Digression; Pets at Hogwarts (was; Marauders Map & Pettigrew)

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 45109

Pippin writes;

<< I don't think that law-abiding Percy would have bent the rules to bring 
Scabbers to school (he's not a cat or an owl or a toad.)  >>

I don't think that there is any rule against students bringing animals other 
than a cat, toad or owl. (We never hear of any problem over Lee Jordan's 
trantula, for example.) I believe the instruction was intended to fend off 
children bringing a cat AND and owl, or an owl AND a toad or whatever. They 
might better have worded that each student was permitted to bring only ONE 
animal to the school, and that a post owl counted as that animal. 

There is no certainty as to just when Percy passed his pet rat on to his 
youngest brother, either. At the earliest possibility, he did so when he 
first weent to Hogwarts, at the latest, he did so when his parents got him 
his owl (when he became a Prefect) just before Ron's first year. The latter 
fits the best with Ron's statement on the Hogwarts express, but the former is 
not completely unreasonable.

-JOdel