Harry Potter Fans With No Life

THURSDAY 16TH NOV 2017

So what exactly do we know about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald? Lots, actually…
Production of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald started this summer and we already know quite a lot about the second Fantastic Beasts film. So, if you want to go into the film not knowing much, we suggest you look away now…

It’s called Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Straight away the title says that Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) will be a big focus in the second film, after having been unmasked in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Clearly his capture by MACUSA won’t last for very long, and Grindelwald is still intent on exposing the wizarding community to the non-magical world.

So, what will he do next? As the title suggests, not nice things. Grindelwald escapes custody and sets about gathering followers to his cause. What many of his new devotees don’t suspect is that his true intention is to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings.

We know from the Harry Potter books that Grindelwald’s ascent represented a dark time for the wizarding world – much like the rise of Lord Voldemort. So, things are about to get serious.


First look at Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore
VIEW FULL SCREEN
Jude Law plays a young Albus Dumbledore, taking on the mantle of one of J.K. Rowling’s most beloved characters. Warner Bros.

Jude Law makes his debut as Albus Dumbledore
After being name-checked in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the future headmaster of Hogwarts makes his debut in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Today we got our first look at Jude Law in costume as Albus Dumbledore, complete with a short beard, long, grey corduroy coat and some very nicely embellished shoes. To echo the words of Kingsley Shacklebolt – you’ve got to hand it to Dumbledore: he’s got style.

Dumbledore will ask his former student Newt for his help, and the two do seem to have a history: Dumbledore argued against Newt’s expulsion from Hogwarts years earlier. And in the latest edition of the textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a new foreword from Newt says that Dumbledore was ‘more than a school teacher to me’.

He added: ‘More than this I cannot say without fear of breaching the Official Magical Secrets Act or, more importantly, the confidences that Dumbledore, most private of men, placed in me.’

Dumbledore is also shown carrying a long, impressive wand, but it’s not the Elder Wand, because…

Grindelwald has the Elder Wand
In this new photo, Grindelwald is seen holding the familiar, textured wand we recognise from the Harry Potter films. From the books, we know that Grindelwald stole the most powerful wand in the wizarding world from the wandmaker Gregorovitch quite early on in his reign of terror.

Eagle-eyed fans may also have noted this close-up of Dumbledore’s wand next to the Elder Wand. All things come to those who wait, Albus…


View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Fantastic Beasts
✔
@FantasticBeasts
Wands at the ready. On 11.16.18 the #FantasticBeasts story continues. Check back tomorrow for more #MagicInProgress. #WizardingWednesdays
07:00 - 15 Nov 2017
440 440 Replies 11,382 11,382 Retweets 27,347 27,347 likes
Twitter Ads information and privacy


Familiar faces return
Our main hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and his friends – No-Maj New Yorker Jacob (Dan Fogler) and sisters Tina (Katherine Waterston) and Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol) – will all return in this next film.

No-nonsense MACUSA President Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo) will also be back, along with Abernathy, a MACUSA supervisor played by Kevin Guthrie. With Grindelwald on the loose again, Newt will need all the help he can get.

It is set straight after the first film
The film takes place in 1927, just a few months after Newt’s first adventure. So, we’re still deep in the Roaring Twenties but the characters will obviously have bigger fish to fry than taking in the delights of the decade.

For one, Newt has finally finished the textbook he was working on, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.


View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Fantastic Beasts
✔
@FantasticBeasts
A newly published author must have a book launch party. Newt Scamander has been busy. #MagicInProgress #FantasticBeasts #WizardingWednesdays
09:00 - 1 Nov 2017
46 46 Replies 1,667 1,667 Retweets 5,796 5,796 likes
Twitter Ads information and privacy


We also know that the film will be going beyond New York, to Paris and London as well. Fantastic Beasts on tour! Although judging by Newt’s travel papers, he might be having a bit of trouble getting about.


View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Fantastic Beasts
✔
@FantasticBeasts
Name of Applicant: Newt Scamander, Profession or Occupation: Magizoologist. #MagicInProgress #FantasticBeasts #WizardingWednesdays
09:00 - 4 Oct 2017
144 144 Replies 5,638 5,638 Retweets 19,553 19,553 likes
Twitter Ads information and privacy

And Credence is alive!
Credence (Ezra Miller) also returns, in a ‘mysterious way’. Growing up with fanatical Mary Lou meant that Credence developed an Obscurus – a dark, uncontrollable force which occurs when a witch or wizard represses their powers. When we last saw Credence, he appeared to have been killed within his own Obscurus form, so how did he survive?

