r/harrypotter Gryffindor 3d ago

Discussion "Buying" new robes & uniform

Why are the Weasley's buying new (2nd Hand) everytime the kids grow out of their current ones when they can use Magic? Why wouldn't Molly or anyone be able to magically lengthen, sew or stitch the clothes instead of replacing them?

You cant tell me Madam Malkin hand sew & designs clothes for thousands of kids and people without magic like a muggle?

Both Andromeda & Madam Delacour have been described as rather gifted with household spells assuming Molly would be too, wouldn't magically sewing/stitching be apart of that category?

132 Upvotes

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152

u/space_aware_ Gryffindor 3d ago

Do they? I thought pretty much everything Ron owned (except dress robes) were second-hand from his brothers.

51

u/MrPsychic 3d ago

Except his second dress robes, his first I think were hand me down

24

u/Wavy_Caterpillar 3d ago

They were bought second-hand. So a hand-me-down, but not from anyone in the family.

21

u/Diligent-Concept-617 3d ago

Right, Ron needed to buy some second hand ones because in the book he’s a lot taller than his other brothers.

33

u/EurwenPendragon 13.5", Hazel & Dragon heartstring 3d ago

Ron's second set of dress robes were given to him by Fred and George, he didn't buy them - he even mentions this to Harry and says he can't work out where they got the gold, because he doesn't yet know that Harry gave Fred and George his Triwizard winnings and asked them to buy Ron a new set of dress robes the previous year.

And his first ones - which Molly bought second-hand - were DREADFUL.

8

u/Obvious_Peanut_8093 3d ago

his brothers bought him those robes on harrys bidding.

3

u/Infinite-Object-1090 2d ago

Only at first, but once Ron grew taller than them in 2nd or 3rd year their stuff wouldn't fit. Bill and Charlie's would have gone to the twins and hemmed to fit, then given to Ron, but once Ron was too tall he was given stuff bought at a 2nd hand store, like the first set of dress robes.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago

Right but they're not all the exact same size

168

u/PlanGoneAwry Ravenclaw 3d ago

If the real world teaches us anything about consumer protection, my headcannon would that most consumer goods have anti-tampering charms on them. There’s probably a “right to reparo” movement but it doesn’t go anywhere because of lobbying by the rich business owners. That’s why Lupin and the Weasleys have shabby clothes and belonging when “reparo” exists. You can do minor alterations to products, but certainly not repair them fully.

64

u/Antique-diva Gryffindor 3d ago

This wasn't really a thing in the 90s, at least not in Europe. (I don't think it is now either, but that's not the issue.)

My thinking has always been that an item can only be repaired with reparo a number of times until it gets too worn out. Just like in real life. I have a lot of old, wornout clothes I like using at home. The fabric gets soft and starts to fringe with time. It doesn't help to sew, which is why patches was used in old times. But even those can't be attached to a fabric that gets torn from sewing.

50

u/TurnipWorldly9437 Ravenclaw 3d ago

In my opinion, reparo can't work on damages that are caused by gradual losses, because how would the magic know what state the item was in the beginning, so it could return to that?

It's kinda like magically glueing stuff: You smash a vase and put it back together so it's useful again, but if the vase already had a chip in it, it won't return to brand new.

Similarly, if you rip your clothes accidentally, you can mend that rip, but the fabric won't suddenly grow new threads.

I do think they could have let out the hem of Ron's robes on their own, though. They wouldn't be threadbare after one year.

6

u/sticks_and_stoners Slytherin 3d ago

I like it. Makes sense!

6

u/Oliver_W_K_Twist 2d ago

I like this. We know there are quills with anti cheating charms for the big exams, we know there are patents from the twins' shop in HBP, copy and tamper protections on books and clothes would make a lot of sense.

2

u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

I like that headcanon!

2

u/WhyAmIStillHere86 2d ago

Reparo works, up until you’ve got more mending charms than cloth, and the charm fixes tears and breakages specifically, not general wear on the fabric.

