Bagman / Witchy Fertility

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 34293

Eloise edblanning wrote:

> On Saturday evening my husband referred to someone as a 'bagman', 
> using it not in its dictionary definition travelling salesman),
> but as slang, for a lackey, one who merely carries another's bag.

The only meaning I know for 'bagman' is the person who carries the 
cash for a criminal enterprise. One example, in a protection racket 
(in case anyone doesn't know, that is when the organized crime 
boss tells people to pay him this much money every month and then 
he won't burn down their business, murder them, etc), the bagman goes 
around to all the 'customers' every month to collect the money from 
them. Another example, when the crime boss bribes a politician, the 
crime boss's bagman carries the money to some place where the 
politician's bagman picks it up.

But my reaction to encountering Ludo Bagman by reading GoF was to 
wonder if this was a hint that he would be 'left holding the bag'.

Jo Ellen Rober wrote:

> I just have to laugh at this and "sigh"....poor,poor Molly. I don't 
> remember reading any canon based text to verify this. If they 
> mention the parents' age of the wizard children at all, they are in 
> their twenties when they procreate. If this were indeed the case, 
> then the population ratio of muggle/wizards would soon be about 
> equal because the wizard fecundity would be twice as long, assuming
> no wizarding birth control measures were used and you did not
> factor in the difference in death rates between the two populations.

It seems pretty clear to me that wizarding birth control IS being 
used. All these kids in school, surely we would have heard of a lot 
more siblings among the fellow students if parents typically had a 
baby a year or even a baby every two years. 

When Molly visits Harry at Hogwarts during GoF, she tells anecdotes 
of the gamekeeper before Hagrid, a man named Ogg. That SOUNDS like 
she was at school more than 50 years ago, before the CoS flashback of 
Tom Riddle framing Hagrid for opening the Chamber of Secrets and 
getting  him expelled, after which Dumbledore kept Hagrid on as 
gamekeeper. She would be at least 68 in GoF if she left Hogwarts 
before Hagrid became gamekeeper, and at least 62 if Ogg was there 
only for the first part of her first year. So people on the list made 
up theories about how a thirteen (or fourteen) year old Hagrid 
couldn't have just become gamekeeper in charge, he must have started 
as assisstant to the previous gamekeeper (Ogg). 

But then JKR said in an interview that wizards live longer than 
Muggles, Dumbledore is 150 and McGonagall is 'a spritely 70'. If 
McGonagall, whose hair is still black, is 70, there's no reason that 
Molly can't be 70 as well. If Molly is 70 the same year that her 
youngest (Ginny) is 13 (during GoF, which was being publicised by 
that interview), subtraction says she was 57 when Ginny was born.

[It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is: Dumbledore 'is' 150 
when? In the year 2000 when the interview was given, in the year 2002 
which is now, in 1994-5 during GoF which was being publicised by that 
interview, in 1991-2 during the first book?)