Spinner's End Clues

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 153812

zgirnius:

> > But it is still interesting. What do the drinks add
> > to the scene?
> > [ drink drank drunk ]

> > Are we supposed to get something from all this alcohol
> > consumption?

Len:

> > The British drink.  "A few before dinner" with a Brit
> > will put the average american under the table before
> > the nachos get served.  

Lilygale now:

> The veritable orgy of (mostly social) drinking that goes on
> throughout HBP cannot be a coincidence.  We have Dumbledore
> offering the Dursleys mead, blood red elf wine at Spinner's
> End, Harry quaffing a bit of Felix, Hagrid and Slughorn
> drinking their way through Aragog's memorial, Slughorn offering
> mead to Harry and Ron, Trelawney over-imbibing prior to talking
> to Harry about Snape and the prophecy.  All of which culminates
> in that fateful drinking scene in the cave.

houyhnhnm:

Now that you mention it they really do gulp a lot, don't they?  Len's 
explanation makes sense.  I'm just going by British books and films; I 
didn't notice it that much on my one visit to the UK, and most of my 
compatriots could drink me under the table anyway.  But I think there 
is additional significance to all the liquids.  Book 6 is the Slytherin 
book.  Slytherin is associated with the element of water and the watery 
signs with all liquids.  Scorpio rules all bodily liquids.  Neptune, 
the ruler of Pisces, is also the ruler of *all* liquids.  It is 
appropriate that the liquid state of matter would figure so prominently 
in HBP.

As for the Christian symbolism, as a non-Christian I have stayed clear 
out of that.  I am sure that Rowling has included Christian symbols in 
the books and it is natural that that aspect would be the most 
meaningful to Christian Harry Potter fans.  I don't mean to imply that 
anyone who gets that kind of meaning out of the books is somehow 
"wrong", but I would like to point out that the bookshelf on Rowling's 
website holds two books of fairy tales and one book entitled _World 
Mythology_ (no Bibles and no works on Christian theology).  I think the 
overall religious message, if any, of the Harry Potter series will turn 
out to be a universal rather than a sectarian one.