So it’s come to this: JK Rowling is out of retcon revelations and now we all know how Godric Gryffindor used to shit on the floor. The official Twitter account for Pottermore dropped a steaming piece of trivia on us all today, writing “Hogwarts didn’t always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the 18th century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence.†The fan response has mostly been “why, god, why?†with a few intrepid souls really thinking this wild assertion through. How did they clean the booty? What about students who hadn’t learned vanishing yet? What happened to my childhood? Who can I blame for this mental image?
The solution, probably, is the same as many rudimentary tasks in the Potterverse: house elf slavery. But is this waste disposal system any more outlandish than how muggles crapped in ye olde times? People pissed on the floor all the time at Versailles. And chamber pots were the standard for nighttime elimination for centuries. In conclusion, every generation before 1900-ish had more interaction with their poop than we do now and isn’t it great to be modern?