harry potter - Why do first years cross the lake to get to the castle?

It makes sense to keep them together, and to have them arrive in the Great Hall separately from the rest of the school for the Sorting. But why the boats? The lake crossing is dramatic, but inefficient - as we see in book 4 when Dennis Creevey falls in the lake during the storm.

Is there a canon (books/movies or JKR) explanation for why the first years come up from the train in boats instead of carriages?

Answer

One explanation (not QUITE canon but based on it) is the thestrals.

You probably do NOT want any first-years who are already traumatized by having seen a death to be even further spooked by seeing a rather frightening animal pulling the carriages.

This line of thought is actually somewhat backed up by JKR. In an Pottercast interview, when discussing the (obviously unwritten) possible graduation rituals/ceremonies at Hogwarts, she said:

JN: Did you have ideas for what kind of traditions that they would do? Like ride the boats back out of Hogwarts, obviously, I think it's the cutest thing...

JKR: Oh yeah, definitely. No, I think the boats would've been the most poetic and beautiful way to get-- for them to leave. And symbolic in that they-- Harry wouldn't have seen the thestrals again, you know what I mean? It would've been a return to innocence, really. And passage over water is so symbolic, you know, in the history of magic, so, yeah. That would've been great.

(src: Anelli, Melissa, John Noe and Sue Upton. "PotterCast Interviews J.K. Rowling, part one." PotterCast #130, 17 December 2007.)

Note the last bolded sentence too. Apparently, the passage over water has special magical significance (I am not sure of what kind) - it may also play part in first-years arrival.

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In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

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When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

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