I have to start off this Minute with telling you that this is one of my favorite chapters of the series. We are getting a close up look at my favorite wizarding family: the Weasleys. I love their overflowing, disorganized, warm and crowded home, and their family dynamic.
But, there are two members of the Weasley family that I’d like to focus on for this Minute: the twins.
While taking notes for this chapter Fred and George just kept standing out to me. First of all, I thought it was nice of them to help rescue their little brother’s best friend. Yes, it gave them the opportunity to fly an illegal flying car across the country and help out one of the most famous wizards in their community, but they still agreed to help Ron out. In the last book we mostly see them teasing Ron, so I thought it was nice that we were shown in this early part of the series that they weren’t just annoying older brothers all of the time, that they could be counted on in times of need.
Ron’s comment when Harry questions their ability to break him free of the Dursley’s prison: “You forget who I’ve got with me”, implies that Ron thought they were vital to the rescue effort. He chose to go to the twins, not anybody else in his family. We know Percy, the prefect, would not have been willing to break any rules, he’s too busy at the moment writing love letters anyways. I wonder if Bill and Charlie were around if they would have been willing to go along with this plan? Ron mentions in Deathly Hallows that Bill has always been decent to him, perhaps he would have helped, but not in such an illegal way. We know from book 1 that Charlie is willing to do illegal things to help out Ron, he probably would have been on board. I think Ginny from later in the series would have helped as well, but eleven-year-old Ginny is too timid at this point.
The other thing that I started to wonder about Fred and George is how they learned their ‘Muggle tricks’…maybe they decided to take Muggle Studies last year (their third year) and there was a section about all of the strange ways Muggles accomplish things without magic, like picking locks instead of using the spell Alohomora. The question from there would be if their Muggle Studies textbook went into detail about techniques for picking locks, or if the idea just stuck with them and they eventually found a Muggle during the summer that was able to teach them the skill. I can also see the twins figuring it out themselves, they are very clever after all.
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Commentary
Notes
In the Harry Potter Lexicon Minute podcast you’ll hear the voices of our editors sharing some of the many little things which delight us about the Wizarding World. In each podcast, just a couple of minutes in length, we’ll talk about anything from cool trivia and interesting canon passages to the latest Wizarding World news. We hope you’ll join us! And we’d love to hear from you as well. Feel free to use the comment section on the blogpost for each podcast to post your thoughts.
Special thanks go to Felicia Cano who gave us permission to use her amazing artwork of Hermione reading a book for the logo, which was created by Kim B.