Is there anything in the HP world that bothers you?... And Neville

[Melanie L Ellis]

No: HPFGUIDX 56607

Thanks for the replies on the Mandrakes. I realize JKR was just playing
off the folklore of the mandrakes (I had looked it up, and read basically
what was posted here, that the roots look human and they were thought to
make noises.) but I still say she made them sound too realistic. As one
poster said (sorry, I forget who) all it would have taken is one or two
sentences in Hermoine's explanation of them to set the tone for them
*not* being real, living beings. Something along the lines of, "Mandrakes
are a magical plant who resemble humans in their appearance and life
cycle, and whose properties are.....". Sure, it's a small extra mouthful,
but coming out of Hermoine, wouldn't sound out of place at all!

I think JKR probably just got carried away with her descriptive version
of a "play on words" and didn't stop to think about how it *really*
sounds when you read it closely.

Now, about Neville. I think the poor boy is a much more powerful wizard
than anyone believes him to be. I think he's just *scared* to be anything
more than the mediocre bumbler that he is. Why? Would YOU want to be a
full-out wizard if your parents had been reduced to simpering mental
patients because they were tortured by fellow wizards? We know that his
Gran takes him to see his parents regularly, so he knows just exactly
what happened. I think that subconciously, he's afraid that if he
develops more than a minimal amount of power, he just might end up in the
same position for some baddie to come after him. So he does terribly at
the powerful magic stuff, and is much better in the "safe" stuff like
Herbology.

I think something will turn him around at some point, though, and he will
come to realize that *nobody* is safe when evil is on the loose, and it's
better to be prepared and able to stand and fight than to cower and hope
that the bad guys don't notice you.

Melanie Ellis
Alabama Homeschool Message Board
http://pub77.ezboard.com/balabamahomeschoolmessageboard

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