choices / Mama Fridwulfa / Secret Keeper switch

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 110907

There were many brilliant posts about Petunia's pact, clinical
depression, and human-giant sex.

Del wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/110468 :

<< So LV, as LV, cannot be redeemed. Maybe Tom could have been helped,
back when he was a kid, but I guess it was already too late by the
time he was 15. Which is completely in contradiction with DD's
statement about choices. >>

People keep referring to DD's statement as 'our choices make us what
we are', but that is not in fact what he said. He said our choices
SHOW what we are. According to that, TMR's choices show that he is
evil, regardless of whether he made those choices because of a mental
illness resulting from his physiology or his upbringing, regardless
whether they were the only choices available to him under the
circumstances. There is an oldish post that explains this better than
I ever could, so here it is:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/23598

From:  "Aberforth's Goat" <Aberforths_Goat at Y...> 
Date:  Sat Aug 4, 2001  12:47 pm
Subject:  Re: [HPforGrownups] Re: Calvinism

<< Not so fast! The CoS passage actually has some of the most
"Calvinistic" passages in the canon. In fact, it was that passage that
got me thinking about this. Let's pull it out for exegesis:
 
*  "Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which
*  makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices,
*  Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
*  Harry sat motionless in his chair, stunned. "If you want proof,
*  Harry, that you belong in Gryffindor, I suggest you look more
*  closely at this." [....]
*
*  "Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the hat,
*  Harry."
 
So: Harry's choices *reveal* something--they peel the layers off the
onion--they show us the person he actually is. His true identity, his
soul, his platonic essence. And that person is, fundamentally, a
Gryffindor. He may not even have known it, but there's a white hat in
his soul and when it comes to a crisis, he'll wear it.

Karen wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/110586 :

<< My question is what on earth did his mother see in his father? We
know, from the photo scene in GOF that Mr Hagrid Snr was "a tiny man",
and if I remember correctly there was no qualification of "compared to
Hagrid." We also learned that "size is everything" to giants in OOTP.
How would a giantess hope to produce a child of acceptable size when
the father was a tiny little wizard? >>

We also learned in OoP that even tho' giants can't do magic, they 
like acquiring magical artifacts. Maybe Fridwulfa thought it would be
useful to have a wizard around, who could do magic for her, so she
married him as a way of acquiring him. Maybe she also thought her
child would be better off as a wizard or witch, doing magic and 
living in wizarding civilisation, than as even a large giant.

mhbobbin wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/110713 :

<< Sirius Black declined to be the Potters' secret keeper because he
himself was planning to go into hiding. >>

That is not the way I understood it. I understood that the original
plan was that the Secret Keeper would also go into hiding, to avoid
being caught and tortured to give up the secret. But Sirius's clever
idea was that he would pretend to be the Secret Keeper and NOT go into
hiding, so that LV would catch and torture him instead of the real
Secret Keeper. (Why did he think that he would be less likely to
reveal under torture that Peter was the real Secret Keeper than to
reveal the Secret?) The real Secret Keeper DID go into hiding.

<< "I thought it was the perfect plan... a bluff... Voldemort would be
sure to come after me, would never dream they'd use a weak, talentless
thing like you.... ["] >>

<< "I persuaded Lily and James to change to Peter at the last moment,
persuaded them to use him as Secret-Keeper instead of me.... I'm to
blame, I know it.... The night they died, I'd arranged to check on
Peter, make sure he was still safe, but when I arrived at his hiding
place, he'd gone. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. It didn't feel
right. I was scared. I set out for your parents' house straight away.
And when I saw their house, destroyed, and their bodies... I realized
what Peter must've done... what I'd done...." >>