A/N: I've never written any fan fiction before, but I welcome any criticism you may have! I'm sorry if this is a bit of a departure from the norm... it's not a "story" in the typical sense, and it doesn't even take place at Hogwarts. But I've had this idea floating around in my head and I'm interested to see what you all think! (Working) Title: The Real Wizarding World
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Harry Potter. I don't think JK Rowling is actually a witch.
Rating: M (I think?)
Word count: 1,808
Feedback: yes! yes! yes!
It's an odd feeling, really. Can you imagine if the whole world knew about you, but thought you were made up? It's pretty clever what that Rowling witch did, though. The year before Voldemort's death, just as everything was really looking bleak, this unknown witch goes ahead and publishes a book about the Boy Who Lived. For Muggles. It was completely unheard of. I don't think anyone in the history of the wizarding world has done anything to so brazenly risk our exposure. Maybe that was her point, at least originally. She must have figured that with Voldemort taking control, she had to get the word out to the Muggles somehow. And that's the best part: while the book was gaining massive popularity among the Muggles, I don't think anybody in our world knew about it until after Harry Potter defeated Voldemort. I was just a baby at the time, but my parents tell me that everybody was too busy being scared for their lives to pay attention to what was popular among Muggle children.
When the Ministry did find out, it was complete chaos. Every witch and wizard the world over was afraid that Muggles would come knocking at our door at any second. One of my earliest memories is of my dad casting cloaking charms around the house, muttering something about "sightseeing Muggles" and "the destruction of our world as we know it." Of course, Rowling had to stand trial at the Ministry. She might have been sent to Azkaban if it hadn't been shut down after Voldemort's death. But as it was, the wizarding world was in a state of celebration as well as mourning. A memoir of Harry Potter, the hero of our world, was pretty much what everybody needed at that point. And, after some thought, the new management decided that it would be just fine if every Muggle on the planet thought that the wizarding world was completely fictional. The real trouble for Rowling came when she started enchanting her books to make them irresistible to the Muggles. Some Muggle children were even getting wrist and neck cramps because they literally could not put the books down. Stuff like that usually gets you into some pretty serious trouble in the wizarding world, but I think Rowling got off easy since she donated so much of the proceeds from her books to the restoration effort that followed Voldemort's downfall. Muggle money isn't worth a lot in the wizarding world, but when you have as much of it as Rowling… well, you tend to get a little bit of slack.
It took her a decade to finish the rest of the books. She had to arrange interviews with as many people involved in Harry Potter's childhood as possible, which was hard since so many of them were dead. I recently decided to read through them, and they're pretty inaccurate. The first one was almost complete fiction, of course; she had almost no way of getting any details about Harry Potter's childhood, since he was still in school when she started writing. But even the books that followed were highly dramatized, with a bunch of made up characters thrown in as well. The Malfoys are given a son who becomes Harry Potter's arch-nemesis, and Potter also starts dating his best friend's sister in the later books. I know that good stories have romance and everything, but I still laugh at that one; anybody who's ever read an interview with Harry Potter knows that the guy is married to his job. He won't let anything stand in the way of being an Auror. And as far as I know, Ron Weasley doesn't even have a sister.
What bothers me the most, though, is how she portrayed the wizarding school. My name is Christian, I'm an American wizard in my seventh year at Fort Toadswick Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and I'm here to set the record straight.
First of all, you need to understand that we wizards are everywhere. You'd think from reading Rowling's books that every wizard in the world lives in the U.K. (with a few stragglers in France and Bulgaria), but I assure you we have a very strong population here in the States. And we don't all attend school in castles, either. That's a Scotland thing. Here in the States, we've got a nice, sturdy brick fort that sits atop a mountain in Vermont. Muggles don't much care for it here because they don't get cell phone service, but we obviously don't mind. And that's another thing: even though we don't use technology, you should know that not all wizards and witches use quill, ink, and parchment. We Americans have, in fact, graduated to pen and paper. We also don't have to wear those ridiculous-looking robes; there's no dress code at Fort Toadswick.
