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HRA# Chapter 72: Hermione’s Doubts and Harry’s Speech
🕑 Added 2025-03-19 18:53:53 +0000 UTCThe storm elements raged wildly, striking the earth elements with lightning. A chaotic web of electric currents transformed into whips that lashed across the surface of the earth elements, sending dirt and stone flying. Frenzied winds tore at the earth elements’ forms, bursting into clouds of dust and smoke.
There were no clear adversaries among the four elements. They attacked one another indiscriminately—two elements might team up to suppress a third in one moment, only to turn on each other the next.
For the students, this was nothing short of a magical war beyond anything they could have imagined. Especially for those born into the Muggle world, it was a spectacle that far surpassed the grandest displays of cinematic special effects.
The four towering elemental figures, so massive they seemed to blot out the sun in the sky, clashed relentlessly. Yet none could fully defeat another. The best outcome was a temporary suppression of one element, but as soon as the others faltered even slightly, the suppressed element would reclaim its space.
Through this evolving struggle, Harry effectively demonstrated to the students the true nature of the relationship between the elements.
In the final moment, as if by some unspoken agreement, all four elements unleashed their power toward the center of the field. The forces collided and exploded high in the air, scattering like meteors. At the same instant, the elements themselves vanished without a trace—save for the earth element, whose body no longer floated midair but crumbled into scattered debris across the ground.
Curiously, as the students stared in stunned silence at the scene, a faint rainbow shimmered into view amidst the mist-laden air.
Not a sound could be heard—not even a loud breath. Many had been holding their breath since the spectacle began, struck speechless, still reeling from the awe of what they had just witnessed.
“…It’s so much like you,” Dumbledore couldn’t help but whisper to Professor McGonagall as the elements burst apart in their final act.
This time, however, McGonagall didn’t shoot him a glare. Instead, her lips pressed together slightly, as if suppressing a smile.
“This is the duty of a shaman priest,” Harry said, bowing slightly as he gazed at the spot where the four elements had vanished. “We don’t simply worship elemental power or treat their words as inviolable commands. We exist in a state of equal communion with them. We are their balancers, their mediators. We quell their conflicts, guiding them so that people can live in a suitable environment.”
Hermione raised her hand once more, and Harry gestured for her to speak freely.
“If the elements truly have their own will, and they fight each other with schemes and cunning, doesn’t that make them evil?” Hermione’s question was one that many of the students had been silently pondering. “Why, uh, balance them at all?”
She hesitated for a moment but pressed on, teeth clenched. “What I mean is, are the elements really necessary? Because I’ve heard you say, Professor, that in the world we live in, the elemental forces are dormant. They’ve shown no sign of their presence for all these years, and we’ve lived just fine—no problems at all.”
“So—uh, according to you, Professor, the elements have their own desires, right?” Hermione needed to clarify her doubts. “If their existence brings us war, that’s not a good thing, is it?”
“And most importantly,” she continued, “if balancing the elements is what allows us to have a suitable environment, then why didn’t wizards before us ever notice their existence?”
She was indeed a sharp-minded child, capable of drawing broader conclusions from a single point. Some students hadn’t even considered the issues Hermione raised—they were simply dazzled by how cool Harry’s display had been. Others had only grasped fragments of her concerns.
To be honest, these were piercing questions—so sharp they hardly seemed like something Hermione would ask. They sounded more like the sort of challenge a Slytherin might throw out, the kind of pointed attack Harry’s enemies might use to undermine him completely.
Even Hermione herself felt a twinge of guilt, but Harry waved a hand to reassure her that it was fine.
And it truly was fine. In Harry’s view, if he wanted to spread the ways of shamanism in this world, such doubts were inevitable—only a matter of when they’d surface.
“Excellent questions,” Harry began, affirming Hermione before continuing. “But I’m afraid I need to correct a misconception you’ve formed due to a lack of understanding: the idea that the elements haven’t shown their presence and we’ve still lived normally.”
“The elements are everywhere,” he explained. “Just as we use fire to cook our meals, crops need soil to grow. The sky brings rain and snow; there are winds, storms, thunder, and lightning—all the phenomena of nature are the breath of the elements. Their existence is intertwined with ours and shapes our lives.”
