Fact and Fiction

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Fact and Fiction

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No one ever gives much thought to the subject of Muggle Studies. Consequently, no one ever gives much thought to the Professor of Muggle Studies. There aren't hordes of fans clamoring to find out what the name of the Muggle Studies professor is, even though it is likely the most ambiguous of all the Hogwarts classes mentioned in the Harry Potter books.

Who really cares, though, when there are so many other intriguing things to focus on? What does Muggle Studies matter to a reader who is, by definition, Muggle? It is the magic that captivates the audience of the Harry Potter series! So our lovely author can easily leave out anything specific relating to that boring subject and feel secure in knowing that no one is going to ask her for details.

It's fairly obvious that Muggle Studies isn't integral to the central plot, after all. Harry grew up with Muggles, the readers are Muggles, and so who the hell needs to know more about them?

But why would J.K. Rowling even bother to mention this worthless subject without giving the name of its professor to go along with it? Come on, Jo, give your readers none or both (just to satisfy their idle curiosity), not one without the other! Granted, the Professor of Ancient Runes remains anonymous as well, but I can assure you that Ms. Rowling has her reasons for that. She never puts anything in the books without good reason.

She never leaves anything out without good reason, either.

The fact is that there's more to the Muggle Studies professor than meets the eye. Her story is closely intertwined with Harry's...but don't expect it to ever turn up in the books. That would defeat the whole purpose of the HP series.

I don't have to tell you that the Harry Potter books are extremely complex, multifaceted works. The timeless tale of good-and-evil, the irresistibly magical universe of wizards and witches, the story of a boy growing up and the destiny he has to deal with are among their innumerable features. And while all that might make up the core of the story, I still haven't even touched on "the whole purpose of the HP series" that I mentioned earlier.

The real objective of JKR's project (and no one is supposed to know about this, naturally) is for it to serve as a cover-up. It turned out to be a very artful cover-up that attracted multitudes of fans and induced a media frenzy (which really worked in her favor), but a cover-up nonetheless.

Would you believe me if I told you that Hogwarts was real and the tales of Harry Potter are completely factual? Face it: you'd think I was a raving loony. That scenario may very well be part of your own wishful thinking, but as it's from a documented work of fiction, you know better than to believe that it could be reality. Anyone who's sane would dismiss that notion.

Ever wonder if making you do just that is what J.K.'s aim really was? Maybe, but unless you're insane, I'm sure you dismissed that idea too.

You're in a vicious cycle of disbelief, in case you hadn't noticed. Unless you see something that undeniably contradicts that cycle, it's never going to be broken.

Well then, allow me to present my case. Never mind that I'm breaking the International Statute for Secrecy - something that, mind you, is hard to do convincingly these days. Honestly, I could strut around the streets of London gibbering about Quidditch and hippogriffs and butterbeer at the top of my lungs, and no one would bat an eyelash! I mean, they'd just think that I was some random HP fanatic, or maybe a role-player.

That's all well and good, but I hate seeing Muggles deliberately ostracized from our world, especially when so many of them are accepting the magical community (even if it is "fictional") so readily. Frankly, I don't see any point in staying in hiding any longer. This isn't the 15^th century, it's the 21^st, for Merlin's sake!

I tried to tell the Minister of Magic this, but she wouldn't listen. So, I've decided to take matters into my own hands.

I'm not going to tell you what really happened to Harry Potter. The books cover that well enough. I'm going to tell you the bits that were left out: the bits that involve the people behind-the-scenes, so to speak. Like I said, you know what really happened to Harry Potter, but you don't know that everything you know did happen to Harry Potter.

Maybe I sound like I'm off my rocker, but at least hear me out! It's high time that you hear the things the MoM has been concealing so desperately from you for so long:

In 1990, Harry Potter was 10 years old, and the population of the wizarding world was becoming increasingly curious about him. What with vanquishing Lord You-Know-Who (after all this time, people are still twitchy about that name) at age one and promptly disappearing for nine long years, he had garnered a considerable amount of fame. Thing was, he just wasn't getting the sort of publicity someone of his caliber normally did, mostly because the wizarding media severely lacked the ability to print anything about him.

The lad was a mystery! The story of Halloween 1981 had been hashed and rehashed a thousand times over, and that was really all the concrete information they had to work with. I'm sure that any Daily Prophet reporter would have killed for an interview with the boy, but that was possible by no means. He was still stuck with those Muggle relatives of his, and stuck there he would stay until it came time for him to start his schooling.

That meant that the papers had to wait a full decade before they could get any new material aside from the occasional "Dedalus Diggle Swears to Shaking Hand of Boy-Who-Lived!" type of headline. They sure did manage to blow that article out of proportion, though - it took up the entire front page of the Daily Prophet, and was continued in generously sized blurbs on pages 4, 7, 10, and 11. After nine years of waiting, wizards and witches were finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Full-fledged speculation on Harry's imminent return to our world had exploded!

The only group going as wild over the prospect of Harry's homecoming as the media was the employees of Hogwarts. All right...so Severus wasn't excited about it, but nearly all the other professors were. Harry was going to be a student in their classes, and whether it was because they knew him through family connections or his fame, they were thrilled that he would be arriving at Hogwarts soon.