Rowling has everybody wearing these big billowy robes all the time. And yes, professors and government officials still wear robes, but it's the 21st century*: most young people wear jeans and T-shirts like everybody else in America. We wear robes kind of like Muggles wear suits. Of course, a lot of older wizards still take issue with it. I've heard things like "the Westernization of the wizarding world" and "the death of our culture," but I think they're just afraid of change. It's not like we're trading in our wands for Muggle cell phones or anything. It's a constant battle. Last year, a girl came into class with a really low cut shirt. I wasn't in the class, but my friend Charlie told me that the 117-year-old Transfiguration professor took one look at her and transfigured that thing into a turtleneck. The boys groaned and the girls giggled; the girl with the new turtleneck was really embarrassed. That was Theresa, now that I think of it. I remember because Charlie told me how he was the only one to stand up for her. He told the professor off for being inappropriate and pointed his wand at Theresa to try to undo the spell. She pushed it away, though; he was a sixth-year student in fifth-year Transfiguration and she must have figured that she'd rather have a turtleneck than no shirt at all. That was how they met, actually. She offered to tutor him as a way to thank him for standing up for her, and the rest is history.
The reason Charlie was a year behind in Transfiguration was that, well… okay, here's another thing I didn't like about Rowling's books: I understand that the books are for kids, and maybe Harry Potter and his friends were pretty straight-edge in school, but Rowling's Hogwarts was way too PG for my tastes. It's like teenagers in the wizarding world don't even do drugs! I know Rowling included Felix Felicis and love potions, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Muggles have drugs that reduce your inhibitions; we've got drugs that change your whole personality. They've got stuff that makes you hallucinate; we've got stuff that makes your hallucinations real. Muggles did come up with weed, though. I won't lie to you – we wizards love that stuff. If you want to know why Charlie had to retake fifth-year Transfiguration, regular old Muggle weed is your answer. I mean, it did wonders for his Divinations grade, but Transfiguration requires a lot more precision and focus. Even though he was a total pothead that year, we always looked back on it as kind of a blessing in disguise. Being held back a year in that subject allowed him to meet Theresa, after all. After what happened, though, I guess I'm not so sure anymore.
That's another thing Rowling conveniently left out: Hogwarts has a reputation for teen pregnancy. (What did you expect from a school that puts the girls' beds just across the hall from the boys'?) But you never see that in the books, do you? I'll never forget the day I found Charlie and Theresa in the library furiously poring over a scattered heap of textbooks, looking for something that might work as an abortive charm. We do have those charms, by the way, but they require a great deal of skill and you need a license to perform them. And yes, it's a big controversy in our world, too. I told Charlie and Theresa that they needed to go talk to the school nurse, but they both refused. Admitting that she was pregnant meant admitting that she had had sex, which is one of many fun things that is not allowed at Toadswick. It was like watching a train wreck, seeing them try to figure it out on their own like that. Theresa was looking up ways to transfigure the fetus, and Charlie was trying to find killing curses that only worked on small creatures. He kept muttering something about how these kids had given him a faulty contraceptive spell. They were so scared and frustrated. I'd say Charlie looked about ready to point a Reducto charm right at Theresa's stomach. Or maybe something even stupider, like, "Accio embryo." They were in way over their heads, and nothing I could say was going to stop them.
I never found out how they eventually tried to handle it, but I saw the results. It was bad. Theresa almost died, I think; she missed two weeks of school. Charlie looked more like a ghost than some of the actual ghosts who hang around the school. We all tried to cheer him up, but he didn't really come around until he knew Theresa was safe. It ruined them – they can't even look at each other anymore. I'm not even sure that Theresa can have kids now… the miracle of life is pretty complicated stuff. After a certain point, even magic has its limitations.
All I'm trying to say is that most young wizards don't spend our time worrying about our Herbology grades or solving mysteries or saving the school from terrorists. Most of us are just normal teens trying to get through school as painlessly as possible. And to be honest with you, I think that can be a lot more painful than some of the stuff you read in kids' books.
*Yes, we wizards use the Gregorian calendar, too. We may not be religious in the same way that Muggles are, but Jesus was one hell of a wizard.