As everyone throughout the wizarding world knows, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was founded about a thousand years ago by four extraordinarily gifted wizards working together in collaboration.
They were Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.
The four great founders each came from the most prestigious and ancient pure-blood wizard families of that distant era, families whose magical lineages stretched back into the mists of time before recorded history.
These four outstanding young wizards, who by all rights and social expectations should have held rigidly conservative attitudes toward the transmission and teaching of magical knowledge, keeping it locked within their own bloodlines as their ancestors had done instead possessed unusually broad minds and remarkably forward-thinking vision.
They recognized that magical education must become more open and accessible, that the old ways of hoarding knowledge within families would lead to stagnation and decline.
They understood that talented children born to non-magical Muggles, children who had no knowledge of their own abilities or heritage, must be given the opportunity to glimpse and study the profound mysteries of magic.
Only through this openness and inclusion, they reasoned, could magic continue to flourish and endure across the generations rather than withering away in secrecy.
Though it must be noted that Salazar Slytherin held a different view on this particular matter of Muggle-born admission.
And so, united by their shared ideals and dreams of creating something greater than any of them could achieve alone, the four founders pooled their resources and magical knowledge to establish Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the remote Scottish Highlands, nestled in the mountains beside the deep, mysterious black lake where the giant squid still dwells to this day.
In the school's early days, the four founders managed Hogwarts together as equal partners. They taught everything they had learned and mastered in their lifetimes to the many young wizard descendants who came from equally distinguished pure-blood families, drawn by admiration for the founders' legendary magical prowess and reputation.
They also actively recruited students from the Muggle world, seeking out those children who displayed magical talent but had no understanding of what they were or where they belonged.
When the school first opened its doors to students, the four founders initially charged tuition from all students regardless of their background, needing funds to support the school's operations, to pay for food and supplies and maintenance of the growing castle. But they quickly discovered an unexpected and troubling problem that threatened their egalitarian vision.
Collecting tuition posed no difficulty at all for descendants of wealthy magical families, but many children with magical talent who were born into the humble Muggle world, children whose parents worked as farmers or merchants or laborers, could not possibly afford Hogwarts' tuition fees, which represented more money than their families might see in a lifetime.
In response to this heartbreaking situation, watching talented children turned away for lack of funds, the great four founders made a compassionate decision and waived the tuition completely for those impoverished Muggle-born children, allowing them to study for free.
While deeply grateful for this generosity and opportunity, those charity students inadvertently brought with them a new and equally troubling problem that the founders hadn't anticipated.
The school's differential treatment of charging some students while allowing others to attend for free provoked considerable dissatisfaction and criticism within the broader magical community.
In that ancient era when blood purity reigned supreme as a uniting principle of wizarding society, and when teaching magical secrets to Muggles invited harsh criticism and even accusations of treason to magical-kind, such obvious differential treatment between pure-blood and Muggle-born students subjected the newly established Hogwarts to widespread, bitter criticism from powerful families and traditional wizards who viewed the founders' policies with suspicion.
Therefore, after much discussion among themselves, the four founders made a revolutionary decision that would transform magical education forever: Hogwarts would waive tuition completely for all children, regardless of their blood status or family wealth. All expenses would be borne entirely by the four founders themselves from their personal family fortunes.
This was an extraordinarily generous commitment that would cost them greatly.
Years passed, decades rolled by, and eventually three of the four original founders passed away one by one. After their deaths, Helga Hufflepuff alone remained, and she became Hogwarts' first official Headmistress.
To maintain the school's operations and honor her commitment to free education, to ensure that no talented child would be turned away for lack of funds, Helga Hufflepuff spent her entire personal fortune without hesitation or regret.
This selfless dedication continued to the point that her final years were lived in considerable poverty.
Helga Hufflepuff's successor did not come from a similarly wealthy magical family. He lacked the personal fortune to spend so freely on the school's operations. Consequently, facing the harsh reality of empty coffers and rising debts, he had no choice but to reinstate Hogwarts' tuition system.
