Colin Creevey - chapter 12 + 13 summaries - wizard names - etc

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 20417

Catherine wrote about Colin Creevey:

> I  know that at the moment he is annoyingly hero-
> worshipping Harry (which Harry does put up with,
> without being too rude and hurting his feelings) .

I think Harry IS being too rude to poor Colin, the way he just brushes
him off all the time,  and am astonished that Colin has not yet shown
any hurt feelings about it. On the day in PoA when Harry was excluded
from the Hogmeade outing, Harry was just as mean to poor Neville, who
was being nice when he suggested they could play Exploding Snap or work
on their homework together.

Trina wrote:

> 4. *Is* it obvious what is making Lupin ill?  (yeah, yeah, yeah, I
>  know.  Pretend this is the first time you've read PoA)

No. It was not obvious. Even tho' I got the werewolf idea as soon as I
saw the name Lupin, I didn't figure out that his Boggart was the moon
and I didn't realize that his sick day was connected to the moon phase.

> 5.  Wood has the Gyffindor team practising 5 nights a week.
>  Do you think this is allowed by school rules?  Is Wood a little
> *too* obsessed?

Somehow JKR managed to make me like the character Oliver the jock, to
sympathise with Harry and Ron's love of Quidditch, even to care which
House won the cup, when in real life I surely would dislike Oliver and
he would dislike me, and I probably wouldn't attend even my own House's
matches.

> 1. Why does Hermione not exhibit the least bit of
> sympathy for Ron on  the loss of Scabbers?
> Does Ron just have it in for Crookshanks
> because he jumped on his head in Diagon Alley?

I thought that complete lack of sympathy was very unbecoming of
Hermione. Ron was sort of right. Crookshanks really had been hunting
Scabbers all semester. Even if the reason was only that Crookshanks is a
cat and Scabbers is a rat, I've lived with cats all my life and I know
that pet rats, canaries, and garter snakes are in danger from natural
cat instincts. Before the loss of Scabbers, Hermione should have kept
promising Ron that she would try harder to keep Crookshanks out of the
boys' dorm, and after it, she should have gushed: "Oh, poor Ron, how sad
for you, I know how much you loved that rat".

> 2.  Did Harry see the Grim on the way back to the castle
> or was he just imagining things?  Why doesn't he tell Ron?

Even on first reading, I never thought the big black dog was really a
Grim, but I didn't know it was Sirius either. I kept wondering what that
big black dog was all about: could it be a spy for the bad guys? I
believed that Harry saw the big black dog on the way back to the castle
(just as he had earlier seen it in the Quidditch stands). He didn't tell
Ron because Ron would panic at the thought it was a Grim.

> Trina (a South Carolinian whose only agenda is to make
> sure Lady Jane  gets her amoxicillin for the day.)

Who's Lady Jane? Once my doctor gave me amoxicillin and I turned out to
be allergic to it...

Barbara Purdom wrote:

> Maybe JKR will give Remus Lupin a twin brother Romulus.

Surely naming two brothers Remus and Romulus would create a big danger
of one of them killing the other. Like naming them Cain and Abel.

> If ever someone's destiny were in his name...

And Sirius Black: big Black Dog-star. And Professor Sprout for
Herbology, and Professor Vector for Arithmancy, and Newt (like a newt)
Scamander (like a salamander) as the fabulous beasts nut.... Pippin has
suggested that some wizard parents use a Name Charm which chooses a
destiny-connected name for their baby and the parents, having used the
Charm, cannot refuse to use the name it provided. I still question how
the family name can always be part of it.

Amy Z wrote:

> Re: Harry's lack of impure thoughts about Cho,
> I think Jo may just be (mercifully) sparing us the details.

As you know, I think Harry's lack of impure thoughts about Cho (not even
kissing!) is an important clue to Harry's psychology.

Craig wrote:

> Of course, if it is a teacher in her 30's, we might
> get to see one of the boys do a reverse Hermione-
> and-Lockhart-type swooning....

That occurs in the AU 4th year fanfic HP and the Doomspell Potion:
http://home.att.net/~Doomspell/Doomspell/Homex.html

Catherine wrote:

> isn't it strange that 3 out of 4 champions are seekers?

