Transportation and getting past barriers seems to be a huge theme in the Harry Potter books. Does anyone know why? What’s it all about, Harry?
Just off the top of my head…
Transportation:
Broomsticks
Train
Magic car
Floo network
Secret passages from Hogwarts to town (several)
Walking
coaches from train to school
Gryphon riding
teleportation (whatever they call that spell)
magic elevators at the ministry
wizards in paintings going from one to another
Barriers:
train station
Hogwarts walls, variously guarded by dementors, spells, etc.
Just about every room at Hogwarts has a special way to get in
I’m not suggesting it’s unreasonable or in any way bad, but I don’t remember quite so many different ways of getting around in other novels I’ve read.
For transportation, you left out (at least) portkeys, riding Thestrals, riding dragons, being carried by a phoenix, swimming (unaided and using underwater breathing spells), the ship from the German wizard school to Howarts, the giant carriage pulled by flying horses from the French wizard school to Hogwarts, enchanted rowboat over the underground lake, the Knight Bus, Hagrid’s motorcycle w/sidecar, the pair of vanishing cabinets, and You-Know-Who flying unaided.
There are more barriers than I think I could list, include non-physical ones like the Secret that keeps Grimmauld place hidden, and the charm that keeps You-Know-Who from attacking Privet Drive.
It’s a mildly interesting observation how many ways of transport there are, and how often it’s a key plot point, but not sure it says anything important about the series.
It’s because J.K. Rowling, known to her faithful, adoring readers as simply “Jo,” was once an unemployed single mother, writing her wonderful story of the “boy who lived” on the back of cocktail napkins at a Glasgow Starbucks, and she had to take the bus there every day because she didn’t have a car, and her subconscious concern with transportation worked its way into the text.*
Decorating a threshold is a simple and ancient way of emphasizing that two spaces are disconnected, that there is something much different on the other side of that door than the place you are in now. It’s a device that allows the author to change the scene radically, with a little foreboding thrown in as we marvel at the strangeness of apparating, the false wall at the train station, a previously secret passage…
Some of the modes you describe are normal mundane transport - the Hogwarts train is a normal train, the coaches are normal (if antiquated - but possibly better than cars, if the road is unpaved) animal-drawn coaches (albeit with magical animals) (and you forgot that first-years take a boat across the lake), the elevators are normal elevators, walking (through secret passages or otherwise) is normal enough, riding animals (albeit magical ones) is normal enough.
Broomsticks are associated with witches, so that makes sense for inclusion in a wizarding world.
Portkeys, floo network and apparition seem a bit redundant. The floo network was introduced first (in book 2), and portkeys were a necessary plot element in the conclusion of book 4 (Harry needed to be transported somewhere upon reaching the Triwizard tournament cup). Apparition (also first mentioned in book 4, IIRC) probably just seemed like a natural thing for wizards to be able to do.
Barriers are everywhere in the normal world as well, unless you live in a place where houses have no walls. Security spells replace keys. And since wizarding society keeps itself concealed from the Muggle world, concealment barriers of various sorts are no doubt very important.
They have no use for cars. Arthur Weasley’s Ford Anglia is an anomaly amongst wizards. So if they don’t have road vehicles, or apparently any need for aeroplanes, then the same wide variety of transportation options that Muggles have must be similarly varied in the Wizarding world.
I’d imagine It’s mostly because her audience is little kids. And they can understand travelling, and have probably already imagined other ways to do it. So it fits right in with their fantasy world.
