Polyjuice!Arabela and other Polydoubts

[karywick <karenwickersham@ameritech.net>]

No: HPFGUIDX 53104

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Morgan D." <morgan_d_yyh at y...> 
wrote:
> > 
> In PS/CS ch 2, Harry describes Mrs Figg as "a mad old lady who lived
> two streets away", and he says her "whole house smelled of 
cabbage". In
> CoS ch 12, Harry drinks Polyjuice Potion and thinks "it tasted like
> overcooked cabbage". That was enough to convince many readers that
> Arabella isn't an old lady at all.
> 
> But Polyjuice Potion isn't a tool for simple shape-shifting. It 
gives
> the drinker the appearance of someone else. So if Arabella isn't the
> old lady described by Harry, there IS some old lady that looks like
> that somewhere. Where is she?
> (big snip)

I have a hard time going with all that polyjuice for such a long time 
just to impersonate an older person - I'd go with the later reply 
(orry I can't remember after reading so many who said it.) - just use 
an agining potion whenever you expect to see Harry which I'm sure 
wasn't very often.  

Instead I have another theory.  What if Arabella is one of those 7 
registered animagi (pl?).  Thre's no reason Hermione would have known 
of her name when she read the 7 names back in CoS (I think, but I'm 
not sure of the exact book).  There's really no way she would have 
known Harry's babysitter's name or remembered it years later when 
Dumbledore said in GoF to gather the old crowd.

Turning into one of her many cats would have been a great way to go 
undercover when she needed to see what was going on with Harry or to 
keep an eye on Harry when he was outside of the Dursley's house.  
Does anyone else have any opinion on this?

Kary