The Tough Guide to Harry Potter

W

Walls share the unique acoustic properties of common rooms.  They amplify everything you don’t want an eavesdropper to overhear and muffle everything you might possibly be desperate to have generally known.  (example:  “Hark!  Hermione is sneaking off to see Draco.”  Vs. “Help!  I am being assaulted!”  “Did you hear a muffled scream?”  “No, not really. Lets go play Quidditch!”)  Given the frequency of snooping, it is possible that the walls even recruit listeners for sensitive information. This may contribute to the lack of legitimately secret secrets in HPFH.  They are also not as solid as they appear; often sliding aside to reveal convenient hidden rooms.  Draco Malfoy and Fred and George Weasley will be especially well versed in these.  See privacy

Wands:  Unusual wands are used as an indication of or sometimes substitute for an unusual personality.  Owners of wands with unique or mysterious components will be of some importance to the tour and are entitled to a romance with one of the more interesting canon Potterians.  Lost or broken wands are an excellent excuse to have a diverting encounter with the enigmatic Mr. Ollivander.  After obtaining a new wand, you will be able to position this long stick up your sleeve, in a back pocket, in your boots, or down your pants with ease. You are a wizard after all.  Female tourists must stand firm against the temptation to use their wand as a hairpin.  Doing so will have disastrous results.  Wands may also be used euphemistically.  See sex

Wandless Magic is the single most popular and admirable special magical gift the tour guides can bestow.  The minute you see someone wave their hand and float something across the room, you can assume they are going to be fairly hot stuff.  Luckily, your tour guides have limited this gift to the righteous.  This allows them to torment the fledgling hero with hardship.  One of the most nerve-racking people to be in HPFH is the Potterian destined to perform wandless magic, but who can’t really do it yet.  Voldemort seems to find these people particularly offensive and will be assiduously trying to kill them before they attain their true power.  Poor Mary Sue/Gary Stu will be doing a lot of fleeing before she/he gets to save the day.  If you aren’t the beleaguered super sorcerer, you can help them out by listening sympathetically to the list of their many woes and by lending a hand when they are practicing levitating things around and setting them on fire.   See Hermione Granger and Original Characters

Weather:  After about a month in HPFH, tourists may being to wonder why divinations experts look to the stars for their inspiration.  They ought to become meteorologists instead.  Blizzards guarantee at least one person being lost and/or seriously injured in them, probably in the trackless wastes of the Forbidden Forest.  A member of the opposite sex will save them.  When two students are missing, wait a little while and go looking in Hagrid’s hut.  Knock before entering.  Sunny snowy days mean snowball fights fraught with romantic tension.  People will end up on top of each other.  The OFT here is nose to nose.  Violent thunderstorms herald attempted suicide, noisy sex, or a preliminary death eater attack on Hogwarts.  The death eaters will wait courteously to attack until the sun comes out though, possibly because black robes wouldn’t look nearly so imposing dragging in the mud and plastered to the skin.  And the rain rule is reversed for private homes, since the villains can apparate directly inside the house and the lightening helps establish mood.  Sun will allow you and your friends to bask by the lake or go on House Elf facilitated picnics.  Ladies will be able to doff their many layers and dress in mildly shocking muggle clothing.  Sun signifies pleasant romance.  When your tour guides neglect to specify weather, you will be cooped up indoors and can assume it is dreary out.  Remember, you are supposed to be in Scotland. See Frostbite

Weddings of the HPFH sort follow a nondenominational neo-pagan tradition.  Before the vows are exchanged there will probably be a preliminary binding of souls or ordeal to prove your true love. Therefore tourists who have scheduled a wedding for their tour should mentally prepare themselves for a lengthy lecture concerning the grave and potentially dangerous consequences of the aforementioned magical act.  Although the whole exercise may seem somewhat excessive or unnecessarily nerve racking, it helps to explain the low to nonexistent divorce rate in HPFH. The only person qualified to perform weddings appears to be Albus Dumbledore with the occasional assistance of Minerva McGonagall. Given the frequency of marriages occurring the summer after graduation, we strongly suspect this is how Albus really spends the entirety of his summer holiday. We can only wonder how he finds the time for the rare weddings taking place during the school year. Tourists who yearn for a white dress and a three-tiered cake with figurines on top are advised to marry Weasleys or muggles.

Weeping:  In HPFH, nearly everybody does a lot of crying.  Get plenty of practice before you go.  You need to be ready to face the puffy eyes, stuffy noses, and splitting headaches that are never described but certainly must follow these bouts of tears.  Tourists are allowed to sob in the privacy of their rooms while clutching a letter or wail with their faces pressed into the chest or hair of their future/present lover.  They in turn may weep quietly along with you or murmur vague words of comfort while caressing your back.  Though Ron Weasley sometimes will awkwardly pat your shoulder instead.  And if the person giving clumsy comfort is Severus Snape, he will briefly entertain the cowardly wish to just send her to Madame Pomfrey.  The only person in all of HPFH who will be maintaining a stiff upper lip is Albus Dumbledore.  At most, tourists will be able to sneak a peek at a few scattered tears.  See tragedy, death, and victory

Werewolves See Lycanthropy and Remus Lupin

Whips leave long, thin, picturesque scars.  Thus they play a more interesting role in the history of certain tour companions than they will in the actual region.  They do sometimes hang with silent eloquence on the walls of Malfoy Manor.  See torture, childhoods, Draco Malfoy, Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy, and Narcissa Malfoy

Whomping Willow (prank):  This unfortunate event will only have one or two sources of concern for tourists that cannot be adequately addressed by canon evidence.  Primarily:  Who to blame?  Tour guides firmly sympathetic to Severus will place the guilt squarely on the side of Black.  This bully disregarded his friends’ feelings and pettily attempted to murder his enemy.  The blameless Snape, in his turn, will cling to this memory forever as the time when Dumbledore favored the Gyffindors above his life.  Since this encourages him to become a death eater in a straw-breaking-the-camel’s-back sort of way, tourists are free to hold Sirius ultimately responsible for Snape’s fall from grace.  Tours slightly more sympathetic to Black and scheduled simultaneously to the actual incident will also have to deal with Sirius’s shame and need for Remus’s pardon. And this can lead to the exciting possibility of romance.  If your tour guide is less partial with their favor, they will spread blame liberally between both parties.  They have a healthy respect for the potential cruelty of unrestrained teenage boys.  Tour guides zealous in their affection for Sirius Black will ignore the episode entirely.  If you have are visiting a region like this, be polite by joining all and sundry in their heroic disregard for the fiasco.   Note: In slash regions, sexual tensions and jealousy may be the underlying motivation for the entire sorry situation. See justice, vengeance, and Remus Lupin/Sirius Black

The Weird Sisters are the only popular band in all of HPFH.  Unconventional female Original Characters will be fond of muggle popular song.  Muggle tourists will be gratified to know that most open-minded, worthwhile wizards listen to nonmagical music.  See Yule Ball

Worry is one of the lighter hardships born by tourists and Potterians alike.  This is certainly natural for a place like HPFH where danger and death abound.  Considering the many opportunities for disaster, you would be hard put not to worry about at least one of them.  Tourists should prepare for the worries to be well founded.  That concern that keeps you up at night will almost certainly happen.  But the tour guides soften the blow by making the event not quite as bad as you expected.  Hence Hermione’s parents are gruesomely murdered but Ron rallies round in a more than friendly way.  Or Snape is called to see Voldemort, but only has to witness a death eater being tortured.  These silver linings are what keep Potterians and tourists slogging on long after other less optimistic persons would have given up in disgust.