The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter (27 page)

Likewise, O.W.L.s are given by the Wizarding Examinations Authority at the end of the fifth year (like the GCSE, usually at about age 16). O.W.L.s are spread out over two weeks; theory exams are given in the morning, while practice exams are in the afternoon. The exception is Astronomy, which is tested at night.

Grades are as follows:

As you may have guessed, a “T” is really, really bad, as if you have the intellect of a troll. Ouch. Like the GCSE, O.W.L. results guide students’ last two years of coursework. Failure to achieve a passing grade in an area usually means that classes in that area are no longer available to students. At British boarding schools, after the GCSE, students begin to specialize, moving from O (ordinary) subject levels to A (advanced) levels.

Another similarity between O.W.L.s and the GCSE is that students can try crazy stunts—cramming and cheating in the Muggle world; eating the remains or other substances of magical creatures in the wizarding world. And wizard professors have a slightly easier task than their Muggle counterparts because they can employ anti-cheating charms. Both Muggle and wizard students receive their scores during the summer.

At the end of their education, both Muggle and wizard students take another exam: the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the N.E.W.T.s, respectively. For the IB, students are tested in six subjects (language, second language, individuals and societies, experimental sciences, mathematics, and arts) and write what’s called an extended essay (4,000 words) in one subject, based on individual research that’s guided by a mentor.

N.E.W.T.s, on the other hand, are Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests taken in the seventh (final) year at Hogwarts. Passing N.E.W.T.s is not necessary in order to graduate from Hogwarts, but good N.E.W.T. scores are required before graduates can enter certain fields. For example, to become a healer requires an “E” in N.E.W.T.s in Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. And that makes sense, given that healers have to reverse the effects of potions, charms, curses, and the like. Other careers include Muggle relations, curse-breaking, professional Quidditch, retail sales, publishing, and public relations, and each has its own exam requirements.

Rebeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts, as well as Care of Magical Creatures professor, does not live in Hogwarts castle, as do the other professors. Instead, Hagrid lives in a small hut at the edge of the grounds, near the forbidden forest, where he often ventures, in spite of the centaurs, unicorns, and giant man-eating spiders that lurk there (see Chapter 2 for more on these creatures). In the Muggle world it is not uncommon for a school’s groundskeeper to live in a small building separate from—but still on the grounds of—the campus.

Just at the edge of the forbidden forest is the Whomping Willow, a tree that, when provoked (which is generally when any students are nearby), starts thrashing its long, willowy branches, breaking everything in sight. Press a knot on the tree trunk, however, and the tree ceases all movement. Fans of
The Princess Bride
movie will immediately recall the knot on the tree in that movie that reveals a secret torture chamber below.

The forest is off-limits to all students, unless they are with Hagrid or another teacher. And what would a fantasy tale be without a tempting forbidden forest? Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and myriad other fairy tale characters have lost themselves in dense forests that were supposed to be off-limits. In addition, the best-known fantasy literature is teeming with dark, frightening forests:
Robin Hood’s
Sherwood Forest; the dense forests of Lewis’s
Narnia;
the Forest Sauvage in T.H. White’s
The Once and Future King;
and the many forests in Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings
(the Old Forest, Lothlorien, and Fanghorn Forest).

Hogsmeade, a village near Hogwarts, has the distinction of being the only entirely wizarding city in Great Britain. This means that, unlike Diagon Alley (see Chapter 7), which is situated in the middle of Muggle-laden London, Hogsmeade doesn’t have any nonwizards nearby. Hogsmeade is a city that doesn’t exist on Muggle maps, and, like Hogwarts School, it’s Unplottable, so nonwizards never wander into it.

Like the school, Hogsmeade derives its name from a long connection of pigs and magic. “Mead” means both an alcoholic drink (a beverage that flows in the village pubs) and “meadow,” the image of which the quaint village elicits.

And Hogsmeade is nothing if not quaint. The entire town is made up of thatched cottages and shops, just like a seventeenth-century British country town (many of which remain in the same charming state today— if you drive or take the train through the British countryside, you’ll see many such quaint villages). The main street is called High Street, a name as common to British towns as “Main Street” is to small-town USA.

Hogsmeade boasts an eclectic mix of eateries and shops that rivals Diagon Alley in London. They are discussed in the remaining sections of this chapter.

If you knew that a dervish is a whirling, chanting, frenzied person (as a part of some Muslim religious practices, not unlike the quaking and shaking that took over some Protestant groups early in U.S. history), and if you thought of the word “bang” as meaning “a loud noise,” what would you think Dervish and Banges sells? If you guessed something loud and frenzied, you guessed right: Dervish and Banges sells magical wizarding instruments—which, almost by definition, because they are magical, would be unpredictable and, potentially, combustible. The actual objects sold in this store, however, are not well-documented in Rowling’s novels.

The Hog’s Head is a pub in Hogsmeade that’s not on the main road. It is, in fact, rather dark, dirty, and smelly; it’s considered a far second to the Three Broomsticks (described later in this chapter), and students rarely frequent this pub. The name may be drawn from The Boar’s Head in Shakespeare’s
Falstaff.

A favorite of kids and adults alike, Honeydukes is a shop that sells the latest in wizard sweets, along with sweets that Muggles love, too: toffee, chocolate, and nougat (a chewy candy made from egg whites, honey, and chopped nuts).

The name likely derives from honeydew, the sweet melon, but also evokes another sweet (honey) and all things British (dukes and duchesses). There was also a Duke’s Candy Store on Hoe Avenue in the Bronx in the 1960s, when J.K. Rowling was a child, but it isn’t likely she ever knew it existed.

Muggles can also enjoy wizard candies without leaving the comfort of their homes. Jelly Belly sells Bertie Bott’s Beans, and several online candy companies have taken to manufacturing and selling everything from Chocolate Frogs to Cockroach Clusters. See Appendix B for a few wizard candy websites.