Mostly Weasleys // New stuff at end

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 22808

Sofie wrote:

> I wonder if Lily/Petunia's father was/is the 
> accountant in the Weasely family. Could it be 
> possible? 

Dumbledore said to McGonagall: "I've come to bring Harry to his aunt and
uncle. They're the only family he has left now."

As the Dursleys treat Harry in such an un-family-like way, and the
Weasleys treat him in such a family-like way, if the Weasleys were his
blood kin as well as soul kin, Dumbledore would have been lying. (Oh,
Melanie Brackney already said so.)

Incidentally, Lily had DARK RED HAIR ("She was a very pretty woman. She
had dark red hair and her eyes -- her eyes are just like mine, Harry
thought") and Dumbledore himself had auburn hair when he was only 100
years old (CoS), and to me 'auburn hair' and 'dark red hair' mean much
the same thing, but he would have been lying HUGELY if Harry were HIS
great-grandson.

I suppose it is possible in THEORY that Narcissa could be blood kin to
Lily and still not be family to Harry, on the ground that she divorced
or annulled her natural family when she joined the Death Eaters. (The
other day Julie W suggested Narcissa might be Lily and Petunia's
sister.) 

I would like to believe that Petunia and Narcissa were sisters in a
wizarding family, Petunia was disowned at a very young age for being a
Squib and given to the Evans family of Muggles who knew about the
wizarding world. Thus, Petunia would be Lily's sister only by adoption.
That would explain why Narcissa and Petunia look similar and have
similarly unusual names and Lily looks different and has a more normal
name. It would also explain why Petunia hates magic so much -- it was
[lack of] magic that cost her her birth family -- and why Petunia is so
very jealous of Lily. 

Anne B wrote:

> But didn't JKR say in an interview or chat that
> transfigured things don't stay that way permanently? 

IIRC she said that things which are created by magic [out of thin air]
don't last very long, but I don't think she said transfigured things
don't stay that way. That things created by magic don't last was her
explanation for why the Weasleys don't just make food and clothes and a
new car by magic. It's not really an adequate explanation because the
clothes only have to last for one day each and the car only has to last
for one trip. It also doesn't explain why they can't Transfigure shed
chicken feathers or Charm old clothes into new clothes. 

Perhaps we just don't know that some routine part of their day includes
going through a magic remover, something like a metal detector except
that all the Transfigured clothes would turn back and all the things
created from thin air would vanish and all the Charms for hair
straightening and acne removal and 20/20 vision would come undone. That
would explain the reliance on bobotuber pus, Hair-So-Sleek, and other
Potions, (and eyeglasses,) because Potion effects are not removed by
this hypothetical magic remover.

Susan Hall wrote:

> omeone made a comment which indicated that they 
> were rather surprised that the Weasleys had rather 
> posh accents on one of the taped versions of the books.
> I'd always assumed that the Weasleys fell into that 
> well known socio-economic group "English Upper Class 
> Eccentrics - No Money" and that therefore the only
> characters in the canon likely to have posher accents

But for how many generations do the offspring keep the ancestral posh
accent? Should we assume that Arthur's parents raised him less
eccentrically? 

Doreen wrote:

> How did Molly & Arthur get home in CS? (snip)
> If they did apparate, why didn't they apparate 
> themselves into the Ford Anglia and drive the two to school?  

Maybe it is only possible to Apparate to a known location, and they
didn't know the co-ordinates of the Ford Anglia because it was in
motion. (oh, LavenderChic already said that.)

Doreen wrote:
> In this passage of CS, Ron obviously is practicing 
> wizardry before the school term actually starts (snip)
> Why did he not get into trouble with the Misuse of 
> Magic Department? 

Previous discussion has suggested that MoM has no way to know whether an
underage mage does magic except reports from informants. Only because
someone was monitoring the Dursley house because of Harry did the
monitor know that magic was done there -- and didn't know that it was
really Dobby who did the magic, not Harry. (Oh, David Frankis already
said much the same thing.) If MoM noticed magic being done at King's X
or for that matter at the Burrow, they wouldn't know who did it and
therefore wouldn't know it was someone underage.


MY FRIEND SUGGESTED:
---------------------- AN IDEA I NEVER HEARD BEFORE!

Ta-da! We were taking about Owls having Owl Magic to find the addressee
even if the address written on the letter is nothing but the name. She
spoke of using Owls to find people in hiding. I started on my usual rant
about it being impossible to follow an Owl because they go 'between' the
dimensions like Pern Dragons, but she said: Why don't they mail him a
Howler and LISTEN for it? Then go to wherever they heard the sound
coming from.

She also proposed a compromise between the 1000-student Hogwarts and a
280-student Hogwarts, which includes both the fact that there must be
around a thousand wizarding folk of Hogwarts age to maintain the
population, and that JKR said that there are 1000 students at Hogwarts,
and that JKR said that Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in Britain,
BUT the Hogwarts we see in the books is way smaller.

She said: "Maybe ALL the schools are at Hogwarts" and went on to suggest
that that would explain why there are so many doors that apparently go
nowhere and rooms that are apparently unused and moving staircases and
more space in the Castle that seems to be needed. This isn't as good an
idea as the one about MoM agents finding Sirius by owling him a Howler,
as it doesn't explain how students are Sorted into the various
Hogwartses -- it is argued that the Hogwarts Express is only big enough
for 280-student Hogwarts, in which case they would have to be Sorted
either on Platform 9 3/4 or before they receive the letter that tells
them when to catch the train. 
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