a few thoughts ...

[Elbereth]

No: HPFGUIDX 25235

Hello, all! ~~

Just de-lurking after my first week on the List, a week of reading
everything with great fascination!

I'm another Arabelle Figg type:  43-yr-old Canadian me and my Siamese cats.
 (I'm the stupid kitten with the opposable thumbs.)   ;-]

Just a few comments from the cheap seats, prompted by the recent
discussions -- I apologize for not crediting the people who twigged them,
but I'm not that organized  this week.  %]

1.  The Order of the Phoenix:  my thought on this is that it will be a new
group, formed by Dumbledore and named for Fawkes -- something along the
lines of the Order of the Knights of the Round Table.  The membership will
come from the "old crowd" and Harry's gang, and their mandate will be to
work against Voldemort unbeknownst to the MoM.

2.  Snape isn't that farfetched, isn't a stereotype -- he's almost exactly
like a math teacher I had in high school.  He was a hard-faced and stern
man who browbeat and mocked his class -- he had developed the knack of
seeing clearly with his peripheral vision, so it didn't matter that he was
staring out the window, he *knew* what you were doing.  He terrified
everyone by having people stand and explain algebra questions on the
overhead projector -- I recall one classmate (who was, come to think of it,
much like Neville) who actually fainted when called upon ...

3.  Dumbledore has every reason to "look old" without it being some Omen of
Doom.  JKR has said that witches and wizards live longer than Muggles, and
that Minerva McGonagall is in her 70's (?) and Albus Dumbledore is twice
that.  Compare that, however, to Nicholas Flammell, who is in his mid-600's
-- there's also no real guarantee that Dumbledore was *taking* the potion
that his partner Flammell had developed with the Philosopher's Stone ...

4.  I wish I could find the ruddy reference, but I distinctly recall JKR
saying sometime last year that Lupin would be back in Book5, and that he
would play an important role in Book7.  So sweet Remus ain't dead yet,
folks!  OTOH, I can't help but recall with dread that the archetypal
werewolf *dies* at the end of the movie/book/fairy tale ...  8-[

5.  And finally, an icky thought that can only be discussed in an adult HP
group -- no, no, the ListElves may calm themselves, I shall be delicate!
<bweg>  Okay, here goes:  I suspect that Bertha Jorkins may have played a
more involved role in Voldy's revival than JKR can ever reveal.  But I ask
myself ... we see Voldemort early on as a face manifested on someone else's
body (Quirrel, who always makes me think of squirrels, but I digress); we
hear V. talked about as if he were a weak and disembodied spirit, a
phantasm, an evil influence.  THEN, after months in hiding, and months with
the unwilling company of Bertha Jorkins (missing person and presumably
"pure"-blooded witch) Voldy shows up in his, as someone so aptly put it,
"ugly baby form".  So.  Were the powers of evil using poor Bertha as a
magically-augmented incubator?  Voldemort's body, the form he took before
The Graveyard Scene, had to come from somewhere ... <shudder>  (Sorry, I
just thought I share that nightmare image, so I don't have it all to
myself, ick.)

Elbereth (a.k.a. BlueEyedTigress)

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   "Watashi no hobaakurafuto wa unagi de ippai desu."
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