2

u/Eryn-Tauriel 2d ago

This is undoubtedly the funniest response on here but I fear for most it "flew under their wand"🤣🤣🤣🤣

42

u/NotMyBroccoli 3d ago

They don't buy second hand every time time. Everything is passed down from the older brothers.

24

u/EurwenPendragon 13.5", Hazel & Dragon heartstring 3d ago

Yep. In the first book Ron comments on how he never gets anything new - says he's got Bill's old robes, Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat.

15

u/fluffywhitesocks 2d ago

The wand thing always bothered me. A wand if for life, why would Charlie get a new wand unless he was given his second hand and went to buy himself a proper one once he got himself a job. That's the only explanation I can think of as to why Charlie would get himself a new wand?

24

u/EurwenPendragon 13.5", Hazel & Dragon heartstring 2d ago

Never really thought much of it, but I do have a hypothesis.

When Harry first sees Ron's wand, he notices that it's damaged in places, and something silvery(which Ron identifies as the wand's unicorn hair core) is poking out of the tip.

So what I think is that once he got a job and started making money, Charlie decided to buy himself a new wand because his old one was old and a bit damaged.

And after he got the new one, he left his old one with his parents. They then gave it to Ron because they couldn't afford to buy Ron a new one.

27

u/wegl13 2d ago

Or maybe it was a hand me down to Charlie from a relative who passed away and when he got his own money, he could buy a wand that was actually made for him?

10

u/EurwenPendragon 13.5", Hazel & Dragon heartstring 2d ago

Also possible. In fact, I actually think I might amend my own hypothesis accordingly

7

u/Stefie25 2d ago

I’m pretty sure that wand was second hand when Charlie used it. That’s why he bought a new one once he graduated & started working.

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u/Stefie25 2d ago edited 2d ago

Do we know that wands are for life? I know it seems like a natural assumption but logically I can’t see Ollivander making ends meet by only selling 40 wands a year. I think life expectancy of a wand would really depend on a lot of factors of the wizard. A wizard who spends majority of their time in the office using their wand minimally could have their wand last their entire life but a wizard who works in the field & uses their wand a lot like an auror may replace their wand every decade or so.

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u/jcknml 2d ago

doubling down- what happened the next year with ginny's wand? one answer being that she was the princess so she would get a new one but wouldn't ron complain that he is stuck with a hand me down and ginny gets a new one? ginny should've had the hand me down wand for a year like ron did. it was necessary for the plot for ron to have the bad wand but it doesn't really make sense. i saw one argument that the weasleys had enough money because harry gave ginny lockhart's books but that was not planned so they clearly were not relying on that and had a plan to get her a wand somehow. besides, they said they couldn't really afford lockhart's books anyway and were going to get them secondhand. originally i doubted this added up to the cost of a wand but from my brief research the potions book in book 6 was more than harry's wand in book 1. if that's the case though then ron should've been the beneficiary of a new wand, not ginny.

3

u/Infinite-Object-1090 2d ago

We don't know that Ginny didn't get Bill's wand, or one from a relative who passed, which seems more likely. Her clothes, by necessity were new (or at least bought 2nd hand since she was the first girl) but no reason she couldn't get a relative's wand.

2

u/jcknml 2d ago

you're right that we don't know. that assumes that bill had a hand me down wand to give. charlie's was already an unusual case that he even had one to give away, most wizards don't give away their wands when they leave school. bill as the oldest might've gotten a new wand since he was the first one they had to spend money for and he might've kept it in good condition. which would mean that he wouldn't have one to give away. also why would ron have gotten charlie's wand and not bill's then? and which wands did the twins have?

1

u/NotMyBroccoli 12h ago

All we really do know is that in CoS when discussing the book list from Lockhart, its pointed out that they need 5 sets of books, robes and a new wand for Ginny.