It was a hot topic for conversation, and a hot topic to put in writing, too. People were filling up the letters-to-the-editor column of the Daily Prophet with their versions of how Harry Potter's return would play out. They were all silly, illogical set-ups, and most stories ended either with Harry becoming Minister of Magic or becoming a great family friend - or more - to the writer. One mother adamantly proclaimed that her daughter would someday become Lavender Potter, and she knew that for a fact because she'd seen it in her crystal ball.

Another Prophet reader, Sybil Trelawny, responded with an equally zealous letter informing Elizabeth Brown that she didn't possess the Inner Eye, clearly, and that she herself foresaw only despair for the poor young celebrity.

Old fraud though she may have been for the most part, Trelawny was right there. But I digress.

Despite all this rampant foolishness, some people were rather more level-headed in manifesting their interest in the situation. Sure, everybody was wondering about how Harry would fare the next year, but not everybody was able to scale down their musings from such an absurd level. Still, everyone wanted a story to tell about the Potter boy.

Most people did tell (or rather, make up) a story about the Potter boy, and most of them were utter nonsense. Even Minerva McGonagall, if I remember correctly, embellished rather gratuitously upon her tale of Harry's arrival at the Dursley's.

However, one young lady, an aspiring writer, came to a remarkable realization while stuck on a delayed Muggle train that year: while there was a plethora of speculative or exaggerated sagas starring Harry Potter, there was hardly a grain of truth to any of them. She became inspired to concern herself with reality. Maybe she would observe him during his time at Hogwarts, and gather enough information to base a novel on his life, she thought. It would be in long time in the making, but it would be a refreshing point of view!

As it turned out, the life story of Harry Potter transpired quite a bit differently than the woman expected. After witnessing a - well, a series of unfortunate events, she was having second thoughts about telling this story. The disaster at the end of his fourth year really clinched it; even though she'd already compiled a mountain of notes and even written some of the manuscript, it would just feel wrong to really write something that painful! Especially because it was true.

The things Harry's fifth year had in store for him were worse even worse than those in previous years, as expected. However, they did force the young woman to turn her back on the resolution she'd made at the end of the previous year.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Oh, and the woman in question - she was the Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts. I'm sure you've already guessed her name; indeed, it is Joanne Kathleen Rowling.

Today, of course, Ms. Rowling is a very well known woman (is that the understatement of the century?). You can type her name into a search engine and be presented with links to countless biographies, all of which describe her thoroughly Muggle life. Well, it's not as if she really could profess to be a witch and to have worked at the "fictional" school that she allegedly dreamed up, could she?

I'm not saying that everything that you read about her is fabricated, but certain details have been twisted (not to mention certain memories modified...that was a hell of a job) so as to keep her "Muggle" status unquestionable. It was tough; Obliviating is one thing (and there was a fair amount of that that had to be done - and sometimes in what could be called universal doses, because things like the news report on Sirius Black and daytime owl sightings one November were referenced in the books, which meant the Muggles needed any remembrance they might have of those events erased), but building memories is something else entirely. Of course, with the whole of wizarding Britain and then some at your disposal, plus magic, you can do just about anything.

What magic can't do, however, is prevent the combination of stupidity and excitability that sets people's mouths off to jabbering about He-Who-Must-Note-Be-Named, Death Eaters, and the like with Muggles in hearing distance. With a war brewing, it's hard enough to keep our world a secret, and it only makes things harder when people insist on blabbering about the Dark Lord perpetually. Something about fear inhibits people from shutting up when they really, really ought to, it seems.

That fiasco after You-Know-Who was temporarily deposed had the Muggles really scratching their heads, but the magical authorities let it go because we finally had a cause for celebration! We got carried away with ourselves, but compared to what dark powers we'd been dealing with, getting noticed by Muggles was seen as having zero negative consequences.

During wartime, conversely, getting noticed by Muggles (whose reactions to witchcraft have historically been psychotic) could prove to be a fatal distraction. Our experience with Muggles in relation to the wizarding community have almost never been positive, so if they were to suddenly rediscover us in the midst of Dark Times, the result wasn't likely to be anything good.

Extra precautions needed to be taken, but anxiety over a certain Dark Lord was superceding cautiousness, and the wall between the Muggle and magical worlds was becoming dangerously thin.

At the end of the 1995-96 school year, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore called a staff meeting to address this issue.

"Voldemort has returned," he said (and I'm aware I used the name, but it is a quote, and honestly, there's nothing left of even the name's owner so why do people still avoid using it?). "The entire wizarding world is now aware of the verity of this fact, and we must all do everything in our power to fight him. But while we having been putting all our energy into battling this menace, we have begun to let our fear - and subsequently, our mouths - get the best of us, and this has caused a new predicament to arise.

"Muggles, as many of us seem to have forgotten, do have ears, and they happen to be picking up conversations that include terms like 'giants,' 'spells,' and 'Death Eaters' more and more lately. It won't be long before they put two and two together...and while many Muggles would be behave decently upon finding out about us, others would not. We cannot risk them finding out about our world now. Our current situation is already too tenuous, and if a Muggle uprising against us were to be added to it, I am not sure that we could withstand the blow.

