Hogwarts Express - Bowler Hat - Ron/Quidditch - Prefects - Figg/Fletcher - Mudblood

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 22058

Martin Smith wrote:

> 'Let's go by floo to Diagon Alley! There we can buy
> books and stuff for the kids, take them to King's X
> where they will be happy to rejoin their schoolmates
> they haven't seen all summer, and then we can have a
> romantic weekend in London, staying at the Leaky Cauldron.'

Nitpick: September first isn't always immediately followed by a weekend.
Serious Objection: The books and stuff have to be packed into the
students' trunks sometime between purchase and embarkation.

Martin Smith wrote:

>  but what is a bowler hat?

A bowler hat is a pompous (by modern standards) hat which is round on
top and has a brim that usually rolls up a little at the edges. IIRC
Laurel and Hardy wore them. The part of the hat that isn't the brim
['crown', my friends just shouted at me] has something that is harder
than just molded felt (to its shape] so it provides some small amount of
head protection. When invented, they were tremendously
lower-middle-class attire.

Heather Hettick wrote:

> wool is available in Great Britain and certainly 
> Scotland, or at least was before the recent Foot 
> and Mouth outbreak. 

Do you think the wizarding folk can put a charm on their livestock, or
feed them a potion, to prevent them catching Foot and Mouth or other
infectious diseases?

Melanie Brackney wrote:

> Oh so who is going to take Oliver's space on the
> Quidditch field?  I think everyone is pretty much 
> in unison that it will Ron, but then what if it's not.

I *WANT* it to be Ron, as a present to poor Ron, but Ron could suffer in
interesting ways if it were someone else.  Maybe Dean Thomas, who at the
Sorting was even taller than Ron, whose love for the West Ham football
team suggests that he's sports-mad, and who is Muggle-born. Maybe a
girl, Lavender or Parvati or one of the unnamed pair. Maybe a *girl* who
is *younger* than him and is his own sister!  

Banjo Ken wrote:

> [Ron] could have been a reserve or something before
> if he's a decent player. I would think that if JKR 
> intended him to join the Quidditch team, we would 
> have seen him play at least a little bit. 

As far as we have seen in canon, the Gryffindor team doesn't have ANY
reserves since Alicia (or was it Angelina, I can never remember) was
brought up from the reserves. If there's going to be any House Quidditch
in future books, SOMEONE will have to be first-string Keeper. Whoever it
is, Dean or Seamus or Lavender or Parvati or Neville or Lee Jordan or
Ginny or Colin Creevey or Dennis Creevey or anyone, we have not seen
that person play Quidditch either.

Melanie Brackney wrote:

> Do we actually know for sure that there are in fact
> a male prefect and a female prefect for each house? 

I personally believe there are a male and a female prefect for each
House for each of fifth, sixth, and seventh year, and the Head Boy and
Girl are two of the seventh year prefects.

However, IIRC John Walton mentioned last year that at HIS school, every
student who was old enough, marginally respectable, and marginally
willing, was made a prefect, in order to have plenty of prefects to
share the work. I wonder if there is a FAQ or a Lexicon entry with
John's very witty explanation of what prefects do?

Big Bad A.D. (Albus Dumbledore?) wrote:

> Mrs Figg ...  smells of cabbage and cats ... Arabella
> Figg...   Mundungus Fletcher... coincidence?  I THINK NOT!!!!!

Yes, in one or more of the on-line chats, someone asked JKR if Mrs Figg
is related to Arabella Figg. I'm confused because IIRC one time she said
Yes, Mrs Figg is Arabella Figg, another time she said Arabella Figg is
Mrs. Figg's niece, and another time she said Mrs. Figg is a Squib.

Btw, did you notice that Mundungus Fletcher ('mundungus' is a word for
smelly cruddy tobacco) was mentioned twice in GoF: as one of the Old
Crowd, but previously mentioned by Percy when complaining about all the
Howlers from people who wanted to be reimbursed by MoM for their
property damaged in the World Cup riot? He said something about Old
Mundungus Fletcher had submitted a claim for a 12-room tent with en
suite jacuzzi, but Percy knew he had really be sleeping under a cloak
propped up on four sticks. In CoS, when Arthur came from the hard night
at work, he mentioned Old Mundungus Fletcher tried to hex him when his
back was turned. Interesting sort of good guy?

There was even some discussion long ago on this list of the smell of
cabbages. One suggestion was that Mrs. Figg's house smells like cabbages
because that is the smell of magic. I think that is contradicted by no
mention of the Burrow or the Leaky Cauldron smelling of cabbage. Another
suggestion was the wizarding folk, that is the ones who don't have
Muggle parent(s) or spouse, somehow believe that all Muggles smell of
cabbages, so they use that odor when trying to disguise themselves as
Muggles. 

Big Bad A.D. (Armando Dippet?) wrote:

> #2) Death Eaters are all about purity of the blood. 
> (snip) Voldemort's a mudblood

Voldemort isn't a Mudblood (Muggle-born witch or wizard): he's a
Halfblood. His father was a Muggle but his mother was a Pureblood
descended from Salazar Slytherin. 

I suppose that his hatred of Muggles (disguised as thinking them
inferior, but just because people are inferior doesn't automatically
lead to torturing and killing them) psychologically resulted from having
been abandoned, he believed, by his father when he (the father)
discovered that the mother was a witch.    

I think it is entirely possible that Tom Marvolo Riddle's father was
never married to Tom Marvolo Riddle's mother, and maybe never even knew
she was pregnant. TMR was born in 1926 (1927 according to Lexicon) -- it
is my understanding that people in those days were prudish about
admitting that a child had been born out of wedlock. Just think, if only
they had told him the truth, he might have become a crusader against
premarital sex rather than against Muggles! 

Jerry Lawson wrote:

> But, wasn't Harry's mother established as a 
> witch instead of a Muggle?  Hmm...

Harry's mother was a Muggle-born witch, like Hermione. The Death Eaters
apparently view Muggle-born witches and wizards ('Mudbloods') to be
Muggles -- at the World Cup riot, when Draco tells 'Granger' to get
'that big bushy head' down, he calls her a Muggle.
-- 
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