Peter

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 19042

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., rja.carnegie at e... wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Doreen Rich" <nera at r...> wrote:
> > --- In HPforGrownups at y..., captain_debrowe at y... wrote:
> > > --- In HPforGrownups at y..., aasta2000 at y... wrote:

The way the citations stack up is so pretty.

> Also, Lupin swears to Harry that he won't do anything more than tie
> Peter up.  Perhaps promises are more binding among wizards, or
> perhaps Lupin personally feels bound by that.  Peter doesn't make
> any promise not to escape that I can see...?
> 
> Lupin's promise could also account for his not attacking Peter as
> soon as he transformed to wolf.  This hypothesis requires that 
> Peter doesn't move to escape until wolf-Lupin isn't an immediate
> threat to him, otherwise he'd be dog meat - and the action is
> consistent with that hypothesis.

In that case, the wizard's promise must be magically binding, not 
merely Remus's severe sense of personal honor. Because when he 
transforms into wolf without Wolfbane Potion, he loses his human 
mind (with the sense of honor and knowledge of which human is friend 
and which is foe) and it is replaced with an overwhelming compulsion, 
hunger, desire, rage, reflex response, to attack and try to kill any 
human that the wolf perceives.

> Stray thought.  Houses don't seem to mix much socially up to POA,
> an exception being Percy's Ravenclaw prefect girlfriend - I presume
> that prefects are set apart from their Houses, and have one
> prefects' common-room.  

Houses don't seem to mix much socially, but there are Doubles class: 
we've seen Gryffindor sharing Potions with Slytherin and Herbology 
with Hufflepuff, and I theorize that they share Astronomy with 
Ravenclaw. That is one way that students from different Houses can 
meet. I believe that there are also extracurricular clubs, which we 
readers haven't seen, except for the screwed-up meeting of a dueling 
club, because Harry is busy enough with classes, Quidditch and saving 
the world that he doesn't feel any need to join Drama Club or Cooking 
Club or Chess Club.

> So are all the Marauders in Gryffindor, too? James surely is.  I 
> think the school _really_ need to get that hat fixed - half of 
> Harry's friends are in the wrong House, too.

I'm sure that all the Marauders were in Gryffindor, that they were 
all roommates in one dorm.

Peter may have been quite brave until 12 years of life as a rat 
turned him into the snivelling coward we saw in PoA. (If his motive 
for betraying his friends was something other than fear for his own 
survival, as he claimed in PoA, what was it?) 

There has been much talk of why Hermione isn't in Ravenclaw. It is 
generally agreed that, much as she loves books and loves to just know 
stuff, she loves even more to use her knowledge to save the world, 
and that Ravenclaws tend to be more passive than she is. Who else 
do you think is in the wrong House? Btw, Hermione wanted to be in 
Gryffindor (she said so on the train) and Draco wanted to be in 
Slytherin, and I suspect that the Sorting Hat takes the student's 
desire into consideration as well as personality.