Entertainment - Veelas - Parliament

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 31157

trusg (Tru S. G.?) wrote:

> As far as evening entertainment at Hogwarts is concerned I think we 
> are far underestimating the capacity of everyone owning a wand that
> can do magic creates for having fun. (snip) Actually I find this 
> whole "How else do the Hogwarts students spend their time" debate 
> rather interesting. Anyone got any ideas about how they might spend
> time other than in ways JKR's told us?

I think there are LOTS of activities that we don't know about because
Harry doesn't participate in them. Some of these activities would be
organized as clubs, with a student club president and a faculty sponsor,
that begin by someone putting a notice on the notice board, and the
clubs are inter-House so they would meet in the Great Hall after dinner
or some of the many other public rooms in the Castle. We saw that with
Lockhart's Duelling Club, but I am sure there are other clubs as well.

I imagine that there is an official Student Orchestra and Student Choir,
organized as clubs. Student chamber quartets and rock bands could be
official clubs or just friends doing stuff together. Probably music
lessons are available (perhaps for an extra fee) at levels from rank
beginner on up. (Maybe the teachers come in from all over wizarding
Britain just for the lessons, rather than living at Hogwarts or even in
Hogsmeade.) After all, there wouldn't BE bands like the Weird Sisters if
no wizarding folk ever learned to play guitar. 

A Drama Club to put on student plays. Btw, I like to fantasize about
Snape forcing his Slytherins to gather at appointed times in their
common rooms to read Shakespeare's plays (they're sitting down and
reading from books, but otherwise are actors).

Someone already mentioned pick-up Quidditch games, and I'm sure they
would have broomstick racing as well (probably something like
steeplechase, with risk of breaking their damn-fool necks). Informal
non-hostile duelling, even without a Duelling Club. 

I can't help thinking they would have SOME non-magic sports, at least
wrestling and foot-racing, just for the pleasure of using one's body.
(Also for self-defence when caught without a wand.) Maybe even martial
arts.

I would like fencing and [winged] horse riding (and Heidi's Pegasus
Polo) to be available. The fencing and riding could be lessons, maybe
for extra fees, like the music lessons, and any Pegasus Polo league
would have to be an organized club. 

There could be a whole season of an academic game like Geography Bee,
starting early in the year with lots of bees that any kid can enter,
then a number of elimination rounds until the finals produce a winner
just before everyone has to cram for end-of-term exams. 

There are probably a number of lectures and concerts by outside people,
as 1000 kids in one place from a wizarding population of 20,000 is an
attractive concentration of customers. People whom the Headmaster would
likely view as educational enough to let them speak on campus would
include authors who are on book tours for biographies of last century's
warriors and politicians, explorers showing slides of exotic places, and
politicians hoping to brainwash the parents through their children.
Lockhart probably had spoken at Hogwarts every year or two before
accepting a teaching position.

Adult amateur chamber orchestras would be grateful for the chance to
perform in front of a non-paying audience; successful pop bands would 
charge admission. Maybe there would be small groups of students lining
up a chaperone and permission to use one of the public rooms to hire a
band (or get a volunteer band) and have a dance: that would explain why
so many kids at the Yule Ball already knew how to dance.

Catherine wrote:

> I think you are right, in that the wizarding families wouldn't miss 
> something they've never had - if they've never had it. However, it 
> is by no means certain that they don't have some form of TV at 
> home. Afterall, they have the Wizarding Wireless don't they? That 
> brings me on to another point - how is it no one takes a Wizarding 
> Wireless to Hogwarts? D'you think they have a sports channel which 
> everyone would be glued to on a Saturday afternoon so they can 
> listen to live commentaries of their Quidditch team's matches? 
> Also, what about listening to their favourite groups such as the 
> Weird Sisters? Do groups such as these sell some kind of Wizarding
> World CD? Do the students only get to listen to their favourite 
> bands during the holidays? What about classical music? I'm pretty 
> sure that these are the kind of things the students would miss. 

The wizarding folk wear robes and commute on what looks like a steam
train. I think they are too far behind the times to have TV. (Altho' 
I have been trying to think up a good wizarding name for Viewing Distant
Entertainment!) Even tho' Edison cylinders preceeded radio among Muggles
(and player piano rolls before Edison cylinders), I get the feeling that
the wizarding folk don't have any recorded music. They hear music live
in person or live on Wizarding Wireless. They have to make their own
music for background music for daily chores.

Bearing in mind that the wizarding population is tiny (my guess is
20,000 in UK), even a hugely popular band could perform in many small
nightclubs (does the Leaky Cauldron have live entertainment on weekends?
there are also house concerts) and "small" "cozy" concert halls holding
only a couple hundred people as audience and still be heard a couple of
times a year by everyone who cared (and wasn't suffering from extreme
poverty, I guess). Still, a band aimed primarily at teen-agers that
didn't play at Hogwarts or at least in Hogsmeade would seem to need
other jobs during the school year...

The thing that gets me is, HOW do they follow their favorite Quidditch
teams? They're all Quidditch mad and have favorite teams and favorite
players and Ron knew all about Krum's career ... even if they can only
attend matches while on holiday, even if they can't listen to the
matches live on wireless (presumably because of some school rule against
wireless), surely they would eagerly read written descriptions,
preferably real-time by something like telegraph ("wire" came before
"wireless") or at least in newspapers. AND Harry would know about it,
his friends and team-mates would talk enthusiastically about the latest
matches and show him the newspaper articles or drag him along to listen
on Madam Hooch's wireless. I can see Harry not noticing the other
activities because he's not interested in them because he thinks they're
swotty or Ron can't afford them or he's too busy with team Quidditch
practise, but I can't see him overlooking that one.

