Expecto Patronus: or How the Wizarding World Really Works (Appendix)

Notes on the Wizengamot
It is important to say something here about the Wizengamot. For etymological reasons if nothing else, it is likely to be of pre-Norman Conquest origin. This suggests that it chooses the Minister of Magic, probably from its own number, just as its original Muggle counterpart the Witanagemot chose the king.

The similarity of names is not accidental, because it was with the fall of Anglo-Saxon England and the separating out of wizards and Muggles in the eleventh century, and the retreat of the wizards to form their own communities in the countryside (no doubt to avoid the massacres, enslavement and cultural genocide that was the Norman Conquest of England) that the "separatist" tradition of wizardry in this country seems to have really got under way - and it's not an accident that all the early Chiefs of the Wizards` Council whose names we know are of Old English (as opposed to Norman or Celtic) origin. The Hogwarts Founders had prepared the way, but their school was probably controversial and certainly vulnerable to begin with, which is surely why it was built as a fortified compound in a very remote location: an even more remote location in those days before Apparating, Portkeys or Floo, when broomsticks were slow and extremely uncomfortable. Before the Norman Conquest I would guess from its name that the Wizengamot advised the Old English kings on magical affairs, just as the Witanagemot did on Muggle ones. It was the generation after the Conquest that saw the invention of Quidditch and a whole separate wizarding culture, trained in Hogwarts and living in their own communities, separate from the Muggle world, appearing more or less simultaneously: an independent wizarding community which came to be ruled either by a surviving Wizengamot, or else by a recreated one.

In fact, the Wizengamot was almost certainly the same body Harry's school textbooks call the Wizards' Council, the ruling authority of the "separate" wizarding community of the British Isles in the Middle Ages, which actually means the same thing and (tellingly enough) begins to be referred to under that name in the mid thirteenth century, in the very generation when Anglo-Saxon and Norman French merged to produce a "Creole" Middle English - an early form of our own language.

In place of the Old English Kings the Wizards' Council chose a Chief of the Wizards' Council, who seems to have acted like a king: he certainly enforced summary justice, and also had a court of advisors. The Wizards Council itself at this time was probably a larger and more fluid body than the Wizengamot is now. There were even attempts (abandoned in the fourteenth century) to bring in other non-human magical peoples and give them a place in the Wizards' Council. These were abandoned, apparently for ever, due to the intransigence and sabotage of the goblins, who, to be fair, had no desire to put themselves in subjection to the Council by making it the legitimate authority of all the magical peoples in the British Isles, even if they were represented within it.

This may have been a mistake on their part, since the following century saw unpunished goblin-killings on a large scale (Yardley Platt, the serial goblin killer, lived to a very ripe old age) and their subjection was eventually accomplished (without a compensating place in the power structure) some time in the next few centuries. It is by no means clear whether the goblin riots or rebellions were an attempt to throw off the yoke, or simply resistance to its imposition.

Either the Council was self-appointing, or they were chosen with a restricted franchise, because in 1269 (in a letter to her sister) Modesty Rabnott made it very clear that Barberus Bragge, the then Chief of the Wizards' Council, would have lost her vote if she had had one. It is unclear whether she meant she had no seat on the Wizards' Council (who would have undoubtedly chosen their Chief) or no vote to influence any of those who did have seats on the Wizards' Council.

The Ministry of Magic seems to be a very much later invention - probably a feature of the seventeenth century. It is commonly admitted (for example by Hagrid in Philosopher's Stone) that its chief purpose is to keep the magical world hidden from Muggles, and the Wizards' Council seems to have delegated the bulk of its executive authority to the newly created offices of the Ministry of Magic as a direct consequence of the Statute of Secrecy. The decision to keep magic hidden from Muggles (and the growth of their technology) had in effect created a State of Emergency which ad hoc meetings of the Wizards' Council were no longer sufficient to manage, and the whole bureaucracy of the Ministry of Magic became a real necessity. The Wizards' Council was at some point restored to its old name of Wizengamot - possibly a symbolic throwing off the Norman (or Muggle) yoke as the wizards adopted a policy of total separation - and membership of the body became (if it was not always) a part-time occupation, for all its power and prestige. It is certainly a part-time occupation now: Dumbledore was able to combine presiding over it as Chief Warlock with the headmastership of Hogwarts and the Chairmanship of the International Confederation of Wizards, and (for Fudge's first years in office) being the power behind the throne in Wizarding Britain. Griselda Marchbanks combined an active role on the Wizengamot with being head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority, so it clearly not an onerous position. Their meetings may not have been unlike the old JP's Quarter Sessions which ran the affairs of English counties, before the reform of local government: pleasant society gatherings, where everyone knew everyone else, and as often as not were related.

