to an astonished first year Hufflepuff from Ireland.
To an avid fan of fictional books, Ash explained that while house elves might be distant decendants of the elves he described, there were no records of the tall and fair race existing on earth in the past millenia.
Same goes for orcs, Ash didn't know of a race that was like that. Kobolds however existed and together with dwarfs lived mostly in central europe.
An avid comic book reader asked about aliens and Atlantis then, and while Ash had nothing to offer on aliens, he knew about Atlantis. However just like for the non-magical, Atlantis was only a myth.
It was said to be an ancient magical civilization, that lived on earth millenia ago and only ruins and texts with a runic language called 'Glyphs of the Sea' tell of its stories.
Once that was done, a first year Hufflepuff girl with a Greek mother asked about Greek mythology. As one of the most documented pantheons of the western world, many magicals agreed, that the greek pantheon was in fact a group of ancient magicals. Since the timelines for many stories don't match, Ash explained how it is believed that the names like Zeus, Hades, etc. were inherited.
When asked about the titans, Ash could only offer some even wonkier speculations. Most people believed the 'original pantheon' that 'bested the titans' either made them up or actually did manage to seal what the people today believe to be primordial spirits.
Something must have happened though, because if the name was truly inherited, the magical line of the Greek pantheon must have ended or gone into hiding. No magical today lives on Mt Olymp and calls himself Skyfather Zeus after all.
An hour of walking in the snow with Ash generously tossing out warming charms to keep the first years warm, they returned to the classroom.
Ash then explained some traditions and their meanings, followed by a few more myths based on these traditions with the twins chiming in from time to time to tell funny stories of when their family celebrated something.
"Okay, I have one more topic to talk about, before it is once more time for questions and then we are done for today. The topic is how we even came to know how to use magic. Anybody that isn't Fred or George have any guesses? Or those grown up in the magical world, want to share what your parents taught you?" Ash looked around, a few hands were raised.
"You're unusually quiet today, lets have Astoria tell us what her parents told her." Astoria gave Ash a bashful smile with rosy cheeks.
"Sorry, I'm a little under the weather professor."
"No worries Astoria, please share."
"My mom told me about ancient Celtic druids that lived on these islands before the Romans came, they had staffs made of Elder wood instead of the wands we have today and they learned magic from nature spirits like dryads and a now-extinct sentient race of pixies that bonded with these druids as familiars."
Ash was excited, that was certainly an answer to the question that was most enlightening to the other first years.
"Very well, 3 points to Slytherin for that excellenct answer Astoria. Lady Greengrass certainly told you no falsehoods, all these points you mentioned are facts. If I am not mistaken, your mother's side of the family prides itself as descendants of a Celtic clan called the Oakhearts, no?"
"Yes Professor Ash, that's what she told me," Astoria admitted with a bright smile, happy and proud that someone like Ash knew so much about her mother's family.
"Any others?" Ash asked into the round and a few more hands shot up.
"Yes, Frederic, how do you think we came to know how to wield magic?"
A rather tall blonde first year from Gryffindor stood up.
"Professor Ash, I read a book that talked about intent in magic. Earlier you said that magic comes from either the soul or the mind, but so far you only explained the soul part. I believe the intent comes from the mind, so we humans invented words with meanings or with a certain intent and that's how we learned spells."
Ash was shocked, that explanation was almost verbatim, what he was going to explain at the end of the little discussion.
A few moments later he gathered himself and looked at Frederic with a bright smile.
"Extraordinary Frederic, are you sure you aren't secretly a Ravenclaw with that much wit? Take 10 points to Gryffindor for that amazing conclusion! Also next time you don't have to get up," Ash winked at the last sentence.
He turned to the rest of the class and began his explanation.
"Both Astoria and Frederic raised great points. Magic was learned through trial and error by many generations. To go from using magic through sheer emotion, entirely uncontrolled, like you have through so-called accidental magic, to wielding magic with waving a wand and a set spell incantation, it took countless geniuses, several lucky coincidences, the willingness to share and the ingenuity of the human kind."
Benedict in the back raised his hand this time, so Ash pointed with a nod and he asked, "Professor Ash, what do you mean with willingness to share?"
"Well like you heard, it was the nature spirits that taught the Celtic druids. Had the spirits not wanted to share their ways, our world would certainly look different, no?"
Reluctantly, Benedict nodded.
"However, the druids were not perfect, well nobody truly is. Before the four founders of Hogwarts came together with the dream to teach magic, knowledge was scattered. Many magicals with talent grew up having to invent ways to use magic on their own and while that itself led to several unique breakthroughs, the fact remains we stopped hoarding knowledge for a better future for all of us. Magicals in turn stopped ignoring their gifts."
Ash looked at everyone present, his mood suddenly solemn, "and make no mistake, had that not happened we would not have been able to stop the church's witch hunts."
"But coming to a topic I would much rather discuss, if spells came to be through the mind and intent, how do you guys think potions came to be?"
Nobody lifted their hands, because that was not something they ever thought about. Ash pointed towards a first year Gryffindor girl and asked her the question once again.
