Ancestor/descendant - ST and RL, ages - Happiness

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 26519

Bobbins wrote:

>JKR hinted in an online chat that the ancestor/descendent mix up 
might be intentional

I have wanted to ask about this for months.  Does anyone have a theory 
as to what she might have meant by that?  What =would= it mean for 
Riddle to be Slytherin's "last remaining ancestor"?  Theories, anyone?

Catlady wrote:

> The other
> females on staff are old enough to be his mother or grandmother and
> perhaps all of them remember having him as a student. 

I'm not so sure the other women are older, nor that Trelawney is his 
age.  She's twice referred to as an "old fraud" (PA 16, GF 10, GF 13). 
 In that context "old" might have nothing to do with age, but IIRC (I 
can't find the reference, fine me 2 Sickles and give it to the 
L.O.O.N. treasury) Ron at some point calls her an "old bat," which 
seems an unlikely slur against a 35-year-old woman, even granting that 
the slurrer is 14.  

Re: the ages of Sprout, Vector, Pomfrey, and the 
as-yet-ungendered-but-probably-female Sinistra, do we have any clue 
whatsoever?  With Hooch we know only that she rode a broom that was 
first produced before 1926, which argues for a Hooch born in the first 
quarter of the century but is not at all decisive.

I do suspect Trelawney has the hots for Lupin, but one reason he fled 
might be that she's 75.  As if one needs another reason to flee ol' 
Sybill, on top of the fact that she's nuttier than a fruitcake and a 
sure-fire source of depression.

Catlady wrote:

> I am find it very difficult to find words to discuss happiness. When
> speaking metaphysics, surely there must be a distinction between 
saying
> 'a happy person' and 'a cheerful person'. And the word 'contented' 
that
> someone on this thread introduced.

Important distinctions, thanks.  I don't know what I meant by asking 
whether RL is happy, because I don't know what JKR meant by saying 
that the happiest people do not become ghosts.  It's instructive to 
remember that (IIRC) she said it in the context of being asked whether 
James and Lily became ghosts.  She said they didn't--and I think it's 
true that just because your adult years are dominated by a reign of 
terror, you're murdered before your 23rd birthday, and you die 
believing your entire family will be destroyed, that doesn't mean 
you'd describe yourself as an unhappy person.  I'm being quite 
serious.  Clearly JKR does not mean to say that whether one 
becomes a ghost depends upon one's state of mind at the moment of 
one's death, else James and Lily would surely be ghosts.

I tend to think Remus is happy, more or less, because he seems to have 
an equilibrium that I equate with happiness--but there, that's my 
definition, your mileage may vary.  His losses have been staggering, 
but they are also 12 years in the past.  People rebuild their lives.  
People can also be happy in spite of being persecuted.  At the end of 
PA he has to be miserable about leaving Hogwarts (it seems like an 
expulsion from paradise from my POV), but on the other hand he has his 
dear friend back, miraculously.

Amy Z

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 My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
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