SiriusInAzkaban/Ship/Wormtail/PoudLard/Petunia/GoFLeaks/LocnOfDurm'g/Melodram

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 54535

Patricia Bullington-McGuire wrote:

<< And even if they don't know that he can transform, they are sure 
to keep an extra watchful eye on him since he managed to escape once 
before. I imagine they would station a guard who can actually see 
(unlike the Dementors) outside his cell to keep track of what he's 
doing. >>

I think the guard with eyes couldn't be a human being, because I 
think a human being would go crazy in the presence of so many 
Dementors.

Fred Waldrop wrote:

<< And admittedly, I want a Harry / Ginny ship & a Ron / Hermione 
ship, mainly because Ginny can give Harry what he wants and needs, a 
big ole family to go home to, the Weasleys >>

That's why I like the Harry/Ron and Hermione/Ginny ships, altho' I 
admit that pairing Harry with Bill would achieve that same goal while 
leaving Ron available to the OC I invented for him, a sassy-mouth 
Hufflepuff girl with as much interest in Quidditch and as little 
interest in schoolwork as he has.

Phyllis erised wrote:

<< still wondering why Wormtail is the only unmasked DE in the 
graveyard >>

Maybe Wormtail had been SUCH an undercover agent the first time 
around that he never came to DE meetings, therefore didn't have the 
uniform.

Cristina Angelo wrote:

<< In french, school and houses names are translated (Hogwarts 
becoming PoudLard, making me actually understand the joke...). >>

The most obvious joke of "Hogwarts" is that it's Warthogs backwards. I 
suppose the reason why being Warthogs backwards is funny is because 
Hogs and Warts are both despised, and schools are usually named after 
something admired rather than something despised. Is "PoudLard" the 
same joke, "lardpoud" being "warthog"?

J Happydogue wrote:

<< I don't know if this has been discussed before but could Petunia 
be a squib? >>

Many people think that the Evans parents were a pair of Squibs, thus 
explaining their happiness at having a daughter be a witch. Some go 
on to suggest that the Evans parents were descended from Salazar 
Slytherin and James Potter was descended from Godric Gryffindor and 
Harry's special powers come from being the first combination of those 
bloodlines. I don't believe it. I think that JKR's whole point is to 
mock the belief in pedigrees by making the most powerful witches, Lily 
and Hermione, being Muggle-born with no wizarding pedigree At All. 

However, *I* would like to believe that Petunia was really born to a 
wizarding family, was Narcissa's sister, but was rejected by her 
parents for being a Squib, so they sent her to be adopted by a Muggle 
family (the Evanses) who for some reason were already in contact with 
the wizarding world. In this fable, Petunia was sent away when too 
young to consciously remember, but her dislike of magic was caused by 
her unconscious memory that magic had something to do with being 
thrown away by her first family.

<< What are the genetics involved in being one of the magical folk? 
Do squibs carry the gene but it isn't expressed? Is it a recessive 
gene so you must get one from both mother and father to be a witch? 
Can the gene be passed and the individual not know that they are 
carrying it until two unaware parents suddenly have a witch or wizard 
child? >>

I have my own theories about the inheritance of Potterverse magic
(which are long but there is other stuff after them):
<< From:  "catlady_de_los_angeles" 
Date:  Sun Jul 21, 2002  7:13 pm
Subject:  Re: wizard education/birth dearth, baby boom/inheriting 
magic

I agree with those who say that the wizarding world had a 'birth 
dearth' during the Voldemort Reign of Terror (which I like to call 
The Bad Years), but not that that caused Hogwarts to have fewer 
students born in those years. In fact, the classes born in those 
years might have been LARGER than usual This is because of a theory 
of inheritance of magic which I came up with in a thread on that 
subject. 

In my theory, the inheritance of magic is partly genetic and partly 
magical. I suggest that in general, there are a whole bunch of pairs 
of recessive genes that usually combine to make a person magical. How 
many of these pairs a person is double-recessive for, and which ones, 
would influence or control how strong their magic power is, and what 
forms of magic they are most talented at. 

But I also suggest that there is also a Magic that keeps the total 
number of wizarding people constant. When a wizard or witch dies, 
their magic goes to the next suitable child born in their area. 
Suitability would be a combination of the genes and of being 
surrounded by magic at the time. (A fetus in a witch's womb is the 
most possible surrounded by magic! So the child of a witch and a 
Muggle is almost as likely to be magic as the child of a witch and a 
wizard.) The longer the magic goes searching for a suitable host, the 
geographically wider an area it searches, and also it becomes less 
picky about suitabilty, such as choosing Muggle-born children who at 
least have SOME of the right genes, even tho' there is no magic 
around them at all. 

