Magic/Quill/Godparents/Inheritance/Ron/DarkhairedBoy/deadCedric/PhineasNigell

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 96276

Back in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/95147
Ffred manawydan wwrote:

<< Suppose you are a WW farmer with a flock of sheep. What sort of
magics do you use? (snip) Then you need a hex of some sort for the
slaughtering, plus charmed devices for skinning, butchering, storing
the meat, and transporting it to market. (snip) In the WW, the normal
way of doing _everything_ is by magic. If they can do something that
way, then why not? That after all is what the magic's for, and they've
had thousands of years in which to work out the solutions. >>

I am often amazed at how *little* the wizarding world uses magic to do
stuff. Madam Malkin pins up hems in the Muggle way: "In the back of
the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool
while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin
stood Harry on a stool next to him, slipped a long robe over his head,
and began to pin it to the right length." You'd think witches could
just draw the hemline with their wand and utter a spell to make the
cloth fold itself up and stay in place without pins. You'd think
witches could just stand Harry on the stool wearing his robe, and use
a wand wave and a magic word to make the garment fold itself to the
desired length without the witch having to so much as touch it!

Shaun Hately wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/95777 :

<< And if this would have been legal in a normal private school in
Britain under muggle law, given that Wizarding law seems to be rather
more old fashioned about such matters - I doubt there'd be a legal
impediment to what Umbridge is doing. Would it
anger Dumbledore? >>

When I first read about Delores's Quill, I gasped in horror: "Isn't
that illegal Dark Magic?" Strict wizarding discipline may okay
stabbing or cutting kids for punishment, but surely *not* using Dark
artifacts on them. How can I be so certain that the Quill is Dark
Magic when the list can't even *define* Dark Magic? Well, it's
drinking its victim's *blood*....

Ghingapuss Mandy wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/95855 :

<< But most importantly each child has 3 godparents. 2 men and 1 woman
if the child was a boy, and 2 women and 1 man if the child was a
girl. So who are Harry's other Godparents? Yet another question he
has yet to ask. >>

That's assuming that Harry got godparents by being baptized in the
Anglican church. Even Muggles have other churches and religions in
which their babies can get godparents, and I imagine that the
wizarding folk have a few not known to Muggles ...  Maybe they have an
old wizarding traditional baby-naming ceremony in which the baby is
welcomed into the community by people formerly called "nameparents",
but now called "godparents" due to so many generations of Muggle
influence. Then we have no clue whether whatever ceremony Lily and
James had for their first-born calls for the child to have one, two,
three, or many godparents.

bboy-mn wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/95862 :

<< If Sirius had indeed been dead rather than in prision, the estate
would have been distributed using Wills and standard British Right of
Inheritance. >>

But, as before, I don't see why the wizarding folk would necessarily
use the same laws of inheritance as Muggles. Yes, I understand that
British wizards and British Muggles are both Brits, who lived under
the same laws something over a thousand years ago, but since then
they've had a lot of time to drift apart. For one thing, the wizard
folk seem to have gone in for gender equal opportunity long before
Muggles did, so there might be rather less male bias in their
inheritance. Tonks might be the next heir rather than Draco, as her
mother seems to be the oldest of the three sisters. Or of all the
people equally closely related, it would be the one who would change
hiser name to Black and name hiser children Black, to keep the
property with the name.  

Laura Snape's-Angel wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/95890 :

<< It would be funny though, if Ron (who I assume won't continue with
Potions if he doesn't have to) thinks he's rid of Snape forever, yet
who's sitting at the DADA desk first lesson? Snape. Haha! >>

It *would* be funny, but I think Ron will continue with Potions if he
can, because it was *Ron* who said he wanted to be an Auror (Harry
only said: Me, too) so presumably McGonagall also counselled him that
he would need five NEWTs including Potions.

Gina wrote in  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPfor
Grownups/message/96045

<< In the beginning of GoF the pale faced boy with dark hair running
from the Riddle's house sounds more like Snape or even his father???
to me. >>

The dark haired boy running from the Riddle house at the beginning of
GoF was Tom Marvolo Riddle (the future Lord Voldemort) who had just
killed his father, Tom Muggle Riddle ("their grown-up son, Tom"), and
Tom Muggle's mother and father.

Jen Reese wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/96127

<< Here's one to add to the list: If no one believed DD & Harry,
that LV killed Cedric, why was there no further investigation? You'd
think his parents and the rest of the WW would be very curious about
Harry & Cedric's mysterious disapperance and Cedric's death. >>

Enough people believed DD & Harry that LV had killed Cedric that Fudge
had to mount that whole Daily Prophet campaign to discredit them. So
it would not have been in Fudge's interest to have an investigation
that found that the tales of LV's return were true. Instead, the wide
public curiosity turned into rumors that Harry had murdered Cedric to
get the Cup.  

Pippin wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/96167 :

<< Hmmm....the Blacks are related to the Malfoys. Could there be a
portrait of Phineas Nigellus, that most unpopular Hogwarts headmaster,
hanging innocently on the walls of the Malfoy manor? Phineas might
have heard Dobby or Lucius himself mention the Chamber and reported it
to Dumbledore. >>

Hmm. Who knows that all the portraits of deceased Headmasters and
Headmistresses are oath-bound (and apparently can be forced) to assist
the current Headmaster or Headmistress? If Lucius knew, he'd be
cautious about portraits of those of his distinguished ancestors who
were Headmasters. Would a portrait who sympathised with Lucius have to
report Lucius's ill-doings to Dumbledore if DD didn't specifically
ask? Could such a portrait report back to Lucius about how much DD
knew and what DD was doing about it?