The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter Read online

  Harmless (or Practically Harmless) Gadgets and Inventions

  Some wizard gadgets are practically kidstuff—fun inventions that make life a little simpler or more exciting. And although a few of the gadgets listed here could, conceivably, be used for evil, in the wizarding world, they tend to be thought of as harmless. (For gags and inventions that are related to food, see Chapter 7.) Note than none of these clever gadgets has been given an especially creative name; these inventions are likely meant to appeal to younger children.• Lunascope: We don’t know many details about this gadget, except that it’s a silver instrument responsible for a revolutionary advance in astronomy by replacing moon charts (what we can assume are moon phase charts).

  • Omnioculars: A cross between binoculars and TiVo, Omnioculars look a lot like binoculars, but they can also slow down action, replay it, do a play-by-play, and so on. Ocular relates to the eyes, and omni means “all” or “everywhere.”

  • Put-Outer: A Put-Outer, although not the most creatively named object in the wizarding world, has an important function, especially if you have nefarious purposes. A Put-Outer looks like a cigarette lighter, but when aimed at a streetlight (and, possibly, other lights as well), it steals the light and stores it. The streetlight thus goes out until the light is restored by the Put-Outer.

  • Revealer: An eraser that reveals secret ink written on what appears to be a blank page. This is the equivalent to the old homemade invisible-ink trick of revealing lemon-juice-based words by exposing them to a heat source.

  • Remembrall: The equivalent of a Muggle tying string around one finger, a Remembrall (remember-ball) reminds you of something you’ve forgotten. This smoky glass ball is roughly the size of a marble shooter; if you forget something important, the smoke inside the ball turns bright red.

  • Spellotape: From the British product Sellotape (the UK’s equivalent to Scotch tape), Spellotape is a tape wizards use to mend books, wands, and the like. It’s used so often that it’s the wizarding equivalent of duct tape.

  • Vanishing Cabinet: Although the name may lead you to believe that the cabinet itself vanishes (if, for example, a classmate you didn’t like was coming over to borrow your best sweater, you could temporarily make your cabinet of clothes disappear), that’s not what a Vanishing Cabinet is at all. Instead, anything that’s put into a Vanishing Cabinet— whether your best sweater or a person— disappears. The object (or person) is not made invisible; instead, it is transported elsewhere, often for days or weeks.

  KING’S ENGLISH

  If you met a Muggle who claimed he was in possession of a Dark Detector, you might think he was a little crazy, right Well, if you lived in Great Britain, you wouldn’t say he was "crazy,” you’d say he was mental. He hadn’t "gone round the bend”; he had gone round the twist. had gone round the twist.

  • Wizard penknife: The Swiss Army knife of the wizarding world, this penknife can unlock any locked door and undo even the most tangled of knots. The first is a little scary, what with the power that comes with undoing any lock; the second is quite convenient, especially if you’ve ever had your iPod’s earbuds all in a wad.

  MAGIC TALE

  If you grew up playing "magic,” you probably imagined bewitching a small rug to create a flying carpet. Just a little abracadabra, and you hoped to be flying around the room on your bathmat. Unfortunately, you’ll find no magic carpets in Harry Potter’s magical world. Wizards there are said to remember fondly the Axminster model, a flying carpet that could seat twelve comfortably and was considered a lifesaver on family vacations. (Axminster is a type of carpet originally handmade in Axminster, England.) But in the wizarding world, carpets have been defined as a Muggle Artifact by the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects (a publication from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office of the Ministry of Magic). Thus, flying carpets are relics of the past.

  Mirrors and Glasses

  Mirrors and glasses have great power in the wizarding world:• Foe-Glass: This mirror reveals when enemies are nearby. A Foe-Glass (a glass that allows you to see your foes) shows figures moving about, all rather skulky and shadowy. When an enemy comes clearly into focus, he is close indeed.

