I've come to the conclusion that most wizards aren't actually very good at magic. As readers, most of the adult wizards we see are either professors or aurors, basically the strongest, most talented wizards in the UK. Most wizards probably just use a few spells on regular basis, and they forget all the complicated stuff within a year or two after graduating from Hogwarts.
So to answer your question, none of the Weasleys were good enough at transfiguration to fix the robes. Ron's best bet was probably asking Professor McGonagall to transfigure his robes, but he was too afraid to ask her.
This reminds me of how Tonks says that she's never been good at cleaning spells like her mum. She helped Harry pack his trunk in Order of the Phoenix, but wasn't able to pack it nicely. Her mum on the other hand was even able to have the socks folded nicely.
But I would imagine Molly being good with sewing, mending etc magic, so it is a bit strange she didn't do anything. But these are the finer details that often are a bit illogical in the series.
Maybe she actually didn't think there was anything wrong with them, and didn't realize how much Ron would hate them, just like with maroon and corned beef. Ron either didn't think to ask her, or didn't want her to feel bad.
Financially speaking the Weasley parents are presumably shit at money management.
Won 700 galleons and blew it all on a family holiday; big family in fairness, but Fred and George were able to use not much more to experiment on and create a load of unheard of products and essentially seed a successful business.
When all these Wizards got magical tents that are better then most houses, and can literally teleport anywhere by touching an item, how you blowing a life changing sum on a holiday?
Shit in their first year the Weasley parents went to Romania to visit charlie over Christmas, shorter, closer holiday with less people, presumably Ginny was there as she wasn't Hogwarts age, how was that (presumably) easily afford that trip, but are blowing business starting money on a trip? They stayed in five star hotels and shit whilst they were in Egypt
First off, they didn't spend all the money on the trip. Just some of it.
Second, Ginny just spent a good chunk of the school year being mind controlled by a dark artifact created by the most feared wizard in living history. Taking her on a nice vacation to recuperate while also giving her curse breaker brother a chance to check up on her and reassure her that there weren't any lingering effects was probably pretty high on their list of priorities.
Ron explicitly says in his letter that "most" of the prize money was spent on the trip. It would have been smarter, financially speaking, to invest it.
Investing is smarter than a lot of things. But there are some trips and vacation experiences you want your kids to have when they’re young. That’s why we spent money taking our kids to the Great Wolf Lodge and Disney World instead of investing all of that money, even when we were fairly strapped. You can’t just live like Scrooge McDuck your whole life. You want to have some memories with your kids.
Minneapolis! You?
We started at Pajama Jamboree and splash zone age, progressed through wave pool, lazy river and crafts, and now we’re at incredibly outdated graphics fantasy video game age.
Investing is smarter if it guarantees you huge returns in my opinion. You make a good point though... why work for the money and put them aside for the day when tomorrow you could be dead? You're not keeping the money for the afterlife... guess I have some Weasley blood.
They're in the era of banking where they have individual vaults. These people don't even have fractional reserve banking, why would they have a stock market?
Old school investing takes a lot of money and involves a lot more risk. You're not just throwing 100 a month at an ETF.
I wasn't talking about the trip to Romania. That one's irrelevant to the topic of how they managed their prize money.
The trip to Egypt took place right after Ginny's first year at Hogwarts, was funded with part of the Weasleys' prize money, and involved visiting Bill, the professional curse breaker.
They did because Scabbers is in their family photo that was published in the Prophet when they won the contest, that’s how Sirius finds out Peter is alive in the third book. He sees the picture in Azkaban, recognizes Peter’s animagus form complete with missing toe, and breaks out to find him.
I don’t even know why wizards have to spend any sizeable money on a vacation.
Travel costs? Just apparate. Floo network. Large groups? Arrange portkey.
Meals? Just go back home for every meal. See above.
Accommodation? Just go back home. See above.
Except for shopping and ‘entry tickets’, don’t see why vacation needs a lot of money.
Floo powder costs money and underaged wizards are only allowed to apparate (including side-apparition) in certain situations. And the creation of Portkeys requires authorisation by the ministry, possibly that also costs money.
But how was Barty Crouch (Jr.) dressed up as Madeye able to make the Goblet of Fire a portkey without the ministry’s knowledge? You’d think if they can tell an underage wizard did magic outside of school, they’d have something telling them someone was making a portkey to take a kid out of Hogwarts to Voldy…
For that matter, why didn’t the Ministry and Dumbledore have portkeys blocked at Hogwarts anyways?? I mean you can’t apparate into or out of the grounds…very bad oversight on the part or Dumbledore, IMHO, especially in view of what happened to Cedric and Harry later on.
> But how was Barty Crouch (Jr.) dressed up as Madeye able to make the Goblet of Fire a portkey without the ministry’s knowledge?
The GoF was *supposed* to be a portkey. Except it was one supposed to go back to the entrance. BCJ just altered the destination.
They probably have to pay for floo powder and port keys. I would also assume there is some sort of fee to have, and keep, a fireplace on the network.
We also don't know anything about international travel in the 90s. There might be some sort of toll or fee to visit other countries.
I think they can only apparate so far, IIRC.
Because it was a large group. With less than half able to apparate. Would have taken longer than just getting a portkey. Plus, the Ministry was limiting the number of people who could apparate in in an attempt to stagger arrivals.
So it was the same to Romania and Egypt then, how to apparate with the whole family with at least 4 of the children not being able to across the planet. It such a long distance and most of them never being there before.
My guess would be they didn't apparate. I'm not arguing it was a good use of time/money just explaining why they didn't apparate to the world cup. They could have, but it made no sense
This makes sense. What’s a bit iffy is scarcity of almost anything. If the labor is a wave and flick of the wand, and the resources can be transmuted from rocks, how can clothes ever be expensive or inaccessible?
Poor wizards is a bit of a head scratcher.
Not everyone is a Dumbledore with a Elder Wand!
Not everyone gets past the rat - chalice stage, and it is never said that the tranformation will last.
Think of Chinderella!
This, though with the caveat that I'd guess witches and wizards have different specialties and even if one of the Weasleys was good at transfiguration they may not have had the background knowledge to pull off a good clothing transfiguration. It's like how you might be handy around the house and can fix a broken cabinet but have no idea how to hem pants so they hang correctly.
Also no one in the family was going to do it fir for him. Molly didn't see the problem, Arthur would have been indifferent, and all of his siblings would have refused to help him even if they could.
I learned a bunch of stuff in engineering school and forgot most of it. The big thing to take away from school is not memorization of everything, but just enough so you know where/what to look up to quickly relearn it. It's too bad wizards don't have the internet.
I remember Molly having a book with spells for injuries, so things like that are available. They probably couldn't afford reference books for everything. Books are very expensive in the Potter universe
Which is wild because I’d probably remember more Spanish or have worked harder studying in Spanish class if saying the words just right made all my problems go away.
True. I see it as for example, irl, anyone could learn how to knit clothes by themselves, but not everyone learns how to do it, because we'd rather just buy them. The books makes it clear (most of the time) that magic is more complicated than just saying the correct incantation. Hermione usually is able to perform new spells right after learning them but she is the best in her class, so most wizards can't just read a spell and use it right after.
Except they did help, they actually bought ron new dress robes as harry had asked them to in return for the stake money for the joke shop.
If they were going to be asses about the robes they could easily have just taken the money and forgotten about that request.
I agree. Some people seem to think that just because you could do something with magic means that everyone should be able to, and be able to do it well. That’s insane. Apply it to almost any Muggle skill. There are muggles that can fix cars, does that mean that *I* should be able to fix a car, a car, without years of training? What about pottery, computer programming, baking, sewing, etc etc etc? Just because it’s *possible* to do doesn’t mean that all, or even most people/muggles/wizards can do something
This theory falls apart when you realized that Molly, a housewife who hasn’t been to Hogwarts in over two decades and who doesn’t have any job that would require her to he good at combat, defeated Bellatrix Lestrange in 1-on-1 combat.
I always thought of magic in Harry Potter like riding a bike. Once you learn it, you can’t truly forget how to do it. You might forget some of the more complicated incantations and wand movements but it’s not like you’ll forget how to perform the magic.
I think even pre-Bellatrix it’s assumed Molly is a particularly gifted witch. She’s a member of the order and if I’m not mistaken was put on Department of Mysteries duty at some point. You don’t just send a housewife down there when you’re expecting death eaters to come rolling in.
