When I was writing the Epithalamium Series, I wanted to make sure I knew what Minerva had been doing during the time between leaving the Auror corps and returning to Hogwarts and what she’d be doing as a teacher, so I created a CV and a contract for her.
The speeches Minerva and Albus listen to on D-Day are real. King George VI did address his subjects over BBC Radio, urging them to remain steadfast as the final chapter of the war began. The careful cadence he used to suppress his stutter (famously depicted in the film The King’s Speech) is audible at the beginning of the recording.
American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to plan and lead Operation Overlord, the Allied plan for the liberation of occupied Europe and the invasion of Germany.
Three days before the invasion, Eisenhower recorded two speeches to be broadcast on 6 June. The first, the “Order of the Day,” was addressed to the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied forces who would carry out the invasion. The second, which is what the denizens of Hogwarts hear, was intended to buck up the war-weary people of Western Europe with the news that help and liberation were coming. Eisenhower’s voice in the recording betrays the utter exhaustion that plagued the general in the days leading up to the invasion.
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