Snape/Metamorphmagus/wizarding population/SalazarDescendents/Remus/Ethics

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 83088

Alison Williams wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82968 :

<< Given his outrageous bias towards the members of Slytherin House
might it draw out - eventually - some grudging respect to know that
the Hat was of the opinion that Harry 'would have done well in
Slytherin'? >>

It seems to me more likely that that Snape would be additionally
enraged at Harry by learning that Harry had rejected Snape's House
with most insulting intensity. -"The arrogant brat thinks he's too
good for MY House!"-

Inge wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82981 :

<< What if Barty Ferm Jr still exists - on special occassions. What 
if Tonks could Metamorph into Ferm Jr and take his place at the DE
meetings and get information directly from Voldemort to pass on to 
the Order. >>

You explained that Barty Ferm is Danish for Barty Crouch. Does Ferm
mean something in Danish? "Crouch" is a name of some real people and
also an English word meaning "to bend down". JKR might have chosen
with some thought of Crouch Sr "lowering" his morals to the level of
the opponent when he authorised use of Unforgiveable Curses and so on.

After GoF there was tons of speculation that someone (perhaps Snape)
would use Polyjuice to impersonate young Barty among the Death 
Eaters, and tons of replies that Polyjuice is way too overused. (Also
discussion of who knows that Junior was Kissed -- and the possibility
that he *wasn't* Kissed: we have only McGonagall's word for that, and
some people think McGonagall is Ever So Evil.)

There was discussion when OoP was realised of whether Metamorphmagism
can be a replacement for Polyjuice ...  how MUCH can a Metamorpmagus
change hiser appearance? Can they change their mass (as Harry and 
Ron did when Polyjuicing into Crabbe and Goyle), can they make an
entire bodily organ vanish away (as Barty's eye and leg did when he
Polyuiced into Moody), can they change their sex (we actually don't
even know if Polyjuice can do that), can they ever stop resembling
themselves? The stuff Marci discussed in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83057

Ffred Manawydan (who predicted me too well) wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82982 :

<< Some of the things that need to be factored in to try to think
about the size of the WW (and I agree that the British Isles is
probably the relevant unit here) are - the number of professional
quidditch teams and the likely fan base that would be needed to
support them (your figure would imply that there are less than 500
wizards in Wales, for example, even though there are two professional
quidditch teams requiring support - the diversity and size of the
media (at least one radio station, the Daily and Evening Prophet, the
Quibbler, Witch Weekly, and a number of other publications, plus a
very healthy-seeming book market) - the number of wizards who work 
for the Ministry - if they are working for the bureaucracy, then a
certain number of other wizards need to exist working elsewhere in
order to generate the cost of their wages >>

In my opinion, we don't need to think how many wizards would have to
work to make enough money to pay the wages of wizarding bureaucrats,
book publishers, and Quidditch players, because (in my opinion) a
great deal of the money in the wizarding world is 'made' by magic. We
only need to think of the number of wizards needed to fill all the
jobs (including the 'job' of customer). Which leads me to wonder how
many people are needed for a professional Quidditch team --- seven
starting players and how many reserves? One or more coaches? One or
more trainers, medi-mages, and masseurs -- or are all those jobs
replaced by one witch and her magic? One or more broomstick tenders,
or do the players tend their own? Talent scouts, ticket sellers,
groundskeepers, ushers, food and souvenir vendors -- how many  stadia
are there? (COuld there be only one, gov't-owned, stadium, so that no
two matches could take place at the same time?)

A publicist for each team, a licensing manager for each team (or one
for the whole deal), or do the owners do that themselves? A
meteorolo-mage (weather witch), not only to predict the weather of
next match so that the coach can choose the best strategy and players
for those weather conditions, but also to analyse all the little air
currents that might give an ittybitty headwind or tailwind to
broomstick flyers? Or would that be only one for the League? How many
devoted fans and how many more-casual spectators are needed? 

My particular, digressional, concern is that all the kids are locked
up in Hogwarts nine-some months out of the year, unable to attend the
pro matches and apparently having no Wizarding Wireless at Hogwarts 
to listen to the live coverage. 

