July 15th, 2004 - Bureaucracy

 

Dear Journal,

I will get right to the point: Idiotic brainless bureaucratic dunderheads!  "It's easy as first-year transfiguration", she said. Darn stupid empty-headed woman!  That Apparition Department secretary has been working at the Ministry for far too long if you ask me! I will not believe she is not remotely associated with at least one Longbottom!  What's more, I would bet my cauldron she answers hundreds of demands such as mine and always "forgets" to fill us in on the needed procedures before we even attempt to file a claim!  The forms already are tedious enough, I'm sure I'm not the only one who could use a bureaucratic-non-sense translator next to me when I do.  There is always something wrong or missing, and not only with this lady!  

The fact is that I, as each year, have to fill-in my apparition license demand before it expires at the end of this month.  It is a measure of "control" taken by our dear Ministry of Magic to make sure young people do not attempt it without proper training. Have they never met the Weasley twins? Got around their precious law when it was still freshly hatched from their certainly overloaded brains they certainly did! Of course thanks to those kind of illegal teenage pranks, the requirements are even more severe as of this year.  (Note to myself - Strangle Molly when you next see her)

Anyhow, again this year someone had to justify his job by changing not only the zones of apparition but also the license's procedures.  First of all, those twits at the Ministry change the apparition license's vicinity each darn year!  One year Hogwarts is considered to belong to one part of the land while the next it belongs to another. They even hire someone to actually change the regional indications of each vicinity. Yes, did I say "justifying their jobs" or what!! I reckon the guy who does it every year is the Ministry's dumb cousin. And dumber than dumb he must be to not have been able to make it into the Ministry directly!

Hence, us at Hogwarts have to change our license every year or so in order to meet with the Ministry's approval of bureaucratic accuracy. Ha! Yet again what an ironic turn of phrase!  If there is but one thing not accurate and precise in the world, it has to be governmental institutions. Their neatness amounts to as much as Filch's slovenliness, and their degree of astuteness must barely equal that of both Goyle and Crabbe! And I'm being generous!  I refuse to believe they are even aware of their imbecilic endeavours or else they would have longed barricaded themselves and marked their doors with red crosses so as to not spread the insanity further.  But no, they are still pestering us with their licenses and procedures and claims and new rules.  And this year, they changed not only the territorial bounds but the requirements for getting said license as well: apart from filling-in a 5pages long form, you also have to provide tones of papers proving your identity, occupation, revenue, and what kind of wand you own (as if they didn't know from the tracking device they've put on our wands before the end of the war), and then, you must use a crest (I had mine but lots of people did not use crests anymore and had to have one made), and finally, as if it were not enough, you have to find a witness to vouch for the authenticity of the above.

When are they ever going to ask me whether I wear black or white underwear?!  Maybe I should imply it next time I talk to the Apparition Department secretary, might at least get her off my case for good.  She'll deliver the information all at once to make sure I don't floo again. Or maybe I should imply that next time she drinks water she should be careful of what her glass may contain... would get me in trouble, but the look on her face would be priceless!  

No really, she deserves it. Her and her goody-goody unnerving high-pitched voice proffering niceties as if she actually cared, and then leave me off with inexact information.  Thanks to her incompetence, I now have to pay myself a trip to the Ministry itself to solve the situation.  My form was rejected, all wrong and if I don't go by tomorrow, I won't be able to get my license for a whole month as a penalty.  All because of one darn paper I did not know I should have in my possession nor that I was obliged to do anything about it.  And believe me, it is not because the lady did not mention it.  I asked her about it and told me it had automatically been sent for me to the right department, and should not worry about it anymore or whatever referred to it on the claim. Right!  The "right department" flooed me this morning and guess what?  I DO need the paper to fill-in yet another form which was unknowingly NOT included in the first 5pages long form I first received!  Do not ask me why, but these kind of bureaucratic elisions always happen to me!  Not to McGonagall, not to Albus, not even unlucky to Lupin, ME!  I should have followed my gut instincts when I considered some parts of the form which I couldn't fill in thanks to the missing paper.  But the lady said I didn't have to after all.  How come such incompetents work for the Ministry!?  I know my standards are sky-high in Potions, but in such cases, all I wish for is to have all the papers in my possession. Nothing more.  But I guess God, even in his greatness, cannot go against the asininity of governmental institutions!  No! Not even God!

Therefore, I shall leave you here today.  I have still some reading to do, and look for all the papers I can think of which could relate to my apparition license request tomorrow. I do not want to take any chances of having to apparate back here looking for yet another of paper thanks to their idiotic omissions!  

Severus