PS Chapter Five: "Diagon Alley"
Dec. 18th, 2015 10:28 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
for-diddled.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslock* Question for the non-English readers here: did your translation of the books try and keep the pun in Diagon Alley, or not?
* I doubt that wizards would have their own separate currency system: their population is too small and thinly-spread for it to be worthwhile, and they’d most likely have adopted sterling long ago. Unless perhaps the goblins just force them to use this weird currency to make sure that Gringotts always has control over the wizards’ monetary system. Government of the day does something to offend the goblins? Massive hyperinflation and economic collapse, here we come. This would fit in nicely with the “Goblin rebellions actually ended in a goblin victory” school of thought.
* Hagrid flew over to the island, even though the ability to fly without a broomstick is later considered a sign of unheard-of magical power. Hmm... Evidence that Hagrid’s actually a secret evil wizard mastermind, and his incompetence is all just an act to throw people off the scent?
* Gringotts is this big, scary wizarding equivalent of Fort Knox, so well-defended that only a crack squad of high-school students would have any hope of robbing it.
* I wonder how the Dursleys fair, given that they’ve got no signal flair, no phone, no food and no water, and Hagrid’s just taken their only means of transportation off the island.
* Note how Harry’s being predisposed to look up to Dumbledore, and to look down on the legitimate wizarding government, right from his introduction to the magical world.
* The Ministry of Magic’s most important job is keeping the existence of magic a secret, because otherwise “everyone’d be wanting magic solutions to their problems.” Oh no, wizards potentially having to give a crap about people outside their own tiny little bubble and do something to alleviate the world’s problems! Will the horrors never end?
* Reasons why the MoM’s job is so difficult #1,477: Hagrid’s going around recklessly drawing attention to himself, talking about “these Muggles” in a loud voice in the middle of a busy street.
* Hagrid doesn’t understand “Muggle money”, meaning that he’s unable to economically interact with 99.99% of the population. I’m not sure if there’s a better indication of the WW’s insularity and xenophobia in all the rest of the book.
* Plus, why on earth would Hagrid need help paying for things? Sure he wouldn’t necessarily know the exchange rates or what would represent a good price for something in the muggle world, but the coins and notes all have their value written on them. If he has to pay, say, £20 for a train ticket, it really shouldn’t be beyond his competence to hand over a bank note with “£20” written on it.
* First-year students have to buy pointy hats as part of their uniform. Apparently this was discontinued early on in Harry’s academic career, because we practically never see anybody wearing them.
* Nice that all the wizarding textbook authors have names which just so happen to suit their topics of expertise. Nominative determinism at its finest.
* It seems a bit pointless making students get a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, when they won’t actually be studying care of magical creatures until their third year, if at all.
* Letting any students who wants take a cat to school sounds pretty stupid. Cats aren’t very sociable animals, and debouching a whole school intake’s worth of cats into one building is unlikely to end well.
* So what do muggles see when someone goes into the Leaky Cauldron? Somebody just disappearing into thin air? For that matter, what would somebody in an aeroplane flying above Diagon Alley see?
* As soon as he goes in Harry gets mobbed by over-excited fans, which I guess makes him the wizarding equivalent of Justin Bieber.
* Appointing somebody who’s clearly suffering from some sort of dark arts-related PTSD to teach defence against the dark arts seems like kind of a dick move, which is why I’m not at all surprised that Dumbledore’s gone ahead and done it.
* The way Hagrid talks about how Quirrel “was fine while he was studyin’ outta books but then he took a year off ter get some first-hand experience” reads most naturally as if Quirrel had been teaching defence before he left, so I’m guessing Rowling hadn’t thought up the DADA curse when she wrote this.
* Quite unlike the customers at the pub, the people in Diagon Alley either don’t notice or don’t care about Harry’s presence.
* “A plump woman outside an apothecary’s was shaking her head as they passed, saying, ‘Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they’re mad...’” Given that there are seventeen sickles to a galleon, this is a bit like saying “one hundred cents an ounce” instead of “a dollar an ounce”.
* If wizards are serious about this secrecy thing, they probably shouldn’t be making use of conspicuous non-native species like snowy owls to carry their post.
* “The You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen” sounds kind of suspicious, even without any prior knowledge of what’s in there. “Dumbledore’s asked me to get something from vault 713” would be a much more discrete way of putting it.
* I’m not sure why the Gringott’s vaults have to be so big – the wizarding world doesn’t have that many people, after all. Maybe it’s just meant to make it harder for people to break in – to get to the vault you’re trying to rob, you first have to navigate your way through this vast subterranean labyrinth full of traps.
* “How often had [the Dursleys] complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.” Alright, I know the Dursleys are horrible people, but they kind of have a point here. Raising a child does take money, and if Harry’s family was apparently so rich, couldn’t Dumbledore have arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Dursley to receive an annual stipend to cover the costs of bringing up their unexpected new ward?
* A currency system based on such high prime numbers as seventeen and twenty-nine is completely stupid. There’s a reason most real-world currencies are based on easy-to-divide numbers like 100 or 20 or 12.