Robert Shaw wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83034 :

<< Fewer muggles born in 1914-19 means fewer muggle-born wizards,
hence fewer wizards in total, and so on. >>

Only if the number of muggle-born wizards is proportional to the
number of Muggles born. Even if inheritance of wizardry was a matter
of Muggle genetics, if the birth dearth during the Great War affected
parents who didn't carry the recessive gene for magic far more than
the parents who did carry it, the decline in number of muggle-born
wizards wouldn't be as great as the decline in the number of muggles
born. In my own theory, is only partly a matter of Muggle genetics 
but also partly magical, with some deep magic causing that the number
of magic babies born equals the number of mages who die, so that
number of Muggle-born wizards has nothing to do with the number of
Muggle births, but only with the excess of wizard deaths over wizard
births.

Therefore, my theory holds that the first Voldemort Reign of Terror
("the Bad Years") and the bad guys attempts to wipe out Muggle-born
witches and wizards, with all the killing they did and the resulting
discouragement of child-bearing by frightened people, had the ironic
result of significantly increasing the number of Muggle-born magic
children born. So that the proportion of Muggle-born students at
Hogwarts was higher than usual in the classes from the one that was
seventh-year when Harry was first to Ginny's class.

<< The wizardly birth rate fall may be within wizardly living
memory. >>

I feel sure that the wizarding birth rate fall was more than 2000
years ago, maybe it was 8000 years ago. JKR has presented a wizarding
world in which equal opportunity of wizards and witches seems to be
the default position (which is consistent with a society in which
amount of magic power correlates more with control of other people
than does amount of physical strength.) Elfrida Clagg (wrongly called
Cragg in OoP) was Chief of the Wizard's Council in the mid-1300s.
There are witches on every professional Quidditch team as well as an
all-female Quidditch team. I am sure that very few witches can 
achieve a great career while caring for as many children as Molly
Weasley (almost as low as the proportion of Muggle women who can do
it), therefore the witches always user their contraceptive and
conceptive magic to space their children, holding down the average
number of children per family. I believe that there have always been
Muggle-born wizards because the wizarding folk have never, in the 
last 3000 years, had a birth rate up to replacement level, because
many wizards and witches never bothered with marriage and/or
child-bearing at all. 

Sherrie Snape wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/82983 :

<< As to how Voldie could be Sally Sly's last descendant - Wizarding
families in general (Weasleys excluded) seem to be very small. If Ms
Marvolo-Riddle was the only child of the only child of the only child
(& so on ad nauseum), then her only child (being one snot-nosed Tom
Riddle, Jr.) would be the last of his line, until/unless he himself
chose to breed. Just as Sirius was the last of the direct line of the
Blacks. >>

But last of the direct line is far from last descendent ... Sirius 
was the last of the direct line of the Blacks, but not the last
descendent of Phineas Nigellus. There is Draco and Tonks in the
younger generation, and maybe all those Weasley kids (Arthur as fifth
cousin twice removed might be descended from Phineas Nigellus) and
probably others we don't know about. 

For TMR to be the last descendent by being the only child of only
child ad infinitum, ol' Salazar would have had to have only one child
himself. I find that terribly unlikely ... someone posted: "Who would
want to marry Salazar?" I'm sure that many witches would have wanted
to marry him because he was famous and powerful and doubtless wealthy
(a common side-effect of power) AND many wizarding families would 
have wanted to make a marriage alliance with him and/or get his genes
into their pedigree. Malfoys, for example, I believe married a
daughter (a sister of the Malfoy heir) to Salazar, and then married
her daughter to her brother's son, the heir's heir. I believe that
Salazar had no ethics preventing him from multiple bigamy ... and no
ethics preventing him from 'seducing' witches by use of Imperius
curse. Result: more than one offspring. 

I have a big problem with canon, because I *don't* believe that Tom
Riddle was the last descendent of Salazar Slytherin, but Dumbledore
said so, so Dumbledore cannot be omniscent and always truthful. 

