A Report to the Ministry

A REPORT TO THE MINISTRY

Memo

From: Professor M. McGonagall

To: the Hon. Sissilius Prthwynn, Permanent Private Adviser for international affairs to the Minister for Magic

Sissilius, in my view this report should be handed straight to Cornelius Fudge and read thoroughly. As you will see, it involves major issues of policy and gives highly disturbing news.

The first and, I suppose, the most immediately urgent question that this report will place before the Minister is what to do about the American Ministry of Magic. I am aware that we do not like to interfere in other jurisdictions, yet the malefactions and derelictions of duty uncovered during my investigation of the current Slayer are such that I think decisive action is warranted. I am not suggesting that the American Ministry is penetrated by enemy interests; in a sense, I almost wish they were! It would at least mean that they take an interest in their work. But in all my weeks in Sunnydale, indeed in the state of California, I haven't met so much as one Ministry employee; and that in spite of the fact that California has the highest concentration of amateur sorcerers in North America. I know that the American ministry men resent their stereotyped portrayal as a bunch of self-absorbed, snot-nosed Transcendentalist Boston Brahmins too high and mighty to notice anything that goes on beneath their highly refined eyes; yet I cannot see what, if not that, explains their complete lack of interest in the town of Sunnydale, in the activities of a number of sorcerers, and in the desperate struggles of the current Slayer, Miss Buffy Anne Summers.

In spite of its mendacious name, the town of Sunnydale is the most horrible place I have ever seen. One would not think that, in this day and age, a town could be found so hideously under the power of evil spells. It is a place where people vanish and re-appear in shocking guises and where, if a young person's body is found in the morning lying in an alley drained of blood, the relatives bury it, grieve in private - and never speak of it again. In the few weeks I spent here, I have personally witnessed at least half a dozen vampiric murders; and what is more terrible is to see, in the artificial brightness of the people's smiles - in their continuous acting as though nothing was wrong - in the way in which children and teen-agers are allowed to "hang out" in the dark of the night, as though the darkened streets were safe and constantly patrolled; and in the way in which people who vanish or die are forgotten and never spoken of again.

The ghastliest part of this situation, in my view, is that the community is not shrinking, but growing. In the few years since Joyce and Buffy Summers have lived there, the town has nearly doubled in population, acquired a number of new businesses, and a brand new University of California campus, where Ms. Summers and her bosom friend Miss Willow Rosenberg have just matriculated. The pool of prey for vampires, demons and dread veil sorcerers is growing. The town is graduating into a city; even the gory death of its hundred-year-old major, a vile sorcerer some of us knew as Orimarus, has drawn no attention and done nothing to reduce its attraction to immigrants and incomers. The evil spell that created this city has survived the death of its creator, and, slowly spiralling and ingrowing in power and subtlety, has taken on a life of its own, sucking in people as prey from near and far. Only the complete destruction of the city and neighbouring areas, in my view, can now put a definite stop to the evil.

This is obviously not a welcome thought to the only power to stand in the way of the evil, 19-year-old Buffy A. Summers, the current Slayer. Indeed, Miss Summers does not seem to have yet even been touched by the idea that perhaps the destruction of her place of residence is an option. She is young and in some ways painfully immature - a well-know flaw in the spell that creates Slayers, most of whom do not live to accumulate sufficient experience to understand magic and the world around them.

In my view, this taints the Council of Watchers to the core. The fact that their founders saw fit to create a charm that would make an inexperienced young girl the opponent of choice of one of the most dreaded of supernatural menaces, not only insured that most Slayers die heroic early deaths (in other words, fail), but, above all, places the Chosen One - young, callow, in constant need of supervision and control - radically below the Council, in spite of her great powers. This fosters a most unhealthy sense of superiority on the part of Council members (we are the ones who know - the ones who control), which is clearly reflected in their actions. The difficulties of dealing with the Council are too well known to need rehearsing. It is typical of their attitude that they never notified the Ministry that Dr.Giles and his Slayer had both abandoned Council allegiance, so that, for the moment, the world's one active Slayer was altogether beyond the control of anyone. This happened last year and the rift, so far as I could see, is still operative; Dr.Giles, in particular, being motivated by a paternal concern for his Slayer that is most untypical of the average Council attitude. Minister Fudge may regard this as a significant asset in our dealings with the Council, especially since I gather he knows Dr.Giles personally.

The concern of Dr.Giles for Miss Summers is one feature of a theme that one encounters again and again about Miss Summers. She has a remarkable ability to gain the devotion of others. I do not think it would be excessive to say that it is this gift for friendship and affection that has kept her alive for so long.

