Jobs These Nine “Harry Potter” Characters Would Have If They Were Muggles

Other than the massive war that totally ruins their final year of study, and the fact that exams are often interrupted by a serial murderer trying to kill them all, the kids of Hogwarts actually have it pretty sweet in terms of their futures. When someone asks them what they want to do after they finish school, they can just say, “A wizard, obviously,” without their Dad being like, “Stop being such a smart-ass, Charlotte, and also, you’re grounded. Forever.” (Hypothetically.)

In the Muggle world, they all would’ve had to attend boring career fairs and listened to their parents extol the virtues of a law degree (mainly money) to them for the entirety of high school (Also hypothetically. Hi, Dad! I write for a Harry Potter website now; oh, snap, vindicated!).

So if the characters of Harry Potter had been forced to get Muggle jobs, here’s where we think they would’ve ended up.

1. HARRY POTTER

If Hagrid had never shown up to do this kid a solid and tell him about Hogwarts, and poor Harry had spent the rest of adolescence trying to restrain himself from killing his uncle and making it look like an accident, you can bet he would’ve spent the year after his 18th birthday drunk in Greece.

When he gets back, however, Harry wants to make sure his crappy upbringing – which was somehow never intervened in by social workers (go figure) – doesn’t happen to any more kids than it has to. He trains as a teacher and goes to work in an inner-city school, before remembering how much he hated school and resents having to follow the rules that keep the kids he teaches entrenched in the same bad situations.

Instead, he pours his inheritance from his parents into starting a youth center where kids can hang out after school and talk to him about their problems. His wife Ginny, a journalist, pretends to be annoyed when Harry lets random teenagers crash on their couch on the odd night but secretly loves it. She is genuinely annoyed when their probation officers show up at the house, though.

Harry plays on a weekend baseball league with his best friend from high school, Ron Weasley, who has leveraged his strategic abilities as a college chess champion (I never said the two of them were popular) into a career in management consulting. Their baseball career involves about 10% baseball, 30% trash-talking the opposition, and 60% deciding they’ve earned a beer after all that exercise and heading to the pub. Both of them feel like things turned out pretty well, all things considered.

2. and 3. FRED AND GEORGE WEASLEY

If there’s anything the showbiz world loves more than youth, it’s twins – Mary-Kate and Ashley, that time Lindsay Lohan played two people in The Parent Trap… actually, that’s all I can think of. Anyway, Fred and George Weasley get expelled from school at age 16 for the video they broadcast, entirely without authorization, in a full school assembly, and go on to enormously popular and highly controversial careers in stand-up comedy.

A combination of Russell Brand and Noel Fielding with a side-helping of Jackass, the pair holds records the world over for being fired from more radio hosting jobs than any comedians ever while somehow (miraculously) never having been charged with a crime.

Mrs. Weasley pretends to be embarrassed a lot by their antics, but they always get her back on-side by taking her as their date to the Emmys every couple of years so that she gets to brag about it to the neighbors.

Also, there is no joke here about Fred dying in a horrible partying-related accident because I still can’t even deal with that, so let’s just say for the record that he and George both live long and happy lives married to exceptionally well-humored supermodels, okay?

4. HERMIONE GRANGER

Hermione is brilliant enough to be recruited by the government into a role so shady that she has to tell people she works in “agriculture” and read enough brochures about cattle farming to sound convincing.

Her promising career as a spook, however, is cut short because she keeps showing up in the photographs her agency takes of the participants in protest marches for various causes.

After several warnings from her job, her high-profile firing (complete with freedom of assembly Supreme Court case) leads her to a distinguished role as a Professor of Politics and Gender Studies at a top university. There, she participates in campus groups for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, and justice for Palestine with a level of fervor and enthusiasm that disturbs even the most progressive of students.

She is very active on Tumblr.

5. DOLORES UMBRIDGE

The shortest-lived Republican Presidential candidate in history, Umbridge’s manifesto prompts an uncomfortable-looking Sarah Palin to label her views “a bit far-fetched” and leads to an investigation of her possible connections to hate groups, though no charges are ever laid. Naturally, rather than fading from public life, she finds an enormous fanbase as a pundit on Fox News, where she specializes in education policy and racism.

You wish this were implausible.

6. LUNA LOVEGOOD

Luna grows up with a fervent belief that no one ever landed on the Moon, and this, combined with the passionate love of science she develops in high school, positions her perfectly for a career as an eccentric naturalist, documentary maker, and author who is referred to in articles as “the weird David Attenborough.” The films she makes documenting her quests to find creatures that no one else believes exist are critically acclaimed and win numerous awards, though that’s not why she does it.

The truth is that Luna really genuinely believes she’s going to be the one to find the abominable snowman, and she wants a film crew along for the ride when she does.

Her red carpet fashion at documentary film awards have spawned several websites and a book, none of which have managed to shed any light on the matter.

7. REMUS LUPIN

Lupin is a librarian, the awesome sort who arranges for ukulele gigs and zine fests among the stacks, and runs English-language workshops for new immigrants in the study rooms. He collects vinyl, plays the bass guitar very badly, and has equity in a hole-in-the-wall artisan coffee and chocolate shop.

He is worried that at his age this is all starting to look a bit sad, but then he swings by the shop for some chocolate and goes to browse for second-hand records and remembers he’s actually a badass who doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

He’s always had a bit of a strange penchant for werewolf movies.

8. DRACO MALFOY

Draco Malfoy was slated to follow his father into politics, and he definitely fancied the idea of “loads of power,” but then he learned about the part where you have to engage with your constituents (i.e., poor people) and went off it pretty quickly.

He winds up in the perfect role for someone who loves money and has a touch of the psychopath about him: investment banking. When people warn him that his boss Tom Riddle has – possibly literally – no soul, Draco merely feels jealous and wonders how he did it.

For what it’s worth, one stint in rehab, the global financial crisis, and the birth of his first child later, Malfoy decides he’s “too old for this s***” and spends his squillions (whatever’s left over after keeping himself in Armani suits and trinkets, that is) as an angel investor in start-up enterprises that amuse him. To his disgust, it makes him rather happy.

Tom Riddle vanishes on an ill-fated stag weekend in Albania and has never been heard from since.

9. ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

Look, sometimes you just can’t, even with the magic of imagination, consider a character any differently than the way they’re portrayed in the books. And the thought of Dumbledore tucking his beard into his chinos and going to work in an office sort of fills me with dread (mostly for his coworkers because if there was ever someone who wasn’t cut out for sane water-cooler conversation, it’d be Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore).

So let’s be real: Dumbledore in Muggle life makes a long, distinguished, and globally beloved career out of playing wizards on film, with a sideline in using his fame to advocate for LGBTQ rights.

Yes, what I’m saying is that Albus Dumbledore’s Muggle job is essentially “Sir Ian McKellen.” Deal with it.

Source: BuzzFeed Celeb