[HPforGrownups] The Prank? Was Doing the Two-Step

[Pen Robinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 51379


On Saturday, Feb 1, 2003, at 03:00 Europe/London, dicentra63 
<dicentra at xmission.com> wrote:
>
> So can we *please* pretty please not call this the *stomp* anymore,
> because that's not what happened.  The Prank was most surely a prank
> (as far as we can tell), but there's a world of difference between a
> step and a stomp.
>

Off on a favourite tangent...  as I remember, Lupin didn't describe 
what Sirius did as a 'prank', he described it as a 'trick'.  To me, the 
shades of meaning implied in 'prank' are fairly lighthearted, 
non-serious in intention, probably meant to amuse.  'Trick' is 
potentially more sinister.  To me at least, it carries greater 
implications of malice than does 'prank'.  It also seems to me that a 
bit more thought goes into a trick than into a prank.  IOW, Sirius 
*meant* to do something nasty.  (His subsequent defensiveness, along 
the lines that Snape deserved it, confirms this.)

So why do we all call it 'The Prank'?

Pen