Prefect / Malfoys / Fidelius Charm / Boggart / do wizards have fiction

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 130535

Phoenixgod mentioned in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/130149 :

<< It also struck me as odd that if he wanted to give Harry a normal
teenagers life for one more year, why not make him a prefect. his
reasoning always seemed off to me, but a relatively minor off
compared to other more glaring issues I have. >>  

Being made a prefect was much more important for Ron than for Harry.
For Ron, it not only got him his mother's approval instead of
disapproval, it got him a new broomstick, without which he wouldn't
have been able to join the Quidditch team. (I had been hoping for
years that Ron would become prefect and Keeper, but *expecting* that
the prefect would be either Harry because he's the hero or Neville
because DD figured it would improve him.) 

But in that final conversation, it would have been utterly counter-
productive for DD to tell Harry that Ron needed to be prefect more
than he did. And telling Harry that DD 'recognized' that he should
have been prefect but DD had the most affectionate reason for not
appointing him served Dumbledore's purpose of making Harry feel
appreciated. Of course, this implies that Dumbledore was lying in the
very conversation where he had finally promised to tell the whole
truth....

Danny wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/130171 a lot of
things I agree with and also:

<< I'd like to think of their marriage as an arranged one . with being
THE pureblooded family the Malfoys are (and have been) I think the
expectations on Lucius have been equally high as they are on Draco.
And a good looking woman from an old and pureblood family as the
Blacks (and having the same political believes!) ... and being around
the same age as Lucius, I think a father (who likes arranging things)
must be hard pressed, NOT to use this opportunity. >>

You'd probably right about what JKR will tell us really happened, but
I still prefer to believe that Lucius and Narcissa arranged their own
marriage. They must have known each other at Hogwarts if not before,
and they knew each other's worthy bloodlines and wealth, each other's
shared beliefs and ambitions, and and recognized each other as a
worthy and helpful partner. I like to believe that they enjoyed each
other's company as well as being sexually attractive to each other.
The latter two points are not required for a 'suitable' marriage but
make it more enjoyable. They told their parents they wanted to marry
each other before the parents got around to arranging it.

Rose Red wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/130172 :

<< Pettigrew was the only person who could let anybody know where the
Potters were. Hagrid delivered baby Harry to his Aunt and Uncle.
Ummmm....is it just me or there is a huge non-sequitor here? Somehow
the news got out, and only Pettigrew could let people know there was
even news to tell. >>

As we saw in OoP, the Secret Keeper can 'tell' the Secret via written
note. I figure that Peter wrote such a note to Sirius, and wrote such
a note to Dumbledore but disguising his handwriting to look like
Sirius's. He could have written another note to Hagrid or Dumbledore
could have shown his note to Hagrid (which strikes me as kind of a
rude thing to do with someone else's secret). 

wherr009 wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/130249 :

<< Who performed the Fidelis (sp?) charm to hide the potters? Was it
James or Lily or someone else? >>

I think it must have been James or Lily or Sirius or Peter, because
their big idea was that everyone would think Sirius was the Secret
Keeper but really Peter was the Secret Keeper (therefore the bad guys
would try to capture and torture Sirius for the information, but
Sirius wouldn't be able to reveal it because he wasn't the Secret
Keeper; it apparently never occured to Sirius that he *did* know that
Peter was the Secret Keeper and where Peter was hiding, so he *could*
have been made to reveal that to the bad guys, who could then capture
and torture Peter). 

Therefore, it would have been very foolish to allow yet another person
to know (via casting the spell) that Peter was really the Secret
Keeper. (Of course I am jumping to the assumption that the person who
casts the spell must know who the Secret Keeper is, probably must cast
it on him in person.) 

Further, I assume that Peter didn't cast the spell because he was the
magically weakest of the four. If the Fidelius Charm requires to be
cast by a person who is neither the Secret Keeper nor the Secret's
owner, then it would have been Sirius.

Potioncat wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/130260 :

<< I've had to remind myself that this is fiction, and JKR or any
author, could ignore certain possibilities, but I've thought this too.
Neville's fear of Snape is played for humor in this chapter, but what
if it had been a real, more personal fear? What if the biggest fear
was being hurt by a parent? Or being afraid of a parent, or a
classmate? I thought that before OoP, and once we saw Molly's Boggart
I wondered to myself, how could you possibly Riddikulus that away! >>

I wrote a fanfic of "Lupin's Boggart Class with the Third Year
Slytherins" in which Draco's biggest fear was Lucius, Blaise's biggest
fear was Draco, Pansy's biggest fear was dying the way her mother had,
and Millicent's biggest fear was her mother dying the way her father
had. Lupin and the kids turned these fears into jokes adequately
enough to dispell the Boggart. I figure a DADA teacher has to be able
to think on his feet. 

The difference with having the Boggart appear as Voldemort is that the
whole class, at least all the kids from wizarding families, would
totally panic and it would be impossible to  keep order. Here I am
imagining, as apparently was Remus, that people who know about
Voldemort know what he looks like, enough to recognize him.

Tamara wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/130468 :

<< ... Hermione, Harry and Ron do not read for pleasure, unless it is
non-fiction such as the history of Quidditch. The only celebrity whom
has appeared has been a non-fiction author. Does fiction not exist in
the magically world? >>

I'm afraid that may be so. Here's something JKR said in the World Book
Day chat:
http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm
<< mnich: If you had a job in the wizarding world, what do you think
you would be?
JK Rowling replies -> I can't think of anything I'd rather do than
write, so I suppose I'd write spellbooks! >>

I can't imagine a world without stories (violent adventure stories,
sleazy romance stories, funny stories mocking inferior people like
Muggles), so I'd think she could have the exact same job in the
wizarding world that she has in this one.