* Also, somebody should probably tell Dumbledore that taking a child who’s been impoverished and deprived all his life and then suddenly just giving him more money than he knows what to do with is generally a really bad idea.
* Why is Draco’s mother buying his wand for him? Wouldn’t he need to be there in person to wave wands around and see if sparks fly out?
* I’m assuming this whole “I’ll bully my father into buying me a broom” thing is just Draco trying to make himself look tough, since judging from their interaction in COS Lucius isn’t really the type of parent to let his own children push him about.
* “I heard [Hagrid’s] a sort of savage – lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed.” That seems... pretty plausible, actually.
* The anti-muggleborn prejudice we see in the wizarding world always struck me as being more like class prejudice than racism, probably because of the way Draco talks about it. “[T]hey’ve never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter” sounds much more like some old-moneyed aristocrat griping about all these nouveaux riches and their uncouth manners than some Neo-Nazi ranting about the Jews.
* Harry’s upset that Malfoy doesn’t think muggles should be allowed into Hogwarts, to which Hagrid reassuringly says “Yer not from a Muggle family”, thus implying that Malfoy has a point and reinforcing the message that anti-muggle prejudice is OK.
* I’m surprised Hagrid knows enough about the muggle world to make a comparison to football.
* Contra Hagrid, I think it’s actually pretty easy to summarise the rules of quidditch: everybody flies around for a bit until the seeker catches the snitch and wins the game, thereby rendering everything that has so far happened completely and utterly pointless.
* Hagrid’s bit about how “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin” is just stupid. Aside from the prima facie implausibility that every bad wizard over a millennium would come from that one house, there’s a very prominent (supposedly) dark wizard who was in Gryffindor – Sirius Black.
* At the tender age of eleven Harry’s already showing an unhealthy interest in Curses and Counter-Curses, foreshadowing the gallant Crucio of DH.
* Credit to JKR, the descriptions of the shops Harry goes in are quite atmospheric and well-written.
* Darn it, when Ollivander goes on about James Potter’s powerful eleven-inch wand, my mind takes up residence in the gutter and refused to be moved.
* “And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard’s wand.” Well, unless you snatch their wand away, in which case it will transfer allegiance to you like the flighty little wooden trollop that it is, although this will never once come up in conversation or be mentioned in any books or classes until you’re in your very last year of school.
* Harry and Hagrid take all their magical stuff with them on the Underground, thus proving yet again how badly wizards suck at this whole secrecy business.
* I doubt that wizards would have their own separate currency system: their population is too small and thinly-spread for it to be worthwhile, and they’d most likely have adopted sterling long ago. Unless perhaps the goblins just force them to use this weird currency to make sure that Gringotts always has control over the wizards’ monetary system. Government of the day does something to offend the goblins? Massive hyperinflation and economic collapse, here we come. This would fit in nicely with the “Goblin rebellions actually ended in a goblin victory” school of thought.
* Hagrid flew over to the island, even though the ability to fly without a broomstick is later considered a sign of unheard-of magical power. Hmm... Evidence that Hagrid’s actually a secret evil wizard mastermind, and his incompetence is all just an act to throw people off the scent?
* Gringotts is this big, scary wizarding equivalent of Fort Knox, so well-defended that only a crack squad of high-school students would have any hope of robbing it.
* I wonder how the Dursleys fair, given that they’ve got no signal flair, no phone, no food and no water, and Hagrid’s just taken their only means of transportation off the island.
* Note how Harry’s being predisposed to look up to Dumbledore, and to look down on the legitimate wizarding government, right from his introduction to the magical world.
* The Ministry of Magic’s most important job is keeping the existence of magic a secret, because otherwise “everyone’d be wanting magic solutions to their problems.” Oh no, wizards potentially having to give a crap about people outside their own tiny little bubble and do something to alleviate the world’s problems! Will the horrors never end?
* Reasons why the MoM’s job is so difficult #1,477: Hagrid’s going around recklessly drawing attention to himself, talking about “these Muggles” in a loud voice in the middle of a busy street.
* Hagrid doesn’t understand “Muggle money”, meaning that he’s unable to economically interact with 99.99% of the population. I’m not sure if there’s a better indication of the WW’s insularity and xenophobia in all the rest of the book.
* Plus, why on earth would Hagrid need help paying for things? Sure he wouldn’t necessarily know the exchange rates or what would represent a good price for something in the muggle world, but the coins and notes all have their value written on them. If he has to pay, say, £20 for a train ticket, it really shouldn’t be beyond his competence to hand over a bank note with “£20” written on it.
* First-year students have to buy pointy hats as part of their uniform. Apparently this was discontinued early on in Harry’s academic career, because we practically never see anybody wearing them.
* Nice that all the wizarding textbook authors have names which just so happen to suit their topics of expertise. Nominative determinism at its finest.
* It seems a bit pointless making students get a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, when they won’t actually be studying care of magical creatures until their third year, if at all.
* Letting any students who wants take a cat to school sounds pretty stupid. Cats aren’t very sociable animals, and debouching a whole school intake’s worth of cats into one building is unlikely to end well.
