Alcohol use in the Wizard subculture

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 158227

One thing to keep in mind, as far as alcohol use among wizards and witches 
goes, (including those whom we would consider "underage") is that the Wizard 
world is, in many ways, very old-fashioned.  It basically ranges from 
feeling roughly like Britain of the period before World War II all the way 
back to medieval survivals.

Hogwarts itself is run like an English "public school" of the period before 
Thomas Arnold "reformed" Rugby.  Sports are not compulsory, for one thing 
(compare-and-contrast other "school stories," such as _Stalky & Co._ by 
Rudyard Kipling) and the students run their own lives far more than I 
believe was the case after Arnold's time.  In some ways, Hogwarts is a 
deliberate inversion of a traditional "public school"---the abundant, 
luxurious food and extremely comfortable beds are a contrast to the 
accomodations at many very exclusive public schools, where students were 
expected to supplement the "food" they were provided with their own money 
(in _Stalky & Co_ this is called "brewing") and the dormitories compared 
rather unfavorably to the sleeping accomodations at Colditz.

Given its rather "Regency-to-Early-Victorian" ambiance, a certain amount of 
_moderate_ alcohol use by students is hardly unusual.  It is often forgotten 
(Particularly in America, where nearly a century of temperance propaganda 
did a lot to distort history) how widespread drinking was in the old days, 
particularly before tea and coffee became so cheap and easily obtained. 
Children routinely drank "flip" (a mixture of ale or cider and an egg, 
beaten to a froth---quite enough to get one tiddly, particularly a child) in 
Colonial America, and the same held true for Europe.

In _Tom Brown's Schooldays,_ Flashman is expelled, not for drinking as such, 
but for _drunkenness._  If he had been better able to hold his liquor, or 
hadn't mixed his drinks, he would probably have gone on at Rugby until the 
usual school-leaving time.  And, be it noted, nobody thinks anything's 
unusual about Flash being served alcohol in a public house, or the publican 
getting into any trouble for doing so.

Drinking by children became more and more taboo as the nineteenth century 
wore on, until it was all but forbidden.  Wizards, though, do not come under 
Muggle laws---otherwise there are a lot of people at Azkaban who could file 
petitions of _habeas corpus,_ and win, because they never got a trial. 
*pausing to imagine Rumpole of the Bailey's indignation at how the Wizard 
World conducts trials---it would be _epic!_*