The Impact of a Post-9/11 World on the Wizarding World
I think most discussions of Harry Potter and 9/11 get stuck at a not very useful question: "why didn't the wizards stop 9/11?" Of course, the wizarding world has a long history of ignoring genocide, atrocities, and mass violence in the human world. One of the clearest themes of the books is that any group with such immense power and privilege-- in this case, the ability to warp reality itself-- is as a community necessarily going to ignore the horrors of other groups as long as they remain isolated.
Now, wizards are so isolated that many barely know about the basic workings and history of the muggle world. Ostensible muggle experts struggle to understand even rubber duckies. We can assume that a great number of wizards were likely not even aware that 9/11 happened at all. Muggle-borns would of course be aware, but it would be difficult for them to move their fellow wizards to care; after all, muggles are killing each other all the time.
So one might assume that 9/11 had very little effect on the wizarding world at large-- but I would suggest this is an inaccurate assumption. 9/11 didn't occur in isolation. I'm going to suggest 3 avenues by which 9/11 should have radically altered the wizarding world, to the point where we must consider the world we see in The Cursed Child so terrible unlikely that either it must not be counted as canon or must have occurred in a universe with no 9/11 (and what could result in such a universe? We'll get to it in the final section!)
(N.B. I do not think any of this breaks rule 2: I am speaking of things that occurred after 9/11, but I am not making kind of ethical or political evaluation concerning whether those things are good or bad, and I am only discussing in the broader context of how "how did 9/11 affect the world of Harry Potter," a question centered on an event that this sub has decided is pre-modern)
I. The Surveillance State
With 9/11 came the introduction of the PATRIOT ACT, the topic it hand is the effects of 9/11, not the goodness or badness of particular political policies that we must acknowledge if we are to have any kind of coherent discussion at all), the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, mass wiretapping, immense records of internet activity, etc etc. 9/11 came at just the time when technology began to allow governments to hyper-surveil their citizens and gave such governments just the cause to justify such surveillance to said citizens.
We know that governments were previously vaguely aware of wizards, and that federal governments had points of contact with wizarding governments, but the books suggest that information exchange was very minor, and that wizarding governments didn't hold muggle governments in sufficient esteem to bring them significantly into the great masquerade.
With the rise of the Surveillance State, muggle governments no longer need cooperation in this area.
IA. Major governments begin collecting data on wizards at large
Wizards do not care to understand modern technology. They don't bother with it. They've created a reactionary culture built on an understanding of muggle inferiority several centuries out of date. This is a great weakness here as it is unlikely that wizards would know that intelligence agencies were gathering data on them until it was too late, until muggle governments had exponentially expanded their understanding of the wizarding world.
IB. Major governments begin recruiting wizards
At a certain point, intelligence agencies will have sufficient understanding of wizardry at large and will have sufficient dirt on many wizards in particular that they may begin forcibly recruiting wizards as assets.
This would result in another great leap forward in understanding of the wizarding world-- intelligence agencies would likely begin to gather solid histories of wizardry as well a working conceptual foundation of magic. Once that is accomplished, muggle scientists could begin exploring the boundaries of technology and magic.
Circle back and combine that understanding with an increasing number of turned assets, and you now have muggle governments asserting real influence over wizard governments. The CIA has the Minister of Magic's dirty laundry, and it knows how to weaponize that against him.
II. The War on Terror
A coalition of nations now begins to wage war in the Middle East. Note that "war" in the aftermath of 9/11 includes things like declarations of no-fly zones, assassinations, troop movements into territories not officially at war, proxy-wars, etc etc.
Given the new relationship between Muggle and Wizard governments, how would the wizarding world be involved in the War on Terror?
IIA. Torture
Almost immediately, intelligence agencies would begin using their assets for the purposes of torture. Two of the three Unforgiveable Curses would be used to gather intelligence from muggle prisoners.
IIB. Drones
In the longterm, however, muggle governments (and their defense contractors) would likely seek ways to weaponize wizardry. We know that magic can be used to enchant muggle technology like cars and busses; why not planes? Muggle governments and contractors would likely research ways to use magic to wage war without risking the lives of soldiers (and, by removing the trigger finger from the immediacy of the battlefield, making it psychologically easier for soldiers to kill others).
