Love her or hate her (and my opinions are mixed), I must confess, JK Rowling was a huge influence on why I didn’t become a regular author. No shade on people who get what they paid for, but the young reader crowd is just so gimmicky, and not in a good way, and you see that with a lot of works like Percy Jackson and Twilight (but also predominantly with Rowling’s work). How do you compete in such a no-rules game?
So then let’s talk about one of the cores of the issue. People often have an epiphany when divulging into Harry Potter, and they think “huh, what’s the deal with this if that thing is how it is”. While noting that conflicts in literary analysis don’t always reflect something that doesn’t add up and that it could be a hiccup in details/semantics, the questions themselves don’t go away. And there’s nothing that matches the amount of those having to do with Harry Potter. What example of which strikes you as the most overlooked?
If Rowling herself ever notices that I’m bringing this up, let it be known I do think of her work as a reskinned Brothers Grimm in the universe of The Worst Witch and that I’m collaborating with another author (Samantha Rinne) whose work I would argue deserves Rowling’s prestige if Rowling’s work deserves it. Thanks (and here is where I run for the hills).
There is zero reason for the wizarding world to have social classes. Allow me to explain.
Although food can’t be created with magic, any graduate of Hogwarts can cast the Herbivicus Charm (I think it’s called) or the Greenhouse Charm to grow plants in moments. There’s also a spell that produces fresh, clean water. They have spells that make the insides of things larger than the outside. Spells that clean dishes. Spells that levitate objects and automatically perform rote tasks.
Every wizard or witch is maybe a month or two of moderate work (at the absolute outside) away from having a private pocket kingdom with crops, furniture, fireplace, teleport pad, beds, clothing, swimming pool, pets, cattle, enchanted kitchen, self cleaning floors, and fucking golf course if they want it.
If they can’t create, craft, grow, or summon something, they can buy it with money taken from an entire world of gullible muggles. Sure, dollars and yen are worthless in Diagon Alley, but you can still buy food and an enormous range of physical comforts with it. And if you absolutely have to spend money in a magical store- muggles still have gold. Even at the extortionate exchange rates that I assume the goblins would charge, the process of turning essentially free cash (in exchange for magic tricks or conjured trinkets) into gold and then into goblin coin is basically nothing but profit. A lot of it.
Which brings me back to social stratification. Why are the Malfoys considered a powerful family? Why do people differ to government functionaries and Dumbledore? Why do witches and wizards run businesses or work at all? Social hierarchy is a result of power imbalances, and other than direct, physical force, there are no power imbalances in the wizarding world. They can take your job, but who cares? You don’t actually need one. They can take your home, but who cares? You can make another in a few weeks (and this time the hot tub will go on the balcony instead of in the backyard).
A wizard does not need anything from society or from other wizards.
I feel like this is explained by the really unclear ideas of the “power level” of wizards. What makes Dumbledore “the most powerful wizard” isn’t ever actually given context.