The unusual Gift?

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 106838

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince 
Winston)" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "paul_terzis" 
<paul_terzis at y...>
> wrote:
> 
 here in Greece we avoid to give perfume as a present to people we 
care and love. It symbolizes seperation and clash between the person 
who gives the perfume and the one who receives the perfume. The only 
way to counter the bad effect is the person who accepts the perfume, 
to give back  to the person who gives the perfume a couple of coins. 


Rita replied:
> 
> I've never heard of that superstition before. Here in USAmerica, we
> have a similar superstition about knives. If someonen gives 
someone a set of silverware (if it's *silver*, a whole set is an 
*expensive* gift), the recipient is supposed to give the giver one 
penny for each dinner knife, butter knife, and other knife in the 
set. The statement reason is that if you give a knife, it will cut 
your friendship, so sell the knives instead.
>>

Valky:
Maybe JKR is alluding to both superstitions in the gifts, of Sirius' 
and of Ron's. Sirius gave Harry a knife.

I JKR were placing these superstitions in the canon as the 
superstitions that they represent in the real world, then it follows 
that we may see the worst split of Ron and Hermione yet in book 6 
because sometime after Sirius gave Harry the knife their friendship 
was split by the pensieve scene, and Harry *used* the knife to 
confront Sirius with his anger. Not *definite leads* to the 
conclusion that the superstition holds in the Magic realm but it can 
be read that way.