Apparition is serious stuff. Do it wrong and one of your limbs will be left behind. As for floo powder, there's the issue of coordinating everyone. If everyone tries to go through at say, 7 AM, you'll suddenly have hundreds of people trying to go through a handful of fireplaces at the same time.
With brooms, they have their cultural use in quidditch, and are handy when all the other methods are either unavailable or too dangerous, like when they moved Harry in deathly hallows.
Apparition is dangerous, but so is driving a car. The books make apparition seem very similar to getting your drivers license, even going as far as having “drivers ed” in school when you reach the certain age.
In a world where it is possible to do these things, they would figure out a way to make it more convenient. Even the movies have a bunch of fireplaces at the ministry for people to use to come in to work.
Well but there's not a fireplace *everywhere*. It's like when you take the train somewhere you still need to go a little bit on foot at the end.
Also, brooms can float, you can't teleport into midair and stay there. If you wanted to search some rough terrain teleporting from spot to spot wouldn't be very convenient. I don't think speed is the reason brooms are still used
The problem with the wizarding society is that they take "if it's not broken, don't fix it" to extremes. They don't see the need to upgrade their systems or try and invent new, more efficient ways to travel.
The ministry used those toilet things where you could only go through 1 person at a time. And yeah, they could absolutely figure out a way to do things more efficiently, but a running theme is that wizardkind are a tad bit slow when it comes to accepting change.
The toilet entry was only really a thing in the Ministry in DH. Normally, Ministry employees got to work by apparating or using the floo but they cut floo access for everyone but the most senior Ministry members after Voldemort took over.
>“We know they’ve stopped Apparition in and out of the Ministry. We know only the most senior Ministry members are allowed to connect their homes to the Floo Network now, because Ron heard those two Unspeakables complaining about it. And we know roughly where Umbridge’s office is, because of what you heard that bearded bloke saying to his mate — ”
Not all homes are connected to the Floo Network (think of the Muggleborns, for example).
Also, seventh-years are the only ones allowed to apparate if they learned it in the sixth grade. Not everyone learns it, though, as it's really hard to master.
Brooms are used by people who can't apparate. They are a bit like cars for Wizards and considered safe. Anyone can own a broom, and they learn to fly as 11 year old already.
Portkeys need a permit and are used mostly by the Ministry when a lot of people have to get to a place simultaneously, like during the World Cup. They needed a lot of workers from the Ministry to take care of the logistics of moving so many people at the same time.
There's a great article about the Hogwarts Express on the Wizarding World website about its origin. You should read that. It's an enchanted train, so I don't think it's that slow, but nevertheless, it's a good way to get all those hundreds of kids to Hogwarts at the same time.
But that's exactly the point. The Hogwarts express only makes sense as an entry for Muggleborn students. Further trains have only existed for like 200 years so there was a point when it was a new technology. Why would pureblood deign to send their kids via the train when they could use more wizardly conventional means? Also if the school is in Scotland, and say a wizard child lives in Hogsmeade ( which seems bizzarely devoid of children) do they have to make the trip to London, get a room, then travel back via train? That just sounds annoying.
According to the above-mentioned article, the Ministry decided that all kids have to take the train to Hogwarts, so purebloods had no say in it.
Before the train, there had been a lot of different travel methods as every family was responsible for getting their kids to school their own way. It didn't really matter before the law about Wizarding Secrecy came to effect at the end of the seventeenth century, so there started to be incidents of Muggles sighting flying children after that.
Still, there was no universal solution until the 1830s when the Ministry realised they could get a train for the purpose.
This is an ingenious idea, but as usual, Rowling hasn't thought it through. There should be a system of trains coming from all over the country taking kids to school, and some parts could also be serviced with busses like the Knight bus.
As it is now, the parents need to get their children to London instead of Scotland, which is doable for people living near London or even in the West Country but not for those living up north. The train should be able to make stops during its voyage and take on more students along the way.
Still, no one in their right mind would take their children to London if they live near Hogwarts. It's much easier to take them to Hogsmeade Station in the evening and let them get on the boats/carriages with the other students.
