"Other parts of the world have their own equivalent to Thestrals." I wonder what those equivalents might be?

 

I think it was less the architecture and more the events which had occurred there. Although the way the place was constructed "using dark magic" also was mentioned. I'm not sure how you can use dark magic to construct a building... using body parts in construction? Don't know.

Either way, it reinforced what we already knew about there being a diverse range of sources of magic, not just organic beings.

It makes me think about Voldemort's curse on the DADA position. A lot of people assume that Voldemort put the curse on the position consciously, like a regular spell, but I've always felt that it was something rather more arcane. Maybe this gives us a clue: the very act of refusing a momentous individual like Voldemort the position, when he wanted it so badly, could have cursed it by association alone, without any kind of active spell-casting. The events which occurred in relation to the position make it inherently dangerous, like like the events occurring on Azkaban imbued it with dark magic.

 

So Dumbledore repeatedly turning down Minister for Magic cursed it towards incompetence?

 

Actually the incompetence was there long before Dumbledore was born.

 

Maybe it was built with magic the way Hogwarts was built with magic. Only instead of using 'normal' magic to build in moving staircases and disappearing doors Ekrizdis used dark magic for more sinister purposes. Limb eating stairs, doors that burn you at touch, defensive mechanisms, maybe something in that direction. He used it mainly to torture and kill after all.

 

Awesome information, I loved the Ministries parts, it reminded me of the magical wonderful worldbuilding of the first books. The Seer thing was damn good too. Won't complain about Pottermore being useless anymore.

 

I do hope they add more information though. We received four or five 'red quills', but we also got the entire Order of the Phoenix book in one go with significantly less art work.

 

Hmm. This takes certain favorite plot elements and bits of fanon and kicks them squarely in the teeth.

The muggle government holds no sway over the MoM.

Rather than being a long-standing tradition, truly anti-muggle sentiment seems to be a rather modern thing, or at least something that comes and goes.

Being dismissive or belittling toward muggles, however, definitely seems to be a widespread and accepted thing.

Also, while the Potters are such well-respected big shots in fanon, meriting lordships and other fancy titles in some fics, they apparently didn't rate a Minister. On the other hand, what names do we recognize on the list?

Gamp, Rowle, Parkinson, Diggory, Boot, Flint, Gambol, and Lestrange (and possibly some other, more obscure ones, that I'm missing).

The real question here is whether Ottaline Gambol was the same one from "Gambol and Japes," or if the latter Gambol was a descendant. It somehow strikes me as being just like the Wizarding World to have a Minister that was also co-founder of a joke shop.

I'd just like everyone to stop for a moment and contemplate this one fact: We now know nearly as much about a 16th century Parkinson Minister for Magic who didn't appear in any of the books (or exactly as much, if he wore a frilly pink dress to his victory party), as we do about Pansy Parkinson, who was in the books.




Yup.

"The structure of this roof cap is exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in deep space."

"Cold riveted girders with cores of pure selenium.

"The architect was either a certified genius or an authentic wacko!

"The whole building is a huge super-conductive antenna that was designed and built expressly for the purpose of pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence."

That's more like building so as to enhance/facilitate dark magic, rather than using dark magic for construction, but I really felt like this was a great opportunity to quote that scene.

 

I expected to see at least one Malfoy too. I wish JK would give us a little more history on the Potter's. I want to know how far back the lineage goes and what kind of people they were.

Is this the first time we've actually seen it confirmed that a wizard can live nearly 2 centuries without the aid of something like a philosopher's stone? I remember everyone thinking Dumbledore was like 150, but then she said he was 114 or something.

 

I guess they just don't make them like they used to.

 

I can't express how glad I am that there were no Malfoy ministers. Fandom does not need another reason to hug the Malfoy family's collective nuts.

It would be nice. Maybe down the road...

Well, there was Griselda Marchbanks, of the Wizarding Examinations Authority. We don't have an age for her, but she oversaw Dumbledore's Transfiguration and Charms NEWTs, and was still around and doing the same job when Harry took his OWLs.

If she managed to somehow snag that job, fresh out of Hogwarts, that still makes her at least a few years older than Dumbledore.

"No! Nobody ever made them like this!"

Thanks for graciously providing that setup, you beautiful subcreature.