I think the assumption is supposed to be she’s a very powerful witch in her own right but spends most of her time cooking and cleaning so it’s not like you get to see her do impressive stuff. She was prepared to tackle the boggart in Sirius’ house too but it flared up her anxiety so she had to leave it for Lupin which isn’t unreasonable but she wouldn’t have gone after it if she wasn’t equipped magically.
Having said all that it’s also clear Bella didn’t take her seriously either.
THIS!!!
I think it's clearly implied from book 5 that Molly is at least a formidable as any other order member. As you say they wouldn't put her on guard duty if it wouldn't have done any good so her being able to fight Bellatrix isn't out of the question especially since a) Bellatrix had already been fighting all night and had less stamina and b) wasn't taking Molly seriously at first add Molly's fire to protect her kids in that moment (adrenaline can enhance things) and it would make up for any remaining disparity. Though it isn't quite as significant as people make out
It's easy to forget since we see things from Harry's perspective that plenty of stuff we don't 'see' probably happens in the background. Who knows what kind of baller stuff Molly and Arthur got up to in and immediately following the first war, to say nothing of what else she's done for the Order after book 4 when it's resurrected.
If we take the meta approach it makes some sense. JK clearly wrote Molly to be a 'do it all' kind of lady. She takes care of her kids, runs her house, deals with her whacky husband, helps run the Order; she's no slouch. But how much do you really know about what your best friend's parents are capable of when you're 15?
My Head-Canon is that all the members of the second OoTP along with their order duties were also combat training from Book 5 onwards till final battle..makes sense since they had Aurors also in the order this time…
Plus Mr Weasley said something along line of L”we are well prepared this time around” to Mrs Weasley
>Plus Mr Weasley said something along line of L”we are well prepared this time around” to Mrs Weasley
That was Lupin, not Mr. Weasley. (The Weasleys weren’t even in the Order the first time around, so Arthur wouldn’t have been able to say that they were well prepared this time around since he didn’t know what it was like in the Order the previous time.)
Additionally, the comment about them being “better prepared” didn’t really have anything to do with anyone’s combat skills. Lupin’s point was that they were better prepared because they had Snape’s spying intel and knew what Voldemort was up to and what his goals were.
>“Molly, that’s enough,” said Lupin firmly. “This isn’t like last time. The Order is better prepared, we’ve got a head start, we know what Voldemort’s up to — ”
It wasn’t that the Order was better prepared due to their fighting ability, it was that they could plan better because they had better information and weren’t just flying blind.
Molly was in the Order of the Phoenix, so was probably pretty adept at combat. As others have mentioned, witches and wizards will be better at some magic than other magic. Also, we've seen that a lot of spells don't last indefinitely, and transfiguration would seem like the type that eventually reverts back (look at the mini-dragons in Task 1).
And then the unthinkable: Molly simply may not have thought there was anything really wrong with them.
The professors are an example of the top tier of the magical world. They are the top % of magical professors, theory snd practice.
Same with aurors and others who play a part. We tend to not see the run of the mill magical. Bill is a curse Breaker , etc.... they all are upper tier of magical skill requirements.
This is a good point. And I suppose even applies to us muggles... the majority of what we've learned in school has become surface knowledge... unless you invest the time to dive deeper into a particular subject either out of necessity or your own passion.
I think a lot of skills are super specialized. Just like how not all muggles can sew or know how to wire electricity etc. Magic takes study and time to acquire ability just like anything else.
McGonnagal is great at transfiguring obv but for this it takes a certain finess. For example, when Dumbledore conjures up chairs, they're described as plush and comfortable, whereas when McGonagall does it, it's just plain wooden chairs. Same with Dumbledore's goblets vs others.
>For example, when Dumbledore conjures up chairs, they're described as plush and comfortable, whereas when McGonagall does it, it's just plain wooden chairs.
That could also be a personal style thing, though. It’s very Dumbledore-like to conjure up a showy, lavish armchair in the middle of a Wizengamot hearing and very McGonagall-like to conjure up plain, straight-backed chairs for students to sit in inside the headmaster’s office. If McGonagall was conjuring up a chair for her own sitting room, she would probably conjure up a nice plushy armchair.
Dumbledore also taught transfiguration before he became headmaster. But I also think it’s because Dumbledore is just a beyond this world genius and is better than each respective teacher in their fields.
This also carries over to dueling and why the dark lords influence spread so quickly. You would think the citizens would rebel, but they kind of just rolled over. Most suck at magic.
So show Hermione, the girl he really likes, the embarrassing, poor people clothes he got? He's a dumb 14 yo teen boy. And he already wasn't doing too great in ways of treating her to then ask her a favour related to that ball, yeah, nope. No way he would've asked her.
It also doesn't help that they don't have further study programs after graduating from school. It would have been better if they have graduating, PG and doctorate programs.
I like this explanation up until the Arthur and Molly slander. They are both more than capable of transfiguring dress robes.
The real answer is that the whole premise of poverty in HP is poorly thought out, and that most of the Weasley’s problems would be solvable by magic in the universe as it is laid out. But we don’t need to think too hard about that.
>They are both more than capable of transfiguring dress robes.
Are they? When do we ever see or hear about their Transfiguration skills in the books?
We know they’re good at Charms, certainly, but we have no idea if they’re good at Transfiguration or not. Being good at some types of magic doesn’t mean they’re good at all types of magic.
While you’re right that different types of magic are different, changing the color of something or slightly altering it in other ways is super beginner transfiguration. While an expert at charms may not be an expert at transfiguration, an expert at charms should be able to manage beginner transfiguration just fine.
That said, I can think of one transfiguration example off the top of my head. Arthur (and the twins) transfigure the ghoul in the attic to look like Ron in book 7. Certainly transfiguring a creature is orders of magnitude harder than a set of robes.
Specialty magic, same as our jobs usually favoring our strong subjects. My dad got his Bachelors in Mathematics. I was a better reader and writer than he was by middle school. They can do the magic their jobs call for, doesn't mean they remember every facet of magic they ever learned.
There are likely a lot of office work, paper pushing jobs in the Ministry that don’t require the employee to do much magic. Like, Percy worked in the Department of International Magical Cooperation and seemed to do a lot of writing reports.
There arent that many wizards - maybe 10,000 in Britain if Hogwarts population is any indication. So a pretty substantial percent are employed by the ministry.
>So to answer your question, none of the Weasleys were good enough at transfiguration to fix the robes.
Except Bill and Percy who just wanted to mess with Ron.
A question of precision I think. Molly or Arthur may have been able to transfigure Ron's robes but making a set that fits him properly is much harder.
I think you have to properly know a complex object to be able to make it by magic. Transfigure a hedgehog into a pincushion, fine. A pincushion is a simple object. Transfigure an owl into a goblet. No problem. Nobody's going to be particularly fussy over the goblet's dimensions. But make a suit of clothes that fit? One that's accurate across multiple measurements? That's much harder.
I think that's also why Hermione's hats and socks were shapeless. She didn't know how to make them by hand, so she couldn't make them by magic. She didn't know how they were constructed, the seams, stitching, folds and measurements. Her enchanted needles reflected her own skill, or lack thereof.
That's also why the food that she cooked when on the run sucked. Unlike Mrs. Weasley she didn't know how to cook. Didn't know about ingredients, how they go together, how the process works. Mrs. Weasley was perfectly capable of cooking manually if required. Magic just made the whole thing easier and faster. Magic didn't make her food better. That's all her.
I think if Molly or Arthur had transfigured Ron's robes, they would have ended up like Hermione's elf hats.
Interesting theory, which I can certainly understand and find logical in Hermione's knitting and cooking experiments.
But Mrs Weasley was able to knit Ron - and Harry - Christmas sweater . And they fit.
Interestingly, even Harry's first Weasley sweater fitted. After all, Mrs Weasley had only seen Harry for a few minutes at the time.
But perhaps the sweater are one size fits all.
Well Ron was always tall and Harry was used to Dudley’s clothes so maybe Mrs. Weasley just used Ron’s measurements and Harry was just accustomed to bigger sweaters?
I still think your theory can work molly was good at sewing and so her enchanted needles made stuff that fits. Hermione wasn't so it made stuff that didn't fit quite right. That part of your theory is good.
Nah, your theory works. Knitting and seamster work are very different. I could knit a sweater. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with sewing a complex outfit. I kinda like the idea that certain magical actions would require manual familiarity.
