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SPECIAL: Chamber of Secrets and the Plumbing of Hogwarts

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Chamber of Secrets (Pottermore post) Let’s face it—this is probably everyone’s least-favorite Pottermore post ever. So little about it makes sense. For contrast, this is my head-canon on what really happened vis a vis the Chamber entrance and plumbing at Hogwarts in general: The four Founders did not simply rely on magic to do things like build Hogwarts because they did not understand the Muggle way of building; they understood Muggle methods perfectly well but improved upon these methods with their magic. Wizards had had indoor bathrooms—both bathing rooms and water closets—for a long time when Hogwarts was founded. Wizards understood the physics of plumbing because they did not need to work as hard as Muggles to do things like acquiring food to eat and clothes to wear. This gave them the luxury of time to work out how to most efficiently dispose of human waste without magic. Thus, regardless of whether someone in a magical household can do spells (a young child, the ...
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Essay: The Wand Chooses the Wizard

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In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , Voldemort’s and Harry’s wands refuse to fight each other because they have the same core: a phoenix feather from Fawkes. This was the third wand revelation that JK Rowling gave her readers, the first two being that the wand chooses the wizard and that a damaged wand (like Ron’s wand in Chamber of Secrets ) can backfire on the user or otherwise behave unpredictably. Once we learn more rules of the Wand Game in Deathly Hallows it is clear that Ron’s broken wand is responding as if the he is no longer its master ; the wand/owner covenant is broken. I have written in previous essays about the metaphorical quantum entanglement between Harry and Voldemort, but this is not the only type of metaphorical entanglement in the Harry Potter series. Wizards and their wands are also entangled. After it breaks, Ron and his wand are no longer entangled—if they ever truly were, since Rowling reveals early on that he is using Charlie’s old wand. It is un...
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Essay: JK Rowling's Own Private Tarot Game

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JK Rowling never tells her readers about Harry Potter learning about Tarot, nor is it ever mentioned during his Divination lessons. Despite this, Professor Trelawney abruptly reappears in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , even though she is no longer Harry’s teacher by the time he’s in his sixth year. In just about every appearance she makes in the sixth book she is raving about the Tower , also called The Tower of Destruction , or La Maison Dieu ( The House of God ) in French, the sixteenth card in the Tarot Major Arcana. Trelawney ranting about this card is the first overt mention of Tarot in the seven books, and it is a virtual throwaway. It is not, however, the first mention of the name of a Tarot card in the series . In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , Rowling calls the Little Hangleton pub frequented by Frank Bryce, the caretaker at the Riddle House, The Hanged Man. This is the name of the twelfth card in the Tarot Major Arcana. JK Rowling has also invente...
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