Integrated worlds, separate, or co-existing?

[career advisor]

No: HPFGUIDX 154894

<Sandra Collins <sandra87b at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:          
<<snip> I just can't get my head around the layout of the whole HP world.>
 <<snip>I suppose my point is, if the characters have to go through a> 
 <magical gateway to be on Platform 9 and 3/4 which exists in a >
 <'parallel' world, why don't the magical people reside permanently> 
 <in that world? Sandra, back after ages away!>
 
<snip>Katie:
<Well, my understanding was always that those magical things were NOT in a <parallel world, but instead existing right there in front of all the Muggles, but <they couldn't see them. Like St. Mungo's looks like a old run down department <store, and Muggles just don't see what they don't want to see: "Fred, George, <and Ron stepped after them; Harry glanced around at the jostling crowd; not <one of them seemed to have a glance to sparefor window displays as ugly as <Purge and Dowse Ltd's, nor did any of them seem to notice that six people had <just melted into thin air in front of them. " OotP, American Hardback, page 483.
<Hogwarts is enchanted to look like a ruin, and no Muggle notices that the <Leaky Cauldron is there, probably because it's been enchanted, too. As I <understand the HP universe, witches and wizards are mostly invisible to a <Muggle public that wishes not to see magical things, but for the more important <or difficult to hide secrets, an enchantment of some sort is needed. "Seats a <hundred thousand," said Mr. Weasley, spotting the awestruck look on Harry's <face. "Ministry task force of five hundred have been working on it all year. <Muggle Repelling Charms on every inch of it. Every time Muggles have got <anywhere near here all year, they've suddenly remembered urgent <appointments and had to dash away again...bless them," GoF, American <Hardback, page 96.<snip> Katie

DA Jones

I found this intriguing to answer, perhaps I went off the deep end, but you hit my imagination button.  So I pondered this, so below is my goofy opinion. 

Remember the tent at the World Cup in GOF. One of the prime abilities of witches and wizards seems to be the ability to create ''wizard space'. This is sort of like being able to cut a hole in reality with a scalpel and inserting a balloon, which you blow up and then fill with whatever furniture you want. The balloon holds it's shape and creates an extra-dimensional space. But the 'portal' is in normal space and can be entered by determined or imaginative muggles unless disguised by charms and such. 

However, witches and wizards sometimes travel through 'normal space' to move from one 'wizard space' to another. The Hogwarts express appears to travel from one 'wizard space' Platform 9 3/4 to another Hogsmead station.  Whether Hogsmead station, Hogmead and Hogwarts are three separate wizard space, one wizard space or several interconnected 'nested' wizard spaces, is debatable. 

St. Mungos portal is disguised so that muggles don't accidentally stumble in. It must be possible, because there is even 'security' --the manikin. Also the ministry of magic is a 'wizard space' accessed from the telephone both.

The Floo network seems to be a way to connect wizard space's. When it connects to the homes of the muggle-born, the fireplace itself must be the wizard space/portal.  

Apparation also seems to work mostly from wizard space to wizard space. Maybe intent creates 'apparition points' in which a wizard space is created with a portal to that point. 

However, at least the outside of most wizard structures would look perfectly normal to muggles, it is the inside that is expanded, or if there are differences from the outside, muggles would prob ignore it, or they are covered with charms or secret passwords or 'bricks' as with diagon alley.  I think a muggle could find the burrow, and would think it was just an old rickety house, if he went inside he might think diff, because to some extent the inside of the burrow has prob made use of wizard space principles. 

Maybe all magic works in the HP universe by first using intent to imagine a magical field around the object to be magiced. This magic field; call it the 'JKR field' changes the laws of physics around the object allowing the magican to change it in ways he imagines. The wand movements are important in that the define the size and shape of the field, which may affect what can be imagined.   In other words all magic works by first creating a 'wizard space' through intent around what the wizard wants to change. In other words all magic in the HP universe works through imagination. 

DA Jones
 
 		
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