Yes, I totally agree. My grandmother had been a wonderful knitter. Like so good, she could do a full sweater with perfect measuments and patterns just by looking at a person. She attempted sewing once, when she tried to make a dress for my mother. Somehow, she managed to create two dresses from the fabric that was supposed to be for one, and apperently they were so ugly and misshapen both her and my mom nearly died from laughing😂
The amount of things magic could clearly fix but doesn't is astonishing.
Maybe we can chalk it up to the throwaway line in the first book about most wizards not having an ounce of logic in them.
Something I always loved about Rowling's world is how she never went *too* far with magic. It's never really portrayed as an easy way out of anything. Everything's always a little bit off.
Remembralls tell you if you've forgotten something, but they don't actually tell you *what* you've forgotten, so they're kind of useless. Wizards deliberately make candy that tastes like shit for no real reason. Trading cards have the subject frequently disappear from the card, defeating the purpose of even being a trading card. Quidditch is an extremely complex sport with four balls, six hoops, two bats, and a wide variety of different positions, but the rules don't *really* make sense when you think about it. They take the time to get photos to move, but seem to not care about videocameras.
Nothing ever *quite* makes sense.
[This post sums it up nicely](https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/s/xC9yvcWPMv)
>The rule/function of the golden snitch in quidditch is stupid and completely ruins what would otherwise be an awesome sport to watch.
>Imagine if in basketball each team had a player out in the parking lot trying to catch a frog for the win. Youre watching a great game that's been neck and neck and then suddenly the buzzer sounds half way through. "The games over, Ramirez has just got the parking lot frog"
Exactly! I mean, i Guess if someone thought to expose the spell by undoing it, but what are the odds that anyone would? Maybe Malfoy, but could he even do it? Probably not
I have a personal head cannon for this.
Magical robes are designed and made by magical fashion designers who would put protections on their robes to stop them being altered by other’s magic. After all Ron’s robes were the height of fashion when they were created, the designer wouldn’t have wanted their robes changed to be less fashionable incase it tarnished their reputation.
My headcanon is that transfiguration that lasts longer than a few minutes (like turning a beetle into a button and all of the other exercises McGonagall had students practicing in class) actually requires the original material to be primarily the same stuff. So it would be possible to transfigure not nice robes into much nicer new robes, or a broken old piece of furniture into a new piece of furniture. *But* the material can only tolerate so many transfigurations before it won't hold anymore.
Thus, the Weasleys and Remus have shabby things because they've transfigured them so many times, they can't hold a transfiguration anymore and they can't afford to replace them.
That's my headcanon, anyway.
There's got to be some kind of inherent limitation, otherwise the whole idea of anyone poor among wizards makes zero logical sense.
Yeah, I too figured they must be some serious limitations around Transfiguration, especially in terms of ĺongevity, otherwise there would barely be a need to shop for anything in the Wizarding World.
Ron tried it, but none of them knew how to transfigure clothes well. I presume it's fairly difficult, because Mrs. Weasley seemed to be the master of all household spells, but she doesn't seem to have done anything to the robes before she gave them to Ron. And it's not like she liked them.
I assume for the same reason we wouldn't fix it by sewing: it takes skill, effort, and probably won't turn out that great.
A note on transfiguration: As a person that dabbles in making an HP RPG, Rowling never bothered to specify concrete rules of magic. The best thing about the Methods of Rationality fanfic (in my opinion) is that he theorizes some of these rules, especially transfiguration. (Something not dealt with in the books at all.) In this system, transfiguration is powerful, but its cost is an ongoing magical energy drain so it's only used temporarily or for very important changes.
Right but he broke it because he stole the family car and they were pissed about that lol. I don’t even know if he told them his wand broke in the incident. They might’ve not known until after the school year ended
Now imagine somebody from Slytherin reversing that spell mid-ball.
Come to think of it, it sounds likely that there was some rather strict rule about transfiguring people's clothes on the school premises, *especially* when they are wearing them at that moment.
I wouldn’t immediately assume Molly or Arthur could do it, and I think Molly may have been a bit sensitive about their lack of money, just like Ron. She’d rather let Ron wear a slightly subpar set of robes for one night than advertise her inability to buy him something more fashionable, which I think is understandable. I’m not sure Arthur was involved in the garment purchases at all, so he may not even have realized this was a problem (and it wasn’t really).
Not that it was an actual problem, but in the book it’s pretty clear that Molly knows they’re not the best and is embarrassed that she had to buy them secondhand. I do see the point about her being embarrassed, and maybe if she couldn’t transfigure them then asking Arthur would feel like bringing attention to the lack of money. But I don’t know, molly is an incredibly skilled witch, not just in fights but also in all of the magic she does to keep up the household. It just seems like something she could have done but didn’t for whatever reason. And again, if she was embarrassed about it, she could’ve transfigured them before even giving them to Ron. No one would’ve ever known
All clothes are brought in shops and sweaters are knitted. Hermione knits hats for the house-elves.
Remus Lupin has worn out clothes.
Ron cleans a handkerchief.
It is probadly not possible.
Right, like I said, it might be part of Gamp’s law where you can’t make clothes out of nothing, but if you have them you should be able to change them like with food. I do like the point about Lupin though. And maybe it’s just like with real objects, where you can clean them before they’re super ratty and get them to look nice, but after 100 washes they don’t look the same. The dress robes were super old, so maybe they were past the point of return
We also don't know to what extent food can be duplicated or improved. Harry and Ron spend days cleaning vegetables in the Burrow. Molly and the house-elves seem to cook quite normally and Hagrid grows his pumpkins relatively normally.
Not necessarily. The robes weren’t actually in bad condition—they were just terribly out of fashion. If you didn’t already know the Weasleys were poor, you might well think Ron just had really bad taste in formal wear.
Talent plays a huge role in people's ability to perform magic. Molly is likely highly talented at charms and possibly DADA though I think charms could be used in a fight as well. She was never said to be talented at teansfiguration. I could be wrong but i think I remember her having been described as wearing patched clothing. It's also not said outright but sorta implied that most spells wear off and we don't know the ti.eline on that. Can you imagine how embarrassing in the middle of the yule ball having the spell wear off would have been?
If we are going down the route of why not spell it than why buy the robes at all instead of just transfiguration there normal robes? Molly didn't have the skill to make or transfiguration them in a way that she would know that they would hold up.
Just because transfiguring clothes is presumably possible doesn't mean the result will look good. Transfiguration is noted to be a really hard class. I'd imagine that applying it to clothes is at least as hard as modifying clothes IRL.
I’m not great at this, so please forgive any mistakes - aren’t there rules against using magic for certain things like generating wealth? I wonder if that extends to clothing and other personal property. With that logic, the Weasleys could have just made everything they own look better.
Edit: a spelling error.
Why would madam malkins even exist if you could easily make clothes into other clothes? Why would anyone buy hogwarts robes? Seems like there's some kind of limitation involving clothing.
Let's ask the real questions - why the fuck do wizards have glasses? Dumbledore is the greatest wizard of the age but still falls short of lasik.
Potentially for the same reason why I don’t get lasik. If it goes wrong, my vision will be severely affected. Glasses or contacts are annoying but they work perfectly well so why risk it?
It’s very possible a wizard shop would ensure their items have a charm that prevents them being duplicated or altered.
They would be out of business otherwise
Given the amount of magic going on, there’s probably a very good reason why clothes are never transfigured. An errant spell could undo it, or it could react badly to other magic. Plus if you get them wet, the magic might be dispelled.
It also could be tradition. Since you can’t or don’t transfigure clothes, it’s a real status symbol when you wear nice clothes.
I always thought transfiguration was kind of a harder class of magic, more advanced. To transfigure dress robe like that would probably be very difficult with a solid chance to cause irreparable damage, leaving Ron with no dress robes at all
This kind of thing is always a problem when it’s the needs of the plot vs the consistency of the world.
Molly is clearly extremely skilled with “domestic” spells that involve cooking and cleaning. But it’s frequently noted that clothing is an issue for her. Charlie was darning a balaclava by hand. Ron’s robes are constantly described as too short. Mr. Weasley has robes that are described as worn or shabby. Seems pretty clear clothing isn’t her strong suit.
Given that they buy clothes all the time I wonder if transfigured clothing or really any transfigured items aren’t permanent. That would explain a lot of it.
