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Chapter 3 – Living the Muggle Life
By Simon Bennett, Auror
With the statute against revealing magic to muggles in place, one has to be careful when one is within the muggle world. When living around muggles, it is even more important to be wary of your actions. One wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the MLE for the simple action of unlocking the apartment door with a flick of the wand and a spell in front of a neighbor, rather than relying on the more muggle option of using a key.
First things first, never…NEVER use your wand outside the walls of your apartment or home. Only extreme circumstances of danger provide a true reason to risk that type of exposure. If you feel you must use magic, such as the aforementioned security, there are simple spells that even the less experienced witches and wizards can manage wandless.
Home Life
Even inside the home, there are things to consider, especially if your home is at eye level through windows. Take precautions of what might be seen by the casual passerby. Needles knitting on their own or possessions cleaning themselves up off the floor might just lead to a lot of awkward explaining. If possible, charm your windows in such a way to only make what you want to be seen from the outside visible.
Visitors to your home add another level to the situation. This could be both fellow wizards and witches, as well as those of the muggle variety. In the case of magical friends and acquaintances, those with little experience in the muggle world would be advised to keep their interaction with the outside as minimal as possible. Some witches and wizards are just not comfortable or befitting within this environment, causing a scene with their behavior originally meant to compensate for their lack of experience.
In the case of visiting muggles, two questions need to be asked: are you a hermit who travels everywhere outside your home by floo or apparition and never see any of your neighbors unless they happened to come to your door and knock? Or are you friendly and truly live among muggles, even to the point of inviting them into your home? If you answered the latter, you need to be aware of what is exposed at times, especially if subject to the sudden visitation of a friendly, curious neighbor.
Pets
On the subject of pets, it goes without saying to keep your creatures either muggle, like cats dogs, birds and reptiles, or the more mundane magical ones, like crups, kneazles and jobberknolls. There is also the option of using a disillusionment charm on a more suspicious creature, although there are complications to be considered. These include, but are not limited to, having to worry about losing them once you can no longer see them and being seen as weird reacting to a seemingly empty space.
Currency and Business
Another thing to consider is how to pay for things. Muggle world means muggle currency, rather than the coins you find in Gringotts. You would need some general knowledge at least on the various currencies that you would encounter in the Muggle world. These include such monies as the British pound, the American dollar and the Euro that is common amongst the various countries of the mainland continent. Sound a little confusing so far? And that’s just the main paper money, and not the coins, that are included in the mix. But that is what one needs to contend with in order to purchase your house or apartment. Even if you resort to getting everything else, like clothes and groceries, from the magical world, your landlord will only give you a funny look and think you’re crazy if you try to pay him in galleons. And what about that late-night order of Chinese food? Don’t expect to tip the delivery boy with sickles.
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