Just Saying,

Or

A deconstructive analysis of the Harry Potter franchise by someone who actually lived in it

1. Fiction and Reality

He was given the name "Joseph Claymont." It took some time to familiarize himself with it, a hesitation in responding to his own name which Mother Clarion fortunately attributed to his young age. After a while, "Jo" stuck in his mind as the one word he automatically responded to, one he treated as he would any nickname that had been given to him over the now apparently brief couple of decades he thought of as his "previous life."

The first few years were ones lived in deep introspection. He had enough time for this, being given no true responsibility aside from food and play. Though he understood the value in this, having long ago begun to feel nostalgic for the ease and carelessness of childhood, he was nevertheless incapable of enjoying it because of the simple fact that, rationally, he should be a child no longer.

Reincarnation. The word sprung to mind the moment he first opened his eyes to Mother Clarion's cooing face, wrapped up in cushy blankets and having lost all control of his bodily functions. As he regained his motor skills, doing so with a speed unparalleled by any of the other orphaned children, he spent much time thinking on the implications of his newfound existence. Religious ideas tangled in his mind, and though he thought they came the closest to explaining something so impossible, he was forced to abandon them after hitting the same conceptual wall he'd hit every time he'd ever considered the possibility of an afterlife. Though he had a fairly useful schema for acting in the world, he didn't have the most basic sketch for what to do outside of it. Having a new body and life made for one new bullet point in his otherwise empty outline of non-existence.

So Jo busied himself with other things. He found that the people around him spoke English, and so re-learning the language took no time at all. Reading came even easier, as the only part of him that needed any adjustment were his new eyes, which struggled to dart from one end of the page to the other with the same speed as his old ones. He discovered that the year was 1982, making his birthday 1980, and as he grew older, he was both glad and puzzled to realize that the date was the only thing which differentiated this world from the one he'd come from. He also discovered that he now lived in London of all places, though the accent which everyone seemed to posses (including him, as time went on), had more or less given that away.

The people were the same. When he found a map, he saw that the general layout of nations was much the same as well, save for all the new ones that would be instituted in later years. He briefly considered treating his rebirth as a sort of time-travel adventure, wherein he might change things for the better, stopping any coming catastrophes and speeding along any coming social gains, but he abandoned that idea soon enough. Time paradoxes aside, he knew very well that geopolitical intricacies were beyond him. There was just too much he didn't know or understand for him to attempt any massive divergences from the history he only vaguely recalled.

Instead, Jo decided to enjoy his childhood. Getting to experience it a second time was lucky enough. He played with the other orphaned children, and he helped Mother Clarion around the home when she needed it. The poor woman was all by herself with twenty kids, after all. He went to church once, to see if the pastor was any good. He wasn't, and so Jo never went again. He read a lot. He ate all his vegetables, hopeful to grow taller than the 176 centimeters which a decade and-a-half of junk food and candy had given him in his old life. He started going to school, and as he didn't like lying, he decided to not bother with hiding the wealth of his knowledge. He skipped three grades after the first day. On the second day, he skipped another two. Jo thought that the only reason he wasn't allowed to skip more was because the adults in charge didn't want him to move on to college before he was even six.

They tested him, of course, just to see. He aced most of the exams they presented him with, all except for maths, as he'd lost all interest in the subject after advanced algebra and had therefore put no more time in it than necessary. His IQ, to their surprise, wasn't the world-shattering number they'd thought it would be. It was above average, but that was all it was. No one asked for Jo's opinion, and so he didn't offer it, more than satisfied with having those around him make their own conclusions.

And then, one day, he sneezed himself blue. One of the other kids had blown a daffodil at him, and when he sneezed, his skin suddenly took on a sickly, purplish blue color. It happened in the orphanage, right as Mother Clarion was rounding everyone up from backyard play. They all stopped and stared, speechless. Jo, for the first time in matters related to his strangeness, joined them in their utter bafflement.

Mother Clarion got everyone inside and took him to her office, where she sat him down while she called the hospital. As he sat, Jo stared at the blue hands on his lap, and an impossible thing occurred to him. Something, he thought, just as impossible as being born again into a new life.

His theory was confirmed to him the moment that two men walked through the door, each holding out a thin stick. Mother Clarion bolted to her feet, fear-struck, walking around her desk.

"Who are you men barging into—"

"Stupefy."

A blue stream of air shot out from the lead man's wand, washing over Mother Clarion's face like a splash of water. She dropped right to the floor, unconscious. The other man had his own wand pointed at Jo, but he hesitated when he saw that the boy didn't so much as twitch out of his seat. Instead, Jo simply looked down at Mother Clarion on the floor, then at the two men, and then faced forward at nothing. He smiled, and his voice sounded bemused, like he'd only just stopped laughing at a good joke and was still struck by its brilliance.

