A BRILLIANT Reason For Why Floo Powder Exists
| Meta | |
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| Title: | A BRILLIANT Reason For Why Floo Powder Exists |
| Creator: | u/Comtesse_Kamilia |
| Date(s): | June 4, 2020 |
| Medium: | Posted to the /r/HPfanfiction subreddit |
| Fandom: | Harry Potter |
| Topic: | Headcanons, Canon, Fanfiction |
| External Links: | original reddit post, wayback archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
A BRILLIANT Reason For Why Floo Powder Exists is a short meta discussion posted by u/Comtesse_Kamilia to the /r/HPfanfiction subreddit. The author discusses a segment of the fanfiction Hermione Granger, Demonologist and why they appreciate it. The comments section contains further meta discussion on headcanons and canon in general, as well as fans sharing relevant bits of fanon and meta.
Within a month of posting, the post had 682 upvotes with a 99% upvote rate.
The Post
"I was reading "Hermione Granger, Demonologist" by BrilliantLady on ff.net when I read this amazing explanation for why floo powder was invented. To my knowledge this is entirely her idea, and not canon.
In this one scene Hermione and her demon friends explain why so many witches and wizards were unable to escape being burned at the stake."
"Some witches did escape," said Camio. "Did you never wonder why 'Floo powder' was invented? Jumping into fires isn't an intuitive method of travel, and a dangerous thing to experiment with. It was a desperate plan, for desperate times. Not all witches and wizards could Apparate, especially the young. So one bright Swedish alchemist – one of our allies, not Flamel of course – invented a powder to help their people escape. You kept a pouch of Flöja Powder in your pocket, so when it was dropped in the flames, or failing that when the flames reached you and started burning your clothes, it'd turn the fire green and you could travel instantaneously to a safe house, such as Hogwarts, where a fire was kept constantly burning in the Great Hall to aid travel."
I've never seen this explanation before and was impressed. It makes A LOT of sense and shines some light on an otherwise mundane item.
INSTANT adoption into headcanon right there."u/Comtesse_Kamilia
Responses
[u/Ash_Lestrange] "No one's going to stop you from adopting it as a headcanon, but it does strongly contradict canon, both the excerpt in PoA and additions in Tales of Beedle the Bard and Pottermore. Simply put, Beedle tells us witch hunts were mostly dangerous for children as they didn't have wands. PoA tells us adults used a flame freezing charm and allowed themselves to be tickled by flames. And Pottermore has the powder invented before witch hunts."
[u/Kingsonne]
"The nice thing about headcanon is that it doesn't have to align perfectly with canon. The books do mention the floo network specifically, but it doesn't matter if you don't want it to, it works perfectly fine as a developing system.
You could have an eternally burning emerald flame in the Great Hall of Hogwarts to which all instances of floo travel are brought. As the magic was refined further, enchantments could be placed on various fireplaces to create alternate exit points and assign them names by which they were accessed. They are now managed by the ministry.
Or you could have early floo being a more unstructured and dangerous magic, users spinning through a realm of fire and ash searching through the glimpses they get out of various fires for a safe place to exit. Later enchantments give the realm of fire more structure in the form of a network in order to make it more direct and usable. The network falling into the hands of the ministry to manage.
I personally will always be partial to the fanon that the floo network was invented by St. Nick and that the proto-ministry coopted the network from him some time Statute of Secrecy was enacted in order to close connections to muggle homes and stop his violations. Though this interpretation is certainly up there too."
[u/TheHeadlessScholar]
"I like the fanon that all forms of magical transportation were originally copied from magical beasts, and that floo was inspired by phoenix travel."
[sfinebyme]
"I loved that one too! It had just the right mix of whimsy and explanatory power to feel like it fit the Rowling-verse in a way that so much fanon doesn't."
[blue-mandarin] "I think there's a bit of a plot hole to the story of witches using freezing charms on the fire when they were getting burned. Likely, their hands would be tied, so I wonder how they would be able to get their wand, especially since the executioners would have searched for it before the burning. Also, if they had their wand at the burning, they would have had the wand in prison before execution, and could have just broken out."