To put it plainly, this is my most important scoop to date. Forget Babbitty Rabbitty: the time for jejune yarns is dead. I have taken upon myself the behemoth task of answering the eternal, burning quandaries which have assailed humanity for generations. I will let you once again rest on your laurels and sleep like the innocent bairn that you were before questions such as ‘Stan Shunpike: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier or Spy?’ kept you awake at night in feverish uncertainty.
Contents:
Fenrir Greyback: The PM we never had
The Amalfoy Class: Why Lucius Malfoy and Motherland’s Amanda are one and the same
Is Snape a Byronic Hero?
Men with Zen: Why Mark Corrigan and Horace Slughorn would’ve been friends
Stan Shunpike: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier or Spy?
Fenrir Greyback: The PM we never had
Okay. I know this sounds bold, but hear me out. Fenrir has some serious brawn, and he’s got friends in high places. Draco has full faith in him,
‘“You know Fenrir Greyback? He’s a family friend. He’ll be dropping in from time to time to make sure you’re giving the problem your full attention.”’
Firstly, a friend of the Malfoys has gotta have some sway. Secondly, this sounds like pretty admirable prime ministerial behaviour – ensuring everyone is pulling their weight. He’s polite, but he knows what he wants: a 21st century go-getter:
‘“Begging your pardon, Mr. Malfoy,” interjected Greyback, “but it’s us that caught Potter, and it’s us that’ll be claiming the gold–”’.
As Lupin basically suggests, he’d fit in perfectly at Whitehall:
‘He regards it as his mission in life to bite and to contaminate as many people as possible’.
In that weird white purgatory cave, Dumbledore tells Hazza that if ‘Greyback is involved’, it’s sure to be a ‘protracted and messy affair’. Fenrir will thus get on swimmingly with every Tory councillor in the country.
Not only has he got the sonorous gravitas, ‘a rasping bark of a voice’ which can shout down all the other MPs at PMQ. (Not that there’d be many MPs left after his inauguration). He’s also got the looks. The Daily Mail will pap this dreamboat like crazy, and Murdoch will have a field day:
‘Harry could smell a powerful mixture of dirt, sweat, and, unmistakably, of blood coming from him. His filthy hands had long yellowish nails.’ He has ‘a face covered in matted gray hair and whiskers, with pointed brown teeth and sores in the corners of his mouth.’
He will rise to the top of The Official Monster Raving Moony Party, having been struck off from Reform for his (actually admirably entrepreneurial) hubristic mutiny: ‘“To hell with the Ministry”, growled Greyback. “They’ll take the credit, and we won’t get a look in.”’. He’s had enough of being merely ‘permitted to wear Death Eater robes in return for his hired savagery’. This man is self-awere, with lofty ambitions. His sharp, concise way with words (‘Greyback gave a grunt of pleasure’) will make him super popular with the tabloids, and he will slide into the soon-to-be re-dubbed ‘Whitehowl’ quicker than he can gnash those spiky chops.
Fenrir: the butcher, the Titan, the misunderstood philosopher. Save Britain. Live corporeally. Vote Fenrir.
The Amalfoy Class: Why Lucius Malfoy and Motherland's Amanda are one and the same
They are hated – they’re fantastic: wherever there is danger they’ll be there… no, it’s not Danger Mouse – it’s Lucius and Amanda. I hear you, I really do: ‘Beadle now, we granted you your tenuous Greyback political agenda but this has to stop – you’re having us on’. I’m really not. And once you read on, reader, you’ll see my POV.
It’s plain to see where I’m coming from on the surface level; physically, these are two peas in a pod: bright silvery hair, delicate bone structure, pale eyes and slim, lofty stature.
But dive yet deeper, and we find the similarities just keep materialising. Amanda and Lucius are both classy and classist. They’re not only socially aspirational, junior research fellows of table talk and professors of the schmooze, but they know where they stand in the civic hierarchy. No grammar schools for these kids, no Sainsbury’s weekly shop, no Twinings tea, no family Vauxhall, and absolutely no voting left of Lib Dem: these are belt-and-braces, Westminster School Board of Governors purveying, Harrods Food Hall shopping, Whittards-membership card holding, Land Rover-driving, White-truffle-hunting, tax-loophole-finding social Kings and Queens. And they own it:
‘“Associating with Muggles…and I thought your family could sink no lower…I’ll see you at work”’.
Lucius, ever the gracious father, also teaches his offspring his ways: ‘“Father and I are in the minister’s box. By personal invitation of Cornelius Fudge himself.” [...] “Don’t boast, Draco. There’s no need with these people”’.
And the following line could just as easily have been said by either figure:
‘“I’d actually love to do treaty bits and prestige items - your blinis, your sourcream, your lumpfish caviar”’.
