Unicorns - Potions - Animagi - Jorkins

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 28012

Tabouli wrote:

> JKR unicorns start out gold and hornless and then go silver and
> then white and horned. 

I don't know if she has any historic lore for that. What it reminded 
me of was -- was it the wordless movie DREAM OF WHITE HORSES? -- 
maybe the Lippanzer stallions -- anyway, some breed of horses 
that is famous for being WHITE, except they are born black and have 
faded to dapple-gray as yearlings and don't reach pure white until 
they're two or three years old.

Cindy wrote:

> I wonder whether wands are useful or even permitted in the making
> of potions. 

> > 2) What is the difference between a potion, draft, draught,
> > solution, and concoction?
> Here's an attempt to make sense of these terms. 

I think your proposed explanation are excellent and probably correct 
and ought to go into the speculations section of the Lexicon. Steve?

> what is a Scintillating Solution?).

I suppose it makes the recipient sparkle. Same effect as the Star 
Spangled Charm I invented for Lily to use on her Christmas wreaths to 
achieve the same appearance as fairy lights. Or perhaps it makes a 
person 'sparkle' in a metaphorical way, intellectual brilliance or a 
brilliant wit. 

> Weight loss potion, of course.  To be taken on the hour.
> Consisting of at various times of chocolate, fried foods,
> pizza and ice cream.  Exercise causes it to wear off. 

Oh, God. I think I love you. Of course, when the exercise of walking 
ALL OVER the mall while shopping causes the potion to wear off, one 
has to take an extra dose!

Amy Z wrote:

> > I like things, like COBOL and knitting, where sloppiness doesn't 
> > ruin it.
> LOL!  That is a great comfort to this sloppy knitter.

But your earlier post said you LIKE cooking and potions, partly 
because of the care required.

James Andrewartha wrote:

> who are the other 6 (registered) animagi?

I fantasize that two of them were the Prewetts whose death by 
Voldemort Hagrid bemoans along with that of Bones and MacKinnons. I 
fantasize that they were Hufflepuffs (loyal and law-biding, so they 
registered) who worked as agents for Dumbledore's anti-Voldemort 
resistance. Shorter answer: IIRC, from canon we don't know at all.

Cindy wrote:

> For this Bertha Jorkins stuff to be important to make it into the 
> Pensieve and for Dumbledore to still be sad about it, the "kissing" 
> has to be more than garden-variety kissing.

I read it as, Dumbledore is not still sad about the kissing, he is 
sad about Bertha's death. "Why did you have to follow him in the 
first place" applies to why did she follow Pettigrew from the 
Albanian tavern (where she ran into him on her holiday) to her death 
and service to Voldemort? What caused that old memory to come up in 
the Pensieve was that he used the same sentence/question then as now 
and the cause was Bertha's snoopiness then as now.

Speaking of Bertha's sevice to Voldemort, some brilliant person on 
this list suggested that she provided him with more than information 
-- let me do a Search for it:

"blue eyed tigress wrote:
Okay, here goes:  I suspect that Bertha Jorkins may have played a
more involved role in Voldy's revival than JKR can ever reveal.  But
I ask myself ... we see Voldemort early on as a face manifested on 
someone else's body (Quirrel, who always makes me think of squirrels, 
but I digress); we hear V. talked about as if he were a weak and 
disembodied spirit, a phantasm, an evil influence.  THEN, after 
months in hiding, and months with the unwilling company of Bertha 
Jorkins (missing person and presumably "pure"-blooded witch) Voldy 
shows up in his, as someone so aptly put it, "ugly baby form".  So.  
Were the powers of evil using poor Bertha as a magically-augmented 
incubator?  Voldemort's body, the form he took before The Graveyard 
Scene, had to come from somewhere ... <shudder>  (Sorry, I just 
thought I'd share that nightmare image, so I don't have it all to 
myself)"

So Dumbledore could be sad not only for poor Bertha, but because of 
the unfortunate result she enabled: Voldemort's return.