Marina wrote:

> I've been wondering-- what exactly are veela? All we really know 
> from GoF is that they are beautiful women who turn into harpies
> when they're angry. They appear to have all sorts of powerful 
> magical qualities, but they are not listed in FBWTFT, so they
> aren't "beasts."

If they were "beasts", wouldn't it be kind of disgusting for humans to
cross-breed with them?

Veelas are real. Real folklore in Slavic countries, anyway, altho' I
think usually transliterated 'vila'. They are beautiful young women who
dance in the woods (therefore, sometimes called 'wood-nymphs' by
English-speakers) and lure men into leaving their path to dance with
them, of which one common outcome is that the veelas suddenly vanish and
the man is all alone lost in the woods at night. They take the form of
swans in order to fly. Upon arrival at their dancing ground (or swimming
hole), they take off their swan skins to take more human form. A man who
steals a veela's swanskin can keep her for a wife and she will do the
housework and bear children, but if she ever gets the chance she will
grab her swan skin and transform and fly away, leaving her children
behind. People put out food offerings for the veelas, because the veelas
can help or hurt the crops. They are sometimes said to be the spirits of
young women who died childless, so that the powers of fertility they
didn't use while alive can be used for the crops. 

They may be personifications of Nature, which would explain why they are
said to be fairly nice in Greece (under the name of 'dryads') and get
nastier northwards until they are quite sadistic in Russia. The phrase
'get the willies', meaning 'be scared' (do Brits say 'get the wind up?')
comes from a Russian phrase referring to being pursued by veelas. Mind
you, veelas are intensely similar to rusalki ('water-nymphs', 'nereids')
who live in bodies of water and lure men to kiss them and lure small
children to hug them, whereupon they sink back into their water, pulling
down their victim to drown, which is nasty enough. 

Gabriel wrote:

> Once again I'd like to press my theory that the body which does
> this, which is the closest the wizards have to a legislature, is a
> dormant witenagemot which meets only in times of crisis. 

Wit(ch)enagemot? I knew it was a pre-Norman Parliament, but checked
One-Look Dictionaries http://www.onelook.com/index.html for the
etymology. Gemot is meeting and Witana is counsellors, singular witta,
from weid- , PIE root referring to wisdom, wit, and some other
interesting things like 'to see'. My point is, we know the word 'wizard'
comes from 'wise' and it was long believed that the word 'witch' came
from 'wit', so calling it Witch-Meet would be a fine translation.

However, One-Look also pointed me to an article
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/13951.html that says 'These
facts discredit the old argument that the witenagemot was similar to the
later representative Parliament and make it clear that the witan were
more analogous to the later Curia Regis.'

Presumably, that analogy to Parliament would be the 'Wizards' Council'
that is frequently referred to in the 1200-1300-1400s part of QUIDDITCH
THROUGH THE AGES? FANTASTIC BEASTS has a footnote (in "What is a
Beaast?") that the Wizard's Council preceeded the Ministry of Magic.
Both books refer to the position of 'Chief of the Wizards' Council' or
'Council Chief'. If only I could find the place where canon refers to a
'Warlocks' Council', I could go on to my theory that 'Warlocks' Council'
is an alternate, older, or more formal name for Wizards' Council', and
is referred to by Dumbledore's title of Chief Warlock (on his
letterhead: "Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards"). 

(I also imagine that Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorceror" is
the top honor, better than mere Order of Merlin, First Class, and that
Supreme Mugwump, International Confederation of Wizards is a title
meaning President Emeritus (or Secretary-General Emeritus) of the
Internation Confederation (or Federation) of Wizards (or Warlocks -- all
those names appear in canon and I want to believe that they are the same
thing) and the ICFW is a governing body more powerful than the UN.)

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Question for JKR:
1) In the Potterverse, what is a 'warlock'? (warrior-wizard? MP-wizard?)
1.5) Is International Federation of Wizards, International Confederation
of Wizards, and Internation Confederation of Warlocks all the same
thing?
2) Why aren't Thunderbirds (aka Quetzalcoatls) in FANTASTIC BEASTS?
3) Are Boggarts (not in FB) Beings or Spirits?
4) Is the Ministry of Magic part of the Muggle government?
5) Does Molly Weasley have red hair like her husband and children?
6) About werewolves in the Potterverse: are they contagious when in
human form, or only in wolf form? Is silver harmful to them? Are they
transformed only at night or also in the daytime? 
7) Is Professor Sinistra a witch or a wizard?
8) Why do they have to study so much Astronomy? Does the class include
Astrology? Do they have to know the locations of the planets because
they're going to travel there?
9) What is Arithmancy? 
10) Is Hermione 10.4 months older or 1.6 months younger than Harry?
11) Is Fleur a Seeker on a Beauxbatons Quidditch team? For that matter,
is Beauxbatons's Quidditch intramural like Hogwarts's or extramural?
12) Does the Fidelius Charm remove the information from people who used
to know it before the Charm was cast? Does it conceal the information
from all people or only the ones specified when the Charm was cast? 
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