Random Questions

[Aberforth]

1. Where does an animagus keep their wand when they change form? - Rita Skeeter was a beetle, surely far too small to conceal a wand about her personage.

2. Where does Sirius get a wand from? Clearly he doesn't have it with him in Azkaban, and doesn't have his own throughout PoA (he has to steal one). He simply can't walk into Olivanders to buy being one of the most wanted people in the wizarding world and the wand chooses the wizard so he couldn't send someone else to buy him one.

3. Has Ernie McMillan been transported from a Jane Austin novel - check out his use of language especially in OotP.

4. There isn't enough pupils in each class. Apparently there are hundreds of pupils in the school, but there is only 5 boys in harrys year in gryffindor. If that is roughly the same for boys and girls throughout the houses and years that makes 280 pupils, discounting that some will leave after their OWLS. This isn't many hundreds is it? My school had 1000 pupils in it.

5. What does Dumbledore actually do during term time? All the staff (excluding the DADA teachers) have been there for years, so he doesn't have to interview many people. He doesn't teach anything. He doesn't write letters to parents about their children or school supplies etc. Surely the old man can stretch to teaching DADA himself.

6. I thought that Slytherin valued pupils who were pure-bloods and wanted to accept only them into the school. Yet, the sorting hat put Tom Riddle into Slytherin (definitely an intended paradox) who's father was a muggle, and it wanted to put Harry in Slytherin. Surely the pure-blood system would mean that cunning half-bloods (or less) would be shipped out to Hufflepuff or something.

7. The casting of spells in an odd one too. It seems that wizards can do magic without wands (harry blowing up his aunt etc), and they can do spells without speaking (the deathe eater in OotP that has had been Silencio'd). Sirius could transform to Snuffles without a wand. I don't understand - somone help me. Do you need a wand or a voice at all????

[Mistress Siana]

I understand it the way that wizards can do some basic spells or blow things up out of rage without a wand, but to do complicated things, they need it. About the voice: I don't remember where I read it (I think during the duel in the ministry) but I think you can cast spells without speaking, but they are less powerful that way.

I have yet to think about the others...

[Jotomicron]

You can find pretty answers to your last question here. Try it!

The number 6 is the most curious one, to me... The Sorting Hat sorts having in mind his creators' will. Slytherin would not teach a half-blood... Hmm! Strange thing.

And I think the wand could be transformed along with you if you were an animagus... That's how I understand it, anyway!

[Nobby]

Sirius could have ordered a wand by post. remember he got harry's firebolt by post using harry's name! he could of done the same again

[Aberforth]

"The wand chooses the wizard"

Ordering a wand by post would be a tricky business as there are so many different types. Plus wands do not work as well as it should if it is not suited to the person using it.

If Sirius ordered a replica of his original wand then Olivander would know it was him since he "remembers every wand he ever sold"

Therefore, I doubt he would have ordered it by post - a broomstick would be easy since all firebolts are the same except for the number stamped on them.

[Nobby]

it never says that sirius' wand taken by the ministry. we assume so cos it happens to other prisioners. it could have hid it! grasbin at threads here

[darkcloak]

The number 6 is the most curious one, to me... The Sorting Hat sorts having in mind his creators' will. Slytherin would not teach a half-blood... Hmm! Strange thing.

I think we need to take into consideration Rowling's theme of "it is not who we are but it is the decisions we make that make us what we are". Even though Tom was not a 'pure-blood' he had the cunning, the talent and the ambition to use it, to be allowed into Slytherin (and being the heir helped I dare say ).

I often wonder whether Tom sat under that hat as Harry did, yet argued to go into Slytherin and not Gryffindor.

"You could be great in Gryffindor, it's all here"

[Scellanis]

well I have something to say about the hundreds of pupils at the school....

sizes of years do fluctuate hugely, my year at school was absolutely tiny, at my primary school we had 8 people in my year, i mean when we got to secondry school there were more, but only around 400 in the school...now take my little sister's year, her year is soooo huge that they had to add in an extra fourth house to the school, completely restructure the whole class system to fit them in, they dont fit in the small gym where they hold the Christmas dances and discos, have to squish them into the assembly hall instead, there is well over 100 of them at the secondry school in her year....thats about 1/4 of the size of the secondry school at the time i was there and there are 6 years to the secondry school....class sizes change majorly, just because Harry's year is small (note his year is one that were born while Volde was at the height of his reign of power, I imagine just like world war two, there would be a massive baby boom right after his down fall, probably the year after)

as for the what do teachers do when they arent teaching...particularly dumbledore...im thinking it would be a university like structure...when not teaching they are researching their subject or in Dumbledore's case doing things like writing rules for the ministry, sitting on the whatever it was that do witch and wizard trials and so on...he has a great long list of titles to his name and he doesn't get those by sitting behind a desk doing nothing all day....you can guarantee he does a huge amount but we just dont get to hear of it because most of it isnt at all relevant to the story....


