[HPforGrownups] Release date/hopes/money

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 59097

Snowwy wrote:

>I just assumed the Saturday idea was for work/school
>too.  But the more I thought about it The Solstice is
>the only point in the year where the light equals the
>dark and the days ahead are more light than dark.  I
>think it has something to do with it.

I think you're thinking of the spring equinox rather than the summer
solstice there! The solstice is when the light is at its greatest and the
days ahead see the dark increasing...

quoth Mel

> Will I get in huge trouble if I just yell real loud DITTO!!!!!
> I couldn't have said it better myself. I want a nice, tight, finely
> tuned like PoA page turner. I think I skimmed half of GoF. I was also
> disappointed by the GLARING wand order error. That was not just
> rushed writing--it was rushed editing as well.

My own fond wish is that the new book won't include any spell, potion, or
other plot device that will have everyone asking "Why didn't so and so use
that when zzz happened in book x?"!

sgrifenodd Catlady:

> see how it could be arranged. According to JKR, the Quill writes the
> name of each magical child born in Britain in a book when it is born
> and once a year McGonagall consults the books and addresses Hogwarts

> I like the idea that the Quill identifies the detected children by
> addressing the letters that McGonagall was going to give to the owls
> to deliver, because that would cut out an intermediary -- quills are
> MEANT to write. Otoh, my multi-campus theory has place for an
> intermediary -- after the Quill lists the children in order of
> their magical power, so that the top 280 can go to Hogwarts Castle
> and the others can go to the other campus(es), someone adjusts the
> sequence so that the children of old wizarding families or families
> with wizarding political pull get raised to the top 280 and others
> get lower to make room for them.

I think that the concept of the Quill has _many_ problems, some of which
you've indicated, sufficiently many to suggest that it's not a safe part of
canon.

Another problem might be: what if the proposed student just didn't want to
go? My own parents offered to send me to a boarding school when I was that
age, but I turned it down (no particular reason, just didn't fancy it).

Also, who decides which students in the WW go to Hogwarts, and which don't?
We can surmise that all the muggle-borns get an invite, because they really
_need_ it to make sure that they can survive in the WW (also JKR has said
that the proportion is 25% which is far higher than it can be in the general
wizarding population, otherwise there would be so much muggle influence
coming that the WW culture would have ceased to exist long since).

Also, if the Quill lists in order of magical power, what about the Hogwarts
students who are neither (apparently) Old Magic not particularly bright
(Crabbe and Goyle jump to mind, even if Neville isn't a good example). Maybe
an invite goes to those whose wizardry _isn't_ particularly powerful, just
to make sure that they get the best tuition possible to make use of what
they have, with the remainder of the places made up by those who are there
for the prestige.

Makes Hogwarts sound a little bit like a sink comprehensive, I know, with a
high proportion of remedial and immigrant children!

> If not, had they invented magical means of reproducing books one at
> a time? Such as enchanting an existing book so that it splits (like
> cellular mitosis) into two identical clones, or so it gives birth to
> an identical baby book? Or enchanting a quill so that it writes the
> copy of the existing book while the human does something else more
> enjoyable and less causative of writers' cramp?

I'm sure they do have some sort of multiplication. Possibly the source of
the mediaeval ecclesiastical theory of "miraculous multiplication", which
was used to "explain" why there were entire forest loads of "pieces of the
True Cross" being sold all over Europe!

Cheers

Ffred

O Benryn wleth hyd Luch Reon
Cymru yn unfryd gerhyd Wrion
Gwret dy Cymry yghymeiri