Diggorys - WB, PEG! - Harry's Family - Schooling - Muggles

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 14707

Amy Z wrote:
> Amos would understand a lot better if Cedric told him, "Harry was
> attacked by Dementors in the middle of the match," but sharing that
> would really have been unfair to Harry--more so than letting Amos
> think that Harry just fell off his broom.  This isn't humility (it
> makes Harry look like a worse flier than he is, in fact), but it's
> very admirable.

There were a lot of people at that match, even if only Hogwarts students
and staff. Some significant fraction of students would have told their
parents, either in periodic letters (the period might be 'every time I
need to ask for more spending money') or when they came home for
holidays. The parents would tell their friends, as Harry Potter and
Dementors are both subjects worth gossiping about. With that many people
passing on the rumor, I'd be surprised if it wasn't pubbed in THE DAILY
PROPHET.

Peg Kerr wrote:
> I've emerged for the moment from wrestling with the plot of my third
> book (my heroine is being obstreperous; I just can't make her behave
> the way she should)

Welcome back, Peg! I would dearly love to hear more about what writing
is like for real writers (besides the matter of un-co-operative
characters, two questions that have come up lately on various lists are:
do real writers feel surprised by what they see coming out of their pen/
typewriter/ word processor? and why is it so difficult to write sex
scenes?), but the new definition says that has to be on the Off Topic
list, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/messages so please
join it.

Amanda wrote:
> Soooo, who's providing any maternal feeling? Mrs.Weasley?

Professor McGonagall is his House mother -- not that she fits the
stereotype of 'motherly type'. Maybe she doesn't have to -- Hagrid is
emotional enough for ten humans.

Amy Z wrote:
> A child of 6 can easily learn arithmetic (meaning add, subtract,
> multiply, divide).  Ditto with reading and writing-   (snip)
> I just wonder about literature, nonmagical history, science
> (which is  true and interesting even if you can circumvent
> physics with magic!),  etc. . . . don't wizarding kids ever want
> or need to learn them?

Long ago -- I think it may have been in the 1960s -- there were a lot of
articles in the travel section of the newspaper about street children in
Mediterranean countries who had had no formal schooling and many of whom
were illiterate, but they all spoke at least 6 languages and could do
any kind of complicated currency conversions in their heads very fast --
just by hanging around with their ears open, they learned the skills
they needed to make their livings from tourists.

Ginny suggested the name Pigwidgeon for Ron's little owl. Pigwidgeon is
a tremendously appropriate name, meaning: : "A cant word for anything
petty
or small. It is used by Drayton as the name of a fairy." If Ginny found
that name by reading Drayton, she was better read as a teenybopper than
I am at 43!

However, literature is one thing that you definitely don't have to go to
school to learn. Go to the library, or read the books on your parents'
shelves (that's what I did), or join a reading-aloud club (a list member
mentioned her Shakespeare-reading group), or have the parents read aloud
to the kids.

Again, history can be passed on without schooling -- just have the
retired old people babysit the young-uns by telling them all about what
they lived through and what their great-grand-parents had told them
about.

I think Steve van der Ark suggested last month that people who come to
understand the scientific worldview lose the ability to do magic. I
*hope* that isn't true. I agree that science is interesting just for fun
(I read SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN as escapism from working for a living) and
also I keep hoping that some brilliant Muggle-born student (Hermione!
Maybe Cho Chang?) will grow up to famously invent much more powerful
ways of doing magic that come from combining magical theory with
scientific theory.

Naama wrote:
> No, no, no. You use physics to circumvent magic! Remember -
> Hermione said of electronic devices that they were substitutes for
> magic, not the other way around. :)

Hermione was reciting what she had read in textbooks and been told in
Muggle Studies class, but that doesn't mean that it is true. I wrote
about it a week ago, see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/14085 (second topic
down).

Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:
> I was wondering why the magical world celebrated holidays
> like Halloween and Christmas.  Does magical history cross
> with Muggle history, or shouldn't they have their own holidays?
> Does that mean that all witches and wizards are Christian?

I feel sure that SOME witches and wizards are Christians.

There is a constant flow between magical society and Muggle society.
Wizarding folk often marry Muggles (as Seamus Finnegan's parents) and
lots of wizarding folk were Muggle-born (such as Hermione, and Lily).
The Muggle spouses and Muggle-born, especially if they don't cut all
contact with their old friends and family, would want to keep
celebrating the holidays that were a big deal to their families (in many
cases, Christmas) and thus the Muggle holiday would be introduced to the
wizarding world, and they would want to keep wearing the same type of
clothes they were used to, especially for things like gardening, so the
current crop of kids are wearing jeans and t-shirts, but 100 years ago
the girls were dressed like Alice in Wonderland.  Therefore, for a
wizarding family to be QUITE as ignorant of Muggle life as the Weasleys
is unusual.

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