Arthur Not Attacking Lucius and Ron's Eat Slugs Spell (WAS: CoS cringes)

[erisedstraeh2002]

Constance Vigilance ("Susan Miller") wrote:

> The bookstore. Lucius says the most awful things to Arthur and 
> Arthur does - nothing? <snip> Related book-cringe - why did Arthur 
> attack Lucius here, anyway? How un-wizardly is that? It would have 
> been much more effective, not to say lots more fun, to have Arthur 
> whip out his wand and spin some curdling curse.  

Now me:

With respect to why Arthur attacked Lucius physically instead of with 
his wand in the book - Lucius has obviously hit a sore spot with 
Arthur with his blatant anti-Muggle prejudice.  IMO, Arthur attacks 
Lucius physically (rather than magically) because he loses his head 
in his anger.

I agree that the movie missed a key event by excluding the Arthur-
Lucius fight.  We have so much more to learn about Voldemort's first 
reign of terror, and it could quite possibly have involved a Lucius-
led attack on the Weasley family.  So there could be a lot of history 
behind that brawl.

Constance Vigilance again:

> Like-father-like-son, it would have nicely set up Ron for "Eat 
> slugs, Malfoy" later.

Me again:

The "Eat slugs, Malfoy" spell in the movie bugged me because all of 
the spells (with the notable exception of Voldemort's recorporation 
potion) are in Latin.  While the book doesn't say what Latin term Ron 
used for the slug spell, to be consistent with all of the other 
spells, it would have *had* to have been in Latin.  So I was bothered 
when the movie turned it into English.

~Phyllis