Full Moon Werewolf (was: Hatred of ancient Magic vs. HP Magic

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 27261

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Mindy C.L." <mindyatime at j...> wrote:

> Which just got me thinking, last night as I was walking home from
> dinner at my parents', gazing up at the full moon. It's fortunate
> that the HP wizards are not religious at all... 

I keep thinking that SOME of them must be religious and observant... 
and with pretty much all the same religions that Muggles have, as 
Muggle-born witches and wizards wouldn't change their religion 
just because of studying at Hogwarts.

> I was just ruminating for a moment that suppose there ARE 
> practicing Jews in the HP universe and suppose one of them was 
> bitten by a werewolf??? This werewolf would for the rest of the 
> life be missing out on half of the Jewish holidays... since 
> Passover and Sukkos fall out every year in mid-lunar month, exactly
> at full moon.

A Wiccan who became an HP werewolf would have much the same problem, 
as '[at least] once in the month shall ye gather, and better it be 
when the Moon is Full' ... 

> Can you imagine the head of a household being unable to lead the 
> Passover Seder because he becomes a wolf every year on Passover? 

COULD an HP werewolf BE the head of a household? With the amount of 
prejudice against werewolves depicted in PoA, if he wasn't married 
yet when bitten, no one would ever marry him after. We don't even 
know if the wizarding folk have a law against werewolves getting 
married!  Presumably one's spouse becoming a werewolf would be 
considered proper grounds for divorce, as leprosy was at one time in 
some US states. Anyway, if the prejudice against werewolves keeps 
them from finding jobs (as Lupin said of himself), they wouldn't be 
able to support a family, and TO ME a person who is financially 
dependent on spouse, parent, or child is NOT the head of the 
household. 

> Which leads me to ask the following to werewolf-related questions:
> 1. How long does a werewolf remain in his state -- 24 hours? less?
> more? 
> 2. Does a werewolf transform only upon SEEING the moon, or does it 
> happen automatically on the eve of the full moon?

JKR herself seems confused about the latter, because in the climactic 
scene Lupin transforms when outdoors he is struck by a ray of 
moonlight when the moon comes out from behind a cloud. Well, if he 
only transforms when he SEES (or is touched) by the moonlight, such 
that cloudiness is enough to block it, he wouldn't need to take 
Wolfsbane Potion in order to keep his mind and hide in his office as 
a tame wolf, because he would keep both his mind and his human form 
as long as he stayed indoors and hung blackout curtains on the 
windows. 

So people have asked JKR about that in some of the interviews and 
chats she did to publicize GoF, and she always replied that he hadn't 
transformed yet when he went into the Shrieking Shack because the 
moon hadn't risen yet, and he transformed later because the moon had 
risen. But if he transforms at moonrise, he should have transformed 
while IN the Shrieking Shack: the moon whose light struck him was 
high enough in the sky that it had risen a while before. "It rose 
while he was in the Shrieking Shack", I believe she said in one 
interview.