Willow Rosenberg - The Real Story

Willow Rosenberg - the real story (a QUIBBLER world exclusive)

Glomonio Seviracus, the editor of the DAILY PROPHET, is one of the most dreaded figures in the wizarding world. He is credited with nearly incomprehensible powers over sorcerous public opinion. It was he who started the Gilderoy Lockhart phenomenon with a series of well-placed articles; it was he who made Cornelius Fudge an acceptable candidate for the Ministry by a sympathetic series of interviews, and who ruined the chances of his rival Barty Crouch. It was he whose support enabled Cornelius Fudge to last in his post, in spite of a number of public blunders.

He is also, in person, a harassed-looking, insignificant little wizard, in terms of power only one step above a Squib. He has been promoted because he was the weakest of a number of candidates, of whom the most able would certainly have overshadowed the proprietor (a Muggle of monstrous egotism, who fancies himself as driver of public opinion in both worlds) and conflicted with the purposes of the Ministry, which likes to consider the PROPHET its house organ.

You might say that Glomonio was not made for our turbulent times. He likes an easy life, and has a constitutional distaste for taking action that might land him in hot water with the people who matter. Some of the less satisfied of the young blades on his paper have been heard to say that he would give Voldemort a good write-up, if Voldemort were a shareholder. (Note to our readers: that is his name, and we will go on using it.) More than one scoop has been silenced or placed on page 13 rather than make trouble. Think about it: in spite of the loud headlines and occasional (very occasional) muck-raking, when has Glomonio ever done anything that really annoyed the Powers that Be? Even his famously decisive intervention in Fudge's favour was about as risky as saying that water is wet: Fudge always was the candidate of the Ministry's top bureaucrats, who regarded rival candidates Barty Crouch as a dangerous hothead and Albus Dumbledore as a near-crackpot. The PROPHET is vulgar, noisy, rabble-rousing - and entirely safe.

What I want to tell you about is the most recent case in which a major scoop was silenced; not just placed on page 27, but killed with a blow between the eyes. It happened when a series of documents (some of which are now in my possession) found their way into the hands of Daiquiri Snape, one of the youngest and keenest recruits to the paper. She is a Sensitive - a gift she thought would help her in a career in journalism, poor girl! And she had been convinced, ever since the rumour started sweeping the wizard world, that much of the Willow Rosenberg case had been covered up.

Who it was in the Ministry who leaked the Rosenberg papers I do not know, although this unknown hero of public disclosure would get a Merlin First Class if I had my way. They were handed not to Daiquiri Snape but to a senior columnist, a lady famous for her flamboyant taste in glasses and tortoiseshell hair-do; and it was as assistant to this lady that Daiquiri first heard of it. These documents include a complete secret appreciation of the whole matter as well as a file on relationships with the American Ministry of Magic ((very critical, and including first drafts of several diplomatic letters), and personal correspondence between Minister Fudge and a well-known and popular member of the Council of Watchers, who was directly involved in the taming of Willow Rosenberg.

What these letters reveal is dynamite. It has always been Ministry policy to deny the existence of the Slayer (as of Crumple-Horned Snorckacks), but the Quibbler has overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (Readers will remember our several past stories about her affair with a werewolf, her violent temper, and her escapades with several Hollywood figures.) And even if the Ministry claims that our evidence has been disproved, the question remains: if there is no Slayer, what do the Council of Watchers watch? Here is a body whose power is second only to that of the Ministry itself, with formidable resources and backing, incongruously staffed largely by Muggles, that performs no visible role at all. There is, of course, their famous library, which thousands of wizards and witches have consulted with profit; but the Quibbler has evidence that the Council has a Secret Library several times the size of the public one, which only Council members are allowed to consult or even donate to.

The Watcher with whom Minister Fudge is in regular contact is the one in charge of the current Slayer. He is an Englishman who has resided in the United States for several years, though he recently returned to England. Though he affects the dress and manners of a Muggle, he is from a wizarding family that has provided Watchers for several generations, and is not without power himself. Apart from his own signed letters to Fudge, which describe life with the Slayer and with the now-legendary Willow Rosenberg in great detail, there is the evidence of facts. While in America, he was allowed to transport there a considerable part of the Watchers' Secret Library, an unprecedented privilege (see The Quibbler 84, January 1996, in which we described the sudden removal of a number of secret texts to the United States - though at the time we ascribed this to the start of a new anti-Nargle campaign.). The only way this can be explained is that this Watcher is in active service, Watching over an active Slayer. Our readers will remember that the current Slayer is also resident in America.

Of course, to keep total secrecy over the Slayer and her activities is very convenient to the Ministry, and indeed to the Council. When things go wrong, they can pretend that it is all invention by "discredited sources" such as our poor selves. And in the case of the current Slayer, it is fair to say that things have gone about as wrong as it is possible to be. The earliest of the documents leaked to the PROPHET, which we have seen, is a report from a major member (not the Headmaster) of a famous wizarding school. This person was dispatched to America by Minister Fudge himself, and her report (written in a hurried and slightly disjointed style, with uncorrected cancellations, hanging periods and repetitions - which suggests great haste) is one long list of explosive allegations. It describes one large American town as entirely in the thrall of demons, with Muggles being hunted and killed every night. The American Ministry of Magic, which the Quibbler has long denounced as a nest of self-satisfied, incompetent dynasts concerned only with feathering their nests, is stated to have completely neglected this town; and our own people, in spite of some affected compliments paid to Fudge, do not seem to have done much better, since Fudge did not even know that his old friend, the Watcher in question, resided in the town concerned. Incredibly, it was left to the Muggle American Armed Forces (known to Muggles by the somewhat mystical description "the Pentagon") to develop a response to this magical aggression. Minister Fudge's agent even came to the point of suggesting that the British Ministry ought to develop direct contact with the Pentagon, by-passing the useless American Ministry; a violation of wizarding protocol and privilege on which our readers will surely have harsh views.

