Wizard's Work - Yucky Potions - Ghosts/Lupin - Hagrid/Snape - Hog Warts - Polls/OTCha

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 26454

I sent this message six hours ago: at four hours and at six hours I got
notices that it had not been delivered yet. So I'm sending it again. 

J. Franklin (J. F. Ranklin?) wrote:

> So what do graduates put on their resumes
> under education when applying for jobs in 
> the Muggle world?  It seems that this would
> be particularly difficult for children from 
> Muggle families.  

They lie. I am sure that wizardry makes forgery EASY, not only creating
documents that Muggles CANNOT identify as fake, but placing created
documents in government files and placing created data in government
computer files, and removing documents/data as needed. Someone, I think
on this list, once suggested that creating new Muggle identities for
wizarding folk done by a department in MoM, and came up with clever
names for the specialists in doing this kind of magic. It COULD be hard
enough magic to be done only by specialists, without the specialists
being part of MoM: they could be in private practice.

> A similar problem is what do they tell
> nonmagical relatives about where their
> children go to school? 

They lie. Usually not claiming that their child goes to St. Brutus's
School for Criminally Insane Boys, but rather claiming that their child
goes to an experimental school for especially talented children. And I
like to think that the government (truant officers, National Health,
Department of Child Protection, etc) doesn't even know that the child
exists during the school year (see above about forgery and reverse
forgery, and remember Memory Charms), but during the summer, they not
only know about the child, but don't know that they didn't know during
the school year.

Catherine in California/medieval Albion wrote: 

> Somehow I can't imagine my old turf of
> programmer would be needed since they
> don't seem to have any kind of computers 

I'm a COBOL pgmmer. It seems to me that applications pgmming is kind of
like modifying spells and systems pgmming is kind of like inventing new
spells. Charms, I think, would be the kind of spell that is most verbal
and logical, therefore most resembling computer pgmming, and that
Potions is the most physical, therefore least like computer pgmming. 

I wonder if witch-I would work in a hidden cubicle Charming ledger
volumes to produce Inventory Analysis reports from the material in and
material out entries written in it by the stock clerks? I think Lexicon
Steve's theory of magic working by intention would require only showing
the bespelled volume a mock-up of what the report should look like, but
maybe the spellcaster has to specify that quantities out must be
multiplied by negative one before being added to
running-on-hand-quantity...

Mindy wrote:

> I am quite repulsed by the list of ingredients
> that go into the various potions Snape brews
> with his students. Are these things actually
> DRUNK by the students or are they applied
> topically to surfaces of whatever needs to
> be affected?

JKR put in the disgusting ingredients because it is traditional in
literature that potions have disgusting ingredients, like Shakespeare's
witches in MACBETH: "eye of newt and toe of frog, liver of a spotted
dog". Some modern people who believe that the literary tradition of
magic is based on something real say that the disgusting ingredients
were really 'code names' for more reasonable ingredients, like "toe of
frog" being the code name for a particular herb.

Another explanation has to do with the placebo effect. Supposedly
experiments have found that bitter tasting placebos (that are oral
liquids) have stronger effects than sweet tasting placebos, and that
placebo injections have stronger effects than placebo oral medications. 

In JKR's universe, the disgusting ingredients are really there and magic
works by more than the placebo effect, but perhaps part of the way that
magic works is that there is a cost and perhaps part of the way that the
cost for potions is paid is by having to work with and consume and taste
the disgusting ingredients.

Cindy wrote:

> As a group, I don't find the ghosts to
> be very interesting characters.  (snip)
> the Bloody Baron (who IS he, anyway?) (snip)
> I worry, though,  because I don't see how
> [Lupin] can be happy.  Maybe he was emotionally
> OK before teaching at Hogwarts, but the
> circumstances under which he lost his job
> would really depress anyone. 

I put a Bloody Baron backstory into one of my fanfics, altho' it didn't
say why Peeves is scared of him. I haven't figured out yet why Peeves is
scared of him -- that is one of the Mysteries of Hogwarts.

I don't see how Remus could have been happy before PoA -- all his
friends gone in one swoop, and one of his loved and trusted friends had
been the traitor who killed the others. He must be happier after PoA,
since he has one of his friends back, no longer a traitor. I hope they
can spend some time together.

Remus surely has lost jobs and housing before when people discovered his
secret. He's probably used to it. This time, he has the consolation of
knowing that the non-Slytherin students appreciated him, that Snape was
being the same old Snape enemy from school days, and that Dumbledore
begged him to stay on.  

Barb wrote:

> The questions to ask about September 1, 1993 are: 
3) And, for those whose PoA books are at hand 
> (snip) was Lupin at the welcoming feast that evening

He was at the Welcoming Feast:
"On a happier note," [Dumbledore]  continued, I am pleased to welcome
two new teachers to our ranks this year. "First, Professor Lupin, who
has kindly consented to fill the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts
teacher." There was some scattered, rather unenthusiastic applause. Only
those who had been in the compartment on the train with Professor Lupin
clapped hard, Harry among them. Professor Lupin looked particularly
shabby next to all the other teachers in their best robes."

