Daily Prophet; Searching through Archives/FAQs; Harry's Favorite Friend(s); Ron's Ambition

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 16862

Hi --

Thanks to Joywitch for her entertaining Daily Prophet edition (I have a
copy for baby's scrapbook)!!  :--)  Unfortunately, Professor Trelawney's
accurate prediction tally seems to be holding out at *2*!  Elizabeth
Grace is late ......

SEARCH FEATURE: I've noticed a few people commenting on the search
feature on Yahoogroups (and its general lack of utility).  I agree!
Writing the FAQs and trying to use that search function has been a real
challenge.  For the newbies who aren't aware, there is a "FAQs
Committee" working on a set of topical substantive FAQs (essays really)
on topics ranging from each major character, the economy, government &
social issues of the wizarding world, spells, wands, potential romance
pairings -- really everything.  There are 50+ FAQs in all, and I think
that at this point about 50% of them are ready to be uploaded.

We are having some discussions about where to upload these documents,
but I'm hopeful that this will all be resolved soon.  I'm sure the
old-timers are all thinking, "Yeah, right.  We've been hearing *this*
for about forever now."  But, it is the truth.  We do have most of them
written or in draft form.  If you search the Archives and type in FAQs
Update, I think you should find a reasonably recent message from me that
lists out all the FAQs if you're curious as to what we're covering.  It
has been a real challenge since we originally were covering about 7500
messages from our Yahoo Club days, and the message tally has risen to
nearly 25,000 in the aggregate since we started this project.  So ....
soon.  Soon, I hope!  :--)

Segueing into my next topic --

> I wrote:
> >Conversely, no one has yet commented on my ... >ahem
> .... *brilliant*(IMHO) analysis of why Harry >clearly
> would not favor either of his best friends >over the
> other.  Sigh.  Oh well.  I'll just assume >I'm right.
>
>
> Kathy replied: :)  Well, it probably won't surprise you that I
> completely disagreed with it, but I figured there wasn't much point in going back over arguments we've
> been through a million times before.
>
Well, I used the Yahoogroups search feature, since I couldn't recall us
having discussed this particular issue in the past.  I didn't find
anything.  So, I'm left not knowing what your opinion is really.  I do
know that you believe Harry cares for Ron more than Hermione, and I know
you have plenty of reasons why you believe this to be so.  But, I don't
know that you've specifically addressed my argument that Harry says
pretty clearly at the bottom of the lake that Hermione is his friend too
-- he thinks they are equally important according to his own words in
the 2nd Task.  But, no big deal if you don't want to discuss it
further.  Just noting that I don't recall it having been discussed in
the past, and the search feature didn't yield anything.

HERMIONE'S FRIENDS -- I agree with Jim that clearly Harry and Ron are
her best friends!  But, I still say we don't really know that she
doesn't have other friends or at least acquaintances.  The Eloise Midgen
example is a good one.  She doesn't really have close friends to fall
back on -- we see Ron hanging out with the twins & Lee and/or Seamus &
Dean in GoF when he's estranged from the Trio.  In PoA, we are
definitely left with the impression that Hermione is pretty much on her
own.  But, she did have alot of studying to do at that point, and she
probably did at least have acquaintances to eat meals with & so forth.
I don't think her dorm-mates would have snubbed her & refused to let her
eat lunch with them for example.

RON'S AMBITION -- Thanks to Rita for making some good points about
things that Ron could be doing to advance his ambitions & goals.  :--)

Penny



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