Dumbledore, Head of House, Portkeys

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 132

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Sister Mary Lunatic" wrote:
> 
> besides, no one had noticed Ginny's troubled behavior during the 
> school year -- surely McGonagall, as her Housemaster/mistress, 
> should have been paying closer attention.

Yes. I am sure the Head of the House is supposed to notice when her 
charges are in trouble, and figure out (how?!) whether the cause is 
normal teen-age behavior that is best ignored, a real-life problem 
that needs a word of advice, an emotional problem that needs a word 
of comfort (how is Snape at giving words of comfort?!), or an onset 
of mental illness that requires professional attention. What kind of 
professional attention do wizards give to mental illnesses? Charms, 
Potions, talk therapy? Is Madam Pomfrey in charge of it?

> Harry's life was in jeopardy from the Dementors, and possibly 
> Sirius and Lupin (for all Prof D knew), in PoA

Dumbledore was trying to protect Harry (and incidentally the other 
students) from the Dementors and from Sirius Black by methods such 
as forbidding the Dementors to come into the castle (they had been 
forbidden to come to the Quidditch game and came anyway and 
Lupin reported that -"Dumbledore was angrier than I had ever 
seen him"- (the funny punctuation is a quasi-quote, which 
indicates that I will be very surprised if I got the quote 
right, but you-all know to what I am referring)) and forbidding Harry 
to go to Hogmeade. Dumbledore should know, and have set guards on, 
all the secret passages (maybe not the one Harry used: the Whomping 
Willow IS a guard), but maybe Sirius evaded the guards by being 
Padfoot. Even having gotten into the castle, he couldn't have gotten 
into Gryffindor tower (and Harry's dorm) if Crookshanks hadn't 
brought him Neville's written list of the week's passwords (see, it 
wasn't Neville being careless and losing the list like his toad!). 

Dumbledore knew that Lupin is a good guy, and I (being slow on the 
uptake) only realized last week that the reason that Lupin was on the 
Hogwarts Express, instead of arriving before the students like all 
the other teachers, is that Dumbledore had asked him to ride the 
train to guard Harry (at least I figured that out for myself before I 
read it in a fanfic!).

> I wonder if there is an explanation as to why a person can PORTKEY 
> into Hogwarts and out of Hogwarts, when Apparating is impossible.

I think people have already said that Portkeying probably requires 
having a spell placed at the destination point as well as on the 
device, while Apparating doesn't require a spell to be placed at at 
the destination point. So one needs an Anti-Apparating spell to keep 
unwanted people from Apparating in, but only to control who places 
Portkey Destination Spells on the grounds to keep unwanted people 
from Portkeying in.

I wonder how expensive a spell Portkey is? An American wizarding 
school could be a day school for kids from half the continent if they 
each were issued a Portkey that went to school in the morning, each 
morning, and home in the afternoon.