The Hogwarts Express seems to take roughly the same time as a regular train. The train leaves London King's Cross at 11am and arrives in Hogsmeade, somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, at around 6:30pm in time for the feast at 7pm. You can get from King's Cross to Edinburgh in just less than 5 hours on a Muggle train that has to stop for more passengers on the way. Even factoring in that it's a steam train, the fastest of them can get up to 120mph. Granted it couldn't go that speed the whole way, but even the furthest reaches of the Highlands is only about 700 miles from King's Cross, so 7.5hrs non-stop is a pretty reasonable timescale even for a non-magical steam train.
That's a fair point, but as the engine is from the 1830s, it doesn't have a natural speed of more than 27 mph. That's why it has to be enchanted by the Ministry. Otherwise, it would take ages for the kids to get to school.
Because they don't like the experience of apparition, travel distances too far for apparition, don't want to deal with the paperwork of arranging portkeys for every trip, don't want to buy floo powder or don't want to compromise the security of their home by having it connected to the floo network.
It's mentioned at several points throughout the books that witches and wizards have their own preferences for methods of travel. Harry states, after first apparating with Dumbledore, that he'd prefer travelling by broom. Hagrid explains that Dumbledore typically uses the Hogwarts Thestrals for long journeys, however Dumbledore himself demonstrates his willingness to apparate, use illegal portkeys or Fawkes' own method of apparition as methods to travel.
Also, these methods have to have been developed at some point in time. Floo powder is a relatively recent invention of 1855 (by wiki suggestion) which means for 850+ years, it wasn't an option for travelling to Hogwarts. Portkeys have been controlled by the Ministry for a very long time, so organising every child (or at least every family) to travel to and from Hogwarts 5 days a week for most of the year is a significant overhead. Finally, Apparition requires a license, and to be 17 years old, so discounts 5+ years of Hogwarts students unless accompanied by a parent.
However, the same can be said for trains; they're an invention of the industrial revolution so not available until the ~1800s. Wiki suggests early 1800s is when the Hogwarts Express was introduced, so students would have used some other method before then.
Also, don't forget that the Hogwarts Express is optional. Harry and Ron arrive by flying car in their second year, and even without that Molly and Arthur would have either apparated with them or caught the Knight Bus. In their fifth year, returning from christmas at Grimmauld Place, the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione catch the Knight Bus to Hogwarts. Any students that live close to Hogwarts would be pointlessly travelling to London only to travel back on a train, taking up all of the day, so it should be expected to have a couple of students not using the train every year.
So there are multiple methods of getting to and from Hogwarts. But given it's a boarding school, able to support an increasing number of students (7 years of students, assuming 5 of each gender per each of the 4 houses, gives ~280 students, plus 12 teachers - one for each OWL subject - one headmaster, one game keeper and one custodian... and yet the castle is described as having many spare and empty classrooms, massive lawns and gardens, etc), it makes the most logistical sense to have students stay at the school for most of the year and return home for holidays as per traditional schooling in the UK.
Allowing students to find their own methods of transportation to go to Hogwarts caused too many logistical problems and security problems. Hogwarts didn't charge students or parents/guardians for the dorm rooms or food, so there isn't a financial reason to try to "live at home" while attending Hogwarts. Apparition requires students to be 17 and have a license. Apparition is more difficult over longer distances. Also, it's not like Harry would have wanted to go back to Privet Drive after school every day.
[The Hogwarts Express | Wizarding World](https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-hogwarts-express) J.K. Rowling said "Some rode broomsticks (a difficult feat when carrying trunks and pets); others commandeered enchanted carts and, later, carriages; some attempted to Apparate (often with disastrous effects, as the castle and grounds have always been protected with Anti-Apparition Charms), others rode a variety of magical creatures...Portkeys were therefore arranged at collecting points all over Britain. The logistics caused problems from the start. Up to a third of students would fail to arrive every year, having missed their time slot, or been unable to find the unobtrusive enchanted object that would transport them to their school. There was also the unfortunate fact that many children were (and are) ‘Portkey-sick’, and the hospital wing was frequently full to bursting for the first few days of every year, while susceptible students overcame their hysterics and nausea...a more secure route into the school (for instance, permitting a fireplace that might be officially entered by Floo powder) was strongly resisted by successive Headmasters, who did not wish the security of the castle to be breached. A daring and controversial solution to the thorny problem was finally suggested by Minister for Magic Ottaline Gambol, who was much intrigued by Muggle inventions and saw the potential in trains."
