Remember that time there was an indisputably dirty headline in a newspaper in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and none of our dumb baby brains noticed it? To be fair, we were all taken aback by the shock of Pubescent Harry being replaced by Angst Pubescent Harry, who suddenly had a short haircut and more #rage than there is water in the Lake on Hogwarts grounds. But while we were distracted by that and the onslaught of dementors chilling in Privet Drive, we missed a very important, extremely hilarious detail: the newspaper clutches in Harry's angsty teenage hands has a headline that says Balls Judged 'Too Big,' with the rest of the headline cut off. In the words of Michael Scott, "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID."
The hilarity was brought to the internet's attention by Tara Block of POPSUGAR, whose eagle eyes are bringing the internet some much needed shenanigans in the tense week leading up tot the election. TO BE FAIR, if you continue to squint, it is clearly an article about tennis balls — there's a picture of a tennis ball to the right of the text — but to be less fair, this was a rather ~convenient~ angle for them to shoot the headline from. And given the fact that literally every single Daily Prophet used in the movie was written with ridiculously attentive detail down to the very last column, it seems like it would be a little too hard for them to let something like this happen by accident, y'all.
Actually, I have a theory about why this headline existed. Muggleborns like Hermione get The Daily Prophet all the time, but obviously so they don't accidentally break the brains of every Muggle on the block, they get a special version of the paper that is engineered to look like Muggle post. That's an awful lot of work that wizards and witches have to do in order to make fake content good enough to trick Muggles on a daily basis — it's like writing an entire second paper. Obviously you're not going to waste your best resources on this, so I'm guessing that the intern — let's call her Fran — decided to have a much-needed laugh as she was forced to write yet another fake Muggle sports page, stuck in her windowless cubicle, the last of her pumpkin juice stolen from the fridge by that jerk Steve from the Arts and Warts section again.
So really, this is so much more than a sneaky risqué headline, y'all. This is the beautiful micro-rebellion of a twentysomething witch slaving away at midnight for Muggle post that nobody was even gonna read — until today. Until right now, when the internet finally woke up and appreciated her and her subtle sass. #Bless you, Fran the Intern, for this glorious gift. Forever may you reign.
Images: Warner Bros