Miss Summers' first impact is quite negative. She affects a pose of impenetrable Valley Girl superficiality. Any statement is met with a barrage of trifling talk, so interspersed with pop-culture references that the uninitiated can often make neither head nor tail of it. She has little interest in wisdom and knowledge, leaving it to her close friend Willow Rosenberg and her Watcher Dr. Rupert Giles to research and study; and, unlike them, she regards research purely as a means to an end - the end being to find as many ways to kill, capture or banish demons and vampires as possible.

Nevertheless, as one comes to know her one becomes aware that this is, at best, only a façade, taken up, perhaps, to deal with the violent pressures of her life. In fact, Miss Summers shows a devotion to duty and a selfless courage that would shame most of her elders. It is a sobering thought that, while even the most trouble-prone Auror or Hit Wizard would not expect to meet serious danger more than once or twice a year - and that we thought the time of Lord You-know-who bad because a few people died most days - Miss Summers goes out armed and expecting trouble every night. In her career thus far she has, to my certain knowledge, met and halted Grindelwald-level threats at least twice; and the nmber of lives she has saved is hard to reckon. Her fame is beginning to spread through the city. At her recent High School graduation day, her school year voted her Class Protector, an honour invented especially for her.

What is most remarkable about this to my mind is that a girl who appears to have begun as an ordinary, shallow Californian teen-ager with her mind on Ray-Bans, branded jeans and school popularity contests, has developed such a strong sense of duty that she not only imperils her life and soul but regularly sacrifices her social life to a life of endless patrolling and grim lonely fights; and such warmth of heart that she has bound to herself a number of people who not only care for her, but willingly use their own time to support her in her work and even risk their lives for her.

Foremost among these are Willow Rosenberg, her boyfriend Oz (NOTE: there follow a couple of hastily erased sentences), her childhood friend Xander Harris, and of course Dr.Giles himself. Willow Rosenberg, (erase erase erase) and besides a remarkably gifted student and a budding witch. I shall have more to say about this anon. As for Dr.Giles, the Ministry knows all too well that he was deeply involved in the Life-Borrower magical disaster twenty years ago; but he seems to have learned from that experience. He is a magical perfectionist with a strong need to do things right. His hesitant and shrinking manner comes not from any inner fear, but from a demanding urge that nobody around him should ever suffer again through his carelessness or arrogance. Apart from his already-mentioned fondness for his ward, the truth is that his sense of responsibility is his dominant characteristic.

Of Mr. Xander Harris there is perhaps less to say. His role in the group is less easy to define than any of the others', perhaps because, unlike any of them, he has no powers or background to speak of. One has the impression that he provides the foundation of sound common sense and street smarts that they all, in their different ways, need; and, of course, he is far braver than he realizes. After a few weeks in his presence, I developed a considerable regard for him, and dread the thought that he is the member of the group most in danger of death or injury. And, of course, he provides all the jokes.

(It is interesting, to English ideas, how little differences in class and culture seem to matter in this group. Dr.Giles is a landed aristocrat who will never suffer from want in his life; Joyce Summers and the Rosenbergs are decidedly of the intellectual Upper Middle Class; while Xander Harris is working-class American Irish with a family background based far too firmly on the bottle, and plans to go into the construction business while his friends go to college. Yet they all meet on a footing of perfect equality and great mutual esteem.)

Possibly the greatest asset in Miss Summers' life is her mother. There is little but good to say about Mrs. Joyce Summers. A handsome woman in a very American way, strong-boned and fond of Everest-like coiffures, she is, like all the rest of these people, a Californian new-age type with the views and attitudes typical of her class; but she is above all a warm-hearted, sympathetic, devoted, but firm and unspoiling parent. She is quite simply a model mother, and a tower of strength for her daughter. As Miss Summers settled into her new home in Sunnydale and formed her circle of friends, Mrs. Summers somehow tended to take over as mother-figure to both Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg, neither of whom were happy at home. As for Dr.Giles, an alliance that would seem a natural development of their mutual esteem and love for their charge seems to have been effectively negated by a sorcerous episode that left each of them extremely embarrassed in the presence of the other. My view is that, in time, they may overcome this unfortunate event and marry; which would be a very good thing for the Slayer as well. I must however put on record, little though I trust in such signs, that I believe I saw a Grim near Mrs. Summers at least twice. Should the Slayer lose her chief support in life, the consequences might be disastrous, not only for her, but for the world at large; the evidence is that the loss of her father - and that through divorce, not through death - has already upset her profoundly.