We don't know that Fleur isn't a Seeker as well. We weren't told
anything about Beauxbatons or Durmstrang's SCHOOL Quidditch.

Liz nizbet_noni wrote:

> Harry thinks something like "he hoped Padma Patil's
> nose was dead centre," which implies that Padma looks
> different to Parvati.

To me, it implies that Harry has no idea what Padma looks like. I think
that is a sign of how unobservant he is, since he MUST have seen Parvati
and Padma together SOMETIME in four years, considering that all the
students eat together in the Great Hall.

Robert Carnegie wrote of psychic vampires:

>  These ones surely sound more like incubus / succubus / Dementor?

Psychic vampires (which are real and are ordinary Muggle human beings,
except for the unfortunate effect on other people they associate with)
resemble Dementors in the Dementors' "depression" aspect: they suck all
the happiness and hope out of you. They don't particularly resemble
Dementors in their "PTSD" aspect: awakening memories of the most
horrible things that have happened to you. I don't know what your idea
of incubi/succubi is: it is my understanding that the demon takes the
appearance of a beautiful woman (succubus) to get sperm from a man, and
then takes the appearance of a woman's husband (incubus) to pass the
sperm on to her, thus explaining why there are babies who look like
someone other than their daddies.

Jim Flanagan wrote:

> in several different Indo-European mythologies, including Sumarian,
Greek, Indic, and Celtic,

You must have meant something else when you typed Sumerian, because
Sumerian is NOT Indo-European. The Sumerian language is one of the those
languages that have no relatives. You meant Slavic? Farsi? Armenian?
Hittite?

Allyse wrote:

> Malfoy has a very poor opinion of  Harry. I would imagine
> that he sneeringly thinks that the mere sight of the Dementors
> would be enough to make Harry go to pieces.

I imagine that JKR's Draco was  hoping that Harry would be killed, not
just lose the game. However, Draco had no business sneering at Harry:
"That little git," [George] said calmly. "He wasn't so cocky last night
when the dementors were down at our end of the train. Came runing into
our
compartment, didn't he, Fred?"
"Nearly wet himself," said Fred, with a contemptuous glance at Malfoy.
How badly the students suffer from the Dementors is connected to what
Horrors they have experienced: Harry the worst, with his parents'
murder. Ginny badly, with her previous year's encounter with the Chamber
of Secrets, Neville badly, with his regular visits to his unfortunate
parents. Draco badly: there must be horrors in his past, too.

Ebony wrote:

>  At home, when I was angry and crying, rest assured I
> didn't think or say nice politically correct things.

What kind of parents see their child crying over having been bullied and
don't tell the child that she's just a crybaby, that being bullied is
her own fault for not standing up for herself, and that she must be
lying, the parents' nice friends' children wouldn't ever do anything
like that?

> As a teacher, I do not sympathize with bullies.  I do not
> "understand" their behavior in the light of the way they've
> been treated, and I do not want to see things from the bully's
> point of view.  We've all got problems, but it doesn't give
> *anyone* the right to take out your frustrations on someone
> else.  And I am so *sick* of this relativist culture in which the
> victimizer's rights as a human being are valued over the victimized's!

I don't think it has anything to do with relativism; I think it is
simply the very old, absolutist, traditional value that 'might makes
right". And I must unhappily acknowledge that the parents of bullies are
quite correct to take their children's side against the victims: bullies
grow up to be very successful in climbing the corporate ladder and
eventually get huge money. We humans are a lot more like chimpanzees
than is pleasant.

Kelley wrote:

> Btw, does Ollivander use only dragon heartstrings, unicorn
> hair, and phoenix feathers as cores?  Seems a bit limited.
> If this -is- the case, (and as far as we know it is, yes?)

Ollivander said it is the case: "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a
powerful magical substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix
tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands
are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite
the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with
another wizard's wand."

btw: "just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the
same": there is more than one phoenix in the Potterverse

> then lots of people must have phoenix feathers in their wands, right?

The second wand Harry tried was "Maple and phoenix feather. Seven
inches. Quite whippy. Try --"

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