While reading a book you saw at least ones how characters getting injuries or diseases and how they cope with them. And at least once you wandered is it really how it happens in real life? The thing is that you eventually never search for that kind of information as it is perfectly working inside the story.
But I saw a few risks that come with such an experience. As mostly in our average life we are not facing death that often as main characters of some books does, we may not have the same experience twice. And that also leads to a problem when you face a situation and you was never taught how to operate or react and the only knowledge you have is from the book. So at that exact moment I can say that your life a bit depends on your reading experience and the knowledge that writer gave to you.
That’s why I think it is important to look through these cases and maybe break a few common stereotypes about some injuries and provide people with more life depending useful information.
That’s why I choose as my mission to search that up for you and finally understand would famous books work if the medicine and physics would have worked there in traditional way.
I fully understand that it is not sometimes what people search for while they just want to read literature, but I am also not talking about average accidents that happen to the main characters, so this research is for the greater good of every reader.
I chose to look through the world known books so that everybody could relate to the experience. Thus I will look through the Harry Potter books and see how characters would be affected in real life. I am also choosing this book because it is partly written for kids as well and they are more sensitive than adults and consume all the new information much more efficiently. That is why it is even more important to follow the real life experience in children’s books. Adults could of course tell that something is not accurate when, for example, person falls from ten floor building and then safely runs away, however children may understand that wrongly and think that they would be also safe after that.
I am very concerned about such things, that’s why I think that increasing peoples awareness would help a lot of reader in real life too.
The first book in a Harry Potter series is "Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone". Main characters there are still kids so there are not that many injuries in the book. However three people eventually were hurt there.
We will look closer on each case as the story goes.First person, who was injured, appeared to be Neville Longbottom. And as the story goes we will know that that’s not really an unusual accident as Neville is known for his clumsy behaviour. Even though it is not his main feature it is rather important to know for the story that he is in some way prepared for such things as he aware of his own ponderousness.
This happened during the first quidditch lesson at Hogwarts. Madam Hooch – their teacher gave clear instructions on the first move that they were supposed to learn – sit on the broom and fly a few meters up the ground. However Longbottom successfully failing the first task lost the control of his broom and fall down on the ground.
To understand the whole seriousness of situation we need to know how high he was in the air as there was no other factors affecting him accept from gravity we can predict the injuries. Professor said
“few feet above the ground”
where few means “more than one” or “more than three” as they are eleven years old kids we can count that they were supposed to fly around 2 or 1 meters up as 1 feet equals to 0,3048 meter. Than we include the words about the lost control and assume that he might have flew up a bit higher which I would make the highest of three meters as he slipped to the ground pretty fast and the process of flying up is rather smooth.
Thus we would consider that he fell from the height of 3 meters. A person could not be heart severely when falling off that height even when it’s not jump. Neville was sitting on the broom so he was falling not on his legs one hundred present. The most in danger part was neck, spine and hands. But you are not supposed to broke your neck while falling prom that high on the ground so the worst thing that might have happen to him and eventually happened - he got his wrist broken.
In conclusion, I might say that this injury in pretty accurate to real life even though we cannot really check it directly due to lack of magic artefacts in especially my property unfortunately. Also, if somebody owns any types of broomsticks, or other artefacts, or plants, or animals that would be mentioned in this article you may send them to me to make this work even more accurate. I will check them all and tell my readers the whole truce about accuracy of real life experience in Harry Potter books.
Second person, who was injured was Ron Weasley. Strangely enough in this book Harry won’t be on the list. He fainted once but that was a curse, so we won’t count that. Back to Ron – during their operation for saving Philosopher’s Stone from Snape he was knocked out by a stone queen of chess.
“She struck Ron hard around the head with her stone arm and he crashed to the floor. He looked as if he’d been knocked out.”
So according to the explanation we can probably say that he was hit by a rock that fall on his head with some power.