It is not unlikely that Fudge's poor showing at Harry's trial developed in no small part from the understandable irritation of fifty eminent and important people being dragged out of bed early one morning at the Minister's whim (quite without warning) to judge something as trivial as a simple matter of Underage Magic. They would not be used to this.

It is a common misconception that the Wizengamot is primarily a court of law. In fact it is not. Harry's trial before the full Wizengamot was clearly an extraordinary exception, and Old Courtroom Ten hadn't been in use for years. For minor offences (like underage magic) judicial authority has clearly (in nearly all cases) been delegated to the relevant officials of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, while more serious offences, such as the Death Eater trials over which Harry saw Bartemius Crouch preside in Dumbledore's pensieve, seem always to have been tried before the Council of Magical Law - where Wizengamot members seem to preside, but the actual verdict is made by a jury - and (as Bagman's trial displayed) not a biddable jury either.

The Wizengamot's real role was originally (no doubt) a matter of interpreting (and enforcing) traditional wizarding customary law (until comparatively recently real law was understood to be immemorial; legislation was thought of as tyranny) but there is no doubt that its principal functions have been legislative for centuries. All Fudge's new laws with regard to Hogwarts had to be carried through the Wizengamot, a body which (however suspicious it was becoming of Dumbledore) had no very great regard for the Minister. That is why Fudge had to proceed in such a slow and piecemeal fashion in trying to remove Dumbledore from Hogwarts, first proposing Umbridge to fill a vacuum in the staff - a seemingly innocuous move - and then (when the Daily Prophet had presented that as a success) gradually passing more and more laws to whittle away at Dumbledore's position. All this had to pass through the Wizengamot, a surprisingly independent body which Dumbledore had only recently presided over (as Chief Warlock) and where he still had a fair amount of support, and that is why two of the oldest and most eminent Wizengamot elders (Tiberius Ogden and Griselda Marchbanks, of whom even Umbridge was visibly afraid) resigned from the Wizengamot over the appointment of Umbridge as High Inquisitor. They took this step because it was the Wizengamot that had created this post (and the consequent reign of terror at Hogwarts) and they wished to show their disapproval and publicly undermine its prestige.

It is probably in his role as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot that Dumbledore would have helped draft wizarding legislation, as he explains in the filmed version of Chamber of Secrets.

"I am well aware of our bye-laws, Severus, having written quite a few of them myself."

Just how the Minister of Magic is appointed has not been made completely clear, but it isn't merely on etymological grounds (the parallel to the Witanagemot) that I suspect that the Wizengamot appoints him. The phraseology of Sirius Black's description of the political manoeuvrings which allowed Cornelius Fudge to "get the top job" and Bartemius Crouch to be "shunted aside" doesn't seem easily compatible with any form of direct election to these posts: it's more suggestive of private deals behind the scenes by members of the Wizengamot - there's no other body that could do it, either, especially none with such a promising name. Also, the Heads of Department seem to be chosen independently of the Minister; they are probably chosen by the Wizengamot too, again in all likelihood from among their own number. Nor do there seem to be fixed electoral terms: According to the Daily Prophet, Fudge became Minister after Millicent Bagnold "retired" - as opposed to coming to the end of her term: and there has been no hint of elections in the last few years, or that they are imminent now. In fact, the probability is that the Wizengamot not only appoints the Minister of Magic but can remove him too, at will - as the Muggle parliament can replace the Prime Minister. That would explain why Cornelius Fudge feared that he would be quickly removed from office if he followed Dumbledore's advice - and indeed Dumbledore's suggestions (leaving dangerous criminals unguarded, making alliance with murderous giants) were the sort that Sir Humphrey Appleby would have called "courageous" - not to say "novel." They were clearly political suicide, which Fudge understandably began to think that Dumbledore had intended him to commit.

The Wizengamot clearly has the right (perhaps on the Minister's recommendation) to remove individual members from its number (like Albus Dumbledore) and indeed to reinstate them - much as the Muggle House of Commons could to until the Wilkes affair in the eighteenth century. Where its members are drawn from is another matter. Some of its members are clearly appointed: high officials of the Ministry like Senior Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge seem to be automatically Wizengamot members by virtue of their official positions. So are the Minister of Magic and all the Heads of Department, but as their appointments are clearly political, that may simply be a case of the Wizengamot choosing high political officials from among its own number. If this is nearly always the case (and it follows the practice of both the British parliament and the Roman senate) it would explain how Fudge got to be Minister. With most of the Wizengamot too old for the job (as they clearly are) or with other interests as well, like Dumbledore, then if one rules out Crouch and his allies, there may not have been very much choice. Some choices, indeed, could have seemed far worse. After all, could anyone imagine Ludovic Bagman as Minister?

