Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Places/Ministry of Magic

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Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter - Place
Ministry of Magic
Location Underground London
Permanent Residents
First Appearance Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (mentioned),
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Contents

[edit] Overview

The Ministry of Magic is the government body of the wizarding world in Britain, and has physical offices in London, apparently deep underground. In The Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter, as in the Harry Potter series in general, the term is used to refer both to the physical place, and to the government body housed therein.

[edit] Extended Description

Beginner warning: Details follow which you may not wish to read at your current level.

We first hear of the Ministry in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, when Hagrid comments disparagingly about it while reading the Daily Prophet. However, we don't actually get to see the physical Ministry location until the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The visitor's entrance of the Ministry of Magic is an abandoned red telephone phone booth; one enters the Ministry by dialing "62442" ("magic"). While we don't know if it was different before the accession of Voldemort's puppet Minister, Pius Thicknesse, by the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the normal means of entrance for employees is via a particular public lavatory; one opens the lavatory booth with a special token and then flushes oneself to the Ministry.

We see the inside of the Ministry on three occasions; however, as is to be expected with such a large organization, we actually see very little of the workings of the place.

Early in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is summoned to a hearing concerning his apparent breaking of the Statute for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. He accompanies Mr. Weasley to his work, entering through the Visitor's Entrance, and passes through the Auror offices on his way to Mr. Weasley's office. Finding that the hearing has moved, Mr. Weasley takes Harry down to the courtrooms on the level below the Atrium.

Later in that same book, Harry comes to believe that Sirius Black is being tortured by Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries in the basement of the Ministry, and, along with five other students, flies to London to rescue him. It turns out to be a trap set by Voldemort, and a battle ensues, in the course of which the Atrium's Fountain of Magical Brethren is destroyed.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry, Hermione, and Ron, searching for the Locket Horcrux, enter the Ministry in disguise. They have learned that Dolores Umbridge, a Ministry functionary, currently has the locket, and hope to find some clue as to where it could be. In the course of this visit, we see the floor of the Ministry which is used by the Minister and his close staff, the Atrium, and the courtrooms. One of the areas we visit seems to be a flourishing propaganda production group. In the course of this visit, Harry does manage to recover the locket.

[edit] Departments

  • Level 1: Minister of Magic and Support Staff
  • Level 2: Department of Magical Law Enforcement
    • Improper Use of Magic Office
    • Auror Headquarters
    • Wizengamot Administration Services
  • Level 3: Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes
    • Accidental Magic Reversal Squad
    • Obliviator Headquarters
    • Muggle-Worthy Excuses Committee
  • Level 4: Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures
    • Beast, Being and Spirit Divisions
    • Pest Advisory Bureau
  • Level 5: Department of International Magical Cooperation
    • International Magical Trading Standards Body
    • International Magical Office of Law
    • International Confederation of Wizards, British Seats
  • Level 6: Department of Magical Transportation
    • Floo Network Authority
    • Broom Regulatory Control
    • Portkey Office
    • Apparation Test Center
  • Level 7: Department of Magical Games and Sports
    • British and Irish Quidditch League Headquarters
    • Official Gobstones Club
    • Ludicrous Patents Office
  • Atrium
  • Courtrooms
  • Department of Mysteries

[edit] Personnel

[edit] Analysis

While the Ministry is mentioned very often in the series, and almost always in a manner that refers to the organization rather than the place, we really learn very little about the organization of the Ministry. We are told that the Minister is elected, as Fudge says, at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, that if he was to try and carry out any of the instructions that Dumbledore suggests, he would be voted out immediately. And while Fudge is, as we learn in the sixth book, replaced by Scrimgeour following the revelation that Voldemort had returned, we do not see the mechanism used for that vote. The reader does rather get the feeling that the magical government runs completely independently of the Muggle government, but apart from that we learn little about its operation. We do learn that the Ministry is very quick to follow the lead of the currently elected Minister, almost to the extent of being his own personal fiefdom; the Ministry as a whole seems to shift almost overnight from Fudge's policy of denial to Scrimgeour's policy of active defence, and again to Thicknesse's anti-Muggle stance.

We do learn that the Ministry, like all human groups, has organized itself into sub-groups, and we become aware of the bureaucracy inherent in the situation. In various asides that Arthur Weasley makes concerning the maintenance workers, and our own observation of Arthur's own work space, we learn that the Ministry is rife with office politics even in times of peace: the maintenance workers' demands for more pay were supported by a solid month of dreary rainfall outside the Ministry's magical windows, and Arthur's unpopular department is required to squeeze two workers and all their files into a converted broom closet.

[edit] Questions

  1. We see rather a lot of the Department of Mysteries during the battle. We actually see rooms or wings dedicated to three mysteries, and hear later of a room dedicated to a fourth. What are the four mysteries that we see or hear about? What other mysteries might there be?

[edit] Greater Picture

Intermediate warning: Details follow which you may not wish to read at your current level.

In the Battle at the Department of Mysteries, Harry first opens a door onto a room full of brains in tanks; presumably this is the Mystery of Consciousness or Thought. The second, the amphitheatre with the Veil, is apparently the mystery of Death. The third, that Harry cannot open, we learn later is the room of the mystery of Love. The fourth is the room of the mystery of Time. Everything that we find in the first room is somehow related to Time. The Hall of Prophecies beyond that is clearly related to Time, though also to Consciousness, and so there should be a door from that room to the brain room. We learn that in the course of the battle, Ron, Ginny, and Luna pass through a room containing a model of the planets; this may be dedicated to the mystery of Space, though it is probably more to do with Astronomy, and the effects of planetary position on various spells.

As the circular chamber leading into the Department of Mysteries has twelve doors, one of which is the exit, there must be a total of eleven mysteries. Assuming Space is one of them, we have heard of five, and six must remain, assuming none of the doors are traps.

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