Wizarding Teabags? and muggle inventions

[Vicki Merriman]

No: HPFGUIDX 1523

Blaise wrote:
On the wider question, someone else has already mentioned that Lupin 
used a teabag for Harry in PoA.  I would imagine that the situation 
is the same for the magical world as for Muggles, with some snobs and 
a majority of people who aren't so fussy.    
-----------------------------------

Harumph schmumph :-)  preferring properly made tea doesn't 
necessarily make one a snob.  Plain old good quality looseleaf black 
tea is a heck of a lot cheaper than teabags.  And in the wizarding 
world, it just makes sense to me that most people wouldn't have gone 
the teabag route, simply because they don't seem to add a lot of 
muggle inventions to their repetoire, and because they seem to have 
simple spells for cooking and cleaning up that would take care of any 
tealeaf fuss.  The only thing I can say is that perhaps they get much 
of their food supplies from muggle suppliers, and since even in the 
UK many/most people have gone to teabags, that is what the wizarding 
world is reduced to buying.

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Sister Mary Lunatic" <klaatu at p...> 
wrote:
> What I find interesting are the contradictions that exist in JKR's 
wizard> world/muggle world interfaces.  For instance, why should 
Hogwarts, built > over a thousand years ago, have a thoroughly 
modern, even luxurious > (prefects' bathroom) plumbing system, and 
yet have no electricity?  The > plumbing must have existed in some 
form from the beginning, as the pipe > leading to the Chamber of 
Secrets was supposedly only known to Salazar > Slytherin,

Yeah - I think some of this falls under the "I'm just writing a 
book / not proving the general theory of relativity and anything 
within reason that makes the story better will go in even if there 
are slight inconsistencies with a previous one liner" explanation.

However, trying to come up with intra universe (as I call them) 
explanations can be a lot of fun.  How about this.  Remember that 
piping and indoor plumbing has actually been around since Roman 
times.  Perhaps the wizarding world never lost those abilities and so 
when Hogwarts was built, it was built with some effective but 
somewhat crude plumbing and that this has simply been kept up and 
modernized as time went on.  Naturally, Salazar knew the existence of 
the plumbing as built and then Tom Riddle explored the modernized 
pipes when he was at school 50 years ago and opened the Chamber of 
Secrets then.

> Or why Arthur Weasley, who is in daily contact with "muggle 
artifacts,"> should be so hopeless inept when trying to interact with 
the Muggle world.


My favorite explanation is from the lister who explained it about a 
month ago "that's because he works for government."

Vicki