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[abbers44]

HARRY POTTER DISCUSSION POST

I CANNOT HOLD IT IN ANY LONGER. Post your questions/topics here! Any book/movie! A thread a topic seems like the easiest way to stay organized, but no need to be too anxious about that. GET IT ALL OUT.

Comments

[abbers44]

WIZARDING ECONOMICS. I am seriously so fascinated by this lsdkfj Wands are only 7 Galleons! They are still on the gold standard! Are there scholarships available? Are there homeless wizards? WHAT IS THE DEAL.

[victorialupin]

HOW DOES WIZARDING MONEY WORK.

No, really. 17 Sickles to a Galleon, and 29 Knuts to a Sickle. WHY WOULD YOU NOT STICK WITH MULTIPLES OF 5/10?

ARE ALL WIZARDS SUPER GOOD AT MATH?

[abbers44]

sdlfkj screaming. I know, I know. When I just reread the bit where Hagrid's explaining the money system, I was like, JESUS CHRIST. SO NEEDLESSLY COMPLEX.

And everything in coins!! Wallet design must be a huge market sdlfkj endless lightening and shrinking charms.

I wonder if there are other money systems in different countries, or if it's all just the same coins. Everything we know about the wizarding world is pretty Anglicized, with all these Roman roots. Surely wizards in, like, China don't use awkward Latin when casting spells.... It's be really fascinating to learn about how it works abroad. We had tiny glimpses in GoF, I guess, but I want mooooooore.

[victorialupin]

I remember reading some essay years ago that theorized that Wizarding Britain is kind of ... behind the times, to say the least, and that the rest of the Wizarding World looked at it as a bit backwards and conservative. I'm not sure if there was much evidence of that (beyond maybe the fact that they banned flying carpets, even though other parts of the WW use them?), but I like the idea nonetheless.

[greensweaterlj]

hello secret commenting

the money system is based on the old pound system. british people are still in love with how silly it was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling#Pre-decimal

[abbers44]

sdflkjd good lord

[likeafox]

I've always wondered about spells. Are they set phrases, like learning a foreign language? Or are they more just a way to channel magic, in which case I suspect they would vary by language. But if that's the case, do they just, like, never get updated? Since British wizards are still using spells that must have come into existence in Ancient Rome or whenever.

Also, and this has seriously always bugged me, do American wizards use the same spells? Do they do them in American or British accents? It seems like, if saying S instead of F can end up with you squashed by a buffalo, saying spells in an American accent could cause all sorts of problems....

[greensweaterlj]

i always thought spells were medieval (same age as hogwarts) - when latin was the lingua franca....

[abbers44]

Right! And like, if you were creating a spell or whatnot, you'd still work within that same system, if only because that's how you were trained and that's what you understand enough to manipulate.

But spells must be just a way to channel magic, because Dumbledore is forever doing shit without any words whatsoever, so it would make sense that you could vary accents and even languages and still get the job done, but schools have to pick one, until the kids get powerful enough to do away with words.

[greensweaterlj]

augh tried to like this comment

facebook has ruined me

[abbers44]

et tu

[greensweaterlj]

:

[likeafox]

ahh, I like this explanation.

In my head I guess spells develop similar to the way language develops, only the rules are much more rigid since the magical equivalent of bad grammar would have much more dramatic consequences than a misplaced modifier would. Though if it is the case that spells developed like language, they must evolve much, much more slowly than language does. (which, come to think of it, does fit very well with canon.)

I wonder if you could learn foreign spells the way you learn a foreign language?

[abbers44]

That's always a thing in fic, Draco reading his father's creepy German curse books or whatever. You can learn ancient runes, so I guess that's similar to learning foreign spells...

[likeafox]

I feel like wizarding economics are going to be completely different from muggle economics in a lot of ways because magic basically decimates supply and demand. Food, obviously, you can't magic out of thin air, but everything else seems fair game. (I guess potion ingredients fall under the category of food, since they clearly have to buy them

[victorialupin]

paying property taxes on the castle

lol @ at the thought.

And, no, I don't think there's anything in canon that suggests Hogwarts is anything but free. That's what I've always assumed. It's not a university, after all; it's basically the equivalent of a public education. And we've heard nothing about taxes in the WW, so ...