Scabber is NOT a rat (was Hyperbolic Chapter Titles )

[feetmadeofclay]

No: HPFGUIDX 81341

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "meltowne" <meltowne at y...> 
wrote:

> Golly: 
> 
> The Authorial voice is always right - even when it doesn't give you 
> the whole picture. The facts it gives you are true. Scabbers was a 
> rat - undistinguished and long lived. Spells wouldn't work on it 
> apparently. 
> 
> Me:
> 
> Actually, no scabbers was NOT a rat, and that's the point.  


Golly: Actually an animagus is the animal it turns into enough to 
refer to it as a dog or a rat or a stag.  Scabbers WAS a rat who was 
also an animagus in his non human form.  The same way a person can 
be a doctor and a woman and dead all at the same time.   


>When Ron 
> tried to cast spells on scabbers, he was trying to turn a RAT into 
> something yellow:
> 
>           "Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,
>           Turn this stupid fat rat yellow."
> 
> The spell failed, not because Ron was a lousy spellcaster, but 
> because Scabbers wasn't really a rat!  He was a human in disguise.

He was a human in transformed shape.  We have no idea why the spell 
didn't work.  We don't know if Ron flubbed it, if it wasn't a real 
spell or if it is because animagi cannot be changed colours.  You're 
doing exactly what you are saying I should not be doing.  You're 
jumping on the most reasonable explanation.  But at least here the 
text provides ambigiuty.  

The fact that the spell didn't work doesn't make him less of a rat 
and more of a human.  He has the body of the rat and a mind of a 
human.  Who is to say which he is more like?  Sirius said the 
Dementors could not sense animal emotions - thus imply when he was in 
dog form he was a dog.  

 The revelation is perfectly consistent with the previous authorial 
voice.   
 
> We can't always take everything at face value.

GOLLY:  What a person cannot be is dead and alive at the same time. 

Which is why when the author says 'worst'  I believe it.  You can't 
have a memory that is the worst and not the worst.  It either is or 
it isn't.


  The memory from the 
> pensieve may be Snapes worst memory, it might not.  

GOLLY: Why?  Why he put it in there we don't know.  All I know is 
that it is his worst memory.  

And yet again, I ask if you are going to give this treatment to the 
books, it has to go with EVERYTHING.  Every word is suspect.  Is 
Hermione a girl?

Golly