Snape & Ships & Family Size, Paintings & Ages & More Snape, & magic Ferrets

Sun Apr 10 04:50:10 UTC 2005

No: HPFGUIDX 127375

Geoff wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127015 :

<< I don't think it was Lucius because Harry hadn't met him by 
then. >>

Yes. That's why Draco was in the dream: Harry had met Draco already.
But Draco, Snape,  high-pitched laughter, and green burst of light
were in the dream together as a result of Harry's forgotten memory of
Lucius, Snape, Voldemort, and AK at Godric's Hollow. Draco, whom Harry
had met, stood in for Lucius, whom Harry hadn't met, because those two
look so much alike. 

Betsy horridporrid wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127017 :

<< [Snape is] Dumbledore's right hand man (McGonagall would be the
right hand woman). >>

Some listie once wrote that Snape was DD's left hand man, which I
loved.

allthingshp wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127022 :

<< > "B.G.":
> "Her girlhood crush on Harry will be over and she'll
> marry a man in the WW government and help him to
> become the Minister Of Magic. "

Or become the minister herself!! >>

My favorite ship for the younger generation is Hermione/Ginny. I'm
convinced that Hermione, starting as an outsider/activist with SPEW,
will eventually become the first Muggle-born Minister of Magic, and
Ginny would be a good help for that.

I don't think Harry wants to be Minister of Magic: he doesn't seem to
like administrating.

Emma asked in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforG
rownups/message/127055 :

<< I wondered about family size too. Cedric Diggory doesn't seem to
have any siblings (or at least none near enough him in age to be at
school or to go to the world quidditch match). Is the usual family
size small for wizarding people? >> 

I think, with the long lifespans of wizards as suggested by Dumbledore
being 150 and McGonagall 'a spritely seventy', wizarding families
could have as many children as is common for modern Muggles, but raise
them all as only children. Say, marry straight out of school and have
one child at age 20, another when you're 40, another when you're 60,
and maybe the combination of later menopause with fertility magic
would allow a fourth child born when you're 80.

Was Theo Nott's late mother as old as his elderly father?

Eustace_Scrubb wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127135 :

<< And as to the genre pictures that seem to abound at Hogwarts...
presumably these are much closer to the photographs. The people may
simply be artistic creations, fictional characters. What personality
we see in these folks was probably a creation of the artist him/
herself--there may be bits of various real people in some of them, but
they're just characters in a landscape. >>

Are they really genre paintings or are they portraits of real deceased
(and often deranged: Sir Cadogan) wizards and witches? JKR's remarks
on the talking portraits leave me bewildered on that subject.

On the related subject, whether the wizarding folk have fiction (other
than Lockhart's memoirs and Skeeter's articles, falsehoods taken as
true accounts by the readers), are there novels and plays in the
wizarding world? In one interview, someone asked JKR what she would do
for a living in the wizarding world, and she said, as there is nothing
she would rather do that write, she guessed she would be a writer of
spellbooks. Why not of novels? Don't they have novels in that world?

It also made sense to me that they don't have recorded music (other
than 'recorded' as sheet music) in the wizarding world, only live in
person or live over the Wizarding Wireless -- that would explain why
only kids who'd had access to the Wizarding Wireless doted on The
Weird Sisters. But then JKR went and ruined that by writing in QTTA
that Celestina Warbeck had recorded some team's fight song as a
fundraiser for St. Mungo's. Well, if they have recorded music, how
come no Gryffindor had played a Weird Sisters record in the Gryffindor
Common Room?!

Grey Wolf wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127141 :

<< I'd say the Malfoy Sr. has, tops, 50 years (more likely in his
40s, >>

A Daily Prophet article early in OoP helpfully stated "Lucius Malfoy,
41, of Wiltshire'. Helpful but annoying to me, as I wanted him born in
1949 rather than 1954 (my DH was born in 1954!) and to have his estate
near Chipping Sodbury, wherever that is.

<< The way it might be happening, the pure blooded families might have
children quite spaced out, so they can bring up each in the complete
luxury they're due because of their high station. In fact, I just
realised that the Malfoy don't criticise the Weasleys so much for
having too many children, as for the fact that they have more than
they can afford. >>

This is a forbidden "I agree" post (see above re:Emma).

<< In a slight tangential, it is interesting that the extended
lifetime doesn't affect the WW more than it does - promotion
congestion, extended education, late childbirth, etc that we see going
on in our world. >>

I quite agree. In particular, I'd like to see more children who are 
a bit older than their great-aunts or grand-uncles -- it would be easy
enough to show a student already in Hogwarts being supportive to his
great-aunt who is a new first-year. But I don't think JKR gave any
thought to wizarding long lifespans: she just sees all these people in
her head as doing things at the same ages as Muggles (old-fashioned
Muggles like her own parents), except they retire later.

Jim Ferer wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127218 :

<< Snape grew up in a painful, anxious home of emotional turmoil. He
came to school as an oddball, greasy kid who knew too much Dark Arts -
I doubt he found friends or any validation of himself. >>

The validation he deserved for doing so well in all his schoolwork was
ruined for him by James and Sirius and Lily always coming in number 1,
2, 3 (not always in that order) in all their courses so there was no
prize for him. In a normal year, he would have taken 1st place and 2nd
place in many of his subjects.

I believe he found friends of a sort in Slytherin House -- I take
Sirius's GoF statement about Severus having been part of a gang of
Slytherins (who all became Death Eaters, Wilkes and Rosier who were
killed by Aurors, Bellatrix and her future husband, and Avery who
talked his way out of Azkaban but was seen at the Graveyard Gathering)
and his OoP statement about being Lucius Malfoy's lapdog as messages
from the author. 

He would have gotten some validation from these richer,  prettier, and
arguably older kids valuing his magical knowledge and abilities, for
duelling, and maybe for doing their homework for them. That makes him
having sent most of them to their deaths or to Azkaban by spying on
them for the Light Side all the more painful to him.

Alla wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforG
rownups/message/127220 :

<< Let's look at Snape's tirade and Dumbledore response again.

"Sirius Black showed he was capable of murder at the age sixteen,"
he breathed. "You haven't forgotten that, Headmaster? you haven't
forgotten that he once tried to kill me?"

"My memory is as good as it ever was, Severus," said Dumbledore
quietly" - POA, p.391

It seems that Snape believes that Sirius tried to kill him only
once , but now I do wonder whether he was sixteen at the time of the
prank or not.

I also still wonder what may Dumbledore's response mean. What DOES
he remember? >>

He remembers that Snape keeps nagging him on this same topic, and
should shut up already.
He remembers some loathsome things that Snape has done, maybe also at
age 16, but at least as a Death Eater, and been forgiven for.
He remembers that, when he brought the students involved into his
office right after that event, he heard two quite different
explanations of events.
He remembers that Sirius has demonstrated the ability to be quite
dangerous, so Harry and the other students must be effectively
guarded.
And?

Emma Hawkes wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127332 :

<< Money, bribery and corruption in the wizarding world >>

Nice essay. Thank you for posting it.

<< The mind boggles at the prospect of enchanted ferrets - what
possible use can there be for such a thing? >>

That would depend on what the enchantment (I typoed 'enhancement') is.
Mortlake might be trying to re-invent Nifflers, or a version 
that would sneak into buildings, instead of dig in the dirt, to seek
treasure. (Ferret burglars instead of cat burglars.) Maybe he'd use
them to rob Gringotts Bank.

If the enchantment involved giving them unobtainium-steel teeth or
poison fangs, they might be used as assassins.

Or maybe he gave them wings in hope of having them clean out Doxy
infestations in the curtains...