Pettigrew/Scabbers & Marauders' Map

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 4537


> Griffindor. Harry had the map a relatively short time, perhaps he, 
too, only 
> checked outside the Griffindor house, or along the routes he was 
planning to 
> take when he consulted it.

Another thing to think about is that there will be well over a 
thousand little tiny names wriggling around on that map, right? Or 
are only SOME names/figures shown? And if only some, which I think 
likely or it would be too cumbersome to use, then there is some form 
of "filtering" going on. I think that "filtering" is just a natural 
part of the way magic works. It does what it's intended to do.

Magic in the HP universe doesnt' follow scientific logic completely, 
it also follows intent. (For example, when you need bones regrown, 
you drink a Skele-Gro potion, whether it's an arm or a leg, and the 
potion responds in part to the INTENT of what it's supposed to do and 
regrows the correct bones.) And the intent of this item is to show 
what the viewer needs to see. Harry himself didn't appear on the map 
until after it had been explained to him and he INTENDED to use it. 
Then low and behold, there's a little Harry Potter figure on it. He 
needed to know how to open the hump-backed witch, the map showed him. 
No one would have seen Pettigrew on the map because no one knew he 
was alive, so the intent part of the magic would have left him out. 
Lupin did see him, however, because he was suspicious and intended, 
when he looked at the map, to find hidden things on it, to understand 
what was going on, and Lupin knew enough of what was involved to 
include Pettigrew in his schema. Then the map obligingly showed him 
Peter, much to his surprise. When Harry intended to see who was 
sneaking around the castle, he saw Barty Crouch Jr. Peter spent his 
time at Hogwarts as a pet rat, so in that innocuous mode he just 
didn't show up. 

This whole "intent" thing just seems so important to understanding 
magic. We are SO stuck in our perfectly logical scientific way of 
looking at things (obviously, since that's the way our world works) 
that it's hard to see that the Wizarding World just operates by 
different logic. 

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon