Shaun - Viggo -- Wizarding Businesses - alphaquilt

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) <catlady@wicca.net>]

Happy Birthday, Shaun! Your professional knowledge has been as useful 
to HPfGU and OT discussions as the way you keep calm and soothe 
potential flame wars.

Anne U wrote:

<< Aragorn -- Seriously, seriously *Siriusly* DEAD-SEXY :D yeah, I 
know, Gary Oldman's got the part, but damn!! That Viggo Mortenson is 
FIIIINE. <fans self> >>

I strongly agree, but last time I said so, someone scolded me 
against trying to draw parallels between HP characters and LOTR 
characters.... 

Steve bboy_mn wrote:

<< I came up with the idea of combining the best of Muggle 
electronics with the most advanced enchantments to create the 
programmable Portpager; portkey and pager in one; range 500km or 
300mi. You can go from London to Paris or Amsterdam, but you can't go 
from London to Edinburgh. >>

MADLY useful, altho' probably illegal to use in each country until 
that country's Ministry of Magic has inspected it and collected their 
bribe. HOWEVER, what about the presence of magic making electronics 
go haywire? Someone invented a magical analogy of the transistor -- 
printed circuit -- microcomputer chip?

<< Harry has large crates of ginger imported from China and Jamaica. 
The question is, how do wizards transport something that big? Truck 
brooms? Trans-Atlantic cargo brooms? >>

I suspect they use ships, as QTTA says wizards used ships to cross 
oceans until brooms became reliable enough. Magic may serve to make 
their ships bigger inside than out, as fast as jetliners, with total 
absence of seasickness ...  

Another possibility: I wonder if large objects (such as a Muggle 
shipping container of ginger) can be Transfigured or Charmed into 
something small enough and light enough that a Firebolt Express rider 
can stuff his/her pockets full of them, and Transfigure, Charm, or 
Finite Incantatem them back upon arrival. In a fic, I had Sirius  
shrink a *lavish* picnic basket small enough for him to carry in the 
watch pocket of his Levi's while flying the motorcycle, but I don't 
know if JKR would allow that.

<< J -- Juju -- at type of West African fetish/amulet magic.
V is for Vampire or -- voodoo -
X -- Xuthus - Greek Mythology. The ancestor of the Ionian Greeks. 
Y -- Yeti - abominable snowman -- or -- Yggdrasil - The great ash >>

Would a British wizarding (not Muggle) child know of Juju, voodoo, 
Xuthus, or Yggdrasil? They might know of Yeti, which is in FB, but 
I don't like to think that every little kid knows ALL the magical 
beasts before they're old enough to read FB. They probably do know  
vampire, but I really wish I could think of something less scarey for 
a nursery wall.