Florence - desire for family - obliviate & veritaserum - owls - Capone

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 19597

SML wrote:

>Wouldn't it be awesome if Florence was the girl Snape loved, and she 
became
>MRS. LESTRANGE!  Doubly intriguing.

Can't be.  Mrs. Lestrange's first name is Amanita.  ;-)

(NB:  that was a FANFIC reference to our own Pippin/foxmoth/Rosemary. 
 Posts asking where the !$*&@# in GF we learn Mrs. Lestrange's first 
name will be met with blank looks!)

Rebecca wrote:

>I'm having a hard time imagining how Harry's desire could lead to
>evil, but it's not hard at all to imagine how Ron's could. 

I think a desire for a family can lead people into real trouble.  Pop 
psychology in the U.S. today suggests that kids who join gangs are 
often looking for the family they lack (I have no idea whether 
thoughtful study supports this, though it makes sense to me).  I'm not 
worried about Harry.  I'm just saying that any desire can be 
exploited.

Rebecca wrote:

>(I really hate Obliviate. Have I said this before?  I think it's 
evil.  The whole thing with Mr.
>Roberts in GoF actually made me feel ill.)

It is such a horrible violation, isn't it?  And imagine--the wizarding 
world may really exist and some of us have encountered it, but we 
don't know it because someone has erased our memories.  

BTW, I feel much the same way about Veritaserum.  I think requiring 
witnesses or the accused to take it is right up there with torture.  
Even if it were strictly controlled--e.g., you can refuse to use it 
without penalty, you cannot be asked any questions that aren't 
strictly relevant to the case, etc.--it is such a horrible thought, to 
be asked questions and be literally unable to lie, withhold part of 
the truth, or refuse to answer.  And questions will inevitably cross 
the line.  No one asked Crouch about Harry's map, but he told about it 
anyway.  If Snape questioned Harry about gillyweed, he might well find 
out that Harry's in touch with Sirius.  The whole thing scares the 
daylights out of me.  I like to think that Dumbledore is so shaken in 
that chapter not only because of the horrible things Crouch has done, 
but also because they're using this disgusting method.

Also, I second (or third or fourth) the lie-detector test parallel.  
LD tests are so dangerous because they are popularly viewed as valid 
and they aren't.  All they can do is measure somatic expressions of 
stress.  The Newsweek article mentioned that sociopaths can go through 
extremely stressful situations without showing any physical signs of 
stress, so that LD tests don't work on them, whereas I know if someone 
asked law-abiding me if I'd held up a convenience store, my heart 
would start thumping.  When I'm accused of something I didn't do, I 
get positively weak.  

Vicky wrote:

>  On a totally unrelated topic, I wonder how owls know where to 
deliver letters.
>I don't recall people specifically telling them who to give letters 
to.

I think they understand English.  We do see people sending owls 
without actually saying aloud, "this is for so-and-so" (e.g. the scene 
where F & G and R & H & H are all in the Owlery--maybe F or G whispers 
it in the owl's ear?) but I think that's just compression.  Or maybe 
they can even read, as people often write the addressee's name on an 
envelope or on the outside of the parchment; or maybe they just know, 
telepathically, whom you're writing to.  How the owls know how to find 
the person is another matter entirely.  That's that old Owl Magic.

I wrote:

>its prisoners often entered sane 
> and left insane (Al Capone e.g.).

CMC wrote:

>In Capone's case, that was more from the effects of tertiary 
>syphyllis than conditions at Alcatraz.

Ah, this is why I love this list.  I can always depend on someone to 
fill in the gaps in my knowledge of 20th Century American Venereal 
Diseased Gangster History.

Amy Z