The Wolfie Twins took the liberty of moving that Full Moon from
September 1 to August 31, so that Lupin was riding and sleeping on
Hogwarts Express because he was too exhausted to Apparate -- remember in
PoA, he was out 'sick' from class on Friday, then on Saturday the
Dementors disrupted the Quidditch game, then on Monday: "Professor Lupin
was back at work. It certainly looked as though he had been ill." He's
still wiped out from the transformation after TWO days, surely he would
be in terrible shape the very next day.

Which reminds me, FANTASTIC BEASTS not only does not tell how to
distinguish the werewolf from the true wolf, as promised in the scene in
PoA where Snape subs DADA, 

and neither confirms nor denies the Muggle notion that werewolves are
killed by silver weapons or injured by any contact with silver (even
when in human form), 

and doesn't tell us whether his bite transmits the contagion when he is
in human form,

FB also does not answer our questions about when the werewolf is
transformed: only at night? Only one night? From moonrise to moonset of
the Full Moon regardless of day or night? A 24 hour period that is 12
hours on either side of the instant of Full Moon and includes both day
and night? Or only the night time(s) of that 24 hour period, which could
be TWO transformations, one for the later part of one night and the
first part of the next night. 


---  Kelly Hurt <klhurt at y...> wrote:
> --- "Mindy, a.k.a. CLH" <mindyatime at j...> wrote:
> >...will be unraveled by some very shocking
> > revelation about both Hagrid and Snape
> > which will send us all reeling.
> Ah.  Sounds like someone else noticed
> that Hagrid and Snape have identical eyes,
> except, of course, for the emotions in them. 

IIRC, the photo of Hagrid's late father in GoF had the same sparkling
beetle-black eyes as Hagrid. I don't think they COULD have the same
father, as Hagrid's father died when he was 12, circa 1941, and Snape
wasn't born until 1957 to 1960.

---  foxmoth at q... wrote:
> ---  bobbins29 at h... wrote:
> > the main word i dislike, though, is "hogwarts".  it's just... 
> > unpleasant.
> It's a pun on warthog.

One of my pen pals told me on September 6 that the name Hogwarts first
appeared in "DOWN WITH SKOOL" by Ronald Searles and someone. I looked up
DOWN WITH SKOOL on amazon.com and there was no copy available, even
used, but it did tell me it was published in... damn, I can't
remember... 1951 or 1954.

I have a long and complicated theory that the mountain behind Hogwarts
is Mt. Hog aka Hogmount, and the lake is Hogmere and the Forbidden
Forest is Hogwood, and the flat area down by the lake, where the school
is built, was originally Hogmead (meadow) while the somewhat upslope
area where the village was eventually built to support the school, was
originally Hogwald. The mountain's name Hog either means 'Holy' or is
named after the Caledonian (not Calydonian) Boar.

The Four Founders, who were not familiar with the area, got confused
which was Hogmead and which was Hogwald and Godric said to name it
Hogwald School. Salazar threw a fit that Godric just wanted the name to
contain his and Helga's initials (in this theory, Godric and Helga were
married) and leave out him and Rowena. 
Salazar: "Call it Sorwald." 
Godric: "Now look who wants to leave people out. Hypocrite."
Rowena: "Okay, call it Sorfrat for sisters and brothers." 
After a certain amount of shouting by Salazar, Godric, and Rowena, Helga
proposed a compromise: Include all the initials, call it HoGwaRTS.

The T is for Tavish Tartanwool who was familiar with Hogmount and
environs and had told the Four about this suitable location for them. I
have a theory that he was the Fifth Founder but he was murdered by
Salazar and the Four covered this up, concealed all evidence of his
existence, because they still wanted Salazar's co-operation. 

Cassie wrote:

> NB: I think we need to keep a certain measure
> of restraint on our personal feelings. I know
> that I've been on the list a pretty long time,
> and therefore whenever I see yet another "How
> many students are there at Hogwarts?" post, I
> want to throw my computer through the window
> and cut my wrists on the shards. But it is on
> topic, and it is *my* problem that I'm not
> interested, not the list's. So I switch to
> webview and keep my mouth shut so as to not
> ruin other people's fun. Perhaps this post
> seems pointless, but when people start snarling
> and spitting at the mods and sneering at people's
> enjoyment of off-topic lists, it all becomes a
> bit depressing.

Hear, hear! I just went and answered the polls to show my support for
the Magical Mod Squad, altho' I don't like the limited range of options
available. For example, there are a LOT of different sorts of anarchist.
I am a liberal and people from many other 'progressive' ideologies often
mock that liberals aren't even leftist at all, and then there are types
of radical leftist who mock at anyone who would call themselves
'progressive'.
                  
Southern Californian, born November 7 1957, female heterosexual slash
fan, liberal, Wiccan/Pagan religion, raised Unitarian Universalist,
mother was raised Reform Jewish, mother's grandfather was an Orthodox
Rabbi. White, but I refuse to have anything to do with the Caucasus
Mountains. My favorite character is Lupin, my favorite book is of course
PoA, and the character I most resemble is either Moaning Myrtle or old
Mrs. Figg. 

------------------------------------------------------------------
  Pepperwood, thunderbird down, seven inches. Ravenclaw 1976
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