  • Mirror of Erised: This massive mirror—perhaps only one of which exists in the wizarding world—shows you exactly what you desire (“Erised” is “desire” spelled backward). In fact, the inscription on the mirror, Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi, proclaims “I show not your face but your heart’s desire” when spelled backward. It does not show the future, but rather what you wish the present to be and/or what you hope the future will be.

  • Talking mirrors: As in Snow White, some mirrors in the wizarding world talk to the people who look into them.

  • Two-way mirrors: Like cell phones with a live video feed, two-way mirrors allow two wizards to talk to and see each other. Each must possess one of the mirrors, and both must be alive—two-way mirrors do not extend beyond death.

  Objects That Give Advice

  When Mr. Weasley’s daughter, Ginny, narrowly escapes death in her first year at Hogwarts, he quips sound advice: “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.” Wise words.

  The objects in this section appear to be thinking for themselves—or, at least, dispensing advice—yet we can’t see where they keep their brains. Still, the greater wizarding community does heed the words of these two objects.• The Goblet of Fire: This cup is reminiscent of the Holy Grail: large; carved from wood; and humble in its design. The Holy Grail, reportedly the cup from which Jesus drank during the Last Supper, has been the subject of countless stories, books, and movies, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to The Da Vinci Code. Although precious, it is not known to dispense advice of any kind. The Goblet of Fire, on the other hand, is filled with flames, out of which pop the names of three wizards who will join in the Triwizard Tournament (although, in one year, the goblet was tricked into issuing a fourth name). The wizards chosen by the Goblet are bound to complete the tournament—no changes of heart are allowed after the names are announced.

  • The Sorting Hat: The Sorting Hat isn’t much to look at, but oh, what it can do! Old, torn, and not-so-clean, the Sorting Hat is pulled out for the Sorting Ceremony at the beginning of each school year at Hogwarts. After singing a song, the hat is placed on the head of each new student, deciding in which house each student will live. Sometimes the Sorting Hat makes decisions quickly; other times, it mulls the choice carefully. When the Sorting Hat is unsure of where to place the student, the Hat can even confer with the student in question.

  Journeying Through Time

  If you’re going to be a wizard, for gosh sakes, you have to do a bit of time travel! It’s what every Muggle wishes for, although a number of movies— from Somewhere in Time to Back to the Future to Frequency—have shown us the perils of interfering with the natural flow of time. Of the two gadgets wizards have for traveling in time, the first allows one to be an observer only, without interrupting the events of that time, and the other gives one an opportunity to redo events of the past.

  • Pensieve: A Pensieve is a stone basin (to picture this, think of a stone birdbath) into which one’s thoughts can be placed for safekeeping. Yep—that’s right: thoughts (in the form of silvery wisps) can, by using a wand, be taken from the brain and placed in the Pensieve. If you have too much on your mind or want to protect yourself against Legilimency (see Chapter 13), a Pensieve is the way to go. Unfortunately, anyone who ventures near the Pensieve can, by dipping his face into the thoughts swirling in the basin, relive those thoughts as a firsthand observer. In this way, someone else can experience your innermost (and, perhaps, most embarrassing) memories. This object is aptly named: to be pensive is to think deeply and seriously, often tinged with sadness or melancholy. This word is from the French penser, which means “to think.” And a sieve is an object used to sift and separate.

  • Time-Turner:
A time-turner can be nearly any size, but it always looks like an hourglass. Each complete twist of the hourglass turns back time one hour. However, if, back in time, the time-traveling you runs into the original you, the consequences could be terrifying, so it’s important that the original you never see the time-traveling you. The exception, of course, is if you are using a Time-Turner regularly, in which case time-traveling you could probably wave to original you, and both would find it amusing. To cut down on all this confusion, the use of Time-Turners is regulated by the Ministry. All Time-Turners had been kept in the Time Room in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic, but they were all destroyed in a particularly messy encounter between Dark Wizards and good.

