Editor's Preface
You are holding in your hands a collection of notes my mother began writing during the summer of 1996, immediately following the Battle at the Department of Mysteries. In these, she briefly outlines her life story, and the role she had in the Second War against Voldemort.
When I happened upon these papers, I was seventeen and cleaning out my parents' things for the very first time. They were stuffed in the very bottom of a box, hidden underneath several ratty, wool jumpers.
I could only assume my mother had never intended on letting anyone read them (as she states in the introduction note, which in itself is a contradiction of sorts), but there were still calls for first-hand accounts from the war, and I knew that these papers deserved to be read by someone, so I called a small wizarding publication house, and within the year, my mother's words were out there for massive consumption.
What I did not count on was the overwhelming reaction and universal acclaim that this autobiography would garner. If you are reading this editor's preface for the tenth anniversary edition of this book, chances are you are a Hogwarts student assigned to read this for History of Magic. Or maybe you decided to buy a new copy because you wore your old one out. Or maybe you just bought this book because it seemed thick enough to prop up your broken desk.
Whichever kind of reader you are, I appreciate you, and I thank you. I thank you for helping to keep some part of my mother alive.
And now for a word of warning: My mother was not a writer. She often wrote things whenever she felt like it, and in whatever form she felt like using, and sometimes she wrote in cursive and sometimes she wrote in print and sometimes she wrote poetry and sometimes she wrote prose and sometimes she did nothing more than make lists.
When I felt it best suited the story, I injected a word of explanation, but, for the most part, I've left these 'notes' – and I continue to call them that, for lack of anything else – relatively unscathed.
I've also assembled these notes in the order that I believe they are best read, though there is no way of telling when my mother wrote them, though she did (thankfully) title each one. In them, you will read about my mother's relationships with some of the most famous wizards of our time, including Kingsley Shacklebolt, Albus Dumbledore, and even Harry Potter. Through them, you will gather a picture of my mother as a young woman, an Auror, and a Metamorphmagus.
And on a final note, I will address Witch Weekly's claim that this is "the most heart-wrenching autobiography since Hairy Snout, Human Heart."
Though there will be much talk of werewolves and werewolf rights later in this text, as my father, my mother's husband, was a werewolf, and in fact was the first werewolf to be awarded an Order of Merlin, which he received posthumously for his heroic actions in the Battle at Hogwarts, I do not want this to be thought of as a 'werewolf text.'
I want the difficulties my parents faced to be taken seriously, of course, and my father was one of the most active lobbyists of werewolf rights, but I want this to be, first and foremost, an account of the war.
And also, in the writings of my father, he regularly called Hairy Snout, Human Heart, "a load of tosh" and several other, much-less-nice things.
So with that in mind, reader, I present to you my mother's Magnum Opus. I hope that you get something out of it, and I would like to think that my mother would understand why I had it published.
- TR Lupin
No comments:
Post a Comment