[HPforGrownups] Re: Hebridean Black

[silmariel]

No: HPFGUIDX 145487


> bboyminn:
>
> In essense you see a correllation between personality and
> Patronus/Animagus form. Sirius has a bark-like laugh and his animagus
> form is a black dog, etc...
>
> Now drawing the same parallel to Snape, given there are sufficient
> references to lead a larger group of people to conclude that Snape is
> a Vampire, wouldn't it make more sense for his Animagus/Partonus to be
> a BAT.
>

Silmariel:

There are enough references to bats and spider movement, and to vampires. 
Given we naturally associate vampires with bats, it's no wonder to assume 
that every bat-vampire reference is tied together making him a Vampire. 

My main problem with the bat patronus is that, as a spider or a snake, it 
doesn't say anything new or bangy about Snape. It's a reasonable assumption, 
but Jo usually goes for foreshadowed surprises - hidden in the front.

When you have a dragon with bat wings, you can tie the Snape bat references to 
the dragon, if it happens to be black, and agressive, and hunting stags and 
big dogs, of course, not just because of the wings. I won't go into comparing 
Neville with the ocassional cow.

Harry himself compares him to a dragon (the most interesting part is that 
paraphrases the school motto), as Talisman remembered me:

"Deliberately causing mayhem in Snape's potions class was about as safe as 
poking a sleeping dragon in the eye." (CoS 186)

I'd add that at the end of FBAWTFT's prologue, Dumbledore (you can read it as 
last words now he's gone), to wizards only say: never tickle a sleeping 
dragon.

Snape certainly has been 'sleeping' all this years, lurking, and now has gone 
to the center of the scenary.

> True the Hebridean Black, because it is black, has bat-like wings, but
> I suspect all Dragons have leathery skin/membrane wings, making them
> all bat-like except they are red or green or whatever. But beyond
> bat-like wings, there is nothing especially bat-like about the Black
> over other dragons, and if we are going to search for 'bat like'
> references then we would certainly do better to search among bats.
>

But other dragons are not described as having bat like wings, so I deduce that 
Rowling doesn't see them bat-like. In fact, if she sees all wings as bat 
like, I don't know why to make the difference between the Norgewian Rideback 
and the Hebridean, being them both black, if all dragons are bat winged, they 
should have the same wings. 

But the Norwegian is compared to the Hungarian Horntail, instead (also black 
scales). In fact, I've reread all the Dragons' section and the only reference 
present to the wings, is for the Hebridean, so I assume the rest have 
standard dragon wings - excepting the chinese, that I assume will have 
standard chinese-dragon wings. 

It is good that beyond being black and the bat like wings, it isn't more like 
a bat, because it's a dragon. Hebridean doesn't have more in common with 
bats, he does have more in common with Snape - feeding habits, etc -, who 
walks in a spider - or a dragon inside a building - way. 

> As various 'Snape will help Harry' discussions have gone on and now
> that we are discussing Patronus, I think Snape's Patronus would be a
> very good way for Snape to send anonymous messages to Harry in the
> beginning. It certainly would be safer that confronting Harry at the
> moment.
>

Just asking an order member wouldn't reveal who those messages are from? If 
it's something extrange, that is. With a bat Hermione at least should have a 
good guess inmediately.

Silmariel