The battle, in the end, felt rather anticlimactic.
"Murmur… holy...… murmur…"
By the time Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Snape arrived, the only person left on the scene was Hodge Blackthorn, standing alone. Halfway through the fight, the opponent—or rather, it—had simply Apparated away. That alone was further proof it wasn't a living person. The castle and its grounds were protected by anti-Apparition wards even Voldemort had never managed to bypass.
"What on earth happened, Hodge?" Professor Flitwick squeaked, his voice still high-pitched despite eleven more years having thinned the hair on his head considerably.
As he spoke, Professor Slughorn came lumbering up, dragging his substantial bulk and wheezing dramatically. "I… felt… an immense… pressure…" He fumbled in his pocket for an embroidered handkerchief and dabbed delicately at the sweat beading on his forehead.
Professor McGonagall simply fixed Hodge with a stern, searching look.
"It might be connected to the Church," Hodge said quietly. "Wait a little longer. Harry and the others will be here soon."
The professors exchanged glances. They had long grown used to these occasional cryptic, almost prophetic utterances from him. Sure enough, half an hour later Harry appeared. They had barely started talking when Amelia Bones arrived, Hermione in tow.
Hodge couldn't help a small smirk when he saw how Hermione looked these days.
"What?" Hermione asked blankly, clutching a towering stack of files like a protective shield.
"I was just remembering your hair back in school," Hodge said, miming an enormous, bushy explosion around his head. "Quite the difference now."
Hermione rolled her eyes. She turned and caught Harry grinning like an idiot.
"Oh, you two—" She sighed, ignored them both, and moved to greet the professors. Once the pleasantries were over, Amelia Bones got straight to the point.
"It's the Church's responsibility," she announced. The words brought visible relief to everyone present.
It wasn't about shirking blame. Over the past few years the Ministry had deliberately, step by careful step, built cooperative ties with the Muggle government. They had signed treaty after treaty. It had been rocky at times, but they had avoided an all-out split.
The main reason was simple: neither side could truly manage without the other. In fact, wizards were arguably even more independent than the Muggle state. War aside, as long as there was one patch of land on Earth still hospitable to magic, wizards could relocate in the blink of an eye using magic. Deserts, deep forests, hidden valleys, remote islands—places that were uninhabitable hells to ordinary people were merely inconvenient to wizards, if that.
Still, wizards were social creatures. Living entirely cut off from Muggle society was difficult.
The Muggle government's greatest worry, however, was a simple question: did wizards even have national loyalty? To that, Minister Amelia Bones would only promise to maintain order within the magical world. Unless foreign wizards launched a full-scale invasion, she would not unconditionally side with the Muggle government.
Naturally, the Prime Minister and his cabinet were less than thrilled with that answer. But whenever Bones casually mentioned the International Confederation of Wizards—and its current president, who was said to be extraordinarily powerful and kept no fixed residence—they found they had no real leverage. All they could do was haggle endlessly over the exact scope and limits of cooperation.
Two weeks later, Hodge finally received the full story.
In summary: roughly a century ago—coincidentally, the exact era when Sebastian Sallow had been active—a mysterious intruder broke into a Church facility and stole a crystal coffin. Several months later the same intruder returned, this time targeting esoteric books the Church had kept sealed for centuries. In reality, the vault was a magically concealed safe house hiding a holy Murmur that had been in prolonged hibernation. The Murmur awoke and became entangled with the trespasser, Sebastian Sallow.
"I know what a Murmur is," Hodge said curiously, "but what exactly is a holy Murmur?"
Amelia Bones sighed. Realizing every eye in the room was on her, she began to recount the long-buried history.
"You're all aware of the Church's witch burnings, I presume?"
Everyone nodded; it was in the standard History of Magic textbook.
"Before the Statute of Secrecy, there was no hard line between wizard and Muggle activity. Some wizards even chose to become court wizards, serving royalty…" "Nearly Headless Nick," Ron muttered under his breath. The Gryffindor house ghost had been one such court magician, eventually executed by a blunt axe. "…The Church, too, wielded magical power," Bones continued, "though of course they never called those people wizards. They had other names: ascetics, inquisitors, flagellants, that sort of thing."
Professor McGonagall gave a disapproving hmph.
"Exactly," Bones said. "There are no gods in this world—if there were, ancient wizards would have recorded them. From very early on the Church's stance was ambiguous: they used wizards' power while simultaneously denying wizards existed."
The wizards present shifted uncomfortably.
"Unlike the scattered wizarding population, the Church had a complete, tightly disciplined hierarchy. If you asked me what religion is, I'd say it's a system that, in the name of a deity, takes over the role of the state in educating the masses, imparting basic knowledge, and unifying thought… So when conflict arose, ordinary people instinctively sided with the Church. Back then information didn't travel like it does today. Once the Church suppressed news of Muggle casualties, those people would fight to the death without hesitation… And that is the context in which the Statute of Secrecy was born."
"With the Statute in place, wizards vanished from Muggle sight, and the Church's power waned accordingly. At the same time, wizardkind progressed. We copied the Muggles: built our own villages, founded the Ministry, started newspapers, wrote books. In just three or four centuries we created a society that was, in almost every way—"
She frowned, searching for the right word.
"A civilization," Hodge supplied.
"Yes, more or less," Bones said with a faint smile. "But the Church always knew magic was real. From the beginning they feared losing control of wizards, so they made preparations—training wizards loyal to the Church from childhood, and—"
"Holy Murmurs?"
"Precisely," Bones confirmed. "Several hundred years ago the Church accidentally acquired a Murmur but couldn't control it, so they sealed it away. When the original host died, the Murmur couldn't leave the safe house on its own. Eventually the Church hit upon a plan: they selected batches of the devout, had them chant scripture day and night, hoping to find a compatible vessel."
"What kind of vessel?"
"For possession," Bones said grimly. "A Murmur cannot exist independently; it must inhabit a human body. Many of the so-called miracles you've heard of—aside from outright fraud—were actually the work of Murmurs. The Church wanted total control over one, to make it the mouthpiece of God on Earth."
"And then Sebastian Sallow stumbled into the middle of it."
"No one knows exactly what happened over the next hundred years. The Church never produced another miracle; perhaps they gave up. Then, about twelve or thirteen years ago, they detected unusual activity at the safe house and quietly restarted the old project…"