In HBP, Malfoy had the chance to kill Dumbledore but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Dumbledore himself (assumed to be a good judge of character) said Malfoy wasn’t a killer. In which case he couldn’t have killed Harry either.
I think this is a reference to Regulus Black, alias R. A. B. I think it’ll turn out in the last book that he’s alive after all.
Random thoughts and lame joke:
Remember the tent at the World Quidditch Cup Match? It has the normal exterior dimensions of a tent, but inside it was the size of a largish flat. Same with the Ford Anglia.
Wizarding world has its own geometry.
And James, Lilly and Harry Potter ARE wasps. Or WASPS (White, anglo-saxon, protestant*). well, I found it funny.
*yes-I know there is no official religion, but they do celebrate Christmas.
Sheesh! Looks like I need to re-read that book. I remembered it all wrong.
I’ll shut up now.
I celebrate it (well, I give and recieve presents, there’s a tree, etc) and i’m not a christian. Pretty much everyone does over here, unless you are of a non-Christian religion, and even then presents might be exchanged.
And evidently that geometry is based on non-Euclidean Anglias.
Ooh-that was painful! 
Re the non-Christians celebrating Christmas. [sigh] I know-it was a joke. To get the end of WASP in there, I had to allude to something vaguely Christian in the non-muggle world. Hence the reference. Surely you’ll agree that Christmas is vaguely Christian?
Ah, ok. I apologise for my pedantry. :smack:
There are a number of muggle-born witches and wizards, and they would have to know about recent advances in the muggle way of life, having lived that life from birth to age 11. After they go to Hogwarts, they still have contact with their muggle relatives.
And there must be some social contact between adult wizards and muggles, because there are mixed marriages. After the wedding, do none of those muggle spouses tell wizards about useful muggle advances, or want to keep using those things after they get married?
It’s not like there aren’t muggle technologies that would be useful for wizards. Hermione would have had a much easier time finding out about Nicolas Flamel in the first book if she’d been able to google him, for example.
The only way I can see wizards being able to stay as isolated from muggle technology as they are is if there is a wizard religion, and it strictly forbids the use of muggle technology. Otherwise, the wizards who use muggle technology as well as magic would have so many advantages, they’d be able to gain power over the others. Imagine how much in demand for jobs you’d be at, say, the Ministry of Magic if you were one of the only people there who knew how to use Google and could use magic as well.
I’ve thought about that, too.
It must be an absolute bear to teach those students, too, especially the first years. You’ve got, in one class, kids who have learned quite a bit about the wizarding world and nothing about the muggle world, and kids who are exactly the opposite. Anyone who’s been a teacher or teaching assistant will tell you that teaching a group of kids with such different backgrounds isn’t easy. If they want to bring the muggle-born kids up to speed, they must be boring the wizard-born kids out of their minds, and if they assume a basic background in magic like the wizard-born kids have, the muggle-born kids would be utterly lost. And some kids who are bored out of their skulls or totally lost in class, especially at that age, tend to act up in class.
There’s a subject taught at Hogwarts called “Muggle Studies” which may well include a lot of these subjects. Indeed, if it doesn’t, what *does *the Muggle Studies curriculum consist of?
Well, Harry seems to be doing alright. He was only educated in mundane subjects till he turned 11, had no knowledge that the wizard world even existed and gets along just fine at Hogwarts.
It seems there are other schools that wizards go to, perhaps even more mundane schools that don’t focus on magic as much. (obviously that is speculation on my part) Hogwarts seems to be an invitation only school and the kids there have a talent in some area. As a sort of specialty school I can see where they would have a primary focus.
Nope, one of the professors - either Dumbledore or McGonnagal - once stated that any wizard or witch had a place at Hogwarts. It’s not limited to only the very best and brightest. (Presumably that would be every student in the UK and Ireland, though, since foreign students seem to attend foreign schools.) It seems fairly clear that there aren’t any other magic schools in Great Britain, given that none were involved in the Triwizard Tournament. This is wizarding education, and clearly higher education is not the norm outside of studies specific to certain fields (aurors, for one, and presumably doctors and so forth.) Percy was ambitious but from what he did it seems that a government career doesn’t require any further training.