The development of this magic-technology would, of course, take many years, and so we might not expect to see mass drone usage until the 2010s.
IIC. The War on Wizards
But the biggest effect overall would be the change in perception of the wizarding world.
The War on Terror was not a war targeted at any one nation, but a concept.
At times, violent conflict was begun not even after the act of a terrorists, but on suspicion that a country or organization might have the resources to carry out a terrorist attack in the future.
If the Powers that Be elected to attack Iraq, how much more would they be likely to attack the Wizarding World, which had itself carried out terrorist attacks upon muggles in the 1990s?
You may object, of course, that one small subsection of the Wizarding World carried out those attacks-- but would Muggle Governments care?
The nebulousness of the war on terror, the ease by which an government could declare a (relatively) minor violent act without outright declaring war on an area would also mean that a government could easily attack any areas they believed to hold wizards they viewed as a threat without ever breaking the masquerade and revealing wizards to the world.
The War on Terror would operate also as a shadow War on Magic.
III. Revolutions in the Wizarding World
Let's look at the event from the other direction.
After 9/11, a few muggleborn wizards learn of the tragedy, while most continue to ignore the muggle world.
An increasingly large number of wizards are turned by muggle governments, and used as assets.
Eventually, muggle governments make clear that any wizards who do not submit to muggle authority are enemies of the state, and are hunted down by the forces of both technology and magic in the War On Magic.
This is a confrontation unlike any other in modern wizarding history. Muggles have never before been a threat, and so there is no useful antecedent to this conflict. That means things will likely go bad for the wizards, but also that, with this new paradigm, massive change may come about in their culture.
IIIA. The infiltration of Human Institutions
Wizards would likely begin attempting to infiltrate muggle governments, militaries, and intelligence agencies. Their success is likely mixed at best; on the one hand, magic allows them to gather information from prisoners easily, force people to do their will, and imitate the appearance of anyone. However, again, these are people whose muggle experts struggle with the concept of a rubber duck.
Muggleborns would make better agents-- but they would also be the first to be turned by human agencies.
It would be become clear that the wizarding world would need to change if it was going to survive.
IIIB. Turning to the Muggle World
Wizards would likely begin to actually study the Muggle world and, as time in the War on Magic continued on, begin building a more resilient Wizarding World, a society that was prepared to engage with the wizarding world. Things like "basic math and science" might begin to be taught in schools. Computers and phones might begin to appear in wizard homes. And indeed, this confrontation with new ideas, ways of seeing reality, data about the universe, and cultural phenomenon would likely lead to new innovations in magic. If magic warps reality, a better understanding of that reality likely enhances that magic.
The wizarding world of the events in the Harry Potter books is a very stagnant place in every way; real revolutions in culture and magic may finally begin to occur. Of course, that may also lead to some problems.
IIIC. Wizarding Radicalization
As the internet becomes common in the wizarding world, so too will its algorithmic effects.
Death Eater fandoms may begin to spring up; neo-death eaters might begin to gather and respond not only to Muggle aggression but to what they see as ineffective wizarding governments and communities. Accelerationist death eaters might plot terrorist attacks on wizards, may attempt to force wizarding society to the crumbling point, so that more moderate wizards would be willing to tie their wands into a bundle with the death eaters, which is to say, embrace wizarding fascism. These Death Eaters would claim to be protecting a traditional way of wizarding life against the forces of the muggles.
Other wizards would be exposed to muggle artists, political thinkers, and philosophers for the first time. Some wizards would read Marx, or Kropotkin, or other radical writers and begin to think: is it just that I, with all this power to bring about greater equality in the world, ignore the material conditions of so much of that world? Could we not use our magic to bring about a more equitable world for all? And why, of all the muggle concepts to retain, did we retain ideas like capitalism, banking, servitude, and hierarchy? Should we not change our society, and then work to change the world?
Of these two polls, the Death Eaters would likely see far, far greater success. The wizarding world would be changing at a rapid pace. 300 year old wizards would, in their eyes, overnight be introduced to iPhones, to drone strikes, to the possibility that their way of life might be over. They would see the younger wizards trying to further change that society, and they would see the wizards claiming to preserve that society. They would side, as moderates throughout history often have, with the reactionaries claiming to be fonts of Tradition.
