Another Flint? (Was: When?)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 119199


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "kjirstem"
<stonehenge.orders at v...> wrote:
> 
> <Discussion of Colin & Dennis Creevey's parentage snipped>
> 
> > Carol:
> <interesting points about house elves mercilessly snipped>
> > The fact that Colin was one of the basilisk's victims also seems to
> > confirm that he really is Muggle-born.
> 
> kjirstem:
> 
> I thought the basilisk in COS was being directed by Possessed!Ginny,
> not selecting its targets independently. (COS, Ch 17, in Tom Riddle's
> gloating to Harry.) In FBAWTFT the entry for Basilisk indicates that
> they are dangerous to anyone except a Parselmouth, so it isn't that
> they somehow sense Muggle-borns.  Colin was attacked because he was
> thought to be Muggle-born; the attack isn't proof that he actually is
> Muggle-born.

Carol notes:
I suppose we could go with the unreliable narrator idea again. We're
*told* that the victims are all Muggleborns; everyone from Tom Riddle
to Dumbledore seems to refer to them as Muggleborns; but there's no
solid evidence of their parentage. Still, we know that Hermione really
is a Muggleborn, and she was one of the victims. And Tom himself says
that the whole reason for having the basilisk was to kill Muggleborns,
 and I think he would have wanted to be pretty sure of his
victims--something besides the knowledge little Ginny gave him in the
diary, though as a pureblood, she probably did at least know who the
pureblood families weres.

At any rate, we haven't heard another word about the basilisk's
victims, no indication that the basilisk somehow got it wrong. IMO, we
can safely assume that the Creeveys *are* Muggleborn (note that Colin
didn't know about wizard photographs or how to develop them and used
an old-fashioned Muggle camera that must have been his grandfather's).

What point would there be in rewriting the story now to give them a
different heritage? I don't think we need an explanation for their
size other than Dennis's age and their genetic inheritance from, say,
a very short Muggle mother.

Carol, who has already explained why she doesn't think they're part
house-elf, much less part goblin