Hogwarts IT Tumblr Should Be Turned Into a Half-Hour NBC Comedy Series
Someone on Tumblr has been writing a fictional account of what it would be like if you were the IT guy at Hogwarts. It should be made into a comedy series immediately.
Radio Times brought the Tumblr, called “The Setup Wizard,” to my attention. Now you may be wondering, “Why would Hogwarts have an IT guy? Technology isn’t used there.” I’ll allow the tumblr author to explain:
Hello, my name is Jonathan Dart and, as of today, I am officially the IT guy at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. You read that correctly. It took them until 2016, but both students and staff alike have finally caved and demanded that their cell phones work on school grounds, and with that request they had to find a “muggle” (a term I’m quickly learning to detest) to install wifi and maintain any technology that functions on school grounds.
Also, Jonathan is from “the other side of the pond” and even name checks the North American wizard school Ilvermorny while discussing hiring a witch assistant named Emily Vargo. But as you can imagine, he already wonders what the hell he was thinking and has come up against a few obstacles. “Three Broomsticks Inn does not take debit cards, and Butterbeer does not actually get you shitfaced,” he writes. And he was amazed as a student did some simple magic on an iPod but saw that student wound up in the hospital wing. He was, however, relieved at having found his server room in the maze that is Hogwarts castle until he found out about the Room of Requirement:
Turns out the damn room is magical (of course it is) and was only acting as a server room because that’s what I desperately needed it to be. This is great until some kid walks past who desperately needs a toilet and POOF my servers disappear, the signal goes down, and a john takes their place.
He notes Muggle-born Billy Broadview is busy “developing an app to recognized Bertie Botts flavors based on color and pattern.” Sadly, it’s not working so well just yet. Meanwhile, Jonathan hopes for a wizard Google search because he has some burning questions he (and I, for that matter) need answered like, “Is there a birth control spell? A school with this many young teens who are, truth be told, poorly supervised, and I’ve yet to hear of a single pregnancy scare.”
He’s also been having trouble with some of the students considering most of them don’t understand how technology works. After some issues getting into the Slytherin common room, he impressed them with the existence of Spotify but after being the victim of a spell which stuck his feet to the floor:
It took all of 2 days for them to quickly realize I literally have a switch that shuts off all the wifi access to the entire school. I don’t need forbidden curses. I have more power than any witch or wizard at this school could ever possibly imagine.
With Marvel Entertainment and DC Entertainment working on workplace comedies, Damage Control and Powerless respectively, I see no reason a Wizarding World comedy couldn’t fit right in. I’m not sure J.K. Rowling would go for it but if she does, she should definitely hire the tumblr author’s as writers. I’d watch the hell out of it.
As an aside, and because I’m an uber-nerd, I found it interesting Jonathan makes mention of the Headmaster at Hogwarts. We all know after Dumbledore’s tenure Minerva McGonagall took over as Headmistress. Details of her complete tenure are sketchy, putting her last year anywhere between 2008-2017.
In 2007, Rowling had said that 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts (which was May 1998) the school was being run by someone else as “McGonagall was really getting on a bit.” Harry Potter’s son, James S. Potter had his first day at Hogwarts on September 1, 2015 while Albus Severus Potter, the second child, started in 2017 which would be 19 years after the battle. Could the new Headmaster’s name be revealed in the upcoming stage show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child set to debut July 31st 2016?
I digress. Go follow “The Setup Wizard” on Tumblr, you won’t regret it.