[HPforGrownups] Re: Madam Hooch & Flying Lessons

[Fiat Incantatum]

No: HPFGUIDX 38761

On 14 May 2002 at 19:02, Bernadette M. Crumb wrote:

> Perhaps that's why she's a flying teacher and not a Charms
> teacher? *smirk*  My Driver's Ed teacher certainly couldn't do
> anything much else than teach driving... It might be a case of
> she's a witch who is not particularly skilled at Charms...
> Although, you'd think that with a class that has so much
> potential for significant injury, they'd have hired a teacher who
> can do rescues on and off a broom (and why didn't she hop on her
> own broom for that matter and zoom up to grab him? It certainly
> took long enough for his robes to tear and let him start falling
> again!)

I think you are confusing the Celluloid Thing Which Must Not Be Named with the 
actual canon.  What happened on-screen in the theater isn't what happened "for 
real."

For now, we'll set aside the fact that JKR needed to have the complete absense 
of teachers in order to stage the scene between Potter and Malfoy, and therefor 
had to manufacture some excuse to get Hooch out of the class.  According to my 
copy of PS/SS, Neville shoots up *before* the whistle, "like a cork out of a 
bottle" (in other words, very quickly indeed)  goes up about 20 feet (maybe a 
little more) slips sideways off his broom and falls.  No zooming around in the 
air, and *ceratinly* no hanging-by-robes as depicted in the Celluloid Thing.   
Some budding physicist can tell me how many seconds it takes someone to fall 20 
feet, but I'm betting it's not terribly long.

I wouldn't bother with the smirk, personally.  *Anyone* teaching at Hogwarts 
would probably be one of the better teachers in their field, given the absolute 
lack of alternate formal teaching positions in the Wizarding World.  You'd 
think that the competition would probably be fairly stiff.  Other than the 
"jinxed" DADA slot, of course, which seems to be awfully important to the 
series.


Fiat, who has great respect for *anyone* who can tolerate children long enough 
to teach them anything.


  
-- 
Fiat Incantatum 
fiatincantatum at attbi.com

The last temptation is the greatest treason:  
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
           T. S. Eliot "Murder in the Cathedral"