I don’t know how to tell you this, but once upon a time witches and wizards simply pooped their pants and vanished the evidence when they needed to use the bathroom.
J.K. Rowling confirmed as such in a piece published on Pottermore, proving once and for all that there is no detail too small or too weird not to make its way into the public sphere.
She slipped the detail mid-sentence into a piece about the Chamber of Secrets, but uh – fans noticed.
“When first created, the Chamber was accessed through a concealed trapdoor and a series of magical tunnels. However, when Hogwarts’ plumbing became more elaborate in the eighteenth century (this was a rare instance of wizards copying Muggles, because hitherto they simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence), the entrance to the Chamber was threatened, being located on the site of a proposed bathroom.”
Relieved. Themselves. Wherever. They Stood.
It raises some complicated questions.
1.) The Vanishing Spell is one of the most complicated spells taught at Ordinary Wizarding Levels, according to ‘Order of the Phoenix‘. What did younger students do? Or for that matter, the dummies?
2.) How did young witches and wizards deal before they got a wand?
3.) Or Squibs?
4.) Where did it all end up? According to ‘Deathly Hallows‘, vanished objects go “into non-being, which is to say, everything.” Was there just a general aura of shit about the place?
5.) Was it socially acceptable to just poop your pants mid-conversation, or did you potter off to a private corner? Dumbledore once mentioned chamberpots. Were chamberpots a thing? Why did Rowling acknowledge that chamberpots existed and then (a decade later) declare magical folk fans of the public shit?
Answers, Rowling. The public needs them*.
Photo: Harry Potter.
