multi-culti wizarding education / Karkaroff / Pettigrew

catlady_de_los_angeles catlady at wicca.net
Fri Jul 5 21:12:40 UTC 2002


No: HPFGUIDX 40825

Eloise wrote:

<< But there are others, whose lifestyles are quite different, who do 
normally speak Hindi, or Gujarati, or Ghanaian, a Chinese dialect, 
etc.,  etc., many of whom dress according to their own customs, 
celebrate according to their own customs, live lifestyles reflecting 
those of their ancestral homeland and who still have strong links 
with family overseas. It was of these whom I was thinking. >>

I suppose those people would have to send their children to the 
wizarding school in their old country. If the parents are wizards, 
they probably made arrangements before they came to Britain. If the 
parents are Muggles, they would have to figure out enough about
wizardy and wizarding educaation to know that they needed to ask 
their Hogwarts recruiter to refer them to a South Asian, sub-Saharan 
African, Chinese wizarding school. If the parents came to Britain for 
refugee-type reasons (e.g. dissidents who got tired of being 
re-arrested each time they were released from prison), they might 
need one hell of a lot of special (i.e. magic) arrangements for 
sending their child to the old country.

A messy situation would be a wizarding child born in USA to the 
Hasidic or Amish subcultures ... suppose the child were born in one 
of those all-Hasidic villages that they've built in New York State. 
The parents would not only have certain religious difficulty about 
magic, they would have immense cultural objections to allowing their 
child to attend a North American wizarding school in which boys and 
girls take classes together and the school uniform isn't 18th century 
eastern european plus yarmulke and tallit, and I don't think there 
is an all-Jewish or primarily-Israeli wizarding school; I imagine 
that Israeli wizards go to a Middle Eastern school with Arabs and 
Persians, and I can't imagine Hasidic parents allowing that either.

Alexander wrote:

<< How many British children of age 11 do you know who can attend 
Beauxbatons and learn there? That is, who know French well enough? 
And to go to Durmstrang they probably need to know some Slavic 
language (most likely Russian). >>

I suspect that the language of instruction at Durmstrang is German, 
like its name. I wonder if the wizarding folk have spells or potions 
to learn languages quickly and easily. Do they have translator 
earrings (other language to native language) and translator tongue 
piecings (native language to other language)?

Darrin wrote:

<< I envision Durmstrang not so much in Russia as in one of the old 
Eastern European provinces. >>

I believed that Durmstrang was in Latvia, but JKR made me wrong by 
saying in an interview that it is in northern Scandinavia. I can't 
find the particular interview.

The random monkey wrote:

<< They'd have a heck of a time getting in, for one thing, unless 
they went to a Muggle elementary school. >>

I believe that the wizarding folk are REALLY excellent at fake ID, 
and at modifying both paper and electronic records the same as they 
modify memories. If someone wants to go to a Muggle university when 
they leave Hogwarts, they will get all records modified to show that 
they went to a proper school (maybe a fake school that screens
Hogwarts for all the Muggle-born students) and had wonderful O-levels 
and A-levels, not to mention birth certificates and tax records and 
all that Muggle stuff that people like Weasleys surely don't have. 
(It has been suggested that there is a bureau in the Ministry 
responsible for setting up Muggle cover identities for wizards who 
want them, but I'd rather have it done by private enterprise: a 
person whom I PAY to give me false ID is less likely to ask me what 
I want it for.) 

I suppose they will also use magic to make up for classes that they 
didn't take -- maybe a magic bean you can stick in your ear and it 
whispers all the answers to you? The Muggles can't defeat it with an 
Anti-Cheating Quill. 

Darrin wrote:

<< such behavior leads me to believe that the Grangers have 
essentially lost their daughter to the Wizard world, and she's not 
coming back. >>

I believe that Muggle-born wizarding folk generally become amphibious 
-- okay, ambi-cultural: Able to live as a wizard in the wizarding 
world AND as a Muggle in the Muggle world, and accustomed to moving 
between them. She'll have two wardrobes, wizard and Muggle, have all 
the ID she needs (see above) to be admitted to the Reading Room of 
the British Museum (oops, that's an out-of-date reference, isn't 
it?), and visit her parents often. (Being able to Apparate, she'll 
probably visit them MORE often than if she were entirely Muggle.) 

I don't think that getting a wizarding job and marrying a wizard and 
sending her children to wizarding school qualifies as being 'lost' to 
her parents, unless getting a job that isn't the one they chose for 
her (e.g. they want her to be a physican and she becomes a 
photojournalist) and marrying a person they didn't choose for her 
qualifies as being lost to them. 

Alexander wrote:

<< in Russian "kar-kar" is the sound emitted by crows and ravens 
(corresponds to "caw-caw" in English). Ending "off" is just standard 
second name ending and conveys no meaning. So Karkaroff is "raven", 
whatever this means... >>

I think he's a crow rather than a raven ... I know there is no 
consistent way to decide whether any particular species of black 
corvid will be called "raven" or called "crow", but, in English, 
"raven" has a strong connotation of wisdom and "crow" has a strong 
connotation of cowardice and cheating. Both crows and ravens are 
carrion eaters (so are eagles, for that matter), but only the crow is 
bad-mouthed as being "carrion-crow". 

And "carrion" is probably the connecting link: my reaction to the 
name Karkaroff was to think of "carcass" and "canker". He could be 
(stereotyped) hyena, too.

Leanne wrote:

<< If PP was in Gryffindor, then it's clearly possible to trick the 
sorting hat so it sorts incorrectly (or maybe the sorting hat has 
other motives besides student welfare?). >>

Peter might have been a *good* Gryffindor at the time! He *was* brave 
enough to practise the allegedly dangerous Animagus transformation, 
pal around with a werewolf, and never tell on his friends. I don't 
think it's true that Schoolboy!Peter was a coward who only clung to 
James and Sirius so they would protect him; Sirius said that well 
after the fact, and in a highly emotional context. He turned to the 
Dark Side after leaving school; we don't know what happened to 
change him, but people *do* change. 

There are a couple of statements in canon, that during the Voldemort 
Reign of Terror (what I call The Bad Years), "you never knew whom you 
could trust". There must have been people of all Houses serving 
Voldemort or passing information to Death Eaters, or else you could 
trust anyone who had been a Gryffindor. 

Canon asserts that some people served the Dark Lord under the 
Imperius Curse (and when he fell, they kinda came out of trances -- 
wouldn't their trance-like state have been visible before, and served 
as a warning that there was Something Wrong?) rather than having 
*chosen* evil (and currently it appears that Ludo Bagman passed 
information out of sheer stupidity). So one *could* claim that all 
Gryffindors who served the Dark Lord acted under Imperius or because 
they had been fooled ... I must run off and construct a theory of how 
Peter changed because of having been put under Imperius too many 
times ... 





More information about the HPforGrownups archive