Appliances

[circlemidnight]

I remember reading somewhere (Not sure where) that a refrigerator would have been replaced with a 'cooling charm pantry' or something like that. So what appliances (can be anything from toilets, fridges, toasters, bathtubs, whatever s in a house, work, common things like that.) could be adapted magically?

[OliveOil_Med]

One would think so. Remember, the Chamber of Secrets was built with an entrance to the girls' bathroom centuries before Muggles had running water or indoor plumbing. This could be taken as a plothole, but it could also be offered as proof of wizards having a history of using 'magically charmed appliances'.

Who knows, maybe some Muggle advocate slipped an inventor the plans for a working toilet, and that is how we came to have them.

[ohviolet]

I don't know why, but my first reaction is to say that when Harry was at the Burrow he remembers Molly cooking on the stove. I'm not sure of the exact wording, but I'm pretty certain that he doesn't note anything different or magical about it. And also that the dishes were washing themselves in the sink, which appeared to him as a pretty normal sink.
So kitchen-wise, I can only think of what you said about the fridge. And maybe a certain something to keep certain foods fresher for longer, like instead of having to buy a loaf of bread every couple of days (something I hate!), it would last for a while - but that could be associated with the pantry as well.
Maybe washing machines and tumbledryer's could be combined, pop it in for five minutes and it's done. But I do remember someone ironing at somepoint do I'm not sure about that part.

For workplaces they could have something to make copying documents easier etc. A kind of paper, a pile of it, write on the top sheet and it would go right through to the bottom (maybe thousandth) sheet of paper, instead of a big bulky object. And maybe Self-Sorting Filing Cabinets! Maybe something that sorts mail - incoming, outgoing etc. Ha I don't know, I'm just talking rubbish now.

[OliveOil_Med]

Now we are talking about kitchens, I see.

Well, stoves, in modern wizard times, could be like those old black stoves that have just been magically adapted to work by means of magic (in the case of the stove, a heating charm).

We already know there are charms for washing dishes, which takes care of the diswasher.

Something else I always wonder is what wizards do in terms of light. I would think just having candels everywhere could be seens as being very dangerous, and electricity is certainly a step up from fire. I wouldn't think wizards would make fun of it is they themselves were still using something so dangerous and inferior.

In one of my stories, I have magically-charmed fireflies used in lanterns, but I feel like this would really only be used in places that fireflies were native to. What else could be used as a means of giving light besides fire and the singular Lumos charm.

[ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor]

I would think that, after a few house fire disasters, that wizard candles have some sort of charm or magic to them that keeps them from burning anything but themselves (including people, which makes them safe around children). While I don't have an answer as to what charm or spell would do that, I'm sure something plausible could be concocted by the author.

Personally, I think that most wizards, especially the ones that were raised around magic and not Muggles, would use old fashioned methods of doing things, only assisted by magic. For example, for laundry, Molly might have a giant tub with a paddle resembling a boat oar (it has a proper name, which I don't know), which is charmed to swish around the tub like an agitator in a normal washer. It was how it was done for large amounts of laundry (could you imagine scrubbing a sheet on a washboard...shudder), so it's not entirely impossible that it's how wizards do it.

Wizards might use things that look like refrigerators, or at least have separate sections for frozen and chilled foods. They would most likely work on magic and not electicity, except if a wizard was living in a Muggle tenement. It would look rather odd for he/she to be the only one without an electric bill.

[sorrow_of_severus]

originally posted by OliveOild_Med
Remember, the Chamber of Secrets was built with an entrance to the girls' bathroom centuries before Muggles had running water or indoor plumbing. This could be taken as a plothole, but it could also be offered as proof of wizards having a history of using 'magically charmed appliances'.

The plumbing in CoS has always struck me as a plothole. The best explanation I can offer is that perhaps the toilet was actually invented by a witch or wizard, and then made its way into the Muggle world centuries later. Of course, if it were invented by somebody magical, it seems strange that it wouldn't use magic. Basically, what it boils down to is a plot hole. However, since it's canon, we fanfic writers have to accept it.

What drives me more crazy are HP fanfics that have characters watching TV, using the microwave, chatting on their cell phones, etc. drive me crazy! As Hermione explains in GoF, electricity goes haywire around magic.