Sirius's wand: it doesnt have to be his, wizards can use any wand though they get better results with their own wand of course, maybe he stole it, maybe he found it after some wizard threw it out and brought a new one...maybe he got it in a wand shop in a foriegn country, olivander isnt the only maker of wands.

[Ferrus]

Well, that extends the question to all witches and wizards that have been in Azkaban, were do their wands go? I think the ministry keeps the wands and one of the free dementors stole them...

[Liquid Ice]

4+7. Ive often wondered about those....

I thought you could maybe sort of asign (er how do you spell that???) a certain spell to a certain movement like, a click of your fingers (like in the first film quirrel can make fire appear by clicking his fingers, but then how would you know which spells you would need most?)

I have another question too - 8. As there is only one teacher for each subject, and it really is such a big school, then how come the teachers sometimes have free periods?

[Ferrus]

7x4 are 28 classes and say each class does two weeky classes then 28x2 is 56 classes a week... wierd...

[Athena Appleton]

1. Where does an animagus keep their wand when they change form? - Rita Skeeter was a beetle, surely far too small to conceal a wand about her personage.

I assume when they're in animal form, the wand goes the same way clothing would. It's not necessary as animals, but whatever was in their pockets, etc, is unaltered when they return to human form.

2. Where does Sirius get a wand from? Clearly he doesn't have it with him in Azkaban, and doesn't have his own throughout PoA (he has to steal one). He simply can't walk into Olivanders to buy being one of the most wanted people in the wizarding world and the wand chooses the wizard so he couldn't send someone else to buy him one.

Again, I make an assumption about this. Wands are very common in the wizarding world, so I have two theories about this. He could have bought a wand from Ollivander's in the same way he purchased Harry's Firebolt: by mail order and anonymously. He already knows what wand is best for him, having found his match when he was a student at Hogwarts. If he has a 10 3/4 inch birch wood with a unicorn tail core, he could order that specific combination. Also, I think it's possible he stole a wand. We know that you can use another person's wand, it just isn't as useful as using your own perfect match. Sirius broke into a wizarding house to use the floo network, he could have stolen a wand fairly easily, I would think.

3. Has Ernie McMillan been transported from a Jane Austin novel - check out his use of language especially in OotP.

No, I think Ernie's just a little "uppety" (for those of you who don't recognize that word, it's just a way of saying that someone is just short of being snobby.) Ernie reminds me of a nicer version of Percy. He uses big words and tries to impress, he's a bit of a brown-noser, but he's basically a good guy.

4. There isn't enough pupils in each class. Apparently there are hundreds of pupils in the school, but there is only 5 boys in harrys year in gryffindor. If that is roughly the same for boys and girls throughout the houses and years that makes 280 pupils, discounting that some will leave after their OWLS. This isn't many hundreds is it? My school had 1000 pupils in it.

But we don't know if the number of boys in Harry's year in Gryffendor are really representative of how many boys are in other years and other houses. Besides, I assumed there were about 300 students ("several" hundred could technically be 300 on.) Perhaps there's just a few less boys in Harry's class in Gryffendor than there are in other classes. Let's say, there's 12 students per class per house, with the exception of Harry's class and house, which has 10 (in girls, I'm counting Hermione, Susan, Lavender, Parvati, and one more unnamed character). If I'm doing my math correctly, that's 328. That's "several hundred" students.

5. What does Dumbledore actually do during term time? All the staff (excluding the DADA teachers) have been there for years, so he doesn't have to interview many people. He doesn't teach anything. He doesn't write letters to parents about their children or school supplies etc. Surely the old man can stretch to teaching DADA himself.