When Ron tells us that “Malfoy’s father didn’t need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side” he encapsulated another key trait of this effervescent double act – who I shall dub the Amalfoy Class in a little semantic jape – that they know what they want. Amanda, for her part, knows her rights:
“If I want to vibe on with my gal pals that's my prerogative”. Quite rightly, as Donovan sings.
And all Lucius really wants to do too is keep his aura in check with his hooded lads:
‘“Let’s just everybody, calm down… shall we? All we want is that prophecy, what’s the fuss about?”’.
Clearly he just wants to lock back into his wine-tasting class – and he could too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids and this blasted blog.
When it comes to the Amalfoy Class, you quite literally buy one, get one free. They’re both exceedingly entrepreneurial, to the fear and shock of their counterparts. Outside Borgin and Burkes, Lucius’s spending habits attract fan-base attention:
‘“Did Lucius Malfoy buy anything?” said Mr. Weasley sharply behind them. “No, he was selling —”’. Of course, had he been buying, Mr Weasley would’ve been impelled to follow in his wake and homogenise his own car crash of a shopping basket.
Amanda’s Hygge Tygge is the enterprising Marks to Lucius’s corporate Spencer. Her online launch is nothing but a victory pageant:
“Kevin, I’m not failing. If anything, I’m a victim of my own success”.
A woman and man in finance, probably both about 6’5”, blue eyes… and accompanied by more emotional baggage than easyjet would let anywhere near the hold. Not that that would ever be a problem for these two – easyjet, along with the Co-op, the Manchester Guardian, Homebase, speed bumps and non-electric blankets belong to the primitive roster of nightmare-land.
I could prate on about the affinities between these two beloved businesspeople for days, but I’ll lump my final ratiocinations together. These twain share an acute aesthetic sensibility, which is especially prevalent with regards to their shrewd interior design appraisals. Compare Lucius’ commentary on Hagrid’s house with Amanda’s on Julia’s room:
‘“My dear man, please believe me, I have no pleasure at all in being inside your — er — d’you call this a house?” said Lucius Malfoy.’
‘WELL this is a cosy little… worky corner!’.
Lucius and Amanda are to evening soirées what Tristan is to Isolde: inseparable, mutually reliant, and bound by powerful spiritual forces. Lucius knows how to party, and he knows how to host:
‘Harry could feel Ron shaking. They were forced down a steep flight of stairs, still tied back-to-back and in danger of slipping and breaking their necks at any moment. At the bottom was a heavy door’.
Amanda’s ‘soft opening’, inviting friends and foes from relatively diverse ends of the economic spectrum (although Motherland is filmed in Chiswick, so arguably that’s a relative term), proffers ‘sparkles and nibbles from 7’. Her hosting powers are unmatched: when she spills the tea on Anne’s pregnancy, it becomes clear that it was all for the greater good of the shindig:
‘I mean if it did come out it was, like, in a good way - like this is a party and I just want to spread a good vibe’.
Whether it’s the Dark Lord or an artisan smorgasbord, Malfoy Manor or merry Manus, Bellatrix Lestrange or Versace’s complete range, Lucius and Amanda answer to a higher authority. It is the same authority that bestowed a self-anointed, quasi-divine status upon Nigella’s culinary abilities, the same authority that decided football could be used as an excuse for shouty territorialism, and that handbags needed to be unaffordable.
It is an authority untraceable to mere mortals such as you and I; so let us merely watch from a distance as the Amalfoy Class tear each other apart like the unfortunate guys in Jacob’s Ladder. A magical – nay, tragical – duo to stand the test of time: Lucius and Amanda.
Is Snape a Byronic Hero?
In his own words, “obviously…”. I mean my guy is literally the Half Blood Prince, which if I’m not mistaken was Byron’s alternative title for Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Dark past? Tick. Melancholy proclivity for isolationism? Tick. Enigmatic intelligence? Tick. Morally ambiguous conduct? Tick. Turbulent and sullen disposition? Tick.
Crucially, Snape has a deep capacity for love. Let’s briefly delve into Byron’s Childe Harold – the epitomic Byronic hero – to illuminate Snape’s Byronic qualities. Just like the saturnine potions professor, Harold is a ‘gloomy wanderer’, a ‘cold stranger’ void of ‘loved one’ or ‘friend’. But, ‘many a time and oft had Harold loved,/ Or dreamed he loved, since rapture is a dream’.
In fact Byron’s entire poem is dedicated to an abstruse loved one, Ianthe, who aptly has an ‘eye [...] wild as the gazelle’s’, a ‘matchless lily’. Bosh. They are one and the same. After all, Harry has his ‘mother’s eyes’, a token of Snape’s love for Lily throughout the books. His patronus remains her ‘silver doe’, even ‘after all this time’.
