Mrs Norris and Marauder's Map musings (c/o FLIRTIAC)

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 35261

Elkins:
> 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.<

(Tabouli beams at such wisdom.  Elkins, a woman of fine taste in husbands).

Elkins:
> 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.<

I wonder.  An easy way out is that it's a plot escape hatch - JKR wants to mention, very casually and almost missably, that the cat shows up on the map, and FLINTs it by either bending the rules a tiny bit to conceal her hand or having Harry not take enough notice because it's not very interesting or relevant to him at the time (Huh?  Mrs Annie Norris?  *shrug* must be the cat's full name, and good, she and Filch and Snape are out of the way, the coast's clear)(or maybe he doesn't look too closely at the name, just sees a mini dust-coloured cat, knows who it is, and doesn't bother to look closely)

Another escape hatch is that the Map, being a magical device, only shows magical people (Squibs included - I see them as a kind of defunct wizard, not a Muggle).  Muggles have no magic, and therefore don't register on the Map; significant wizards for the viewer would pop up at birth.

[aside: I wonder... when would a pregnant witch's child show up?  At conception, when it doesn't have a name yet?  At birth?  As soon as it has a name?  If Sirius had managed to hang on to the Map (and Harry had been born on the Hogwarts grounds), when would Harry, a significant person for Sirius, have appeared?]

Mrs Norris, in original human form, was a Muggle woman nee Orphan, married to a cruel, abusive Wizard husband, who derided Filch for being a Squib.  A supporter of Grindewald and Minister for Experimental Curses, maybe?  Filch, then young and passionate (instead of old and leprous) was crushed and infuriated, but helpless to protest, as he had no magical powers.  Poor Mrs Norris, herself struggling with her husband's ill-concealed contempt for Muggles and Squibs and the difficulties of living in the Wizard world (maybe her Dursleyesque guardians ousted her when she married Mr Norris?), took pity on Filch, and started talking and corresponding with him about their mutual powerless woes.  They fell desperately in love, and started a torrid affair, but lived in fear of Mr Norris finding out.  Eventually, of course, he did, and in a volcanic fury, turned her into a cat with a curse than can only be reversed by Filch himself, as fit punishment for her infidelity, kicked her into the cellar of Norris Manor, and locked her in to starve.  With Dumbledore's help, Filch rescued her and fled to Hogwarts, where he started work as a caretaker with his feloniously feline beloved under Dumbledore's protection.

OK, here's the escape hatch.  As an ordinary woman, Annie Orphan wouldn't have shown up on the Marauder's Map, because she wasn't magical.  Since the curse, though, she has been rendered magical by default - she is a transfigured human being in cat form, and hence shows up on the Map.  Also, as both Filch and Dumbledore refer to her only as "Mrs Norris" (Filch continued using Mrs Norris in lover's nickname irony, to savour the romantic tragedy of their plight together, and Dumbledore followed suit), the Map took its cue from them and put "Mrs Norris".

Hmm.  Weak, but it'll do as an interim measure.

Whatever the fate of the FLIRTIAC dinghy, I am convinced that Mrs Norris will turn out to be significant in some way.  In one of her interviews (see the Goat for which one) JKR herself proclaimed that the cats in the series will turn out to be important.  Unprompted, even.  We already know Crookshanks is half Kneazle, and to my mind Mrs Norris' behaviour and appearance are a bit too unusual for her to be irrelevant...

Tabouli.


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