Lavender Brown: werewolf?

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 174534

In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Meliss9900 at ... wrote:
>> Melissa:
>  
> Well actually it says 
>  
> "Two bodies fell from the balcony overhead as they reached the 
ground, and  a 
> gray blur that Harry took for an animal sped four-legged across 
the hall *to  
> sink* its teeth into one of the fallen.
>  
> "No!" shrieked Hermione, and with a deafening blast from her wand, 
Fenrir  
> Greyback was thrown backward from the feebly stirring body of 
Lavender  Brown."
>  
> "To sink its teeth" as written in JKR's original text is a 
passive  verb. The 
> action has not yet taken place.  When you paraphrased  the text 
you changed 
> the passive verb "to sink" into an active verb  "sinks"  and, in 
doing so, the 
> meaning of the text changes.
>  
> So if we read JKR's text the "biting" was stopped before it took 
place by a  
> well aimed blast from Hermione's wand.  
>  
> Melissa  
 
Leah:  

I think it could also be interpreted as the actions of speeding and 
sinking following on from each other and both taking place, as in:

'I ran into the room to find it full of my relatives',

so I didn't find the non-biting entirely clear myself.  However, in 
the example I use, I would prefer the sentence to read something 
like 'only to find it full of my relatives' or 'and found it 
full...', so I prefer your interpretation and agree we are meant to 
thin Greyback did not bite Lavender



St. Hell:
>But Leah, it's in the "little cameo(s)" of any battle that the joy
>and agony lie.

 Leah:  

I agree.  I didn't use the word `cameo' as a criticism, but as an 
explanation as to why we weren't really getting enough information 
for a full discussion.  I like cameos.   



bamf:

>We don't even know if she survived the attack.

Leah:
I think she survived Greyback's attack, thanks to Hermione, but not 
whether she succumbed to her original injury, or what was that 
was.   It would have been interesting to have a `Henry V' 
moment:  "What are the numbers of our English dead?", with the 
fallen on both sides listed, but I can see this may have distracted 
from the flow. 

Leah