V’s Scheming - Boggarts - Divination - Ginny

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 21616

Marianne wrote:

>For that matter, why not assign a DE to go to Hogwarts and kill 
>Harry outright? I'm sure there are some Voldemort supporters who are 
>not suspected of being Dark Wizards who could manage to stroll into 
>the school grounds one fine day on some sort of fake mission and 
>find a way to attack Harry. 

>Maybe V should start thinking about changing his tactics, especially 
>since Harry always seems to come out ahead whenever he faces 
>Voldemort. Isn't it a sign of insanity if you do the same thing over 
>and over, and expect a different outcome? You'd think V would start 
>thinking about some other way to kill Harry. Send McNair back with 
>his ax...But, OTOH, I think V is vain enough that he will never ?
>willingly let someone else bump Harry off. It's got to be him.

He is too vain, and also, looking at it from V's point of view, 
sending a lieutenant to kill Harry for him would be a very bad 
strategy in the long run.  That lieutenant, having defeated someone 
whom Voldemort could not, might begin to fancy himself the next Dark 
Lord, and loyalties of other DEs might shift as well.  Once Harry had 
defeated V once (back in 1981), it became very important, not just 
for V's ego but for his hold on power, for V to defeat him himself.

Scott wrote:

>Why would the Dementor still be Harry's fear when he has the power 
>of the patronus over it? 

crstbo623 at yahoo.com wrote:

>2) Harry's boggart is still a demeantor because it is not truly the 
>demeantor that he is fearful of but the painful memories of his 
>parents dying that the demeantor evokes who he comes in contact with 
>it. Harry doesn't want to be continually haunted by those memories, 
>and they are what he is fearful of. He may have the ability to 
>protect himself from it but he doesn't want to have to think about 
>it. 

That pretty much sums up my response, but I would just add this.  
Boggarts still turn into the moon for Lupin, even though his 
transformation is no longer physically painful and one could probably 
think of a long list of things that are scarier—isn't he more afraid 
of being killed, of the Cruciatus curse, etc., than of turning into a 
wolf?  One could ask the same about Ron:  which does he really find 
more terrifying on a rational level, Aragog or Voldemort?  I'd bet 
it's the latter, yet boggarts turn into spiders when they see him.  
There is a quality to fear that has nothing to do with logic; our 
most visceral fears aren't necessarily in response to the things that 
are actually most dangerous, but to the ones that have some other 
kind of psychological hold on us because of past experience, or what 
they symbolize, or because they have an immediacy that realer threats 
don't have.  I like that the boggart responds to this kind of 
illogical but very powerful fear.

David wrote:

>Ron apparently says things almost at random which later turn out to 
>be true (in which case Percy beware). <snip>  Fred and George's bet 
>on Ireland seems similar, though I'd like to know the source of ?
>their confidence in hazarding their entire savings. 

An ability to divine the future is only useful if you know you have 
it and know the difference between a guess and Seeing.  If Ron, Fred, 
and/or George made true predictions because they're Seers, but didn't 
know they were true predictions at the time, then they aren't any 
better off than non-Seers.  (If F & G really =knew= how the World Cup 
was going to come out [not the bet on Ireland, which was the 
favorite, but the double bet on Ireland to win and Krum to get the 
Snitch], and knew they knew it, they should forget about the Wheezes 
and just go to Vegas.)

All of which is to say that a Seer has to know he/she's a Seer or 
he/she isn't much of a Seer.

>(No, I don't understand the significance of Malfoy chasing him on a 
>dragon.) 

Aah, that one's easy.  Draco=dragon, and he's one of the major 
obstacles to happiness in Harry's life.  Plus, the opposing team 
being on dragons sounds like the wizarding version of your everyday, 
routine anxiety dream—take an anxiety (having to take an exam; being 
beaten by the upcoming opponent) and exaggerate it (having to take an 
exam in the nude; being roasted by the opponent's steed).

I like your thought that we've been set up to discount Divination but 
that it will prove true at a key moment.  Or that it already has.

Penny wrote re: Ginny:

>In PS/SS, we don't know her exact age IIRC. <various examples 
>snipped> These actions don't seem like a 9/10 yr old girl to me. 
>This behavior seems to me to be of a much younger child (child 
>expert that I am -- <g>). 

I thought the same, and I wonder whether JKR knew Ginny was 10 at 
that point in her writing.  Maybe Ginny wasn't originally meant to be 
in CoS but it changed in the writing; maybe she was meant to still be 
at home.  So far, with the exception of CoS, she =could= be 5 years 
younger than Ron for all she's needed at Hogwarts in the rest of 
canon.  It'll be interesting to see if she is key to later plots.

Amy Z
who loved Saitaina's trailer rant