Mandrakes / Potions - Muggle parents - Ghosts

[rosie]

No: HPFGUIDX 41077

You know in CoS, how they have to wait for the mandrakes to be fully grown before making the potion to restore the petrified people?

I was just wondering about this because of what Hermione says - that the Mandrake is an important part of many healing potions (or somehing similar). If it's so useful, why doesn't the school have any in stock? Does Prof. Sprout have to grow all the things for making potions? 

Harry buys his plants, fungi etc in Diagon Alley to stock up in PoA (I *think*), so why couldn't Dumbledore dispatch Hagrid or someone to go and get some mandrakes? You'd have thought it would be pretty important to get those people un-petrified as soon as possible.

On a random, yet slightly related note, do you think the parents of those petrified were informed? If they were (as all of them were Muggle-born I think) then I would have expected their parents to panic, but if not, wouldn't that have been a bit hard to cover up? 
"Hermione, dear, how was school?" 
"well, I was as animated as a rock for most of it". 

Speaking of petrified people and by extension Nearly Headless Nick... I know we will find out *why* people become ghosts in Book 7, but just as a question. I think someone mentioned the Bloody Baron's origins, can they repeat? 

Anyway, I wonder why there are all these adult ghosts hanging round Hogwarts. NHN says Gryffindor was his old house, but why is he haunting *Hogwarts* instead of wherever he died? Did they have ghost auditions to relocate spooks to Hogwarts? Were they all random teachers, visitors, and so on who died there....?

Rosie


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