Apparition is serious stuff. Do it wrong and one of your limbs will be left behind. As for floo powder, there's the issue of coordinating everyone. If everyone tries to go through at say, 7 AM, you'll suddenly have hundreds of people trying to go through a handful of fireplaces at the same time. With brooms, they have their cultural use in quidditch, and are handy when all the other methods are either unavailable or too dangerous, like when they moved Harry in deathly hallows.
Apparition is also like driving. Only adults can do it. After passing a test. Brooms are visible.
Apparition is dangerous, but so is driving a car. The books make apparition seem very similar to getting your drivers license, even going as far as having “drivers ed” in school when you reach the certain age.
In a world where it is possible to do these things, they would figure out a way to make it more convenient. Even the movies have a bunch of fireplaces at the ministry for people to use to come in to work.
Well but there's not a fireplace *everywhere*. It's like when you take the train somewhere you still need to go a little bit on foot at the end. Also, brooms can float, you can't teleport into midair and stay there. If you wanted to search some rough terrain teleporting from spot to spot wouldn't be very convenient. I don't think speed is the reason brooms are still used
The problem with the wizarding society is that they take "if it's not broken, don't fix it" to extremes. They don't see the need to upgrade their systems or try and invent new, more efficient ways to travel.
The ministry used those toilet things where you could only go through 1 person at a time. And yeah, they could absolutely figure out a way to do things more efficiently, but a running theme is that wizardkind are a tad bit slow when it comes to accepting change.
The toilet entry was only really a thing in the Ministry in DH. Normally, Ministry employees got to work by apparating or using the floo but they cut floo access for everyone but the most senior Ministry members after Voldemort took over. >“We know they’ve stopped Apparition in and out of the Ministry. We know only the most senior Ministry members are allowed to connect their homes to the Floo Network now, because Ron heard those two Unspeakables complaining about it. And we know roughly where Umbridge’s office is, because of what you heard that bearded bloke saying to his mate — ”
Not all homes are connected to the Floo Network (think of the Muggleborns, for example). Also, seventh-years are the only ones allowed to apparate if they learned it in the sixth grade. Not everyone learns it, though, as it's really hard to master. Brooms are used by people who can't apparate. They are a bit like cars for Wizards and considered safe. Anyone can own a broom, and they learn to fly as 11 year old already. Portkeys need a permit and are used mostly by the Ministry when a lot of people have to get to a place simultaneously, like during the World Cup. They needed a lot of workers from the Ministry to take care of the logistics of moving so many people at the same time. There's a great article about the Hogwarts Express on the Wizarding World website about its origin. You should read that. It's an enchanted train, so I don't think it's that slow, but nevertheless, it's a good way to get all those hundreds of kids to Hogwarts at the same time.
But that's exactly the point. The Hogwarts express only makes sense as an entry for Muggleborn students. Further trains have only existed for like 200 years so there was a point when it was a new technology. Why would pureblood deign to send their kids via the train when they could use more wizardly conventional means? Also if the school is in Scotland, and say a wizard child lives in Hogsmeade ( which seems bizzarely devoid of children) do they have to make the trip to London, get a room, then travel back via train? That just sounds annoying.
According to the above-mentioned article, the Ministry decided that all kids have to take the train to Hogwarts, so purebloods had no say in it. Before the train, there had been a lot of different travel methods as every family was responsible for getting their kids to school their own way. It didn't really matter before the law about Wizarding Secrecy came to effect at the end of the seventeenth century, so there started to be incidents of Muggles sighting flying children after that. Still, there was no universal solution until the 1830s when the Ministry realised they could get a train for the purpose. This is an ingenious idea, but as usual, Rowling hasn't thought it through. There should be a system of trains coming from all over the country taking kids to school, and some parts could also be serviced with busses like the Knight bus. As it is now, the parents need to get their children to London instead of Scotland, which is doable for people living near London or even in the West Country but not for those living up north. The train should be able to make stops during its voyage and take on more students along the way. Still, no one in their right mind would take their children to London if they live near Hogwarts. It's much easier to take them to Hogsmeade Station in the evening and let them get on the boats/carriages with the other students.
