The feasts at Hogwarts feature all kinds of animals and animal products. I suppose a vegetarian would be able to find non-animal food at them though, since there is such a large variety of food. But how would a vegetarian deal with classes?
In The Goblet of Fire, for example, ‘Mad Eye’ Moody kills a spider in front of the class to demonstrate a spell. Throughout the series animal parts are used in Potions. Animals are always being changed into things in Transfiguration. Even the mandrakes in Herbology, while the are plants, behave like animals – and they’re chopped up to make medicine.
There are people who refuse to dissect frogs in Biology because it’s ‘against their principles’. These people seem not to exist at Hogwarts.
Eye of newt and toe of frog
Wool of bat and tongue of dog
Adder’s fork and blindworm’s sting…
These are a few of my favourite things!
At Hogwarts, many many different types of foods appear on the table. Perhaps the reason for the foods that are mentioned is because we’re reading the book through Harry’s eyes and Harry isn’t a vegetarian.
Right. But I was really wondering about the classes. (I used ‘vegetarian’ as shorthand, since I assume vegetarians would object to killing animals, using animal parts in potions, and ‘abusing’ animals by turning them into pincushions, teapots, and whatnot.)
Disclaimer: I’ve only watched the movies, not read the books.
Isn’t all the food conjured anyway? - in this case, the plates piled high with chicken drumsticks are prepared without the expense of animal suffering (or am I just wrong and the food is cooked somewhere and merely transported magically to the tables?).
I’m sure this wouldn’t actually make a lot of difference to some/many vegetarians, but this seems to be a good place to ask the question anyway.
As far as transfiguration goes, maybe they just turn all of the animals back to normal after class?
As far as the inconvenience of being turned into a cup in the first place, this may be a stretch, but since communication with animals is apperantly possible in the Potterverse, maybe they actually get consent from the animals they turn into shit?
The Mandrake thing is a little trickier, but are students required to take Herbology in the first place?
Of course, Wizards sort of tend to be assholes in general when it comes to the rights of other living things (Hermione seems to be the only one who cares about the whole House Elf thing), so I’m guessing that they just tell any vegetarian student to shut up and yank their Mandrake. I can’t really see anyone getting out of grinding a frog into powder or something in Snape’s class by pleading vegetarianism.
They definitely wouldn’t get out of it in Snape’s class. Remember, one time when Neville’s potion goes wrong, Snape force-feeds it to Trevor (Neville’s toad), to see if it turns out to be poisonous, as Snape suspects. And when it doesn’t die, he docks points from Griffindor for Hermione helping him.
But for Transfigurations, turning animals into inanimate objects is only the tip of the ethical iceberg, since they also turn inanimate objects into animals. Just think of the implications of that!
I think it’s one of the base classes everyone takes, up until you get to choosing your future career, at which time I think it can be dropped if it doesn’t apply to your chosen career. But I’d think Herbology applies to dang near everything.
Herbology is required for the first five years, as is Potions.
We don’t find out much about the food – at one point, Mrs. Weasley shoots mashed potatoes out of her wand, so it seems they can make nourishing food from nothing.
We also never see wizards going out for groceries – while they occasionally buy things like lunch or ice cream, we never really see them make non-magical purchases. So maybe they can create their own food (might explain how the Weasleys have managed to survive), and thus conjured meat might not qualify as killing.
Or maybe the vegetarians just sit at a certain part of the table, and that’s designated the “vegetarian side?” The House Elves are very accomodating.
I’m under the impression that if an object is conjured, its mass comes from something else; perhaps air. (Hence, making something “out of thin air”.) So conjuring is just a different form of transfiguration. At least, that’s my theory.
The Wizarding world seems backward in many ways compared to the muggles. There’s a great degree of racism against muggles and muggle-born wizards, and the freely enslave magical critters, without anyone but a single progressive muggle-born caring at all.
One thing that bothers me is the way the house elves talk. The “I is…” syntax is uncomfortably close to the stereotypical way Blacks were portrayed decades ago. I know that that was not probably the intention, but it still grates a bit. On the other hand, Rowling does seem to be drawing a parallel between the house elves and the “happy slaves who don’t want to be free” thinking of old. I’m re-reading The Goblet of Fire, and I don’t remember exactly how this plays out.
MacGonigal mentions that Neville’s pincushion, which he’d transfigured from a hedgehog, still gets nervous when someone approaches it with a pin. Sounds as if they stay as they are.
IANA animal rights activist. I eat dead animals all the time. I know that some of the red dye I eat is made from ground-up insects. It seems to me that killing animals and sentient (or semi-sentient) plants is just a ‘fact of life’ in the wizarding world. I understand that potions made from tofu frogs probably won’t work as intended. It just strikes me as odd that no one considers it. Everyone but Hermione takes the house elves’s lot as a ‘fact of life’, but she’s trying to change it. Using animals in magic is also a ‘fact of life’; and, unlike the social issue of the house elves, there doesn’t seem to be a way around it and nobody has thought about it.
I’ve read that as well. Supposedly, magically-created matter is non-permanent. Which is why wizards still need money and have to buy things. The bit with the mashed potatoes is probably a continuity glitch. If you want a canonical explanation, then perhaps Mrs. Weasely actually made the mashed potatoes the normal way, and was only using her wand to transport them to the dinner table.
As for the OP, I’d assume that Hogwarts would accomidate any reasonable dietary needs. Probably, this would be arranged before the student arrives for their first year.
On the whole, however, wizards and witches don’t seem to be an overly compassionate group. I can’t imagine them letting a student out of potions because he/she object to using newts’ eyes.