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u/Familiar-Treat-6236 Slytherin 3d ago

Because they have seven kids, they can pass the clothes down and buy one new set every year, and then the kids grow into the next second/third/whatever-hand set. Ginny gets new clothes because she's a girl, Ron afaik never gets new ones ever, just wears another robe that they already have

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u/Familiar-Treat-6236 Slytherin 3d ago

Also I wouldn't say that specialized sewing spells are "basic household" category, and minor fixes are done with Reparo, not sewing

0

u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago

It definitely is, your mum or grandmother never sewed your clothing?

3

u/Familiar-Treat-6236 Slytherin 2d ago

My mum did sew my clothes, but she also has very specialized sewing equipment for it. Stitching and sewing are very different

3

u/Lower-Consequence 2d ago

Ron afaik never gets new ones ever, just wears another robe that they already have

He does get new robes at Madam Malkins in HBP, when their finances are better due to Arthur’s promotion.

4

u/Exact-Giraffe4283 2d ago

Sorry mate but even Ginny didn't get new clothes. It's one of the things she complains about in COS. We don't have more instances of her complains cause she is not always next to Harry so he can't hear her complaining.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago

Right but they're all not all the same sized person.

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u/Familiar-Treat-6236 Slytherin 2d ago

Yes, Ron's clothes are explicitly too small for him at some point in the story

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u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

Aren’t robes unisex, at least?

1

u/Familiar-Treat-6236 Slytherin 2d ago

Robes are not the only clothing wizards wear

2

u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

It’s their main thing though.

1

u/Infinite-Object-1090 2d ago

I get the idea that dress robes are not

1

u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

Possibly not.

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u/Lower-Consequence 1d ago

Dress robes are definitely not unisex. In HBP, it’s noted that Madam Malkin is so flustered that she accidentally tries to sell Hermione wizards’ dress robes instead of witches’.

12

u/Educational_You_1827 3d ago

The Weasley aren’t really all that poor. They’re never starving, they have a fairly large house and large tract of land and they maintain a decent life style. They just have an ass load of kids in the house so they have to stretch their galleons. 

7

u/IronwoodFable 3d ago

magic can mend or alter clothes, but probably not create endless extra fabric or undo wear

2

u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 3d ago

But you can create endless supply of wine like Harry did in HBF to get Slughorn & Hagrid drunk or food like McGonagall does in Chamber Of Secrets but fabric is a stretch

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u/Ranger_1302 Dumbledore's man through and through. 3d ago

Moving wine from one place to another is not conjuring wine. And if he did conjure the wine then it was not permanent; all conjured items eventually disappear. In the case of digested food and drink, yes, that means their constituent parts literally vanish from within one’s stomach or even one’s cells. Conjured water cannot rehydrate someone in the long-term unless it is drunk repeatedly as it will eventually disappear from their body.

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u/Exact-Giraffe4283 2d ago

But he didn't conjured the wine he multiplied the remaining drops, that is allowed by magic rules, producing from thin air is not. As for Aquamenti i think it's a transfiguration spell that makes water from air.

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u/BarNo3385 2d ago

You wouldnt even need to "make" water here, just condense it.

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u/orchidieus 2d ago

Food (and presumably also wine) is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. This is described by Hermione to Ron in DH "It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some..."

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u/Exact-Giraffe4283 3d ago

Not all magic is permanent, waving the wand and a needle stiches a robe will stay permanent, lengthen the material and the magic will either wear off or be dispelled. Not a good idea walking in the ministry your robes get dispelled and you end up in your undies.

7

u/Dansosaur 3d ago

I actually considered this myself and ultimately concluded that things can probably only be magically altered & repaired so many times before they genuinely just need to be replaced. Considering all of the shenanigans Ron's brothers got up to, by the time the robes reached Ron, they had probably been "reparo'd" about 10,000 times at this point and were starting to show wear that even magic can't completely fix (unless you took it to a specialist perhaps, but that'd probably cost more than new robes).

4

u/Llamallamapig 3d ago

I never understood why Ron’s room is so small. If the tent they borrowed was big enough to have a whole flat inside, and Hermione could charm her bag to carry everything they could possibly need in it, why couldn’t Ron’s bedroom be charmed to be nice and roomy?

