[HPforGrownups] OOP: Bloodlines, Thestrals, Pensieves, and Apparations (possible spoilers)

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

No: HPFGUIDX 65841

*sacrificial spoiler-free line*

At 4:10 AM -0400 6/29/03, Meliss9900 at aol.com wrote:
>
>That bit about Harry being a half-blood doesn't really sit well with me.  IMO
>Harry has more wizarding blood than LV simply because, even though Lily was
>muggle-born she was a witch.  Only one of LV's parents, his mother, possessed
>wizarding blood.  His father was pure muggle.

Two thoughts:

First, Harry and Tom have the same number of Muggle grandparents: two 
each.  That Harry's mother was a sport doesn't change that.  So it's 
not obvious that this means Harry should be considered something 
other than a half-blood - half his heritage is from wizardly stock, 
and half is from Muggles.  Moreover, there are suggestions (in 
particular, Ernie Macmillan's protestation that he can trace his 
family back for nine generations of wizards in Ch. 11 of CoS) that 
"half-blood" doesn't have to be literal - a wizard with only one 
Muggle great-grandparent might still be considered a half-blood.  I 
rather suspect the Malfoys hold to the "one-drop rule" - if you have 
any traceable Muggle ancestry at all, you're not a pureblood.

Secondly, why does it matter?  The whole point of the series is that 
being half-blood, pureblood, or Muggle-born simply doesn't signify, 
that being a pureblood is not "better" than either of the other two 
conditions.  It always confuses me when I hear fans essentially 
trying to use the Death Eater's ideology to build up Harry somehow! 
It also seems to demean the importance of the Trio - a pureblood 
(Ron), a half-blood (Harry), and a full Muggle-born (Hermione), all 
working together.  (I am a little disappointed that the remainder of 
the D.A. that goes to the Ministry with them is skewed pureblood - 
both Ginny and Neville are, and we don't know what Luna's ancestry 
is.  On the other hand, both the Creeveys are Muggle-born, and they 
were certainly part of the D.A. as well.)


At 10:32 AM +0000 6/29/03, medeia_no wrote:
>Except if Harry can see thestrals because of having witnessed
>Cedric's death, why didn't he see them when leaving school last term?

The carriages are only mentioned very briefly at the end of GoF, and 
it's Hermione who is mentioned looking at them.  Perhaps seeing a 
Thestral is a gradual process - if Harry had paid close attention 
then, he might have seen a shadow, a flicker, but it took a summer of 
brooding and having it sink in that he had truly witnessed a death 
for them to become fully visible.  After all, Harry is still in 
denial about Sirius's death at the end of OoP - perhaps you have to 
not only have seen it and understood it, but accepted it.

Speaking of which, I think Harry's thoughts in Ch. 14 of GoF make it 
clear that Harry has no visual memories of his parents' deaths other 
than the green flash itself; he has to imagine what the scene would 
have looked like.  He only remembers voices, and those only because 
the Dementors brought them up.  If he had any other visual memories, 
I suspect he would have relived those under the Dementors as well, so 
I think we can assume that he didn't actually see his mother die.  I 
don't think the books make it clear why not, though - perhaps we'll 
find out later (a darkening hex on the room?  Wormtail got in the 
way?), or perhaps JKR doesn't consider it important.


At 5:30 PM +0000 6/29/03, Jesta Hijinx wrote:
>I have to agree that I'm wondering if the Pensieves are truly objective. 
>Our memories are our memories, and they are based on our perceptions.

My impression is that a Pensieve memory contains everything that the 
person whose memory it is took in about the scene, either consciously 
or subconsciously, plus some "filling in."  Thus, the snitch drawn on 
James's paper might be the result of Snape's having seen the tip of 
the quill moving in that shape out of the corner of his eye.  The 
scene is as accurate as Snape's memory can make it, but that isn't 
100%.  If something happened (say, for instance, Peter Pettigrew has 
a strange, wicked smile on his face at some point) that Snape's 
subconscious didn't notice, it wouldn't be present in the Pensieve 
memory.

In short, it's more likely to be incomplete than inaccurate.


At 7:11 PM +0000 6/29/03, mugglemonkee wrote:
>What if Snape finally gets the DADA position.

If this ever happens, I suspect it won't be until Book 7 - and I 
imagine we will hear that whichever poor soul has the position in 
Book 6 has once again been disposed of (whether to St. Mungo's, the 
grave, general disgrace, or some other ill fate), and that no one in 
the entire Wizarding World other than Severus would dare to apply for 
the position.

If this does happen, it will also be our signal that Snape is, in 
fact, DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED and he won't survive the book.


At 7:30 PM +0000 6/29/03, jsmithqwert wrote concerning Apparation:
>I have always thought that the sound level was dictated by the skill
>of the wizard/magical creature and the difficulty of the apparation.

Is the departure sound different from the arrival sound?  The sound 
at the departure point would be the crash of air rushing into the 
vacuum that was created when the wizard disappeared, while the sound 
at the arrival point would be the air being forced out of the space 
the wizard needs to occupy.  Strictly speaking, the departure sound 
ought to resemble thunder, at least to some extent.  Everyone's 
apparations in GoF appear to be described as "popping," but it might 
be useful for someone to tote up all the times someone appears or 
disappears and mark what sound effects occur . . . but it would take 
a truly dedicated LOON with some free time to do it.

Why, yes, I happen to be on summer vacation at the moment . . . why 
are y'all looking at me?  ;)

-- 

  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles(at)earthlink.net
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the 
act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. "
	- Gauss, in a Letter to Bolyai, 1808.