Ghoulish musings, Hogwarts: A History, goodness, Riddle, IQs and love

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 25512

mellinell:
> who thinks the Weasleys' ghoul is a red herring, and who thinks it will play a role later on? I'm divided, myself.
 
Hmm, hadn't thought about this much.  I think I'd filed the Weasley ghoul under "atmospheric touch" and dismissed it.  But yes, it certainly could be relevant later.  Does anyone on the list know what ghouls are, exactly?  Somewhere between a ghost and a demon?

Gert:
> The next auxiliary book to come out MUST be "Hogwarts, A History"!!  How could there be any doubt?

Although this is indeed a very attractive idea, I myself doubt it very much indeed.  Why?  Because it's obvious that the history of Hogwarts is absolutely crucial to future plot development and therefore needs to be kept quiet until the end of the series.  Think Chamber of Secrets and the story of the ghosts (which IIRC JKR said would come into Book 7) and what ol' Salazar was up to, just for a start.

usergoogol:
> >Draco is that person that we would all like to be if there were no 
> >EternalGod/BhuddhaNature/AbsoluteTruth/Ultimate Justice to 
> >fear.  Rich, privileged, influential, popular, witty, probably 
> >attractive enough, and certainly used to getting his way.  In a 
> >word, he is powerful, and he raises the >ultimate question of 
> >human morality (as does Voldemort, >Dumbledore, Lucius, 
> >and to a lesser extent, Fudge):
>
>To this, I must take offense, as a moral atheist. I believe, that people, without any of those above things, can be kind, merely >because, it is a logical thing to do. (If your kind to people, people will be kind to you.) Also, doing mean and violent acts is >not comfortable to do if you feel a sort of "mutual feelings," or, empathy.

Little Alex beat me to making a lot of interesting comments on this, but as a moral agnostic let me add that "definition of goodness by majority vote", which I think came up from usergoogol later (who pasted some comments last night to write up today then, eh?) is *not* what we godless creatures are advocating, by any means.  I should now come up with a sweeping explanation of what we *are* advocating, but um,er, I'll have to get back to you on that one.  As a distracting aside, I came up with the idea that God was invented to scare people into being good (or what the society at the time thought would be best for it) at the age of 10 or so, perhaps by parallel with Santa Claus...

Catherine:
> I think that he's counting on Ginny dying and Riddle taking on a 
proper form.  Although what good that would do I don't know.  Would 
it mean there are two Voldys out there?  Heaven forbid!

Oo er!  What an interesting thought.  What would have happened?  Might Tom be aghast to see what his future self became?  I would be if I were him: Tom still seemed to have a few marbles rolling around in there, whereas the Voldemort of GoF is several stripes short of a zebra and looks like a discarded extra from the animated Lord of the Rings.  "Look at you!  What possessed you to concost this skinny snake-man body?  You look hideous!  What are you trying to do, scare away all the Death Eaters?  And as for giving Harry back his wand...!  In my day, the *first* thing I did in the Chamber of Secrets was nab Harry's wand *from* him, you fool!"  And so on...

Susan:
> >4) Hermione is a Very Smart Witch.  Why on earth, then, does she like
>*Lockhart*?

> I have a first in Law from the University of Oxford and *I* can't fathom out
> why I had crushes on the people I had crushes on at that sort of age.
> Better leave it at "hormones and brain cells don't mix".

I've never quite understood why people imagine that academic intelligence (i.e. getting good marks) somehow innoculates you against stupidity in any other domain of human endeavour and guarantees that you are all-knowing and wise.  Ever fossicked around in a university staff room full of PhD holders?  People with high IQs can quite easily have little common sense, poor judgment in love, bad driving skills, total ignorance of domains of knowledge they've never studied, and so on and so on.  I was very like Hermione as a child, analytical, good marks, etc. and at 13 I had a crush on the lead singer of A-Ha!  (Tabouli blushes, but holds her head up defiantly).

So there.

Tabouli.



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