FicWad

That's good to point out, actually! I had been thinking that if it wasn't in dialogue, I didn't have to worry about word choice. If readers experience that as internal monologue, though, that kind of controls, and I need to be careful. In this one case humor probably does not trump everything, and I will go change the word the way you suggested.

Thank you!

Change made. The bit about the economy stays, though, because it is a dig at another piece of fan fiction. Specifically, _Methods of Rationality_, in which Harry wants to use arbitrage to exploit the fixed exchange rates of metals in the wizarding world. I think that based on the books, though, almost all the gold on earth appears to be within the wizard economy and not the muggle one. So you couldn't hurt the wizard economy that way, and you'd violate the Statute of Secrecy far before you could do anything bad to the muggle one. So that bit is just a throw-away line for people who have read too much fanfic. :P I am totally not above inserting that kind of joke, even if I am extremely low-key about it -- it is by _far_ not the only one in here!

In general, there's a very good chance that slightly jarring things have complicated justifications, I'm afraid. The bit about religion, for instance, went in there because it is trendy nowadays to throw little fits about "cultural appropriation", whether it's justified or not. I was drawing attention to the fact that while I as the author had done a little bit of that, wizards in the Harry Potter universe are way, way worse about absolutely everything. That's not just insulating myself from criticism, although that certainly crossed my mind -- I think any sufficiently complicated bit of fanfiction has to deal with the issue at some point.

Hopefully my actual motivations are not as interesting as the story that results. :)