Muggle and magic worlds

[frantyck at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 24340

About how the magic and Muggle peoples can live together and not both 
be aware of each other:

Think of the size of the wizarding population. It can't be large, if 
there are only about a thousand wizarding children between the ages 
of 11 and 18. I don't know precisely how demographers would figure 
this out -- fertility rates, average family sizes, age at motherhood, 
whatever other social and economic imperatives rule such issues -- 
but certainly the total wizarding population can't be more than about 
10,000 in Great Britain. That's infinitesimal next to the total 
population of about 60 million. There must be more homeless people in 
London alone. Certainly there are more eccentrics!

About concentrations of the wizarding population: Hogsmeade may be 
the only wizarding village in England, but it is a *village*, not a 
bustling town of several thousand. If it held most of the wizards of 
England, why would the real centre of the English wizarding world be 
at Diagon Alley?

And, Diagon Alley is just one part of a hidden wizarding district in 
the middle of London (Knockturn Alley, etc.). London, to England, is 
the City, it's way off the top of the urban hierarchical scale; why 
should the wizarding world not follow this pattern? After all, 
wizards and witches are wizards and witches, but they're 
fundamentally and very obviously English, too (language, what they 
eat, Fudge's bowler hat, etc.).

Which means that many wizarding families MUST live dispersed among 
Muggles (not least the non-purebloods). The Weasleys do -- Ottery St 
Catchpole isn't a wizarding village, they have Muggle neighbours, and 
there is only one other wizarding family in the area (the Diggorys, 
from GoF, unless most did not attend the Quidditch World Cup). Malfoy 
Manor, I fancy, is a normally gloomy house with what its Muggle 
neighbours probably think is a snooty and very private family.
There are several examples of wizarding families living in the Muggle 
world, and very few of them living in Hogsmeade or even somewhere 
near Diagon Alley. Most wizards and witches seem to come *to* Diagon 
Alley via the Leaking Cauldron, *from* the Muggle world.

So, it's not clear to me -- and here I believe Mindy has a point -- 
why wizards and witches know so little about the Muggle world. From 
the point of view of the story, it's all as it should be. It's a 
story, after all -- I don't think we should expect the whole edifice 
to hang together absolutely and perfectly.

For instance, it's odd that Arthur Weasley, with his consuming 
curiosity, has never bothered to ask anyone else about "escapators," 
or to wander around in the Muggle world on his own. He doesn't work 
in Hogsmeade, he works in London, where there are more Muggles than 
anywhere else in the British isles.

On the other hand, it's possible that while wizards may live among 
Muggles, they have little experience of the Muggle world. After all, 
living in apartment buildings, we are literally sandwiched between 
other families, yet we may never get to know them. Worlds can come 
very close together without ever mixing. Both Muggles and wizards are 
self-absorbed -- it's only human.

About the wizard economy: it must be tied closely to the Muggle 
economy. I would like to believe that many witches and wizards work 
at Muggle jobs. Hermione, for example, might well teach at Oxford 
*and* write reviews for the Daily Prophet. This would resolve the 
social security number problem.

If the British Prime Minister agreed to help with the hunt for Sirius 
what, as a politician and administrator, did he demand in return? 
Help with espionage? Charms to convince voters? That toothy grin of 
his?

Lastly (almost), household expenses for wizarding families cannot be 
in the same league as us Muggles. After all, they don't pay utility 
bills (to our knowledge), they don't have to buy PlayStation and pay 
college tuition, and so on. No credit cards, because you don't have 
to pay for a million household appliances. Come to think of it, if 
wizards don't need all that Muggle hardware and economic 
inventiveness, that is one explanation for why they still use coins 
rather than magic debit cards! After all, if capitalism never fully 
arrived in the magic world, they're still working in the late 
medieval or early modern economic system! Which makes some sense, I 
think.

I think there must be a healthy service economy, though; after all, 
what mother is going to bother to make a complex potion to cure 
chicken pox when she can buy it in some medimagic store? Anyway, the 
possibilities are endless.

About wizard money: what prevents someone with a wand from magically 
duplicating Galleons? There must be some pretty hefty spells on the 
cash currency.

Oof. Does this qualify as a rant?

Rrishi