The Council must have found their tradition of secrecy especially convenient in light of the fact that, according to the report, the Watcher and the Slayer had both broken away from the Council - a fact of which Fudge was also apparently ignorant. (The author of the report tries to sugar the pill by suggesting that Fudge might exploit this to blackmail the Council!) This alarming situation seems to have arisen on account of mutual stupidity and arrogance, with the Slayer feeling pushed and victimized by the Council, and the Council too vain of its position to give way on any point at all. It is a lamentable episode, and one that should lead to root-and-branch reform of both Council and Ministry.

It is not true, as some irresponsible scandal sheets have put out, that the mysterious Willow Rosenberg was an enemy of the Slayer: to the contrary, several reports to the Ministry and a long and increasingly acrimonious correspondence with the American Ministry (began after the impact of Fudge's agent's report) confirm that she was one of her most intimate friends. Otherwise, everything that has been rumoured about her is true: she is the most talented witch of her generation, she remained unknown to both Ministries until her power became manifest across the world, and she was on her way to destroying all life on Earth until she mysteriously repented and renounced her power.

Ministry documents, in particular the Watcher's own letters, shed some light on these strange events. Apparently, Willow Rosenberg's boyfriend was murdered by a Muggle with a shocking implement called a gun, which shoots pellets of metal with enough force to pierce a human body. Willow Rosenberg, immensely powerful and deprived of any magical training whatsoever, simply went mad. She tracked down the murderer and flayed him alive, then went after his accomplices. Apparently the Slayer, who had been her friend, managed to slow her down, if not to stop her. Meanwhile, the Watcher, who was at the time in England, felt the violent storm of magical energy that attended Willow Rosenberg's near-Ascension, and understood at once what it was. He convinced Albus Dumbledore and Cornelius Fudge to transfer their powers to him, and Apparated in America to confront her.

For what happened afterwards - until the American version is published on Muggle television - we only have the word of Cornelius Fudge's Watcher friend, and readers of this paper will know what the word of any friend of Fudge is worth. However, he relates that, after an initial defeat, Willow Rosenberg managed to overcome him by stealth; but that he, Dumbledore and Fudge had jury-rigged the power so that, if anyone stole it from the Watcher, he or she would be overwhelmed by magical sympathy with every mind in the world. This looked good on paper, as the angry sorceress would be so much in touch with the minds of her prospective victims that she would decide to use her powers for good. That certainly didn't work: Willow Rosenberg seems to have felt that they all the minds with whom she was in contact were suffering, and that the best help she could give them would be to put an end to the suffering - that is, to the human race. She only stopped when faced with the reality of killing her friends would be; however, the Watcher claims that he, Fudge and Dumbledore had predicted it all from the beginning.

Willow Rosenberg is now undergoing rehabilitation in a secret location in Britain which we will not reveal. It is hoped that a better understanding of magic would help her cope with her power; more than one of the documents have very severe comments on the American Ministry's failure to identify her as a child and educate her; and there can be no doubt that this failure in elementary duty came very close to causing the end of the world. (Although the Quibbler's view is that education is no panacea for a nasty disposition. The worst wizard currently living is rumoured to have studied at Hogwarts.)

The overall official appreciation which I mentioned confirms all these points, and brings out one further piece of mind-boggling pettifogging and folly. Quibbler readers are aware that the facts of wizarding life in Great Britain have been set out to the Muggle public by a brilliant and charming young Hufflepuff graduate called Joanne Rowling; while, in America, the adventures of the Slayer have been chronicled by her friend Xander Harris, taking the nom de plume Joss Whedon. The two writers have separate publishers and may even be seen as in competition; and, in order to avoid copyright clashes in the Muggle courts (which are far slower and more inefficient than wizarding justice), all mention of the Ministry was deleted from the Harris/Whedon's version of events, replaced by an unnamed and poorly described coven of English witches. This adds the proper ludicrous note to end this astonishing sequel of revelations.

A journalist with the slightest notion of his or her professional duty would have printed this story in a flash, and on page one. I have an eyewitness description of Glomonio's reaction when Daiquiri Snape presented the evidence to him, which is too painful to my and our public's feelings as wizards and as honest men to publish. To sum up his lamentable performance, Glomonio insists that the Slayer is nothing more than a myth, that the official documents are forgeries, and that Fudge would no doubt deny that that was his signature at the bottom of the appreciation. (Would no doubt deny, Glomonio? Why not ask him first? Or are you afraid of what he might have to say?) Daiquiri Snape left the meeting in tears, with a clear hint that her career would suffer the penalties of excessive zeal.

Daiquiri Snape now works in a career more suited to her talent for truth: she is in training as an Auror. It is to be hoped that she will not, in this new job, be subjected to the same pressures to ignore truth and suppress facts, that blighted her promising start as a journalist.

CULTOR PUBLICI BONI

The Quibbler