This entry is inspired by this blog post by John Finnemore, who writes very funny things and is also the man in this photo of him. If you’re feeling whimsical – of course you are – see if you can find the nuggets of truth buried in the nonsense.
Sir Isaac Newton served as Divination Teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1691 until 1726.
Isaac was adopted as infant in 1454 after he fell out of a tree and landed on the head of unsuspecting Mr. Newton – who, alas, was not a genius and therefore failed to learn anything important from the incident.
Isaac’s magical abilities were discovered eight years later when, on learning that his younger sister Figarella had stolen his afternoon snack, he threw a tantrum and transfigured her instantly into a fruit-filled cookie. Although she returned to her usual form several hours later, she was left with a debilitating passion for baking that consumed her for the rest of her life. In fact, although any sibling of Isaac’s would have struggled to emerge from the shadow of his genius, Fig Newton went on to achieve some measure of success in her own right.
As he matured, Iz the Wiz (as he was known at school) grew out of being an irritable, petulant child and became an irritable, petulant teenager instead. He was often at odds with his classmate and rival, Robert “Fish” Hooke, the LSD enthusiast and outer space artist. On one memorable occasion, Fish tried to convince his peers that all life on Earth was made of tiny blobs called “cells,” so named because he felt that they resembled the rooms of a house. Don’t do drugs.
After graduation, Iz and Fish got into such a terrible argument that Iz refused to write the second half of a book had been working on. Iz’s friend Ed worked for the book’s publisher, had read the first half – which ended on a nasty cliffhanger – and was desperate for the ending.
Even worse, Ed learned that the publisher couldn’t afford to print Iz’s book anymore. As evidence of the humbling truth that in business sometimes you just get unlucky, the publisher had just radically over-invested in the first run of a book called A History of Fishes – a complete flop that no one could have predicted.
In the end, Iz agreed to finish the book as long as Ed agreed to pay for its publication. Ed did so eagerly, though historians now believe that his excitement to finally read the ending was dampened some few months later when his superiors at the publisher informed him that, given the firm’s dire financial position, they had decided to pay him his salary for that year in leftover copies of A History of Fishes. The whole incident seemed a little too cute for Ed, who suspected a conspiracy and held a grudge against Fish Hooke for the rest of his life.
These incidents aside, Iz the Wiz is remembered primarily for a lifetime of scholarship in the fields of alchemy and astrology and especially for his quest to create a philosopher’s stone. Some historians now believe that he found it, citing as evidence the fact that he was 237 years old when he took his teaching post at Hogwarts. Yet as of this writing, no one has actually looked inside his casket in Westminster Abbey, so the mystery continues.
Digital Treehouse 