The real magic of Harry Potter’s wizarding world is its relationship to our own Muggle universe, and one scene from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince illustrates this relationship better than any other. The scene is among the most intriguing in any Harry Potter book, and yet the filmmakers behind the sixth book’s cinematic adaptation neglected to include it in the movie version. In this way, one of the franchise’s most important moments of intrusive fantasy, which fundamentally transformed our understanding of how wizards coexist with muggles, was sadly lacking from the visual depiction of its story.
It’s to be hoped that the scene in question, which the movie version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince replaces with Harry chatting up a waitress at a train station cafe, is included in HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter TV show. It occurs in the first chapter of the sixth book and features a character we never see in the Harry Potter movies. While the British Prime Minister is minding his own business in his office at 10 Downing Street, he’s suddenly asked for a meeting with a mysterious figure he’s met several times before: the Minister for Magic.
Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’s Meeting Between The Prime Minister & Minister Of Magic Should Have Been In The Movie
It Would Have Filled A Plot Hole About How Muggle Society Deals With Voldemort
This meeting would have added something to the Half Blood Prince movie that no scene that’s actually included manages to achieve. Just as the appearance of the Muggle Prime Minister was an important addition to the Harry Potter books, he would have added some extra magic to the movie series by embedding it in the context of our everyday existence. The British Prime Minister is a figure almost universally recognized in the real world, so featuring him in a Harry Potter movie would have brought fans close to the world of the franchise.
What’s more, the Minister for Magic explaining to the Prime Minister that Voldemort and his followers are rampaging around the country, killing Muggles, and destroying bridges is only logical for the plot of the film. Otherwise, ordinary Muggles might be forced to seek explanations for themselves, threatening the secrecy of the entire wizarding community. Instead, nowhere in the Harry Potter movies do we hear about how Muggle society at large deals with – or understands – the trail of destruction that Voldemort leaves in his wake, after his return at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
The actual opening scene of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’s big-screen adaptation might have been easier to render in visual terms, and less of a leap into the unknown for fans of the movies who haven’t read the books. Time was also clearly a factor in the filmmakers’ decision, and the Prime Minister’s meeting with Cornelius Fudge and Rufus Scrimgeour is far from the only book scene that’s cut from the Harry Potter movies. Still, they missed a trick by not opening the sixth movie with this scene, in particular.
The Half-Blood Prince’s Opening Helps Define Harry Potter’s Wizarding World
It Extends The Boundaries Of The Magical World’s Intrusion Into Ours
More than any other scene in the entire seven-book series of Harry Potter novels, the first chapter of The Half-Blood Prince, enтιтled “The Other Minister,” allows us to imagine that the wizarding world really exists alongside our own. Nowhere else in the books do we see how the existence of wizards is viewed from the perspective of Muggle society as a whole.
It’s true that the Dursleys, Frank Bryce in The Goblet of Fire, and even Harry himself in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, give us a window into how specific people from Muggle society view the existence of magic. However, their narrow viewpoints don’t show us the wider effects of the wizarding world on its Muggle counterparts.
In “The Other Minister,” we get detailed insights into how magical phenomena are seen by Muggle society, from the dense fog created by the proliferation of dementor attacks across the country, to the murder of a woman while she was alone in a room locked from the inside. There are vivid descriptions, too, of the Prime Minister’s shock, horror and bemusement at being told the magical sources of the problems afflicting the country he’s supposed to be running.
Precisely because of his position of power in Muggle society, his reactions give us a unique appreciation of how Muggles and wizards coexist in general, and what the witchcraft and wizardry of Harry Potter means to Muggles like us, the audience of J.K. Rowling’s magical stories. “The Other Minister” is, in fact, a watershed moment in the Harry Potter books, as it substantially extends the boundaries of their fantasy’s intrusion on the real world.
The fact that the magical world of the books intrudes upon our own is the distilled essence of what makes them so appealing.
The Harry Potter franchise is categorized as “low” fantasy, otherwise known as intrusive fantasy, specifically because its story is set in our own, contemporary, real-life universe. The fact that the magical world of the books intrudes upon our own is the distilled essence of what makes them so appealing. That’s why “The Other Minister” is such an integral part not only of The Half-Blood Prince but of the entire Harry Potter story.
Season 6 Of HBO’s Upcoming Harry Potter TV Show Needs To Include This Scene
The Show Would Betray The Essence Of Harry Potter’s Appeal By Excluding It
Given that HBO is expected to dedicate at least a season of their Harry Potter TV show to adapting each of the books, they really shouldn’t make the same mistake as the movie version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This scene between the British Prime Minister and the Minister for Magic absolutely has to be in the show, which can’t use the excuse of having a lack of time to tell its story as the movies could, given its serial TV format.
It’d be especially interesting to see which actors will be chosen to play the three parts in the scene, of the Prime Minister, former Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge, and new Minister for Magic Rufus Scrimgeour, respectively. Perhaps a wizened Hugh Grant could subvert his iconic role in Love Actually by playing one of the magical premiers, and the British Prime Minister could be played by a female actor instead.
Whichever way they decide to go with the scene, the showrunners of HBO’s TV adaptation have to do justice to the original opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Leaving out “The Other Minister” entirely will betray the fundamental basis for the franchise’s success.
