Flourish & Blotts

After being less-than-impressed with the storyline of the third Fantastic Beasts movie, I felt motivated to re-read the Harry Potter series. My last re-read was 2.5 years ago before the pandemic. I’ve now finished the first three books. This time around, I felt that the writing in the first book seemed weaker and the characters more caricatured. It felt like an old-school children’s book in more ways than one. For the first time, I felt that the second book was stronger than the first, and I was less annoyed by Lockhart. Maybe I need to change my ranking of the books. The third book is still superb!

 

Today’s post will focus on things that jumped out at me in one chapter of Chamber of Secrets. “Flourish & Blotts” is the chapter title and also where Hogwarts students buy their school textbooks for the new term. Early in the chapter, we read of Arthur Weasley asking Harry all about Muggle life. Plugs and the postal service are mentioned, and Arthur thinks it astounding how Muggles have adapted to live without magic with their ingenious inventions that save time. The harnessing of electricity allows us to create devices that certainly seem magical to our forebears, and one can come up with numerous examples. It makes sense to me that if magic rides on electromagnetic radiation, electricity is the appropriate rival.

 

I hadn’t thought much about the postal service, but seeing it mentioned made me think about the advantages and disadvantages of Owl Post. For one thing, you need an owl. And it needs to be healthy enough to fly. When your owl is away, you have to wait for its return. I suppose you could go to the Owl Post Office if you don’t own an owl. How do owls locate a recipient? There must be some sort of owl-data-sharing system to improve delivery efficiency. If owls didn’t communicate with each other, I suspect deliveries would take much longer unless owls had some sort of way to “know” how to find the recipient. Can a non-owl extract information from the owl network for spying purposes? I don’t know. There is no mention of anyone attempting it.

 

In the same chapter, we read that Lockhart has assigned his seven books not just to Harry’s second-year Defense of the Dark Arts class, but to all levels. (Ginny in her first-year and the Weasley twins in their fourth-year get assigned the same books.) Clearly Lockhart isn’t a good teacher, nor has he followed any prescribed curriculum where what you learn in an earlier year scaffolds the material for subsequent years. Quirrell, in Harry’s First Year, at least assigns what seems like a standard textbook. Lupin, in Harry’s Third Year, seems to be using a standard textbook that at least contains a bestiary and he designs a practical curriculum. Snape makes reference to what students should be able to tackle in their first years when he jumps ahead to discuss werewolves later in the textbook. The Standard Book of Spells seems to have levels for each year, presumably from introductory to advanced. Reading all this made me think about how one designs and scaffolds a magical curriculum. I’ve previously speculated that Lumos should be the first spell learned.

 

To get to Diagon Alley, the Weasley family travels by Floo Powder. Harry messes it up his first time, although I don’t think it’s entirely his fault. This made me think of the various transportation methods in the magical world: Floo Powder using a fireplace network, Portkeys for one-time point-to-point travel, Apparating (including side-on), broomsticks, an enchanted vehicle (flying car or motorcycle, for example), or just plain superman-type flying. Some are teleporter-like while others require traversing at some relative speed. I’d love to have a teleporter-like mode of travel. But I’m not sure our Muggle ingenuity can get us to that point – there are some significant physical limitations.

 

When Harry lands in Knockturn Alley by mistake, and spies on the Malfoys in a shop devoted to Dark Magic objects, we read about the “Hand of Glory”. When you insert a candle, it gives light only to the holder. I suppose our Muggle equivalent is night-vision goggles. Although our night-vision technology basically tries to capture the slivers of visible light available possibly coupled with collecting light at the edges of the visible, for example in the infra-red. The Hand of Glory sounds like it illuminates the visible but only to the holder of the object. It isn’t placed over the eyes, so how exactly it would do so is unclear.

 

I was pleased that so many questions tickled my brain while reading “Flourish & Blotts”. What a wonderful name for a bookstore! And now onwards to the fourth book which is also the pivotal turning point in the series.

 

P.S. For my last read of Chamber of Secrets, I blogged about what might have been if Harry was in Slytherin.