Harry offered an example.
“The waning of the earth element leads to barren land where plants can’t thrive. A lack of water element causes droughts, drying up rivers and streams. Without the wind element, the air grows stagnant, the atmosphere ceases to flow. And if the fire element fades, everything slips into decline—cold and nothingness would engulf the world.”
“But look around us,” he continued. “The land we live on isn’t so bleak. The soil is fertile, the rain and snow are plentiful… though, to be honest, it’s been getting colder lately, and the winds have picked up.”
His words drew a ripple of laughter from the crowd.
“The elements have never been far from us,” Harry said. “Whether Muggle or wizard, the environment we live in is always tied to them. They were merely sleeping before, not communicating with us, but they’ve always affected us.” He spoke calmly, with no intent to conceal anything. “And that’s exactly why I’ve started a Shaman Priest Club here at Hogwarts.”
“I want to awaken the elements’ presence. But this world is vast—too vast for me to traverse every inch of it in a single lifetime, no matter how hard I try. I can’t achieve this goal alone,” he said with a playful grin. “That’s why I’m hoping to gather some like-minded helpers.”
“But before that, I think I should address the other question Hermione raised: Do we really need the elements to awaken?”
Dumbledore’s eyes flickered slightly. Truth be told, he’d seen echoes of the past in Harry many times before, but no matter how often it happened, this candid and forthright attitude always made him… choose to wait and watch.
Time, indeed, was a slow blade—it could make even the most resolute grow hesitant. Dumbledore was, after all, getting very old.
Harry’s speech continued.
“…Yes, even though the elements remain largely dormant, our environment has never suffered for it. Crops flourish, rain falls when it should, winds blow as expected, the air is sweet, and the seasons turn as they always have—without any discord.”
“So do we really need the elements to awaken?” Harry echoed Hermione’s initial doubt, a question now looming large in the minds of the students before him. “After all, as I’ve said, the elements aren’t inherently good. Some are benevolent.”
“They’ll aid those they favor, lending their power to protect the world—bringing water to parched lands, fertility to barren soil, food to the hungry. But that’s only some of them.”
“Others aren’t so kind,” he went on. “They harbor no mercy or goodwill. They’re chaotic, scheming, attacking one another—or cultivating their chosen champions to fight their battles.”
“This means that when the elements awaken, conflicts and disputes will inevitably arise. Do we really need such an awakening? They’ll bring new struggles, new wars… even death.”
His honesty was unflinching. In this very first lesson on shamanism, Harry dodged no question—he tore them open, laying them bare for all to see.
“I don’t particularly like Professor Binns,” Harry declared bluntly, startling the crowd with his candid dislike of a Hogwarts professor who worked without pay. “Because he’s turned a subject that should teach students to learn from history and draw valuable lessons into a dull, sleep-inducing slog. Most students can’t take anything useful from it.”
“Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it,” Harry said, shaking his head slightly. “If you look closely at wizarding history, you’ll see that the wizarding society as a whole is actually shrinking.”
“It’s not because Muggles are growing in number or because the Statute of Secrecy forces us to hide from them. For wizards who wield spells like the Extension Charm, living space is the least of our worries,” he said earnestly. “The real issue—the most dangerous one—is that there are fewer and fewer wizards.”
“Do you know how many first-years enrolled at Hogwarts two hundred years ago?” Harry directed his gaze toward Dumbledore before continuing. “The answer is three hundred and fourteen. That’s just the number of new students in a single year—more than the entire student body of Hogwarts today. And that was only two centuries ago.”
“I have ample evidence that the wizarding world’s population is steadily declining. According to the Ministry of Magic’s records, the total number of wizards in Britain right now is around three thousand. Just three thousand.”
“And that number shrinks faster the closer we get to the present. Even counting students from Muggle families, this year’s intake at Hogwarts was only forty students,” Harry said, locking eyes with the increasingly serious faces before him. “You can go home and ask your parents about it. Have them tell you how the Muggle world—say, the street outside the Leaky Cauldron—has changed in the last twenty years.”