Of course, some bright young witch or wizard, probably Muggle-born or at least half-blooded, could probably figure out how to make each of these devices work on magic. I agree with Molly that the magical community has a history of modifying Muggle devices to meet their own needs. One example of this is photography, where wizards develop their picture in a magical way so they move.

However, the modification of more modern Muggle electronics hadn't happened yet during Trio Era. If you do want to have any of these devices in your stories, the story should be at least Post-Hogwarts, preferably next-gen. To make nit-picky readers like me satisfied, you should probably have a sentence like

Thank Merlin Andrew Winkmeyer had invented a magical cell phone in 2007, Rose thought. She didn't know what she'd do without hers!

originally posted by OliveOil_Med
Something else I always wonder is what wizards do in terms of light. I would think just having candels everywhere could be seens as being very dangerous, and electricity is certainly a step up from fire. I wouldn't think wizards would make fun of it is they themselves were still using something so dangerous and inferior.

In PS/SS, Hermione carries around a little chrmed light in a jar. Perhaps wizards have charmed balls of light contained light bulbs or something similar in their homes.

[ohviolet]

In PS/SS, Hermione carries around a little chrmed light in a jar. Perhaps wizards have charmed balls of light contained light bulbs or something similar in their homes.

This is what I would think, maybe they have that charmed fire in lanterns etc. Or maybe they just use normal old-fashioned gas lanterns, although that's quite boring.

[psijupiter]

I agree with Jess that most wizards and witches seem to use old-fashioned techniques that are made easier by magic. I think there is plenty of evidence in the books for that, the Chamber of Secrets aside! Before fridges people kept food cool and fresh in a number of ways:

1. have an ice room, normally a seperate building from the house, either filled with ice and snow, or placed near lakes or streams, especially where there was run-off from mountains. The large quantities of ice would help to keep it from melting too quickly. Normally only the more wealthy would have these, but some wizards with large estates may have ice rooms, perhaps with the additional of chilling spells.

2. a seperate room in the house, the larder, away from heat sources. Usually it would have some sort of stone slab that would hold the cold in.

3. the zeer pot, which is basically one pot inside another and the gap filled with cold water, so that the water evaporation takes away the heat, keeping the inside pot cold. While the zeer pot is a modern invention, I'm sure I have read that it is based on an old idea. Simply wrapping something in a cool damp cloth will have a similliar effect.

4. keeping stuff outside! In the UK of course, even in the summer it never gets massively warm overnight, especially in the more northern areas.

Basically add a chilling spell to any of these techniques and you could make it work for a wizarding family. Alternatively perhaps witches and wizards don't think about having a cold room, and simply apply chilling/preservation charms to individual food stuffs or containers. Milk bottles for example, could be charmed to stay cold, as could butter dishes, etc... when you boil it down, there isn't an awful lot of stuff that does need to be kept in a fridge or freezer.


EDIT:

The plumbing in CoS has always struck me as a plothole. The best explanation I can offer is that perhaps the toilet was actually invented by a witch or wizard, and then made its way into the Muggle world centuries later. Of course, if it were invented by somebody magical, it seems strange that it wouldn't use magic. Basically, what it boils down to is a plot hole. However, since it's canon, we fanfic writers have to accept it.

The Romans did have plumbing, so it is possible that the wizarding world held onto some magical version of it. The girl's bathroom that hides the opening could have originally been a much simpler bathroom - just holes in the ground that emptied into the large tunnels Harry and Ron go through to get to the Chamber. Then, as time went on, the more modern fixtures and fittings have been added.

If that is the case the snake symbol that acted as the guardian to the opening would perhaps have originally been carved on something else, the wall probably, and part of it's magic was that it jumped onto whatever was in the right place, ending up on the sink. It doesn't quite explain why the sink folds out to allow entrance - in the movie that was quite extensive, but I can't quite remember what it is like in the books - but Harry Potter has a neat plot-hole filling technique of 'well, it's magic!'

Alternatively, perhaps the Gaunt family knew about the opening and were responsible for updating and modifying the entrance, to make sure it was ready for when Slytherin's heir reopened it. If that knowledge was lost by Tom Riddle's time, it might leave enough room in the timeline for either Marvelo or Morfin to have adapted the modern toilets and sinks that Tom Riddle uses when he attends the school.

And if you go down this route, then there is no reason that it ever has to have been a bathroomto begin with - perhaps the room was originally part of Salazar Slytherin's original chambers, which would have allowed him to create the Chamber and the entrance to it without being noticed by the others.