Chapter 77 - History of Magical Europe - III

When the war between the light and the dark in the European magical world, threatened to expose the magical world to the outside world, the magical people from other countries were forced to interfere in the war just to make sure that it did not happen. The exposure would have led to worldwide wars with the only end being one side getting exterminated. The other countries did not want such a large scale war to take place and intervened. They favored the light side since they were against the dark side's objective. The war now favored the light side and they started hunting down dark side members. This led to many large scale battles with many deaths both on the light and dark side. The battles led to the loss of many learned wizards and witches belonging to Europe and also the other countries. A lot of powerful wizards including arch mages died over the course of the war which lasted for many years.

The highest causality number belonged to the Europe. Many highly learned wizards died and with them their knowledge became lost to the world. During the attacks on houses of learned men and other learning institutions, many books and knowledge which had been compiled over many centuries were lost too. This led to the decline in strength of the European magical world. The other countries also lost people but there was no loss of knowledge since the war was happening in Europe and there was no loss of libraries and homes on their side. The wizards who were sent here were strong arch mages due to the scale of the war so when they died the foreign countries also did have a decline in overall strength but due to the fact that many of these arch mages had disciples back home, their knowledge was not lost.

The last major war which ultimately ended the years of large scale wars was the one between Merlin Ambrosius's and Morgana le Fay's forces. Merlin and Morgana were considered the strongest wizard/witch of all time. Merlin with the help of King Arthur Pendragon, the ruler of Britain during that time, and his forces fought Morgana and the Dark side. The war was very long and people fought for many years. The war ended with the death of both Merlin and Morgana in an epic duel between the two. Their disciples and many of the other arch mages in Europe also died in that final battle. A lot of magical knowledge belonging to Europe's greatest became lost to the world with them.

When the other countries saw that the strength of wizards in Europe had declined heavily after that epic battle and the scale of the war between the light and dark had reduced to a low level one, they decided to withdraw from the war and Europe. Before withdrawing they made use of the war and low strength of European wizards to deal a crippling blow to the overall strength of magical Europe. They took actions to make sure that no larger scale battles between strong wizards happened ever in the war between the light and dark side in Europe. They stayed for a few more years to undertake that objective and by the time they withdrew from Europe, Europe had become very weak and had no more arch mages.

It was the end of Europe's golden age of magic and the other countries were happy to see that happen. Wizards belonging to other countries did not like European wizards because they were very arrogant and belittled them all the time so they celebrated the end of European golden age.

After that Europe was left alone and other countries decided to not interfere anymore in whatever happened in Europe. They instead decided to spend their time in finding ways to protect themselves from the inevitable exposure of the magical world which was going to happen in the future. They knew that eventually magic will be exposed to the outside world due to the actions of the dark side and when that happened they wanted to be prepared.

In Europe, with the reduction in strength of the wizards, the light side which had the help of the non-magical side started winning the battles. When the Dark side saw that they were losing, they decided to end the war and go into hiding to restore their strength. So the war between light and dark which was fought for many centuries ended and peace resumed in Europe.

The European world then continued their normal lives. The population of magical people in Europe had drastically reduced due to the war. Many old magical families had come close to extinction while many families had become extinct. If not for the high magic in Europe due to the presence of large number of ley lines, all magical families would have died out in Europe.

Movements by the dark side did happen every now and then but the light side always prevailed in the end with the help of the non-magical side. But the non-ending wars caused the development of magic in the continent to progress in a very slow pace.

The loss of knowledge and the distrust of muggles due to the war led to one major problem in the coming years. People in magical families started interbreeding due to the fear of witch hunts and also hatred towards the muggleborns who were seen as the main cause of the witch hunts and this led to the children being born in the magical families to be squibs. So over the coming centuries many more magical lines died out and many other lines took their place. The small dark apprising that happened frequently also caused the dying out of many old magical lines.

Due to the inbreeding, by the 17th century, there were no more magical children in the royal family of Britain. Only squibs were left in the family. Most of the other founding families of the British kingdom had also died out. The other magical families did not want to be ruled by squibs belonging to the royal family and demanded the magical and non-magical governments to be separated. The royal family did not want to do this but there was no other option for them other than agree to the demands.

Many discussions took place between the royal family and the many prominent magical families. After the conclusion of the discussion a treaty was signed between the two parties which contained many conditions which both the sides had to meet in their rule. The royal family still had the support of many magical families due to contracts signed by their ancestors so the magical side had to agree to sign the treaty before they could be allowed to form their own government. The royal family did this mainly to safeguard their lives from the actions of the magical government.

In this way the British Ministry of Magic was formed to rule magical Britain. After Britain formed their own Ministry, other countries in Europe followed their example to form their governments since their countries were also in similar situations. The magical and non-magical side were separated completely and the governments decided to enforce International Statue of Secrecy to hide the magical world from the outside world.

After the formation of the magical governments, with people from both light and dark sides having almost equal number of people in the governing body, wars became almost non-existent. But the damage had already been done and the magical development in Europe was way behind that of other foreign places. Even after so many centuries after the epic battle, Europe still had no wizards with the strength of an arch mage.

The English section of the academy library contained information only until here. Maybe the Hindi section had the recent history of Europe but I already knew what happened after this from my studies so I did not search for it.

From what I know after the formation of the magical governments, due to the lack of wars, magical development resumed and Europe had started regaining their strength. All was well for many decades but then Grindelwald happened and it was all back to square one. The Grindelwald war was the deadliest one in centuries and was very bad for the already weak European continent. At the end of the 15 year long war, Europe lost many of its good politicians, learned men and also many heads of prominent magical families. The people who took their place in the magical governments after the war were very young and were not prepared for their role. The result of their actions is the current weak European world where studying many types of magic are banned by terming them as dark magic.

It was going to be a very tough battle if I want to correct everything that is wrong with Europe. I was seriously considering giving up and moving my family ȧssets to India or any other country. But since I had promises to keep, I decided to at least give it a try and if nothing changes for the better I could always go to the academy and become an Elder there.

I did not know what the treaty which was signed before the magical ministry was formed contained since it had not been leaked to the public. Even the Black and Falken family did not have a copy of the treaty. Not knowing the contents of the treaty was bad since I was sure that some of the treaty conditions had been violated by the magical ministry over the years. The magical ministry was incompetent and this was expected from them.

I will have to search for the information about the treaty since it could lead to many problems in the future. This means that I will have to sneak into the Department of Mysteries and the Ministry library in the future since these two were the only two places where the treaty was most probably stored. Another option was look for the royal family's copy but that was going to be more difficult to obtain.

The planning for this was for some other time, for now all my concentration was on strengthening myself to be stronger than Dumbledore and Voldemort.