House Elves - Killing Sirius - Harry's Family - Weasleys - Music - More

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 21689

Allison  wrote:

> I think house-elves probably get one family
> (or school or business, like Hogwarts) and 
> that family serves it until they're released 
> or fired.

Yes, but what if that family dies out (or that school or business goes
out of business)? Btw, are the House Elves attached to the *family* or
to the *house*? As long as old wizarding families keep living in their
old family homes, the effect is the same, but suppose the latest heir of
a British old wizarding family emigrates? Do the House Elves stay in the
old house to serve the next occupants? One tentacle says, George said in
CoS: "House-elves come with big old manors and castles and places like
that." Another tentacle says, MoM has an Office of House Elf Relocation,
Newt Scamander had a very boring job there when he was young.

Alice vayabe wrote: 

> Which raises the question of who Winky's father was
> and, for that matter, the one of how house elves 
> reproduce seing as there rarely seems to be more
> than one elf per household.

*IS* there rarely more than one elf per household? The Dobby/Malfoy and
Winky/Crouch interactions look so, but someone says in GoF that Hogwarts
has the most House Elves of any house in Britain. That suggests that
there are quite a few houses that have a couple of elves or even a dozen
elves, but not the hundred that Hogwarts has.

Even if there is usually only one Elf per household, they could sneak
for conjugal visits on occasional nights when the family members are all
asleep or away from home, and all the housework is done.

Caius Marcius Coriolanus (of whom Plutarch did not think well) wrote:

> And there's also a Shakespearean parallel: in 
> Hamlet III,iii, the Prince is prepared to wreak 
> vengeance against Claudius, but hesitates when he
> finds him praying (snip): 
> "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all"  

It must be very convoluted to attribute Hamlet's staying his hand from
killing Claudius to Conscience, as Hamlet's motive was not a queasiness
about taking a human life, but rather was a desire to damn Claudius's
soul as well as kill his body.

Magda Grantwich:

> I'm still a little foggy on the actual time chronology
> of that day that the Potters died and who did what when.

I *think* everyone is foggy on the chronology of the day from the
parental Potters' death to Harry's arrival on the Dursley doorstep. I
think Steve's Lexicon lists it under Mysteries.

Melanie Brackney wrote:
> Where are the other Potters?

Maybe the Potter family had dwindled from several generations of Potters
who had no children or only one child because Voldemort did the coup de
grace. 

Stephanie added:
> And what happened to those Oh-so-supportive Lily/Petunia parents?

Sometimes I wonder if Petunia murdered them in a temper tantrum over
their favoritism of Lily. The Ancient Magic sure sounds like Lily and
Petunia were blood sisters, but I wish Petunia was Narcissa's sister who
was thrown away for being a Squib and adopted by the Evanses. That would
give a good reason for her resentment of magic (magic being why her
birth parents rejected her) and her envy of Lily (who got to live with
her own biological parents).

Catherine wrote:

> But I just had a thought that if Arthur Weasley
> was also a 7th son, then surely we would have 
> heard something about the rest of his family by 
> now.  Unless most of his family was wiped out 
> during the VW1, then surely there would be other
> Weasley cousins at Hogwarts,

In Book 1, Draco (no doubt quoting his father) said: "All the Weasleys
have red hair, no money, and more children than they can afford." That
phrase "all the Weasleys" wouldn't mean anything if there was only one
Weasley. There would at least be one brother of Arthur who also had a
large family, and I like to believe that Arthur was one from a large
family himself, several of whom went on to have large families. Despite
the death toll of VWI, I can't understand why there aren't at least a
dozen red-haired Weasleys first and second cousins running around
Hogwarts.

Emma Moniz wrote:

> where is music in the  magical world, and, more 
> specifically, in a magical education?  (snip)
> Is music simply peripheral entertainment, like the 
> Weird Sisters?

Music for entertainment includes chamber music and opera, which are
mentioned on Dumbledore's and Flamel's Famous Wizard cards, not just pop
music. 
 
I think there are an awful lot of subjects that are voluntary
extracurricular activities at Hogwarts instead of being classes, and
music is one of them. 

I'm sure that wizard folk must learn to play instruments and to sing, in
order to become lead guitarists and singing sorceresses, but I have this
curiosity about how common are instruments magicked to more or less play
themselves? Like Muggles can buy a toy guitar that contains an
electronic chip that plays recorded music while the player (non-sexual
double entendre) just randomly touches strings that are just painted
on.  

***D~M~L*** wrote:

> Why Steven Spielberg? He's a great director! He'd
> probably do a better job on this film than Christopher Comlumbus 

I have heard that Spielberg cannot stand to make a movie without
changing it all around in order to make it more personally 'his'. 

Barbara Purdom wrote:

> It would also be interesting to know what houses some
> of the other teachers were in as well. (snip)  And what
> about Madam Pomfrey and Filch?   

I suspect Filch, as Squib, never was a student at Hogwarts: remember
Neville saying that his family was afraid that he wasn't magic enough to
go to Hogwarts? But then how did Dumbledore run across poor Squib Argus
and his need for a job?

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