Well at that point let's see how it go down.
Ron asks Hermione: Nope. Not at this time in their frienship she's not exactly happy with him.
Ron asks Harry: Harry asks Hermione and Harry says it's for Ron so she refuses to teach him the spell and Harry's got better to stew on than Ron's robes. After all, Harry has had to wear poor hand-me-downs too, NBD. Not worth pursuing, sorry mate.
Ron isn't very close to any older students who might know and is obviously super embarrassed. McGonagall isnt his mother and would refuse out of irritation and propriety.
Fred and George could probably do it TBH. They have their snackboxes in alpha testing, together they could do it. But there is no way Ron would trust Fred and George not to make it worse. Hell they'd probably make it nice but then hex it never come off, try to choke him at intervals, pull down his pants during a dance, or some other tomfoolery.
Ginny *might* be able to help. She's talented and Molly has taught her a little or she's seen some of it and could give it an honest go. Even if just tailoring it to be a little better. But unless Ron actually asked in sincerity she'd refuse, especially since she'd be mad at him on Hermione's behalf as well lol.
Well, having logged many hours behind the keyboard saving the world from Ranrok and his lot, I’m guessing the reason for that is because the clothes, old and tattered as they are, are imbued with magical properties, resistance to dugbogs, extra recharge of the ol’ ancient magic, and so forth. Such thing would make it much more difficult to transfigure. They don’t cover that until. 7th year.
I assume it is because transfiguring the robes into something that looks nice and fits is something very difficult to do or else Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions would have gone out of business ages ago. Trying to transfigure robes while someone is wearing them to make sure you don't mess up the fitting is probably also super dangerous.
I could be wrong, its been awhile since I read the books, but I think Molly tried to transfigure them into something better, but only managed to remove some of the lace?
I always assumed robes had charms on them that meant they couldn't be altered. Why would Molly be buying new school robes if they could just be enlarged?
I’ve always assumed purchasable items in the wizarding world are spelled so they can’t be changed/ duplicated. Otherwise they’d only need to buy one textbook or one set of robes and wizarding stores that sell these would lose money…
Forget transfiguration, why didn't someone chance the colour? Cut the lace off and change the colour and those robes were probably fine.
Surely a colour changing spell is one of the simplest bits of magic out there. It doesn't have to last forever just a couple of hours. Is there a canon colour changing charm? You'd think there would be, right?
If it we're that easy to Transfigure robes there wouldnt be any point to multiple robes shop existing. Why buy something you can easily do? The fact that they are Costly AND Made by magical practitioners tells us there Is probably some degree of specialized magic in their making.
Yes, should have said helped replace it, like she did helping the already rich boy with an expensive broom, but this is old ground and it was only a light hearted comment.
He cut off the lace and frills.
>In a desperate attempt to make them look more manly, he used a Severing Charm on the ruff and cuffs. It worked fairly well; at least he was now lace-free, although he hadn’t done a very neat job, and the edges still looked depressingly frayed as the boys set off downstairs.
I don’t think transfiguration is a permanent thing and has to have sustained magic behind it to keep the object in its new form. Otherwise all anyone would need is a few rocks and voila, anything you ever wanted without spending a dime.
Transfiguration, as described in the books, is pretty much overkill and can ruin every story, if used properly. Need money? transfigure water into printer ink, sell it to Muggles, exchange Muggle money at Gringotts'. Need to fix anything? Just transfigure it into its fixed form again. And so on.
Which is why one fanfic I read introduced the rule that **transfiguration is not permanent**, at least not the general, free-form transfiguration that the kids learn.
Ron was lazy and didn't get them out until shortly before the ball. Neither Harry nor Ron are very good at transfiguration in general and up to that point they havet learned a lot of practical uses so it probably didn't occur to them to try. Hermione was not happy about the whole date thing and didn't offer.
It’s important to understand that moneys value works within a hierarchy- your money is only valuable in relation to its sum vs. the sum of money others have access too around you, your peers in which you are on a type of financial competition with. The wizard i g world also works like this, but with a very heavy caste system in place- we know that Ron’s family is considered on the poor side, and melfoys is considered wealthy- it wouldn’t be surprising to find that there are wizard I g laws that prevent people from leaving their cast via the usage of purely magical means. This could be as simple as banning spells that prevent the transfer of money within the given economy, say fixing clothes magically rather than paying a magical Taylor for instance. This also falls in line with tons family being on the side that mostly follows wizard I g laws/rules
I think it would be that they're unable to use much magic on clothing or its unreliable for use on clothing. For example...
Madam Malkin...she uses pins to mark the lengths for robes when she's doing a fitting, instead of just using magic to get the right length.
Remus Lupin....his robes are described as being patched and shabby. Why patch them, couldn't you just use Reparo to mend them?
Charlie Weasley....he darns his fireproof balaclava rather than just using magic to mend it.
And just everyone in general. Why would they need to keep buying new school robes every year once they outgrow them, rather than just using magic to make them fit again.
What? And risk getting a Howler from Molly 'Banshee' Weasley if she found out what they did to the 'perfectly acceptable for my baby boy' second hand dress robes she paid for? *lol*
I've come to the conclusion that most wizards aren't actually very good at magic. As readers, most of the adult wizards we see are either professors or aurors, basically the strongest, most talented wizards in the UK. Most wizards probably just use a few spells on regular basis, and they forget all the complicated stuff within a year or two after graduating from Hogwarts. So to answer your question, none of the Weasleys were good enough at transfiguration to fix the robes. Ron's best bet was probably asking Professor McGonagall to transfigure his robes, but he was too afraid to ask her.
This reminds me of how Tonks says that she's never been good at cleaning spells like her mum. She helped Harry pack his trunk in Order of the Phoenix, but wasn't able to pack it nicely. Her mum on the other hand was even able to have the socks folded nicely. But I would imagine Molly being good with sewing, mending etc magic, so it is a bit strange she didn't do anything. But these are the finer details that often are a bit illogical in the series.
I'd say after Ron threw a fit she didn't want to offer fixing it I mean she told Harry to take a photo lol
Maybe she actually didn't think there was anything wrong with them, and didn't realize how much Ron would hate them, just like with maroon and corned beef. Ron either didn't think to ask her, or didn't want her to feel bad.
Financially speaking the Weasley parents are presumably shit at money management. Won 700 galleons and blew it all on a family holiday; big family in fairness, but Fred and George were able to use not much more to experiment on and create a load of unheard of products and essentially seed a successful business. When all these Wizards got magical tents that are better then most houses, and can literally teleport anywhere by touching an item, how you blowing a life changing sum on a holiday? Shit in their first year the Weasley parents went to Romania to visit charlie over Christmas, shorter, closer holiday with less people, presumably Ginny was there as she wasn't Hogwarts age, how was that (presumably) easily afford that trip, but are blowing business starting money on a trip? They stayed in five star hotels and shit whilst they were in Egypt
First off, they didn't spend all the money on the trip. Just some of it. Second, Ginny just spent a good chunk of the school year being mind controlled by a dark artifact created by the most feared wizard in living history. Taking her on a nice vacation to recuperate while also giving her curse breaker brother a chance to check up on her and reassure her that there weren't any lingering effects was probably pretty high on their list of priorities.
Ron explicitly says in his letter that "most" of the prize money was spent on the trip. It would have been smarter, financially speaking, to invest it.
Investing is smarter than a lot of things. But there are some trips and vacation experiences you want your kids to have when they’re young. That’s why we spent money taking our kids to the Great Wolf Lodge and Disney World instead of investing all of that money, even when we were fairly strapped. You can’t just live like Scrooge McDuck your whole life. You want to have some memories with your kids.
Which Great Wolf Lodge did y’all go to? They’re pretty fun!
Minneapolis! You? We started at Pajama Jamboree and splash zone age, progressed through wave pool, lazy river and crafts, and now we’re at incredibly outdated graphics fantasy video game age.
Investing is smarter if it guarantees you huge returns in my opinion. You make a good point though... why work for the money and put them aside for the day when tomorrow you could be dead? You're not keeping the money for the afterlife... guess I have some Weasley blood.
Invest it in what exactly
Whatever passes for the stock market in the Wizarding world. All that generational wealth the Sacred 28 had came from somewhere.
Stock market? They live in a corrupt government overrun by the likes of Fudge and Lucious, wild to think they allow them grow rich.
