Mugwump / Snape / Animagi and Werewolves /

catlady_de_los_angeles catlady at wicca.net
Sat Apr 13 04:46:34 UTC 2002


No: HPFGUIDX 37774

Joanna wrote:

> I know this is a really really short post but what the heck is a 
> Mugwump???????I hope we will find out soon. This 'mugwump' is
> bothering me now because you all brought it up.

Maybe someday we'll find out what JKR meant by "Mugwump". Here in 
the Muggle world, that word is derived from an Algonquin word meaning 
'big chief' and at one time it could be used as slangy way to refer 
to a bigshot or boss-man, like "lord high muckety-muck" or " grand 
panjandrum".

In USA in the 1800s there was a political secret society that named 
itself the Indian Lodge of Chief Mugwump, which advocated a 
compromise on some hot issue of the day and therefore were regarded 
as traitors by party loyalists of both sides. A cartoonist therefore 
drew a clumsy quadruped labelled Mugwump, stuck on a fence, with the 
caption: his mug is on one side of the fence and his wump is on the 
other. Therefore, for a while 'mugwump' meant much the same as 'swing 
vote': a waffler, a waverer, with no consistent principles.

Tabouli wrote:

> What's more surprising is that he appeared to devote a lot of his 
> life to snooping about trying to smear the Marauders (James, Remus,
> Sirius, Peter), to the extent that Sirius is so irritated that he 
> snaps and tells him to check out the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. 
> Why?? (snip)
> ...I'd say there's a good chance that the thing James had which 
> Snape envied, and for which Snape plunged himself into a shame so 
> intense he spent the rest of his schooldays trying to avenge it, 
> was Lily.

I find it quite difficult to believe that Severus fell that much in 
love with Lily when they were 11 or even 12 years old. I even doubt 
that James and Lily even were an item yet when they were 11 or 12 
years old. Yes, I remember clearly that I fell in love a *lot* when I 
was 11 and 12. Usually with pop musicians or TV actors or boys two or 
three years above me. It hasn't left any permanent effects except the 
slightest touch of nostalgia.

I think Severus's ground for envy and resentment of James and Sirius 
(and I often suspect that it was Sirius who was the main enemy, and 
James's main fault was being Sirius's friend) was that he was 
accustomed to getting top marks in all his subjects at primary 
school, and now these, these, these *jocks* were getting better marks 
than him without ever showing any sign of hard work. Severus might 
have gotten best marks in one subject, Potions, but I figure the 
class standings were something like 1) James, 2) Sirius, 3) Lily, 4) 
Severus, 5) Remus (who would have done better if he hadn't missed a 
day or two or three of classes every month). I put Lily as #3 rather 
than #1 because Remus said James and Sirius were the two cleverest 
students in their year, not James, Sirius, and Lily, but she might 
have been #1 and even Remus didn't notice because she played dumb 
like a nice girl is supposed to. Either young Lily playing dumb or 
young Severus not feeling himself to be in competition with a *girl* 
would explain why he didn't resent her like the boys.

Anyway, I'm inclined to think that the sexual competition angle was 
homoerotic. In denial, of course. But if young Severus felt attracted 
to one or more of our boys, he could have perceived it as a suspicion 
whether they were getting their good marks by peddling their asses to 
(a) teachers(s), and he could have been spying on them looking for 
evidence of *that*. There's a little problem here: If *Remus* had the 
top marks, then it would make sense for Severus to spy on Remus's 
absences in the suspicion that they were connected to trysts, but the 
only way it would make sense to suspect that *Remus*'s trysts were 
connected to James's and Sirius's good marks would be if he were so 
attracted to Remus that his jealousy was doing the thinking... 

I wonder how Severus felt about Peter, who was supposed to be the 
inseparable friend of his enemies, altho' not a threat in the marks 
department.

