gadgets/Accountant/Eyeglasses/Fake Dementor/Fletcher/Cats/Mudbloods

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 30499

Gwen/Lee wrote:

> I have often wondered about Dumbledore's seeming fondness for 
> gadgets. The Put-outer, the watch with planets, the mirror, the 
> Philosopher's Stone, the Pensieve--is there a pattern here?

I dunno that the Stone and the Mirror are gadgets, but CoS 
describes Dumbledore's office as "a large and beautiful circular
room, full of funny little noises. A number of curious silver 
instruments stood on spindlelegged tables, whirring and emitting 
little puffs of smoke." Instruments = Gadgets.

Megan wrote:

> I think Ron's statement about his "2nd cousin accountant" is quite
> interesting myself, this forming the assumption that there are no
> wizard accountants (why not?) 

Might the accounting be done by House Elves, just among their many 
tasks? Or wizard folk take their shoe boxes of crumpled receipts to 
Muggle accountants -- accountancy being what Muggles contribute to 
wizards!

> & the fact that Ron uses that title to associate his cousin's job
> as being extremely Muggle-like.(snip) Did Ron mean that this 
> accountant was a Squib (so why didn't he just say THAT)?  I don't
> know if a Muggle can just pop up somewhere across the lines.        
      
Maybe the accountant is a relative by marriage, a Muggle who married
a witch or wizard who is Arthur or Molly's first cousin once removed. 
Actually second cousin is a close enough relative (the offspring of 
your parent's first cousin) that I would expect the wizarding folk to 
know them.

JC fordpr wrote:

> One would also think that magic could cure near-sightedness yet 
> there's lots of characters who still wear glasses...

That's what I kept saying, until someone suggested that the 
eyeglasses aren't really for myopia but have deep magical purposes 
and that all the characters with eyeglasses are Gryffindors. I 
haven't checked on the latter statement. I also think that magic also 
ought to be able to cure obesity and baldness, but the books are full 
of dumpy and/or balding characters. 

Sarahbeth wrote:
 
> [Tita Cats's] post just smacked this fellow lurker in the head with
> a strange and unlikely, but still interesting theory. What if the 
> Dementor that Fudge brought with him was just some tall skinny guy 
>(DE) in a big spooky cloak? What if it was all part of the "just in 
> case Potter returns alive" backup plan?  

Well, that would explain how Fudge could hang out with a Dementor 
without getting depressed.

Hollydaze! wrote about Animagi:

> So what does a cat (McGonagall) represent? 

Curiosity. No, seriously, cats resemble McGonagall in many ways: very 
careful of their dignity, they pretend to be arrogant and aloof. They 
have sharp claws and teeth that they use very effectively for 
fighting and self-defense, but they very often avoid fighting by 
being cautious, scoping out situations before they enter and so on 
(I hesitate to accuse McGonagall of running up a tree to escape from 
You-Know-You!). But they're secretly big softies who dote on their 
humans and other friends. And they are very sensual indeed when 
private and relaxed -- I am sure McGonagall totally enjoys a hot 
bubblebath in her private quarters!

Joshua wrote

> Mundungus Fletcher (presumably the father of the poor Hufflepuff 
> Fletcher girl that seems to get in so much trouble

What Hufflepuff Fletcher girl? Are you thinking of the Fawcett girl 
or girls (one Hufflepuff one Ravenclaw), presumably offspring of the 
Fawcetts who couldn't get tickets to the World Cup in GoF?

Eileen wrote:

> Hermione marries Ron. :) Their children would probably be called 
> half-bloods. One of these marries someone from the same situation, 
> and so on, so that the actual ammount of Muggle blood keeps 
> constant but for 5 generations back the family is completely 
> wizard. What is this person? I mean, in Lucius Malfoy's eyes? How
> long can he keep up his prejudices?

CoS: "It was a very near miss," said Ernie. "And in case you're 
getting ideas," he added hastily, "I might tell you that you can 
trace my family back through nine generations of witches and warlocks
and my blood's as pure as anyone's, so -"

It's not my original idea, someone else suggested it, but Ernie's 
mention of 'nine generations of witches and warlocks' suggests that 
nine generations is the definition of a Pureblood. I wonder if nine 
generations of long wizarding lifespans could take his records back 
to the time when the Founders were still running Hogwarts? (And thank 
you for noticing that the offspring of a Pureblood and a Mudblood is 
a Halfblood, altho' we haven't heard whether they have words for fine 
distinctions like quadroon, octaroon, and bien-passe.)

