Carol/La Gatta Lucianese/Jen/La Gatta again/SSSusan/Luckdragon/Carol again

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 146525

Tim (my DH) has a theory that I promised to pass on to the list: he
thinks that Snape and Dumbledore switched places so that it was really
Snape who was killed and Dumbledore who cast AK. 

Carol wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/146155 :

<< As we see at the Yule Ball, he takes ten points each from Ravenclaw
and Hufflepuff for rule breaking (Miss Fawcett and a boy whose name I
can't remember making out in the rosebushes) >>

I don't recall it being made clear to me that there was a rule against
making out in the rosebushes (or elsewhere). I got the impression that
Snape was blasting rosebushes and took points from those of the
fleeing students whom he could identify in the dark simply out of
Snapish spite. 

La Gatta Lucianese wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/146163 :

<< Are veela akin to vilias, viljas, and wilis? >>

Yes.

Jen wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/146171 :

<< You'd think being a metamorphmagus would make learning the animagus
transformations much easier! But Hermione didn't recognize Tonks as
one of the seven registered for the century and I think her name would
ring a bell for Hermione if she'd read it before. >>

Hermione read the Animagus Registry early in PoA, altho' she didn't
tell about it until the end. So Tonks was two years out of Hogwarts
when Hermione read the Registry. And she had three years from then to
beginning of HBP to learn Animagery and get registered. To me, she
didn't learn it during HBP, not when she can't even do her
Metamorphmagus thing, but she has the rest of her life after HBP to
learn it.

La Gatta Lucianese wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/146180 :

<< On a subject that comes up in the HPL: How long does Lupin remain a
werewolf each month? I should think it would only be for, at most, a
245-hour period, when the moon is actually full. Could it possibly be
only during the night of the full moon, or even from moonrise to
moonset/daybreak, whichever comes first? >>

By some definitions, the moon is full for three nights. By another, it
is full for only an instant. I tend to think of werewolves
transforming at nightfall (sunset? full darkness?) and transforming
back at sunrise, so he could transform for three nights and be
humaniform during the days. That doesn't go along with what JKR said
about werewolves transforming at moonrise, but neither sunset nor
moonrise goes along with PoA and transforming when the moon came out
from behind the clouds. Suppose they transform for 12, 24, 36, 72,
whatever, call it x, hours 'at' Full Moon, does it start at the
instant that the moon is full(est) or does it start x/2 hours before
that instant so that the instant is in the middle?

SSSusan wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/146245 :

<< it was mostly his CRASSNESS and CRUELTY in saying "Well - second -
Diggory was the f[irst]." Oooooh!! In my opinion, in that moment, that
action of Draco's meant that he deserved to be come down upon. >>

As everyone is agreed that that was Draco gloating over Cedric's
death, I suppose that is what JKR intended. However, it's not what I
read -- I read it as Draco correcting his statement for accuracy,
which was stupid thing to do under the circumstances. I mean,
*besides* it being stupid to shout rejoicing about the Dark Lord
having returned when LV's return is supposed (by LV) to be kept secret
from the Ministry and the wizarding public, and the Malfoys'
allegiance to him is supposed (by Lucius) to be kept secret from the
same gudgeons, it's stupid to shout out dramatic and frightening
threats and then step on your own lines with clumsy corrections of fact. 

It's sort of like the famous Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch
-- let me quote from Wikipedia: "This Inquisition has a hard time
starting to inquisit, as they get bogged down in recitations of their
chief weapons, among which are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an
almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition_%28Monty_Python%29

Luckdragon wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/146279 :

<< Why do the pureblood community, who have wizarding geneology at
their fingertips, not know that LV himself is not a pureblood >>

They don't know that Voldemort is Tom Riddle, so they can't look up
his pedigree. Maybe they assume that he's a pureblood from a distant
country or a long-ago century.

<< So how is it that all of his followers and affiliates do not
realize that LV is out for himself alone and really has none of their
interests at heart. How is it that they blindly follow someone who
goes against his own philosophy by accepting these other creatures
into his fold. >> 

Bellatrix and Barty are too fanatically devoted to him to be swayed by
mere facts. The other Death Eaters are out for their own goals, which
they think Voldemort will help them achieve. I think that some simply
want the opportunity to kill, torture, and rape (as their idea of fun)
without getting caught and punished, and Voldemort *did* help them
achieve that. Some want money, and LV's organization supplied various
ways of getting it, from robbing the houses of people they killed, to
putting their business customers under Imperius and ordering them to
triple their orders. Some may have hoped that LV would share his
immortality spells with loyal followers. Lucius in particular, under
the delusion that he had Voldemort wrapped around his little finger,
expected to be the real dictator of wizarding Britain when Voldemort
seized power and did whatever Lucius flatteringly suggested to him to do.

Carol wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/146468 :

<< I think that spy!Peter (snip) was operating very much in the
background, not as a DE himself and not known to the DEs because he
was giving his information directly to Voldemort (who trusts no one
and operates in secrecy). >>

That would make sense, to keep one's spy's identity a secret. It
permits the possibility that Snape didn't know who the spy/traitor
was, believed the general opinion that it was Sirius, and thus was not
planning to feed a man he knew to be innocent to the Dementors (not
even via Fudge). However, it seems quite impossible that any DE, even
Snape, could have believed the wilder claims that Sirius was LV's
second in command -- how can a second in command be kept secret from
the people he is commanding?

BUT, per Sirius, and I think JKR meant us to take it as fact, the
Death Eaters in Azkaban were crying out against Pettigrew as the
traitor who led LV to his defeat, apparently an ambush. How could the
DEs in Azkaban have known that Pettigrew was the faithless Secret
Keeper and Snape, also a DE, didn't know it?