We will equate this situation to when a kid would be hit with a rock that somebody has thrown at them. So first step is to understand the size of the rock. As the chess were described as
“all taller than they (kids) were and carved from what looked like black stone”
we may say that the size of queen’s arm might be 1.5 times bigger than child’s arm probably like an average adult’s size and so would weight 13,5 kg if we would assume that the stone that they saw was black granite (average human weight is around 70 kg one arm is around 6,5% of the body weight which would be around 4,5 kg; the density of human body is around 1000 kg/m3; the density of the black granite is 3000 kg/m3). Considering this as the most probable truth we will move to the next point of hitting Ron. It is said that he was
“struck hard”
so at least at the speed of freefall which is 9,81 m/s2 so the power of the hit was 132.435 kg/m2*s2 which is not much at all it is a bit higher than the minimum possible power of hit. So the initiative was not to hurt but to knock off.
Considering everything said before, if hit into the right part effect would be knocking person off but without proper knowledge it martial arts Ron would probably just feel pain but would not get any serious injurie. Although he was knocked off his injurie would probably be concussion that would last no longer than a few minutes just enough to leave him just fine in the chambers for only Herminie and Harry to go further.
One last thing just for the Snape funs. As we know he was scratched by Fluffy at some point. He was said to “limping”, but how he should have been scratched to limp? As it turned out – not that hard. A few dip scratches that would cut bundles on his leg is enough. And as we know Fluffy is a huge three-headed dog so for him it is also not a problem to scratch Snape that hard even without struggling or repeating the movement.
Thus, we can say that he probably was not faking it, and the pain was real too. Such injuries are pretty fast to cure themselves and as we know that they are wizards his bundles were probably fine in a few days.
These were all characters that were hurt in one or other way to gain any kind of injuries in first Harry Potter book.
Now we are heading to the second book and to the new problems and deathly dangerous quests that are awaiting our now twelve year’s old kids. Without any further and due let’s just start we the injuries. But when I started to reread the book I found a few controversial moments, where students or professors were not really hurt at all but technically could have been heard really severally. For example, in chapter 5 when elf Dobby has blocked the entry column on platform 9 and ¾ so Ron and Harry just run into it on the full speed flying over their carriages. In the book they were just a bit hurt but nothing serious, however in reality it could have caused and more severe consequences like dislocation of a wrist. Though someone would have to try really hard to make that injury, still we should consider this possibility.
Another controversial thing is the scene with the wimping willow and flying car. Boys landed on a living tree that was mad with them and started throwing its brunches on them sitting inside of the car and the only thing that they were left with were Ron’s broken magic wand and slight shock. And I would doubt that tree was so specific to not hit them or that they were that cool to dodge every single hit of the willow. Also, considering that the tree was hitting with the power of average person power and it was hitting as it was somebody holding bat. So then a few powerful hits on the roof and it would be already highly dangerous to be inside of the car as every other hit could have been on the head of one of them probably making unconscious. The same thing is with the windows as they could have been broken with bat easily enough making next target kids heads. However, weeping willow completely ignores all of these possibilities, hopefully, on purpose as she understands that they are just kids and she was not made for killing just for scaring and even hurting then just a little. Ok, now after discussing these controversial scenes we can move on to the actual injuries.
The first severely injury is finally getting the main character – Harry James Potter. During the quiddich match in 10th chapter he was chased by cursed blundger that was bewitched by Dobby the elf, and eventually had his arm broken. Well the flying ball that can speed as fast as he wants, most probably cannot only break someone’s arm but also cause something even more serious. But back to the topic, we don’t know its speed during this moment so we will consider that everything is accurate either the way, the speed or even the angle.
However Harry didn’t manage to avoid further injuries. In Chamber of Secrets when he was defeating the basilisk he was poisoned, but again, as we don’t have any comparison to any living snake’s poison we cannot say how strong it was. But the thing that bothers me more is the size of the fang that this giant snake left in Harry’s arm. As we know he took it out of his hand which means that blood was coming out. In arm there is a very important artery and if it would have been even a little bit touched Harry would lose a lot of blood in a very short period of time and then fainted. And as he didn’t know how deep he was bit it was the worst idea to pull out the fang even though it was poisoned. And as there are no consequences of that it is strange.