"Let me guess," Jo said. "I'm a wizard, right?"

The two men looked at him in silence. Jo didn't turn to look at them, still smiling to himself, and they both got the impression that he wasn't waiting for an answer at all. The question had been asked with all the surety of one who was only looking for confirmation.

"How did you know?" the lead man asked.

Jo stood up and stretched, hands over his head, yawn deep. "Let's just say I like to read."

He was in a Harry Potter fan-fiction.

Though Jo couldn't prove this, the thought was as amusing as it was horrifying. Even as he waited with the wizards in Mother Clarion's office—two blokes called Jim and Tim, Ministry Oblivators—Jo couldn't help feeling as if his every thought and action were being written right then by some practically omnipotent creator, one very likely sitting cozily at home, possibly with a mug of coffee at his side.

Really, it was the only scenario in which anything that was happening to him made any sense. His current circumstances weren't only ridiculous, but highly specific, and if he looked at it through a certain lens, even purposeful. These kinds of stories were common. A man or woman from "real life" gets sucked into any given fantasy setting, the knowledge of which rests safely inside his or her head, and becomes a part of the otherwise canonical story, involving him or herself with that setting's characters and conflicts, using his or her metatextual knowledge to survive and, in most instances, thrive in his or her newfound reality. It made a rather absurd amount of sense, as nonsensical as the situation otherwise was.

Well, why not? Who's to say that the life Jo knew before—his previous life in the "real world," one which felt exactly as tactile and actual as the one he lived now—wasn't itself written by some author? Are novels not mere representations of possibility, taking an imagined reality and manifesting it in words which, when interpreted by the reader, become themselves a sort of world weaved in fantasy? And what of books inside of books? Are the novels written by Gilderoy Lockhart—books within the world of the Harry Potter books—farther removed from reality because of their existence as fiction within fiction? Layers of reality, each one more artificial than the other, infinitely escaping from truth?

Jo thought not.

Maybe, he thought, there is no such thing as "truth" at all. Maybe the "actual" is only an illusion after all, one not interpreted through diluted lenses, but created through the act of interpretation itself. In which case, I suppose it doesn't really matter whether this is all a story being written by someone or not, because fiction is all there truly is.

It seemed to him then that whatever difference there might've been between the reality experienced firsthand through the senses and the reality experienced secondhand through catharsis in fiction was as arbitrary as it felt actual. This was a well-trod theory, as Jo well knew, but having studied it was somewhat different from becoming involved in it so directly.

Jo only hoped that, if he were a character created by an author, this author was bad at it. In his experience, bad authors had a higher chance of giving their stories a happy ending, one granted to their characters without much in the way of conflict.

I will now step in and promise you, the reader, that although I wouldn't go as far as to say that I'm a particularly good author, I'm certainly not a horrible one. Jo is right that conflict is necessary for any well-told story, but this doesn't mean that extraneous conflict for its own sake benefits that story any more than its total absence. Conflict and its resolution must, as in any good story, arise from the character's own prerogative, and in doing so that dramatic arc becomes meaningful rather than superfluous. So, while there are exceptions, the general rule is that a story is good when its protagonist is active as opposed to passive, seeking something, desiring something, driven to change. Since I'm taking the time to address you directly, I will simply state that, despite how he may seem, Jo is actually a very passive person, and so making this story any good is really all up to him.

The door opened, and in walked two more people. One, a middle-aged man, was dressed in a simple business suit, hair slicked back, grey beard trimmed short. Jo immediately recognized the other as Minerva McGonagall, since she looked exactly like Maggie Smith, the actress who portrayed her in the movies. The most shocking thing was that she wore no witch's robe, instead sporting a simple outing dress, so that she really didn't look like the character Jo was so familiar with at all.

Jim and Tim stood at attention, arms rigid on either side. "Sir," they both said.

"At ease, gentlemen," the man said, and Jo could see the two oblivators slouch minutely. The man looked from his subordinates to him, and Jo found that he had a kind face, one quite used to the serene smile he held even then. "First thing's first. Has the place been secured?"

"All muggles have been safely oblivated, sir," Jim said. "Wasn't too hard a job, just a case of blue hyperpigmentation on the kid here."

"And the surrounding area?"

"Checked and deemed unaware," Tim said. "We were lucky this happened on private property. I can't imagine what a headache it would've been if he'd turned blue out on the street."

The man chuckled. "We've dealt with much worse, unfortunately. Well, good work, in any case. You're both dismissed. Now could you please allow Ms. McGonagall and I a moment alone with Mr… Claymont, was it?"

Jo, still sitting, gave the man a smile and a nod. He saw the two oblivators make their way out, both addressing McGonagall personally as they did, making him assume that they'd been students of hers at one point or another. They closed the door behind them, and the room was soon filled with silence.

