OOP Chapter 2 Post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182480

Alla quoted: 
> "The arrival of the dementors in Little Whinging seemed to have 
caused a breach in the great, invisible wall that divided the 
relentlessly non-magical world of Privet Drive and the word beyond. 
Harry's two lives had somehow become fused and everything had been
turned upside down: The Dursleys were asking for details about the 
magical world and Mrs. Figg knew Albus Dumbledore; dementors were
soaring around Little Whinging  and he might never go back to
Hogwarts. Harry's head throbbed more painfully" - p.37
> 
Alla commented:
> 
> I find this quote to be so interesting. I remember wondering whether
Muggle and WW world would ever meet each other on the larger scale
than some people going back and forth (parents, muggleborns) and this
one seemed like foreshadowing that it may be.
> 
> Till JKR said that it is not going to happen that is and then I was
thinking that maybe it is a warning against the chaos that may happen
if it will happen.

Carol responds:
JKR has to maintain verisimilitude. We can believe (if we choose
<winks at Betsy>) in a hidden WW within the Muggle world, dependent on
Muggle-repelling spells and Memory Charms and the like for secrecy. We
can even believe in a generic Muggle Prime Minister visited by Fudge
(HBP) who's unwilling to reveal those visits to anyone and in Wizards
(Kingsley Shacklebolt) and Squibs (Mrs. Figg) passing as Muggles. We
can also believe in magically caused disasters (the bridge and the
"hurricane") whose real cause is unsuspected by the Muggles and in an
occasional murder or disappearance (the Riddle, Frank Bryce, Emmeline
Vance, Amelia Bones) of which the Muggle authorities are aware but
which they can't solve, but that's about as far as JKR can credibly go. 

She can't have LV taking over the WW and then extending his rule over
the Muggle world because her story is set in the recent past (it ends,
not counting the Epilogue) in 1998, and we Muggles know that no such
takeover occurred. So the contacts between the Muggle world and the WW
have to be restricted to things that can be otherwise explained
(breeding Dementors as an unseasonable fog making everyone depressed,
for example). *Harry's* worlds overlap, as do those of Muggle-born
Witches and Wizards and their parents, but, for most of Muggles,
including JKR's readers, magic is dismissed as irrational and unreal.
We would walk right by St. Mungo's or the visitors' entrance to the
MoM and not know that they were there.

Carol, now wondering how the whole village of Hogsmeade is concealed
from Muggle eyes