[HPforGrownups] RE: Snape finding Lily's Letter

[Maria]

No: HPFGUIDX 174076

On 8/1/07, Kathryn Jones <kjones at telus.net> wrote:
>
> va32h wrote:
>
> Personally, I think it's the author's responsibility to make sure her
> own story makes sense - and not our responsibility as readers to go
> thinking up explanation after explanation for questionable
> continuity.
>
> This is just one of good dozen small, easily fixed continuity gaffes.
> Which means either the editors were lazy and sloppy or JKR was lazy
> and sloppy, or they all thought fandom would just be too grateful to
> get the last book to care if it was any good or not.
>
> KJ writes:
>
>     Exactly!  None of us are asking other posters to come up with
> increasingly unlikely
> explanations for these glitches, particularly not with a suggestion of
> "duh".  The fact is,
> that there should not be such glaring, obvious flaws in the plot.  Other
> minor things, like
> names and curses, can be excused but when it is a necessary part of the
> plot to show
>  characterization or timing, or movement of characters.  That is unforgivable.

Maria:

Well, you may find it unforgivable, but personally, I don't find some
of these possible explanations neither impossible not even unlikely.
We have all imagined a number of different very plausible situations
that could have led that letter there, as we are in the example of the
letter. Any of those, or perhaps a different one, could have been what
happened, and I am ok with that. I can use my imagination to fill the
gaps, which is what I expect JKR wants. She can't write everything, or
else the book would have a few hundred pages more.

I agree that some things are really contradictory or impossible, and
while I am not a LOON member, I do enjoy discussing them. But with a
story as complex as this one, I can perfectly well forgive and
understand JKR for them. There was a time when finding a "flint" was
very entertaining, now it seems to make people want to burn JKR and
her editors at the stake.

As to why Sirius never showed the letter to Harry, I find the idea
someone has suggested that the letter was inside a book and not even
Sirius remembered it quite good, although it does put down my theory
that Sirius found solace in reading about James's dispair at being
locked up. However, he could have found it in the book by accident
after Xmas, which would also explain why he never showed it to Harry
before. Not having much to do at GP, he might have been re-reading old
books and eventually came accross that one. Who knows. But all these
explanations, fit well in the story, don't break any laws of physics,
and I find them perfectly acceptable.

Maria