No Sex, Please, We're British

[o_caipora]

No: HPFGUIDX 83738

"grannybat84112" wrote:
> Caipora is feeling playful:
> > 
> > In [Larry Niven's] _What Good is a Glass Dagger?_ ... 
> > The bad guy, it seems, carries a sword. The Warlock bursts out 
> > laughing. His explanation is that since a wizard has so many more 
> > powerful protections, he only carries a sword if he's using it as 
a 
> > cure for impotence. 
> > 
> > Thus Niven sheds new light on the personality of Godric 
Gryffindor. 

> I'll be very surprised if JKR leaves the sword 
> to tarnish in its display case now that open war has been declared. 
> Its potential as symbol and pragmatic weapon is just too strong.
> 
> No, I don't think the ruby-hilted blade will be revealed as the 
> medieval form of Viagra. That's not Rowling's style.

I think we can agree that the sword is a very potent symbol . . .

The reasons for a wizard to use a blade do enter into _What Good is a 
Glass Dagger?_ but I can't explain further without spoiling the story.

The protagonist in that story is a student in a wizarding school - 
not Hogwarts but the School for Mercantile Grammarie in Atlantis, 
IIRC - and, yet again, a teenage werewolf. 

Randall Garret's magic is more organized than Rowling's. In one of 
his Lord Darcy books, Darcy's Master Magician explains some of the 
contents of his bag of magician's tools. He has a dull dagger as a 
symbol for a dull dagger, and a sharp dagger as a symbol of a sharp 
dagger. "Sometimes the best symbol for a thing is the thing itself."

Recall the scene where everyone has a sword and Indiana Jones uses 
Something Else. Whatever may be said of the moral characters of 
Riddle and Slytherin, there's no question but that they were first-
rate magicians. Facing Riddle and Slytherin's Basilisk, the best 
weapon may well have been anything but a wand.

The Sorting Hat, old in wizardry and having looked over the shoulders 
of all the Headmasters of Hogwarts, delivered a sword and not a wand. 

 - Caipora