Of OWL:s, Broomsticks and Kneazles

[mediaphen at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 21258



Hi everybody!

Picking up some threads:

OWL:s
IMO, there must be some classes regarded as more important than 
others (for instance, runes couldn't possibly be equally important as 
charms) and thus given more lesson time. Therefore, an equivalent to 
the university units system must be made, in which the runes class 
is, say, 0.5 u, DADA is 2.0, charms is 1.8 and so forth (I'm not 
stating these numbers as absolute facts, just to illuminate my 
general idea).
As for the grades, I believe there to be only two options: Either you 
fail, or you pass.
Let's say, for the sake of understanding, that two fictional students 
(let's call them Pippi and Emil to pay respect to another outstanding 
author of children's literature, Astrid Lindgren) perform like this 
on their OWL exams:
Pippi passes DADA, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions and Arithmancy, 
and fails every other class.
Emil passes Runes, CoMC, Divination, Astronomy and Herbology, and 
fails everything else.
Now, who is the better student? With each class meaning one OWL, both 
Pippi and Emil would receive five OWL:s, so they would be just as 
good as the other. But, with the unit system suggested above, Pippi 
would receive appr 9 OWL:s, whereas Emil would score appr. 3 OWL:s, 
which gives a much more realistic picture of their qualities as 
magical students, IMHO.
(Does it show that I am a University graduate?<g>)

Broomsticks:
I watched the well known Swedish folklore researcher Ebbe Schön on 
the telly (TV, that is), stating that in good old folklore tradition, 
witches used to fly on broomsticks. However, they flied with the tail 
first, and once they were up in the air, they turned around and flied 
upside-down. This because of, in the old time Muggle's belief, 
everything magical was to be done backwards.
So why is it that Harry & Co don't fly like this? Could it be that 
some magician with skills in aerodynamics found that flying with the 
broom's tail-end last gave him a tremendous increase in speed and 
agility, won fame, respect and Galleons at the Quidditch pitch, and 
thereby changing the way witches and wizards flew their brooms 
entirely (much like Dick Fosbury did with the Fosbury Flop in high 
jump...)?
Or could it be that only the bad witches/wizards (as you probably 
know, most Muggles consider witches as evil) fly BW/USD 
(backwards/upside down). Just imagine Lucie M flying his brand new 
Nimbus 500 CDL Extravaganza Convertible to pick up Draco at 
graduation day, tail-end first, bumping his head into the top of the 
walls of Hogwarts :-D
Any thoughts?



Craig wrote:
> Crookshanks is a kneazle.  See the HP school books.
> 
> ....Craig

Haggridd wrote:
>No, he isn't; I'll bet you a chocolate frog!
>
>Haggridd

I have to go with both here. I wrote, in my first ever post to this 
group, that Crookshanks might be a semi-animagus related to Krum. 
Well, I don't honestly believe that world famous Krum were to find 
his long lost brother in cat/kneazle form all of a sudden (how soap 
opera is that?). However, IMO Crookshanks is more than a cat. 
Checking my copy of FB, I found that kneazles have a lion-like tail, 
and AFAIK it's not mentioned in canon. Now, this doesn't rule out the 
kneazle possibility, since the opposite isn't stated either. But what 
really made me doubt that Crookshanks is a 100% kneazle is that FB 
states that in order to own a kneazle, the owner must have a licence 
for it. Hermione buying Crookshanks is, IMO, an impulse, spirit-of-
the-moment purchase, and surely she wouldn't have gotten a kneazle 
permit, carrying it around "...just in case I happen to go to a pet 
store and find a nice little kneazle I can buy and annoy Ronnie and 
Scabs with..." (Herm's thoughts made up by me). So my bet, Mr Bagman, 
is two sickles on Crookshanks being part kneazle, part cat, with the 
physique mainly of a cat (which would explain why the pet shop boy 
(sorry, don't recall his/her name) sold him to Herm, believing `twas 
a cat). Phew! Long sentence...

Haggridd (again) wrote:

>p.s. Are you enjoying the visit of George W.?
>

I jumped there for a second. George Weasley is in town? Wow! Coolness!
Then I realised you probably meant George W Bush, which IMHO is much 
less exciting (saying that isn't too political, right? <g>).


And so, I leave the civilised world for a few days to celebrate 
Midsummer (big thing in Sweden...)

Martin (Hermione act-a-like, Ravenclaw sorted, favourite minor 
character: Lee Jordan)