Congratulations, my dear nephew, on your promotion to a teenage subject! Your last job with a politician didn’t half use your talents. (BTW, let’s just forget the unfortunate incident at the end of the last big human war. I rather lost my head, I’m afraid. Water under the bridge, what?)

Sorry I haven’t kept up our correspondence. Since my Degradation to the Lowest Order of Culture a few years ago I’ve hardly had a moment to catch my breath, as it were.

The fact is, I need your help. This Harry Potter business has rather blown up in our faces. The Rowling woman seemed harmless enough when we approved her first book—magic broomsticks, exploding candy, comic ghosts. It worked right in with our policy of making the humans think that witches and such are silly, cartoonish inventions to frighten and entertain children.

However, things have gone badly awry, and I’m afraid the responsibility is being laid—quite unfairly—at my door. First, children and young people whom we had conditioned to spend endless hours gazing hypnotically into glowing screens, pushing buttons without any real enjoyment, have discovered reading for pleasure. Why, I have a report here of a teenage boy actually sitting in front of his computer reading in the light of the screen! This particular boy not only read all the HP books but went on to read other books after that. He discovered that hours which might have been passed in boredom, complaining, or genuine nastiness become an actual pleasure if only he had a book with him. And he wasn’t even reading to impress! Disaster!

But this is only the beginning. The values in these books are far from what we could wish. The books have become more and more preoccupied with Real Evil, a subject we must not allow the mortals to contemplate any more than can be helped. Our Father Below does not care to have these pathetic creatures thinking of him at all—indeed, we are none of us any of their business. If they care to exorcise ridiculous old crones with cauldrons and black hats, or better yet, ostracize powerful older women who don’t quite fit into their little group, that’s all to the good, but the Rowling woman has really started stepping on our toes.

Harry Potter and his friends are called upon to be loyal, courageous, loving, and discerning. The villains in these books desire power for its own sake, and are motivated by a need to acquire, dominate, terrorize, and destroy. In short, she denigrates our most cherished values. Witches and warlocks are all very well when they are merely sending out owl posts or making automobiles fly, but this really is too close for comfort.

This is where you come in. I’m putting my energies now into a movement decrying these books as evil. Religious fundamentalists, who often can be counted on for energetic "witch-hunting" of various types, are our mainstay here. You can imagine the argument we are making: these books are about witchcraft; ergo, they are bad for children. The books are being banned from classrooms at Christian schools, and children who have them in their backpacks or wear "Gryffindor" t-shirts are being bullied and teased. It’s quite a success.

You may rightly think that even very young humans understand the concept of genre, and can recognize fantasy when they read it, and thus see that the Harry Potter books are not really "about" witchcraft at all, but about friendship, moral courage, and loyalty. However, literalism really is one of our best weapons, and it is working wonders at the moment., especially where the Bible is concerned. We’ve been able to use what is the Enemy’s best weapon to work wonders on our side by teaching them proper attitudes toward "the good book." Reading only the surface, taking things at face value—it’s amazing what the humans can be induced to do, especially if such reading preserves their own interests or a comfortable status quo. The Bible supported slavery and is currently doing much to keep women in their place, at least in some churches. But remember: if the humans really learn to read properly, all is lost.

So, if you could get your subject to lead a movement in his school against the Harry Potter books, arguing that they lead children to want to study witchcraft and become witches, and substitute perhaps some insipid "Christian" literature about "nice" people doing "nice" things, this would be a real help to me.

Good luck with your first teenager. Here’s a hint: the best weapon you’ve got is the fact that most adult humans assume that teenagers are pretty much already on our side, just because they are young and full of hormones. (Actually, most of them are a lot closer to the Enemy than the grown-ups in their lives, but that’s another subject.)

Well—I must go. Old Hammerslime is being degraded to Master of Culture for his part in the revival of "reality" television.

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