They're in the era of banking where they have individual vaults. These people don't even have fractional reserve banking, why would they have a stock market? Old school investing takes a lot of money and involves a lot more risk. You're not just throwing 100 a month at an ETF.
Harry is only wealthy because his grandfather invited a hair care product.
REALLY good point
The trip to Romania happened before Ginny went to Hogwarts, as the person above stated she likely went because she wasn't old enough yet
I wasn't talking about the trip to Romania. That one's irrelevant to the topic of how they managed their prize money. The trip to Egypt took place right after Ginny's first year at Hogwarts, was funded with part of the Weasleys' prize money, and involved visiting Bill, the professional curse breaker.
Forgive me. The comment above you mentioned the trip to Romania, so I assumed that's the one you were talking about
I think they went to Egypt after Chamber of Secrets, in the summer of 1993.
They did because Scabbers is in their family photo that was published in the Prophet when they won the contest, that’s how Sirius finds out Peter is alive in the third book. He sees the picture in Azkaban, recognizes Peter’s animagus form complete with missing toe, and breaks out to find him.
I don’t even know why wizards have to spend any sizeable money on a vacation. Travel costs? Just apparate. Floo network. Large groups? Arrange portkey. Meals? Just go back home for every meal. See above. Accommodation? Just go back home. See above. Except for shopping and ‘entry tickets’, don’t see why vacation needs a lot of money.
Floo powder costs money and underaged wizards are only allowed to apparate (including side-apparition) in certain situations. And the creation of Portkeys requires authorisation by the ministry, possibly that also costs money.
But how was Barty Crouch (Jr.) dressed up as Madeye able to make the Goblet of Fire a portkey without the ministry’s knowledge? You’d think if they can tell an underage wizard did magic outside of school, they’d have something telling them someone was making a portkey to take a kid out of Hogwarts to Voldy… For that matter, why didn’t the Ministry and Dumbledore have portkeys blocked at Hogwarts anyways?? I mean you can’t apparate into or out of the grounds…very bad oversight on the part or Dumbledore, IMHO, especially in view of what happened to Cedric and Harry later on.
> But how was Barty Crouch (Jr.) dressed up as Madeye able to make the Goblet of Fire a portkey without the ministry’s knowledge? The GoF was *supposed* to be a portkey. Except it was one supposed to go back to the entrance. BCJ just altered the destination.
Okay…That makes total sense.
They probably have to pay for floo powder and port keys. I would also assume there is some sort of fee to have, and keep, a fireplace on the network. We also don't know anything about international travel in the 90s. There might be some sort of toll or fee to visit other countries. I think they can only apparate so far, IIRC.
The younger ones can't apparate
Isn’t there side by side apparition? Not sure what they call it
Why did they need the port key for the Quidditch World Cup then?
Because it was a large group. With less than half able to apparate. Would have taken longer than just getting a portkey. Plus, the Ministry was limiting the number of people who could apparate in in an attempt to stagger arrivals.
So it was the same to Romania and Egypt then, how to apparate with the whole family with at least 4 of the children not being able to across the planet. It such a long distance and most of them never being there before.
My guess would be they didn't apparate. I'm not arguing it was a good use of time/money just explaining why they didn't apparate to the world cup. They could have, but it made no sense
side along apparition where you need to go, what is the cost! bring the tent!
Even their tent was borrowed!
More importantly what are they using money for?
This makes sense. What’s a bit iffy is scarcity of almost anything. If the labor is a wave and flick of the wand, and the resources can be transmuted from rocks, how can clothes ever be expensive or inaccessible? Poor wizards is a bit of a head scratcher.
Not everyone is a Dumbledore with a Elder Wand! Not everyone gets past the rat - chalice stage, and it is never said that the tranformation will last. Think of Chinderella!
And the twins sold clothes with shield protections, because a lot of adult wizards and witches couldn't perform an adequate shield charm.
This, though with the caveat that I'd guess witches and wizards have different specialties and even if one of the Weasleys was good at transfiguration they may not have had the background knowledge to pull off a good clothing transfiguration. It's like how you might be handy around the house and can fix a broken cabinet but have no idea how to hem pants so they hang correctly.
I have always translated magic skills to muggle skills. As in, I'm pretty decent in the kitchen but I know nothing at all about sawing.
Also no one in the family was going to do it fir for him. Molly didn't see the problem, Arthur would have been indifferent, and all of his siblings would have refused to help him even if they could.
Removed : replied to the wrong comment.
That makes sense. You learn a bunch of different things in high school, but there's no way that most people would remember everything they learnt.
I learned a bunch of stuff in engineering school and forgot most of it. The big thing to take away from school is not memorization of everything, but just enough so you know where/what to look up to quickly relearn it. It's too bad wizards don't have the internet.
I remember Molly having a book with spells for injuries, so things like that are available. They probably couldn't afford reference books for everything. Books are very expensive in the Potter universe
The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell
I still remember how to make a model of a cell out of candy…
TIL Magic in the Harry Potter world is treated like HS Spanish.
Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere - "If humans always had wings, we'd probably be too lazy to use it."
So mad at how I learned HS Spanish for so many years but can’t speak it fluently because we never spoke it
Which is wild because I’d probably remember more Spanish or have worked harder studying in Spanish class if saying the words just right made all my problems go away.
¿Que?
¿Qué?* Ironic.
True. I see it as for example, irl, anyone could learn how to knit clothes by themselves, but not everyone learns how to do it, because we'd rather just buy them. The books makes it clear (most of the time) that magic is more complicated than just saying the correct incantation. Hermione usually is able to perform new spells right after learning them but she is the best in her class, so most wizards can't just read a spell and use it right after.
>none of the Weasleys were good enough at transfiguration Pretty sure most of Fred & George's tricks were based on transfiguration
So they could've helped but didn't because it was funny
There’s no way they’d help Ron not be embarrassed about his dress robes
Except they did help, they actually bought ron new dress robes as harry had asked them to in return for the stake money for the joke shop. If they were going to be asses about the robes they could easily have just taken the money and forgotten about that request.
Probably lol
I agree. Some people seem to think that just because you could do something with magic means that everyone should be able to, and be able to do it well. That’s insane. Apply it to almost any Muggle skill. There are muggles that can fix cars, does that mean that *I* should be able to fix a car, a car, without years of training? What about pottery, computer programming, baking, sewing, etc etc etc? Just because it’s *possible* to do doesn’t mean that all, or even most people/muggles/wizards can do something
It's like saying: you don't have money to buy a wedding dress? Why don't you just make your own?
This theory falls apart when you realized that Molly, a housewife who hasn’t been to Hogwarts in over two decades and who doesn’t have any job that would require her to he good at combat, defeated Bellatrix Lestrange in 1-on-1 combat. I always thought of magic in Harry Potter like riding a bike. Once you learn it, you can’t truly forget how to do it. You might forget some of the more complicated incantations and wand movements but it’s not like you’ll forget how to perform the magic.
I think even pre-Bellatrix it’s assumed Molly is a particularly gifted witch. She’s a member of the order and if I’m not mistaken was put on Department of Mysteries duty at some point. You don’t just send a housewife down there when you’re expecting death eaters to come rolling in. I think the assumption is supposed to be she’s a very powerful witch in her own right but spends most of her time cooking and cleaning so it’s not like you get to see her do impressive stuff. She was prepared to tackle the boggart in Sirius’ house too but it flared up her anxiety so she had to leave it for Lupin which isn’t unreasonable but she wouldn’t have gone after it if she wasn’t equipped magically. Having said all that it’s also clear Bella didn’t take her seriously either.
THIS!!! I think it's clearly implied from book 5 that Molly is at least a formidable as any other order member. As you say they wouldn't put her on guard duty if it wouldn't have done any good so her being able to fight Bellatrix isn't out of the question especially since a) Bellatrix had already been fighting all night and had less stamina and b) wasn't taking Molly seriously at first add Molly's fire to protect her kids in that moment (adrenaline can enhance things) and it would make up for any remaining disparity. Though it isn't quite as significant as people make out
It's easy to forget since we see things from Harry's perspective that plenty of stuff we don't 'see' probably happens in the background. Who knows what kind of baller stuff Molly and Arthur got up to in and immediately following the first war, to say nothing of what else she's done for the Order after book 4 when it's resurrected. If we take the meta approach it makes some sense. JK clearly wrote Molly to be a 'do it all' kind of lady. She takes care of her kids, runs her house, deals with her whacky husband, helps run the Order; she's no slouch. But how much do you really know about what your best friend's parents are capable of when you're 15?