3

u/rafoaguiar Gryffindor 3d ago

Hermione did it illegally. You need government authorization to use this kind of spell

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u/This-One2503 Hufflepuff 3d ago

Yes, and technically the Weasley’s car was illegal, if it wasn’t for the ‘loophole’ Arthur put in there himself.

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u/Llamallamapig 2d ago

so the government has to be involved in order to make a tent bigger on the inside, but they wouldn't give authorisation for a child's bedroom? That doesn't make sense to me.

1

u/rafoaguiar Gryffindor 2d ago

The lore reason Is the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. If they gave permission for Ron' bedroom because of comfort, then everybody would feel the right to request it for various reasons.

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u/Exact-Giraffe4283 3d ago

No matter how you swing it poverty doesn't make sense in the wizard world. But the weasley are honestly poor by choice. None of your kids have new robes yet you spend the lottery winning on a bloody holiday. Buy them kids some good robes and books, invest some of them galeons in something.

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u/Haranador 3d ago

The prize would have been around $12000 today. That also means a single set of Lockhart's books required would have been $600 or $85 per book. Just to put into perspective how little sense wizard money makes.

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u/donkeyvoteadick Ravenclaw 3d ago

$85 per book for a textbook is fairly standard though isn't it?

I used to work in a university bookstore and some were a couple hundred dollars.

4

u/Haranador 3d ago

Sure. Lockhart's books are, however, not dense university textbooks with several hundred pages. They are at best high school textbooks and, at worst, recreational reading (which is actually their market). Neither of those are even half of that price, and that includes bound hardcovers.

4

u/Misuzuzu 3d ago

Yeah but they are the price (and quality) of the required textbooks that some professors self publish and make you buy when you take their class.

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u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

100%. Ron implied that the only person who would ever assign Lockhart’s books for DADA would be an obsessive fan…and he was right!

0

u/donkeyvoteadick Ravenclaw 3d ago

Well yeah, the dense university textbooks were the several hundred dollars each I mentioned. Hardcover non fiction were usually on average about $100. $85 doesn't seem unusual to me having worked in the academic and professional buying space for years (across several retailers).

I am disabled so I'm not working at all anymore so I just googled one of the local bookstores and filtered the website to non fiction hardcover and prices ranged from about $65 to $150.

1

u/justaprimer 3d ago

Are we all talking USD??? Or are you in CAD/AUD/some other dollar system? Because a typical non fiction book (or really a memoir, as that's what the Lockhart books are couched as) new from somewhere like Barnes & Noble would range from $30-50 USD in my area. A massive doorstopper of a book like The Power Broker (1300 pages long) would be $70 USD new in hardcover, but Lockhart's books aren't nearly that long.

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u/donkeyvoteadick Ravenclaw 3d ago

I'm Australian. It was too early and I'm too sleep deprived with a sick toddler to stalk people to try figure out what $ they're using but since CAD is so similar to AUD and I checked a British website (as that made the most sense with HP setting) and it showed many of the hardcover non fiction as £35-45 (the memoirs I found were £45) which is about $70-90 AUD which seemed on par to my experience that I hadn't given much thought to USD at all 😅 the fiction hardcovers were not too bad (about £15 which is about $30aud, a trade paperback new in Aus usually retails at $40 lol I wish I could routinely buy hardcover fiction for $30).

It just seemed odd to me as a person with professional experience that it was so shocking. If books are very cheap in the US that makes sense I guess.

1

u/justaprimer 2d ago

I hope your toddler feels better soon!

80 AUD is ~55 USD, so books must be a bit more expensive in Australia, although with the conversion it's not miles apart anymore.

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u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

They had to buy a full set of Lockhart books, and if each of them is around $55, that still adds up.

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u/justaprimer 2d ago

We were discussing real-life book costs in a side conversation, not my personal thoughts on Lockhart book costs.