  Protection Against the Dark Arts

  Dark Wizards do exist, and if one’s wizarding skills aren’t top-notch, gadgets can help. Whether escaping from a dicey situation, shielding yourself from hexes and charms, or trying to detect the presence of evil or lies, these gadgets do the trick. Just beware: Dark Detectors, the purpose of which is to alert you to the presence of a Dark Wizard, can be fooled by a powerful wizard.• Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder: This powder, when thrown, makes everything go pitch black, thus allowing good wizards to escape from bad, but also bad wizards to escape from good. That it is Peruvian is a play on Paddington Bear’s origins in “deepest, darkest Peru.” You can also use a Decoy Detonator to make a fast getaway—this ugly, loud gadget makes a noise in one direction (in other words, works as a decoy) while you escape in the other.

  • Shield Hats, Shield Cloaks, Shield Gloves: Although unable to shield against the Unforgivable Curses (see Chapter 12), these gadgets allow lesser charms, hexes, and jinxes to bounce off the wizard wearing them, and sometimes even bounce back to the hexing wizard! Sold at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes (see Chapter 7).

  • Secrecy Sensor: A Secrecy Sensor looks like a squiggly TV antennae (called a television aerial among the Brits); it begins vibrating when it senses secrecy (telling a lie, evading the truth, or concealing an important piece of information). Used properly, a Secrecy Sensor can also tell you when a jinx, curse, or charm has been put on a person or object.

  • Sneakoscope: One of the coolest inventions in the wizarding world, a Sneakoscope (and its smaller cousin, a Pocket Sneakoscope) whistles or lights up whenever it encounters someone untrustworthy. (It is a type of Secrecy Sensor.) Think of how handy this would be anytime you buy a used car, go on a date, or try to find out who stole your baseball mitt.

  Chapter 4

  How Wizards Spend Their Days

  In This Chapter • Doing housework the wizarding way

  • Spending and saving money

  • Getting the mail

  • Listening to tunes

  • Investing in artwork

  • Dining and dancing

  Are you plagued with gnomes in the garden? Can’t tell a Knut from a Galleon? Wondering why the eyes in that picture appear to be following you? Pondering whether to say “yes” to an offer of Cauldron Cakes and pumpkin juice? You’ve come to the right place. This chapter helps you sort out all the ways in which wizards spend their days.

  Cooking, Housework, and Gardening

  To the uninitiated, wizard housework might seem oxymoronic. After all, if you’re a wizard, for goodness sake, you’re not going to spend time cooking, cleaning, and gardening, are you? Of course not! You’re going to use magic to do all of that, the same way Mary Poppins helped the children “clean” up their room by snapping her fingers, and then singing about a spoonful of sugar.

  But, alas, we see no such logic in the wizarding world. True, there are improvements, such as self-peeling sprouts, but tangerines, for some reason, still need to be peeled. Dishes can be charmed to clean themselves, but housekeeping is still considered a full-time job. Even Mrs. Skower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover (that’s Mrs. “Scour” to you) doesn’t relieve wizards of the drudgery of household chores. Creatures must be cleaned out of the most inconvenient places (see Chapter 2 for more on these nuisances), dinner must be made (or house elves must be employed to cook), and the plates must be cleared away.

  KING’S ENGLISH

  After a long day of household chores, you may want to take a kip; that is, a nap.

  And perhaps the biggest challenge faced by a domesticated wizard is the havoc wreaked by garden gnomes. No, not the garden gnome statues that graced American lawns for most of the 1970s and ’80s, but a brilliant takeoff: tiny, live gnomes (old-looking, and with very large, bald heads) that burrow in lawns (thus ruining them) and have to be caught and tossed—literally, tossed into the air as far away as possible. De-gnoming the garden is, for wizard kids, the equivalent to mowing the yard or digging dandelions out from between the bricks. (See Chapter 2 for more on gnomes.)

  Managing Money

  Although you might think that wizards can simply conjure money out of thin air, it doesn’t work that way. Like Muggles, some wizards are rich and some are poor, but most are staunchly in the middle class, working full-time jobs. Moneyed families tend to stay that way, but capitalism is alive and well, which means that any wizard can create a successful business.

  The similarities stop there, however, because wizard money and banking are rather different from their counterparts in the Muggle world.

