By Essa Nazari
After the threats that lingered over our head for a good bit of last year of the ministry taking over the school and the subsequent takeover by Dorchester and her collection of goons, this year has been peaceful. And to be honest, it has been nice. A time to rest and recharge. Allowing us to focus on our studies…whatever they might be. However, a mystery continues to linger from last year and has raised it’s ugly head once again, like a snake in the grass, it waits. The ouroboros are back and they don’t seem to be leaving any time soon.
I am a very firm believer that the symbol of the ouroboros wasn’t selected at random. In fact, after looking back at a previous article about the ouroboros (“An Interview with… Conspiracy” published in The Owl Post 04 February 2024), something stuck out to me. The ouroboros stands for two things, self-sufficiency and being self-consuming. Perhaps this is where those who are investigating them stumble at. They refuse to believe that perhaps everything that has happened in the past five years everything has been connected together from the Hag of Crowscreep, to the Shade, to Dorchester and her goons. This idea that Hogwarts is self-sufficient no matter what happens flies in the very nature of what the school stands for. We have always come together to help each other. Which then leads me to look at the other aspect that the sign stands for, self destruction.
Is it possible that the ouroboros are just one more wheel in this connection, one that is only whispered of in the darkest nights, a secret society called, “Umbra?” This secret society that has the intention of taking over and ultimately destroying Hogwarts that we know and love and transform it into an image of their own making. One that no one at Hogwarts really wants to see. Dorchester tried to do it. As has others in the past. And they all failed because of students and professors alike have found ways to stop them. Perhaps, what Umbra and the ouroboros are aiming to do is to cause us to fall apart from the inside out.
How? By targeting people who seem to be at random but they are all connected in a way that no one can see. Jesma Pearl, a second year Ravenclaw, was poisoned earlier this week using a simple plant called hemlock. This attack, I fear, holds the key to the other attacks and threats. If Umbra could control those who have talents, special abilities, or other desirable assets under Umbra’s control makes the threat they pose all the stronger. If these sorts of people were to be obtained via curses or recruitment, Umbra would be unstoppable.
Perhaps it is time for everyone in the castle, not just those who fall into the above mentioned categories, to start taking extra precautions. Because together we can get through this.
- Watch what you eat or drink – get an older student or a professor to check your food and drink for poisons.
- Travel together in packs (this was a life saver last year with the threats from S.E.R.P.E.N. and T.B.H.S. I know that there were several Ravenclaws who traveled together, older students with younger students, just in case.)
- Be the eyes and ears everywhere. If something doesn’t seem right. Tell a professor, a prefect, the head boy or girl, the prefects. Tell someone.
