Are really not human are they?

Coming from a regular high school, it's really kinda shocking the lack of realism in Rowling's characters wouldn't you say?

For example, drugs. Where the fuck are they? I mean, when you think about it, no school goes without it's group of drug users, from the mystical herb commonly known as weed, to whatever hard shit you find the exchange students doing in the toilets (personal experience). And yet, with magic so wonderful, everyones so damn straight. Surely there's some suped up magical version of LSD floating around somewhere in hogwarts? Or spells of some kind. I mean god surely Harry got mad stressed out at some point and whipped up some industrial strength euphoria potion or something.

Even the lack of alcohol frightens me. Hogs Head that's what, a mile away? Gred and Forge know all the passageways, and yet there isn't even the slightest reference of alcoholic abuse anywhere....hmmm.

Number 2, Sex:
1 school. 1000+ students. at least 1/2 of them howling for sex. There is no freaking way the teachers could stop it. You'd think, at the very least,there'd be a magical sex ed no? I mean sure, theres people snogging in the broom closets and what not, but do you really think they could go 7 years without a shag? COme to think of it, 7 years without so much as a firty thought about anyone, despite the constant looks into Harry's mind? I mean, how often does anyone get lost in thought so much they don't even think; 'woah check out Susan Bones man, she's gotten well fit over the summer'.

Number 3, Brawling:
Very little. Unbelievable. Do you seriously think that Harry, who no doubt would get tormented by Malfoy and his 'cronies' basically everyday, replies with a 'Shut up Ferret' and walks off? Nuh uh. He's got a wand. He knows some spells. I mean damn, I'd blast the crap out of the little twerp if he insulted my mother. You can easily escape serious punishment with suitable witnesses and a bit of self control.

Thats just a couple. Theres the fact a brutally dangerous sport is allowed to be played, general lack of safety, the house system, no stereotypes, no spell abusing, dim-witted and irresponsible teachers, basically not really believable character personalities, where the fuck does all the food come from and other such things.

Ok, but to stress here, I'm not ragging on Rowling. She's restricted by publishers and pissed off parents. What I want to know is...what do you think Hogwarts would really be like? I mean think about you current/past schools and the people who attend them.

And I searched the forums for a similiar thread cause I assumed there would be so I'm sorry if I'm being a twat. Kinda new here.

 

BTW, Oz,

 

I wondered about this a while ago:
Why WOULDN'T everyone in the Wizarding World be addicted to Cheering Charms?
An exhausted mother casts it on her tantrum-throwing two-year-old. Overexcited little boy gets weepy during his his sister's wedding, threatening to ruin it for everyone. Preschool toddler gets hysterical, starting a chain-reaction crying fit involving entire class. Boyfriend publicly dumps your roommate, sending her into a scary depression.

Hyperfocused on grades and getting too tense, or just terrified of what Snape will do to you during Potions. Pre-test anxiety routinely ruins your performance. Hormones causing humiliation for boys or girls.
Bad news about your grandmother's heart, and you have a job interview tomorrow. Pregnancy mood swings affecting a woman's appetite and sleeping patterns. Post-pregnancy blues. Death of a parent, but no where near enough sympathy leave being offered by the company. How about a friend who is a mean drunk? Help him be the life and soul of the party!

The attitude of the patient has A Lot to do with how well he survives trauma or major surgery. A Cheering charm would be part of standard treatment. Think about the pediatric ward in St. Mungos. Scores of frightened, sick, injured children, some of whom have seen their parents badly hurt.

And that's just benign use of a charm that's taught to people in their early teens. Of Course there are other mind-and-mood-altering spells. Hermione cast Confoundus during a Quidditch tryout, and no one noticed. Lockhart-the-Incompetent was world-class with an Obliviate. Seventh-year Charms students would have been throwing lust spells in all directions. Competition for top student would have included sabotaging test performance.

 

As far the drugs and sex, JKR's standard "it's a childrens story" actually works for once. The nearest thing to a student with a drug problem would be Hermione's problems with the Time Turner. We also see in OotP that there is an underground market for potions and charms to improve memory and IQ. Madame Pomfrey remarks that Elois Midgen hexed her own nose off trying to curse her acne. So there is evidence that students are willing to experiment with different magics.

