Muggleparents and Diagon Alley

[jennifer.k at lycos.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 15532


Some thought I have been pondering on during a slightly unfun day at 
school. 

 Has there never been one single muggleparent (either married to a 
wizard/witch or just belonging to a mugglefamily given a magical 
child) who when the letter from Hogwarts arriwed when the kid was 
eleven, tried to expose the wizarding world - yelling out about it to 
the entire world? Either just to get noticed/famous, or beacuse of 
the reason Hagrid mentioned in book 1: "Everybody would like to have 
magical sollutions to their problems" (something like it). I do not 
doubt there is people who´d do it in a second, if they had anything 
to gain from it. 
 What are the teachers/the headmaster at Hogwarts to do with these? 
Would they know, in some way, which parents are to be trusted, before 
sending out the letter, or is this just a blind shot? Them sending 
letters out to all magical children, hoping for all the parents to be 
just and earnest?
 If they in some way knows who are not to be trusted, what then? 
These children aren´t allowed at Hogwarts? Or would Hogwarts throw a 
memory spell over the parents, and then having the children lie all 
years about where they goes to school?

 (My thoughts are a bit hard to get a grip of, perhaps, expressed in 
a language only used at English-classes in school...but bear with 
me. :)

 Diagon-Alley then. 
 Where is this place really... "placed"? I know it is said its in 
London, behind The Leaking Cauldron at Charing Cross Road. But isn´t 
London like covered with houses? It is stated that muggles cannot see 
Hogwarts, but only a sign which sais Danger, and a harmless ruin. And 
that make sense to me, since no muggle lives at this very spot. But 
The Leaking Cauldron is mentioned the same way, the muggles can´t see 
it (or, they don´t appear to) and I guess the same thing goes for 
Diagon Alley. So what is there in the muggleworld instead of Diagon 
Alley? Shouldn´t there be a street or something, with people living 
on it? This could´t just be a charm thrown over an "empty" area, 
having the muggles to see something thats really not there. This 
should mean that Diagon Alley is placed in some kind of another 
universe (or something).

(in short - how could Madame Malkin have a store at the exact spot as 
The "Mrs Smith´s" London-rowhouse?)

Maybe I´m not getting something very important about the wizarding 
world - like that everything about it is set in a parallel world. but 
I allways though they lived in the same world as ours?

(Or is this just supposed to be...magic? :)

/Jennifer