* So what do muggles see when someone goes into the Leaky Cauldron? Somebody just disappearing into thin air? For that matter, what would somebody in an aeroplane flying above Diagon Alley see?
* As soon as he goes in Harry gets mobbed by over-excited fans, which I guess makes him the wizarding equivalent of Justin Bieber.
* Appointing somebody who’s clearly suffering from some sort of dark arts-related PTSD to teach defence against the dark arts seems like kind of a dick move, which is why I’m not at all surprised that Dumbledore’s gone ahead and done it.
* The way Hagrid talks about how Quirrel “was fine while he was studyin’ outta books but then he took a year off ter get some first-hand experience” reads most naturally as if Quirrel had been teaching defence before he left, so I’m guessing Rowling hadn’t thought up the DADA curse when she wrote this.
* Quite unlike the customers at the pub, the people in Diagon Alley either don’t notice or don’t care about Harry’s presence.
* “A plump woman outside an apothecary’s was shaking her head as they passed, saying, ‘Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they’re mad...’” Given that there are seventeen sickles to a galleon, this is a bit like saying “one hundred cents an ounce” instead of “a dollar an ounce”.
* If wizards are serious about this secrecy thing, they probably shouldn’t be making use of conspicuous non-native species like snowy owls to carry their post.
* “The You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen” sounds kind of suspicious, even without any prior knowledge of what’s in there. “Dumbledore’s asked me to get something from vault 713” would be a much more discrete way of putting it.
* I’m not sure why the Gringott’s vaults have to be so big – the wizarding world doesn’t have that many people, after all. Maybe it’s just meant to make it harder for people to break in – to get to the vault you’re trying to rob, you first have to navigate your way through this vast subterranean labyrinth full of traps.
* “How often had [the Dursleys] complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.” Alright, I know the Dursleys are horrible people, but they kind of have a point here. Raising a child does take money, and if Harry’s family was apparently so rich, couldn’t Dumbledore have arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Dursley to receive an annual stipend to cover the costs of bringing up their unexpected new ward?
* A currency system based on such high prime numbers as seventeen and twenty-nine is completely stupid. There’s a reason most real-world currencies are based on easy-to-divide numbers like 100 or 20 or 12.
* Also, somebody should probably tell Dumbledore that taking a child who’s been impoverished and deprived all his life and then suddenly just giving him more money than he knows what to do with is generally a really bad idea.
* Why is Draco’s mother buying his wand for him? Wouldn’t he need to be there in person to wave wands around and see if sparks fly out?
* I’m assuming this whole “I’ll bully my father into buying me a broom” thing is just Draco trying to make himself look tough, since judging from their interaction in COS Lucius isn’t really the type of parent to let his own children push him about.
* “I heard [Hagrid’s] a sort of savage – lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed.” That seems... pretty plausible, actually.
* The anti-muggleborn prejudice we see in the wizarding world always struck me as being more like class prejudice than racism, probably because of the way Draco talks about it. “[T]hey’ve never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter” sounds much more like some old-moneyed aristocrat griping about all these nouveaux riches and their uncouth manners than some Neo-Nazi ranting about the Jews.
* Harry’s upset that Malfoy doesn’t think muggles should be allowed into Hogwarts, to which Hagrid reassuringly says “Yer not from a Muggle family”, thus implying that Malfoy has a point and reinforcing the message that anti-muggle prejudice is OK.
* I’m surprised Hagrid knows enough about the muggle world to make a comparison to football.
* Contra Hagrid, I think it’s actually pretty easy to summarise the rules of quidditch: everybody flies around for a bit until the seeker catches the snitch and wins the game, thereby rendering everything that has so far happened completely and utterly pointless.
* Hagrid’s bit about how “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin” is just stupid. Aside from the prima facie implausibility that every bad wizard over a millennium would come from that one house, there’s a very prominent (supposedly) dark wizard who was in Gryffindor – Sirius Black.
* At the tender age of eleven Harry’s already showing an unhealthy interest in Curses and Counter-Curses, foreshadowing the gallant Crucio of DH.
* Credit to JKR, the descriptions of the shops Harry goes in are quite atmospheric and well-written.
* Darn it, when Ollivander goes on about James Potter’s powerful eleven-inch wand, my mind takes up residence in the gutter and refused to be moved.
* “And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard’s wand.” Well, unless you snatch their wand away, in which case it will transfer allegiance to you like the flighty little wooden trollop that it is, although this will never once come up in conversation or be mentioned in any books or classes until you’re in your very last year of school.
* Harry and Hagrid take all their magical stuff with them on the Underground, thus proving yet again how badly wizards suck at this whole secrecy business.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-12-26 08:52 pm (UTC)I heard [Hagrid’s] a sort of savage – lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed.” That seems... pretty plausible, actually.
Draco is criticizing someone Harry likes. Only bad people criticize people Harry likes. Doesn't matter that the criticism is true.
Hey, the Dursleys are just trying to help with the secrecy by making Harry keep his owl locked up. A snowy white owl regularly flying in there neighborhood would attract too much attention. Don't want loads of Birdwatchers hanging around.