Miss Rosenberg is not as fortunate as her friend. Her family life is notable for its coldness and lack of empathy. Her mother is a Sixties survivor who seems to have neither learned nor forgotten anything since the days of Abbie Hoffman and the New Left; on the occasion I met her, I was treated to a three-hour diatribe about the evils of the capitalist system, remarkable both for its lack of perception and for its sheer dreariness. It is typical of this household that the Rosenbergs insist on every occasion on their Jewish identity, without having any contact whatever with Hebraic institutions or laws (without a doubt, if Miss Rosenberg had had any contact whatever with Jewish religious life, her talents would have been noticed by one of the Wonderworking Rabbis); it is merely one way to wallow in their own separateness and "outsider" position - where in fact they are a successful and thoroughly integrated middle-class American family.

As the most visible feature of Mrs. Rosenberg's character is her narrowness of mind, so her relationship with her daughter is marked largely by a complete lack of awareness and empathy. She is not in any obvious way selfish, cruel or negative; but she is completely incapable of any genuine interest in her daughter's views and feelings, and seems mainly interested in moulding her according to her old-fashioned left-wing views. There is something deeply pathetic about the way this otherwise brilliantly intelligent young woman has not only accepted but internalised her mother's views, I think in a desperate unconscious attempt to draw more affection. I heard her make statements about American Indians and missionaries that were nothing short of grotesque.

Miss Rosenberg is driven by sex to a remarkable extent. In my view, a native need for affection and physical contact has been stoked into a fiery, unwholesome greed by the lack of emotional contact experienced in her family, and further multiplied by her repeated experience of rejection at school, where she was unfeelingly treated as the school "nerd" - to use an oft-heard Americanism. She has more experience than any of her friends, and acquired a steady sexual partner before any of them, but she is insatiably curious about their sex lives. Her constant questioning of Miss Summers about the state of her relationship or relationships could be held to be embarrassing, and is certainly intrusive. She tries to disguise her consuming and somewhat addictive interest in her friends' love lives with an affected little-girl manner and vocabulary ("smoochies"), but it is as evident as the heat of the fire behind a furnace door.

Miss Summers puts up with Miss Rosenberg's constant and rather intrusive interest in her sex life with good grace. She is, in this matter, quite different from her friend; sex is apparently of no great importance to her except as part of a permanent relationship. To simplify matters somewhat, one might say that to Miss Rosenberg a relationship is an acceptable way to have sex, while to Miss Summers sex is an acceptable feature of a relationship. It may be a reflex of the great trauma of Miss Summers' life - her parents' divorce and her father's ultimate desertion of her - that she seems inclined towards a particular kind of young man. My presence in Sunnydale happened to coincide with the collapse of one relationship and the beginning of another, and it was interesting to notice that both young men had a few features in common. They were people of character and notable decency; they were capable of handling themselves in a fight; but the thing that made the most impact, in terms of their personality and presence, was that they were gigantic. Both the vampire-with-a-soul, "Angel", and U.S.Army soldier Riley Finn, are well above six feet in height and built - as the saying goes - like a troll outhouse, broad-shouldered and muscular. Miss Summers is tiny, small and slim; embraced by a Riley Finn, she almost vanishes from sight. She seems driven towards a towering, unshakable model of masculinity; which, given that she herself is far stronger than any male she is likely to encounter, means that she is apt to set impossible standards for her lovers. And yet "the love of a good man" is something that, in my view, she needs.

Riley Finn's presence in Sunnydale is a symptom of a further result of the American Ministry of magic's desertion of its duties. No government can fail to consider open violence on its own territory, and in the absence of any initiative from the Ministry for Magic, it is the Pentagon that has set up its own guard on supernatural violence on American territory, by means of a secret military agency known as the Initiative. (Riley Finn is an officer in the corps in question, and that is how he met the Slayer - to the great surprise of both.) This is another issue that must urgently be taken up: can the Ministry accept the interference of Muggle military agencies in what remain magical areas of interest? I have not been able to learn much about the Initiative, except that it exists and is gaining power. An unorthodox suggestion might be to actually approach them to be our referents in the United States, by-passing the Ministry altogether; but one way or another, the Ministry cannot ignore this development.

Finally, perhaps the most important issue that has arisen during my visit is the matter of Miss Summers' best friend. In my view, Miss Willow Rosenberg is of far greater interest to the Ministry than the Slayer. Miss Buffy Anne Summers is a Slayer of remarkable ability and resilience, who is in my view apt to break the usual bleak record of Slayers and live a long life; but a Slayer is all she is, and the world does not change much for her presence. A Slayer there has been before her; a Slayer there will be afterwards.

