Y!mort/stag/theOrder/Karkaroff/pet rat/H's mental health/Firebolt/hipppogriff

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 124504


Magda wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124129 :

<< Those of you who like to quote multiple posters and insert your
replies for hugely long posts might want to know that Yahoo truncates
them after a certain point. So people like me (and increasing
numbers of other readers on this list) can only respond to the first
half of long posts. >>

Ouch! I had no idea; Y!mort isn't truncating my posts on the website.
Thank you for warning me. How long of a post will Y!mort allow?

Jim Ferer wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124140 :

<< Harry doesn't learn for certain that his father's Animagic form was
a stag until after he's cast his stag Patronus. >>

Yes, but he probably had forgotten baby memories of his daddy turning
into a stag to amuse him.

Northsouth wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124245 :

<< During VW1, it seems to have not gotten quite that far - there were
no pitched battles, just terrorism from Voldemort, counter terrorism
attempts from the Ministry and the Order doing...well, what was the
Order doing? I imagine they were taking the fight to Voldemort, but
rather poorly. DD would have set them up early, like now, but after
the war broke out they would just be a mostly social group fumbling
around for something to do, a home to misfits who wanted to fight but
wouldn't be accepted into ministry ranks (Hagrid, Lupin, Fletcher).
It looks to me like two guerrila groups battling each other, with the
Ministry probably not very tolerant of the Order anyhow. >>

For my fanfic, I've tried to think what the Order did to comin VW1. I
have trouble thinking of anything they could do that the Ministry
couldn't (surely the Ministry could even run spies -- it is a normal
exercise of state power), but the point of the Order doing it instead
is that the Ministry was throughly infiltrated by DE spies: if a
tip-off led to Dept of Magical Law Enforcement planning a raid on a
Death Eater meeting, the Death Eaters would be warned and either move
the meeting or turn it into an ambush. But if non-Auror Order members
conducted the raid, how could they avoid being arrested as the
criminals who had attacked a gathering of respectable pure-blood
citizens? 

I imagine that they found out who was serving LV under the Imperius
Curse and captured them to lift the curse from them, but am not sure
how that syncs with Sirius's statement about no one who knew whom they
could trust, anyone could have been on any side.

Carol wondered in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124369 :

<< why Karkaroff, who betrayed his Death Eater friends (Snape
included) and now wants to save his own skin, deserves empathy from
anybody >>

Karkaroff is a slimy toe-rag, but he seems to be the only person whom
Snape first-names. Karkaroff betrayed his Death Eater friends to GET
OUT OF AZKABAN. Snape never had to go into Azkaban because *he*
betrayed his Death Eater friends voluntarily. I like to think that
Karkaroff, unbeknownst to himself, was in Azkaban only because Snape
put him there. And that Snape might feel guilty about that betrayal.

Whizbang wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124381 :

<< And, my favorite question, why did Molly Weasley harbor a common
garden rat for 12 years? >>

It was her child's (inexpensive) pet. (Aquisition was free and feed
was table scraps.) And she had no idea how long natural rats are
supposed to live.

Lupinlore wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124402 :

<< The only things we can ascribe Harry's so-called "good
emotional health" to are: 
1) poor writing on JKR's part,
2) sheer luck shining of Dumbledore's decisions.
Out of deference to the author, I think we prefer option #2 to option
#1. >>

Or 3) The magical protection that Lily put on her baby also protected
his mental health. (I prefer to believe that it did so by putting a
little model of Lily into baby Harry's mind, like the cliched
imaginary friend, to tell him he's a good kid who doesn't deserve all
this Dursley abuse, and to remind him how good people behave.)

If Dumbledore didn't know that Lily's magic protected Harry's mental
health, that is option 2: Dumbledore was lucky that Lily had done that
spell. But if Dumbledore DID know about it, then what? 

Betsey wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/124452 :

<< I also felt a great deal of sympathy for Draco during the
Gryffindor/Slytherin Quidditch final in PoA. (snip) Draco is the one
to spot the Snitch, Draco is the one who first goes for it, and Harry
beats him to it, not out of any flying skill but on sheer speed that
has everything to do with his Firebolt. Draco is defeated because he
doesn't have the top of the line broom. >>

This is a forbidden "I agree!!!" post.

Nora wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforG
rownups/message/124484 :

<< Not paying attention in class when you've been warned the stuff
you're dealing with is dangerous is arrogant. Insulting a hippogriff
is pure idiocy. It's laid out in ways that are very, very hard to
argue around that Draco was not paying attention, and that's what got
him hurt. >> 

It occurred to me a couple of months ago that Draco surely should have
known how to behave around hippogriffs before he even started
Hogwarts; as there is evidence that they are common in wizarding
society. IIRC the into to FB says that Newt Scamander's mother's hobby
was breeding fancy hippogriffs, and in OoP poor Bode's Christmas
present was a calendar with a picture of a different fancy hippogriff
for each month. So why doesn't he know any better?