The Malfoys WAS: Wizarding kids and their parents

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 183990

> Carol responds:


> So, IMO, it's not the poster Montavilla was responding to (Magpie?)
> who was confusing shrunken teeth with braces. It was JKR confusing the
> effects of those two procedures.

Magpie:
Heh. It wasn't me she was responding to, but I almost added this very 
same tangent: why would braces or headgear shrink your teeth? The most 
I could figure was that maybe the real trouble was that they were 
protruding and just looked large so shrinking them created the illusion 
the problem was fixed, or that perhaps they were overly large and that 
caused Hermione's teeth to be badly aligned and that's what her parents 
were trying to fix with orthodontics. (Your teeth don't always have to 
look crooked to need braces, after all--iirc, mine were a lot about 
aligning the jaw.) 

Fun fact: I was watching a behind the scenes of the movie Tootsie once 
and Dustin Hoffman was talking about some of the stuff they had to do 
to make him a woman that was surprising. He wears fake teeth in the 
movie and I'd thought maybe it was to make his teeth look smaller, but 
it turns out women tend to have longer teeth.

-m