Inherent conflict in R/H - H/H - James' Q career - Galleons - Teaching quality

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 33002

Penny wrote:

>If the romance angle is going to at all affect the bigger events, then 
>there must be conflict.

I don't follow this.  Romance can affect other events in lots of ways 
besides being conflicted in and of itself:  e.g., the classic (I would say 
cliched) dilemma of the hero being diverted from his heroic task by concern 
for his True Love (do I save the world or save Hermione?).

>R/H will be good for some laughs perhaps, but there is no inherent conflict 
>there.  Hermione having feelings for Harry though: that creates conflict 
>potentially between Ron and Hermione, Ron and Harry, Harry and Hermione and 
>Hermione & Ginny.

I'm with Luke here.

There isn't *inherent* conflict in R/H, but nor would there be inherent 
conflict in Hermione having feelings for Harry.  The latter would only 
entail conflict if it made Ron jealous.  Each part of the triangle needs 
another part to make it a conflict.  The same would go the other way; if the 
first romantic interest to develop in the books had been Hermione-->Harry, 
there wouldn't be any inherent conflict in that; the conflict would arise if 
Ron then developed an interest in Hermione (or Harry), or Harry didn't 
return Hermione's interest, or some such.  H/H is only conflict-producing 
because R/H and H/G (that is, R-->H and G-->H) are already underway.

Karl opined (welcome!):

>Her reaction to the Rita Skeeter article about herself... she could care 
>less about Skeeter's comments about
>her appearance, or even the implication that she and Harry are a couple, 
>but
>what sets her off is the insinuation that she broke Harry's heart.

This is interesting.  Why do you say this is the touchy part?  What I divine 
from the sequence of events is that she's particularly ticked off 
about/intrigued by Rita's spying ("how did she know?" GF 27); even then, 
she's quite calm about it until people start sending her Bubotuber pus by 
owl.  That's when she says she's going to get her back (ch. 28).  Before 
that, she's angry on behalf of Hagrid and Harry (and Bagman):  "You horrible 
woman . . . anything for a story" (24).

Rita fretted:

>However, that damn plaque in the movie messes it up. James Potter, Seeker, 
>1972. In my world, James would have been a third-year in '72. If the plaque 
>stands for winning the Quidditch Cup, therefore Gryff won it when James was 
>third-year, then Gryff surely won it in other years that James was on the 
>team.

I think I can rescue you from this one.  Sports history is littered with 
tales of superlative players who never won a championship.  Quidditch is a 
team sport, and a great Seeker can't carry the team to victory all by 
himself (we might focus on Harry in the matches, but Wood keeps making those 
incredible stops, the Gryffindor Chasers keep zinging 'em home, etc.).

However, I *don't* want James to have been Seeker.  All that 
"just-like-your-father" stuff, taken too far, makes me feel claustrophobic, 
and I was very pleased when JKR said he was Chaser.

Joanne wrote:

>according to the Lexicon (1 galleon is worth a bit over $7 US), the
current price of gold ($278 per ounce),  and my rough calculations, 1000
galleons would weigh over  25 pounds.

I just love it when someone on the list brings up a question that's been on 
my mind!  I was trying to calculate the weight of 1000 galleons just the 
other day.

Maybe a galleon isn't solid gold, but just a gold-plated coin.  People would 
still refer to it as gold in that case, as they do.

If a galleon is the size and weight of a U.S. quarter, 1000 of them wouldn't 
be that heavy (think of a bag with 25 filled quarter rolls in it--heavy but 
easily carried).  However, I think a galleon must be quite large, though, 
larger in diameter than any British Muggle coin, since Mr. Roberts refers to 
them as "the size of hubcaps" (GF 7).

Elizabeth ranked:

>Quirrell is largely an unknown, but probably below Hooch (especially after 
>his
>return from sabbatical)

Although one could put other interpretations on it, I interpret "turned out 
to be a bit of a joke" as an indictment of Quirrell's teaching ability.  
(PS/SS "The Potions Master," sorry can only paraphrase.)  As 
Chris/ravenclaw775 pointed out, we can't judge the unadulterated Q because 
we never meet him, but the one we know seems to be a very ineffectual 
teacher.

>Snape is
>probably somewhere in this rank, sadly.

Alert the media--Amy is about to defend Snape.  What about Polyjuice Potion? 
  If we're going to judge a teacher by his students' ability/inclination to 
use his subject outside of class, three 2nd-year students creating an 
apparently very difficult potion successfully has to be a feather in his cap 
(as well as a burr under his saddle <g>).  As for why Harry doesn't look for 
potions solutions for the Tournament tasks, potions are messy and require 
space the students don't have.  Charms can be practiced anywhere.

I firmly believe that being a horrible, nasty, intimidating person detracts 
from one's teaching ability (for one thing, one's students are afraid to ask 
questions, and a student who doesn't ask questions is at a terrible 
disadvantage), but if the standard is how well the students have learned 
their stuff, Snape doesn't deserve such low marks.

Cindy, a.k.a. Trelawney's Champion, wrote:

>Also, she seemed disappointed when Harry did not see Buckbeak being
 > beheaded.  I think that was because she had done her own Seeing and
 > seen the beheading.  Buckbeak was in fact beheaded>

Jenny, unconvinced, responded:

>Nope.  The Trio heard MacNair's axe hitting a post or the ground (or 
>whatever) in frustration because Buckbeak wasn't there.  No beheading 
>happened, Time Turner or not.

Oh boy.  I shouldn't say this, because time-travel stuff gives me a headache 
and I don't even read Time Turner threads at this point, but IMO Buckbeak 
*was* beheaded.  There are two timelines, two parallel universes, two legs 
of the Trousers of Time:  in one of them Macnair beheads Buckbeak and Hagrid 
howls in grief; in the other Macnair strikes the post in frustration and 
Hagrid howls with happiness.

Just to make sure I make enemies of both of you, though <g>, I don't think 
Trelawney was disappointed because she saw Buckbeak beheaded.  She was 
disappointed because she's a bloodthirsty old bat who livens up her dull 
life by looking for horrors in other people's lives, and if she doesn't find 
them, by making them up.

Cindy wrote:

 > She made the following correct prediction in GoF:  "Your worries are
 > not baseless.  I see difficult times ahead for you . . . I fear the
 > thing you dread will indeed come to pass . . . and perhaps sooner
 > than you think."

I'm trying to think of any circumstance in which one could make such a 
prediction and *not* have it come to pass.  I could say to each person on 
this list, "You have difficult times ahead . . . the thing you dread will 
indeed come to pass," and be proven right in every single case given a few 
weeks' time and credulous listeners who interpret every unfortunate event in 
their lives as something they were dreading (like Lavender, who interprets 
her rabbit's death this way even though she wasn't dreading it any more than 
anyone with a pet wishes the pet would never die).

Amy Z
who "meets tall, dark strangers," "has a lucky break," and "finds family and 
money concerns at the forefront" every single day of her life

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Many people said he hadn't noticed he was dead.
                   -HP and the Chamber of Secrets
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