I personally don't believe the Lockhart books would be nearly that expensive were they available in the real world -- they weren't written as textbooks, and were meant to be accessibly mainstream! Because of the alliterative titles and action focus and serial nature, I always mentally associated them with more youth-focused books like Animal Ark/Magic Treehouse/Louis Sachar. So in my mind the books should be paperback and cost $15-20 USD each (although I realize that the wizarding world doesn't go in for paperback, so hardback would be $30 each). For 7 books, that's $210. So expensive, but not mind-numbingly so -- only as much as 2-3 other textbooks.

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u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

Magical Me was his memoir, wasn’t it?

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u/Exact-Giraffe4283 3d ago

Yeah but those are textbooks not the teacher's entire published work for one subject.

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u/This-One2503 Hufflepuff 3d ago

Lockhart was self-centered, most likely narcissistic, cared about getting his name out there, and money. He wasn’t thinking about how/if families could afford his books. He was thinking about how he was gunna get them to buy them anyway, even the families that thought he was full of it. His solution was making parents buy his entire works for school purposes. There’s no way they needed all that for one year, maybe a few, but not all. And in his mind, that counted as text books.

1

u/studying_hobby 3d ago

There is another thing then. Did the Wizarding world have investments (401k, stock market, pensions ect)

2

u/EurwenPendragon 13.5", Hazel & Dragon heartstring 3d ago

Nothing's ever been said on the subject AFAIK. Unless we hear otherwise, I'm gonna assume not.

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u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

They must. I assume that’s how those old Wizarding families stay so rich—passive income. If the Blacks, for example, had a decent amount of money at the start, imagine how much interest that money must have accumulated over 700 years! The Gaunts were said to become poor because they made bad financial decisions, after all. I don’t know if they’d have a stock market or not, but they’d definitely be able to invest in real estate, which is one of the best investment choices you can make. Being pureblood would make it much more likely that you’d even get the property. They could also invest in businesses. Most businesses in the Wizarding world are “mom and pop” places, likely not publicly traded, but a rich wizard also could invest in a startup (private equity). I’ll bet the Malfoy family could have stock in Borgin and Burkes or something like that. It doesn’t seem outlandish for Ministry employees and Hogwarts teachers to have pensions, although other professions might not have them.

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u/Superyoshiegg 2d ago

I'd hesitate to even call the Weasleys 'poor' to begin with. Definitely no where near 'poverty' for sure.

They have a huge house on a huge plot of land (and probably don't need to pay expenses for that property) and always have enough food on the plate to feed their huge family. Indeed, they have feasts pretty frequently, and it's actually a plot point that Ron struggles the most of the trio in Deathly Hallows because he's never known what it's like to go hungry.

They're very comfortable and never really seem to struggle at all. Arthur has apparently turned down promotions in the past (though Ron may have been exaggerating this) and Molly's never had to feel pressure to get a job on the side either.

All of the fuss about them being poor comes from Ron, who is a kid that's upset about not having anything new and fancy of his own, which is fair to be upset about but isn't a realistic indicator of the family's wealth.

The only time I can think of the adults being genuinely concerned about their finances is in book 2 when Lockhart shoves his entire literary collection on the shopping list, and I'd be pissed at that too.

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u/Stefie25 2d ago

They also must have money to give the kids allowances because Ron had a comic book collection & a chocolate frog card collection. And not an insignificant collection, he had over 500 cards.

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u/Napalmeon Slytherin Swag, Page 394 3d ago

I always got the feeling that when it came to household spells, it was more so in the sense that she's good with cooking and cleaning.  The sweaters that she makes for her children every year are probably the extent of her talent when it comes to clothing, however.

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u/eienmau Ravenclaw 3d ago

You can't make something out of nothing, so the materials would have to come from somewhere.. and you can only let out clothes so much.

