Poltergeist/Ravenclaws/Wiz-Muggle/Magic Eye/sQUID/Looks/resilient abused HP

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 30578

Hollydaze! wrote (and others expanded):

> poltergeist is some sort of spiritual energy, it was never human. 
> The energy is subconsciously created by teenage girls, especially 
> those that are depressed or have very strong feelings at the time  

Not just girls! I believe not even especially girls -- any person in 
the first few years of puberty who has a lot of repressed sexual 
energy and repressed resentment against authority figures (now that I 
type that that, I am surprised that I haven't heard of more polter- 
geists in prisons).   As I understand it, the "spiritual" energy that 
creates the poltergeist symptoms is primarily sexual energy. Btw 
P.E.I. Bonewitz mentioned a personal encounter with a poltergeist who 
hit a person on the head, kind of hard, with a paperweight, when the 
person said "Poltergeists never actually harm people."

Klawsie wrote:

> Well, Ravenclaws are supposed to be the very smart ones, right? 
> What if they're kept seperate so as not to "slow down" their 
> learning processes? (snip) It's fairer to the other students. 

Other students like Hermione? It's possible that all Ravenclaws are 
smart (if it really is picking the students that ol' Rowena would 
have picked), altho' from the example of Gryffindors, it's also 
possible that some Ravenclaws just WANT to be smart or just value 
intelligence as the highest good. But even if all Ravenclaws are 
smart, not all non-Ravenclaws are non-smart, so it would be more 
logical to Sort the students into classes by ability than by House 
if ability was the criterion. I believe that the Gryffindors have 
Astronomy with the Ravenclaws and that all the classes that 
Gryffindors and Slytherins have together, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs 
have together.

Eric Oppen wrote:

> I think myself that many or most Muggles could easily handle 
> knowing about the existence of the wizarding world (snip)
> Although I love all the Weasleys, they do show a lot of the 
> prejudice of their pure-blood wizard background when they say
> things like this.  I wonder how Hermione felt  

I don't agree that "most" Muggles could handle knowing about the 
wizarding world. Not that we'd go mad or suicidal, but that we 
would go paranoid. History has shown over and over that cultures who 
believe in magic that is done by local human beings easily turn 
against those human beings and blame them for sudden illnesses, 
injuries, crop failures, and so on, and very often kill them either 
as normal tit-for-tat vengeance or because they believe that killing 
them will end the curse that they cast. Here in modern America, those 
who didn't believe that wizards were agents of Satan or of an 
invading other planet would feel resentment against wizards having an 
unfair advantage. Even I would sulk at people who can Apparate, avoid 
the misery of rush hour, and sleep late every morning!

I strongly agree that Arthur's patronizing attitude toward Muggles is 
a form of bigotry. I strongly disagree that Arthur is AS bigotted as 
Draco. I feel that Hermione has bought into the wizarding party line 
on staying hidden from Muggles for the sake of wizarding folk's own 
safety: perhaps because she is a little bit respectful of authority, 
she believes that for word of magic to get out to the Muggle media 
would be harmful to her personally.

Jerry Myers wrote:

> First of all, it seems evident to me that quite a bit of
> rescources are devoted to identifying new Muggle born
> witches and wizards and inviting them to take schooling.

It is strongly implied that that is done because a few influential 
people (Dumbledore in this generation) push strongly for it and only 
a few people (Lucius Malfoy, Salazar Slytherin) push strongly against 
it, and most don't care enough to push one way or the other, but not 
caring enough to push against admitting them to Hogwarts doesn't mean 
being willing to let one join the country club.

> Arthur's fascination with Muggle ways and his open admiration for 
> the accomplishments of the Muggles does not sound like a fellow who
> is anti-Muggle

When Arthur admires the clever ways that Muggles have dreamt up to 
get along without magic, he sound patronizing, like admiring how 
clever a little child is who figures out something that "everyone 
already knows". He doesn't realize that Muggles have passed wizards: 
we used to invent technological ways to accomplish what we saw them 
do by magic (flush toilets, gas lights for their automatic torches on 
the walls, railway trains for their self-propelled carriages, carrier 
pigeons for owls) but with the Electricity Age, we got ahead of them 
and started inventing things they never had, such as telegraph and 
radio (proof: the name Wizarding Wireless -- radio is called Wireless 
only because it followed telegraph which was Wire), and now THEY use 
magic to imitate what WE do with technology.  

Cindy C wrote:

> After all, Harry could just get two magical eyes like Moody. 

That eye is some powerful magical artifact! I wonder where Moody got 
it. I wonder if it were made by a human mage, made by a human mage 
out of special magical materials (like the Invisibility Cloak is made 
from the fleece of an invisible animals described in FABULOUS 
BEASTS), or if it is really the eye from a special magical animal 
transplanted into the human?

Hollydaze! wrote:

> I always got the impression that the Giant Squid is actually a nice
> creature. (snip) The fact that Lee Jordan and the Wealsey twins 
> -have been said to- tickle it's tentacles. Would you do that with a
> dangerous beast?

*I* wouldn't. But Lee and the Trickster Twins? Sure they would.

Cindy C wrote:

> (Help me if I've missed someone who is definitely physically 
> attractive based on his/her description in the books).  

Definitely Madam Rosmerta, 'a curvy sort of woman with a pretty 
face." Possibly Gilderoy Lockhart. 

Nancy wrote:

> It's amazing to me that Harry is able, despite his childhood with 
> the Dursley's, to love and to trust.  

and Joanne0012 and Chip and Heidi agreed, bringing up the notion of 
'resilience', and Heidi in particular wrote:
 
> The presence of at least one caring person--someone who conveys an
> attitude of compassion, who understands that no matter how awful a
> child's behavior, the child is doing the best he or she can given 
> his or her experience--provides support for healthy development and
> learning. This person can be a parent who was in a child's life at
> one point, but later was separated from the child. Even a permanent
> separation at a young age (between twelve and 18 months) can 
> provide this "caring person" support factor, because the toddler 
> has memories of the parent and the loving environment, which stay
> in the child's subconscious, and even in the conscious mind, longer
> than a lay adult would suspect.  (snip)
> My pet theory is that even if he doesn't remember it, Harry's 
> magical abilities allowed him to "improve" things in the cuboard 
> until his memories of his parents & his prior "life" started to
> fade away.

I'm sure all old-timers are sick of hearing me say it, but *MY* pet 
theory is that it wasn't Harry's magic, it was Lily's magic. That 
her last act was not defending herself nor attacking her attacker, 
that while sheltering baby Harry with her body, she put all her 
life-energy into magically planting an image of herself into his 
mind. So that he perceived this image as an 'imaginary Mum', like 
imaginary friends, but it really had much more reality than the 
usual imaginary Mum and comforted him when he cried in his cupboard 
and told him he was a good kid and told him the difference between 
good and evil (which he would not have learned from the Dursleys) and 
I don't have any proof, but as evidence I offer that the way Harry 
learned to resist Imperius was that "a voice in his head" said: "Why 
should you?" I argue that that voice was what was left of the little 
model of Lily after all these years.