The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter (14 page)

Are you plagued with gnomes in the garden? Can’t tell a Knut from a Galleon? Wondering why the eyes in that picture appear to be following you? Pondering whether to say “yes” to an offer of Cauldron Cakes and pumpkin juice? You’ve come to the right place. This chapter helps you sort out all the ways in which wizards spend their days.

To the uninitiated, wizard housework might seem oxymoronic. After all, if you’re a wizard, for goodness sake, you’re not going to spend time cooking, cleaning, and gardening, are you? Of course not! You’re going to use magic to do all of that, the same way Mary Poppins helped the children “clean” up their room by snapping her fingers, and then singing about a spoonful of sugar.

But, alas, we see no such logic in the wizarding world. True, there are improvements, such as self-peeling sprouts, but tangerines, for some reason, still need to be peeled. Dishes can be charmed to clean themselves, but housekeeping is still considered a full-time job. Even Mrs. Skower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover (that’s Mrs. “Scour” to you) doesn’t relieve wizards of the drudgery of household chores. Creatures must be cleaned out of the most inconvenient places (see Chapter 2 for more on these nuisances), dinner must be made (or house elves must be employed to cook), and the plates must be cleared away.

And perhaps the biggest challenge faced by a domesticated wizard is the havoc wreaked by garden gnomes. No, not the garden gnome statues that graced American lawns for most of the 1970s and ’80s, but a brilliant takeoff: tiny, live gnomes (old-looking, and with very large, bald heads) that burrow in lawns (thus ruining them) and have to be caught and tossed—literally, tossed into the air as far away as possible.
De-gnoming the garden
is, for wizard kids, the equivalent to mowing the yard or digging dandelions out from between the bricks. (See Chapter 2 for more on gnomes.)

Although you might think that wizards can simply conjure money out of thin air, it doesn’t work that way. Like Muggles, some wizards are rich and some are poor, but most are staunchly in the middle class, working full-time jobs. Moneyed families tend to stay that way, but capitalism is alive and well, which means that any wizard can create a successful business.

The similarities stop there, however, because wizard money and banking are rather different from their counterparts in the Muggle world.

Wizards tend to use cash exclusively, which must be extremely inefficient, given that wizard money exists only in heavy coin form. Never has a wizard whipped out a credit or debit card.

Three coins make up the entire monetary system:

So what does this mean? Wizards use tall ships, rounded blades, and Danish kings to purchase items? No, but the names all do relate to commerce, politics, and power in some way—a large and impressive trading ship, a farm implement important to a huge agrarian nation, and an influential king whose power spanned several nations.

Most wizards store their money in Gringotts Wizarding Bank, which is run by goblins. However, unlike in Muggle banks, the money doesn’t appear to be invested or used to finance buildings or other projects; instead, the coins simply sit in vaults until they’re needed. Vaults (at least the important ones) are protected not only by high-level charms but also by dragons, and because the vaults are located 100 miles beneath the streets of London, break-ins are rare.

Literature has a long association with goblins, dragons, and money. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Hobbit,
goblins (called Orcs in
The Lord of the Rings
) and Wargs (wolves) were said to have fought the dwarves, elves, and humans in the Battle of the Five Armies. Why? Because the goblins wanted the dwarves’ treasure. And it was Smaug, a dragon, who stole the dwarf treasure and used it as his bed—never spending it, but enjoying the shininess of the coins and jewels.