[HPforGrownups] Re:Gum Wrappers

[Steven Spencer]

No: HPFGUIDX 112787

  Alex wrote:
> I, too, think that the gum wrappers are important, but doubt that they
> contain a message (in the sense of Alice having written something on
> them and deliberately concealed it).  I agree that Alice does not seem
> sufficiently compos mentis to do something like that, and that if she
> were, it would be cruel.
>
> However, I think that the gum wrappers *are* a message--to Neville as
> well as to us-the-readers.  Neville, I think, inteprets the message to
> be something like "I know you're my son and I care about you" (hence
> he keeps every gum wrapper she gives him, even though he has enough to
> paper his bedroom).  What Alice thinks the message is remains to be
> seen.  It's possible she's trying to communicate something much more
> complex than that and regards the symbolism of the Gum Wrappers as
> transparently obvious.  (which it, of course, isn't.)
>
>

Terpnurse now:
I remember this came up a month or so ago and I had a forehead-slapping 
moment. Someone, I believe it was Kneasy, mentioned that if not the 
wrapper itself, perhaps it's a message contained in the gum. We know 
that Droobles Bubble Gum produces bubbles (globes, spheres) that last 
for days. Maybe Alice is trying to get something across to Neville 
along those lines. Kneasy was thinking along the lines of the Prophecy 
Globe, but I wondered if it wasn't something 'closer to home' as it 
were.

Alice has spent well over a decade in St. Mungo's. What is there that 
is spherical like the bubbles? Well, two times we, the readers, have 
visited the hospital, and two times the light globes were described in 
detail.

If we look for allusions to corruption at the hospital, we'll see that 
Lucius makes generous donations to them. Suppose there was something 
sinister about those light globes? Perhaps some sort of spy-cam spell? 
Or a low-level noxious charm that keeps their long term patients from 
recovering? Any other ideas?