This theory also explains Squibs, as children of a wizard and a witch 
who were born at a moment when more wizarding babies were being born 
than wizarding folk were dying. THEREFORE, if two Squibs marry, their 
children would have the right genes, and if the Squib couple lived 
(unhappily and in poverty) in the wizarding world, their children 
would have been somewhat surrounded by magic, and therefore children 
of Squibs who remain in the wizarding world are likely to be 
non-Squib. Squibs who move to the Muggle world, make a life there and 
marry a Muggle, would probably have children who were Muggles, but 
with the genes to be very attractive to magic looking for a 
Muggle-born person to reside in.

This theory also implies that there would be more Muggle-borns than 
usual during The Bad Years. That would be an ironic result of 
Voldemort's attempt to eliminate Muggle-borns! But, as you said, more 
wizarding folk than usual were dying during The Bad Years, because of 
all the murders, and fewer were being born than usual, because of 
parents reluctant to bring children into such a dreadful world. Thus, 
quite a number of witches and wizards died with no wizarding child 
being born at their death-time, so their magic went looking for a 
Muggle-born host. Thus, more 'Mudbloods'. That could explain why 
wizarding folk from Bill Weasley's age on down are more familiar with 
Muggle things than their parents are, and take it for granted to wear 
Muggle-style clothes: they learned it from their classmates.

A further implication is that a post-Harry Potter Day wizarding baby 
boom may have resulted in an epidemic of Squibs.

****

I think it is more likely that if magic were one gene-pair, that 
magic would be the RECESSIVE allele. Thus, any magic person must be 
double-recessive, thus any child of two magical parents would be 
magic (mm * mm = mm, as you know). The exception, non-magic children 
of two magic parents, Squibs, are extremely rare; to me, extremely 
rare MIGHT mean once in a generation. Rare enough that they could all 
be the result of a birth defect or mistaken paternity. 

Heterozygous people (Mm) would be Muggles, but two heterozygous 
people would have children in the famous pattern 25% MM, 25% Mm, 25% 
Mm, 25%mm = 75% Muggle and 25% Magic. That would account for there 
being quite a few magic children of Muggle parents, and some of them 
being siblings.

***

Any purely genetic system would have some Muggle siblings of magic 
children. If magic was a dominant gene M, many wizards and witches 
would be Mm and if they had children with a Muggle mm, half the 
children would be Mm and half mm, so half the children would be 
Muggles. That includes Ksnidget's suggestion that the dominant gene M 
is one that was created by the number of repeating elements becoming 
greater each generation until first it becomes long enough that the 
phenotype is somewhat abnormal and then keeps getting longer, making 
the condition worse every generation.

We can account for magic children being more than the predicted 
percentage by assuming non-genetic mechanisms ... maybe a non-magic 
embryo cannot implant in a magic womb, so only wizards but not 
witches could have non-magic children ... that would work with magic 
being either m or M; mm womb rejects mM embryo because of its alien M 
gene or Mm womb and MM womb reject mm embryo because it lacks M gene 
... if magic is m, it could be that mm only marries Mm, never MM, 
become MM just 'smell wrong' to be attracted to, or m is partially 
expressed by Mm being more open-minded and whimsical and thus more 
compatible to magic person. >>

Alex aesob wrote:

<< Does anyone know if there was any substantiated leaked info from 
GoF? How tight is security at Scholastic & Bloomsbury and their 
printers? (Probably better than that of a head-of-state's, eh?...) >>

There were several authentic leaks during the final weeks running up 
to the release of GoF, probably arranged by Scholastic to stoke the 
hype. One was a little girl in a Washington DC suburb found a copy of 
GoF on the shelf at her local bookshop and bought it more than a week 
before the widely-known release date, and a newspaper printed the 
First Chapter allegedly shown to them by her. An unknown person 
pseudonymously joined HPfGU to post that she works at Scholastic, 
knows about the upcoming book, and will burst if she doesn't tell 
someone at least the hint that the title will be Harry Potter and the 
C-- of F--, please guess what that stands for. Soon she unsubbed. I 
believe that was a Scholastic PR person doing their PR job... 

Steve bboy_mn wrote:

<< It is likely that Drumstang is in an area of Russia that is north 
east of Finland (near the city of Murmansk, Russia). >>

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/6494
Pam Scruton's post of JKR's reading in Glasgow
<< Jo thinks that Durmstrang is in northern Scandanavia - the very 
north of Sweden or Norway >>

Abigail wrote:

<< That's the problem with melodramas - no one appreciates the 
gravity of death. It's finality. People die of anger or love or 
shame, when in fact they should be clinging to life with their 
fingernails, because it is too precious to let go of. So many 
people in the Potterverse have fought death with every breath 
they had left, isn't it disgraceful, to embrace it in the name of 
honor and drama? >>

That's the Voldemort position, the reason for his quest for 
immortality, valuing the continuation of one's own life more than 
honor and virtue.

<< Just look at the predictions people make about the coming books. 
Why, by the time we get to book 7, there are more dead characters 
then living ones. It just seems to belittle the importance of death. 
How shattering is it that a character dies if it happens every other 
week?" >>

That's reality. Look at the Normandie landing.