But Miss Rosenberg can change the world. Part of the issues that absolutely must be taken up with the American Minister for Magic is her presence. This girl, put it simply, has more magical potential than any sorcerer of her age in a generation. She is of Fudge, Barty Crouch, Dumbledore, Tom Riddle level. And the fact that she has been allowed to grow up unsupervised and unrecognised is a scandal. I will pay Minister Fudge the compliment of assuming that, if such a dereliction of duty had been detected in Britain, heads would have rolled. In Britain, she would have been offered a place at Hogwarts long ago.

But she has not; and Willow Rosenberg, capable of becoming the greatest witch alive, is on her way, entirely unsupervised and largely untaught. So far as I can understand, her early development depended entirely on occasional, ad hoc and unchecked consultations of Dr.Giles' library (Giles, incidentally, does not seem to have come even close to realize the potential power of his charge's shy bosom pal) and frequent and unsupervised "netsurfing" - she shows great skill with computers - during which she came up with the most extraordinary mixture of hopeless nonsense, uprooted and misunderstood facts, and startling intuition powered by tremendous natural talent. Some of her magic is of an absolutely brutal nature, cutting through complex clusters of spell by the sheer desire to achieve a result; nor does she realize how dangerous this is.

Miss Rosenberg's intense interest in sex is of interest to the Ministry because I fell it is likely to interact, in the near future, with her progress as a sorceress. As the Ministry knows, many American witches, especially Californian ones, have curious views about sorcery. They regard it as an exclusively feminine activity, even personifying it as "the goddess"; and they show positive dislike at the thought of a male - such as Albus Dumbledore - daring to meddle with "the mysteries of the goddess"! Many of them also have what I can only describe as an unhealthy convinction of the sexual nature of magic, and their circles often develop a hothouse atmosphere of homosexual attraction, not without subtle rivalries or violent rifts.

Miss Rosenberg has met such a circle - formed by chance and, so far as I can see, largely unrelated to the sorcerous horrors of Sunnydale - in her first weeks at college, and become an eager member; though she told none of her friends about it. Her development as a witch is in the hands of this circle, if it is in anyone's. Dr. Giles is not really a sorcerer, and besides he has his hands full with his own charge. And just as she has accepted uncritically her mother's outdated and unintelligent left-wing prejudices, so Miss Rosenberg has accepted, without any reflection, their new-age, lesbian-feminist view of magic.

In my assessment of Ms.Rosenberg and her Wiccan attitudes I feel that I must take into account the fact that the young lady showed me a marked hostility, which of course may have prejudiced me to some extent against her; it went against her whole idea of "wicca craft" that I should work closely with a man - even though the man in question was Albus Dumbledore. As a result, our relationship was strained, until the day when her relationship with the werewolf Oz collapsed and, having for the moment nobody else around who would understand, she poured out her griefs to me. From what I said thus far, it would be easy to characterize Miss Rosenberg as an easily-led moron, and I am eager not to leave such an impression. She is in fact a formidably intelligent young woman, who, where her own feelings are not concerned, is strongly intuitive and insightful; and a naturally affectionate person, whose love has been a source of strength to Miss Summers in past struggles. It is rather the case that, talented and intelligent as she is, she is driven by forces and needs so powerful that they can completely blind her to her own situation. I think one could see a parallel with her enormous, not properly realized magical powers.

I cannot say that I enjoyed my time in Sunnydale, although it has led to meeting a number of remarkable and mostly quite attractive people. It has left me with painful impressions of the present and grim forebodings for the future. It is my considered view that urgent action is required on at least three fronts: relations with the US Ministry, with the Initiative, and with the Council - whose negative attitude to Dr.Giles and Ms.Summers seems to me misguided in the extreme, given the nature and extent of the threats faced by the latter in Sunnydale. About Miss Rosenberg we can do nothing, especially since she misguidedly refused the place at St.John's College, Oxford, which Dr.Giles and I contrived to get for her; but I convinced Dr.Giles to keep me informed about any future developments - unlike his fellow Watchers, he has proved consistently sensible and co-operative. It is very important that observation of her should be constant; if an agent can be spared, one should be sent to Sunnydale full-time.

Yours truly,

Minerva McGonagall, O.Merl., Deputy Headmistress

(pencilled anonymous note at the bottom: Cornelius, you may be certain that all this has gone straight to Dumbledore as well.)