They have landed lords and ladies, so I always assumed there were rustic wizards growing and harvesting food with magic.

 

Isn't that more fanon? The Malfoys were landed gentry courtesy of muggle royalty, but other than that there aren't any landed gentry, and Lord Voldemort is the only one using that title in the canon wizrding world, right?

But good shout about the landowning thing, maybe some wizards do own and cultivate a lot of land and that's where most of the produce sold in wizarding Britain comes from, unless they just obliviate and steal from muggle farmers.

 

There's no canon explanation to go to on this.

Logically it would make sense that many wizards wouldn't live in muggle cities. Its always going to be easier to keep the secret if you have a bit of space and distance from muggles, and living out in the countryside comes with access to large gardens. Magic likely removes a lot of the physical labour from gardening, so it becomes reasonably easy to farm a bit for your family.

Certainly we know that the Weasley's have an orchard behind their house, which suggests they're growing fruit for themselves and maybe to trade with friends and neighbours who grow other things?

There's probably a shop in Hogsmeade and one in Diagon Alley, run by guys who largely go round everyone they know that grows things and buy their surplus; have a handful of suppliers who deliberately farm larger amounts to sell them; and the rest probably obtained discretely from muggles (either for payment or via obliviation).

 

JK never shows us a non-good-guy family-home IC. The only wizarding family we meet in any detail are the Weasleys. I must admit, I’ve never been sure if they’re supposed to be the country bumpkins of the wizarding world or not.

 

Definitely in terms of the style of their home, I could see them being a bit bumpkinish. But I think the logic of living in the countryside is quite strong. The more isolated you are, the easier it is to hide your magic whilst still being able to use it. And even more so with kids causing accidental magic. The more remote you are, the fewer obliviations are necessary.

And since travel time or remoteness are definitely non-issues in the wizarding world, there's no downside to a nice remote home.

 

At a certain point, you have to wonder how in the world money even circulates in the magical world. Even if their population is less than 10,000. Their GDP has to be nothing compared to the wealth of, say, the wealthiest 10% of wizarding society. Estate tax, anyone?

 

And yet there is Diagon Alley, Grimmauld Place and a bunch of magical folks living in Godrics Holow. While there are remote places that are wholly wizard owned, that seems to be the exception. Most just seem to live in the same place their ancestors lived in, regardless of muggle towns or cities around them growing and changing.

 

Diagon Alley is an effectively sealed area that is safe away from prying muggle eyes. Grimmauld place is a single house, owned by a family who (from what we can tell by their attitudes) likely never interacted with the muggles around them. Godrics Hollow is an interesting one. I'd personally say a small village with multiple magical families is a hell of a lot less risky to the statute of secrecy than, for example, a big suburb with a single magical family who interact with the muggles around them regularly.

 

Hmmm. Do they? We know that there was a Malfoy Sir, at some point, but it was quietly swept away as too muggle, and while it’s a title it’s not a peerage. They don’t have Princes, and we never actually see a Lord or Lady, do we? Beyond Voldemort as an affectation, whose parentage we know.

Is it WoG?

 

The idea that they have Lordship rings and designated seats on the Wizengamot is fanon, but it always seemed like a decent extrapolation. The society depicted just seemed aristocratic. Lucius flexing by raising peacocks on his estate is really the only insight we have into what he does with the land around the manor, but generally when you're as obsessed with genealogy and purity as the Malfoys and the Blacks, you'd think there would be some property to inherit. That was the motivation behind all the arranged marriages and maintaining purity in the real life aristocracy, the consolidation of wealth and the continuation of the landed class.

 

Can you use Wingardium Leviosa to levitate enchantments that have a physical component (the mist in the maze, for example)? If we define magic as an being an object — or we say that once it’s been cast it has a physical property — then, yes, theoretically you could. But that’s all speculation.

To be more specific: if you cast a color changing charm on a feather, is it (a) a magical-feather, meaning you can’t levitate the color separately from the feather because it’s still a feather, or (b) a feather-with-magic, meaning the magic that alters the feather is a property you can manipulate?

Are there any instances of this happening IC? Is there anything stated that contradicts this idea?

 

Inspired by the Parts of Canon thread, I wonder to what extent magic can make food go further - my understanding of the exemption to gamps law is magic cannot create food but can expand on what is already there. So if you have 1 potato, can you make mash for the whole Weasley family? How far can you stretch meat? Is it literally 5 loaves and 2 fish can feed 5000?

Any thoughts?

 

Canonically the only time we know for sure that magic was used to increase the amount of food, was Hagrid charming his pumpkins to the size of large boulders each. Assuming you can increase the amount of other kinds of food by at least that ammount, I don't doubt that wizards can feed their families a while with just one vegetable.

There was also them serving a hundred roast turkeys during christmas at Hogwarts in Philosopher's stone, considering that not even 20 attended it, I would assume that the house elves just prepared a few turkeys and multiplied them.

 

I think Harry also refilled the wine provided by Slughorn when they consoled Hagrid over Aragog's death; that specifically was a Refilling Charm.

 

How were they struggling to find food in the seventh book? Did the refilling charm not work on whatever it was they were eating?

 

Mostly, I think, because the three of them were pretty incompetent about a lot of stuff during that book.

 

The problem wasn't that they lacked food, the problem was that they couldn't cook and what they had ended up tasting disgusting. Ron even tells Hermione she shouldn't bother using magic to increase the amount.