Points of Divergence

What is Cannon Here

As per the Introduction, this is a multi-way crossover. I am using source material from Harry Potter, following the same rules I use in the Encyclopedic Reference. I am then pulling in some stuff from Madeleine L’Engle’s Many Waters, one or two concepts of demonology from C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, some other myths and legends (as Rowling herself does in places), and mixing that in with some actual history and some actual theology. Where necessary, I will force the history and the theology to fit my story’s needs, so the result is really really fictional. With as prolific as the Harry Potter fan fiction community is, the odds that a given fan fiction author comes up with something truly unique is extraordinarily rare. Where I use ideas I have come across in the fan fiction works of others, I have tried to reference those works. Sometimes those works have come first, sometimes they simply published first.

Cannon things you must recall

From each work there are certain things you must recall for anything here to make sense.

Things you might have missed in Harry Potter that I am elaborating on

• In Goblet of Fire, Harry is unwillingly entered into a binding magical contract. I am making the assumption that Riddle and Crouch Jr. have Crouch Sr. spout a viable theory for why Harry has to compete. That is, if he is not in fact in a binding magical contract, he could be, despite not having entered. Riddle and Crouch Jr. will have to assume that Dumbledore, or another adult present, might do the responsible adult thing and object otherwise. Thus it is possible in Mrs. Rowling’s world to create a binding magical contract on unwilling participants. I will elaborate on binding magical contracts.
• The Unbreakable Vow as described in Deathly Hallows is essentially a ritual to create a contract. The magic is coming in part from the bonder, but in part from the two kneeling, which from earlier books, seems to be an essential component of the magic. Thus beyond the magic learned at Hogwarts, there are others, including rituals.

Things Specifically Pulled from Many Waters

• With the things I borrow from Many Waters, I take more liberties. I’m attempting to describe the important deviations here, combining both the things similar and things different sections because I think it actually ends up being clearer.
• L'Engle calls the fallen angels the nephilim. I’m using more orthodox theology and calling the progeny of the union of an angel and a human a nephil (I’m using seraph - seraphim, cherub - cherubim, nephil - nephilim).¹
• L'Engle has all such end with the great flood. Later passages in the Old Testament suggest that nephilim continue to exist after the flood. I am positing that fallen angels continued to seduce women during the Old Testament times.
• Being seduced by a fallen angel is not just a matter of falling in love with the wrong person, the fallen angel also seduces you into an evil ritual that corrupts your soul. I am going to extend this and call such a person a witch. See below for deviations from Harry Potter.
• The fallen angels directly interact with humanity and have visible manifestations of the powers they retain from their angelic nature. I’m extending this to say that some of these are inherited.
• All of the angels and nephil found in Many Waters are, in Harry Potter terms, animagi.
  • These animal forms are symbolic in some way of the angel or nephil in
  • question. I am not fully using L'Engle’s definition of nephil, but I am keeping this aspect.
  • All nephil have the ability to be an animagi, and this transformation is, when not specifically suppressed, natural to them.
  • A given nephil may make this transformation difficult (essentially suppress the ability) by believing it to be difficult. Thus some cultures have developed rituals surrounding unlocking the ability (such as Mrs. Rowling’s canonical description of the process).

Things Specifically Pulled from Screwtape

• Lewis describes the effect of sin on the fallen angles in The Screwtape Letters.² At various places I talk about “bizarre” things happening to nephil. This is more or less what I envision. However, I will use language really loosely across all the appendices, intentionally.
  • Sometimes this represents instances of Divine Justice, that is, God has so ordered the world (in this fictional universe) such that using magic a certain way has consequences.
  • Sometimes this represents the power God has given actual angels. Using Many Waters as the source concept angels have a fair amount of autonomy and sometimes a lack of clarity in how best to execute their duties. For those angels who did not rebel, their choices are never sinful, but sometimes suboptimal (see the intro about this being bad theology but good fiction).
  • Sometimes it represents something the nephil has him/her self done unintentionally that cannot be (or at least has not been) distinguished from the above categories.

  I am intentionally going to frequently be vague and downright inconsistent in my language about this, because it is (and always has been) unclear to both the nephilim and the clergy which of the three is happening.

Things That Make This an Alternate Universe

Historical fabrications

• Witch hunting was a product of ignorance (sometimes poorly educated priests yes) and even more so of Protestantism. The rejection of those parts of Sacred Tradition not contained in the Bible by Protestants caused them to reject the true understanding of the interactions between the fallen angels and humanity.
• I have adjusted the history of The Priestly Fraternity of St Peter.
• Appendices, backstories, and footnotes talking about scholars or Church archives are talking about the fictional versions of these things that exist within the story.
• As stated above, the huge segments of fictional source material have required correspondingly huge levels of fiction in my ‘theology.’

Some Notable Differences from the actual Harry Potter universe

Essentially I’m using Many Waters as the basis of an answer to the question “where does magic come from originally”, though as explained above, I did change the answer provided there some. However, to make that origin story work a little better, and also to make real the idea of consequences, as explained in the Introduction, I needed to diverge a little more than just answering an unasked question.

• Harry is noticeably out of character in this story. I will try to make him the exception rather than the norm. However, to the extent that characters are formed by their experiences across the actual Harry Potter series, they may end up in different places (emotionally/psychologically) between my first chapter and last, than they did between Mrs. Rowling’s first book and last.
• Those that call themselves witches are not actually. They are nephilim. That is, you will encounter two sets of characters, those from the original Harry Potter, who will use ‘witch’ and ‘wizard’ as merely gendered versions of the same concept, and original characters to this work from my fictional clergy who will use ‘witch’ in the sense defined here, to strictly mean humans who have gained magic through demonic ritual. See the next point.
• Non-magical people, and all appendices, use the word “witch” to refer to those corrupted by union with fallen angels. They do gain power (magic) from this union, but are corrupted by it. Should they repent and receive forgiveness from their sins, they would also lose their access to magic. It is from these people that the persistent rumours about non-magical people “stealing magic” come. It is possible (in this story) for someone to become magical.
• Following from the origin of magic I’m using, magic will follow somewhat different rules than the Harry Potter books. This includes both the way the characters use magic and magical creatures.
• Modern day welders of magic, heavily influenced by paganism and by those who have given into temptation, have obscured the difference between those who inherit magic and those who have gained it through sin. They call all female welders of magic witches, this is part denial, part self delusion, and part ignorance. Exactly how much of which differs from person to person.
• The Old Testament references to witches refer to those corrupted by union with fallen angels, not to the children of such unions (This is certainly bogus and entirely fictional theology, but it is necessary for world building).
• The Statue of Secrecy was imperfectly implemented. At one point, knowledge of the a-fore bullet points was commonly taught to most clergy. With the disruptions to the education of clergy wrought by the enlightenment, and worse, by the modern era, now only a few priests and bishops know this history.
• Magic users are not human. Just like a hippogriff is a blend of the incompatible horse and eagle that is not fully one nor the other, the person who can use magic is a nephil, not a human. The various appendices written from an in-world perspective attempt to explain this union. I have intentionally written these primarily from an in-world perspective. The varied source material I am pulling together does not fully work independently, (I certainly rant enough about the various problems in the Encyclopedic Reference section) and pulling them together makes some things worse. The in-world perspective gives me as an author some wiggle room.
• Note that in describing the nephilim in the above two appendices, I struggled with what to put where, and thus also hit on some other differences. I have done my best to avoid duplicative information across the appendices.