The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter (41 page)

Those are the departments that do
not
exist in the Ministry. The following are the seven departments that
do
exist.

The Department of Magical Games and Sports coordinates all international competitions held on British soil, and also regulates intra-British sports and games. The British and Irish Quidditch League Headquarters has an office under this department, as does the Official Gobstones Club (see Chapter 6 for more on Quidditch and Gobstones).

One unusual office in this department is the Ludicrous Patents Office. No one is quite sure whether the agency is actively
encouraging
ludicrous patents, or whether this office is sniffing out the ludicrous ones and throwing those patent applications away.

British government has a similar agency to the Department of Magical Games and Sports in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which oversees and coordinates with museums and galleries, libraries, architecture, historic building, and the like. This British department also funds public broadcasting, including the BBC, promotes British tourism, encourages creative industries, and sponsors sporting opportunities and events, from grade-school to elite levels.

No such centralized department exists in American politics, although small offices and divisions oversee some similar entities. Sports and games are nearly all self-regulated by sport governing bodies, with little or no government intervention. Even the U.S. Olympic Committee is a nonprofit organization, not a government agency.

Every good government has an agency that deals with moving people from place to place (Department for Transport in London; Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C.), and the Ministry of Magic is no different. Chapter 5 discusses the four major ways wizards travel from place to place, which four key offices in this department regulate: the Floo Network Authority, the Broom Regulatory Control, the Portkey Office, and the Apparition Test Center.

These four offices operate very much like those in the Muggle world, where Muggle governments undertake tasks like regulating car emissions, licensing automobile drivers and their cars, regulating the safety of planes and trains, and so on.

Governments of large, developed countries could, perhaps, take a lesson from the wizarding world and create their own “departments of international cooperation.” Instead, the United States has the departments of State (the chief agency of international diplomacy and cooperation), Commerce (for cooperating in trade), and Defense (for when nations aren’t feeling so cooperative). Similar departments exist in Great Britain: Foreign Affairs; International Development; Trade and Industry; and Defence.

The offices in this department include those related both to international trade and international law, as well as the British seats in the International Confederation of Wizards. Like the United Nations, the International Confederation of Wizards oversees all magical ministries and councils worldwide. This group initiated the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy, which is the international law that drives nearly all other laws and rules within the wizarding world: that Muggles cannot know of the existence of wizards and witches. The leader of the International Confederation of Wizards is called the Supreme Mugwump (see more in Chapter 1).

As both one of the most enjoyable
and
one of the most dangerous jobs in the Ministry, working for the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures is a career without equal in American and British politics. The U.S. Department of Agriculture comes closest, but you can’t compare the inspection of cows—a primary function of the USDA—with the excitement of transporting a dragon, the gratification that comes from helping wizards rid their homes of garden gnomes and doxies, and the danger of hunting fire crab poachers. But it’s all in a day’s work for the employees of this department.

This department has two aims:

Those two goals are met in two ways:

Muggles in the United States and United Kingdom do not have an equivalent department: the British Department of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are involved in treating and correcting maladies, but do not deal with cleaning up catastrophes.

Likewise, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (with groups like the Federal Emergency Management Agency) deals regularly with catastrophes, but would never attempt to change the public’s perception of the event. Wait a minute … maybe these two departments aren’t so different after all!

The Department of Magical Law Enforcement is structured nearly identically to the U.S. Justice Department and the British Home Office. But unlike United States and British law, law enforcement in the magical world (see Chapter 15) has only two priorities: avoiding Muggle detection and protecting wizards.

International Code of Wizarding Secrecy requires every wizarding government to take strenuous precautions to avoid detection from Muggles, resorting to the memory-altering tactics employed by the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, as needed. For this reason, offices within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement make it illegal for wizards to both improperly use magic and misuse Muggle artifacts. There is no equivalent agency that comes close in the Muggle world.

To keep powerful and/or Dark Wizards from taking advantage of other wizards, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement vigorously protects the wizards within its borders. For wizards engaging in fraudulent, but otherwise harmless, activities, the Office for Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects (a mouthful!) prosecutes to the fullest extent of the law. For more evil deeds, the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol (or Squad) is on hand to make arrests, and Aurors (see Chapter 15) both track criminals and protect innocent citizens in danger. This service is much like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (United States) and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (UK).

To prosecute crimes, the Wizengamot Administration Services acts as the high court, like the United States Supreme Court. You can find more on the Wizengamot in Chapter 15.

Aaaah, the Department of Mysteries. Very secret are the goings on of this government agency; so much so that those employed by this department are called Unspeakables. It’s not that they
can’t
speak, it’s that they
don’t.

An equivalent agency in British and American government probably exists, but who knows, really? Governments are full of mysterious activities; few advertise the fact by actively naming a department of

"mysteries.” Remember that the U.S. government was able to develop and test atomic bombs in complete secrecy during World War II’s Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Residents of that “Secret City” were not allowed to speak to anyone outside the town limits about what they were working on … the Unspeakables of the Muggle world. Similarly, the Central Intelligence Agency (United States) and Secret Intelligence Service (UK) are responsible for all foreign espionage, and those employed at those agencies are not allowed to speak to outsiders about their jobs. Perhaps there’s even a link between Rowling’s Unspeakables and the so-called “Untouchables,” government officials who went after mobster Al Capone in the 1920s.

According to Rowling, upon the election of each new British Prime Minister, the Minister of Magic must contact the Muggle Prime Minister (through a portrait of a wizard hanging on the Prime Minister’s wall) to meet and discuss the existence of wizards, magic, and the Ministry of Magic itself. The Minister of Magic must also inform the Prime Minister whenever highly dangerous creatures are brought into the country or when Dark Wizards threaten the security of Muggles in general or the Prime Minister directly. Aurors have even been known to infiltrate the Prime Minister’s staff in order to guard and protect him under this last set of conditions.

What’s fascinating about this idea is that it forces readers to wonder, “Do wizards really exist in England, and the Prime Minister just doesn’t want to admit it?” It helps explain how the wizarding world has survived, undetected, all these millennia. In fact, one could argue that Rowling’s particular genius comes not only from creating an entire fantastical world, but in joining that world with the Muggle world and explaining ways in which the two have been intersecting for years. That concept gives readers pause, even those older, worldly, experienced readers. Is it possible? Did the Minister of Magic introduce himself through a picture in the wall to Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980s? What about Tony Blair more recently?

Each Muggle Prime Minister, of course, tells no one what he or she knows and takes the knowledge of magic and wizards to the grave. Why? Because if the Prime Minister passed along his knowledge of the Ministry of Magic and the entire wizarding world, his mental state would quite surely be questioned, and he would likely find himself turned out of 10 Downing Street in a half-day’s time.