Fantastic Beasts: Muggles and Merpeople

Last week, Scribble reported on a Niffler incident in Virginia Beach. While it might just appear as a simple Muggle inconvenience, the event has witches and wizards across the globe concerned that the International Statute of Secrecy may be on the verge of breaking down. Some would rejoice, but seeing as the reality of magic hasn’t been a comprehension for Muggles in hundreds of years, it has the majority of the wizarding community a little anxious, especially with the Muggle film adaptation of Newt Scamander’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them fast approaching.

Arabella Featherman reporting to you live from Athens, Greece, where another creature incident has just occurred. With the filming for Fantastic Beasts on the rise, Muggle and magical leaders from all corners of the world met and decided it would be virtually impossible to keep magic a complete secret, but for the most part, the majority of the Muggle population believed magic to be just that – magic, make-believe, fiction. In an effort to keep with that mentality, it was agreed upon that those involved with the movies were granted knowledge of the various magical creatures but were sworn to silence and that after the movies were finished, Memory Charms would be administered.

But here in Greece, things are already deviating from that plan. With merpeople being one of the most well-known beasts, they were instantly chosen to play a part in the films. A liaison was sent from the Greek Ministry of Magic to meet with the merpeople regarding their appearance on screen. Since merpeople have varying traits depending on where in the ocean they hail from, the liaison told filmmakers there should be more than one kind of merperson shown. This liaison (who still refuses to share his name) had merpeople come together, here in Greece (seeing as Greece is the birthplace of mermaids, or sirens), from all around the world.

What he didn’t count on was that as soon as the various merpeople cultures came into contact with one another, they began to clash. For two days now, bodies of merpeople have been washing up on shore, and hundreds of delegates from the Greek Ministry of Magic have had to perform Memory Charms on the Greek Muggles. The Scottish and Irish merpeople have been the worst culprits from what I’m told, and Ministry officials, including the brilliant liaison, are in the process of urging diplomacy among the merpeople. They are trying to section off the seafloor for the representatives of each group to have an area to themselves, with the Greek community of merpeople in charge, seeing as it is their homeland. Even as you look out now across the water, you can see the unrest among the waves.

Let’s hope this gets settled before filming begins.