Lucius's job / Hr+Ro = JKR+??? / Wizarding Plumbing and Muggles

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) <catlady@wicca.net>]

No: HPFGUIDX 49705

Dave dmwang wrote:

<< Do we know from canon what job, if any, Lucius Malfoy has? >>

We don't know from canon what job Lucius Malfoy has. I believe that 
the Malfoys have inherited so much wealth over the centuries that 
managing his investments and playing politics is a full-time job.

Peter the Couch Elf wrote:

<< Jo Rowling has said that Hermione is a character loosely based on 
herself. As such, it is interesting that she has Hermione becoming 
attracted to Ron rather than Harry. >>

And she has introduced the public, on a TV show, to her childhood 
friend, Sean something, on whom she said Ron is based. She reminisces 
of them hanging out together without ever hinting at any romance 
between them... She reveals so much about herself to the public that 
it leads me to speculate about things which are none of my beeswax.

Dan Tobias wrote:

<< Actually, they also adopted indoor plumbing... note all the 
references to bathrooms at Hogwarts. >>

I always say, in the Potterverse, the wizarding folk had indoor 
plumbing with hot and cold running water and flush toilets ever since 
Atlantis. All the various Muggles who 'invented' indoor plumbing 
(Minoans, Romans, 18th century, etc) were really trying to copy what 
they had seen when a guest in a wizarding home. Also, the wizarding 
folk had elaborate castles ever since Atlantis, so it doesn't matter 
that Muggle 'castles' were IIRC wooden huts surrounded by a muddy 
ditch and a picket fence at the time of the Founders.

I personally don't believe in Atlantis or primordial matriarchies, 
but I also don't believe in flying carpets or House Elves. A large 
part of the gimmick of the Potterverse is that many things which are 
familiar folklore or fantasy motifs which every reader *knows* aren't 
real, *are* real (altho' often garbled) in the Potterverse. So I 
think I'm tremendously amusing to add Atlantis and primordial 
matriarchies to the list of things that Muggles are too stupid to 
believe in.

About Potterverse wizarding folk having had late twentieth century 
indoor plumbing and Renaissance 'replica' castles since back before 
Atlantis sank. They didn't need to know any plumbing, hydraulics, 
metallurgy, stonecarving, or architecture because they made their 
bathrooms and castles by MAGIC! However, Muggles who visted wizards 
and saw the nice things the wizards had, had to invent all that 
technology in order to imitate the wizarding goodies. 
 
The wizarding folk teach their children a lot of self-enhancing 
falsehoods. For example, they teach their children that the reason to 
keep magic secret from Muggles is to avoid being pestered by Muggles 
wanting favors (and Hagrid, not having completed his education, still 
believes that), when in reality the wizarding folk went into hiding 
because they were scared of the Muggles attacking them. When it comes 
to Magical History, I have more faith in Professor Binns's accuracy 
than in Hagrid's. In CoS, Binns said: "You all know, of course, that 
Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago - the precise date is 
uncertain - by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The 
four school Houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga 
Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. They built this 
castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when 
magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered 
much persecution." Let me repeat: "witches and wizards suffered much 
persecution." 

Another example is that they teach their children that Muggles use 
technology to imitate what wizards do by magic. Technology probably 
*started* that way, Muggles trying to figure out how to make 
bathrooms and castles and swords like the wizards had ... this may 
have remained true up to the Steam Age, with Muggles inventing 
horseless carriages to imitate the horseless carriages that carry 
students from Hogsmeade Station to Hogwarts, inventing railroads to 
imitate wizarding self-propelled wagons like at Gringotts, gaslight 
to imitate the magical self-lighting candles on the wall of wizarding 
houses ... but by then the discovery and invention of science and 
technology had become self-propelling themselves, and with 
Electricity, Muggles went on to invent things that the wizarding folk 
copy. The Wizarding Wireless Network is obviously an imitation of 
Muggle radio, because it's named after "wireles", the British Muggle 
name for radio. The wizarding folk would have no other reason to name 
it "wireless", because they didn't have a preceeding technology named 
"wire" (the telegraph).