Clothes as Metaphor (was: Lily and Tuney and Sev)

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 176437

> bboyminn:
> 
> Well, I've speculated many times on this aspect of
> magic. If a pair of jeans tears, then it could
> easily be magically mended - good as new. However,
> if you wear a hole in a pair of jeans, it is not
> so easy to mend. 
> 
> <snip>
> It all comes down to trying to create something out
> of nothing, and nothing of real lasting substance
> can be created that way.

Mike:
I agree with you, Steve. This is also the way I looked at 
Transfiguration magic. Hermione's conjured canaries have artificial 
substance that will fade, causing them to dissapate into nothing over 
time. Likewise, if food is conjured from a real source (like Madam 
Rosemerta's mead that Dumbledore conjures in HBP's "Will and Won't") 
then it will have substance and be subsistance. If, instead, 
Dumbledore had conjured the tea and cakes in Hagrid's hut (GoF) from 
nothing, then it might taste like the real thing, but would be the 
epitome of empty calories. I.e. there would be no sustinance to be 
gained from eating/drinking that food, you would essentially be 
eating air transfigured to look and taste like food.

The thing is, in the case Sev's smock, the substance is there. A 
reasonably competent witch/wizard should be able transfigure the 
material into a shape that resembled a descent shirt. For that 
matter, the coat had too much material, it should have been easy to 
tailor it into the proper size for Sev. Heck, she (Eileen) could have 
saved the extra material for patches and/or letting it out when Sev 
grew.



> bboyminn:
> 
> As to Ron's Robes, I suspect Molly didn't fix them
> because she is a harried housewife with too many
> kids and too little time. I suspect the robes 
> were bought close to the departing time, and she 
> was rushed to get many other things accomplished 
> before all her kids left for school.

Mike:
A fair assessment. Though one must ask, how long does it take to do 
one of these transfiguration jobs. I'd daresay less time than Molly 
took arguing with Ron after she handed them over.


Lisa:

Muggles have various abilities and talents -- apparently wizards and
witches do, too. My poor mom couldn't sew to save her life. There
is no way on earth she'd've ever been able to repair or "remodel"
clothing of any kind. Perhaps spells are specific talents, too.
Molly might be a really talented witch when it comes to cooking
spells, but just can't sufficiently master the sewing spells.

Mike:
I definitely agree with your assessment on varying abilities with 
spells, Lisa. Tonks told Harry that she never got the hang of those 
sort of "householdy" spells. But Molly knitted the boys jumpers for 
Christmas every year. (I don't remember Ginny ever being stuck 
wearing one <g>) And Hermione even managed to magically knit elf hats 
that began to look like hats (instead of cozies) as a teenager, and 
she had neither a witch mother to teach her nor does she seem headed 
towards early domestication. LOL

I would have thought that Molly would have learned these seamstress 
type spells, what with all the hand-me-downs she probably had to 
foist on her kids. The fact that the boys went from lanky to stocky 
and back with the next one born, would seem to make this knowledge a 
must in the Weasley household.


> Steve/bboyminn
> 
> As to Snape, I can sympathize with him myself, because
> to some extent I've been where he was. We were poor
> when I was growing up. <snip> So, what does a kid do? Grins 
> and... no... frowns and bares it. Kids are powerless in 
> life, so they take what their parents hand out, and they
> endure. Thank god for their ability to endure.

Jen:
About the shirt, gosh, there's so much going on with that one article
of clothing. I suspect there's some shame for Snape, since he wears
the coat until he gets to know Lily. It *is* a marker for his
poverty, as well as a class distinction in a mill town - the worker
sons wore the smocklike shirts and the management sons likely wore
something else, thus one reason Petunia with her class-consciousness
fingered Severus so quickly as the boy who lived by the river (wrong
side of the tracks as you said later, Ceridwen).

Mike:
I suppose that's the reason JKR had Severus wearing those clothes. 
Like you said, Jen, that smock spoke volumes about who and what Sev 
was. Had Eileen made him *good* clothes out of the rags, we would 
lose the texture of the scene, lose that sense of him being from 
Ceridwen's "wrong side of the tracks".


Jen:
Then there's the connection to Harry as the kid who wore the
oversized clothes and was laughed at or avoided by other kids; Harry
didn't even attempt friendships.

Mike:
Another good catch, Jen. <g> Does anybody know what the term for this 
would be? There is this parallel between the two boys ill-fitting 
clothes. But ones clothes are too small while the others are too 
large, so they are ill-fitting for opposite reasons.

This is the metaphor I see. Severus has outgrown his clothes/world 
that he is still confined to as a child. He's ready for Hogwarts long 
before he gets there. When we see his grey underwear, it signifies 
there is something foul going on underneath. Severus has already 
aligned himself with the DEs he will eventually join. Then as an 
adult his billowing, black robes give him that bat-like and/or 
vampiric appearance. Our clue that he should be dead, he is living on 
borrowed time trying to walk that tight-rope.

Harry has a lot of growing up to do to fulfill his clothes/potential 
as the wizard that will save the world. He's already *big* in the 
wizarding worlds eyes, before he even steps into it. But he still 
feels small and insignificant, he doesn't think he'll fit in. When he 
crosses over into the wizarding world he has good clothes, he fits in 
this world. He gets handsome dress robes signifying he's wearing a 
man's clothes while really still a boy, competing in the same arena 
as those much older than himself. Then Harry is outgrowing *his* 
clothes, he's ready to move on from Hogwarts, his journey has 
outgrown the childhood of school.

Mike, who's really out of his element when he starts getting into 
metaphors ;)