Alcohol is harder to get (for them) than you would think: Ron remarks in the Hogs Head that he bets the bartender would serve them fire whiskey. Remember this is a nearly year-round boarding school. Wizarding Britain is a small community. You're not going to be able to sneak to the corner store and give some bum 50 bucks to buy you a 12-pack, and he can keep the change. Plus I would not be surprised if the House Elves don't search all the trunks for contraband when they arrive (everyone just leaves their luggage on the train, after all).

As for fighting, we see plenty of evidence of fights:
Ron told Harry he could hit Malfoy on the nose during the duel that never happened.
Hermione and Bulstrode got in a fight during the dueling class in CoS.
Hermione slaps Malfoy in PoA.
It's mentioned several times that people try to trip up or injure players before Quidditch games. Gryffindor even acts as a bodyguard for Harry in PoA.
There is always the annual Draco Malfoy Hexing at the end of the year.
I forget what year it was, but I remember Neville and someone else getting into a brawl with Crabbe and Goyle in the stands during a game.

The thing to remember is that Wizards and Witches are fairly sheltered compared to most until they go to Hogwarts. After the age of eleven they are more influenced by Hogwarts than their parents. What happens the very first day of class? They are lectured about the danger and difficulty of using magic. We are shown examples in every book of what happens when you are not paying attention to what you are doing: spells backfiring, potions exploding. Sure Harry and Ron skate by to a certain degree (not as much as is shown in Fandom IMO, they did do all right on their OWLs) but I think there are plenty of examples around them of what happens if you are impaired while trying to perform magic. That has to be a huge deterrent to getting smashed.

 

Smuggling drugs and illegal substances would be a snap - make up a bundle at home and have your owl fly it to the school. If the bird leaves on the day the students meet the train, the stuff won't arrive until at least the first day of classes. If your bird is smart, ask her to wait for a couple of days or have her drop it off at the ward boundries by the Forbidden Forest.

And yet teenagers are a major cause of drunk driving accidents...

 

Do you honestly think that Rowling would mention substance abuse in her books? The Harry Potter Series is first and foremost a children's series. Imagine the outrage there'd be if 1st graders began inquiring to their parents about LSD.

Child: Daddy, what's a weed?

Father: Wha-What? Where did you hear that word?!

Child: Oh, Harry Potter rolls it up, lights it on fire, and puts it in his mouth. Can I try it too? It must be yummy

Butterbeer is alcoholic, as is firewhiskey. While Fred and George may know all the passageways, it's evident in the books that no one else does.

...

Two words: Children's book.

Sounded like you were.



Honestly, I'm ecstatic for once that Rowling intended it to be a children's book and didn't mention any sex/drugs/alcohol in her books. I've come across way too many fanfictions as is with summaries like:

"HD. Draco is hurting as Harry's addiction to cocaine is evident." (Actual Story)


I'm okay with realism as long as the focus of the plot isn't substance abuse (or D/H now that I think about it...). In a magical world with magical villains and problems, can't we think of better plotlines than drug addiction?



Anyways, to address your question of what Hogwarts is like, realistically, I'd argue that it'd be like any small, conservative boarding school. Most of the younger kids would probably be sheltered, and that there is way too much staff supervision to really allow any true depraivity to occur.

 

Frankly, the staff supervision is SADLY lacking. Bullying is rampant, sabotage of assignments and homework is common, Luna is robbed, teachers are possessed, counterfeited, and torturers... There is no system of redress, no student counselor.

Why aren't more students nuts, anyway?

 

I don't think the supervision is lacking. The faculty-student ratio is pretty high and most of the teachers seem strict and responsible. After all, most of the students are terrified of McGonnagall. But some teachers (i.e. Snape) just don't care.

Obviously, there will always be problems like bullying, sabotage, etc. But that's natural in such a competitive environment and it's so pervasive that you can't really blame the teachers.

As for possession/torture... Where would the plot be if Hogwarts was a perfectly safe haven? Besides, these threats come from outside sources (i.e. Voldemort, Umbridge) that are more malevolent than your average schoolchild. Once again, it's not the result of lack of supervision.

 

Bullying and sabotage of assignments is no proof of a lack of staff supervision. A British boarding school is a vastly different experience than any other type of school. We do not know there is no student counselor, the books are written mainly from Harry's POV and he doesn't see everthing. I don't understand why such details are expected in the books, they are highly irrelevant and pointless. It is much like the thread discussing the aparant plot hole that is the Fat Lady's portrait being canvas and that canvas has only been a suitable medium for art since the 1950's. It is utterly irrelevant.

