FLIRTIAC and the Marauder's Map

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 35239

> At last! (Tabouli dabs at happy tears). Spurned and smiled at 
> indulgently forall these months, FLIRTIAC finally has a genuine 
> supporter! 

Two, Tabouli.  You have two of them now.  No amount of whining and 
wheedling and cajoling could convince my husband to accept for a 
moment my Fourth Man Theory (hmppph!), but one brief run-down of 
FLIRTIAC, and he was clambering into your dinghy.

Er...so to speak.

And as to why Mrs. Norris' first name wouldn't show up on the 
Marauder's Map -- why she's not, say, "Annie Norris" or something 
like that -- I say that's because the Marauder's Map is (like so much 
else in the Wizarding World) a little bit archaic.  According to 
proper Victorian etiquette, a woman's first name is *never* used 
along with the prefix "Mrs."  Her husband's name is used instead.

So why doesn't the Marauder's Map show her as, say, "Mrs. Cepheus 
Norris" then?

Well, because Mr. Norris has since remarried, that's why!  "Mrs. 
Cepheus Norris" is technically his *current* wife's proper nomen.  
His estranged ex-wife is still entitled to use his name -- and 
indeed, to refer to her by her maiden name without her consent would 
be a very dire insult, as that would imply that she herself in some 
way bore the culpability for the estrangement -- but to distinguish 
her from Cepheus' current wife, she is referred to simply as "Mrs. 
Norris."

<Elkins nods firmly to herself, not without a certain degree of self-
satisfaction, and lights another cigarette>

Tabouli wrote:

> Could the cat shape be a curse Mr Norris put on his cheating wife, 
> which he maliciously set up so that it could only be broken by 
> Filch himself?

I like that theory a great deal.  It's really really really *mean,* 
for starters, and you *know* what an absolute *brute* I can sometimes 
be. 

<Elkins absently claws a few stray owl feathers out of her hair, 
glances down at them, and then tosses them, with a slight shudder, 
into a nearby tide-pool>

But then, I love Mrs. Norris.  It always irks me somewhat that the 
kids all hate her so.  I mean, I can see why they have a problem with 
Filch -- he's scary, and he's mean, and he gives nasty detentions, 
and he threatens them with torture in his creepy old office -- but 
what's poor Mrs. Norris ever done to them?  So she glares balefully 
at them, so what?  So she rats them out to Filch.  That's her *job,* 
for heaven's sakes!  And just think of all of those times she stares 
right at Harry in his Invisibility Cloak, and then *doesn't* alert 
Filch to his presence.  She's cutting Harry slack all the time, if 
you ask me, and the rotten little kid doesn't even appreciate it.

> (Tabouli, suspecting that most listmembers are by now well and 
> truly tired of her voluminous defences of her favorite ship,
> flourishes her last two LOLLIPOPS)

<concerned look>

Oh, dear.  I hope that my teasing wasn't part of what gave you that 
impression.  Teasing, like prank-pulling, is all too easy to "get 
wrong," especially in a forum that allows for no observation of body 
language or facial expression.  If I came across genuinely 
exasperated -- or worse, as hostile -- then I do apologize.  And just 
for the record, I always really enjoy reading your LOLLIPOPS defenses.

-- Elkins, wondering if a FLIRTIAC post really needs to be prefaced 
with a SHIP warning.