Since most Obscurials don’t survive past the age of 10, Credence could prove to be a very powerful wizard indeed. In the new photo released today, he is sitting quite intimately with Claudia Kim’s unnamed character. More on her later…

Former Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams has a role – and Nicolas Flamel will appear
The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams will appear in an as-yet unnamed role. She sounds a tad excited about it. We hear she’s a bit of a Potter fan.


Jessica R. Williams
✔
@msjwilly
HELLO THERE. I AM SCREAMING BECAUSE I AM GOING TO BE IN FANTASTIC BEASTS. https://twitter.com/pottermore/status/9 ... 0338472963 …
08:37 - 6 Oct 2017
751 751 Replies 5,101 5,101 Retweets 53,516 53,516 likes
Twitter Ads information and privacy
New cast and characters also include Wolf Roth as a character called Spielman; Victoria Yeates as Bunty; Derek Riddell as Torquil Travers; Poppy Corby-Tuech as Rosier; and Cornell S John as Arnold Guzman.

Travers and Rosier were also the last names of two Death Eaters in the Harry Potter books. Distant relations, perhaps?

Nicolas Flamel, creator of the Philosopher’s Stone, will also appear in the film, played by Brontis Jodorowsky. Flamel was also quite friendly with Dumbledore – does this mean the characters will share a scene?

We’ll meet Newt’s brother, and Leta Lestrange
After making a fleeting appearance in a photo, the mysterious woman from Newt’s past Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz) joins the cast of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and she’s engaged to... Newt’s older brother, Theseus.

Theseus (Callum Turner) seems rather different from his mild-mannered Magizoologist brother – he’s a war hero and Head of the Auror Office at the British Ministry of Magic.

We’re running away to the wizarding circus
In terms of magical entertainment, we’ve seen the likes of Quidditch matches and the Yule Ball before, but never a wizarding circus. In Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald we get to explore exactly what this entails, with Ólafur Darri Ólafsson playing Skender, the owner of the circus. Actor Claudia Kim’s character is one of the circus’s ‘attractions’. And that might be because…

A new type of magical curse has been revealed
Claudia Kim’s character is a ‘Maledictus’ – a carrier of a blood curse that makes her transform into a beast. This appears to be different to being an Animagus, as an Animagus can transform into an animal by choice. If we break up the etymology of the word, ‘Mal’, means ‘wrongful’ or ‘ill’ – and ‘dictus’ in Latin means ‘to speak’.

We’ll see teenage versions of key characters
Earlier this year, a casting call was put out looking for young actors to join the wizarding world family. The roles included younger versions of Newt Scamander, Leta Lestrange, Albus Dumbledore, Gellert Grindelwald and a character called ‘Sebastian’. Who are you, Sebastian?

Unless there’s some sort of anti-ageing potion we don’t know about, this all strongly implies we could get some flashbacks to these characters’ pasts. We’re sure teenage-Grindelwald will be simply adorable.

This is J.K. Rowling’s second screenplay
J.K. Rowling penned the script herself, with David Yates returning to direct. J.K. Rowling recently tweeted a picture from the set – it featured a very swanky chair. Once again, we’re in good hands.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

J.K. Rowling
✔
@jk_rowling

09:39 - 25 Aug 2017
912 912 Replies 16,133 16,133 Retweets 86,960 86,960 likes
Twitter Ads information and privacy

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is out in cinemas on 16 November 2018.

How is Professor McGonagall in Crimes of Grindelwald?

By William Silvester • December 5, 2018

How is Professor McGonagall in Crimes of Grindelwald?

Though it is a charming bit of plot candy to throw out to eager Potterphiles, the mention of Professor McGonagall in the latest film “Fantastic Beats: The Crimes of Grindelwald” has caused a tidal wave of reaction all out of proportion to the size of the scene.

The question being asked – is it even possible for her to be in this scene? The wording of the screenplay, written by J.K. Rowling, is this:

“TRAVERS, THESEUS and four other AURORS enter, YOUNG MINERVA MCGONAGALL behind them”.

