I'm rereading Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban. Yet again, something occurred to me about the wizardung community of this universe: they are so very tough! True, they can be healed by magic. And true, they seem to have some diseases the rest of us don't have, probably because of the magic surrounding them. (See Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows for an example of this, when Ron leaves the family ghoul in his pyjamas, supposedly sick, as a decoy).
But kids play Quidditch, an extremely dangerous game. Think about it: would you want your kids flying around on broomsticks high in the air? With the Beaters threatening them with clubs? In The Goblet Of Fire we meet a former Beater who has probably suffered too many bashings in his career and is a bit crazy as a result.
And Harry suffers falls that would kill a Muggle and just needs a night or two in the hospital wing, where the school nurse, Poppy Pomfrey heals him by magic. She couldn't do that if he was dead, though.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, a Quidditch game is played during a rain storm - imagine what could happen to the players in that! But it's normal at Hogwarts not to cancel for a bit of rain - or a lot of rain, for that matter.
Another thing that wizards can suffer in this universe is splinching, which happens when you get apparating wrong. This means you can split yourself. Nasty! But that too can be fixed and wizards usually seem to survive it.
It could be, of course, inspired by Tolkien's Gandalf, who fell down an abyss, fighting his enemy all the way, then chased it back up. But Gandalf isn't human; the wizards of the Harry Potter universe are.
More or less.
But kids play Quidditch, an extremely dangerous game. Think about it: would you want your kids flying around on broomsticks high in the air? With the Beaters threatening them with clubs? In The Goblet Of Fire we meet a former Beater who has probably suffered too many bashings in his career and is a bit crazy as a result.
And Harry suffers falls that would kill a Muggle and just needs a night or two in the hospital wing, where the school nurse, Poppy Pomfrey heals him by magic. She couldn't do that if he was dead, though.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, a Quidditch game is played during a rain storm - imagine what could happen to the players in that! But it's normal at Hogwarts not to cancel for a bit of rain - or a lot of rain, for that matter.
Another thing that wizards can suffer in this universe is splinching, which happens when you get apparating wrong. This means you can split yourself. Nasty! But that too can be fixed and wizards usually seem to survive it.
It could be, of course, inspired by Tolkien's Gandalf, who fell down an abyss, fighting his enemy all the way, then chased it back up. But Gandalf isn't human; the wizards of the Harry Potter universe are.
More or less.
It's like those old time stories where the kids could go off and do all sorts of dangerous things. The Famous Five could be boating or on their island in a bad storm, but no one went to check on them: the adults just trusted the kids to get back OK.
ReplyDeleteI think that things have changed a lot and that if Harry Potter had been contemporary fiction there would have been a lot of fuss over kids running such risks. You can sort of get away with it in fantasy. And in adventure, the first thing you have to get rid of is the parents. :-)
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