So how are the rest of the Wizengamot chosen? Some are clearly appointed officials, and it is always possible that the rest are self-appointing, choosing eminent wizards to fill a vacancy in their number. I suspect, however, that this is unlikely. Quite apart from the direct references in Quidditch through the Ages to voting for members of the old Wizards' Council, the fact that general popularity is a major factor in deciding political appointments suggests that the Wizengamot is by and large an elected body, albeit probably not by the sort of election which now exists in the Muggle world. Nor would Tiberius Ogden and Griselda Marchbanks have resigned from so influential a body if their replacements were simply to be chosen by the anti-Dumbledore majority there. Probably they were fairly sure that people like themselves would be elected in their place.

Another factor to consider in guessing how the Wizengamot elders are chosen is that they are clearly all "independents" and do not belong to any formal party structures, which do not seem to even exist in the politics of wizarding Britain: patronage networks and factions yes, but not formal political parties - a bit like the Muggle political world as it was before the Statute of Secrecy - or indeed that of the Roman Republic. The Wizengamot elders also seem to be genuinely independent, and make up their own minds over how to vote, as was the case in Harry's trial. For another, by and large (apart perhaps from some appointed officials) they are very elderly indeed. Albus Dumbledore is over 150 years old, and Griselda Marchbanks some decades older: by far the largest recorded ages of any wizards that do not possess a philosopher's stone. (Look at the dates on the Chocolate Frog Trading Cards to see how wholly exceptional these ages are.) By and large, it is an elderly legislative body. The Daily Prophet actually refers to its members (or some of them) as elders. Evidently, it is possible for a Wizengamot elder to be replaced, but it does not occur very often: in practice membership is either for life or very nearly.

In consequence the Wizengamot is a small and largely elderly body, with only fifty members or so, nearly all of whom must have known each other for decades. Clues as to how they might be elected are sparse. There certainly seems to have been a restricted franchise of some sort, at least back in the Middle Ages, as we see from Modesty Rabnott's letter. Members of the Wizards' Council were probably chosen by important families or communities. If they were a self-appointing oligarchy then, that is unlikely to still be the case, because it is clear from the words of both Cornelius Fudge and Sirius Black that popularity is a major factor in who becomes Minister of Magic, and in whether he survives.

Still, even now, whatever voting system there is must be weighted in some subtle fashion towards pure-blooded wizards, marginalizing the Muggle-born. After all, J K Rowling has said that pure-blood and Muggle-born witches and wizards are roughly a quarter of the wizarding population each, while the remaining half have both Muggle and pure-blood ancestors, so unless the political system was weighted towards the pure-blood families, there is no way Araminta Meliflua could ever have hoped to have a chance of pushing through a bill that could have made Muggle-hunting legal, even a generation ago. On the other hand, they clearly aren't "in charge", because that was the (unfulfilled) aim of those who originally supported Voldemort. In fact, they seem to be very much in retreat, as Borgin pointed out to Malfoy:

"Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere."

This sort of balance could have been achieved by something like the old Muggle system of Pocket Boroughs, by which smaller (and older) communities can outvote larger ones. My personal suspicion, however, is that the constituency from which each particular Wizengamot elder is chosen is decided not by territory or place of residence (a Muggle idea) but by family origin, which seems to be more important among wizards.

This sort of system existed in ancient Rome, where (admittedly, in the Plebeian Assembly) extended families or tribes (originally running their own affairs) became in the end little more than electoral devices: thirty one "voting tribes" from a particular place of origin, and four "city tribes." Romans accepted outsiders (including freed slaves) as citizens when they had culturally absorbed them (just as wizarding Britain accepts Muggle-born wizards); but all outsiders that became citizens were enrolled in the four "city tribes" - thus very much diluting their vote. This seems to me like a very wizarding thing to do.

If the wizarding system followed this model, additional Wizengamot elders might be senior Ministry officials like Umbridge (appointed either by the Wizengamot, or else by the Minister) or the leaders of major public institutions like Hogwarts (appointed by the governors) and maybe St Mungo's too, or maybe the leaders of certain ancient and important wizarding communities, bringing the total to something like fifty.

