Felix Felicis

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 127921


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tonks" <tonks_op at y...> wrote:
> 
> felix felicis : lucky, fortunate, happy. 
> 
> Do we know that this is going to be a person?  Maybe it is a new
spell. I looked up Felicis in an online Latin Dictonary and up poped
the whole phrase!!  Much to my shock. Maybe it is not a person??
> 
> I have been researching because I was going to predict, based on 
> something else I discoved earlier that Felix Felicis being a person
was going to be an evil person. I base this on the fact that someone
named Felix was the anti-pope when there were two popes. But now I am
not sure that it is even a person. What do people think?? 
> 
> Tonks_op


The reason that the whole phrase popped up is that Latin adjectives
are listed in dictionaries and glossaries by their first two principal
parts (the nominative and genitive forms), which indicate which
declension they belong to. "Felix, felicis" means "happy" (or
"lucky"), "of the happy" (or "of the lucky"), and the formation of the
genitive (possessive) shows that it's a third declension adjective. 

(My Latin is extremely rusty--high school was decades ago when I was a
different person altogether--so I may have some details wrong. Or
perhaps someone else who took Latin more recently can explain it more
clearly. My point is that the words "felix, felicis" belong together
in somewhat the same way that "good, better, best" belong together,
except that "felicis" is the genitive rather than the comparative and
superlative like "better" and "best." Oh. Yeah. That cleared *that* up!

Anyway, I think that JKR just liked the sound of the two forms
together and that they are a person's name. My money is on Felix
Felicis as the DADA instructor and/or the HBP. I doubt very much that
he'll be evil. JKR's character names generally fit the character and
Felix Felicis would be ironically unsuitable for an evil character. In
fact, he could be the fortunate person who ends the jinx on the DADA
position (which unfortunately, IMO, would make the job unavailable as
a reward for Snape's services to the school and the Order unless Felix
voluntarily steps down at the end of Book 6 or 7).

FWIW, the anti-popes weren't necessarily evil. They were simply rivals
of the Roman popes elected because the reigning pope was considered
corrupt or incompetent.

Carol