The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter (40 page)

Read The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter Online

Authors: Tere Stouffer

Traditionally, the ability to speak Parseltongue has been the mark of a Dark Wizard. In fact, the ability has been associated with Salazar
Slytherin, founder of Slytherin House at Hogwarts (see Chapter 8), the house that has produced more Dark Wizards than any other. Lord Voldemort, the darkest of all wizards, is the best-known Parselmouth. However, not all Parselmouths are evil, as Harry Potter speaks fluent Parseltongue. His ability to hear snakes has saved the day on more than one occasion.
According to an interview with J.K. Rowling, Parselmouth is an “old word for someone who has a problem with their mouth,” as with a harelip.
Snakes have never been well-liked in culture and literature. A snake was, after all, responsible for the fall of man, when a serpent tempted Eve into tasting the forbidden fruit. Serpent mythology and folktales, in fact, are among the most recognizable cultural stories in the world. Both feared and respected, serpents were thought to be the most dangerous of all creatures, but they have been used in both healing and fertility rites.
Serpents have been associated with gods and goddesses and played a role in a variety of literature, from Mesopotamian mythology and the Babylonian
Epic of Gilgamesh
to Kipling’s
The Jungle Book.
Sealing the Deal with a Fidelius Charm or an Unbreakable Vow
A Fidelius Charm, rarely mentioned in the wizarding world, is a complicated charm that hides information inside a person, who is known as a Secret-Keeper. (
Fidelis
is Latin for faithful, loyal, trustworthy, and dependable.) As long as the Secret-Keeper says nothing, it is impossible for anyone else to discover that information, even if faced with it directly before him. So if you wanted to know the location of a soccer game, but that information had been hidden inside a Secret-Keeper, you wouldn’t be able to find that soccer game even if you walked onto the soccer pitch (field) and tripped over the players themselves.
However, if the Secret-Keeper divulges the secret, the charm is nullified, and the hidden information is up for grabs. Because of the power of Dark Wizards to perform Legilimency, Secret-Keeping is important business. Wizards must always choose their Secret-Keepers carefully; their very lives could depend on it.
An Unbreakable Vow is similar to a Fidelius Charm, but instead of a secret that cannot be learned, it represents a vow that cannot be broken … ever. To make such an airtight vow, the two people making the vow take each other’s right hands while a third party, a Bonder, stands over them. The vow is said out loud, while a flame surrounds the two vow-makers’ hands. It’s the equivalent of the fidelity claimed by blood brothers, but with much less spit and blood and with a much greater consequence if the vow is broken.
What happens if you break the vow? Simple: you die. Imagine if a bride and groom took this approach. The divorce rate would surely decrease, but the number of deaths might increase somewhat!
Creating a Horcrux
A Horcrux is, perhaps, the most difficult to understand—and the most evil—of all advanced wizardry. There is only one reason to create a Horcrux, and that is to achieve immortality.
A Horcrux is an object in which you hide a portion of your soul. If, after you’ve created a Horcrux, your body is killed, you will survive because that hidden portion of your soul will remain untouched. You can then rebuild your body, starting with the torn portion of your soul.
It’s not the attempt at immortality that makes the creation of a Horcrux inherently evil; instead, it is the means by which the soul is torn. A soul is split in only one way: by committing the act of murder. This act is so evil that it rips the soul, and thus allows the split portion to be stored in a Horcrux. A split soul will be a lesser soul, however, because the human soul was meant to remain whole and unblemished.
The word
Horcrux
likely derives from Latin words. The English word crucible, a container that can resist both great heat and withstand a severe test or trial, is associated with the Latin
crux.
And
hor
is likely a shortened version of several Latin terms that all lead to the English horror, horrid, and horrible. Thus, a Horcrux is a “horror-filled container, ” which is an apt term for a container holding the portions of a person’s soul ripped apart by committing murder.
Dualism of the soul is an idea long present in the Bible, in which a soul is thought to be immortal, while the body is not. “Soul” is often used as a synonym for “life” in the New Testament, whereas today we tend to think of the soul more as the center of wisdom, goodness, and intuition in the body and less the source of life itself.
The soul is the subject of much of literature, particularly fantasy literature. Phillip Pullman’s
His Dark Materials
