Colin's camera -

rosie crana at ntlworld.com
Sat Aug 10 08:35:56 UTC 2002


No: HPFGUIDX 42403

Fyre Wood said:
"Wait a second?! I thought that cameras, bugging devices, and all 
those electric things wouldn't work on the Hogwarts' Campus, as 
mentioned in the GoF by Hermione when she explains bugging to Harry 
and Ron.

Plot hole? a Flint? Or does Creepy Colin Creevy use one that doesn't 
run on that sort of thing and is disposable? Or perhaps is the camera 
a Polariod?"

I just thought of that myself. Even a disposable or Polaroid camera usually takes batteries. You have to go back a number of years before cameras didn't use electricity, don't you?. I can't really see Colin clutching a home-made pinhole camera either...

Um.
Um.
Maybe one of his friends "magicked" it for him so it will now run on magic not batteries (the same guy who suggested he develop it in a special potion?).

Amanda pointed out that Mr Creevy would likely give his son a cheapo camera meaning an old mechanical one, but you can get battery-powered, flash cameras pretty cheap here, so why bother?

New idea: Harry didn't get the full Muggle introduction to Hogwarts because he was not Muggle-born and his adoptive family (Petunia) were meant to know about the WW. Perhaps if you are truly Muggle-born like Colin, you get someone coming to your house (bit like Hagrid's visit to Harry) to talk to you and your parents, you get to write to someone and ask lots of questions, you get more detailed information about the castle and so on. 

Then Mr Creevy could have asked "My son's a really keen photographer, is that ok?" and either his advisor person says "As long as it doesn't use batteries" - he goes and digs up his old one from the attic, or says "Sure, just let me reconfigure it" and somehow magically changes it to run off magic instead.

It was described as looking like an "ordinary Muggle camera" I believe, not "an ancient rusty old camera", so I incline to my magic camera theory :)

I wonder what cameras people like Rita Skeeter's photographer use.

On a related-sort-of note, you know where Mr Weasley (I think) describes the security around the QWC in GOF, and says "there are some places Muggles can't penetrate", making reference to Diagon Alley... what does he mean by this?

He clearly can't mean they physically cannot enter at all, as Mr & Mrs Weasley do. They can't enter without the help from a witch or wizard, perhaps? Ideas?

_________________________

Bboy_mn wrote:
"I know I'm not suppose to post really short messages, but I was
wondering if anyone was willing to speculate about Molly's real name?

If Molly is a nickname, the what poper name is it typically a nickname
for?"

Believe it or not (over in the UK at least) Molly comes from Mary as the most common origin of that nickname (and Polly as well). It seems to be a nickname that can come from many names though, like Millie. My sister's name is Amelia, she's called Millie, it's also short for Millicent, and a girl who went missing here was called Amanda, nicknamed Millie.

Molly works in the same way I think, but if you trace it back I believe it does come from Mary for the most part. Nowadays kids might be given that as a name just by itself but I don't think this was so common in the past.

Rosie


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