I am of the opinion that Dumbledore knows most everything going on in that school. Naturally, if people are taking different forms, etc., he's not up on that, but I think he spends a great deal of time knowing what Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, and the other students are doing. I think he's fully aware of every prank Fred and George have pulled (he glances their way a lot when he's relaying rules, etc.). I also think he keeps an eye on the teachers. Also, it's not as if he only does Headmaster duties. He is, after all, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot (I know I'm probably getting this wrong, just look up everything he does either on his Chocolate Frogs card or in the paper when he's being stripped of his titles.) So he's Headmaster at Hogwarts, he's involved in the court system (surely meaning he's called to London often), he's leading the Order of the Phoenix... he's a busy old dude.

6. I thought that Slytherin valued pupils who were pure-bloods and wanted to accept only them into the school. Yet, the sorting hat put Tom Riddle into Slytherin (definitely an intended paradox) who's father was a muggle, and it wanted to put Harry in Slytherin. Surely the pure-blood system would mean that cunning half-bloods (or less) would be shipped out to Hufflepuff or something.

Okay, I know no one follows me in this theory, but I think this is perhaps the strongest evidence that Voldemort is, in some ways, a historical twin to Adolf Hitler. Much of what Hitler detested in others could be found in him and his followers. I don't think Voldemort COULD have been put in another house (other than, perhaps, Ravenclaw) because he displays none of the traits of the other houses. Even though he was not a pureblood, being cunning and me-first would automatically keep him from being put in Hufflepuff. He's clever, so, yeah, I think he could have been placed in Ravenclaw, but I think his cunning and his cruelty, and defiantely his thirst for power, was so overwhelming that it all overrode the small little detail of his muggle heritage.

7. The casting of spells in an odd one too. It seems that wizards can do magic without wands (harry blowing up his aunt etc), and they can do spells without speaking (the deathe eater in OotP that has had been Silencio'd). Sirius could transform to Snuffles without a wand. I don't understand - somone help me. Do you need a wand or a voice at all????

Someone has explained this as the wands and stuff make magic easier to control. You can just say "Alohamora," but the wand directs the power of the magic to the lock. Now the magic might find the lock on its own, but it's more likely to work the first time with the wand. As far as blowing up his aunt, or the vanishing glass in the snake house, if I'm not mistaken, an adult wizard even told Harry not to worry himself about that, it's to be expected if you get too emotional, but he must learn to control his emotions. That magic is, I think, different, because it's just like a spillover of emotion from a magical person. It seems that the further we get into the books, the more we realize that these wizarding people have to keep their emotions in check at all times. What I wonder is, is the threshold of anger required for magic to happen different for different people? Molly seems to lose her temper all the time, yet she doesn't do magic accidentally. Are all her little hissy fits when the twins are doing something wrong or Mundungus wants to bring stolen goods into the house not that bad, on a Molly-scale? I'd hate to see her on her worst days...

Aberforth, I think you read the books looking for descrepancies (can't spell that word to save my life). Lighten up.

[Athena Appleton]

"The wand chooses the wizard"

If Sirius ordered a replica of his original wand then Olivander would know it was him since he "remembers every wand he ever sold"

Ollivander remembers every wand he ever sold, but we don't know if every wand's person is different. Like, it's quite possible that there are wands that fit people more commonly than others. 10 3/4 birch with a unicorn tail core could be a commonly accepted wand, therefore, he could have several in stock. If 132 people use that particular wand, he could remember which 132 people use it...

Okay, weird analogy: say i'm a waitress. say i have 50 regular customers, and 12 of those regular customers always get a hamburger cooked medium well. After seeing those 50 people, I can point out the 12 who will for sure order a hamburger cooked medium well. But if I'm back in the kitchen, without having seen the customer, if I saw a hamburger cooked medium well ready to be taken out, I couldn't guess which of the 12 it would be... Okay, I'm not good at analogies.

I'm just trying to say that I think it's likely that some wands are more common than others.

Well, that extends the question to all witches and wizards that have been in Azkaban, were do their wands go? I think the ministry keeps the wands and one of the free dementors stole them...

I thought they got snapped in half. I think that's been made clear by 1. Hagrid's wand was snapped in half, and Harry gets the letter from the Ministry saying someone would be by shortly to snap his wand in half... but I could be wrong... sure thought that, though....

I have another question too - 8. As there is only one teacher for each subject, and it really is such a big school, then how come the teachers sometimes have free periods?

