2t or not 2t /Narcissa Muggle-born? /wiz univ /wands /Time Turner

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 31676

Amy Z wrote:

> Both Jim Dale and Stephen Fry could check pronunciations with JKR
> as they worked, and they came up with different pronunciations of 
> this and many other words.

I don't know any excuse for the other variant pronunciations, but 
probably so many people in the wizarding world have never heard the 
word 'Voldemort' spoken, so if they see it in writing, they have to 
guess how to pronounce it, and come up with different guesses.

Grey Wolf wrote:

>Voldemort's (who's father left his mother when she was carrying him)

Tom Riddle said his parents were married but his father left his 
mother when he found out that she was a witch. This led him to hate 
the father who had abandoned HIM (prenatally) and all Muggles. 
However, young Tom wasn't exactly a witness to these events: he is 
going by what someone told him. Probably not the Muggle orphanage 
people, so maybe he was with his maternal grandparents for a few 
years before they died too and he was put in the orphanage. I keep 
wondering if his grandparents were telling him a euphemised story, to 
spare him from knowing that his parents had never been married and 
Tom Sr had refused to marry the girl when she told him she was 
pregnant. In which case, if only they had told him the truth, he 
could have crusaded against premarital sex instead of against Muggles.

jenbea wrote:

> she decieved him and said she was a witch when she wasn't, and it 
> was only after the ceremony that Lucius found out she wasn't? 

Then Lucius would have murdered her. In a cool-headed, well-planned 
way that would look like an accident to Muggles and couldn't be 
pinned on him by Aurors. Lucius is not the kind of person who would 
continue to love a person who had 'made a fool' of him.

Jessie wrote:

> I truely wonder if Lily's family are actually wizards. Harry may
> just THINK that she is from a muggle family

Hagrid also thinks that Lily was from a Muggle family: "some o' the 
best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in 'em in a long line 
o' Muggles -- look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!"

Mahoney wrote:

> Also, the case could have been an optimistic gift from someone when
> he first finished his whatever degree ("since you're going to be a 
> Very Important Professor now, and all..."); then even without 
> having got a job that case was the only one he had so he's used it
> to death.  

And the 'someone' could have been James or Sirius or even Peter.

dsm Reg wrote:

> I think there is lots of evidence that there is no wizards' 
> "university": (snip)
> I think we have to assume that there cannot therefore be a PhD or 
> equivalent qualification for advanced wizards and witches.

Just because there isn't any university does not mean there aren't 
any advanced degree. 

One of the topics on which I mouth off at tremendous length is my 
completely outside of canon belief that there are Guilds in the 
wizarding world, including Guilds of academic subjects. A kid gets 
out of Hogwarts and wants to be a Healer like Madam Pomfrey, he/she 
finds a Master Healer who will accept him/her as an Apprentice. The 
kid wants to be a Potioner, he/she finds a Master Potioner to be 
Apprenticed to. 

The academic degrees we Muggles are accustomed to were based on the 
degrees used by the medieval guild system (and Latin for 'guild' was 
'collegium'): the undergraduate is an apprentice, the person with 
bachelor's degree is a journeyman (allowed to take jobs in the field, 
but only under a level of supervision, and not allowed to teach 
apprentices), and the PhD is equivalent to a Master.... the PhD 
dissertation is equivalent to the Masterpiece, the example of 
excellent work in the field which the ambitious journeyman presents 
to an official guild committee of Masters to judge whether he/she 
deserves to be elevated.

I imagine that the Potioners Guild has internal stress between the 
members who own little shops and make potions to sell to the general 
wizarding public and the members who only want to do research. 

faux pas wrote:

> Wands in general. Ollivander seems to make it clear that the wand 
> chooses the owner. (SNIP) The only thing I can think of to compare
> it to would be custom made shoes. They fit the person they're made 
> for but wouldn't fit anyone else as well. 

But the wands Aren't custom-made. I imagine that most are made in 
something similar to standard 'sizes'. So a wizard or witch with one 
standard type of 'talent' will match one of the standard types of 
wand. Little individual variations in people and little individual 
variations in 'standard' wands can make one wand more suitable for 
the person than another, just as one pair of size 6 shoes can fit a 
person's size 6 feet better than another pair. But still there is Not 
Only One wand for the person and Not Only One person for the wand.

Btw, I never assumed that the standard 'sizes' had to do with the 
type of wood, type of core, or length of the wand, those traits that 
Ollivander seems to remember his wands by. I always assumed that the 
magical characteristics were something invisible that we don't have 
words for in Muggle language.

But a wizard or witch with very unusual 'talent' would need a very 
unusual wand. I imagine that the Ollivanders make an unusual wand 
when they get inspired with an idea for it, and put the unusual wand 
away in storage for maybe hundreds of years until someone comes along 
who matches it.

Marina wrote:

> But how did it know to put H and H in the entrance hall three hours
> before and not, say, Diagon Alley three hours before? Any theories?

Good question, and I don't know the answer. I thought for a while and 
came up with a feeble guess: Hermione's Time Turner was set to put 
her 20 feet west of where normal-time-she was (that is, where she had 
been at the time she is travelling to). In her normal time travelling 
to take classes, she is careful not to be 20 feet east of an open 
stairwell at the moment when normal-time-she is on her way to Muggle 
Studies and time-travelling she will be on the way to Arithmancy (I 
don't remember exactly which class was at the same time as which).