Editor’s note: As the last chapter in the last book of the Harry Potter series ended on 1 September 2017, InUth will revisit the franchise and bring you a series of interesting articles pertaining to the books.
Wouldn’t you confess that as you grew up, you wanted to apparate into the world of Harry Potter and leave the misery of everyday teenage life behind? To study in the dungeons and towers of the mighty Hogwarts castle would have been so much more fun than trying to make sense of calculus behind the drab (and sometimes rotting) desks in our schools, isn’t it? The Harry Potter universe proved to be an escape for us all, whether from the burdens of school academics or the mounting expectations of our parents.
But well, if we can’t slip into the magical universe (no matter how much we wish), can we at least bring a few magical hacks in our lives, if not through gobsmacking scientific technology, then through imagination at least? Our lives would become so interesting and so easy if we borrow a few hacks from the Harry Potter universe.
Here is a list of magical hacks that we ought to somehow borrow from the Harry Potter books in order to make our lives easy:
1. Cloak Of Invisibility
Passed onto Harry from his father, Cloak Of Invisibility is a magical cloth that renders its wearer invisible. Harry used the inherited object to move around Hogwarts to quench his thirst for curiosity. It turned out that his cloak was the one among the Deathly Hollows as it didn’t fade with age and provided a secure protection.
Scientists and engineers are already on the move to create a cloth that would project the background on its surface, essentially rendering anyone behind/under it invisible. Such a cloak would be so helpful for us to sneak out a snack in the middle of the night without letting anyone know!
2. Pensieve
Pensieve is a shallow stone or metal basin that is used to store memories in the Harry Potter universe. Not only can you revisit the stored memories, but also look at them from a non-participant third-person perspective.
Pensieve will be of much use when we fight with our girlfriends or boyfriends over ‘who did what’ arguments!
3. Firebolt Broom
Broomsticks were rumoured to have been used by witches as a means of transportation in medieval Europe. And thus, we were introduced to them in JK Rowling’s books. Brooms were everywhere – they helped Potter win the Quidditch Cup, served as a medium of escape and employed goblins who manufactured them. Firebolt was the fastest broom of its production and quite costly. Harry was the only one in Hogwarts to have owned the broom.
Life would be so easy if we had a flying broom. We wouldn’t have to sit bored in a car stuck in traffic. We could just get out of the car, sit on the broom and zip over the traffic with supersonic speed.
4. Time-Turner
Hermoine used Time-Turner to travel back in time in order to attend classes of conflicting subjects in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She, along with Harry, used the device later in the book to save Sirius Black.
The only way we can actually do time travel is if we hop into a spaceship and encircle a black hole closely. That way we will jump straight to the future. However to travel back in time is a concept that confounds even the best of physicists. In that case, we should just let our imagination flow and think as to what all could we do if a Time-Turner suddenly appeared in our hands!
5. The Marauder’s Map
It’s a magical parchment that maps the whole of Hogwarts school and shows the location of every person on the school grounds. It looks like an ordinary parchment at first but reveals itself by mouthing the words “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
To have such a parchment (or even an app) that tracks everybody’s location at once would be quite dystopic. But, it’ll be fun to track where your bosses are so that they don’t catch you while you secretly watch those funny cat videos.
6. Felix Felices
Also known as Liquid Luck, it is a magical potion which makes its drinker lucky for some time, during which whatever they do will turn out to be successful. Harry used it to extract an important memory from Horace Slughorn as well as in the battle against Death Eaters.
We DESPERATELY need such a potion! All our problems will be solved if we could get a steady supply of this fictional potion. Only if it was real…*sigh*.
7. Deluminator
Also known as Put-Outer, it was a device used by Dumbledore to remove light sources from his immediate surroundings as well as bestow them. He bequeathed the device to Ron, who used it quite handily in the last book of the Potter series.
India is a land of load-shedding. There maybe be the provision of 24/7 electricity in the cities, but people in quite a few villages in the hinterland are prone to outages. Deluminator will definitely come in handy then.
8. Portkey
A Portkey is any object in the Harry Potter universe which is enchanted to transport anyone who touches it to a particular location.
Why bang your head on the steering wheel when stuck in traffic or lie to your friends about the time it would take for you to reach them when you could just magically get teleported in a jiffy? Hmm…sounds something like the Alcubierre warp drive that we humans may be able to invent someday.
9. Developing Solution
Used widely in all daily publications in the Harry Potter universe, it is a potion which, when used on photographs, allow them to move. Sounds something like GIFs, no? Only if we could have GIFs on papers instead of the boring, still pictures.
10. Sneakoscope
Sneakoscope is a kind of a detector that looks like a glass spinning top. It lights up, spins and whistles if someone is doing something untrustworthy nearby.
It’ll come handy in the real world if we were to make sure that our siblings don’t intend to destroy our belongings or figure out whether our colleagues intended to do something mischevious.
