Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists (Kindle Single) (Pottermore Presents) Read online

  Radolphus Lestrange

  1835 – 1841

  Reactionary who attempted to close down the Department of Mysteries, which ignored him. Eventually resigned due to ill health, which was widely rumoured to be inability to cope with the strains of office.

  Hortensia Milliphutt

  1841 – 1849

  Introduced more legislation than any other sitting Minister, much of it useful, but some wearisome (hat pointiness and so on), which ultimately resulted in her political downfall.

  Evangeline Orpington

  1849 – 1855

  A good friend of Queen Victoria’s, who never realised she was a witch, let alone Minister for Magic. Orpington is believed to have intervened magically (and illegally) in the Crimean War.

  Priscilla Dupont

  1855 – 1858

  Conceived an irrational loathing of the Muggle Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, to an extent that caused such trouble (coins turning to frogspawn in his coat pockets, etc) that she was forced to step down. Ironically, Palmerston was forced to resign by the Muggles two days later.

  Dugald McPhail

  1858 – 1865

  A safe pair of hands. While the Muggle parliament underwent a period of marked upheaval, the Ministry of Magic knew a period of welcome calm.

  Faris ‘Spout-hole’ Spavin

  1865 – 1903

  Longest-ever serving Minister for Magic, and also the most long-winded, he survived an ‘assassination attempt’ (kicking) from a centaur who resented the punchline of Spavin’s infamous ‘a centaur, a ghost and a dwarf walk into a bar’ joke. Attended Queen Victoria’s funeral in an admiral’s hat and spats, at which point the Wizengamot suggested gently that it was time he move aside (Spavin was 147 when he left office).

  Venusia Crickerly

  1903 – 1912

  Second ex-Auror to take office and considered both competent and likeable, Crickerly died in a freak gardening accident (mandrake related).

  Archer Evermonde

  1912 – 1923

  In post during the Muggle First World War, Evermonde passed emergency legislation forbidding witches and wizards to get involved, lest they risk mass infractions of the International Statute of Secrecy. Thousands defied him, aiding Muggles where they could.

  Lorcan McLaird

  1923 – 1925

  A gifted wizard, but an unlikely politician, McLaird was an exceptionally taciturn man who preferred to communicate in monosyllables and expressive puffs of smoke that he produced through the end of his wand. Forced from office out of sheer irritation at his eccentricities.

  Hector Fawley

  1925 – 1939

  Undoubtedly voted in because of his marked difference to McLaird, the ebullient and flamboyant Fawley did not take sufficiently seriously the threat presented to the world wizarding community by Gellert Grindelwald. He paid with his job.

  Leonard Spencer-Moon

  1939 – 1948

  A sound Minister who rose through the ranks from being tea-boy in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Oversaw a great period of international wizarding and Muggle conflict. Enjoyed a good working relationship with Winston Churchill.

  Wilhelmina Tuft

  1948 – 1959

  Cheery witch who presided over a period of welcome peace and prosperity. Died in office after discovering, too late, her allergy to Alihotsy-flavoured fudge.

  Ignatius Tuft

  1959 – 1962

  Son of the above. A hard-liner who capitalised on his mother’s popularity to gain election. Promised to institute a controversial and dangerous Dementor breeding program and was forced from office.

  Nobby Leach

  1962 – 1968

  First Muggle-born Minister for Magic, his appointment caused consternation among the old (pure-blood) guard, many of whom resigned government posts in protest. Has always denied having anything to do with England’s 1966 World Cup Win. Left office after contracting a mysterious illness (conspiracy theories abound).

  Eugenia Jenkins

  1968 – 1975

  Jenkins dealt competently with pure-blood riots during Squib Rights marches in the late sixties, but was soon confronted with the first rise of Lord Voldemort. Jenkins was soon ousted from office as inadequate to the challenge.