For the next two centuries, spanning many generations of students and headmasters, the tuition system continued unchanged, becoming accepted as simply the way things were done.
This policy shift directly led to magical education becoming closed off once again, retreating back toward the old ways.
Magic was transmitted only among wealthy pure-blood wizard families who could afford the fees, and a small number of exceptionally wealthy Muggle-born descendants whose parents had accumulated enough money to pay.
Unable to reach critical mass or form a substantial community, unable to afford education for their children, Muggle-born wizards consistently struggled to integrate successfully into the magical world, remaining continuously marginalized and viewed with suspicion.
Significant change finally came in the third century after Hogwarts' founding, brought about by an unlikely revolutionary.
A Muggle-born wizard, who had himself struggled to afford his education, was appointed as Hogwarts' Headmaster. After taking office, he immediately and actively sought innovative ways to give more poor but magically talented Muggle children the precious opportunity to receive proper magical education, to return to the founders' original vision of inclusivity.
After careful consideration of various options, the forward-thinking Headmaster made a controversial decision. He sought financial help directly from several ancient pure-blood families whose prestige and influence in the magical world was at its height.
In exchange for relinquishing some of his personal authority as Headmaster and agreeing to accept formal oversight of Hogwarts' policies and decisions from these wealthy families, he secured a binding commitment of financial support from the ancient wizard families.
Thus, through this historic compromise between idealism and pragmatism, the Hogwarts Board of Governors was formally established as an institution, fundamentally changing the school's governance structure forever.
-----------
Whew!
Having finally finished reading through the lengthy, dense chapter on the complex history and formation of the Board of Governors in the extremely thick volume of Hogwarts: A History, Harry, Ron, and Neville—all gathered closely around Hermione at their usual table in the back corner of the library, all exhaled heavily in unison, releasing their held breath.
The three boys' gazes met and interlaced across the flickering candlelight that cast shadows across their young faces. Each discovered surprise, deep reflection, and complex emotions in the others' eyes as they processed what they'd just learned.
"I never imagined—"
"Hmph!"
Ron's words had barely left his mouth when Madam Pince sitting upright at her desk by the entrance door, reading a dense book snorted coldly and cast a hawk-like, piercing sharp look of intense disapproval in their direction.
Startled by her fearsome glare, Ron quickly fell silent and lowered his head sheepishly.
Meanwhile, seemingly unaffected by Madam Pince's warning, Hermione's fingers continued gliding smoothly across the yellowed pages of the text.
The Board of Governors' membership was not fixed or permanent in composition. In fact, due to the truly enormous financial burden that supporting Hogwarts represented, far greater than most families had anticipated when they first agreed to participate—all of the original Board members who had signed that first agreement had been completely replaced within half a century of the Board's establishment.
To effectively control and reduce educational costs, the Board's successor families ordered the Hogwarts Headmaster to strictly control spending for each magical subject and to carefully review all educational materials and curriculum. They eliminated large portions of magic passed down from ancient times—magic that, while undeniably powerful and impressive, required vast quantities of rare and expensive resources to properly master and teach.
At reading this particular passage, Hermione let out a soft sigh.
Over the following century, as Hogwarts' more accessible admission policies took effect, the number of Muggle-born wizards successfully integrating into the magical world grew rapidly.
This demographic shift again provoked considerable dissatisfaction and alarm among conservative pure-blood wizard families, who saw their traditional dominance and influence waning. Consequently, the Board issued new orders demanding that Hogwarts limit the total number of Muggle-born students it admitted each year, imposing strict quotas.
But this discriminatory directive met with resolute, fierce resistance from Hogwarts School's teaching staff and administration, who refused to compromise the founders' vision of equal access to education.
The Board therefore suspended all financial support to Hogwarts, cutting off the school's funding completely and hoping to force compliance through economic pressure.