“For most wizards, their understanding of Muggles boils down to ‘they can’t use magic’ and ‘there are a lot of them.’ But they don’t grasp what that really means,” Harry sighed, then delivered the answer. “It means Muggles can pool the intellect of three thousand people to tackle a single problem and advance their technology. A number that’s trivial for them is something the wizarding world could never muster.”
“How many years has it been since we last heard of a groundbreaking new spell?” Harry raised his voice, addressing the entire crowd. “Students from Muggle families already know this before coming to Hogwarts: in 1969, Muggles used rockets and spacecraft to send themselves to the moon—the one we see in the sky every night. A place no wizard has ever reached. They even left a flag there. And now it’s 1991—twenty-two years have passed.”
As Harry spoke, students from Muggle or mixed backgrounds murmured in agreement, bolstering his point. Unlike pure-bloods raised entirely in the magical world, they’d attended Muggle primary schools and read books on natural science.
“From magical history, we know ancient wizards accomplished feats modern wizards can’t even fathom. Today’s wizards can only read fragmented records and dream,” Harry said. “We’re growing weaker. Even after enduring the international Dark Lord Grindelwald and Britain’s own Voldemort, our collective strength hasn’t risen from those wars—it’s weakened further. That’s the opposite of what happened to Muggles after their First and Second World Wars.”
“I’d like to ask Headmaster Dumbledore a question,” Harry said suddenly, turning to him. “When you were young, just starting at Hogwarts, how strong were that year’s graduates? How do they compare to today’s?”
All eyes turned to Dumbledore. He rose, casting a Sonorus Charm on himself as he faced the sea of students.
“I must preface this, children,” Dumbledore said with a touch of resignation. “A hundred years ago, it was a chaotic time. Many places were unsafe.”
“So, Professor! How strong were the graduates back then?” Fred Weasley shouted, standing up and cutting through Dumbledore’s preamble.
“I’ve no intention of lying—or of hurting my students,” Dumbledore sighed. “But from what I know, in the year I started at Hogwarts, there was a graduating student who, in his fifth year, had already defeated the Ashwinder gang near the school, taken down poachers, and even quelled a major goblin rebellion.”
His words sent a wave of excitement through the students. They erupted into loud chatter, shouting out their thoughts.
They might not know what the Ashwinder gang was, but poachers? Those were notorious dark wizards—vile characters with real skill, the kind sent straight to Azkaban if caught. And a goblin rebellion? That was on another level.
The goblins had rebelled countless times yet still controlled Gringotts, the backbone of the wizarding economy—a testament to their strength.
But fifth year? That was incredible—unbelievably so. The students buzzed with excitement, yet this truth came straight from Dumbledore’s mouth.
Harry had to fire off several sharp bangs from his wand to quiet them down.
“If you look up goblin rebellion history in the library,” Harry added, “you’ll find that student’s name in the records of the most recent one. He was undeniably a legendary figure—his name pops up in countless accounts from that era.”
“Thank you, Headmaster, for your explanation,” Harry said, nodding to Dumbledore. “But I disagree on one point—that society was chaotic a hundred years ago. Has the wizarding world been peaceful in the last century? Our most recent war ended just eleven years ago.”
Many of the young witches and wizards present had parents who were victims of that war. They knew it, at least in part.
They watched Harry intently. He himself was a living symbol of that war’s tragedy, its shadow lingering over magical Britain even now. Eleven years after Voldemort’s death, people still feared to speak his name, calling him “You-Know-Who.”
“The magical world’s population keeps shrinking,” Harry said. “Even with new witches and wizards born to Muggle families each year, the numbers are dropping fast. I don’t know where the wizarding world is headed—I’m just the head of the Shaman Priest Club, and this is only my first lesson.”
He pressed on, sharing his findings and conclusions.
“I don’t know what happens when our population dwindles to a certain point—a thousand? Five hundred? Three hundred? How will wizarding civilization and culture survive? That’s a question for Headmaster Dumbledore or the Minister of Magic to wrestle with.”
Harry understood the importance of population all too well. In Azeroth, the tauren had been driven from their ancestral lands by centaurs, forced into a thousand-year nomadic exile, precisely because their numbers were too few.
