Maybe your best friend Harry, with his vault filled with literal piles of gold, can help you out.
And Harry really owed them some money since he would spend some time at their house and sleep/eat for free, he is such a jerk
Also banged their daughter
It is considered impolite to offer money to someone after banging their relative. Assumed pimping is not a good look.
Muggle logic
I mean, he did end up marrying her though, hahaha.
Ron will never pull himself up by his magical bootstraps with that kind of entitlement attitude.
Wizards these days… Nobody wants to do the work transmuting elements into gold anymore.
Harry’s been so ‘poor’ his life, he probably didn’t remember he had a vault until he got a girlfriend.
A girlfriend who is a member of said family
Sounds like socialism.
The wizarding world is strangely conservative… for some reason
Yup! They can literally create anything with a wave of their wand, yet they still have poor wizards.
If there weren’t poor wizards, there wouldn’t be anything for other poor wizards to aspire to be better than
Wizarding prowess seems like a strong motivator. But what do I know? I’m not a crazy yuppy.
This is the kind of thing that has made the interpretation of Harry Potter as a struggle between old (“good”) conservatism vs new (“bad”) conservatism really resonate for me. You can think of the wizards as nobility, and muggles as commoners. It’s acceptable to buy gifts and stuff for the people who don’t really need them, but for the lesser nobility, it would be viewed as a handout and would be really difficult to navigate in a way that allows everyone to save face.
Iirc in the actual lore (not the movies) McGonagall somehow gets access to Harry’s Gringotts vault and takes the money for the broom from there. So it’s not exactly a gift.
I didn’t remember that! Is that actually in the book, or is that some expanded lore thing?
Just recently reread the first book, it’s never explained. McGonagall talks to Gryffindor’s team captain about what broom they should get for Harry.
Maybe through Hagrid. He seemed to have access.
Makes sense. Would also explain why he doesn’t ask Harry to buy him a new wand or candy on from the cart. Harry offered to buy all the candy for himself, and then just split some with Ron. But a wand is pretty important in a Wizarding school, someone should have bought him one lol.
I get that Ron’s parents were supposed to basically be Irish Catholics that didn’t believe in birth control (which doesn’t make sense, because why would Wizards believe in God?), but like… they probably shouldn’t have had so many kids if they couldn’t afford to take care of them properly.
[Jims the camera]
The idea that Ron went a whole school year without a wand is absurd.
It was just a plot element for some funny moments and to have Lockhart blast himself with a spell at the end. I don’t think there was any other justification until people started making up defenses after the book came out.
I always got the impression that, despite their financial issues, the Weasleys were too proud for “handouts.” Like, despite their frustrations and hand-me-downs and everything that came with it, to them, it didn’t matter because they had each other, and they truly cared for each other.
Like, yeah, the Malfoys had money and the newest and best of everything, but until the final book, they didn’t seem to have a loving family home or lifestyle. Everything was about status and how they were perceived by the world around them (Lucius having a great job with connections because it made him “important,” whereas Mr. Weasley had a job that was looked down upon but was important for both wizards and muggles).
Arthur was a member of the Order, he was a powerful and accomplished wizard, yet was content with his job working with “muggle artifacts” because he had a passion for it, and that was more important than his perceived status in society. I also imagine that they, the Weasleys, didn’t want to give Harry the impression they only wanted him around so he’d buy them things, and Harry probably didn’t want to be tempted to buy them things so that he could basically make them beholden to them (“I spent 100 gold on this wand for you, you owe me XYZ”). Remember, Harry was almost put in Slytherin, and did have several moments throughout the series where he acted less than honorably towards those around him.
Or I’m just overanalyzing the work of a transphobic conservative bigot. 🤷♀️ I haven’t reread the books since JKR went all-in on her bullshit, but that’s the impression I remember from reading them every summer growing up.
I still don’t understand why JKR died on the hill she did; given she wrote HP, which is on the other end of the universe to her hate. The moral of HP is to practice kindess regardless of the abilities, appearance, or standing in society.
I always got the impression that, despite their financial issues, the Weasleys were too proud for “handouts.”
Yeah, that’s pretty much stated outright in GoF 10:
Harry looked away. He would willingly have split all the money in his Gringotts vault with the Weasleys, but he knew they would never take it.
If Harry had started buying the Weasleys a bunch of stuff, it would have just made the entire situation more awkward.