Like Snape, Harold is shackled ‘with every step’ by powerful and restrictive forces:
‘Still round him clung invisibly a chain
Which galled for ever, fettering though unseen,
And heavy though it clanked not; worn with pain [...]’.
Smells like mouldy Voldy’s iron grip to me.
Both Byronic heroes hold ‘little in common’ with others, are ‘untaught to submit/ [their] thoughts to others’, are ‘proud though in desolation’ and seek ‘a life within itself, to breathe without mankind’. But it is not quite possible: Snape cannot dissolve every strand of his own humanness. He loves Lily, is deeply loyal to Dumbledore, and despite his animosity towards James, betrays compassion towards Harry:
‘I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter—’.
The brash; the unabashed; he’ll cause a splash: Ladies and Gentleman, Severus the Byronic.
Men with Zen: Why Mark Corrigan and Horace Slughorn would’ve been friends
It’s a crying shame that Mark Corrigan, TV’s favourite inverse-snob and history boffin, and Horace Slughorn, roped in after his retirement to return to Hogwarts, didn’t get to meet. Sparks would’ve flown and there’d have been cauldrons of chemistry; we’re switching Dark Marks for larks, Mark.
Luckily I have evoked something of their friendship for you here. It glitters with the tears of quiescent potential: what never was, and never can be. Let’s get into it.
Both Corrigan and Slughorn appreciate the little things, life’s small joys. When life gives them lemons, they do a Thom Yorke and put everything in its right place. Mark has managed to finesse breakfast, successfully optimising his toast strategy:
‘Brown for first course, white for pudding. Brown's savoury, white's the treat. Course I'm the one who's laughing because I actually love brown toast.’
And Slughorn will also indulge, quite rightly, in any and all ‘creature comforts’ that retirement affords:
‘He certainly had those, thought Harry, looking around the room. It was stuffy and cluttered, yet nobody could say it was uncomfortable; there were soft chairs and footstools, drinks and books, boxes of chocolates and plump cushions. If Harry had not known who lived there, he would have guessed at a rich, fussy old lady.’
Both of them are very in-tune with their thoughts and feelings, and admirably, never hesitate to vocalise them. Mark’s wedding day speaks to this best:
‘OK, here we go, wedding day. I am heading for a wedding. How do I feel? Empty, check. Scared, check. Alone, check. Just another ordinary day. Ha ha. Very funny.’
Slughorn also boasts the capacity to face harsh reality square-on, and give it lengthy utterance:
‘“Not so well,” said Slughorn at once. “Weak chest. Wheezy. Rheumatism too. Can’t move like I used to. Well, that’s to be expected. Old age. Fatigue.”’
Both are refreshingly honest about their feelings towards others. Slughorn delivers informed character analyses of crucial figures in the wizarding world: ‘“That’s what she did, did she?” said Slughorn. “Idiotic woman. Never liked her.”’
It is with similar attention to detail that Mark astutely observes the fickleness of his peers: ‘Everyone at this party isn't as young, fit and single as they're making out. Yep, let's face it, we're all falling apart piece by piece. Doesn't matter if you're single or in a couple: You. Are. Going. To. Die.’
Both demonstrate clear-eyed perspicacity with reference to their street cred; their self-deprecation and humility really sets them apart. Mark is aware of how he is seen by peers:
‘“Ah great the big triple, uninterested, unavailable and repulsed.”’
Slughorn shares this self-awareness: ‘“what would the Death Eaters want with a poor broken-down old buffer like me?”’.
Alike in their world-view, they could spend many a boozy evening watching the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 o’clock news bulletins, decrying the corruptions and inadequacies of the modern world. Slughorn voices this, and knows his rights:
‘“All right, I'll do it! But I want Professor Merrythought's old office, not the water closet I had before. And I expect a raise, these are mad times we live in. Mad!!”’.
Corrigan is similarly disenchanted with the status quo:
‘“Hell, who’s in charge? The world’s just people walking around, going in to rooms and saying things. It’s all a big swizzle!”’.
Finally, these lionhearts display shows of pragmatism time and time again. Mark seriously knows where it’s at:
‘“Listen, Jeremy, you don’t seem to understand. Nothing you want is ever going to happen. That’s the real world. Your hair isn’t red, people don’t walk around on stilts. Maybe somewhere you can earn a living sitting around, drinking margaritas through a curly plastic straw, but in this world, you’ve got to turn up, log on and grind out.”’
Slughorn, too, lives for the grind, but doesn’t romanticise his chance of survival: life is taxing, but he doesn’t pay taxes:
‘“[...] taking up a post at Hogwarts just now would be tantamount to declaring my public allegiance to the Order of the Phoenix! And while I’m sure they’re very admirable and brave and all the rest of it, I don’t personally fancy the mortality rate —”’.
