Harry Potter and the Grim Reality of Real Life

In the 8th book of the series, our 3 heroes have all left school to discover that even without Voldemort, the world is a pretty shitty place.

Despite the usual teenage distractions during her 6th form years, Hermione netted a clean sweep of A* grades in all her subjects. The Daily Prophet might have maintained that exams are easier nowadays, thus discrediting her achievement, but fortunately for the integrity of journalism that particular piece of bog roll masquerading as a newspaper was forced to close after hacking into the voicemails of everyone who lost a relative in the final battle against Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

Hermione could have taken up her place at a top university with those grades, but her Maths was strong enough to allow her to calculate that £9k a year in fees plus living costs for 3 years would leave her with a debt of such overwhelming magnitude that she’d have to live at home for 40 years and look to get on the housing ladder in her early 60’s. She therefore had to settle for a university that was charging less than the maximum fees, in a town with more affordable rents. She’s studying Media and Bieber Studies in the University of Central South Coastal England in Bognor Regis (which is housed in the newly renovated chalets of what used to be Butlin’s.)

For Harry, like the majority of school leavers, a job in the retail sector beckoned. Tesco have taken him on to one of their management training courses. And Ron applied for a level 3 apprenticeship in Computer Animation Design, because he “likes computer games” and sees a future for himself in this field along with tens of thousands of others.

In their wake, Hogwarts has become an Academy in order to redress the funding deficit that all schools are currently experiencing. A new Head has been appointed, who wants to change the uniform and go for a more corporate image. This would entail a complete rebuild, particularly of those staircases that tend to split apart from each other and cause a health and safety risk. There’s no money available from the government to update the buildings to the desired office-style corridors and peacock blue interior, so the new Head has made a deal with the giants of the Communications industry, Floo Networks in which Hogwarts receives a large investment of capital and Floo Networks receives 3 executive seats on the Board of Trustees.

You might be wondering why money seems to be in short supply to support education. Well, essentially, the top bosses of Gringott’s had spent decades getting rich off the back of high-risk investments, over-lending and lots of other unregulated naughty financial stuff that most people don’t understand, except for the fat bonuses the greedy little goblins had been paying themselves. Consequently, the arse fell out of the economy at a time when The Ministry of Magic was spending beyond its means and there now exists a huge deficit that needs paying off. The new Minister for Magic, Dunghill Camberbum, has declared that this deficit was not his fault, is quite frankly appalling and needs paying off sooner rather than later so that he can be seen as the slayer of the deficit in the same way that Harry Potter is seen as the slayer of Voldemort. So, at a huge risk to economic stability, Camberbum is cutting government spending at all levels, including those unwieldy and unnecessary bastions of social welfare, the education, police and health services.

With Voldemort dead, he expects less of a drain on health services and besides people can just help themselves and set up their own things and buy stuff from private companies. And surely the police will have less to do without so many Death Eaters around, so cuts can be made there. And schools are full of subversive lefty-liberals who hate the Ministry anyway, so fuck them. They can work longer and contribute more to their pensions, the moaning, useless, soft-touch, part-timers.

As a result, Hogwarts now has 8 teachers over 120 years old teaching a full timetable to students who require entertainment to motivate them into working, or else they’ll just play on their Blackberry’s and I-phones and look up facts on Wikipedia if they’re expected to know anything. The new Minister for Schools, Machiavellius Gove has decreed that the new National Curriculum should include compulsory study of more traditional and academic subjects, like the things Gove a(nd his usual dinner party guests) enjoyed at school, such as Ancient Mesopotamian, Classical Sculpture and systematic buggery.

In the final scene of the book, Harry, Ron and Hermione all join a anti-Ministry protest in London. Ron is cautioned for shouting rude words at Mr Gove as he drives past with his window open to let the smell of his breath out (the word used is CUNT but this is only included in the adult edition of the book), Hermione joins a sit-in at a branch of Olivander’s Wands Emporium and Harry is sentenced to 16 months in prison for doing a poo on a statue of Cornelius Fudge, the former Minister for Magic.