Cat!Hermione and Madam Pomfrey (was Re: Some mistakes in book1???)

[Brian]

No: HPFGUIDX 47850

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Fer Mendoza" <nosref at y...> wrote:
> Cheryl asked:
> 
> > Which leads to a slightly off-topic question...how did Hermione 
> > explain her problem in CoS? "Hi, Madam Pomfrey, I've just 
kinda    
> > turned into a 
> > humanoid cat... How? Well..."
> 
> Fer:
> 
> Ron actually explained this to Harry in the second book.(WARNING: 
not 
> a direct quote) "Good thing Madam Pomfrey doesn't ask questions" 
or 
> something like that.  I guess HRH just had to tell her they were 
> trying a spell and it went wrong.  They didn't have to expound.
> 

   Speaking as a former US Army medic, whose responsibilities were 
similar to a scool nurse's (treating boisterous "children" who 
sometimes did things that they weren't supposed to), I have to say 
that I have an issue or two with Pomphrey's apparent handling of the 
situation.

  Hermione's mishap with the polyjuice cannot be discounted as "just 
a spell that went wrong"; It was the real world equivalent of kids 
whipping up some bathtub gin or methamphetamine, and ODing on it. 
Snape described it, IIRC, as an "illicit" mixture, the recipe was 
kept only in the restricted section of the library (which brings 
fraud into the equasion, but I won't get into that here), several 
ingredients were what we would refer to as "controlled 
items"(boomslang skin, bicorn horn), and they had to resort to 
assault and larceny to obtain them. 

   While we don't know for sure what, if anything was said to 
Dumbledore about Hermione's condition, I refuse to believe that 
Pomphrey is so incompetant as to not correctly diagnose the cause of 
the ailment!  Neville being turned into a canary could be dismissed 
as a case of "boys will be boys" once you consider the source, and 
more importantly, the METHOD. What HRH did with the polyjuice wasn't 
just irresponsible; It was CRIMINAL on several points.

Ok, I'm done ranting now.

bkb042