Such a system could have come about if the Wizengamot (or Wizards' Council) were originally made up of the leading members of all the most prominent wizarding families (which could be why Modesty Rabnott had no vote) who would perhaps have run their own affairs but come together to agree on common laws they could enforce. When each member of the Wizards' Council died or retired, his family (and their descendants, including any descendants of mixed blood) would choose a successor to represent them - and maybe replace him if a majority of them agreed on a particular replacement: so although his constituency would be his friends and relations, he couldn't go too much against their wishes without some risk of being replaced. Wizards without any ancestors at all from old families would be effectively excluded, and even if (on the Roman system) they were allowed a family or tribe (or electoral house) of their own, (perhaps four on the Roman model, one for each of the houses at Hogwarts that introduced them to the Wizarding World) then until their descendants began to intermarry with wizarding families their electoral influence would still be very limited - especially as the number of Muggle-born wizards grew. Nor would they have likely objected. In historical times it would have seemed rather progressive when compared to the Muggle world in the days of the Rotten Boroughs (in that everyone allowed to use a wand would have had a vote), and even now, when things have changed, any Wizengamot elder the Muggle-born wizards might be allowed to choose would have to be conciliatory, or risk being excluded from their number in the way that Albus Dumbledore was.

Moreover, such a system would be subtly weighted in favour of the pure-bloods in the way that the wizarding political establishment genuinely seems to be. Maybe at some point in the past some electoral "families" or "houses" were required to choose their representatives from among their pure-blood members. This is clearly no longer the case, but even now the smallest electoral houses (where a few votes went a very long way) would almost certainly be those where pure-blood wizards predominated; electoral houses where lots of wizards had married Muggles would probably be a good deal larger, considering the relative infertility of pure-blood families. Some electoral houses might be tiny; the very largest might contain hundreds.

I admit that this is all highly speculative, and is almost certainly wrong in its details, but I suspect that it is this general sort of political system that wizarding Britain is likely to use.

And I don't see how such a system could be easily changed, short of a major upheaval - which, in fact, may be about to occur. (The symbolism of Dumbledore and Voldemort between them destroying the Fountain of Magical Brethren suggests as much.) At the moment I have suggested a very stable set up exists, which makes for close personal contact between the Wizengamot members and those who choose them, which does not exist in any Muggle political system. Even those selected from the larger electoral houses might not want the system changed, because they personally were chosen through their connections with their particular constituency, an advantage which any reform would remove. And if (let us say) Hermione were ever chosen to sit in the Wizengamot, then if she really said all that was on her mind she would only confirm the others` convictions that it is a good idea after all to have the system weighted against newcomers from the Muggle world - and if she stepped too far she might find herself removed like Dumbledore, which would put an end to any other reforms she might have planned.

From what we have seen of how the Wizengamot functions, it seems to work by a degree of consensus, perhaps because the nature of whichever way they are chosen means that the elders of the Wizengamot have similar background (and prejudices) and (more particularly) because those wizards (like Dumbledore) who stand too far outside the consensus risk being removed from the body.

Not that we should criticise the way the Wizengamot is chosen too heavily. If it is by the way I have suggested, then for all the system's flaws, at least some of the Wizengamot elders will be there because their friends and relations like or respect them, and not because they are ambitious and ruthless egomaniacs, which is all too often the case among people that want to get elected. In any case, however they are chosen, it is a fact that Dumbledore had a lot of support among them only a few years before (and indeed, Fudge would depend for the next two years on Dumbledore's faction there to stay in power). Fudge probably had to rely on the unanimous support of the Ministry officials in the Wizengamot to get the votes to remove Dumbledore, and to push through his controversial legislation in creating a High Inquisitor for Hogwarts - and I suspect that Fudge's majorities were quite narrow, in spite of whatever mental influence and suggestion Voldemort brought to bear on the Wizengamot elders, the support of the Daily Prophet, and whatever money and threats Lucius Malfoy was spreading around. Why else did Fudge proceed so slowly and cautiously? He had to win the other factions over each time, to bribe or persuade them to support him. Even after five years in office, his own personal faction was tiny (only six voted to find Harry guilty) and probably restricted to those members who were Ministry officials like Dolores Umbridge.

It was a different Wizengamot which Araminta Meliflua (an aunt of Sirius Black) had tried to bully into declaring Muggle-hunting legal. Since then the mood must have softened. The first Voldemort war probably removed the more extreme of the pure-blood faction from the Wizengamot (since they were fighting on the other side) and the reaction against Crouch that followed it saw off another tyrannical threat. I have a strong suspicion that Millicent Bagnold probably stayed on as Minister just long enough until, with defections and retirements, Crouch's faction fell below the critical level for her to be sure that he wouldn't succeed her as Minister of Magic.

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And that's the end!