"We must find some way to keep ourselves concealed from the Muggles. But time and energy are precious; we cannot afford to expend them on Memory Charms or elaborate veiling spells. Neither do I think any attempts to prevent our own kind from spilling out information in front of Muggles, as they have been doing, would succeed," he told the staff solemnly, the tips of his long fingers drawn to a point. The characteristic twinkle his blue eyes always held had grown dim. It's not often that Albus Dumbledore looks old (even though he really is), but he did on that day.

I'm certain he doubted that the meeting would manage to be productive. There's not much that can be done to guard against a collective lack of discretion.

In fact, the meeting turned out to be very productive. A strategy utilizing the concept of not only not trying to suppress the collective lack of discretion, but instead to augment it was proposed. It was ingenious, really. The gears to put the plan into motion had already begun turning six years earlier. Granted, they had been put on hold for a year, but it was clear that they needed to start turning again.

The Headmaster had hardly finished his speech to open the meeting when the Muggle Studies professor realized that her abandoned idea for a novel was the answer to their problem. If the story of Harry Potter were to be put forth to a Muggle audience and labeled "fiction," no one would ever believe that any of it was true. The one thing that can kill the possibility of something being reality is its being written down in a fiction book.

That is why, of course, you classified me as a raving loony when I first put forth the idea that Hogwarts was real and everything in the Harry Potter books is factual.

You see what I mean? Because of those books, Muggles can be simultaneously aware and ignorant of the wizarding world. They know of the things that exist there, and they know about them in alarming detail...but the one, vital thing that they don't know and could never fully believe unless they saw proof of it with their own two eyes is that all of it is real; all of it is true.

At any rate, after Professor Rowling presented her idea to the Headmaster, she set back to work at writing the novels. The first was published in the following year, only a little while before You-Know-Who suffered his final defeat.

Back in 1996, before publishing, J.K. found that observing Harry over the past five years had already enabled her to write a fairly comprehensive account of Harry's adventures thus far. Now that she had the aid of Dumbledore, she had even greater resources at her disposal - namely Dumbledore's Pensieve.

Jo Rowling was essentially a first-hand witness to all of Harry's adventures. That, plus her undeniable talent as an author, has allowed her to tell Harry's story in magnificent detail. It's an incredible story; it really is detail rich. Jo tells you everything you need to know as well as everything you'd imagine that you'd want to know.

There's another side to every story, though, like I told you. In most cases, a change of perspective isn't so meaningful...but here, it's a side that is worth more than just another way of looking at things. What's more is that this other side is deliberately hidden - which is just so appropriate, because hiding things is really what all of this is about.

By telling you all that I just told you, I may very well have defeated the main purpose the Harry Potter books have always served. I've intended to defeat that purpose for a while now, because I think it amounts to a load of crap. I really believe that the wizarding and Muggle worlds could finally come to put aside their differences, and live together in harmony. It would be a lot easier for everyone, what with there being no more pesky secrets!

After all, it used to be that way before, a long time ago. I'm firmly of the opinion that it's about time to go back to the way it was - the way it was meant to be. Unfortunately, the majority of the magical community doesn't share my view on this subject. Still, I think that it serves as sufficient justification for me to tell you all that I did.

The Minister of Magic tried to explain to me why our world has to remain a secret from the Muggles. "For every one of them that would willingly accept us, there's another that would gladly see us burnt at the stake, 21^st century or no. There are nutters who have happily tossed the books into a bonfire; don't think that they would hesitate to do that to us, too! Face it, we have to stay in hiding, because coming out of it would only result in chaos! Besides, writing seven novels is a lot of work; I don't want to undermine the principle behind them," was something along the lines of what Minister Rowling (yes, you read that right) told me.

I can see her point, but in spite of it, I thought you had a right to know the truth.

Even now that I've told you it, you still may not believe me. That's fine; I'm not going to attempt to persuade you any more. My quill has already gotten my person in a fine spot of trouble. Not that I'm really all that concerned about that; the point is: I've said my piece, and you can take it or leave it.

Whatever you get out of all that I've said here is what you needed from it, be it something to believe in or just a nice fanfic to read whilst you pass the time waiting for book six.

Whether you believe me or not, I do intend to set the record straight on one more point: the score Hermione earned on her Muggle Studies exam, which was mentioned by Ron in the third book, is not an exaggeration. Over three hundred percent! I tell you, I nearly spit out my tea when I heard about it. As it turned out, she was able to earn that mark through a bizarre combination of extra credit from the bonus questions, the extra points she received for her exceptional answers, and a grading curve. And with score like that she still gave up the class...there are some things I will never understand.

Now that I've cleared up that point, I suppose you want me to clear up the matter of how I came to know about the story I related to you. I'm afraid I can't reveal my name to you...after all, do you really think I'm going to practically invite Ministry officials to find me and haul me off to Azkaban? Telling you who I am would be going one step too far, I'm afraid. As for how I came to know this tale: let it suffice to say that I was a first-hand witness.