Parselmouth / willow wands / indoor plumbing / werewolf

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 33815

Katze wrote:
>  I'm not sure about the parselmouth. I'm beginning to wonder if
> [Harry having got it from V] is just what Dumbledore thinks, and 
> perhaps he's not sure (is it possible for D to make a mistake?). 

Dumbledore has made at least one big mistake quite recently: he was 
fooled by fake Moody for an entire school year. Previously, he 
testified to the best of his knowledge that Sirius had been the 
Potters' Secret Keeper.

Katze wrote:
> His first wand was a hand-me down, so apparently unicorn hair
> worked for the previous owners. But who was the previous owner?
> What is Bill? Charlie? Percy? I would think that Ron got one of 
> their wands, so I think the "innocent" part actually tags the 
> previous owner.

In the first book, Ron introduces himself (on Platform 9 3/4 IIRC) as 
having Bill's old robes, Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat. 
However, I think Charlie was not the *original* owner of the wand 
either; I think it had belonged to some elderly, probably deceased, 
Weasley before it was Charlie's. Btw, I suppose the reason that Ron 
had Bill's old robes instead of Charlie's is that Bill and Ron are 
both tall and perhaps Charlie's old robes were already too short for 
him.

> Willow is good for "charm work" as Mr. Ollivander says.

It always seemed to me that being good for charm work, or for Ron 
Weasley, was a characteristic of the individual *wand*, not of the 
materials of which it is made. So that one willow/unicorn suits Ron 
but IMHO another willow/unicorn might not suit him and a certain 
maple/phoenix might suit him well enough. The meanings of the wood, 
as listed in that essay, seem to me to be messages from the writer to 
the reader, rather than meaningful In The Potterverse.

Boggles wrote:
> Salazar _can't_ have built the current entrance to the Chamber of 
> Secrets, as indoor plumbing didn't exist in his day. 

Someone suggested (and convinced me) that the wizards have had indoor 
plumbing with flush toilets and hot and cold running water since 
Atlantis -- theirs works by magic not by hydraulics. And all the 
times Muggles have invented indoor plumbing (there was indoor running 
water at Knossos and hot and cold indoor running water in Imperial 
Rome), the inventor was some Muggle who had been a guest in a 
wizarding home and seen the wizarding facilities and was trying to 
figure out how to have the same conveniences in a Muggle home.

Tori Marie wrote:
> [Lockhart] supposedly performed a charm that turned a werewolf back
> into a normal human again.

There was a discussion of why that Homorphus Charm was not a cure for 
Lupin. I suggested that its side-effects include damaging the 
recipient's brain to the point where he does not remember and can 
never again learn how to speak, nor even toilet-training. Someone 
else suggested that it only worked within a year or two after the 
werewolf was first infected, and it had been discovered too late for 
Lupin. I was finally persauded by another suggestion: that it only 
turns the werewolf human for one minute. That is long enough to 
identify him, especially in a village where everyone knows everyone. 
Once he has been identified, his neighbors can tie him up before 
nightfall of each Full Moon, or more likely they will kill him in 
daylight of New Moon when he has no special powers to defend himself 
with.