Animagi & werewolves

[blaise_42]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C7162
From: blaise_42
Subject: Re: Animagi & werewolves
Reply To: [Yahoo! #7138] Re: Animagi & werewolves
Date: 8/18/00 5:38 am  (ET)

<<Is it legal to kill a werewolf the other 28 days of the month?>>

Indeed yes, a fascinating question. I'm probably going to rely on ideas
that various fanfic authors have thrown out (c.f. Angie's thought that
fanfic authors have to prove the theories other people create - thanks
for that!).

Really, we have no idea what wizards think of werewolves, beyond that
they despise and fear them. I can well believe that wizards are highly
misinformed, perhaps thinking that werewolves are dangerous 29 days
out of 29 (or that they're afraid of pumpkins!). Do werewolves count as
human under wizarding law?

I can't help thinking of Ron's reaction to Remus in the Shrieking Shack.

If wizards were to believe that werewolves were always dangerous,
you could make a case for killing a werewolf any time of the month,
and likewise if they didn't class werewolves as human.

<<Tom Riddle made some remark about Hagrid raising a litter of werewolf
pups under his bed, and it may have been you who pointed out that human
children who turn into wolves one night a month cannot be raised under a
bed. Perhaps there is a magical creature which is wolf-like full-time but
its bite turns a human into a werewolf, and the wizard folk, including
their lawmakers, keep getting confused between the magical creatures and
the infected humans, leading them to make laws that treat the infected
humans as if they were rabid coyotes or plague-carrying rats. >>

Fascinating! I like that as an explanation of what Hagrid had under his
bed. Perhaps if a werewolf bites a real wolf, the wolf becomes one of
these carriers?

I don't think there's much potential for getting the human werewolf and
the wolf werewolf confused, though. They're fundamentally different.

The wolf version is in some ways not such a threat. I think one of
the things wizards find scary about werewolves is that they can't
recognise them. We see no sign of the traditional hairy, long-toothed,
clawed human who is a werewolf in HP; Remus looks normal. A mad wolf is
easier to identify, and there's no chance that it's been living amongst
you. Secondly, if you'll accept my theory on how these wolf-werewolves
are formed, there can't be any (or more than a tiny number) in Britain
because wolves are extinct here.

<<Lockhart claimed to have cured a werewolf with the Homorphus Charm. As
many of Lockhart's boasts were based on other people's actual deeds,
do you think there actually IS a Homorphus Charm?>>

I don't think there is one. For one thing, if there were one, could
Remus' parents not have tried it on him? Or Sirius could have used it
when Remus transformed in PoA. I think it's all a product of Lockhart's
imagination. Either that or the charm causes some sort of great harm to
the werewolf, so that nobody who cared for the werewolf would ever use
it on him.

Wow! I love these complicated, in-depth discussions!

~Blaise.