Out On A Limb About Florence

[snazzzybird]

No: HPFGUIDX 105849

Now that JKR has let the air out of the Mark Evans trial balloon, I'm 
going to go out on a limb with a fearless prediction:

Florence will prove to be another Mark.

Way back when the first round of Florence speculation gripped this 
list, I had my doubts... but kept them to myself.  Who was I to throw 
cold water on a fun theory?  And it wasn't as though I had anything 
remotely canonical on which to base my belief.  JKR has, indeed, 
tossed a name into the narrative in one book, and made that character 
important in a later one.  However, I just didn't think so with 
Florence.

I didn't think so with Mark Evans, either.  Like many of the posters 
on this list, I didn't see how he could be a relative of Harry's -- 
for reasons that these posters expressed better than I could.  The 
only thing that kept me from being 100% sure he wasn't important was 
that *name*.  Why, I wondered, would JKR give him Lily's last name 
for no reason?

La Rowling answered that one herself: she made a mistake.  I can 
accept that.  Brilliant writer though she is, I have no problem 
believing she's human.  She wanted to tell us something about Dudley, 
and she did it by having Harry refer to a younger, smaller child that 
Dudders beat up.

Sometimes a writer will mention a character simply to illustrate 
something about another character.  In GOF, JKR wants us to see that 
Bertha Jorkins was a snoop and a tattletale even when she was at 
school.  She learned something about a fellow student and she went 
right to Dumbledore with the information.  Later on, we'll remember 
this about Bertha when we learn that she was killed because she 
learned a secret that Lord Voldemort didn't want known.

Florence could have been anybody.  Florence was nobody.  Whoever she 
was kissing, I hope she enjoyed it, because I think that was the 
closest she's going to get to her 15 minutes of fame in the 
Potterverse.

--snazzzybird, whose little claw feet fit very nicely on this limb