There's also a Scalping hex. I suppose that's what they use at Durmstrang.

 

IIRC, Molly did cut Bills or Charlies hair before the wedding in book seven. I don't remember any specific spells, but there must be some... Haircut related spells going around

 

If the movies are anything to go by, they had a barber or someone who knew the barber/grooming spells through Harry's third year, then someone else figured it out in the fifth year. Probably someone Ron didn't like or he would have gotten better results.

We know Hermione used scissors on Harry's hair while they were on the hunt, so either she didn't know the charm (unlikely) or the grooming tasks are handled by enchanted equipment/a real person.

 

This crap is actually in Canon, though.

"Beautification Potion"

 

From Spacebattles:

It's just annoying.

 

Extreme pacing. For slow, it would be everyday taking like 15,000 words/ other such things. For fast its like the classic op summer taking place in a 100 words.

 

I'm not sure pacing can meaningfully be related to in universe time. I mean, look at the Harry Potter novels - they do one year per novel. Now look at, say, a Dresden Files novel. In those, each novel covers only a few days. And while I'd say the Dresden Files novels are faster paced than the Harry Potter novels, they are not so by a factor of a hundred (365/~3).

Pacing is how quickly the plot moves - long meandering sub-plots, the user of short snapping scenes verse longer detailed scenes for slower pace, how many words to go from one station of the story to the next, stuff like that.

If your entire story starts and ends over the course of a few days, then 15,000 words/day is not a problem - assuming, of course, lots of plot happens in that day and the basic structure of a story is observed.

Likewise, if the summer isn't important to a fic, covering it in a hundred words (or even a simple sentence) wouldn't be a problem.

However, I see what you mean. A story that tries to cover lots of plot stations in only a few words has poor pacing (never mind if that plot is framed in a few hours chronological time or a few millennia). Likewise, a story that meanders aimlessly through unimportant details is likewise failing at pacing.

 

There is a logic issue in this paragraph, because if the Dresden Files novels only cover a few days having a roughly equal word count, it wouldn't make sense for them to "outpace" the Potter books that cover more time, especially not by such a margin. If the proposal of the relation "pacing-universe time" is the basis for your post, you'd expect Potter to have the faster pacing.
But I agree with your point. Pace is imo better measured with how many things actually happen during a certain amount of pages.

Apart from that, I think that fast pacing grows annoying when you get that nagging feeling that there wasn't one second of rest for the characters in the last 500 pages (only happened one time when reading a book, and never when reading fanfiction). If that isn't the case, I'm an absolute sucker for fast-paced novels, regardless of the time span they cover.

 

I think you are misunderstand me; in fact, I think you have me exactly backwards. I am saying it is completely irrelevant how much in-universe time passes with respect to pacing. A slow paced novel could cover a thousand years in 10,000 words, and a different series could cover twenty four hours over the course of a five novel series and still be fast paced. That simply doesn't matter. It is completely unrelated to pacing. (Okay, perhaps not competently unrelated to pacing. In universe time is certainly a tool available to authors that can help with pacing but it not the only tool and can easily be override by other things).

What matters, with respect to pacing, is how fast the plot moves along and, more, how fast it feels the plot is moving along. This need not be constant over the course of a novel - and indeed should not be - but I think its fair to say that books have an overall pace. The reason the Dresden Files novels have a faster pacing than Harry Potter is because a Dresden Files novel careens like an out of control car from plot point to plot point, with barely a minute for the reader to breath. The fact that it does so over the course of a few days in-universe is irrelevant. It could have easily have the same break-neck pace over a few weeks, months or even years. Harry Potter, on the other hand, is a more sedate affair. Is has a slower pace because the slower build-up of the plot, the more frequent asides and it lets the reader relax a bit through a gently rising action, not because it happens to take place over a greater length of time.

 

No, I didn't. I just phrased what I wanted to express in a way that could be misunderstood.

But I agreed with you a paragraph later, on the exact thing you explained again in your latest post:

What I wanted to say: You argued against a theory that says pace should be measured in the amount of time that passes during a certain amount of pages.
Then you said that, based on that theory, one would expect the Dresden Files to outpace Potter by 365/~3.

But that doesn't make sense, because:
Dresden: Three days.
Potter: A year.

Amount of Pages: Roughly the same.

=>Potter is faster paced by 365/~3, IF we thought the mentioned theory to be true.

You don't think so, I don't think so, I just wanted to point out that you were presenting something the theory doesn't propose.

 

Ginny being a slut.

She had a whopping two boyfriends in the Books before Harry, had only one boyfriend at a time, wasn't known to have cheated on either boyfriend, isn't known to have done anything more serious than kissing, and ended things with both boys for perfectly acceptable reasons.

Seriously, that re-read is leaving me tempted to come up with a detailed, up-to-date list of all the things Fanon and FanFictions insist are Canon that can easily be disproven with a single line of text.

 

Yeah, but that didn't include the 17 girlfriends she had on the side, and Dobby on Tuesdays. Come man, read the books. It's all in there!

 

The completely irrelevant will from Sirius where he jokes and all that other will garbage common in Indy!Harry fics.

 

Non-magic AUs in HP fanfiction have never really bothered me because I simply avoided them and moved on, but it seems like my second favorite fandom, A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), is infested with them. (at least on AO3) I swear that at least half of them are "Modern AUs" or "College AUs". If I'm going to read ASOIAF fanfiction it better be in set in Planetos.

 

What would even happen in a fic like this? "Only one will claim the throne... of University President."

 

Uh, I wish. At least academia politics might have been slightly interesting.

But instead, they're usually dumb high school drama stuff, especially rather horrid Ships.

 

And it's not like college!GoT couldn't work. Have Jon join a fraternity notorious for sticking to rules set up when it was founded in 1894 or whatever and Jon somehow becomes the Secretary (I dunno how frats work) and takes in geeks and nerds into a frat of jocks, so jocks put him in a hospital. Dany, with her hawkish approach to championing justice, would probably be a ruthless BLM ally. Stannis would be an older professor fighting for tenure with a younger, better liked brother while openly cheating on his wife with a hot redhead religious studies PhD from Europe, Joffrey would be an entitled affluenza brat...

Wait, no, stop. This just sounds like Social Justice: the TV show.

 

This sounds like it will be painful to read.

 

I made the mistake of reading one, once. It seemed normal, poor Ginny, rich Harry and then all of a sudden Ginny pulls out a wand and it turns into a plot twist :fire

At least be consistent :facepalm

 

Somewhere around chapter six...

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