Granger - technology - Snape - Triwizard Portkey - Lily

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 14085

Part of my insanity is my conviction that Cressida Granger, who owns the
company that makes Lava Lites, is Hermione Granger's much older sister
-- both their personal names come from Shakespeare. My web searching
turned up tons of stuff on her company and their products but nothing on
her personally. So I asked my friend whose web searches always work, and
she found that Ms. Cressida was born in 1963. I know people who've had a
'change of life baby' 17 years after they thought they'd completed their
family! The article is called Magic of the lamp lights up the path to
success: http://www.lineone.net/express/00/11/05/city/m0300-d.html

Pippin wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Jim Ferer" <jferer at y...> wrote:
> > So whether we're talking about "scientific" or "magical"
> > understanding, the tools are the same. Our 'eclectricity' and plugs
> > (all our science and technology) are substitutes for magic that we
> > Muggles are forced to use. Magic replaces technology. That
> > wouldn't happen in Tolkien's world.
> Look at your words. What you describe is not magic replacing
> technology, but technology replacing magic. And that is exactly
> what happens in Tolkien's world when the Fourth Age arrives
> and all that belongs to the elder eras fades and is forgotten.

The wizarding folk tell Harry that electricity and Sony Gameboys are the
stuff Muggles invented to make up for our lack of magic. I feel that the
real situation is more complicated. At first, Muggle tinkerers invented
things to accomplish results they had seen when visiting wizards --
indoor plumbing with flush toilets, for example. But at some point,
Muggle inventions got ahead of wizarding magic, and the situation
changed to wizarding folk trying to invent magic things to accomplish
results that they see when visiting Muggles. For example, it is obvious
from its NAME that the Wizarding Wireless Network was invented to
imitate Muggle wireless -- they wouldn't be inspired to call a wave on
in the air, a song on the wind, "wire less" since they hadn't had an
earlier version WITH wires (i.e. the telegraph). I speculate that the
transition occurred during the Gaslight Era -- gas lights were invented
to imitate wizarding automatic candles and railway trains were invented
to imitate wizarding self-propelled carriages. But electric light, an
improvement over wizarding automatic candles (except when there are
rolling blackouts), was an original Muggle invention.

Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:
> Anyway, does anyone else think Snape is as complicated as I do?

There are a ton of people who love Snape, enough that they have at least
one egroup dedicated only to discussing Snape, which I am not in and do
not know the URL off-hand, even tho' I enjoy Snape's complicated
messed-up mind enough to write fic about him. Pippin wrote a song in
post #6914 of this group:

>To the tune of: A Bicycle Built for Two
> [Enter Pippin, Dinah, Amanda and others]

> Snape-y, Snape-y,
> Give us your answer do.
> We're half crazy,
> All for the love of you.
> We know that you would disparage
> A wizard-Muggle marriage,
> But come, we entreat,
> To the Prefect's bath suite,
> And we'll give you a good shampoo!

Rebecca Bohner wrote:
> Trina --
> Only one problem with your logic.  It tells us why the Cup was
> rigged to return to Hogwarts, but it still doesn't tell us why they
> used the Cup for the portkey and didn't use something far simpler
> like (as you suggested, to my considerable amusement) Harry's
> toothbrush.  Surely *that* could have been enchanted to return
> Voldemort & Co. to Hogwarts just as easily as the Cup?

IIRC the last time this subject came around, it was suggested that it is
normally impossible to use a Portkey at Hogwarts, much the same way that
it is impossible to Apparate at Hogwarts. But that the Triwizard Cup
already was a Portkey with an exemption to that rule, because it was
supposed to bring the Champion to the judges' stand. Thus, converting
the Cup to a Portkey to the graveyard saved young Crouch from having to
create his own exception to the no-Portkey-at-Hogwarts rule. Maybe only
Dumbledore is a great enough wizard or only Dumbledore knows the
necessary secret spell to create an exemption to the hypothetical
no-Portkey-at-Hogwarts rule.

Courtney asked:
> How is it that the Portkey worked when in the beginning of the book
> Arthur Weasley stated that Portkeys worked at predestined times?
> Moody couldn't possibly have known the exact time in which Harry
> and Cedric were to be touching the Cup.

IIRC Arthur explained that there are several kinds of Portkeys and one
kind is set to work at a pre-set time; that's the kind that they used to
go to the World Cup. But the Triwizard Cup is another kind, a kind that
works at any time that a witch or wizard touches it.

Andrea from Brazil wrote:
> What if Lily once showed mercy to Voldemort, and he had
> that debt with her? Dumbledore said it's a powerful connection.
> Maybe, because of a prophecy or something, Voldy had to
> kill James and Harry, but *couldn't* kill Lily. Then, when he
> actually got to murder her, it all turned back to him, because
> he had broken the magical bond. That'd be why he wanted to
> spare her in the first place. I mean, the guy's a big time baddy,
> has killed lots of people, why would he care about murdering
> an extra one? He finished Cedric off without thinking twice.

I've never heard this suggestion before, and it does make sense. I'm
going to be brooding all night whether I can think up any little scrap
of a reason to contradict this.
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