Wizarding governments would also likely flirt with or attempt to weaponize these neo-Death Eaters, as they would seem a useful tool in the struggle against their muggle enemies. This would legitimize this faction further.
Muggle governments too would be united with Wizarding governments in their opposition to Wizard Leftists; in the long term, the creation of a post-scarcity society threatens both their ways of life, and in the short term, both would be served by protecting the secrecy of the wizarding world, which Wizard Leftists would threaten to end.
IV. 2017: the Nonsense World of the Cursed Child
By 2017, the wizarding world should be devastated. After 16 years of war, a good chunk of the populace should be wiped out. Those that remain should be far more integrated with the muggle world than we see in the play. Further, they should be radically polarized.
It is unthinkable that Hermione, a muggleborn with a lifelong history of activism which disrupted hierarchies in the wizarding world, could have ever attained the position of Minister of Magic. By this stage, the overton window of the Wizarding World would have been shifted drastically right. Centrists would have mobilized to defeat Hermione in Wizarding Primaries.
Harry's position is also unrealistic. If he had not been turned by human agencies, he himself would likely become an important agent infiltrating the human world, given his experience in that world. If he remained a domestic cop, as the influence of the neo-Death Eaters grew in his government and in the institution of policing, he might be fired, or even killed. He could not conceivably rise in the ranks of the ministry given his history and all that he symbolizes.
Ron could still probably run his shop or whatever it was that he was doing?
But let's say it is canon. Let's say that The Cursed Child really is the 2017 of the Wizarding World. That must mean one thing:
IVA. In Harry Potter**, 9/11 NEVER HAPPENED**
But how? Why? Why this one atrocity avoided, when so many others still occurred?
The first possibility one might consider is that a wizard was on one of the flights, and acted in self-defense. But wizards rarely fly commercial airlines, and so all flights having wizards on board would be extremely unlikely.
The second is that there were wizards acting in self defense at the targets-- a wizard being in the World Trade Center and in the Pentagon is possible. But still, if planes were hijacked for an attempted terrorist attack, many of the ripple effects previously discussed would still occur. A hijacking on that scale with that many possible deaths would still be the biggest news story of the year, would still be sufficient to justify surveillance and war.
We have to assume that the hijackings never happened.
Now, all kinds of things could have shifted history so that they never happened. For the purposes of this thought exercise, let's try to get things down to one single change, one single shift that would reshape the political landscape of 2001 significantly enough that we can assume intelligence agencies would have acted differently, and might have prevented the plot before it could have advanced sufficiently to make the news upon termination.
And since so much could have gone down between Deathly Hallows and The Cursed Child that we don't know, let's try to keep things restricted to time close to the events of the last novel, in 1998.
What was the big story of 1998 that had repercussions for the Democratic party and thus, ultimately, the shape of the subsequent election?
That's right, the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Now, the affair was made public in January, long before the end of the novel in May-- but the impeachment trial did not occur until December. That gives us a window.
Now, let me ask you-- if you are a child of the 90s (saturated in muggle culture), and you've just been through the worst experience of your life, but you finally triumphed, you made it to the other side, and now you just need to celebrate-- what are you going to do next?
That's right. You're going to Disney World!!
It would be extremely safe to assume that Harry, Ron, and Hermione went to Disney World after the events of the novel-- and it would be extremely safe to assume that Ron fucked something up. And we, given the terms we've laid out so far, know that something big must have happened during this window, something so huge that it changed the political landscape.
I think, given all this, it is safe to assume that Ron accidentally caused some kind of natural disaster in Disney World. Clinton acted swiftly, garnering good will and making an impeachment a politically disastrous idea. Riding this wave of popularity, his chosen successor (possibly Gore, possibly not) easily won Florida, hanging chads or no.
With different staff in the CIA and FBI, the communication problems that prevented the agencies from working together to piece together the plot and prevent it simply did not occur. 9/11 was prevented, and The Cursed Child is able to occur as written.
Credited to GandalfTheChill
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