 

There was this image from the Daily Prophet that listed wizard life expectancy at 137.75. Always seemed about right to me.

Since it's only the average some wizards might approach two centuries, much like some humans live several decades longer then the average human lifespan.

 

Malfoys prefer safer approach: buy your own minister, and remain blameless when he screws up.

From Pottermore:

 

I find myself curious about this Minister most of all:

In real life, Lord North did indeed resign following a vote of no confidence, but it was actually due to the disastrous British defeat at Yorktown in the American Revolutionary War.

By altering these events, one wonders about the American revolution and how it related to wizards.

Indeed, the consistent theme of the Ministers for Magic section is the extremely high importance placed on the statute of secrecy, which largely precludes wizard involvement in Muggle wars (though if the war gets serious enough, like WW1 and WW2, wizards seem to be willing to break international wizarding law and get involved). This implies that the magical world largely takes its cue from the Muggle world in terms of what territory belongs to whom, because an international conflict between wizarding communities would be virtually impossible without clashing against the Statute of Secrecy.

Indeed, I'm struck by how much the wizarding world seems to be very much a global community, much more integrated than the Muggle world, with international law having real teeth and being generally obeyed by governments. ICW censure led to a Minister for Magic resigning, a witch was prosecuted for helping Britain in the Boer wars.

All of this really undermines the traditional view of magical communities amounting to nations. Yes, there are national Ministries of Magic which are concerned with enforcement of the statute of secrecy, but there seems to be much less of an idea of statehood in the magical world, other than the Muggle states in which the wizards live.

The Ministry of Magic and the ICW is often seen as equivalent to a Muggle government and the UN, but that seems to be increasingly inapt. A better analogy might be the relationship between a bank and a regulator.

All of this amounts to answering a question I've had for a long time about the magical world: what happened during the era of the British Empire? Did the British Ministry of Magic also expand their authority, or did the magical and Muggle worlds diverge during this time? Given the "taking the lead from Muggle nations" approach, it seems likely that yes, the authority of the British Ministry did expand during the era of the British Empire, and that it contracted again when the British Empire collapsed bit by bit.

Of course, the extent to which wizards in Africa, India etc. actually obeyed their new British Ministry is up for grabs. But it seems to me that at least the British Ministry's de jure authority in the magical world (as recognised by the ICW) would have followed the Muggle lead.

 

It'd be interesting to see how those in the colonies/dominions viewed the independence of their regions as, with the practicality of portkeys and the floo network, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't really develop their own native identity as the muffgles did, because for a wizard there's no practical difference if you live 10km, 1000km, or 10,000km away if you can instantly teleport to your destination.

So maybe you would have had a lot of muggleborns from Canada and Australia for instance at Hogwarts in the 1800s to early 1900s, as there really wouldn't have been any need to have their own school, especially with all the non-muggleborns considering themselves British and Hogwarts as the only school of choice for good British wizards. So then the logical conclusion is it would be the decendents of the native muggleborns (the first true native purebloods) that would have enough of a cultural identity to warrant their own school.

 

I think it makes sense that an expanding British Ministry would provide a interface between the British Muggle Government and the magical elements of its territories. Can you image an Indian wizard turning up to the Governor-General of India and trying to get things done? On the other hand, I can't imagine wizarding peoples would be happy to suddenly loose sovereignty and law making powers to a foreign group just because the muggles lost a war. That could lead to increase incentives for wizards to interferer in muggle conflicts, exactly what the ICW doesn't want.

I imagine the ICW has rules for this sort of thing. Perhaps ICW members are guaranteed continued self governance if they want it, with the foreign ministry just taking over the role of interfacing with the government.

 

That's just awesome. Wouldn't have expected that.

 

Slightly late, but...

What?
This contradicts the earlier part on werewolves, where it is mentioned that they have no social structure to speak off.

... I went to read the old werewolf bits. What do you know, nothing about organization or lack of it. I must have read it differently and my memory is proven faulty in this regard.

That means that there is some entity the goblins could negotiate with and that they could have actual allies in form of werewolves, same as the rabble that joined Voldemor with Fenrir. Interesting.

I can work with this.

Anyway, continue.

 

It says the goblins joined forces with werewolves, not the werewolves. Sounds more like they were similar to hired mercenaries than an organized group.