  Harold Minchum

  1975 – 1980

  Seen as a hard-liner, he placed even more Dementors around Azkaban, but was unable to contain what looked like Voldemort’s unstoppable rise to power.

  Millicent Bagnold

  1980 – 1990

  A highly able Minister. Had to answer to the International Confederation of Wizards for the number of breaches of the International Statute of Secrecy on the day and night following Harry Potter’s survival of Lord Voldemort’s attack. Acquitted herself magnificently with the now infamous words: ‘I assert our inalienable right to party’, which drew cheers from all present.

  Cornelius Fudge

  1990 – 1996

  A career politician overly fond of the old guard. Persistent denial of the continuing threat of Lord Voldemort ultimately cost him his job.

  Rufus Scrimgeour

  1996 – 1997

  The third ex-Auror to gain office, Scrimgeour died in office at the hands of Lord Voldemort.

  Pius Thicknesse

  1997 – 1998

  Omitted from most official records, as he was under the Imperius Curse for his entire term of office, and unconscious of anything that he was doing.

  Kingsley Shacklebolt

  1998 – present

  Oversaw the capture of Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters following the death of Lord Voldemort. Initially named as ‘caretaker Minister’, Shacklebolt was subsequently elected to the office.

  * Prior to 1707, the Wizards’ Council was the longest serving (though not the only) body to govern the magical community in Britain. After the imposition of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1692, however, the wizarding community needed a more highly structured, organised and more complex governing structure than they had hitherto used, to support, regulate and communicate with a community in hiding. Only witches and wizards who enjoyed the title of ‘Minister for Magic’ are included in this entry.

  How great would it have been to share a foaming pint of Butterbeer with Faris ‘Spout-hole’ Spavin? But there are a few in that list we’d avoid altogether – Damocles Rowle, for instance, the Minister who first began sending criminals to Azkaban.

  Even before it became a notorious prison, the island fortress was not exactly somewhere you’d go on a family holiday. You might want to get a very happy memory and a fervent ‘Expecto Patronum!’ at the ready…

  ‌

  ‌AZKABAN

  BY J.K. ROWLING

  Azkaban has existed since the fifteenth century and was not originally a prison at all. The island in the North Sea upon which the first fortress was built never appeared on any map, Muggle or wizarding, and is believed to have been created, or enlarged, by magical means.

  The fortress upon it was originally home to a little-known sorcerer who called himself Ekrizdis. Evidently extremely powerful, but of unknown nationality, Ekrizdis, who is believed to have been insane, was a practitioner of the worst kinds of Dark Arts. Alone in the middle of the ocean, he lured, tortured and killed Muggle sailors, apparently for pleasure, and only when he died, and the concealment charms he had cast faded away, did the Ministry of Magic realise that either island or building existed. Those who entered to investigate refused afterwards to talk of what they had found inside, but the least frightening part of it was that the place was infested with Dementors.

  Many in authority thought Azkaban an evil place that was best destroyed. Others were afraid of what might happen to the Dementors infesting the building if they deprived them of their home. The creatures were already strong and impossible to kill; many feared a horrible revenge if they took away a habitat where they appeared to thrive. The very walls of the building seemed steeped
in misery and pain, and the Dementors were determined to cling to it. Experts who had studied buildings built with and around Dark magic contended that Azkaban might wreak its own revenge upon anybody attempting to destroy it. The fortress was therefore left abandoned for many years, a home to continually breeding Dementors.

  Once the International Statute of Secrecy had been imposed, the Ministry of Magic felt that the small wizarding prisons that existed up and down the country in various towns and villages posed a security risk, because attempts by incarcerated witches and wizards to break out often led to undesirable bangs, smells and light shows. A purpose-built prison, located on some remote Hebridean island, was preferred, and plans had been drawn up when Damocles Rowle became Minister for Magic.