  Spending the Cash

  Wizards tend to use cash exclusively, which must be extremely inefficient, given that wizard money exists only in heavy coin form. Never has a wizard whipped out a credit or debit card.

  Three coins make up the entire monetary system:• Galleon: This gold coin is the most valuable in the lot. A galleon was a large sailing ship, used for trading, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

  • Sickle: Seventeen of these silver coins equal one Galleon. A sickle is a crescent-shaped blade that’s used to cut down weeds. The sickle also appeared on the crest of the former Soviet Union.

  • Knut: Twenty-nine of these bronze coins equal one Sickle. Knut (also called Canute the Great) was king of Denmark and Norway, and was the first Danish king of England.

  So what does this mean? Wizards use tall ships, rounded blades, and Danish kings to purchase items? No, but the names all do relate to commerce, politics, and power in some way—a large and impressive trading ship, a farm implement important to a huge agrarian nation, and an influential king whose power spanned several nations.

  Banking on Wizards

  Most wizards store their money in Gringotts Wizarding Bank, which is run by goblins. However, unlike in Muggle banks, the money doesn’t appear to be invested or used to finance buildings or other projects; instead, the coins simply sit in vaults until they’re needed. Vaults (at least the important ones) are protected not only by high-level charms but also by dragons, and because the vaults are located 100 miles beneath the streets of London, break-ins are rare.

  TOURIST TIP

  Although not by any means the largest bank in London, C. Hoare & Co. is the oldest surviving private bank in the city, located at 37 Fleet Street. Founded in 1672, the bank is still run by members of the Hoare family. It is said that literary figures Lord Byron and Jane Austen both banked at Hoare’s. For information, visit .

  Literature has a long association with goblins, dragons, and money. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, goblins (called Orcs in The Lord of the Rings) and Wargs (wolves) were said to have fought the dwarves, elves, and humans in the Battle of the Five Armies. Why? Because the goblins wanted the dwarves’ treasure. And it was Smaug, a dragon, who stole the dwarf treasure and used it as his bed—never spending it, but enjoying the shininess of the coins and jewels.

  Just like Smaug, when Eustace turns into a dragon in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he finds himself sleeping on a bed of treasure—money, jewels, and gold. In Ursula Le Guin’s The Wizard of Earthsea, dragons sometimes attack people when searching for treasure. The literary link between dragons, goblins, and treasure is deep indeed.

  Hobgoblins, another name fo
r goblins, also appear far back in British folklore as short, hairy, ugly creatures who can be friendly and helpful, but can quickly turn mean and nasty. That folkloric tradition fits the wizarding world’s goblins to a “T.” Goblins and hobgoblins also appear in the Spider-Man comics, the Dungeons & Dragons game, and even in Shakespeare (Puck, in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, is a hobgoblin).

  Receiving Mail

  Technology is irrelevant to wizards—why use overnight delivery services, text-messaging, and e-mail when you can use magic? So a wizard’s first choice for contacting other wizards is not through high-tech means but through the mail service, which travels via owl.

  The Role of Owls

  Owls, not carrier pigeons or hawks, are the bird of choice for wizards. In fact, a local post office is little more than an owlery.

  The rationale behind using owls is a little murky, but a connection between owls and magic is well established. Magic tends to be practiced under the cover of darkness; owls are nocturnal creatures. The consistent hooting of an owl has long been associated, right or wrong, with impending death, especially the death of a child. The Greeks and Romans believed that witches could turn themselves into owls, and then feast on babies. In fact, in many cultures, owls have been believed to act as messengers for wizards and witches, just as they do in the magical world of Harry Potter. And in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, Merlin has an owl named Archimedes.

  The advantage to using owls is that they work seven days a week, they can deliver messages just about anywhere in the world, and they can find the addressee even if no one is supposed to know where he or she is. The downside is that owls must be cared for, fed, and given treats, and they can be temperamental. In addition, cats, another highly magical creature, don’t tend to get on well with owls.