Ummm... Hogwarts seems to be run more like the way most people think of Universities. They don't have the same classes every day, some classes are a few times a week, some are just once a week (in OotP, they explain their scheduals in depth.) So, for each class year, there are 2 classes (two houses to a class). Seven years, but the NEWT level classes are, I assume, the combined classes. Let's look at McGonagall's schedual based on this theory:

The different classes she conducts throughout the week. The days and times are just examples. The letters are the first names of the houses, the numbers are the years in the class (eg. HR1 are the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw first years)

Monday: HR1, HR2, free period
Tuesday: SGHR6, HR3, SG1
Wednesday: SGHR7, HR4, SG2
Thursday: SG3, SG4, free period
Friday: HR5, SG5, free period

That's assuming that the classes are only taken once a week, as they seem to be done in OotP (Mondays were Harry's bad days.) So, see, it fits.

[Scellanis]

4+7. Ive often wondered about those....

I thought you could maybe sort of asign (er how do you spell that???) a certain spell to a certain movement like, a click of your fingers (like in the first film quirrel can make fire appear by clicking his fingers, but then how would you know which spells you would need most?)

I have another question too - 8. As there is only one teacher for each subject, and it really is such a big school, then how come the teachers sometimes have free periods?

That quirrel example doesnt count...the fire is a result of Snape's potions in the book, Quirrel doesn't summon it in the book.

But anyway, it is my beleif that the wand only channels the magic...if your mind is strong enough and you have practiced long enough you could do it without a wand, dumbledore certainly can and I think macgonagall can too though im not certain, i may be getting confused by the movies....

[Jotomicron]

I'll just give my answers. Some of them are just equal to some already presented.

1. Where does an animagus keep their wand when they change form? - Rita Skeeter was a beetle, surely far too small to conceal a wand about her personage.

As said by Athena, I think the wand changes like the clothes do. Remember that there are only 7 registered animagus (and another 4 unregistered), which means 11 animagus, in the 20th century. This means that being an animagus requires quite an energy... and with that, you should be able to just make with the wand whatever you'r like...

2. Where does Sirius get a wand from? Clearly he doesn't have it with him in Azkaban, and doesn't have his own throughout PoA (he has to steal one). He simply can't walk into Olivanders to buy being one of the most wanted people in the wizarding world and the wand chooses the wizard so he couldn't send someone else to buy him one.

I really think he stole a wand. As for the DE that have escaped, I think Voldemort might have got some wand for them: he knew them, he's super intelligent, and he knows which ingridients would best fit in their wands...

3. Has Ernie McMillan been transported from a Jane Austin novel - check out his use of language especially in OotP.

I don't know Jane Austin novels...

4. There isn't enough pupils in each class. Apparently there are hundreds of pupils in the school, but there is only 5 boys in harrys year in gryffindor. If that is roughly the same for boys and girls throughout the houses and years that makes 280 pupils, discounting that some will leave after their OWLS. This isn't many hundreds is it? My school had 1000 pupils in it.

As said earlier (I think Sonkem did) they were born in the last year of the first war, the most awful one, I'd bet... People were not thinking about having children, they were trying to save their lives!

5. What does Dumbledore actually do during term time? All the staff (excluding the DADA teachers) have been there for years, so he doesn't have to interview many people. He doesn't teach anything. He doesn't write letters to parents about their children or school supplies etc. Surely the old man can stretch to teaching DADA himself.

Yeah! He his the great wizard of the wizengamot, he used to help Fudge (and will do it again, I think!)... He is a great wizard: he wants to know what's happening in his school, but he has lots of work in the outside world!

6. I thought that Slytherin valued pupils who were pure-bloods and wanted to accept only them into the school. Yet, the sorting hat put Tom Riddle into Slytherin (definitely an intended paradox) who's father was a muggle, and it wanted to put Harry in Slytherin. Surely the pure-blood system would mean that cunning half-bloods (or less) would be shipped out to Hufflepuff or something.

Imagine Slytherin found Tom Riddle... what would he say? Would he teach him? Even though he is mugle-born? I think he would... Riddle showed ambition and, most of all, a great power (things Harry also have). Slytherin would make him a undestructable wizard...

7. The casting of spells in an odd one too. It seems that wizards can do magic without wands (harry blowing up his aunt etc), and they can do spells without speaking (the deathe eater in OotP that has had been Silencio'd). Sirius could transform to Snuffles without a wand. I don't understand - somone help me. Do you need a wand or a voice at all????

As I said before, the Harry Potter Lexicon has great theories about this: they say wands help focusing the target of the spell and words help focusing your mind... they are only instruments, not he magic itself... Therefore, one should be able to open a door even without saying Alohomora, or even without a wand, because, if one had a great mind, that would be the only nacessary thing to perform a spell...