Joshua wrote:

> Yes, but Riddle also calls his mother a Muggle, which isn't true. 
> I believe that is hyperbole on Riddle's part more than anything.

Riddle called the late Lily a Muggle the same way that Draco called 
Hermione a Muggle when he found our three hiding in the woods from 
the DE riot at the World Cup. To the villains, a Mudblood IS a Muggle. 

Philip Nel wrote:

> That is, why does Rowling have certain characters care about 
> magical parentage, when other characters do not care in the least?
> What assumptions lie behind this concern over purebloods, 
> half-bloods and "mudbloods"?
 
You must be the author of that book I just ordered from Amazon based 
entirely on Penny's recommendation on this list!

The bad guys care about pedigrees and the good guys don't. I suppose 
that, rather than being a handy way to tell the good guys from the 
bad guys (I don't think Ernie Macmillan is a bad guy despite the 
quote above), it's a mildly preachy way of condemning both racism and 
the class system (both based on pedigrees). The Death Eaters have an 
obvious resemblance to Nazis and NeoNazis (including following their 
charismatic leader), and also an obvious resemblance to the Ku Klux 
Klan (someone on list pointed out how similar the costumes are). 

The prejudice is not bound into law like Jim Crow laws, the Death 
Eater organization was not invented by leading members of the 
government to enforce customs generally accepted as laws, and the 
wizarding racists show no sign of wanting to keep the Muggleborn 
around as cheap and subservient labor. They just want to eliminate 
(kill) the Muggleborn. 

Why?

I can't accept that bigotry and intolerance and genocide are the 
automatic result of differences between peoples. The Greeks may have 
said rude things about the Scythians being 'barbarians', but the two 
peoples did business with each other and influenced each other's art 
and legends and I don't recall any genocides.

Supposedly the wizarding folk are just like Muggles except they have 
this one extra ability (magic) and live significantly longer (I 
figure twice as long). I can see people who can do something easily 
and naturally feeling superior to people who can't do it at all, thus 
the patronizing attitude toward Muggles that we see even from good 
guys like Arthur Weasley. But it is not a direct step from 
patronizing to genocide, and feeling superior to people who can't 
Accio or Levitate is irrelevant about Muggleborn witches and wizards 
-- they CAN do magic. Even tho' the wizarding folk think of 
themselves as kind of an upper class, a certain snobbery about 
nouveaux riches or other kinds of people who have risen into the 
upper class generally does not cause genocide. 

I am convinced that the hatred that people like Lucius Malfoy feel 
toward Muggles and the Muggleborn comes from their fear of Muggles, 
and the accompanying scorn is a defense mechanism, an exceeding 
ungraceful one. They proudly trace their opinions back to Salazar 
Slytherin, and here is what History (in the form of Professor Binns) 
says about Salazar and the Muggleborn in CoS:

"You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand
years ago - the precise date is uncertain - by the four greatest 
witches and wizards of the age. The four school Houses are named 
after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, 
and Salazar Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from 
prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common
people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution."

He paused, gazed blearily around the room, and continued.

"For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking
out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the
castle to be educated. But then disagreements sprang up between them. 
A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin
wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. 
He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic 
families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing 
them to be untrustworthy. After a while, there was a serious argument 
on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left 
the school."

IMPORTANT CLUES: "far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when 
magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered 
much persecution." and "He disliked taking students of Muggle 
parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy."

They were HIDING because they were AFRAID of being persecuted by 
Muggles (there are a bunch of references to hiding from Muggle 
persecution in Quidditch Through the Ages, too) and Salazar's 
objection to Muggleborn students was that they might pass information 
about the wizarding folk to their dangerous Muggle relatives. Fear.

Which might even explain why even Malfoy and Riddle show no sign of 
wanting to exterminate Halfbloods and don't even use the word 
Halfblood as a serious insult (Riddle uses it of himself): there was 
no point in excluding students raised by one magical parent, as they 
ALREADY KNEW about the wizarding world. That's a big difference from 
the two models of villainy I mentioned earlier, the one where "one 
drop" of black "blood" made a person black, and the one where one 
Jewish great-grandparent made a person Jewish.