Headscratchers / Bedknobs and Broomsticks

• More of a behind-the-scenes question… Does anyone know what the deal is with the Bookseller? His story arc is an extremely glaring case of What Happened to the Mouse?, which makes me wonder whether his role was initially meant to be bigger, but eventually cut back (presumably for time).
• Just how many suits of armor were in that museum/castle? It's a limited space, but the lines of armies goes on for literal miles. Yes, the castle is shown to have quite a few, but for just a little castle with a minor village it seems outlandish.
  • Perhaps those ghostly trumpets in the spell scene also called other suits of armor in other museums to life...?
  • Most museums have far more materials stockpiled in their employees-only areas than on display.
  • Or those were items from a bigger museum sent to the village for safekeeping.
  • There seem to be far fewer once they close in. An illusion, perhaps? It's a powerful spell cast by someone who explicitly has no idea how to control it, after all.
  • Miss Price knows a spell that turns men into rabbits. Wouldn't that be a much quicker and efficient way to deal with an enemy army? Admittedly I haven't watched the film in a while, so perhaps there was a stated limitation for that spell.
    • The spell is short-lived, everyone she cast it on transformed back to normal after a minute or so. Besides, she tried to cast it on the army, but forgot how the spell ended.
    • Also, she doesn't demonstrate the ability to do it to more than one person at a time.
• Rather then steal the Star of Astoroth, why didn't they just talk to the king after establishing a friendship, say they're studying the human who created them and ask for a transcribe of the inscription. The king then gives them a scroll. After they return home, the scroll crumbles to dust, as it can't be taken between worlds.
  • The previous human studying magic on the isle was experimenting on and transforming animals. I don't think they would welcome any humans who were asking about his magic.
• Why does Miss Price suddenly abandons her initial idea of collaborating on the war effort? Even if all her notes were lost in that blast, they do know the words for the substitutive locomotion spell.
  • It would be rather difficult to get an audience with the Ministry of Defence claiming that you can animate armor and fight the Nazis with it.
  • All of her magic failed when her house and all those magic trinkets were destroyed, and none of the characters have enough of an idea how things actually work to recreate it.
• Why does Charlie think that blackmailing Price by showing people her broken broom would work at all? Even ignoring that she still has magic powers (as he finds out the hard way), all he would prove is that she had a broom (something almost everyone owns one of) and it broke at some point.
  • He was only showing Miss Price the broken broom to reveal that they’d saw her flying on it and know her secret. Like you say, showing it to someone else wouldn’t prove anything. Miss Price asks them not to tell anyone in the village as it would draw attention to her when she’s trying to help the war effort with magic. If someone decided to poke around her house - based on the children’s assertion that she was doing strange things - and found what looked like occult objects in her workroom, Miss Price could be arrested.