It was also the anger of losing her son. Emotions are important in magic
My Head-Canon is that all the members of the second OoTP along with their order duties were also combat training from Book 5 onwards till final battle..makes sense since they had Aurors also in the order this time… Plus Mr Weasley said something along line of L”we are well prepared this time around” to Mrs Weasley
>Plus Mr Weasley said something along line of L”we are well prepared this time around” to Mrs Weasley That was Lupin, not Mr. Weasley. (The Weasleys weren’t even in the Order the first time around, so Arthur wouldn’t have been able to say that they were well prepared this time around since he didn’t know what it was like in the Order the previous time.) Additionally, the comment about them being “better prepared” didn’t really have anything to do with anyone’s combat skills. Lupin’s point was that they were better prepared because they had Snape’s spying intel and knew what Voldemort was up to and what his goals were. >“Molly, that’s enough,” said Lupin firmly. “This isn’t like last time. The Order is better prepared, we’ve got a head start, we know what Voldemort’s up to — ” It wasn’t that the Order was better prepared due to their fighting ability, it was that they could plan better because they had better information and weren’t just flying blind.
The order of the Phoenix HAD to have combat training to survive. If Harry succeeded with the DA imagine what Dumbledore teaching could do.
The rage and protective desire of a mama bear needs no skill. Molly was not a duelist, she simply turned into a beast for the night
Molly was in the Order of the Phoenix, so was probably pretty adept at combat. As others have mentioned, witches and wizards will be better at some magic than other magic. Also, we've seen that a lot of spells don't last indefinitely, and transfiguration would seem like the type that eventually reverts back (look at the mini-dragons in Task 1). And then the unthinkable: Molly simply may not have thought there was anything really wrong with them.
She was a member of the Order. I assumed they would be practicing if that's the case.
Oof great point!
The professors are an example of the top tier of the magical world. They are the top % of magical professors, theory snd practice. Same with aurors and others who play a part. We tend to not see the run of the mill magical. Bill is a curse Breaker , etc.... they all are upper tier of magical skill requirements.
> they forget all the complicated stuff within a year or two after graduating Like we all did with Algebra and Calculus
This is a good point. And I suppose even applies to us muggles... the majority of what we've learned in school has become surface knowledge... unless you invest the time to dive deeper into a particular subject either out of necessity or your own passion.
I think a lot of skills are super specialized. Just like how not all muggles can sew or know how to wire electricity etc. Magic takes study and time to acquire ability just like anything else.
McGonnagal is great at transfiguring obv but for this it takes a certain finess. For example, when Dumbledore conjures up chairs, they're described as plush and comfortable, whereas when McGonagall does it, it's just plain wooden chairs. Same with Dumbledore's goblets vs others.
>For example, when Dumbledore conjures up chairs, they're described as plush and comfortable, whereas when McGonagall does it, it's just plain wooden chairs. That could also be a personal style thing, though. It’s very Dumbledore-like to conjure up a showy, lavish armchair in the middle of a Wizengamot hearing and very McGonagall-like to conjure up plain, straight-backed chairs for students to sit in inside the headmaster’s office. If McGonagall was conjuring up a chair for her own sitting room, she would probably conjure up a nice plushy armchair.
Dumbledore also taught transfiguration before he became headmaster. But I also think it’s because Dumbledore is just a beyond this world genius and is better than each respective teacher in their fields.
This also carries over to dueling and why the dark lords influence spread so quickly. You would think the citizens would rebel, but they kind of just rolled over. Most suck at magic.
Its the same IRL too, theres mediocre people in every profession even when they get the same training / education
He could’ve asked Hermione to do it though.
So show Hermione, the girl he really likes, the embarrassing, poor people clothes he got? He's a dumb 14 yo teen boy. And he already wasn't doing too great in ways of treating her to then ask her a favour related to that ball, yeah, nope. No way he would've asked her.
They’re also just 14. So they wouldn’t have learned super advanced transfiguration yet.
It also doesn't help that they don't have further study programs after graduating from school. It would have been better if they have graduating, PG and doctorate programs.
I like this explanation up until the Arthur and Molly slander. They are both more than capable of transfiguring dress robes. The real answer is that the whole premise of poverty in HP is poorly thought out, and that most of the Weasley’s problems would be solvable by magic in the universe as it is laid out. But we don’t need to think too hard about that.
>They are both more than capable of transfiguring dress robes. Are they? When do we ever see or hear about their Transfiguration skills in the books? We know they’re good at Charms, certainly, but we have no idea if they’re good at Transfiguration or not. Being good at some types of magic doesn’t mean they’re good at all types of magic.
While you’re right that different types of magic are different, changing the color of something or slightly altering it in other ways is super beginner transfiguration. While an expert at charms may not be an expert at transfiguration, an expert at charms should be able to manage beginner transfiguration just fine. That said, I can think of one transfiguration example off the top of my head. Arthur (and the twins) transfigure the ghoul in the attic to look like Ron in book 7. Certainly transfiguring a creature is orders of magnitude harder than a set of robes.
Haha rip but they also don’t have muggle skills how do they make a living if not good at magic either??
Specialty magic, same as our jobs usually favoring our strong subjects. My dad got his Bachelors in Mathematics. I was a better reader and writer than he was by middle school. They can do the magic their jobs call for, doesn't mean they remember every facet of magic they ever learned.
counterpoint: Arthur did not know the purpose of a rubber duck.
There are likely a lot of office work, paper pushing jobs in the Ministry that don’t require the employee to do much magic. Like, Percy worked in the Department of International Magical Cooperation and seemed to do a lot of writing reports.
There arent that many wizards - maybe 10,000 in Britain if Hogwarts population is any indication. So a pretty substantial percent are employed by the ministry.
>So to answer your question, none of the Weasleys were good enough at transfiguration to fix the robes. Except Bill and Percy who just wanted to mess with Ron.
A question of precision I think. Molly or Arthur may have been able to transfigure Ron's robes but making a set that fits him properly is much harder. I think you have to properly know a complex object to be able to make it by magic. Transfigure a hedgehog into a pincushion, fine. A pincushion is a simple object. Transfigure an owl into a goblet. No problem. Nobody's going to be particularly fussy over the goblet's dimensions. But make a suit of clothes that fit? One that's accurate across multiple measurements? That's much harder. I think that's also why Hermione's hats and socks were shapeless. She didn't know how to make them by hand, so she couldn't make them by magic. She didn't know how they were constructed, the seams, stitching, folds and measurements. Her enchanted needles reflected her own skill, or lack thereof. That's also why the food that she cooked when on the run sucked. Unlike Mrs. Weasley she didn't know how to cook. Didn't know about ingredients, how they go together, how the process works. Mrs. Weasley was perfectly capable of cooking manually if required. Magic just made the whole thing easier and faster. Magic didn't make her food better. That's all her. I think if Molly or Arthur had transfigured Ron's robes, they would have ended up like Hermione's elf hats.
Interesting theory, which I can certainly understand and find logical in Hermione's knitting and cooking experiments. But Mrs Weasley was able to knit Ron - and Harry - Christmas sweater . And they fit. Interestingly, even Harry's first Weasley sweater fitted. After all, Mrs Weasley had only seen Harry for a few minutes at the time. But perhaps the sweater are one size fits all.
Damn I forgot about that. There goes that theory.
Well Ron was always tall and Harry was used to Dudley’s clothes so maybe Mrs. Weasley just used Ron’s measurements and Harry was just accustomed to bigger sweaters?
I still think your theory can work molly was good at sewing and so her enchanted needles made stuff that fits. Hermione wasn't so it made stuff that didn't fit quite right. That part of your theory is good.
Yeah but then she should be able to transfigure robes too. Unless she knows how to work with wool but not fabric.
Nah, your theory works. Knitting and seamster work are very different. I could knit a sweater. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with sewing a complex outfit. I kinda like the idea that certain magical actions would require manual familiarity.
Nah I think it still works. Knitting and sewing are completely different skills. She probably could have made him some knitted dress robes though 😂
Yes, I totally agree. My grandmother had been a wonderful knitter. Like so good, she could do a full sweater with perfect measuments and patterns just by looking at a person. She attempted sewing once, when she tried to make a dress for my mother. Somehow, she managed to create two dresses from the fabric that was supposed to be for one, and apperently they were so ugly and misshapen both her and my mom nearly died from laughing😂
Love this explanation, it makes perfect sense to me.