The man walked towards Mother Clarion's desk and sat behind it with the ease of someone well-versed in command. McGonagall followed him, choosing to stand at his side. They both looked at Jo, examining him, and he did much the same, more than willing to let them take the lead.

Finally, the man leaned forward, hands clasped. "Now, Mr. Claymont—or Joseph, if that suits you better?"

"Jo is fine."

"Jo then. My name is Gerald Lane, Head of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. This woman with me is Professor Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Nice to meet you."

"Of course, you as well. I don't suppose you know why we're here today?"

Jo decided at that moment to speed things along. Slow conversations were rather boring to sit through, even if they involved him directly. "You all freaked out because I knew you were wizards."

If Jo expected to see any shock, he was disappointed. Gerald Lane's serene smile stayed plastered on his face, and McGonagall looked at him as sternly as she had upon first walking into the room. What he didn't know is that the two were in fact quite shocked with his frankness, and only avoided showing their surprise by virtue of their extreme level of self control.

"That's right, Jo," Lane said. "We did 'freak out,' as you put it. Now, that doesn't mean that you're in any trouble. It's just that, well, we wizards take our secrecy very seriously. Minerva and I would just like to know how exactly you knew about us. The way Jim put it, you didn't look very surprised at all when he and Tim started waving their wands."

Jo didn't think that saying he was from another reality would do him any favors. Not because the two wizards wouldn't believe him—though it would probably be a hard sell—but because it would take too much effort. That and he'd likely gain an inordinate amount of attention from the Ministry, even more than he'd managed to acquire now. He didn't know whether or not it would make him some sort of study subject for the Department of Mysteries, but even if it didn't, Jo couldn't imagine that they would leave him alone. It all just sounded like a giant pain, really.

But he also didn't want to lie, because again, Jo didn't like lying. So he did what he always did whenever his strangeness was questioned: allow the questioner to make his own conclusions.

"I turned myself blue by sneezing," Jo said, sounding bored. "When that happened, it looked to me like there were only two possible reasons for it: either I'd been infected by some unheard-of disease, or I'd just done a real-life magic trick. Both of these were equally outrageous to me, so I waited until there was more evidence before coming to a conclusion. When your two 'oblivators' walked in here, having somehow not alerted any of the other kids, having gotten past the locked front door, and immediately hit Mother Clarion with what looked like a spell from what were clearly wands of some sort, it became obvious to me that the second possibility was the only one which could reasonably explain everything that was happening. I pulled off a magic trick, they did the same, and so we must have the same power. That's what went through my head, at least."

And it had been what went through his head. An extremely abstract, generalized version of it, but the same string of thought nonetheless.

Lane's smile widened a smidge. "You have quite the vocabulary for one so young."

Jo shrugged. "I get that a lot."

"Your story sounds plausible, Jo," Lane said, closing his eyes. "Not likely, but plausible. And I get the impression that you're a rather peculiar boy, so I suppose I can stand to believe it. Just out of curiosity, what else have you managed to figure out about us wizards with that brain of yours?"

It was a trap. That's what Jo thought right away, and he frowned, trying to recall every detail about the wizarding world that he'd seen firsthand during the past few minutes. Two possibilities presented themselves to him once more: either it was a trap, and Lane thought that Jo was trying to determine how much of his own wizarding knowledge was safe to reveal (which was the case), or it wasn't a trap at all, and Lane thought that Jo was merely trying to piece together all the evidence that he'd seen into some sort of unified hypothesis. Either way, Jo knew he must only give them the story that would make sense with all the observations he'd made since his initial bout of accidental magic, making sure not to say anything that held even an ounce of context he couldn't have known otherwise. He couldn't just play dumb either. Lane now knew he was smart enough to make educated guesses. So, all that in mind, Jo began.

"There's a lot more wizards out there, right?" he said.

Lane nodded. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, you said you were the head of some department. That means that you're part of a structured organization or institution, and apparently it's one that was formed to keep magic a secret like you guys did here."

"That's right. But you said 'a lot' more of us. Why do you think there are 'a lot' as opposed to 'some' or 'a few'?"

Jo paused, thinking not of what he wanted to say, but of whether he should. Ultimately, he decided he'd already shown enough of his cards that one more wouldn't hurt.

"Because your department doesn't profit from its labor," he said, and for the first time, he saw Lane's eyes widen ever so slightly.

Jo fought the urge to smirk. He couldn't contextualize the wizarding world with information he shouldn't know, but the fact is that the wizarding world wasn't some alternate reality entirely separate from the one in which "Muggles" lived. Wizards were still people, and so their world had to function just like the normal one did, only with a bit of magic added. Little five-year-old Jo might be technically incapable of knowing how the wizarding world worked, but he'd already outed himself as someone who knew how people worked, so why not use that to his advantage?

