Afterlife - Warlock - Stag - Chapter Summary - Triwizard Cup - Veela

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 23778

Amy Z wrote:

> JKR has said that the happiest people don't become 
> ghosts; what then does happen to them?  

'the next great adventure'

Gwyneth wrote:
> What's a Warlock?

> What makes a Warlock different from a Wizard? Because 
> Dumbledore is Head Warlock or something-like-that,
> is he a Warlock?  So can a Warlock be a Wizard?  Are
> all warlocks wizards?  Are all wizards warlocks? Can 
> a witch be a warlock?  What is a warlock?

Gwendolyn Grace replied:

> So I humbly submit that the explanation is as 
> simple as "warlock" is a specifically male term, 
> "witch" is a specifically female term, and 
> "wizard" is a more-or-less male term but that 
> can be loosely applied to both genders.
(snip)
> BTW, Gwyneth, Dumbledore is "Supreme Mugwump," 

The Hogwarts letterhead says:
"HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc.,
Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International 
Confed. of Wizards)

I understand that to mean that Dumbledore is O.M. 1st class Grand
Sorcerer (like Order of the British Empire, Knight Commander) and he is
also Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards. I
imagine that in this case we can forget all the political meanings of
Mugwump, in regard to Abolition, Presidential election of James G.
Blaine, etc, and go by its original meaning "big chief", and go on to
imagine that Supreme Mugwump is the title they give to to people whom us
Muggles would call something like Secretary-General Emeritus.

The title Chf. Warlock is there on the letterhead and I have little idea
what it means: I don't even have a theory whether it is one of his
ranks/offices in International Confederation of Wizards. 

But 'what does "warlock" mean in the Potterverse?" is my usual answer
for what would I ask JKR if I could ask her one question. Most recently
in my post #23508, where I said:

Note to people in the Muggleverse: 'warlock' doesn't mean 'oathbreaker'
in the Potterverse, or Ernie MacMillan wouldn't describe himself as
descended from nine generations of witches and warlocks and Quidditch
wouldn't be called 'the noble sport of warlocks'. That genealogy sounds
as if 'warlock' was a synonym for 'wizard' but it seems terribly
redundant to have two words that mean exactly the same, so I like the
theory that 'warlock' means a Member of Parliament, I mean a
Representative to the Wizards' Council, Warlocks' Convocation,
International [Con]Federation of Wizards/Warlocks, and so on. Perkins
(Arthur's subordinate) being 'an old warlock' could mean that he was a
Representative who got voted out, so his old friends got him a civil
service job where he is protected by his friends from ever getting a bad
performance review. Also, it could be linked to 'warlock' meaning
'oathbreaker' by reference to campaign promises.

Which leads to second question: are International
Confederation/Federation of Wizards/Warlocks (Steve's Lexicon lists the
three names JKR used) different organizations or different names for the
same organization? I prefer the latter.  

Mindy wrote:

> If James Potter turned into a Stag, then how 
> on earth did he fit into the Whomping Willow 
> tree to join Lupin the werewolf every month? 
> He'd be noticed in no time -- a dog or rat 
> can be unnoticed but not a STAG! Any answers?

Being noticed would hardly be a problem for James Potter: he had the
Invisibility Cloak. He could remain under the clock until he was in
tunnel and transform there and go the rest of the way in stag form, if
the stag wouldn't fit into the tunnel, he could wait by the Whomping
Willow for the other three to come out, waiting in stag form but covered
by the Invisibility Cloak.

Susanna Pigwidgeon37 wrote:

> Question 11: I cannot get rid of the thought 
> that some of the less important characters, and 
> especially Lockhart, are caricatures of very real
> and unpleasant persons JKR met and couldn't resist
> to have her little revenge on. What do you think? 

IIRC JKR has said in interviews that Lockhart is based on a real person
but she's not going to tell who. Someone on list suggested that Lockhart
is based on her ex-husband, and I find that extremely plausible.

> Question 12: Do you think that Lockhart's way of 
> presenting himself as The- One- Who- Always- Knows-
> Best is a result of stupidity combined with 
> selfishness and conceit,

Yes. He seems to have been convinced by his own propaganda. It would be
amazingly stupid as a strategy because he keeps getting proved wrong
right away.

> Is he a Slytherin?

OF COURSE. His ambition obviously is to be famous, to be admired, to be
doted on by old ladies, and to make some money from his books. He stops
at nothing to achieve that ambition, including trying to leave a young
student (Ginny) to die.

Elizabeth smurfs wrote:
 
> A question I do have about the Cup however, is: 
> Did Harry ever get to keep the Cup? I do not 
> remember it being mentioned.

I had the impression (based on some real-life competitions, not on the
text) that the Cup would be housed in the Trophy Room of the winning
school until it was won by another school.

Martin Hooper wrote:

> I was wondering if anyone had any theory's/ideas 
> about what veela's are?

Sofie wrote:

> P.S (Are their male Veela? Because they aren't
> mentioned. If not how do they breed, or do real 
> Veela (as opposed to half Veela) live forever?)
  
As several people have mentioned, vila are real folklore from the
Balkans (and IIRC also from Russia), altho' they are called by a variety
of names: nereid and rusalka in Greece for example. They live in the
woods or underwater. If men go into the woods at night, vila lure them
into dancing with them and dance them to death, if either men or
children gaze too long into bodies of water, a vila will rise up enough
to hug them affectionately -- and drag them underwater to drown. I
imagine that the former story was told by wives to husbands to try to
discourage them from being seduced by young beauties from other
villages, and the latter story was told by mothers to their children to
try to discourage them from playing near bodies of water where they
might fall in and drown. 

Vila turn into swans and fly away by putting on their swan skins. If a
man is clever enough that he steals a vila's swan skin (while she had
taken it off to dance) instead of being embraced by her, then she has to
marry him and keep his house and bear his children until she is able to
steal back her swan skin, whereupon she puts it on and flies away home.
This swan stuff is supposed to have supplied the plots for ballets like
Swan Lake. It also is overwhelmingly reminiscent of a zillion Irish
tales about selkies.

There are no male veelas in the real folklore. There, veelas are
suggested to be the spirits of girls who died unmarried and childless.
Because they became spirits without having used their fertility for
child-bearing, they still have that fertility and therefore are
invoked/honored as fertility spirits at various agricultural festivals
and at weddings.   

JKR's veelas probably are NOT ghosts. They could be an all-female
species if they grew on trees (or if they reproduced by parthenogenesis
like certain species of anole lizard in real life). They could be the
females of a species whose males look nothing like them -- who maybe
look like hideously dwarves and spend most of their time underground
mining for gold and jewels. If the males and the females were all that
different from each other, they might get together only once or twice a
year, for purposes of reproduction, at some kind of big orgy ... like
Beltane?
------------------------------------------------------------------
Pepperwood, thunderbird down, seven inches
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R ighteous
A ttractive
V ictorious
E ager
N atural
C lassy
L echerous
A mazing
W ise
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