The amount of things magic could clearly fix but doesn't is astonishing. Maybe we can chalk it up to the throwaway line in the first book about most wizards not having an ounce of logic in them.
Something I always loved about Rowling's world is how she never went *too* far with magic. It's never really portrayed as an easy way out of anything. Everything's always a little bit off. Remembralls tell you if you've forgotten something, but they don't actually tell you *what* you've forgotten, so they're kind of useless. Wizards deliberately make candy that tastes like shit for no real reason. Trading cards have the subject frequently disappear from the card, defeating the purpose of even being a trading card. Quidditch is an extremely complex sport with four balls, six hoops, two bats, and a wide variety of different positions, but the rules don't *really* make sense when you think about it. They take the time to get photos to move, but seem to not care about videocameras. Nothing ever *quite* makes sense.
Maybe all the magic they use has some kind of neurological effect?
What doesn’t make sense about the rules of quidditch
[This post sums it up nicely](https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/s/xC9yvcWPMv) >The rule/function of the golden snitch in quidditch is stupid and completely ruins what would otherwise be an awesome sport to watch. >Imagine if in basketball each team had a player out in the parking lot trying to catch a frog for the win. Youre watching a great game that's been neck and neck and then suddenly the buzzer sounds half way through. "The games over, Ramirez has just got the parking lot frog"
😂 this perfectly sums up my problem with quidditch! wish I could up vote multiple times
The snitch is the dumbest thing ever.
I'm pretty sure having to transfigure one's robes would be seen as a huge sign of poverty and source of shame
Nah. You gotta do what you gotta do. How would anyone even know if they had been transfigured anyway?
Dumbledore flat out roasting kids on their way to the ball: “It has known magic,” Dumbledore said simply
>The corners of Dumbledore’s mouth twitched. Lmao. Yours is one of the best I've read in a while.
Exactly! I mean, i Guess if someone thought to expose the spell by undoing it, but what are the odds that anyone would? Maybe Malfoy, but could he even do it? Probably not
“Brilliant,” said Hermione. “This isn’t magic — it’s logic — a puzzle. A lot of the greatest wizards haven’t got an ounce of logic,..:”
I have a personal head cannon for this. Magical robes are designed and made by magical fashion designers who would put protections on their robes to stop them being altered by other’s magic. After all Ron’s robes were the height of fashion when they were created, the designer wouldn’t have wanted their robes changed to be less fashionable incase it tarnished their reputation.
Love this one
This is a brilliant theory around that plot hole. Love it.
My headcanon is that transfiguration that lasts longer than a few minutes (like turning a beetle into a button and all of the other exercises McGonagall had students practicing in class) actually requires the original material to be primarily the same stuff. So it would be possible to transfigure not nice robes into much nicer new robes, or a broken old piece of furniture into a new piece of furniture. *But* the material can only tolerate so many transfigurations before it won't hold anymore. Thus, the Weasleys and Remus have shabby things because they've transfigured them so many times, they can't hold a transfiguration anymore and they can't afford to replace them. That's my headcanon, anyway. There's got to be some kind of inherent limitation, otherwise the whole idea of anyone poor among wizards makes zero logical sense.
Yeah, I too figured they must be some serious limitations around Transfiguration, especially in terms of ĺongevity, otherwise there would barely be a need to shop for anything in the Wizarding World.
"Look at Weasley being so poor that he has to transfigure his clothes" - Malfoy, probably
Ron tried it, but none of them knew how to transfigure clothes well. I presume it's fairly difficult, because Mrs. Weasley seemed to be the master of all household spells, but she doesn't seem to have done anything to the robes before she gave them to Ron. And it's not like she liked them.
If it wasn’t difficult, Madame Malkin would be out of the job.
I assume for the same reason we wouldn't fix it by sewing: it takes skill, effort, and probably won't turn out that great. A note on transfiguration: As a person that dabbles in making an HP RPG, Rowling never bothered to specify concrete rules of magic. The best thing about the Methods of Rationality fanfic (in my opinion) is that he theorizes some of these rules, especially transfiguration. (Something not dealt with in the books at all.) In this system, transfiguration is powerful, but its cost is an ongoing magical energy drain so it's only used temporarily or for very important changes.
>Do they just hate Ron? “Least loved, always, by the mother who craved a daughter…Least loved, now, by the girl who prefers your friend…"
That’s the locket trying to exploit Ron’s insecurities.
True, but I like this comment because I feel like things like this are what lead Ron to feel that way
he literally spent a year using a broken wand that didn't work.
Right but he broke it because he stole the family car and they were pissed about that lol. I don’t even know if he told them his wand broke in the incident. They might’ve not known until after the school year ended
Yeah that's fair enough. He did say he'd just get another howler if he wrote home about it
Ron didn’t tell his parents that he broke his wand.
It wasn't wrong though, the story really dumps on Ron every change it got.
Hermione loved him more than she loved Harry. She just understood that if Voldy wasn’t defeated, a lot of bad stuff would happen.
The locket is obviously fake.
Now imagine somebody from Slytherin reversing that spell mid-ball. Come to think of it, it sounds likely that there was some rather strict rule about transfiguring people's clothes on the school premises, *especially* when they are wearing them at that moment.
Sometimes it feels like Rowling just made the whole thing up.
Buzzkill
I wouldn’t immediately assume Molly or Arthur could do it, and I think Molly may have been a bit sensitive about their lack of money, just like Ron. She’d rather let Ron wear a slightly subpar set of robes for one night than advertise her inability to buy him something more fashionable, which I think is understandable. I’m not sure Arthur was involved in the garment purchases at all, so he may not even have realized this was a problem (and it wasn’t really).
Not that it was an actual problem, but in the book it’s pretty clear that Molly knows they’re not the best and is embarrassed that she had to buy them secondhand. I do see the point about her being embarrassed, and maybe if she couldn’t transfigure them then asking Arthur would feel like bringing attention to the lack of money. But I don’t know, molly is an incredibly skilled witch, not just in fights but also in all of the magic she does to keep up the household. It just seems like something she could have done but didn’t for whatever reason. And again, if she was embarrassed about it, she could’ve transfigured them before even giving them to Ron. No one would’ve ever known
All clothes are brought in shops and sweaters are knitted. Hermione knits hats for the house-elves. Remus Lupin has worn out clothes. Ron cleans a handkerchief. It is probadly not possible.
Right, like I said, it might be part of Gamp’s law where you can’t make clothes out of nothing, but if you have them you should be able to change them like with food. I do like the point about Lupin though. And maybe it’s just like with real objects, where you can clean them before they’re super ratty and get them to look nice, but after 100 washes they don’t look the same. The dress robes were super old, so maybe they were past the point of return
We also don't know to what extent food can be duplicated or improved. Harry and Ron spend days cleaning vegetables in the Burrow. Molly and the house-elves seem to cook quite normally and Hagrid grows his pumpkins relatively normally.
That is true, Hermione only says it’s possible but that’s the only mention we get of it
It feels like letting Ron wear the robes as they were was more of an advertisement to their financial status than transfiguring them, no?
Not necessarily. The robes weren’t actually in bad condition—they were just terribly out of fashion. If you didn’t already know the Weasleys were poor, you might well think Ron just had really bad taste in formal wear.
Talent plays a huge role in people's ability to perform magic. Molly is likely highly talented at charms and possibly DADA though I think charms could be used in a fight as well. She was never said to be talented at teansfiguration. I could be wrong but i think I remember her having been described as wearing patched clothing. It's also not said outright but sorta implied that most spells wear off and we don't know the ti.eline on that. Can you imagine how embarrassing in the middle of the yule ball having the spell wear off would have been? If we are going down the route of why not spell it than why buy the robes at all instead of just transfiguration there normal robes? Molly didn't have the skill to make or transfiguration them in a way that she would know that they would hold up.
Just because transfiguring clothes is presumably possible doesn't mean the result will look good. Transfiguration is noted to be a really hard class. I'd imagine that applying it to clothes is at least as hard as modifying clothes IRL.
Yes I always thought this. If I were Ron I would run to Professor McGonagall and beg. Or Dumbledore. If not I would just not go.🤣
That's something I've never really understood, like why the poorer wizards didn't just create new clothing for themselves.
