Was Scabbers an illegal pet? (was: 24 hours again)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 105181

Several people have quoted this provision from the Hogwarts letter in
SS/PS with regard to whether a rat is allowed: 

"Students may bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad."
> 
Christelle commented:
> Safe if it means that only one pet is allowed (Hagrid would try to 
> bring many more), a rat is not allowed.
 
Carol:
If you mean that the sentence has two possible interpretations, a)
Only one pet is allowed and b) only an owl or a cat or a toad is
allowed, I agree, but I want to point out that the two aren't mutually
exclusive. b) implies a), certainly, but a) doesn't necessarily imply
b). In other words, if we interpret the sentence literally as an
absolute rule, then Ron (and perfect Percy before him) is breaking the
rules, as was Lee Jordan with his tarantula. OTOH, if the letter is
simply stating that only one pet is allowed and is listing the three
most common WW pets on the assumption that students will also
understand it to apply to other pets not listed, then having Scabbers,
and only Scabbers, isn't breaking any rules. Having both Scabbers and
Pigwidgeon would be. (I know the circumstances in which Ron acquired
Pigwidgeon; I'm not saying that he would or could have had both at the
same time; this is a hypothetical example.)

Surely both McGonagall and Dumbledore have known about Scabbers since
Percy was a first-year and neither of them chose to apply the "rule"
literally. It would, in fact, have been cruel to the little boy to
deny him the only pet his parents could afford, one that (chances are)
followed him home one day rather than being bought in a store. Having
allowed Percy to keep Scabbers for seven years, they could hardly deny
Ron the same privilege (though I wonder why they didn't notice that he
was living an unusually long time). Having allowed both Percy and Ron
to keep Scabbers, they could hardly deny Lee his tarantula.

So even if the "rule" was originally intended to be taken literally,
Dumbledore and McGonagall transformed it into a guideline. (Here are
the preferred pets. Please bring only one.) Now if someone had tried
to bring in a pet dog, perhaps they'd have enforced the guideline a
bit more strictly. In general, though, McGonagall is what might be
called a "loose interpretationist," one who enforces the spirit rather
than the letter of the law. She may be strict, but she bends the rules
(first-years are not allowed their own brooms) when it suits her needs
or wishes. (IMO, she'd have signed Harry's Hogsmeade permission form
if the wording had been subject to interpretation, but there was no
getting around the fact that she wasn't Harry's parent or guardian.) 

Now if someone had tried to bring an unusual pet into Slytherin, Snape
might have chosen to enforce the rule, considering the wording "owl OR
cat OR toad" as absolute, and his student would probably have had to
ship the rat or tarantula home via owl, hoping that the pet would
survive the journey. But from her perspective and Dumbledore's,
Scabbers was not an illegal pet. Either that or, out of kindness to
the Weasleys, they chose to turn a blind eye to the violation.

Carol