Shortly after that stage direction she is referred to again when Professor Dumbledore says to his students “Go with Professor McGonagall, please” (CG).

To put this brief scene in perspective, let’s look at what else JKR has written about McGonagall in Pottermore. “Minerva McGonagall was the first child, and only daughter, of a Scottish Presbyterian minister and a Hogwarts-educated witch. She grew up in the Highlands of Scotland in the early twentieth century…” (Pm). So far, so good. However, in Chapter 15 of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, McGonagall told Professor Umbridge that she had been teaching at Hogwarts, “Thirty-nine years this December” (OP15). It has been established that Order of the Phoenix took place in 1995 and in Pottermore JKR stated that McGonagall began working at Hogwarts after working for the Ministry for two years, immediately after graduation. Using that date places her graduation in 1954, her first year in school at age 11 in 1947 (she would turn twelve in October), and therefore her birth would have been in 1935. “Crimes of Grindelwald” is known to take place in 1927. It has often been said that JKR uses the excuse that she is not good at math to explain variances in dates but that is an eight-year difference and McGonagall had not even been born. This is simple arithmetic not complicated math. Knowing of Jo’s penchant for detail I find it hard to believe she made such an error.

So, what is the reason for her inexplicable appearance? Had the name Minerva not been used it would be easy to explain away the apparent inconsistency as a different McGonagall, however, the script does say “Young Minerva McGonagall”. Is this then an attempt to keep this McGonagall separate from the ‘old’ Minerva McGonagall found in the Harry Potter books as she is a different person? Perhaps. How common a name is McGonagall? Is it likely to have two professors with the same name teaching at the same school, albeit years apart? It would be more likely if they were related.

Minerva’s father was the Reverend Robert McGonagall and her mother Isobel Ross. Though the happy couple named their first child after Isobel’s talented witch grandmother, Minerva, she could not be the professor at Hogwarts as her name would not have been McGonagall, unless by some happy coincidence she had also married a McGonagall. If that had been the case, then Young Minerva’s grandmother could have been the Minerva mentioned in “Crimes of Grindelwald.” Unlikely, but possible.

A stronger possibility would be that a relative on her father’s side of the family was a witch or wizard, thus passing down the McGonagall name. Though her father was a muggle, a latent wizarding gene could probably still run in the family only to surface when combined with that of Isobel, whose parents, according to JKR in Pottermore, were “a witch and a wizard”, strong genes indeed. In fact, JKR goes on to relate, when two more children, Malcolm and Richard, Jr., were born to the pair, they too quickly showed wizard traits.

So, who else from the McGonagall clan would fit the “Crimes of Grindelwald” timeline? We have no way of knowing how old her father was or his birth order in his family. As Minerva was born in 1935, and was his first child, we can assume, by the custom of the times and the fact that he was an ordained Presbyterian minister that he married while in his late teens to early twenties. This would be allowing time to grow up, attend some sort of Theological school, meet Isobel, woo her and marry. They courted throughout the last part of her Hogwarts schooling, about which he knew nothing, and by the time she was 18 they eloped. If little time was wasted in bringing forth children and if she gave birth to Minerva in 1935, we can assume Isobel was born, (1935 – 18 years =) c. 1917. She would have been 10 at the time Crimes of Grindelwald took place. Robert would probably have been about the same age, give or take a year of two. So, if Robert was one of the younger children in his family, and big families were the norm in those times, it is possible that he had older siblings. Perhaps an unmarried sister, ten to twelve years older, named Minerva McGonagall, who could have been a witch and a professor at Hogwarts in 1927. While it is not likely that a McGonagall would name his daughter Minerva, the witch could have adopted the name for herself out of reverence to the Roman goddess of wisdom. However, if one of Robert’s older brothers married a witch named Minerva, she could be the person mentioned in the screenplay. A second Minerva in the family could also influence Isobel’s decision to name her daughter.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to back up any of this speculation which leads us to a more probable explanation. I would not even suggest this possibility had not it already appeared in canon in Prisoner of Azkaban and later in Cursed Child. Time travel, or more specifically the use of a Time-Turner would explain why a young Professor Minerva McGonagall appeared in 1927 Hogwarts.

