Comments on: The Other Minister

By: Grace has Victory

Grace has Victory — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 08:41:54 +0000

n8, there may well be more than one wizarding school in the US. Britain and France each has about 1% of the world's people, and each has one wizarding school. The US and Canada have something like 6% of the world's people, so there could be as many as five schools in the US plus one more in Canada. Hogwarts nestles in the Grampian Mountains, where hardly anyone lives. I imagine the American schools would be hidden away in thinly-populated locations such as the Arizona Desert, the Rocky Mountains, the Kansas Prairies... You tell us. Where do you think they are?

By: Amanda

Amanda — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:37:20 +0000

I love this chapter, it’s very amusing and says a lot about the relationship between the Muggle and Wizarding worlds. I really like how the two men are in the same boat, yet so very different from eachother. Besides, you can really relate to the Muggle prime minister and his reactions. It makes you think about your current leader being in touch with your country’s equivalent of MoM. And that is really funny.

By: n8

n8 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:09:13 +0000

all this international talk about wizards makes me wonder where the us wizarding school would be located, anybody have any ideas? maybe one for each region because the states are so big?

By: Lesharo

Lesharo — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:10:52 +0000

On the Ministers: I realize that JKR didn’t really apply a timeline (in the books at least) until DH, but with the timeline we end up with (HBP is ’96-’97) it shows that Harry’s Britain is not ours.

“”…And I must say, you’re taking it a lot better than your predecessor. *He* tried to throw me out the window, thought I was a hoax planned by the opposition.”"

John Major was PM from 1990-1997. His predecessor was Thatcher, *her*self. Of course, for the time the books were written, it would make the current Tony Blair and the “*He*” from the quote John Major.

About the different countries/cultures having different magic: I agree that one would think the non-Germanic (like the Asiatic) languages would have to be fundamentally different in their incantations, if not in the magic itself.

By: marielle

marielle — Mon, 30 May 2011 19:36:36 +0000

With the idea of Hitler, you have to wonder how the wizards reacted with the muggle war, as that one was big enough and destructive enough to have probably affected some of them. Though maybe it’s easy to make wizarding houses bomb proof. I also can’t help but wonder if there was tension between British wizards and German ones (or between any of the axis or allied powers during WWII or if muggle politics never really effected wizarding.
Also for that matter how does magic use change from country to country, I find it hard to believe Japan or China would have the same magic methods or spells. I can maybe believe the romance languages due to the latin base and maybe maybe German due to English German ties but outside of that wouldn’t the different countries have different spell words due to the different language?

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:06:22 +0000

Speaking of PM and Minister of Magic, can you imagine what it was like for Neville Chamberlain in office? Hitler on the rise and Grindelwald terrorising Europe at the same time? No wonder the guy was eager to cave into appeasement with Hitler, lesser of two evils and all that.

By: tsunamicharly

tsunamicharly — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:08:09 +0000

Reading the comments about the Muggle PM got my brain on a sidetrack thinking about interactions between the PM’s and Ministers of Magic in the past. Did the Minister of Magic at the time ever visit Margaret Thatcher? Love to see her reaction to a wizard popping into her office. Or Churchhill. No wonder heads of state seem to age so rapidly while in office.

By: Rtozier

Rtozier — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 12:04:10 +0000

In 1987 TV weatherman Michael Fish was informed that there were rumours a hurricane would be hitting Britain. Live on TV, he said that it wouldn’t be. It did. The MoM might not have needed to get every meteorologist in the country, as it would have been accepted that in Britain, there is a history of weather people failing to predict hurricanes. The weather guys who didn’t predict a hurricane in the West Country would have been mystified, but not likely by enough to go digging and uncover the magical world. All they would have had to get were eyewitnesses. The question arises: what were giants doing in the West Country anyway? What would Voldemort have wanted in the West Country that he got giants to wreak havoc there? The West Country is a fairly magical place – perhaps he got them to kill a few important witchards?

By: Austen

Austen — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:30:32 +0000

I really like this chapter. It explains the relation between Muggles and Wizards and it is something that needed to be explained.

The Bones death is always sad. It also shows that the war has really started.

I picture Tony Blair as well. Although I believe it wouldn’t have been him story wise.

Let Book 6 commence!

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:58:23 +0000

I always love seeing stuff about the Muggle world in HP. What I am very sorry for is that we never got a look at a Muggle Studies class. OK, all the readers know everything already, but what sort of lessons are taught, and why? The few tidbits we got in book 3 don’t cut it. Whatever it is, the curriculum clearly isn’t good enough to have made Mr. Weasley the expert he really ought to be if he’s so interested in Muggles.

I always tended to think of Tony Blair in this scene too.