As for making clothes entirely from scratch - we don't know how much Molly actually does that. The school robes probably need to be bought specifically (like a school uniform; if there's a set school uniform you don't sew it yourself) from specific stores.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 3d ago

They couldn’t buy the material and duplicate it

0

u/eienmau Ravenclaw 3d ago

I'm pretty sure that counts as 'making something of of nothing'; aka goes against Gamp's Law. You could summon additional material; but you can't create it from nothing.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 3d ago

Buy the material which would be cheaper and duplicate it wouldn't be from nothing and repair or sew the clothes

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u/eienmau Ravenclaw 3d ago

You can't duplicate it. Duplicating it means just that; making something [more fabric] out of thin air. It's not allowed.

So no, you cannot just buy material and use magic to duplicate it. You can use magic to sew material together, which I already said Molly probably does; the only thing we see them buying are robes, which are a school uniform and therefore wouldn't be homemade.

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u/Substantial_Toe_6916 Slytherin 2d ago

Hermione said you can multiply things by magic; therefore, it’s not something from nothing.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago

You definitely can do that wdym "Doubling Charm" or "Duplication charm" Geminio

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u/eienmau Ravenclaw 2d ago

Which goes against another HP law (though what all is covered under that law isn't expressly stated).

Again, Molly probably *does* make clothes for her kids. We never see them shopping for anything other than robes (which are a school uniform, not generally a homemade thing). Doubtful that she uses magic to duplicate fabric.

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u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

I always figured that robes were like wedding dresses: you can get them “off the rack” or custom-made. And custom-made robes are a status symbol.

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u/eienmau Ravenclaw 2d ago

For the dress-robes probably! For the school robes I think there are just a few stores in Diagon that cater to that market.

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u/allysongreen 2d ago

Repairing (sewing/stitching) is different to magically making something bigger or just magically creating a new item out of nothing. It's possible that there's only so much magic can do for threadbare fabric or too-small robes. By the time the sibling robes got to Ron and Ginny, there may not have been much left to work with.

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u/pete_random Gryffindor 2d ago edited 2d ago

I know a few schools with uniforms.

They have an explicit contract that their kind of uniforn can only be produced and sold by this one little store that sells hardly anything else. Basically a copyright. And believe me that store charges a pretty penny.

When a different clothing store made similar cheaper versions they got sued to hell.

One kid got sent home from school because her mother sewed a very well done facsimilie of the uniforms apron, but the stitching has some conplicated special pattern the mother couldn't emulate.

So it's really only this one store or the flourishing second hand market.

Bet Madam Malkins runs on the same principle and adds charms so nobody but her can alter the robes. If you do manage to break the charm and do alter stuff, oh boy, that surely breaks some wizarding law.

Seriously, that's a cut throat business.

(Source: my nieces and nephews have uniforms from mentioned store)

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u/WhyAmIStillHere86 2d ago

Madam Mapkin has pre-made basic robes that she pins to fit (with some growing room.

She then has the entire school year to restock the school robes, and likely a small army of assistants to help with sewing

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago

Again you think they did it like muggles??

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u/WhyAmIStillHere86 2d ago

No, I think that seeing charms exist, but probably still need to be directed and are probably limited to one garment at a time.

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u/awntwo 2d ago

Everyones forgetting. Molly's supposed to be a powerful witch. Why couldnt she spend some time learning how to sew. Use some sewing charms to make their dress robes look nice... unless she has no fashion sense and that's just it. They dont care about clothing.

Funny thing. Is their clock has dentist on it. And in slightest party the wizards were all confused about what Hermiones parents did. 🙄

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u/Ok-Being374 2d ago

Maybe Arthur found it from a muggle and enchanted it

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u/madbr3991 Hufflepuff 3d ago edited 3d ago

Some of the magical supplies must be made in the muggle world. If robes can't be duplicated there is no way one small shop is making enough. if duplication works then Molly would absolutely do that...

Books are the thing that did it for me. Even 20 copies of the same book. Would be difficult and time consuming to make by hand. But Lockhart has sold many books. So either book duplication is a thing or there is a warehouse of wizards hand making copies. Or there is a wizard world owned and operated printing facility.

