Harry Potter

Sending owls to deliver letters to Muggle families might run the risk of breaking the masquerade. Wizarding families who live in Wizarding society probably also aren't in the habit of using Muggle stationary.

This isn't most series. Magic being essentially an emp means it's (at the time the series takes place anyway) pretty much impossible to fully integrate modern technology (Nineties era tech anyway) and magic.

Any attempt to figure out a way to get around this would probably require mutual cooperation from both wizard researchers and Muggle engineers and scientists. This doesn't necessarily even need a full break of the masquerade either. We already know that Muggle authorities do know about the Wizarding world. Heck, the first book already hinted at this by the fact that Wizard world currency can be exchanged for Muggle currency.

Edited by M84 on May 17th 2022 at 12:22:45 AM

Meant Muggle-borns or half-bloods asking their parents for supplies. And I know Dean said he didn’t tell his other anything , but I’d assume other kids would contact their parents with Owls being the immediate form of communication.

That was more that I’m just too used other series trying to find or already providing an answer to it.

Edited by Cross on May 16th 2022 at 12:30:06 PM

Even putting aside the potential masquerade break issues, that still doesn't change the reason Hogwarts itself doesn't buy bulk purchases of Muggle stationary. It's just safer for them to stick with the Quills made in-house, so to speak.

Is the issue that in general, wizard world live along side but not with muggle world, which it kinda pount out many of the issue rowling often face in her worldbulding.

Clearly there should be the first techno-wizard.

Or a magi-anthropologist masquerading as a muggle travel host.

Edited by terumokou on May 17th 2022 at 1:45:04 AM

Like I said, it would take more than one magic user. Heck, it would take more than magic users period.

It would take a joint-project between magic researchers and Muggle researchers to figure out why magic messes with electronics and how to overcome it.

Which of course would require wizard society to get over their inherent xenophobia and actually show interest in the non-magical world.

Remember that people like Arthur Weasly who show interest in non-wizard stuff are seen as weirdos.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 17th 2022 at 12:44:06 PM

Yes, it would. The issue of magic interfering with electronics will never be overcome as long as Wizarding society still considers itself above Muggle society.

I mean shit, at this point what exactly is stopping the Wizarding world from going all conquerors on the Muggle world? Vague morals? Lack of numbers?

The fact that Voldemort and Grindelwald have had significant support and that is never addressed, to the point that Grindelwald can be pardoned for his crimes and win an election and Voldemort is able to conquer wizarding Britain easily since his followers infiltrated the government and installed pureblood supremacy laws.

I think the more we see the adult side of the Wizarding World, the fact that the magic schools are the best setting of this franchise is getting more and more obvious.

The fact that Muggle firepower is just more efficient when it comes to killing people.

Well the Wizards with wands don't know that TBF.

As I mentioned before, arguably the biggest disagreements wizard society has with fascists like Grindelwald and Voldemort is about isolationism.

Wizard society wants to segregate itself, undisturbed by muggles - that attitude is perfectly summed up by Hagrid who thinks wizards are better off not interacting with muggle society because everyone would just keep asking for magical solutions otherwise (nevermind the inherent dickishness of actually having magical solutions to at least some problem and just refusing to share it with others).

Long story short, wizard society can excuse the xenophobia and authoritarianism, but draws the line at breaking The Masquerade.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 17th 2022 at 3:08:37 PM

I mean back when we were all more innocent and naive we could accept Hagrid's explanation at face value, but after all the RL shit, and it's easy to see parallels with that explanation and supremacist thinking that defines fascists.

That's why I think the only place this series could go is if the masquerade was broken, and we had stories dealing with a changing Wizarding World.

Hagrid in general really becomes a massive case of Harsher in Hindsight when growing up and looking back at the books.

There's his first real meeting with Harry (you know, when he tried to turn a child into a pig) or his dismissal of Hermione's house elf advocacy because "they like serving people".

In a way Hagrid is basically Harry's racist uncle whom we only sympathise with because Harry does.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 17th 2022 at 3:15:59 PM

one does not simply break the masquerade and upend the status quo,you'll find a lot of the reasons stories fervently maintain a masquerade is that without it the plot falls apart as writers have built the entire story around having a masquerade

You could easily write a story about "hidden group refuses to share their magical solutions" and have them be the villains.

It could be a morally grey story, too. At first it looks like these assholes just refuse to bother helping, then as the heroes get more involved they discover all the weird magical problems going on. The wizards (or elves, or whatever) could still be doing more to help, but they're not just sitting around doing nothing while normal people die.

.... Ah shit you are right. And like Hagrid is such a likeable and sympathetic character otherwise.

In most settings where the masquerade breaks, it usually happens only because a big enough disaster happens that renders the masquerade totally unsustainable or outright useless.

That didn't happen in the main book series since Tom had yet to get to the level of an open war with Muggles. He was still limiting himself to a shadow campaign of terror that kept Muggles from knowing what was happening.

Edited by M84 on May 17th 2022 at 9:33:12 PM

Think this is the first time I’ve seen that take on Hagrid. Honestly, the only character my opinion has really got harsher on was Xeno.

Still, it's weird with how generations work, you'll eventually have people who will want the integration. Your Gen-Z hybrid youngins need that social media fix. Also god imagine livestreaming.

Honestly, spending a good part of the year in a place without access to social media might not be the worst thing for them.

Well, not like they need social media for fascist indoctrination to occur anyway.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 17th 2022 at 3:52:10 PM

Yeah but at least they won't get bombarded with inane crypto and NFT bullshit.

Hey, at least those bubbles are popping.