[HPforGrownups] Re: When

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 179800

From: "Barry" <whealthinc at ozemail.com.au>
>> While reading DH, I had the strong feeling that JKR's writing was based
>> on resistance fighters in WW2. I then asked myself: Teenagers! Where
>> are the mobile phones (cell phones) and computers? The dragon flying
>> from Gringotts would easily be picked up by satellite and planes.
>> Why  didn't we see any? Giants would also be easily spotted.


Shelley:
This question for me can be explained by looking at the Quidditch World Cup, 
and by the conversation with the Other Prime Minister. The Wizards clearly 
manipulated the Muggle environment with charms that meant to confound, hide 
and conceal the magical world, including the Dragons and Giants. It was said 
of the Giants that most (Muggles) were "lost in accidents" while in the 
wild, when they had encountered a Giant and died from it. Those that lived 
had their memories wiped by squads of Wizards who covered things up. The 
satellite images and planes would be the same way- the Wizards would have to 
have people working with almost every police network and control towers for 
the airplanes to make sure things we kept quiet, or spun to be publicized 
with an excuse that the Wizards thought the Muggle public would just buy 
hook and sinker. (Take a cue from today's alien/UFO sightings: "That wasn't 
an alien spacecraft you saw, that was a government weather balloon.") I 
imagine with the War with Voldemort that the more Voldemort killed and 
murdered innocent people, the busier the Wizard world would have had to have 
been just working overtime to keep all of those events covered up and 
obliterated, or released as some crazy old geezer who claims to have met 
"Bigfoot", or just some odd mixture of metals that caused a bridge to 
fatigue unnaturally early. Sure, people saw the Dragon, until the headlines 
in the paper featured a local group of kids that had developed a radar 
controlled plane or kite that looked like a Dragon, and the poor Muggles 
would just change their mind that what they saw mustn't have been a real 
animal after all.

Yes, Muggle teenagers would have had cell phones and Internet connections, 
but we assume that Hermione and all the other Muggleborns gave up all of 
that when they came to Hogwarts to learn about all the Wizarding stuff 
instead. Only those, like Arthur, would still know how to use these things 
and be interested in them. I imagine that Kingsley, at the Muggle Prime 
Minister's office, would have "sat" in front of a computer to pretend to do 
his work, but in reality he didn't need a computer to finish it. He would 
have used magic instead, and everyone who entered his office would have been 
"confounded" to see Kingsley actually typing at the computer, just as the 
Wizards wanted them to see. The office itself would have rigged, just like 
the Quidditch World Cup stadium was, so that it had the proper intended 
affect on the Muggles who got near it. Maybe they just got the feeling of 
contentment, like Kingsley was adequate and they didn't need to stay long, 
as he had everything well taken care of. I bet the Muggles who met Kingsley 
in his office would "swear" that they saw him answering his cell phone once 
or twice, while they were in his presence.