  Rowle was an authoritarian who had risen to power on an anti-Muggle agenda, capitalising on the anger felt by much of the wizarding community at being forced to go underground. Sadistic by nature, Rowle scrapped the plans for the new prison at once and insisted on using Azkaban. He claimed that the Dementors living there were an advantage: they could be harnessed as guards, saving the Ministry time, trouble and expense.

  In spite of opposition from many wizards, among them experts on both Dementors and buildings with Azkaban’s kind of Dark history, Rowle carried out his plan and soon a steady trickle of prisoners had been placed there. None ever emerged. If they were not mad and dangerous before being placed in Azkaban, they swiftly became so.

  Rowle was succeeded by Perseus Parkinson, who was likewise pro-Azkaban. By the time that Eldritch Diggory took over as Minister for Magic, the prison had been operating for fifteen years. There had been no breakouts and no breaches of security. The new prison seemed to be working well. It was only when Diggory went to visit that he realised exactly what conditions inside were like. Prisoners were mostly insane and a graveyard had been established to accommodate those that died of despair.

  Back in London, Diggory established a committee to explore alternatives to Azkaban, or at least to remove the Dementors as guards. Experts explained to him that the only reason the Dementors were (mostly) confined to the island was that they were being provided with a constant supply of souls on which to feed. If deprived of prisoners, they were likely to abandon the prison and head for the mainland.

  This advice notwithstanding, Diggory had been so horrified by what he had seen inside Azkaban that he pressed the committee to find alternatives. Before they could reach any decision, however, Diggory caught dragon pox and died. From that time until the advent of Kingsley Shacklebolt, no Minister ever seriously considered closing Azkaban. They turned a blind eye to the inhumane conditions inside the fortress, permitted it to be magically enlarged and expanded and rarely visited, due to the awful effects of entering a building populated by thousands of Dementors. Most justified their attitude by pointing to the prison’s perfect record at keeping prisoners locked up.

  Nearly three centuries passed before that record was broken. A young man was successfully smuggled out of the prison when his visiting mother exchanged places with him, something that the blind and loveless Dementors could not detect and would have never expected. This escape was followed by another, still more ingenious and impressive, when Sirius Black managed to evade the Dementors single-handed.

  The weakness of the prison was demonstrated amply over the next few years, when two mass breakouts occurred, both involving Death Eaters. By this time the Dementors had given their allegiance to Lord Voldemort, who could guarantee them scope and freedom hitherto untasted. Albus Dumbledore was one who had long disapproved of the use of Dementors as guards, not only because of the inhumane treatment of the prisoners in their power, but because he foresaw the possible shift in loyalties of such Dark creatures.

  Under Kingsley Shacklebolt, Azkaban was purged of Dementors. While it remains in use as a prison, the guards are now Aurors, who are regularly rotated from the mainland. There has been no breakout since this new system was introduced.

  J.K. Rowling’s thoughts

  The name ‘Azkaban’ derives from a mixture of the prison ‘Alcatraz’, which is its closest Muggle equivalent, being set on an island, and ‘Abaddon’, which is a Hebrew word meaning ‘place of destruction’ or ‘depths of hell’.

  ‌

  HORACE SLUGHORN

  BY J.K. ROWLING

  BIRTHDAY:

  28th April

  WAND:

  Cedar and dragon heartstring, ten and a quarter inches, fairly flexible

  HOGWARTS HOUSE:

  Slytherin

  SPECIAL ABILITIES:

  Accomplished Occlumens, expert Potioneer, advanced self-transfiguration

  PARENTAGE:

  Wizard father, witch mother (family one of the so-called ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight’)

  FAMILY:

  Never married, no children (although the Slughorn family continues through a collateral line)

  HOBBIES:

  The Slug Club, corresponding with famous ex-students, fine wines and confectionery

  ‌

  Childhood

  Horace Eugene Flaccus Slughorn was born into an ancient wizarding family, the only son of doting and wealthy parents. Although a fundamentally good-tempered boy, he was educated to believe in the value of the old boys’ network (his father was a high-ranking Ministry official in the Department of International Magical Co-operation), and encouraged to make friends ‘of the right sort’ once he arrived at Hogwarts. The Slughorn family is one of the so-called ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight’, (a select list of the only families designated ‘pure-blooded’ by an anonymous author in the 1930s) and while Slughorn’s parents were never militant in their pure-blood beliefs, they encouraged a quiet belief in the family’s innate superiority.

