Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In Philosopher's Stone, we hear Dumbledore replying to McGonagall's query as to whether he could do something about the scar baby Harry has on his forehead:
“Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground." - Chapter 1, The Boy Who Lived.
Now, I have no idea what that last sentence means.
It could be because English is not my native tongue. Is it some kind of a joke, or does it really mean something?
The London Underground is a public transport network of underground railways in London, also called The Tube.
Dumbledore is referring to the Tube Map, which is the map used by travellers on the underground. It’s not simply an overlay of the railway lines onto a map of London; it’s a simplified version of lines to make it easier to follow. It’s become a cultural icon for London, and is recognised as a design classic. This is how Wikipedia describes it:
Beck [the designer] was a London Underground employee who realised that because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another — only the topology of the railway mattered. This approach is similar to that of electrical circuit diagrams. […]
To this end, Beck devised a simplified map, consisting of stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the River Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or on 45 degree diagonals.
This is a recent version of the Tube Map:
It’s a very distinctive image. Most people in Britain would instantly associate it with London. It’s quite an unnatural arrangement of lines (and hence quite remarkable), but also something that most British readers would be familiar with.
I expect it was intended as a joke for British readers. Rowling probably didn’t expect the original books to have such a large international audience.
(Sorry if it that seems as I’m over-explaining it, but I’m guessing that since the OP isn’t a native English speaker, they probably didn’t grow up in the UK and don’t realise the map’s cultural significance.)
As far as I know, it’s never explained how he got this scar. Rowling said in an interview that she might explain it eventually:
How did Dumbledore get his scar in the London Underground?
You may find out one day. I am very fond of that scar.
But I don’t think she ever followed up. Perhaps a future Pottermore update?
The London Underground refers to the underground train system. I.e. the subway. The British also call the Underground "The Tube".
There's no reason the statement couldn't be literally true, i.e. Dumbledore has a complex scar above his left knee, the lines of which correspond to the lines of a map of the London subway system. The most likely interpretation is thus that Dumbledore is indulging in a bit of hyperbole: the scar consists of intersecting lines, and if you squint just right, you can see similarities between it and a map of the London Underground. It's really not any more complicated than that.
The answers here already explain what the London underground is, so I won't go into that. I think it's quite likely Dumbledore was being literal when he said he had a perfect map of London underground on his knee. It's exactly the kind of thing that you would attribute to Dumbledore's character.
I'll go further and say whilst Dumbledore doesn't lie (generally speaking) in the books, he does an awful lot of redirecting questions he doesn't think should be answered. At this point he's not fully aware of the scar's significance but he may already suspect there's more to it than just being a scar and is redirecting the conversation.