It certainly seems that way. I guess you can fanwank this away (as people in this thread have been doing :)) by assuming that wizarding society is so insular (as it seems to be) that most of them aren’t aware of such things, and muggle-born wizards are taken out of muggle society early enough that they give up their old way of life. Or something. But yeah, it doesn’t really fit. They really appear to be, on the whole, pathologically medieval as far as societies go. (Another aspect of that which I’ve noticed is that they don’t seem to earn interest on their savings - the bank is literally just a place that holds on to your money, as far as we’ve seen. If there’s no interest-based banking, then we can pretty safely say that the wizarding economy is incredibly primitive compared to muggle economies.)
You think it involves learning trigonometry? I doubt it. It probably encompasses a little bit of some of the things I’ve mentioned, but it certainly seems unlikely that it involves math, literature, and science education of the sort that any muggle student would be expected to have, all in one class. Given the general state of wizard awareness of the muggle world, it probably involves explaining things like Coke machines and the postal service. From my dim memory of what was mentioned of Hermione’s muggle studies homework, that seems pretty much in line with what she was learning. (Of course, Arthur Weasley must have taken it at some point, and his knowledge of the basics of the muggle world, despite his fascination with it, is rather pathetic. So one wonders whether the students are learning much at all.) And it’s an elective, so - again - the average wizard is not going to have taken it.
The sheer number of wizards around does seem to make the low attendance at Hogwarts problematic. There are, what, 10 people in Harry’s Griff class, so 40 per class? 280 students in the entire school? Assuming that every single wizard in the UK goes to Hogwarts, that’s what, around a 4000 wizard capacity over a span of 100 years? In all of England? That seems hardly enough to populate the Ministry alone, let alone all the different wizard villages, allies, the school, the hospital, etc.
I took that interpretation from Mrs. Weasley saying how excited they were that Ginny was accepted at Hogwarts. That is what led me to the interpretation that acceptance is not guaranteed.
It would seem possible then that Dumbledore’s personal feeling is that any wizard should be able to attend but it’s also made clear that he has more ‘liberal’ policies than the general wizarding world. Perhaps he feels that it should be open to all, but in practice it isn’t. I have to do some rereading, this is going on some fuzzy memories, I haven’t read the series in a while.
That certainly doesn’t follow. By that argument, there are only two universities in Great Britain, since only two participate in the University Boat Race.
Fine, but is there any evidence at all that any other wizarding schools exist? Nothing is ever said about Hogwarts being an elite school; it’s declared that all young wizards may attend; it’s situated quite near the only wizard village in Great Britain (or is it the entire world?); it appears to be a central spot in wizarding politics. Hogwarts is an absolutely central institution in British wizardry. You’d think, if any other magic schools existed in Britain, at some point there would have been some evidence. After all, Draco attends despite the fact that his parents don’t like the school’s politics, and apparently their only other consideration had been Durmstrang. There’s simply no evidence to support the notion that any other magic schools exist in Great Britain. Why wouldn’t any mention ever have been made?
The triwizard tournament is described as being between the three most prestigious magic schools of Europe. That would mean that there are other magic schools in europe, though it doesn’t mean there are others in england. It would also lend to the idea that Hogwarts is one of the better schools.
I don’t remember the word “prestigious” being used. Are you certain?
Besides, there’s certainly other magic schools in Europe. Durmstrang’s students seemed to be Slavic (or at least, Eastern European) but it wasn’t clear exactly where they all came from. All the Beauxbatons students we saw were French, though. Clearly there must be magic schools serving Italy, Iberia, and all the rest of Europe. That said, I still don’t see any reason to think there are other magic schools in Britain. Of course, this is all a side argument. If the students at the most elite school in Britain (if not the only one) aren’t learning things that us muggles consider quite normal, then imagine how poor the education must be at other schools.
Fairly certain, I’ll double check my copy of GOF tonight and let you know.
It is a side argument of course, but isn’t that what we do best here? 
Rev -no worries.
Maybe the wizard kids don’t go to school at all? Maybe Hogwarts may have a place for all (which I don’t recall ever reading, but whatever)–but not all take Hogwarts up on the offer? Look at the bus conductor, and the shopkeepers in Diagon Alley etc–perhaps there is a large working class contigent. I do know that Rowling’s said the WW is much smaller than the Muggle one.
But if the World Cup audience is anything to go by–well, no, even there, it was a HUGE crowd, by wizard standards, but if you can’t see or hear the match unless you are there, then the audience is world-wide, only in the thousands. Porportionate? I suppose.
Or, we could just accept the inconsistencies and go back to the myriad theories as to how book 7 will end…
PS-I thought Muggle Studies was more like basic info and sociology, not math, science etc.