  Horace was sorted instantly into Slytherin upon arrival at Hogwarts. He proved himself an outstanding student, and while he did not follow his parents’ implied instructions to the letter (numbering among his friends several talented Muggle-borns), he practised his own brand of elitism. Horace was drawn to those whose talents or backgrounds made them in any way distinctive, revelling in reflected glory, and dazzled by celebrity of any description. Even as a boy he was an embarrassingly loud name-dropper, and would often refer to the Minister for Magic by his Christian name, happy to imply that the family were on closer terms with him than was really the case.

  Early Teaching Career

  In spite of his considerable abilities, his admiration of those who enjoyed the limelight and his parents’ ambitions for him at the Ministry, Horace Slughorn was never drawn to the cut and thrust of politics. He enjoyed his creature comforts and revelled in the vicarious delights of having high-achieving friends, without much wanting to emulate any of them. Perhaps he knew in his heart of hearts that he was not the stuff of which great Ministers are made, aware that he preferred a less taxing and more comfortable existence. When offered the job of Potions master at Hogwarts he was delighted to accept, having a great flair for teaching and a deep fondness for the old school.

  Subsequently promoted to Head of Slytherin house, Slughorn remained a good-tempered and easy-going man. He had weaknesses – vanity, snobbery and a certain lack of judgement when it came to the good-looking and talented – and yet he was devoid of cruelty or malice. The worst of which he could be accused during his teaching career is that he made far too great a distinction between those students whom he found amusing and promising, and those in whom he saw no flicker of future greatness. The institution of the ‘Slug Club’ – an out-of-hours dining and social club for his selected favourites – did nothing to assuage the feelings of those who were never invited.

  Slughorn undoubtedly had a good eye for latent talent; over a fifty-year period numerous members of the Slug Club, hand-picked by him, subsequently had dazzling careers in the wizarding world, in fields as diverse as Quidditch, politics, business and journalism.

  Relationship with Voldemort

  Unfortunately for Slughorn, one of his very favourite students, a hands
ome and exceptionally talented boy called Tom Marvolo Riddle, had ambitions that were far removed from the likes of the Ministry or proprietorship of the Daily Prophet. Manipulative and charming when he chose, Riddle knew exactly how to flatter and cajole his doting Potions master and Head of House into parting with forbidden information: how to create Horcruxes. Most ill-advisedly, Slughorn gave his protégé the knowledge he had been lacking.

  Although it is not shown in the novels, we may deduce, from what Professor Dumbledore tells Harry Potter about his own suspicions about Tom Riddle during the latter’s school days, that Dumbledore would have warned his colleague Slughorn against allowing himself to be used by the boy. Slughorn, secure in his own judgement (which had been vindicated so many times), brushed off such warnings as paranoia on Dumbledore’s part, believing the Transfiguration teacher to have taken an unaccountable dislike to Tom from the moment he had fetched the boy from the orphanage in which he had been brought up.

  Slughorn remained in thrall to Riddle right up until the latter’s departure from the school, when Slughorn was disappointed to discover that his prize pupil had not only turned down every wonderful job offer made to him, but vanished, showing no desire to keep in touch with the master with whom he had seemed to feel such an affinity. Slowly, over the ensuing months, Slughorn had to admit to himself that the affection Tom Riddle had seemed to feel for him might, after all, have been a pretence. Slughorn’s guilty feelings about having shared a piece of dangerous magical knowledge with the boy intensified, but he suppressed them more determinedly than ever, confiding in no one.