This is so fair enough. As he says, he’s just ‘a tired old man who’s earned the right to a quiet life and a few creature comforts’.
The first personality-oriented indication we receive of Slughorn is that he is ‘aggrieved’, which actually pretty much sums up Corrigan’s perpetual headspace too. So let’s raise a glass of Felix Felicis to the bromance which never was. Long may they live in our hearts, souls and on this page.
Stan Shunpike: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier or Spy?
My next line of enquiry revolves around Knight bus conductor and community do-gooder Stan Shunpike. I am not entirely convinced of his innocence. Here I will present the evidence, and your jurisdiction can thenceforth predominate.
When we first meet him, we are told that he’s ‘few years older than [Harry] was, eighteen or nineteen at most, with large, protruding ears and quite a few pimples’. Nothing amiss here, you think. But no – I smell a rat. And it’s not Wormtail (yet). Stan goes on, ‘dropping his professional manner’. He positively bombards our hero with barely disguised bellicosity: ‘“’Choo fall over for?” sniggered Stan.’, ‘“’Choo lookin’ at?” said Stan’, ‘“Woss that on your ’ead?” said Stan abruptly’, ‘“Woss your name?” Stan persisted’.
I posit to you that his subsequent faux-naivety is a ruse, designed to lure his victims to an asphalt tomb. He scares Knight Bus driver Ernie into the ‘collywobbles’ with his meddling craic about Azkaban: ‘“I don’t fancy ’is chances against them Azkaban guards, eh, Ern?”, a manoeuvre designed to rattle the chauffeur into dangerous driving.
Just when our hero thinks he’s off the hook, Stan’s aquiline nose is sniffing around in his affairs again, tampering with history itself: ‘“Anyway, when little ’Arry Potter got the better of You-Know-’Oo—” Harry nervously flattened his bangs down again.’
In an uncharacteristic flash of brilliance (akin to Horrid Henry’s far more consistent ‘Eureka!’ moments), Hazza J P sees Stan’s future before his very eyes. Shunpike’s snooping is so inchoately powerful, it has been able to transcend temporal boundaries, and Harry can practically hear the conductor’s posterior words, refracting through the swirling vortex of history: ‘“’Ear about that ’Arry Potter? Blew up ’is aunt! We ’ad ’im ’ere on the Knight Bus, di’n’t we, Ern? ’E was tryin’ to run for it…”’. As a Gallagher brother yells in the drunken haze of his own success on some rogue live recording of Live Forever, ‘this is history!’.
Shunpike’s interventions, plenteous in their verbal capacity, overpower speech alone, and spill into his physical actions: ‘After a while, Stan remembered that Harry had paid for hot chocolate, but poured it all over Harry’s pillow when the bus moved abruptly from Anglesey to Aberdeen’.
King of the Kibitz, he can always be relied on to vocalise any and all consciousness that lurks around inside his mind: ‘“Ern! Ern! Guess ’oo Neville is, Ern! ’E’s ’Arry Potter! I can see ’is scar!”. “’Ow come you di’n’t tell us ’oo you are, eh, Neville?” said Stan, beaming at Harry, while Ernie’s owlish face peered interestedly over Stan’s shoulder.’
His Mr Tickle-esque reach extends into the world of lusty romance. His philandering modes of seduction are frankly only to be admired:
‘A third young wizard, whose pimples were visible even by the dim, silvery light of the veela, now cut in, “I’m about to become the youngest ever Minister of Magic, I am.” Harry snorted with laughter. He recognized the pimply wizard: His name was Stan Shunpike, and he was in fact a conductor on the triple-decker Knight Bus’.
Even when under the Imperius Curse does trusty Stan manage to interfere with Harry’s life. He gets up to all sorts of mischief in Book the 7th, from becoming a Death Eater and ‘not know[ing] what he’s doing’ (although that’s hardly a shocker), to being involved in ‘a mass breakout [from Azkaban] which the Ministry has hushed up’.
But, after the tea and cakes and ices, we have reached the time. The moment we’ve been long awaiting. We’ve traipsed through the scrolls, we’ve visited Azkaban, we’ve questioned dementors, we’ve located the Knight Bus, we’ve lost Knight Bus GPS reception countless times, and we’ve taken fingerprint traces from his toothbrush. And only one answer is plain: Stan Shunpike is a tinker.
This guy fulfills every criteria: he works with what he’s got, but consistently gets it wrong – he experiments with life largely unsuccessfully. He is clumsy but community-minded, garrulous but gossipy, fun but foul, and, most of all, has arcane verbal powers, allowing him to tinker with Harry’s very self conception, distorting temporal verisimilitude itself. Phewee.
Young Stan is a man with a plan, a can-do attitude, and a lifetime ban from the DVLA; but I’m his fan, and I hope you are too.
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