The Chance for NEW CANON- cont.

[davewitley]

Erin wrote:

> Well, here it is, February 5th and less than one month until the 
> World Book Day Online festival.  Which you can read about here:
> 
> http://www.bloomsbury.com/Childrens/news.asp?id=185
> 
> 
> JKR is going to do what she hasn't done for literally years.  
She's 
> going to participate in a live web chat!  

Am I being brainless or were there no actual instructions for 
getting into the chat at that url?

>  I've been trying to find out what needs to be done, and what I 
know 
> so far is that the chat will be March 4th, 10 A.M. to 11 A.M.  I'm 
> assuming that's British time.  Forgive me, but I haven't yet 
looked 
> up what the time difference is between there and the states (and 
any 
> other relevent places) but I'm thinking it will be sometime in the 
> wee hours of the morning for those of us in the US.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

EST: 5 hours behind; Pacific time, 8 hours behind; Australia 8 - 11 
hours ahead (for some reason Sydney and Melbourne seem to observe 
Daylight saving Time but not Perth).
 
> I thought, in the meantime, maybe we could think of some more good 
> questions to ask. The thing is, if we ask stuff like "Is 
Dumbledore 
> going to die?" or "Will Harry and Ginny hook up?" she won't 
answer, 
> and we need to keep that in mind. We should take this as an 
> opportunity to ask the little questions that have been niggling 
us, 
> not the big burning ones that are gonna get answered in the end 
> anyway.

If they have implications that are not obvious, so much the better.  
That's why I asked the Stan Shunpike one - because it plays into 
debates about class in Harry Potter and whether some of the class 
distinctions are unconscious, merely observed, or part of the 
developing themes.  But I don't think it's immediately obvious that 
asking if Stan went to Hogwarts illuminates those issues.

> Why all the bad teeth?  At last count, Snape, Sirius, and 
Karkaroff 
> all had yellow teeth, and now Hagrid's gotten some teeth knocked 
out 
> by Grawp. Has the wizarding world never heard of dentists?

Isn't this just a cultural difference between the US and the UK?  
Her answer may well just be 'haven't you read the passages with 
Professor Lockhart in?'  Sirius, Karkaroff and Snape don't have bad 
teeth, they just happen not to be slaves to fashion.

David