Remus on train - Words - Hermione - JKR - Voldemort - Magic - Harry compared to Tom - more

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 18996

Amy Z wrote:
> I assumed that insofar as Remus is a plant and not just traveling
> by train because he's ill/poor, he's there to guard against Sirius.

I am not as insightful as Tim -- as soon as Harry learned (from Fudge?)
that wizards feared the criminal Sirius Black as much as Muggles did,
Tim announced: "He's a good guy." "You mean he's innocent?" I asked. Tim
answered: "I don't know if he's innocent, but he's going to be a good
guy, else Rowling wouldn't have made so much effort to make us think
he's a villain." However, I had recognized the name Sirius Black on
first seeing it in PoA, checked back in the first chapter of SS to
confirm my recollection, became convinced that there must be a back
story here, and never was as afraid of Criminal Sirius as I am of
Dementors.

Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
> Why couldn't Sirius have been under the Imperious Curse too?

>From what we heard from Hagrid about people who had been bewitched by
Voldemort and kind of came out of trances when he was defeated, the
Imperius Curse is broken when the person who cast it is killed, so if
Sirius HAD betrayed Potters under Voldemort's Imperius Curse, he
wouldn't have still been under Imperius Curse when he allegedly killed
all those Muggles and Peter.

R. Craig wrote:
> Of all the etymologies, "witch" is the most complicated.

I have a friend who insists that "witch" is cognate to Icelandic word
"Witka" which means a seer, and I can't remember whether the root it
comes from is "to be wise" or "to see".

A LOT OF PEOPLE wrote things about Hermione is an overachiever because
she is dependent on getting good marks and knowing stuff in order to
have self esteem. Other than being a fairly normal accusation used to
insult kids who do well in school, I suppose the evidence is near the
end of SS, where Hermione gets frantic about the need to study for
finals, something about "Don't you realize these exams are important?
Whether we get into second year depends on them!"

I admit that Hermione is is being loosely attached to reality if she
thinks there is any chance that *she*  would do badly enough on exams
not to be promoted to second years, even if she didn't study at all and
didn't get any sleep for days before taking the exam, but I believe that
Hermione didn't really mean saying that -- that JKR put those words in
Hermione's mouth as a kind of joke on parents always telling their
children how important grades are for university and career -- and we
can patch it over by saying that Hermione was just saying that in an
attempt to motivate Ron and Harry to study. Because I don't believe that
Hermione lacks confidence in her academic abilities. I believe that she
is quite confident that she can do great things in the way of
schoolwork, and has some determination to do the *best* she can, as well
as the deep curiosity about all those interesting courses that led her
to take too many classes in PoA.

Blaise wrote:
> Incidentally, if anyone has a nice up-to-date list of all the
> chats/interviews which JKR has taken part in and are to be
> found online, I'd love to see it.

Steve Vander Ark has a list of some of the chats/interviews on his
Lexicon website.

Deeblite suggested that the reason that Voldemort told Lily to "step
aside":
> could be a chivalry type thing.  He doesn't want to kill
> women unless he really needs to.  I know, Bertha Jorkins,
> but he "needed" to do that.

And "needed to kill not only Tom Riddle Sr who abandoned TMR's mother,
and Tom Sr's father, but also Tom Sr's mother? I can't imagine Voldemort
being chivalrous or gallant.

Kate qatet wrote:
> When somebody transfigures something inanimate and makes
> it a living creature (McG's desk to pig always sticks in my mind)
> have they then created a real viable creature? Does changing
> it back to a desk then constitute a murder of sorts?

I keep asking people that question. Recently, my friend Lee gave me an
answer: the animal that was created by Transfiguration from an inanimate
object doesn't have a soul (apparently to her 'soul' means both being
truly alive and being creative) and therefore only goes through the
stereotypical behaviors of that animal like audioanimatronics or a
zombie, and is not fertile. (The Dementors can eat a person's soul and
live the person a soul-less husk which is biologically alive, so there
is canon support for the possibility of a soul-less live biological
organism.) She said the exception would be that the created creature
could have a soul (and be alive and creative) if the wizard put some of
hiser own soul (life, creativity, AND ability to do magic) into it.

So if the creature created by Transfiguration is only a robot made of
meat (and we aren't?), animated rather than animate, killing it isn't
murder. Isn't even killing. So turning it back can't be murder or even
killing.

However, they have a class exercise of changing a hedgehog into a
pincushion. A hedgehog that one assumes was not created by magic for use
in class. Where does its soul go? Where does its life go? Is it murder?
Lee indicated that its soul just hangs around waiting for it to be
Transfigured back into some living being...

This is a really hard subject to discuss because all the words: animal,
inanimate, animate, animated, come from a word meaning 'soul'!

Barbara Purdom wrote:
> But the the greatest DISSIMILARITY between Harry and
> Voldemort is something that V. has  that H. does not: he uses
> his background and childhood experiences to feed his anger
> and hatred. (snip) [Harry] does not become an embittered,
> revenge-driven person, even after years of living in a closet
> under the stairs. (snip) Harry and Voldemort have very similar
> departure points, but their destinations are very different.
> THAT is what makes Harry special.

Moon (scabbers) wrote:
> It is our choices that make us what we are...  and somewhere,
> something led Tom astray, probably slowly and at first imperceptibly.

I believe, or at least suspect, some things that contradicts the freedom
of will (choice) that JKR is preaching: first, that Harry survived his
Dursley life with remarkable (altho' not total) lack of psychological
damage because Lily, powerful witch that she was, left her image in his
mind to comfort him and tell him about good values and help him resist
the Imperius Curse. Second, that Tom Jr is probably a psychopath, which
results from some kind of defective brain. Harry being blessed by his
mother's love and Tom being afflicted with a birth defect are not
examples of free will...

Nethilia De Lobo wrote:
> a basket of "funny custard-colored furballs that were
> humming loudly". The first thing I thought about was Tribbles.
> Anyone else think about that, or am I nuts?

Yes, my first thought was Tribbles. Now, of course, I know that they are
actually Puffskeins.

> But after [Mrs Crouch] died, did she revert to herself?
> If so, why wasn't this noticed, and if not, why?

IIRC, we were told that the Dementors are blind and therefore can't tell
one corpse from another.

> fur: I'm a writer and I was thinking that almost
> every genre of Fanfiction has the SI character test.

SI = Self Insertion? Meaning Mary Sue (as giving oneself a cameo can't
be worse than giving someone else a cameo)? I've seen a Mary Sue test. I
think someone posted the URL in an HPff post....

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