Knight Bus, Flying Carpets and Robes.

[bluesqueak]

No: HPFGUIDX 45781

Knight Bus:
Probably serves exactly the same purpose as the London night bus - 
it's late, you've had a great night out, you're now too drunk to 
risk an auror catching you flying a broomstick without due care and 
attention, you can't quite remember where your home *is* to apparate 
to, and why don't you just stick your wand hand out, collapse onto 
the Knight Bus, and rely on the Driver and Conductor to shout/wake 
you up when it reaches your stop...

Flying Carpets:
I suspect JKR is having a little joke on us here. Crouch Sr. talks 
about his grandfather owning one before they were banned (GoF Ch.7 
somewhere..)- it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that Grandfather 
Crouch was probably around at the turn of the 19th/20th Century.

It was around this time that a magic carpet was unfortunately sold 
by mistake to a muggle second hand dealer, who sold it on to a 
muggle family, where it ended up in the children's nursery. What 
happened next can be discovered in the fascinating account by the 
witch Edith Nesbitt, entitled 'The Phoenix and the Carpet.' 

Since the five muggle children involved certainly had an interesting 
time (as did the cook, the maid, and other assorted muggles), I can 
well imagine the extremely embarrassed Edwardian MoM insisting that 
flying carpets ought to be banned. :-)

Robes: 
I visualise them as monastic style/ medieval full robes, probably 
slightly shorter for the boys (since Ron thinks his *long* dress 
robe looks like a girl's robe). They'd be a wool weave, I think, or 
velvet might be used for the dress robes (Ron's is described as a 
green velvet). Either way, quite warm enough to only need a t-shirt 
or vest underneath. Especially since the uniform includes a top 
cloak for winter wear.

Archie probably *is* eccentric as underclothes were certainly worn 
in medieval monastries. In addition, no underclothes under robes 
would be - how do I put it? - a little inconvenient for the girls at 
least once they hit puberty.

Our poor PS/SS costume designer probably weighed up the time and 
cost involved in producing several hundred school robes *from 
scratch* versus phoning up the companies who produce school uniforms 
and saying 'I need a special order for 300 grey v-necks, assorted 
sizes, 100 to have red and gold stripes on the v, 50 with green and 
silver - etc. And ditto for the readily available school trousers, 
shirts, shoes. 

Time and cost probably said the 'cloak over school uniform' was the 
better option and wouldn't cause the cinematographer and lighting 
designer to tear their hair out trying to film/light tons of dull, 
light absorbing black-on-black uniforms[grin].

Pip