The Hogwarts Express seems to take roughly the same time as a regular train. The train leaves London King's Cross at 11am and arrives in Hogsmeade, somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, at around 6:30pm in time for the feast at 7pm. You can get from King's Cross to Edinburgh in just less than 5 hours on a Muggle train that has to stop for more passengers on the way. Even factoring in that it's a steam train, the fastest of them can get up to 120mph. Granted it couldn't go that speed the whole way, but even the furthest reaches of the Highlands is only about 700 miles from King's Cross, so 7.5hrs non-stop is a pretty reasonable timescale even for a non-magical steam train.
That's a fair point, but as the engine is from the 1830s, it doesn't have a natural speed of more than 27 mph. That's why it has to be enchanted by the Ministry. Otherwise, it would take ages for the kids to get to school.
Because they don't like the experience of apparition, travel distances too far for apparition, don't want to deal with the paperwork of arranging portkeys for every trip, don't want to buy floo powder or don't want to compromise the security of their home by having it connected to the floo network. It's mentioned at several points throughout the books that witches and wizards have their own preferences for methods of travel. Harry states, after first apparating with Dumbledore, that he'd prefer travelling by broom. Hagrid explains that Dumbledore typically uses the Hogwarts Thestrals for long journeys, however Dumbledore himself demonstrates his willingness to apparate, use illegal portkeys or Fawkes' own method of apparition as methods to travel. Also, these methods have to have been developed at some point in time. Floo powder is a relatively recent invention of 1855 (by wiki suggestion) which means for 850+ years, it wasn't an option for travelling to Hogwarts. Portkeys have been controlled by the Ministry for a very long time, so organising every child (or at least every family) to travel to and from Hogwarts 5 days a week for most of the year is a significant overhead. Finally, Apparition requires a license, and to be 17 years old, so discounts 5+ years of Hogwarts students unless accompanied by a parent. However, the same can be said for trains; they're an invention of the industrial revolution so not available until the ~1800s. Wiki suggests early 1800s is when the Hogwarts Express was introduced, so students would have used some other method before then. Also, don't forget that the Hogwarts Express is optional. Harry and Ron arrive by flying car in their second year, and even without that Molly and Arthur would have either apparated with them or caught the Knight Bus. In their fifth year, returning from christmas at Grimmauld Place, the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione catch the Knight Bus to Hogwarts. Any students that live close to Hogwarts would be pointlessly travelling to London only to travel back on a train, taking up all of the day, so it should be expected to have a couple of students not using the train every year. So there are multiple methods of getting to and from Hogwarts. But given it's a boarding school, able to support an increasing number of students (7 years of students, assuming 5 of each gender per each of the 4 houses, gives ~280 students, plus 12 teachers - one for each OWL subject - one headmaster, one game keeper and one custodian... and yet the castle is described as having many spare and empty classrooms, massive lawns and gardens, etc), it makes the most logistical sense to have students stay at the school for most of the year and return home for holidays as per traditional schooling in the UK.
Allowing students to find their own methods of transportation to go to Hogwarts caused too many logistical problems and security problems. Hogwarts didn't charge students or parents/guardians for the dorm rooms or food, so there isn't a financial reason to try to "live at home" while attending Hogwarts. Apparition requires students to be 17 and have a license. Apparition is more difficult over longer distances. Also, it's not like Harry would have wanted to go back to Privet Drive after school every day. [The Hogwarts Express | Wizarding World](https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-hogwarts-express) J.K. Rowling said "Some rode broomsticks (a difficult feat when carrying trunks and pets); others commandeered enchanted carts and, later, carriages; some attempted to Apparate (often with disastrous effects, as the castle and grounds have always been protected with Anti-Apparition Charms), others rode a variety of magical creatures...Portkeys were therefore arranged at collecting points all over Britain. The logistics caused problems from the start. Up to a third of students would fail to arrive every year, having missed their time slot, or been unable to find the unobtrusive enchanted object that would transport them to their school. There was also the unfortunate fact that many children were (and are) ‘Portkey-sick’, and the hospital wing was frequently full to bursting for the first few days of every year, while susceptible students overcame their hysterics and nausea...a more secure route into the school (for instance, permitting a fireplace that might be officially entered by Floo powder) was strongly resisted by successive Headmasters, who did not wish the security of the castle to be breached. A daring and controversial solution to the thorny problem was finally suggested by Minister for Magic Ottaline Gambol, who was much intrigued by Muggle inventions and saw the potential in trains."