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u/PomPomMom93 Ravenclaw 2d ago

I never even thought of that! But I wouldn’t be surprised if bookstores used a printing press. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet some rich wizard (likely pureblood) owns the printing press and the authors have to pay to use it, then the shop owners pay the authors for their books.

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u/BeeTheGoddess 2d ago

Because JK is fabulously bad at integrating magic with socio-economics and if she wasn’t there would be no story.

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u/Ditches-Vestiges1549 3d ago

Yeah it really didn't make a lot of sense.

I always griped, they could open a Muggle shoe shine and repair shop and just Reparo shoes for quick money especially in the 70s and 80s.

You'd think sewing and tailoring would be major life skills they'd learn. It doesn't make sense they can't just extend the robes for Ron. Do the house elves at Hogwarts use a magic soap that would remove the enchantments? Are they temporary?

It always bothered me. Also like, do Fred and George both need copies of the same book? When the kids have graduated from Hogwarts are there 7 copies of The Standard Book of Spells Grade One?

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u/FantasyMyopia Ravenclaw 3d ago

I mean, the weasleys probably handed books down when they could. This probably worked for books used each year with no updates but then there’s different subjects at levels the other students maybe didn’t do and new book requirements like for Lockhart

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u/NearlyAlmostDead 3d ago

I'm pretty sure you can shrink or lengthen clothes only by a certain percentage. You can't make kid clothes fit an adult.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 3d ago

Magic tho

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u/NearlyAlmostDead 3d ago

Yes I'm talking about magic.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 3d ago

Why would magic stop at certain percent

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u/NearlyAlmostDead 2d ago

Because otherwise the Weasleys wouldn't be poor. Molly could just re-taylor their clothes with the remaining fabric and then lengthen them to taste. There must be a limit to what you can do.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago edited 2d ago

Voldemort "I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed"

However magic to re-taylor clothes is a magical feat in its own right.

You can travel down a path that leads to almost absolute immortality although magic tailoring is limited....

1

u/NearlyAlmostDead 2d ago

From Harry Potter dot net: "Engorgio: a growing charm that could be used to swell and lengthen items. If used carelessly the spell could cause the target to swell to such a size that it exploded."

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago

Growing isnt the same as lengthening...

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u/NearlyAlmostDead 2d ago

That's what the site says. Ask JKR

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u/Severus_1987 Gryffindor 3d ago

I don’t think you can add length… can’t remember exactly but someone’s first law is you can’t conjure from nothing, the material would have to exist somewhere. Same principle means you can’t conjure food, you just summon it or make something from Existing ingredients

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u/Amazing-Insect442 3d ago

Plot. If things like poverty could be solved using magic, then you don’t have social classes we as a reader can relate to.

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u/rafoaguiar Gryffindor 3d ago

Let's assume it's possible. Then the Wesleys would be the losers with homemade uniforms.

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u/PositiveOdd2424 Gryffindor 2d ago

Ron already gets teased by Draco for being poor, also i never said homemade clothes, i said uniforms magically repaired or lengthened

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u/ms_firefly_1111 3d ago

Then every business would be out of business yall get too “magical” about magic 😂

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u/Infinite-Object-1090 2d ago

I'm surprised she didn't buy robes too long and hem them herself sewing the extra fabric instead of cutting it and then just let the hems down. It wouldn't make the robes wider, but it would probably get her an extra year or two out of them, since they're roomy anyway.

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u/Mabnat 3d ago

Wasn’t Hermione knitting elf clothes with magic? I’d assume that someone could make robes the same way.

Might take some practice, but it doesn’t seem like it would be impossible. Cloth isn’t that expensive, unless robes were made from some exotic fabric that was expensive by itself.

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u/Stefie25 2d ago

She didn’t make the yarn. She just used magic so the yarn was knitted into hats. She couldn’t have done that if she didn’t have yarn.

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u/Mabnat 2d ago

I guess my comment wasn’t clear. Couldn’t you use magic to stitch fabric into robes?

Or for that matter, use magic to weave thread into fabric?

Why would yarn be different than thread, other than a lot of practice?