In Pottermore we learn that Minerva, after graduating from Hogwarts, “had been offered a position at the Ministry of Magic (Department of Magical Law Enforcement).” Here she would remain for two years before applying for and being accepted for a teaching position at Hogwarts under Professor Dumbledore. The Magical Law Enforcement Department would be the ideal place for her to become familiar was the Time-Turner. As we later learn in Prisoner of Azkaban she did just that. As she later permitted a young student (Hermione Granger) to use the Time Turner for the purpose of taking additional classes she apparently saw no real danger in using the device. This fact indicates that she probably would not have been averse to using it herself, particularly when she was younger and less wise and knowledgeable in the ways of magic and the consequences of time travel.

Assuming her appearance in 1927 Hogwarts was due to the use of a Time Turner, it begs the question – why? What was the appeal of that moment in time. Did she simply want to get to know her future teacher and mentor, Albus Dumbledore, better? Did she want to meet Theseus Scamander in person? Did she have some scheme to change history by influencing one of her students? That is a question that may never be answered unless the brief appearance of Minerva McGonagall at Hogwarts, at the moment when Dumbledore is confronted by six Aurors and asked to take on Grindelwald, will take on a larger meaning in future books. Minor characters rising to influential prominence is certainly not unknown in JKR’s writing. Witness Neville Longbottom or Ginny Weasley who had small, seemingly insignificant parts when first introduced but in the end played a huge role in the saga.

Another interesting fact that could skewer our theories is that Fiona Glascott, the Irish actress who portrayed McGonagall in Crimes of Grindelwald, was 35 years old when the sequence was filmed. Why would a 35-year-old actress be chosen to portray a 19-20-year-old woman? If the casting was intentionally accurate for her age, then Professor McGonagall would have used the Time-Turner c1970 when she was 35. Following this reasoning, what was happening in the wizarding world in the early 1970s?

It was a tumultuous time. Voldemort was just beginning his first rise to power encouraging violence, torture and murder of muggles and muggle-born by his Death-Eater followers. Barty Crouch, Sr. the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (DMLE), fought the Death Eaters with an iron fist, often sending innocent people to Azkaban without a trial. It is not known when Barty became head of DMLE but he may have been in that position or at least a member of the Ministry when McGonagall was also working there. Perhaps, as she was a member of the original Order of the Phoenix, she was sent back in time by Barty, who would apparently use any means at his disposal to fight the Dark Lord. Could this include killing a baby Tom Riddle who had been born on 31 December 1926 and would only be a few months old at this time?

It seems this theory also hits a snag. In a recent Pottermore article JKR quoted Professor Saul Croaker, Department of Mysteries, as saying “the longest period that may be relived without the possibility of serious harm to the traveller or to time itself is around five hours.” It was discovered that time travellers who went over great distances never survived the journey. All experiments were abandoned in 1899 when Eloise Mintumble was trapped in 1402 for five days and upon being retrieved was found to have aged five centuries. She died in St. Mungo’s shortly after, several of her descendants were ‘unborn’, and there were serious time fluctuations on the Tuesday and Thursday following.

So, while it is still possible that McGonagall was at Hogwarts in 1927 for a few hours it is unlikely, unless she made the visit frequently, that Dumbledore would know who she was much less entrust the care of students to her. According to Professor Croaker such travel over long distances would have been harmful and not likely to have been attempted on a regular basis.

Which brings us back to Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 15, when McGonagall says she had been teaching at Hogwarts for thirty-nine years. Could she have meant thirty-nine years teaching Transfiguration rather than total teaching years. After all, it was her Transfiguration lessons that Umbridge was checking up on. If this was the case then she could very well have been at Hogwarts, probably as a new comer, in 1927. Therefore, she would have been born in c1907 which would allow for 17 years from birth to end of school and two years with DMLE before moving to Hogwarts. She would then have had one or more teaching positions until 1956 when she took over Transfiguration. Previously, Dumbledore had been Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher but was reassigned to Transfiguration in 1927 after angering Torquil Travers, the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. This suggests McGonagall had a different teaching position because two Transfiguration professors would not be necessary. There could be any number of reasons why she was in Dumbledore’s classroom on the day the Aurors arrived. Most likely, as she was following behind them, she was escorting the Aurors to Dumbledore’s class.

This is all speculation based on what we know of the characters involved. What JKR has in mind in presently unknown to us mere muggles. Hopefully, the questions will be answered as the Fantastic Beasts series unfolds.