Ars Magica
Wars always change the world. The war we lived through was certainly no exception, but it was more than just war that changed us. Old magic, all but forgotten even before it was eraseed from our culture, returned as both salvation from the enemy and the enemy's terrifying new weapon. As we learned about it, as it became part of our world, what we could want, what we could be, and we what we knew were all called into question.
Hermione's Field Guide To Magic
Except from Romilda Vane's first interview with Hermione Granger about publishing Ars Magica So, this didn't start off as a book! Not a real book, at any rate. It probably rated 'large pamphlet' at best. It wasn't supposed to be something that anyone but me and a few friends who wanted to understand the new magics we suddenly had to deal with. Not new magics, but new to us, you know? Even before the stupidity of the Treaty of Versailles, the Old Lore was already being shuffled off to the side and forgotten about because the modern world made wizards want to modernize - not that many purebloods would admit to that. Then the Gnomes invited me into the library, and Andreil Caine decided to try to convince everyone at Hogwarts that purebloods were the purest form of human and other such utter nonsense. And, of course, Harry starts showing signs of being a Sorcerer just as Fudge and Voldemort - oh, get over it. It's just a name, he's rather dead - actually, fully dead - well, they started bringing Loremasters into the mix. So I went and dug around in the Library and found out about Lore, figured out that Ginny's powers weren't at all Lore or witchery but something else - which I know is a third branch of magic, even if everyone else seems to think they know better. Anway! The book was just my notes that I passed out to some friends to help them understand, right? The DA. Some members of the Order, and the odd muggle who ended up involved - my aunt and uncle, somehow, Harry's friend Gracie, his cousin - which none of saw coming! Ron started calling it Hermione's Field Guide to Magic, because I kept updating it as I learned more. I started making them with a version of the Protean charm - which is one of my favorite charms, because it's a very complex concept and requires...well, anyway. I kept updating them, and then I found out that a bunch of Aurors and Hit Wizards had copies! They were apparently confiscated by Umbridge from my friends, and then the Aurors and Hit Wizards took them from Umbridge and ended up using them as a reference manual! Well, Percy found out about them, read one, and then came to me to make sure I was actually the writer. I was right chuffed that my little 'field guide' was getting attention, and confused. I was sure all those Aurors and Hit Wizards knew everything that was in there, and it was just us ignorant teenagers who didn't know. So Percy can't decide if he's scolding me or complimenting me, until he finds out I didn't write it for anyone but me and friends. He ended up getting updated copies from me, even though Harry and Ron made him pay me for them! Which turned into a whole thing, with other Ministry departments paying me for copies, and then, suddenly, Dueling Societies, Loremasters, teachers, and people I met on the street wanted a copy. I ended up selling a lot of them, and then everyone insisted I write a book about it all. I did, and now it's published, and people are reading it - which is more than I can say for most scholarly works on the nature, history, and culture of magic. I think I'm rather proud of it, but I also know in five years I'll have to update it, because I'll find out so much more between now and then. But that's the beauty of it - the Field Guide to Magic and the new book - they'll update themselves as I update them, and the knowledge of magic will grow. And one day, I can pass the responsibility for updating it to someone else, who will be smarter and wiser than I will be, and new generations can start knowing so much more than we did.Purpose
Ars Magica is the penultimate work of Hermione Granger, Magistra of the Phoenix Guard, Golden Seeker of the Grand Library of the Wizarngamot, and Ministry Historian.
It was written in those first years following the Second Blood War in the wake of the many changes that overtook our society, especially the re-introduction of the Old Lore and forgotten arts and the potential discovery of a previously unknown third branch of magic.
The book was, to everyone's surprise, a critical and popular success, because it explained so much of what so many people were worried about in a world where magic was no longer what we thought it was, and the end of the war didn't mean an era of peace and prosperity - just new battles, massive social change, and the increasingly desperate need to connect our populace with traditions and culture that weren't about excluding entire sections of our population.
Except from Bill Weasley's Forward to Ars Magica
Historical Details
Background
Hermione Granger accidentally became one of the foremost magical scholars and magical historians of our time. She never planned on being a scholar, despite her love of knowledge and research - and being one of the best students in History of Magic year after year.
She said she was going to be an Auror. We all did. We were already fighting the war, after all. She'd started fighting with me at the ripe old age of eleven, and she was still fighting when she wrote the first words of this book the summer of 1996.
The war started for us with a magical artifact of unutterable power and it ended with a new understanding of magic. Between those two points, we had a lot of questions to answer, a lot of new magic to figure out, a prophecy or two, and a lot of ancient history that wouldn't leave us alone.
So she had to become a scholar and a historian. She was the only one of us who could, and we needed answers. I needed answers, and she went looking for them. There was a point, a year or so after Tom rose from the grave, that everything stood on a razor's edge of disaster.
Right then, old magic came back into the world. New magic to us - our generation and the generation before us knew very little of it. But there it was. It came back because Cornelius Fudge and Tom Riddle both wanted the Loremasters on their side, and they both got some of them. And my magic started doing new things, which led to questions.
She ended up in the Grand Library of the Wizengamot and got handed a gold card by an old Gnome who would change our lives. Then she spent the next year or two arguing with Andreil Caine - Ministry Historian, proud pureblood, honest bigot, and exceptional scholar in our History of Magic classroom.
I don't think she ever thought she won. I know he didn't.
But answering all those questions, debating Caine - all of it turned into a lot of information a lot of people needed to know.
She became a scholar by accident, but a writer on purpose - because the rest of us needed her to share what she found. That's what her book is about. Old magic made new, new magic that was really old, and finding a place for all of it in a world that already felt crowded.\
And of course, Hermione couldn't resist telling the wizarding world what we were wrong about - that magic is a lot more complex and amazing than we thought it was.
Except from an interview with Harry Potter about the release of Ars Magica
History
Ars Magica was written a few years after the end of the Second Blood War as an explanation for the 'new' kinds of magic that had come back into the world. Loremasters and Dueling Masters and Societies. Grand Sorcerers, Warlocks, and parts of magical society that had been shoved into the corner to make room for fear and to hide the terrifying things that used to be.
Hermione Granger delved into the history and nature of Lore and High Magic and proposed the existence of third branch of magic no one had considered before. It is a book that changed the nature of how a society viewed magic, and what roles we played in that world as magicians.
Public Reaction
Ars Magica sparked debate about the existence of a third branch of magic, as well as being immensely popular with the average citizen, because it felt like what had been long kept secrets of magic were being revealed to every at long last. The truth is that most of this knowledge was there for the taking and the finding, but Ars Magica put it all in one place and in plain language that just about anyone with a Hogwarts education could understand.
Legacy
WIthin a few years of the War's end, the Hogwarts Cirriculum was significantly revised and expanded, and Ars Magica became a required textbook for all students - and it was a book they would use all seven years of their education.
Type
Manuscript, Magical (Tome/Scroll)
Medium
Paper
Authoring Date
2007
Authors
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