Hogwarts retaliated boldly by refusing to admit any descendants of pure-blood families in the following school year.
Finally, as the conflict escalated and threatened to permanently damage magical education in Britain, the Ministry of Magic was forced to intervene directly in the bitter dispute between the Board and Hogwarts.
To prevent extreme ideas from certain radical pure-blood supremacist families from affecting Hogwarts' normal teaching and admission policies, to dilute the power of the most extreme voices, Hogwarts proposed that the Board expand significantly from its original six controlling families to twelve families with more diverse views.
In return for this expansion and dilution of individual family power, the Board gained the formal power to appoint and dismiss the Hogwarts Headmaster.
Under the Ministry of Magic's supervision and mediation, both parties eventually signed an agreement. The Board would hold advisory power over the appointment and dismissal of all Hogwarts staff members, and full, authority over the Headmaster's appointment and dismissal.
In exchange, the Board must ensure that financial support to Hogwarts would never cease under any circumstances, that the funding would continue in perpetuity regardless of disputes or disagreements. This historic agreement remains under the Ministry of Magic's supervision and legal enforcement to this very day.
After leaving the library and walking through the castle's corridors with their footsteps echoing off the walls, Harry's expression remained somewhat dazed and distant, his green eyes were unfocused as he processed everything he'd learned.
When people spoke casually of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in conversation, they always talked enthusiastically and proudly about its impressive thousand-year history, its longevity and prestige. They spoke of tradition and excellence as though they were inevitable, as though the school had simply always existed in its current form.
But how many people truly knew or understood what storms and bitter struggles Hogwarts had actually weathered during those thousand turbulent years? How many realized how close the school had come to closing multiple times? How many appreciated the compromises and sacrifices that had been made?
The school's history was like a brilliantly beautiful flower somehow growing stubbornly from a crack in solid rock—its resilience and determination inspired deep admiration, yet its fragility and vulnerability provoked considerable anxiety.
"I understand now—" Ron suddenly announced, breaking the silence that had fallen over the group. They'd been walking quietly toward their destination when Ron stopped abruptly beneath a burning torch on the wall, his freckled face showed sudden understanding.
"What exactly do you understand now?" Hermione asked with weariness, glancing sideways at Ron with one raised eyebrow, her tone showed she expected something typically Ron-like and possibly foolish.
With Hogwarts facing such a serious existential crisis, Hermione could hardly be in a good mood. She was especially troubled since the Board of Governors that was creating this current crisis for the school had, in a very real historical sense, come into existence originally because of Muggle-born young witches and wizards like herself.
"Malfoy—" Ron said excitedly, his eyes widening with inappropriate enthusiasm given the circumstances. His voice rose with excitement. "Malfoy seemed in a particularly foul mood during Potions today. Oh, not just him either—that whole Slytherin lot looked rather unhappy and worried. All of them were tense."
Ron's face lit up as he continued working through his theory.
"Don't you think they might be afraid that if Hogwarts decides to fight back against the Board, the school might do what they did historically? They might prepare to expel all pure-blood family students as retaliation! Could Malfoy and his gang be actually worried about getting expelled from school?"
At these hopeful words, Harry's bright green eyes also began to sparkle with growing excitement behind his glasses. What was this—a blessing unexpectedly emerging from disaster?
Hermione was too mentally and emotionally weary to answer this naive question. She simply shook her head slowly and sighed deeply, which immediately provoked Ron's indignation.
"I must remind you, Ron—"
Neville interjected before Ron could demand a explanation for Hermione's expression.
He spoke first with a wry, somewhat bitter smile, finding dark humor in Ron's enthusiasm.
"The Longbottom family and the Weasley family are both ancient pure-blood wizard families in the magical world. We're on the Sacred Twenty-Eight list. If Hogwarts were to make the same drastic decision it made historically then we would be thrown out of school right along with Malfoy."
————————————
For More Chapters; patreon.com/FicFrenzy