"Um, maybe nature spirits again? Since plants come from nature they wanted us to get better at using nature's gifts?" the girl answered timidly in a questioning tone.
"Wow, another witty answer, thank you Stephanie. Take 3 points to Gryffindor! Ravenclaws, you really missed out on two talents there," Ash cheekily praised the Gryffindor, who lit up at the first points she ever won her house.
"While not the only step of the way and while there are different cultures that started brewing potions under different circumstances and therefore work with other methods, we in Magical Britain in big parts have nature spirits to thank for the inception of the potions field."
The students all felt how excited Ash was to talk about potions, they all regained innocent smiles at that. Nobody could truly resist the 'Vial of Sunshine' when he talked about potions with such enthusiasm.
"The other major factor, except the human ingenuity, are actually hags. Since one of my potion masters was a hag, some may call me biased, but hags are much more in tune with nature compared to the average witch or wizard."
A Ravenclaw boy raised his hand, "Yes Mike?" "Um, hags are real? Like with hunchbacks, long hooked noses, warts and they eat children?"
"Um, they certainly don't have a good image in the non-magical world, do they? Haaa....hags don't have the best of images in the magical world either, I'm afraid. All it took was a bunch of bad hags to ruin the name of them all forever."
Ash sighed, his master the hag Griselda the feisty was truly a kind woman and for a woman in her 80s, she was still good looking too, no warts in sight. However people would either not believe she is a hag, or would turn away in fear and disgust at their revelation. Huh, that was their loss though, so good riddance.
"I have been apprenticed to Griselda the hag since I was 6 and she has neither eaten me, nor my little cousin 5 years my junior in all the years I've known her. She and all the hags from her coven in Wales, are all truly kind souls who keep to themselves due to societies' misconception of them. And believe me when I say, except for their literal green thumbs... and other green fingers, you'd never be able to tell them apart from regular witches."
Ash shook his head.
"However that is not the point I wanted to make. What I did want to talk about, is that they were the ones to pioneer potioneering on these isles. Even before druids started brewing their first concoctions, hags already knew countless ways to heal ailments by brewing roots and other ingredients to make the first potions."
Most first years were still sceptical, but it is what it is.
"How about this, do you guys know what a genius potioneer is said to possess if he is particularly gifted?" Everbody shook their heads.
A little proudly, Ash explained, "these people, like me, are said to have the 'hags' touch'. Now imagine how good they must be at potions, if even despite their infamy, the magical community named this gift after the hags."
Ash knew about how bad the image of hags were, since long before going to Hogwarts after all, so he had a few talking points in their favor.
The fact that they still proudly used rituals and blood magics, while it was frowned upon as dark magics by all the magical communities in the ICW, did not help their cause though.
Stephanie, the shy Gryffindor girl once more raised her hand.
"Professor, what was your master like? Do you have pictures of her?"
"Sure I have, give me a moment. I'll go get some, while you guys think of other questions you may want to ask me," Ash said as he stood up to walk towards his office.
When he came back he showed a picture of himself wearing the potion masters' badge with a wide grin. It was a magical celebration picture of himself with one middle aged woman and two older ladies.
The middle aged woman, his master Griselda the hag, stood proudly next to him, ruffling his hair in the picture. The first years could hardly believe that this is what a hag looks like. Many of them were not fully convinced either.
The other two women were his maternal grandmother, as well as Luna's paternal grandmother, Elizee Lovegood and his great grandmother, who raised him in place of his parents, Victoria Isabella Starkey, a potion mistress, who had married the first born son of one the most famous Starkeys, Hesper Starkey who is featured in the chocolate frog cards.
And so the first of three lessons about wizarding common sense slowly came to an end.
It was still two hours to dinner, so once the questions from the first years stopped, he dismissed the exhausted, but brightly smiling students and prepared himself for a quick visit to Hogsmeade.
Grumbling a little that he had to take a broom and couldn't use his magical carpet he bought in Magical Italy, he swore he would get Minerva's permission to use the floo next time he had to go somewhere in the winter cold.
In Hogsmeade, Ash ventured through a few stores and greeted a few students he met on the way, until eventually, he found the house of his grandmother Elizee. She had moved here 2 years ago, when she learned both her grand children would be close-by in Hogwarts. Before, she had moved back to her family in France and had lived close to Lyon during the first wizarding war. Her husband had died even before the war and she could not convince either of her children to move with her. She wasn't on the best of terms with her eccentric son Xenophilius.
Grandma Elizee had also agreed to store the furniture he ordered, so Ash came to spend some time with her and pick up the delivery for the bath houses.
Elizee herself had worked as a herbologist all her life. Hence why Ash had no problem with Pomona refering to him as her grandson. Pomona and Elizee both were roughly the same age and had magically green thumbs.
"So little Ash. Your career is all set, you've long surpassed even your great great grandmother Hesper in potioneering achievements and you're a charming young man, beloved by all. When will you give me some more grandchildren to hold?"
