enigmatic Bill,"that book", Trelawney, the missing Weasley child

[vayabe at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 21337

   Greetings from a very tired newbie who has spent the night going 
through HP4GU's archives ! 

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., pigwidgeon37 at y... wrote:
> Scott wrote:
> "After Arthur makes the above statement there was silence for a 
> moment, and then Bill says "Well, it didn't help us tonight, 
whoever 
> conjured it." (This sentence confuses me the more I read it. Is he 
> saying that they "didn't help" by scaring away the DEs? How *could* 
> the Dark Mark "help" them?) He goes on to say "It scared the Death 
> Eaters away the moment they saw it. They all Disapparated before 
we'd 
> got near enough to unmask any of them. We caught the Robertses 
before 
> they hit the ground though."
> 
> You're not te only one to be confused about this sentence. I tried 
> the old trick reading it aloud, putting the emphasis on different 
> words (it *didn't* help us tonight, it didn't *help* us tonight, it 
> didn't help *us* tonight, it didn't help us *tonight*), but didn't 
> get much more sense out of it. Because who has ever been *helped* 
by 
> the Dark Mark? It would be clear if he said something like "It made 
> our work even more difficult tonight" which would be the "it didn't 
> *help* us tonight" version.

   For what it's worth, I think that is what he meant, which makes 
perfect sense in that they were wondering why and by whom the mark 
had been summoned and Bill is remarking that whatever the reasons, it 
complicated things for those trying to stop the DEs. If your saying 
it out loud, I imagine the tone would be quite wry.
   This doesn't mean of course that he wasn't changing the subject 
(Arthur sounded quite intense) and he might indeed have lost a 
brother to Voldemort. However, if that's the case, it was more likely 
an older brother as I don't see why only one child would have been 
killed if a DE had attaqued Arthur's familly and it seems unlikely 
that Molly would have left a very young child alone.
   A thew thoughts while I'm posting (happens so rarely) : was Sirius 
on Gryffindor's quidditch team ? I like to imagine James and him as a 
pair of unbeatable chasers confounding their opponents with Porkoff 
ploys and Reverse passes.
   My apologies for bringing this up again but my take on Snape's 
love-life is that he fell for Mrs Lestrange (we really need to learn 
what her first name is). His choosing what was right over the love of 
his life could be one reason why Dumbledore trusts him and besides 
she's still alive to make trouble, unlike Lily.
   How long can Pig stay an owlet ? Surely by the end of GoF he's no 
longer the baby described. And if Hagrid is part giant, could prof. 
Flitwick be part goblin/leprechaun/insert-your-favourite-small-being ?
    Alice