Into the Unknown
Having graduated from Hogwarts, Max Paige now works with a professional private investigator/ghost hunter in
Inverness, Scotland while living on Ghost Island...
Inverness, Scotland while living on Ghost Island...
Bonnie Prince Charlie
I spent the next month researching everything I could about the Knights Templar. The stone we’d found and translated had said “The Knights have landed”, and “The treasure is below this well”. It had been a shock to learn that the treasure had been buried in the Forest near Hogwarts all along! We’d just had to wait until the place was no longer Forbidden to find it!
We had taken a sample of the wood from the well and taken it to a Dendrochronologist in Inverness. This area of study involved studying the yearly growth increments of trees to learn the exact age of the tree’s sample. The way it worked was that new rings are added to the outer area of a tree’s trunk every growing season. The width, pattern and number of rings can give the tree’s age, as well as other useful information about the tree, like the climate where it grew.
When the results had come in from our expert, we learned that the wood from the well dated back to 1744, about the time when a French ship wanting to invade southern England was caught in a serious storm. Some think it was diverted to the coast of Italy, and never seen again.
“If Charles Stuart, or ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, as he was known, really was on that ship,” James Dresden, my boss, reflected as he read from a history book on Europe in the 1700s. “You can bet there was some serious treasure on board.”
“Do you think the ship could have crashed near Ghost Island, off the coast of Italy, and somehow some of the treasure made it to the Forbidden Forest?” I pondered.
“If a witch or a wizard was on board and could apparate to the Forbidden Forest? Absolutely.”
That made things very interesting. Charles Stuart had been a known leader who’d been trying to take the crowns of England, Ireland and Scotland. He and the Jacobites had been trying to take the throne from the Protestants, back to the Catholics, but of course this hadn’t worked. But the ship had been carrying military supplies and gold…
Was part of Charles Stuart’s gold on Ghost Island, and the other part in the bottom of the Centaur’s well in the Forbidden Forest? Had the Knights Templar been involved, and taken Stuart’s gold to both locations? Had we really just discovered the “Who”, “When”, and “What” behind the mystery of Ghost Island?
We had taken a sample of the wood from the well and taken it to a Dendrochronologist in Inverness. This area of study involved studying the yearly growth increments of trees to learn the exact age of the tree’s sample. The way it worked was that new rings are added to the outer area of a tree’s trunk every growing season. The width, pattern and number of rings can give the tree’s age, as well as other useful information about the tree, like the climate where it grew.
When the results had come in from our expert, we learned that the wood from the well dated back to 1744, about the time when a French ship wanting to invade southern England was caught in a serious storm. Some think it was diverted to the coast of Italy, and never seen again.
“If Charles Stuart, or ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, as he was known, really was on that ship,” James Dresden, my boss, reflected as he read from a history book on Europe in the 1700s. “You can bet there was some serious treasure on board.”
“Do you think the ship could have crashed near Ghost Island, off the coast of Italy, and somehow some of the treasure made it to the Forbidden Forest?” I pondered.
“If a witch or a wizard was on board and could apparate to the Forbidden Forest? Absolutely.”
That made things very interesting. Charles Stuart had been a known leader who’d been trying to take the crowns of England, Ireland and Scotland. He and the Jacobites had been trying to take the throne from the Protestants, back to the Catholics, but of course this hadn’t worked. But the ship had been carrying military supplies and gold…
Was part of Charles Stuart’s gold on Ghost Island, and the other part in the bottom of the Centaur’s well in the Forbidden Forest? Had the Knights Templar been involved, and taken Stuart’s gold to both locations? Had we really just discovered the “Who”, “When”, and “What” behind the mystery of Ghost Island?