Someone suggested that Karkaroff had been a teacher at Hogwarts, 
Master of Slytherin House, recruiting promising young Slytherins into 
Death Eating, and especially trying to recruit Severus with ... hot 
wine. Which Severus resisted until the aftermath of the Prank: 
Dumbledore revealed his injustice and favoritism for Gryffindors by 
not only not punishing the attempted murderers but covering up their 
offense by forbidding him to speak of it. Now convinced that 
Karkaroff had been right that talk of good and evil is just 
hypocrisy, in reality there is only power, those who wield it and 
those too cowardly to grasp it, he accepted both of Karkaroff's 
invitations. 

(In case anyone doesn't remember that thread, it began with the 
suspicion that Karkaroff in GoF was trying to seduce Viktor into his 
bed, not just Viktor's endorsement deals into his bank vault, and the 
observation that Severus looks like Viktor.)

I don't like any part of that theory: I don't like creditting sleazy 
Karkaroff with so honest a feeling as sexual lust; I don't like 
thinking that sleazy Karkaroff was ever able to con his way into a job 
at Hogwarts, let alone House Master; I don't like thinking that 
Dumbledore wouldn't have Dealt With a House Master who was recruiting 
students as Death Eaters; I don't like thinking that Severus would 
have the bad taste to get close to Karkaroff in *any* way... but it 
keeps seeming more and more plausible, except that I can't imagine 
that he *simultaneously* chose Death Eating and cocksucking (sorry! I 
couldn't resist the play on words). I imagine that it makes a big 
difference whether they were lovers first and he followed his lover 
to the Dark Side, or whether they were Death Eaters together first...

Even without any particular backstory, there are Severus and Igor 
acting civil to each other in GoF, when Severus probably knows 
that Igor named him as a Death Eater, and Igor may know that it was 
Severus who set him up....  

> Tabouli of the finally fixed email account.

Hallelu-ilat!!!

> I'm still fascinated by the unanswered question of animagus 
> reproduction. All you werewolf experts out there, can werewolves 
> reproduce the normal way?

I believe that one of the MANY ways in which being a werewolf is 
inferior to being an Animagus is that a female werewolf cannot carry 
a pregnancy to term: the monthly transformation is too hard on the 
fetus. I thought that a male werewolf's child by a human woman would 
be a werewolf, but FB says that the 'only' way to become a werewolf 
is by being bitten. Hey, for all I know, male werewolves are sterile. 

By the way, I agree with whoever said that werewolves turn into some 
special magical kind of wolf whose instincts are different than a 
true wolf's. The most obvious example is that werewolves have an 
overpowering compulsion, obsession, addiction to attack humans -- I 
figure they lose their minds to instinctive rage, hunger, and need 
when they smell the human scent. I figure, other than smelling 
humans, werewolves keep a good chunk of their human minds: Remus kept 
more of himself when with his Animagi friends because they had their 
human minds and they talked to him and stuff, thus requiring answers, 
thus requiring thought... 

And the reason I mention this now is, I doubt if werewolves are 
instinctively sexually attracted to natural wolves, i.e female 
werewolves don't go into heat and male werewolves are not affected by 
smelling a bitch in heat. On the other tentacle, if female werewolves 
don't go into heat, female Animagi are even less likely to, which 
disqualifies the below question:

> What would happen if McGonagall in cat form fell pregnant to 
> Crookshanks? 

I think that one of the many ways in which being an Animagus is 
better than being a werewolf is that the female Animagus's fetus 
safely transforms along with her. I think, regardless of whether it 
was conceived in animal or human form, the form that it is in when 
born is its reasonably permanent 'real' form. Therefore, before I 
learned that Crookshanks is half-Kneazle, I suggested that his 
obviously excessive intelligence might be due to being McGonagall's 
cat son. Having only one or two young instead of a whole litter is 
part of the magic. The pregnant cat Animagus might want to stay in 
cat form full-time, so that pregnancy would last only 42 days, but 
she would want to be sure to transform back into human form earlier 
than the baby was due, in case she was unable to transform back after 
going into labor...

A. Vulgarweed wrote:

> there is, after all, no evidence in canon that non-Animagi can turn
> themselves into animals.

One scrap of *partial* evidence: Krum Transfigured himself into a 
shark, but badly.





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