Wizarding Teabags? and muggle inventions

[Vicki Merriman]

No: HPFGUIDX 1511

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Rita Winston" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> DO WIZARDS USE TEABAGS??? That is, I am reading Blaise's Second 
> Chance Chapter Seven (because I read the post on-list that said 
> she had posted Ch 7) and Snape makes Dumbledore's cup of tea with a 
> teabag. Even among Muggles, a number of snobs refuse to use 
teabags, > and wizard folk seem to cling more to old ways than us 
Muggles -- 


This seemed strange to me also.  I remember Lupin making Harry a cup 
of tea with a teabag and then apologized saying "I imagine you'd had 
enough of tea leaves anyway."

The tea listserv I am on had several posts on Dobby in book four, 
when he is wearing a tea cozy on his head, with the suggestion that 
perhaps more americans will try tea because of HP.  We also noticed 
that Mrs. Weasley's response to a problem is to make a cup of tea.

I am one of those persons (not quite sure I'm a muggle, probably half 
and half, as my mother has already stated authoritatively that "she 
is no muggle, thank you very much" while my dad is muggle through and 
through).  That, however, is really for another post.

At any rate, I take my tea very seriously, and haven't used a teabag 
for years, except once or twice on vacation in London this past 
July.  I have special heating pots and teapots to make looseleaf at 
the office, and am even on a tea of the month club, which sends 5 one 
ounce samples of fine teas every month.

Until this list starting sucking up my spare time, I spent most of it 
on a really good tea listserv.

I wouldn't have anything to do with most teabags, and find it strange 
that the wizarding world would.  They must have teapots that 
automatically strain the leaves.  Even assuming the bags are better 
than yucky american teabags, why would they use teabags?  I think it 
is just something that made a cute line (Lupin's comment) and that 
JKR didn't really think about too much.  Given the way she has 
created her magical universe, with the implications that wizarding 
folk are not into muggle inventions, I think they'd really have stuck 
to tea leaves.

However, appropos of "not into muggle inventions", they seem to add 
things after muggles invent them.  After all, they have cameras that 
create moving pictures.  But I got the impression in book two that 
the camera was an ordinary muggle one and it was the way they 
developed the film that made the difference.  They also couldn't have 
had the Hogwarts Express until the train was invented in the early 
1820s.  I wonder how students got to Hogwarts before that?  Flue 
powder perhaps, if that existed?  Regular horses that were magicked 
so they never tired?  Flying carpets before the ban?

Vicki