The Twins and the Puffskein

[hekatesheadband]

No: HPFGUIDX 145197

> Allie: 
> 
> I agree and disagree.  A puffskein is definitely not a cricket - it 
> would be horrible enough if they squashed Ron's pet cricket to 
> death - but a puffskein is more like a guinea pig or a kitten, in my 
> mind anyway.  I didn't even take note of the puffskein incident when 
> I read Fantastic Beasts, but when BetsyHP brought it up, I was very 
> distubed.  (I'm a vet!!)  I really DON'T think JKR meant that to be 
> taken seriously, since it was just ONE line in an ancillary book, so 
> I am trying very hard to come up with another reasonable explanation 
> to let the Weasley twins off the hook.  (I'm okay with pretty much 
> everything else they've done.)  So far these are what I have:
> 
> 1.  The puffskein died from something else that would somehow be 
> Ron's fault (maybe he fed it the wrong food), but the twins knew how 
> upset Ron would be so they made up the bludger story.  Let him be 
> mad at them instead of himself.
> 
> 2.  Ron was embellishing the story.  He brought the Puffskein 
> outside while the twins were practicing and it died of natural 
> causes.  Or got hit by a stray bludger (ACCIDENTALLY).
> 
> 3.  Ron never had a Puffskein and he and Harry were just making up 
> stories while they were bored in class.
> 
> Someone help, are there any other explanations?  I can't bear to 
> think of the twins bludgeoning a poor little puffball on purpose!  
> (They're SELLING them now, remember!)  I feel much more at ease 
> thinking it was one of the 3 above. 

I'm not a vet, but I am a vegan, and the sort of death-penalty
opponent who thinks animal abusers ought to have toasters dropped in
their bathtubs as a matter of course. I agree 100% with your take on
the puffskein issue.

Here's one other possible explanation: we don't know how old the twins
were at the time of the alleged incident. What's really horrible in
the world in general is that young children (eight and under, roughly)
will sometimes do very serious, deliberate harm to small animals
without having any true comprehension of what they're doing. It's
strange, because you'd think they would, but some kids just don't have
a fully realized, thorough understanding of others' suffering (their
sense of empathy isn't fully internalized yet). Their understanding
of mortality, of everything that can cause death and of the observable
nature and quality of the passage between life and death. It's not all
kids, but it is some, and it's horrible. 

But most do come to understand these things in time, and are horrified
by what they've done when that understanding sinks in. I wouldn't
support dropping toasters in their bathtubs. Anyway, for that reason I
wouldn't extrapolate anything from that incident until we know how old
the twins were at the time. If they were ten or eleven - as Tom Riddle
was when he started killing his peers' pets - I'd be very troubled. If
they were six or seven, I doubt they understood. In the same vein, I
have a hard time believing that seven-year-olds with only a
rudimentary knowledge of magic, and none of anything else involved,
had any real comprehension of an unbreakable vow and what it entailed.

As for the salamander: according to "Fantastic Beasts," they eat
kindling and cavort around in fires, so I see a firecracker as more
akin to eating a stronger curry than one expected than anything else.
Also according to "Beasts," S.O.P. for gnomes has usually been siccing
Jarveys on them to kill and eat them. Just a thought.

-hekatesheadband

Because the Sorting Hat is really Bono.