And yet most wizards don't drive.

It is a completely pointless discussion for me. It is a childrens book. Even if it were an adult series I would not expect it to be describing the sexual habits of 500 hormonal school kids. The books have clear themes and the plot is centred around them. There is no need of JKR to describe Terry Boot's passion for anal beads or Zacharias Smith's problem with coprophilia

 

Yes. There are too few teachers to adequately enforce the rules outside of class. That is why there are prefects and the head boy/girl. They enforce the rules (at least they are supposed to) when the teachers aren't around. If there are 6 prefects per house, there is a decent chance breaches of the rules will be caught. If someone breaks a rule, at least 1 of the prefects would be around to catch it. Then again, 2/3 of the prefects spend a great deal of time studying due to OWLs and NEWTs so their effectiveness might be lessened.


To the TS, I definitely agree. In my highschool (which had 3000 students), there were tons of kids who experimented with drugs, alcohol, and sex that I know of, and a great deal that I didn't know of. The "this is a childrens story" excuse does actually work in this case because JKR can't very well show students getting high off potions or smoking herbs from the greenhouses.

The way I think about it, there has got to be a ton of potions that produce the effects of common 'muggle' drugs. From euphoria potions to downer potions to speed potions to hallucinogenic potions, etc. I actually remember a fanfic where the author mentions such 'drug' potions, and in his story he called them 'drax' (I don't know why I remember that). Also, it seems like there's a great variety of magical alcohol, and I bet you there's at least a few plants in the greenhouse that can get you high. JKR just can't show it because parents would be all like WTF, or she just didn't think too deeply about the world she created.

Oh, and I bet there are students fucking in Hogwarts, but they would have to be very creative about it. Obviously the common room and dorms would be out of the question, and teachers and prefects patrol the corridors at night, so you would have to have a place like the Room of Requirement if you wanted to fuck and not get caught.

I want to see some of this stuff explored more thoroughly in fanfiction. I've read a few that touched on the subject, but none that described such things in depth, or made them a part of the plot.

 

I'd like to point out, as I did at the start, that I don't blame Rowling for not having it evident in the book. Sorry if I made it seem that way. I know it's a childrens book, I was just noting the lack of these, and I was wondering what you lot thuoght it would really be like.

And is butterbeer alcoholic? I always assumed it was something like root/ginger beer. It's just, why would they happily sell one alcoholic beverage (butterbeer) and not something like firewhiskey? And keep in mind they can all buy butterbeer at at least as young as 13.

 

Just because Rowling doesn't mention all that stuff doesn't mean it isn't there; besides, what is fanfiction for? And she does write about fights, as other people have pointed out.

 

It would be like shandy I think, it has a little beer in it, but there's more chance of your stomach exploding from the sheer amount you'd have to drink than for even a five year to get drunk.

On topic though, personally, I'm glad she left out drugs and sex and the likes. If I wanted to read about drug addiction or rampant prostitution or how Cho Chang has an appendage she shouldn't have. The whole point of the story is that it's a children's' book about good and evil, with the typical White Knight and the average Dark Lord, with the benevolent dictator in the form of Dumbledore. If I wanted to read about anything else I would have happily gone and bought some Steven King books... Though if I ever went looking for a book about dickgirls I'd be quite disturbed.

Aekiel

 

Winky gets hammered off of it in GOF and OOTP. I bet butterbeer is like Nearbeer you can buy at corner stores. .5% alcohol or whatever.

 

When you think about it, there are drugs in the books, in a manner of speaking. Cheering charms have already been mentioned, and in HBP we see an Elixir of Euphoria. No doubt there are many other such potions and spells. The difference appears to be that there is no stigma associated with using them in the wizarding world - most likely because though they have similar effects to recreational drugs, they appear to be harmless.

 

Except of course for Felix Felicis addicts who come off the potion and crash their broom into the stands because they tried a stupidly amazing trick .

Aekiel

 

Which begs another question: exactly what safety features are included in Quidditch? Is there some spell that prevents an unconscious player from splashing himself on the ground, or that protects the crowd from bludgers, or keeps a player from hitting the grandstands at high speeds?

 

I don't think so. Harry had to be caught by Dumbledore in 3rd year, and didn't Ginny accidentally crash into the commentator's booth in HBP?