Chapter Discussions - Chapter Two Questions, "A Peck of Owls"

[HunterGreen]

No: HPFGUIDX 72036

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Kelley" <kelleythompson at g...> 
wrote:
> Discussion Questions and Topics: 
> 
> Q4: What *does* "spoiled, pampered Dudley" hear when attacked by 
> Dementors? 

I wondered about that for a bit when Dudley had such an extreme 
response to the Dementers. It was said in PoA that weakness doesn't 
have anything to do with someone's reaction to Dementers, but that 
would seem to not be completely true. I highly doubt that Dudley has 
something that horrible in his past (it doesn't seem like he has 
ANYTHING horrible in his past besides eating the ton-tongue toffee or 
getting a tail), so maybe his reaction had more to do with being 
unnaccustomed to that sort of unhappiness, which would explain why 
Draco (who also seems to have a rosy life, although that may or may 
not be true) had a strong reaction to the dementers as well (on the 
train in PoA).


> Q5: Petunia says that she overheard James telling Lily about 
> Dementors years ago -- do we believe this? What might the 
> circumstances have been that Petunia was able to overhear this; 
were 
> they at Lily and Petunia's home where they lived with their 
parents? 
> Why was James telling Lily about Dementors and Azkaban? Harry 
> assumes Petunia just happens to remember this scrap of info from 
> years ago, but how likely is it that Petunia only knows "scraps" of 
> information about the Wizarding World?

Do we know if Petunia is the older or younger sister? If she's 
younger, maybe Lily had James over after she graduated and him, 
hearing about what type of person she is, told her the dementer 
stories to scare her. It appears that would fit with James' character.
 
> 
> Q8: We now know this "awful" voice is Dumbledore's; when he 
says "my 
> last", is it the letter he left for the Dursleys when delivering 
baby 
> Harry to them the night of November 1st, 1981? Or has there been 
> further contact between them? Perhaps regular ongoing contact all 
> this time?

I really doubt that they were in contact since then seeing how weird 
the Durlsey's are about letters from the WW, AND, judging by Hagrid's 
reaction to Harry's lack of knowledge about the WW, DD didn't know 
that they were lying to him, making it seem that he just left the 
letter and had no other contact with Harry until he sent him his 
first school letter. 
 
--Not an answer to a question, but something I wanted to mention 
about chapter 2: I was really disturbed by Vernon's decision to just 
throw Harry out after he figured out that someone was trying to kill 
Harry. Yes, they don't like him and wouldn't be all that upset if he 
died, and yes they mistreat him and all that, but as far as they 
know, leaving the house could end his life. They weren't even going 
to give him long enough to contact one of his friends to come get 
him, they were planning to push him out of the house and just write 
him off. Its one thing to hate him, but its another thing to just 
throw him to the wolves (almost LITERALLY in this case), that whole 
scene exposed the Dursleys as more than just 'mean', but as callous.


-Rebecca