Fantastic Beasts 2: 10 Biggest Changes To Harry Potter Canon (And If They Work)

3. Professor McGonagall Was At Hogwarts In 1927

The Change:

While established canon has Minerva McGonagall being born in 1935, this movie shows her teaching at Hogwarts in both the 'present' of 1927 and in the past when Newt and Leta were students, so roughly the early 1910s. McGonagall had previously revealed she'd been teaching at Hogwarts for 39-years as of 1995, meaning she should have started teaching at Hogwarts in 1956, but here she is as a professor some 20+ years before her birth. She is credited as Minerva McGonagall too, so it can't even be a different McGonagall.

Does It Work?

This is one of the silliest moves the film makes with regards to canon and fan-service, and not only does it open up a whole can of worms regarding character ages and who else might appear and when, but also questions of her tenure there. She is, presumably, teaching Transfiguration, which as far as we know is the only subject she's ever taught, and one she is prodigiously gifted in, hence being an Animagus. However, since she's there at the same time as Dumbledore, who now needs to vacate the Defence Against the Dark Arts position and take up Transfiguration, it means McGonagall needs to teach something else too. And, given how cursed the Dark Arts job would become, it's a bit odd that it's never mentioned Dumbledore and (presumably) McGonagall both taught it. And all that's on top of the fact she shouldn't even be alive at this point, and is shoe-horned in for name recognition alone which, when you've got Hogwarts and Dumbledore already, isn't needed.