"The way you all conducted this memory-erasing, it's clear that no private party paid you to do it. No, you do it because it's a public service, because, as you said, wizards like their secrecy. Your budget must come from some sort of public fund, likely through a government of some kind. On top of all that, your men found out about and responded to my magic trick fairly quickly, meaning that your department or perhaps the wider governing structure which it is a part of has magical infrastructure in place that alerts it to what you call 'accidental magic'. The only way to keep such a complex operation afloat, both in terms of labor and financial resources, is to have a large population from which to tax its revenue."

Lane and McGonagall were left truly speechless, and Jo finally got the particular satisfaction that came from blowing people's minds. That said, he also knew it wouldn't hurt to insert some humility into his explanation, if only to make himself as trustworthy as possible.

"At least, that's what I'm pretty sure is true," Jo said. "For all I know, you guys could just have a magical solution to needing taxes. Do you guys even really need money?"

Jo knew that wizards used money, but the idea that they needed it had always seemed rather strange to him even as he read the books. Could wizards create food from nothing, or transfigure it from a non-organic source? Did the aguamenti spell actually quench one's thirst, or were its properties only illusory? The need for money only really came from limited resources, and from what Jo knew, it was possible that this problem didn't even exist for wizards in the first place. From what he remembered, J.K. Rowling had never been entirely clear on the details.

"You are… certainly special, Jo, I don't doubt that at all now," Lane said, still blinking owlishly at him. "I suppose there's no need to carry on with this. You're a bit young for a muggleborn, but I get the feeling I can trust you to keep our secret."

"It's my secret now too, Mr. Lane," Jo said.

"Of course." Lane stood up, straightening his tie. "Now, I believe Minerva has something for you."

Jo looked at McGonagall, who he only now realized had stayed entirely silent throughout that whole exchange. She looked him up and down, face as stern as ever, measuring him still. Finally, she sighed and reached into the purse slung on her arm, pulling out an enclosed envelope.

"As Mr. Lane said, you are a bit young, Mr. Claymont. Too young, by my estimation," she said, walking towards him, holding out the envelope. "But if you're to be aware of our world, I think it's only right that you're also aware of your place in it."

He had a feeling he already knew what the envelope was for, but Jo took it nonetheless. Not wasting a moment, he opened it and pulled out the folded slip of paper inside. It was a letter addressed to him.

Mister Joseph Claymont

Saint Nicholas Orphanage, 2nd floor, Corner room by the stairs, bottom bunk

112 Burnell Avenue

London, England

Dear Mr. Claymont,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1, 1991. We await your owl by no later than July 31, 1991.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

"1991, huh? A bit early to be getting this, don't you think?" Jo said, looking up at McGonagall.

"I wasn't meaning to give you this letter today, Mr. Claymont, but I'm afraid you forced my hand," McGonagall said. She reached up to adjust her glasses. "I was assuming that you would be confunded, as most muggleborn children are whenever they perform any accidental magic. Your unnatural feats would've seemed strange yet possible to you, nothing to be particularly worried about. Of course, it seems that Mr. Lane has judged, quite accurately, that subtle mind tricks wouldn't work on one such as you. The fact is, you wouldn't be able to leave such unusual occurrences well enough alone, would you?"

Jo shook his head.

"I thought not. So, since I know we cannot trick you into avoiding magic until you're ready, I will instead be perfectly frank. Do not attempt to perform any more 'magic tricks' until you are in Hogwarts grounds. This isn't only for secrecy's sake, but also for your safety and the safety of others. As intelligent as I know you are, magic is a very dangerous thing indeed, and an initiate should not practice it without supervision. Am I understood?"

Jo looked at her, face blank. "Why not let me attend the school now, then?" he said. "I'd do well, even if I'm five."

"I'm sure you would," McGonagall said. "But unfortunately, that's not how magic works."

"Why not?"

"That, Mr. Claymont, is something you'll find out when you come to Hogwarts."

Jo smiled. He couldn't help it. Behind McGonagall's no-nonsense approach, he could tell there was a bit of sass. "Alright. I won't use magic. See you in six years, professor."

"Six years it is. And save that letter, Mr. Claymont. Whenever you get the urge to satisfy your curiosity about magic, as I'm sure you will, take a look at the date written there. We will know if you don't."

Jo waved at them as they left. When he was alone, he held the letter out in front of him once more, reading it over again. He read the necessary books and equipment list. He read the date. September 1, 1991. He thought of the events that he now knew he would be a part of. Or, alternatively, the events that he could avoid being a part of. And so, for possibly the first time in either of his lives, Jo found that he needed some sort of tangible plan for his future.

Well then, he thought. I guess it's time to work on that.

AN:

Thank you for reading. I've not seen anything quite like this on this site, so hopefully it's worked out alright so far. If it's your kind of thing, please follow or favorite the story. If you have any comments, please review it. I appreciate any support I get.

Until next time.