Laura wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83043 : 

<< Remus was on the train because DD wanted him there, wasn't he? >>

Yup.

<< It's coincidence that HRH ended up in the same compartment with
Remus. >>

I think not. I think that Remus was able to arrange it because he had
been informed about the Weasleys always arriving late. So by the time
that they arrived at Platform 9 3/4 with Harry, the only compartment
with enough room was the one that students had avoided because there
was an adult [pretending to be] asleep in it. If the Weasleys were
prompt arrivers, he would have had to come into their compartment at
the last minute, say: "Mind if I sit here, there are no other seats
left?" and then [pretend to] fall asleep, which would have made the
kids more watchful of him.

June Diamanti wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83074 :

<< Is it me or is everyone just wand happy? There seems to be the
minimum of restraint on the entire wizarding population - right, 
every underage wizard risks serious educational penalties if they
break the underage rules, but where does that leave the adult wizard?
Pretty much in the middle of a free for all. (snip) All the same, I
would have liked to see some ethical training in the Hogwarts
curriculum. When it isn't appropriate to use spells, when it is. Is
there any other effect of spells apart from the obvious. For instance,
if you used magic to push some clouds away because they were raining
on you, what is the effect of those clouds raining somewhere else and
is it a good effect? >>

to which Laura replied in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83076 :

<< This bears on the discussion a little while ago about the ethics 
of legilimency. The absence of any reference to a code of behavior, 
be it moral/ethical or legal, is conspicuous. Laws seem to spring up
in the WW sort of arbitrarily. (snip) nor does there seem to be any
person or persons who are ethical experts for the WW. (snip) I would
guess that it's a combination of wanting to avoid religious
controversy and not wanting to slow down the telling of the stories
that has made JKR stay away from the idea of moral training. >>

It seems to me that JKR very deliberately created this fascinatingly
"wand happy" society in which ethics are nothing more than one's
personal business. The wizarding world is shown as a place where
society in general and the legal system views Dark Arts (except for a
few specified curses and artifacts) as a perfectly respectable career
choice ("terrible, yes, but great"), where people widely known to be
former Death Eaters who got off punishment by lying are respected
leaders of society, where something being illegal means "don't get
caught" rather than "don't do it". 

Some listies state that that society is not merely amoral, but
entirely corrupt. Certainly it appears that the entire Ministry of
Magic is so corrupt that even our beloved Arthur Weasley, who DOES
have ethics in terms of he really DOES care sympathetically not to
hurt Muggles who can't defend themselves, not just to protect
wizarding secrecy, and his opposition to Voldemort and so on, has not
the slightest qualm about getting those *expensive* World Cup Final
tickets in exchange for "fixing" an enchanted-Muggle-artifact ticket
... This goes along with statements by listies that the wizarding
world is set up in such a way that it keeps having one Dark Lord (or
Lady) after another. A society that generates evil-doers. 

One reason OUTSIDE of the Potterverse is that JKR built the wizarding
world to have similarities to our RL fantasies, fairytales, and
folklore, so that readers can 'believe' that our RL lore really is a
distorted reflection of the wizarding world, and our RL lore includes
a *lot* of evil or at least amoral and power-hungry wizards and
witches. A justifying reason INSIDE the Potterverse is that so many
witches and wizards have so much magic power that a serious effect 
by the good guys to arrest & imprison or kill the bad guys (or by the
bad guys to do so to the good guys) could result in a devasting civil
war that could destroy the wizarding world, so good guys and bad guys
(oversimplified as Gryffindors and Slytherins) have made a cease-fire
or truce or peace.

Samnanya wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83077 :

<< The ethical training in the books is carefully woven into the
story, warts and all...... Let JKR continue to do the job that she 
has done so well so far, keeping us awake and entertained while doing
so. >>

to which June Diamanti replied in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83078 :

<< No - it isn't. >>

I'm sorry, June, I think Sam was right about that (altho' about
nothing else in his post except the blunt compass). JKR has placed
good kids like Harry and Hermione into a corrupt society so that 
their reactions to what goes on around them will make the readers
think about what is right and what is wrong.