I wanted to end this book with these last but one of the most dangerous scenes in which nobody was luckily hurt even though the possibility of it was the highest. I’m talking about the collapsed ceiling in the dungeon on the way to the chamber of secrets scene. The ceiling crashed from the professor smashed himself in it. And even if we won’t talk about the fact that professor was heavily injured and unconscious for a long time as it was the caused by magic we should definitely think about the amount of injuries that Harry and Ron might have gotten due to the rain of stones when the ceiling crushed on them. Not only they could have easily broke their arms and legs but as the worst thing they could have truly been buried under that rocks or just die from the hit of one of the stones. And if in other cases the danger was not really that serious and mostly could have been regulated in one or other way there is no way that children could manage the falling ceiling in the dungeon. So we can definitely say that both of the boys are extremely lucky to not only survive this event but also not to get any injuries out of it.
To sum up this book I can definitely say that here main characters faced much more deadly quests then in the first book. And not only the amount of problems they had to solve themselves but also the level of danger that they had to overcome and survive to save other people too.
This book could have easily become the last for Ron and Harry, so we will continue to count further dangers that they will meet. See you in the next book.
After hard times during the second book we are happily moving on and starting the next school year on a pretty good note. Not heading that far from the beginning Harry faced the first so called danger. If riding in the bus unfastened was deadly. For the context there were no proper sits just beds and the driver was called not the best, as he kept speeding up and then stopping almost immediately for passenger’s stops. Luckily harry himself was not hurt even though the possibility of that was extremely high, however harry was a bit concerned for other passengers who seem to not care at all about the manners of driving.
The next frightening moment happened during the class of caring for magical creatures, the main Hogwarts bully and Harries enemy Draco Malfoy was hurt by the Hippogriff. As this is magical creature we may assume that we cannot say precisely how he would have been scratched. However we know for sure that its body and front paws were like eagles. The strength of an eagles grip vary from 21 kg/sm2 to 28 kg/sm2 which is not the lightest grip. But more than a serious scratch there would not be so Draco got the worst possible scenario however not even closely deadly. He was just lucky enough to hipogriph to scratch his arm and not face.
The next injury I can hardly call so but the victim was again Draco Malfoy. He was joking about Hagrid(the teacher of caring for magical creatures) and how pathetic he is. And fairly enough he was immediately slapped in the face by Hermione. Nothing serious just a slap, so he probably just got a bruise or even nothing, because slap in not a serious combat move at all.
One of the most dangerous fights happened near the Weeping Willow with the black dog. In this accident Ron Wesley was heavenly injured twice. First he was bit by a dog in his arm. This injury we may consider as a not serious one as we know that the dog was not stray and was not rabies. So the worst Ron got a bite on his arm or a few scratches or bruises. However the second injurie is much more serious – he broke his leg and not in a nice way.
“All they could see now was one of Ron's legs, which he had hooked around a root in an effort to stop the dog from pulling him farther underground – but a horrible crack cut the air like a gunshot; Ron's leg had broken, and a moment later, his foot vanished from sight.”
From this paragraph we can definitely say that his fracture is not the best one. And in the book it is said that he just got the broken leg but in reality it could have been not just that but the open fracture that would have led to a blood loss and Ron most probably would also faint. So even though his injury was yet the worst that happened to any of kids though Harry also broke his arm in previous book but I think that the broken leg is much worse especially considering the situation that they were in trying to escape from a few deadly creatures – the dog and the willow, - while Harry was just attacked by enchanted ball.
Apart from Ron - Herminie and Harry were also injured during this battle. Harry was knocked off by a dog but got mostly just bruises, and both Harry and Herminie were hit by a willow that we can count as hit with the rod or twig by human. Yes, it was most likely really painful but again nothing more serious than a couple of bruises and scratches as they escaped it really fast.
That was all for this book as we as usual don’t count the multiple injuries that were got by the main characters with the help of magic spells and magical creatures. We also don’t count the trauma that kids most likely got during these battles with multiple magical creatures that can suck up your soul.
To conclude this book I would say that Ron was most in danger and probably could have easily die from blood loss if the fracture was open. It seems like he got the most deadly challenges so far out of all main characters in this books. Well, we will wish him best in the next books and finish our analysis of the third book in Harry Potter series.