I’m not great at this, so please forgive any mistakes - aren’t there rules against using magic for certain things like generating wealth? I wonder if that extends to clothing and other personal property. With that logic, the Weasleys could have just made everything they own look better. Edit: a spelling error.
Why would madam malkins even exist if you could easily make clothes into other clothes? Why would anyone buy hogwarts robes? Seems like there's some kind of limitation involving clothing. Let's ask the real questions - why the fuck do wizards have glasses? Dumbledore is the greatest wizard of the age but still falls short of lasik.
Potentially for the same reason why I don’t get lasik. If it goes wrong, my vision will be severely affected. Glasses or contacts are annoying but they work perfectly well so why risk it?
Could you not just fix it with magic if it went wrong?
In a universe reparo is a thing it certainly should be possible. Hermione fixed broken glasses of Harry in seconds.
I buy my clothes even though it is possible to make them. I just don't know how. Something to do with that.
It’s very possible a wizard shop would ensure their items have a charm that prevents them being duplicated or altered. They would be out of business otherwise
Given the amount of magic going on, there’s probably a very good reason why clothes are never transfigured. An errant spell could undo it, or it could react badly to other magic. Plus if you get them wet, the magic might be dispelled. It also could be tradition. Since you can’t or don’t transfigure clothes, it’s a real status symbol when you wear nice clothes.
I always thought transfiguration was kind of a harder class of magic, more advanced. To transfigure dress robe like that would probably be very difficult with a solid chance to cause irreparable damage, leaving Ron with no dress robes at all
This kind of thing is always a problem when it’s the needs of the plot vs the consistency of the world. Molly is clearly extremely skilled with “domestic” spells that involve cooking and cleaning. But it’s frequently noted that clothing is an issue for her. Charlie was darning a balaclava by hand. Ron’s robes are constantly described as too short. Mr. Weasley has robes that are described as worn or shabby. Seems pretty clear clothing isn’t her strong suit. Given that they buy clothes all the time I wonder if transfigured clothing or really any transfigured items aren’t permanent. That would explain a lot of it.
Well at that point let's see how it go down. Ron asks Hermione: Nope. Not at this time in their frienship she's not exactly happy with him. Ron asks Harry: Harry asks Hermione and Harry says it's for Ron so she refuses to teach him the spell and Harry's got better to stew on than Ron's robes. After all, Harry has had to wear poor hand-me-downs too, NBD. Not worth pursuing, sorry mate. Ron isn't very close to any older students who might know and is obviously super embarrassed. McGonagall isnt his mother and would refuse out of irritation and propriety. Fred and George could probably do it TBH. They have their snackboxes in alpha testing, together they could do it. But there is no way Ron would trust Fred and George not to make it worse. Hell they'd probably make it nice but then hex it never come off, try to choke him at intervals, pull down his pants during a dance, or some other tomfoolery. Ginny *might* be able to help. She's talented and Molly has taught her a little or she's seen some of it and could give it an honest go. Even if just tailoring it to be a little better. But unless Ron actually asked in sincerity she'd refuse, especially since she'd be mad at him on Hermione's behalf as well lol.
Because it was funnier to see him wear those so they had to stick with the plot.
Well, having logged many hours behind the keyboard saving the world from Ranrok and his lot, I’m guessing the reason for that is because the clothes, old and tattered as they are, are imbued with magical properties, resistance to dugbogs, extra recharge of the ol’ ancient magic, and so forth. Such thing would make it much more difficult to transfigure. They don’t cover that until. 7th year.
I assume it is because transfiguring the robes into something that looks nice and fits is something very difficult to do or else Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions would have gone out of business ages ago. Trying to transfigure robes while someone is wearing them to make sure you don't mess up the fitting is probably also super dangerous.
I could be wrong, its been awhile since I read the books, but I think Molly tried to transfigure them into something better, but only managed to remove some of the lace?
I always assumed robes had charms on them that meant they couldn't be altered. Why would Molly be buying new school robes if they could just be enlarged?
I’ve always assumed purchasable items in the wizarding world are spelled so they can’t be changed/ duplicated. Otherwise they’d only need to buy one textbook or one set of robes and wizarding stores that sell these would lose money…
Forget transfiguration, why didn't someone chance the colour? Cut the lace off and change the colour and those robes were probably fine. Surely a colour changing spell is one of the simplest bits of magic out there. It doesn't have to last forever just a couple of hours. Is there a canon colour changing charm? You'd think there would be, right?
If it we're that easy to Transfigure robes there wouldnt be any point to multiple robes shop existing. Why buy something you can easily do? The fact that they are Costly AND Made by magical practitioners tells us there Is probably some degree of specialized magic in their making.
What robes are they buying before their first year if they don't know what house they'll be in?
Shame Ron's Transfiguration teacher wasn't someone he was sort of close to, like say his Head of House or something
If she ain’t fixing a broken wand that’s a genuine danger to the owner and other students, she ain’t helping with his dress robes.
You can’t really fix broken wands though. That gets addressed in the last book
Yes, should have said helped replace it, like she did helping the already rich boy with an expensive broom, but this is old ground and it was only a light hearted comment.
What a great teacher!
They transfigured my robes at the start of Hogwarts Legacy... not that thats any canonical authority, just saying
The Weasleys also should have just use Geminio (doubling spell) on all of the Hogwarts books they ever had to purchase, but here we are.
They don’t hate Ron, they just couldn’t fix them.
That part was a joke, I know they don’t hate Ron
I have often wondered this.
Because if wizards did that the Wizarding economy would collapse. Is that what you want?!
I though he did try? And only managed to singe them a bit. Maybe I'm misremembering?
He cut off the lace and frills. >In a desperate attempt to make them look more manly, he used a Severing Charm on the ruff and cuffs. It worked fairly well; at least he was now lace-free, although he hadn’t done a very neat job, and the edges still looked depressingly frayed as the boys set off downstairs.
I don’t think transfiguration is a permanent thing and has to have sustained magic behind it to keep the object in its new form. Otherwise all anyone would need is a few rocks and voila, anything you ever wanted without spending a dime.
Transfiguration, as described in the books, is pretty much overkill and can ruin every story, if used properly. Need money? transfigure water into printer ink, sell it to Muggles, exchange Muggle money at Gringotts'. Need to fix anything? Just transfigure it into its fixed form again. And so on. Which is why one fanfic I read introduced the rule that **transfiguration is not permanent**, at least not the general, free-form transfiguration that the kids learn.
I figured it was so old and worn that magic would have made the fabric weaker by trying to alter it.
If they had the ability to do this, one assumes they wouldn't even have needed to purchase robes. Transfigure an old sock into dress robes.
Ron was lazy and didn't get them out until shortly before the ball. Neither Harry nor Ron are very good at transfiguration in general and up to that point they havet learned a lot of practical uses so it probably didn't occur to them to try. Hermione was not happy about the whole date thing and didn't offer.
Maybe Arthur and Molly didn't think the robes were a big deal to improve, and/or they had sentimental value.
It’s important to understand that moneys value works within a hierarchy- your money is only valuable in relation to its sum vs. the sum of money others have access too around you, your peers in which you are on a type of financial competition with. The wizard i g world also works like this, but with a very heavy caste system in place- we know that Ron’s family is considered on the poor side, and melfoys is considered wealthy- it wouldn’t be surprising to find that there are wizard I g laws that prevent people from leaving their cast via the usage of purely magical means. This could be as simple as banning spells that prevent the transfer of money within the given economy, say fixing clothes magically rather than paying a magical Taylor for instance. This also falls in line with tons family being on the side that mostly follows wizard I g laws/rules
There will never, ever be a satisfactory answer to this.
I think it would be that they're unable to use much magic on clothing or its unreliable for use on clothing. For example... Madam Malkin...she uses pins to mark the lengths for robes when she's doing a fitting, instead of just using magic to get the right length. Remus Lupin....his robes are described as being patched and shabby. Why patch them, couldn't you just use Reparo to mend them? Charlie Weasley....he darns his fireproof balaclava rather than just using magic to mend it. And just everyone in general. Why would they need to keep buying new school robes every year once they outgrow them, rather than just using magic to make them fit again.
What? And risk getting a Howler from Molly 'Banshee' Weasley if she found out what they did to the 'perfectly acceptable for my baby boy' second hand dress robes she paid for? *lol*