Goyle was not at MOM and is not in Azkaban

[samnanya]

No: HPFGUIDX 104275

 Diana L.
Luna is not in the same compartment as Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville 
and Ginny, but that does not mean she's not on the train.  She could 
just be in a different compartment.

samnanya
That may be true, but why would JKR mention two of her attributes with 
Ginny {quibbler reading, upside down}? If you compare this chapter to 
Chapter 10 when Luna and Harry first meet, virtually all the loose 
ends are linked -- for expample Neville's plant, seeing Cho. Why would 
Neville's plant and Cho Chang merit more attention than luna? 
Lunas absence is glaring in its incompleteness given all the other 
details, especially considering that she was the only one able to ease 
Harry's pain before he left Hogwarts. 


Diana l.
*If* she's not on the train, her dad might have picked her up from 
school in order to start that vacation immediately so they can 
finish their trip before she goes back to school next year.  It 
obviously wasn't important to JKR to mention Luna as not being or 
definitely being on the train, which may indicate that Luna's 
importance to the story may have passed.  

samnanya
If that is the case, why was Luna even brought in? Why did she merit 
her own chapter? One of the rules of writing is that you do not waste 
precious pages on characters that dont move the story forward in some 
way. For anyone who doubts this, I strongly suggest that they read the 
next to the last chapter of oop to see how deep Harrys despair had 
gone and who was the only one to make even the slightest difference in 
his feelings. IMHO the two pages describing Harry's meeting of Luna at 
the bulletin board was among the best that JKR has written in this 
series. Not a word wasted.


{responses to other aspects of this post to follow...}
samnanya































the story forward.