trilogy is, in fact, obsessed with the notion of the soul, which Pullman calls a person’s “dæmon” and which defines his or her very nature. In Pullman’s trilogy, a soulless person is a ghost of his former self and either shows no emotion or dies, much like those in the wizarding world whose souls have been sucked out by a Dementor’s Kiss (see Chapter 15). A person without a soul, or with only a portion of a soul, could be thought of as less than human, and in fact would become less so, the further removed he was, in time, from the other part of his soul.
This definition (less than human) befits Lord Voldemort, who created not one Horcrux, but six, thus splitting his soul into seven pieces. His Horcruxes include his diary; two family heirlooms (a ring and a locket); a cup that belonged to one of the Hogwarts founders, Helga Hufflepuff; and two others, yet unknown. (Voldemort’s snake and companion, Nagini, is thought to be a possibility, but also likely is that the two remaining Horcruxes belonged to Hogwarts founders, much like Helga’s cup. See Chapter 16 for the latest updates.)
Part 5
Regulating Magic and the Wizards Who Perform It
As with any community, wizards require a method of governing themselves, and the Ministry of Magic fills that role. In this part, you discover the similarities between British and wizard forms of government, take a visit to the Ministry itself, and find out what happens to wizards who break the rules. You also get a bonus chapter, which highlights the people, places, and wizarding tools found in Rowling’s seventh and final novel in the series,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Chapter 14
The Ministry of Magic
In This Chapter
•
Getting a glimpse at the old Wizards’ Council
•
Reviewing the function of each of the seven Ministry departments
•
Discovering how wizards and British politicos liaise
Located deep underground in the center of London, the Ministry of Magic is the governing body for wizards (and for all creatures with magical abilities) in Great Britain, similar in many ways to British and American forms of federal government. However, as this chapter shows, several governmental functions that appear in both Great Britain and the United States simply don’t exist in the Ministry’s seven departments, and vice versa.
The (Now Defunct) Wizards’ Council
Prior to the creation of the Ministry of Magic more than 400 years ago, UK wizards were governed by the Wizards’ Council. The Council spent much of its early days defining Being and Beast, in order to determine who should participate in the Council, and who shouldn’t.
MAGIC TALE
Wizards’ Councils appear in two of the most influential fantasy book series: J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings
and Ursula Le Guin’s
Earthsea
series
.
In
Rings,
Gandalf is a member of the White Council, the fraternity of wizards of which Saruman the White (and, later, Gandalf the White himself) is head. In
Earthsea,
a mature Ged becomes Archmage, head of the wizards’ council.
Ministry Departments Galore
Seven departments make up the Ministry of Magic, and they are described in the following sections.
Upon comparing the Ministry to both British and American federal governments, however, we find some startling omissions in the wizarding world:
•
Exchequer/Treasury:
Wizards don’t appear to pay taxes of any sort, yet Ministry officials do manage to get paid. Given that no governmental body can operate without funds, somewhere, buried deep in London, there must be an exchequer or treasury department at the Ministry. Perhaps we just don’t know about it. Or maybe the Exchequer has an office in the Department of Mysteries (see the final section of this chapter).
•
Work and Pensions/Labor and Social Security:
As with the lack of an Exchequer, the Ministry of Magic has no ministry or department that deals with labor and pension issues. However, jobs are hardly scarce in the wizarding world: careers with the Ministry, at Hogwarts, at St. Mungo’s (see Chapter 7), at Gringotts (see Chapter 4), and in retail and service businesses do appear to be readily available, limited only by one’s lack of distinction in various school subjects at Hogwarts. In addition, elderly, retired wizards give all appearances of being well cared for and able to manage their finances quite well. So perhaps the wizarding community is in the unique position of having enough jobs available for the people who want them, and having citizens who plan for retirement.
•
Education:
Note that there is no Department of Education as there is in both UK and U.S. governments. Hogwarts, as the only British wizarding school, effectively functions as the education department of the Ministry. All decisions related to the training of wizards are made at Hogwarts and by Hogwarts staff. However, the Ministry of Magic has the power to adjust curriculum, change school rules with educational decrees, expel students from Hogwarts, and replace headmasters and/or professors who aren’t up to snuff.
•
Housing:
Nearly every government throughout the world has to deal, at some point, with lack of housing, overcrowded housing, unsafe urban dwellings, and/or unprofitable rural housing and farms. However, the Ministry of Magic does not appear to have any department or office that helps wizards locate affordable, appropriate housing for themselves and their families.

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