Ginny/Regulus/Unnmarried/Portrait/"Left"/PrinceSpell/Metamorphmag/Potion/Brut

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 164251

Michelle from Reno wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164071>:

<< 1) Of all the girls at Hogwarts, why did JKR choose Ginny to have a
relationship/love interest with Harry at this crucial point? I assume
Ginny will be used by LV to hurt, distract, or summon Harry. The
Weasley's, and now esp. Ginny, are Harry's beloved "family". I don't
think this relationship is haphazard. >>

Apparently Rowling "always" intended Ginny and Harry to be each
other's true loves until death. Pippin occasionally posted that it is
a rule of fiction writing that having Ginny be the first girl Harry
noticed in the wizarding world (on Platform 9 3/4, with Mrs Weasley
firmly holding her hand) must foreshadow their ship. I hate it when
arguments based on the 'rules' of fiction writing turn out to be true
-- I want to see arbitrary rules broken. 

Jeremiah wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164083>:

<< I do love speculating on what Regulus' middle name would be. >>

The wizarding folk seem to like giving their children middle names
after relatives, such as Ron Weasley's middle name is Bilius and he
had an Uncle Bilius who died after seeing a Grim. Sirius and Regulus
had an Uncle Alphard, so I thought Regulus's middle name would be
Alphard. 

JKR in World Book Day chat: << Middle names: Ginny is Molly, of
course, Hermione 'Jane' and Ron, poor boy, is Bilius. >>
<http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm>

va32h wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164243>:

<< Could Regulus' story involve Snape? They simply had to have known
each other. In the same house, a few years apart in age, both Death
Eaters, Regulus the brother of one of Snape's biggest enemies...did
Regulus' disappearance coincide with Snape's conversion to
Dumbledore's side? I wanted to believe that Regulus, being RAB, was
the one Dumbledore had once made appear dead, >>

In <http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2004/0304-wbd.htm>:
"* Cathedral: Will we be hearing anything from Sirius Black's brother,
Regulus, in future books?
JK Rowling replies -> Well, he's dead, so he's pretty quiet these days."

I believe that's Rowling saying he's really dead.

Raechel wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164124>:

<< Dumbledore mentions that Sirius and Regulus were both unmarried and
childless. It made me wonder why. Especially considering that Sirius'
best friend, James, was married with a child. >>

Well, I've always been a Sirius/Remus shipper, so Sirius and Remus
would be people who married their high-school sweethearts merely
disguised as single people. HBP cast some doubt on S/R because of
Sirius's will leaving everything to Harry, leaving nothing to Remus,
not even a request for Harry to look after him. All I can do is make
up an explanation that Umbridge's enhancements to the anti-werewolf
laws included making it illegal to bequeathe anything to werewolves.

It's commonly reckoned that Sirius was 21 or 22 when he was put in
Azkaban. If he hadn't found a life partner at Hogwarts, it's perfectly
reasonable that he hadn't found one in his early 20s.  

It seems to me that Regulus was two years younger than Sirius and died
before Sirius went to Azkaban. Thus, I'm inclined to think that
Regulus was only 19, maybe only 18, years old when he died. Even if he
was engaged to be married to his high-school sweetheart, they might
have been waiting for her to finish her last year at Hogwarts. Or her
parents insisted she spend a year after Hogwarts learning some kind of
job skills before marriage. Or -- I don't suppose a Junior Death Eater
would walk out with a Mudblood girl, but a witch who could list three
or four but not nine generations of all wizarding ancestors would be
acceptable to the Death Eater ideology without being acceptable to the
Black parents. 

Some listies have suggested that Severus and Regulus were lovers, who
joined the Death Eaters together, and Severus turned against LV when
LV ordered that Regulus be executed -- it would have been in character
for LV to order Severus to kill Regulus, even if there was nothing
sexual in their friendship. How did he 'slither' out of that assignment?

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164090>:

<< wondering how the portrait could appear in McGonagall's office so
quickly if DD hadn't planned for that to happen >>

The portrait's so quick appearance in the Head's office suggests the
possibility that the great institutions (and old family homes) of the
wizarding world magically extrude, at the moment of death of wizards
who were greatly associated with them, a magical portrait of those
wizards. That would eliminate all our questions about how wizards
learn to paint, how a memory is implanted into a portrait, and whether
a person can converse with a portrait of him(her)self while still
alive. All those miscellaneous portraits at Hogwarts, such as Sir
Cadogan and the group of drunken monks, would have been portraits
whose institutions didn't want them around. I can see how a monastery
wouldn't want the drunken monks' permanent party, but could it be that
they had all died at once? And then it would have to be a wizarding
monastery...

Sarah wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164092>:

<< DD has not "left" Harry, not really >> "You think the dead we loved
ever truly leave us?" [pause for artistic reasons] "You think that we
don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?
Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly
when you have need of him. How else could you produce that particular
Patronus? Prongs rode again last night."

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164197>:

<< If James was stealing spells from the Prince's book, how could
Lupin know so little about it? >>

What is the evidence that James was stealing spells from the Prince's
book? I think we only know of one spell from the Prince that James
used, Levicorpus, and I believe that could have spread mouth to ear if
Severus told it to even one Slytherin or if even one Slytherin peeked
in his book, so James may have had no idea who introduced that spell
to Hogwarts. Remus may have been telling the truth about there having
been quite a fad for that spell at Hogwarts that year, with zillions
of students having learned it from their friends. A few months 'when
you couldn't move for being hoisted into the air by your ankle fits my
image of Hogwarts School. And Sirius was there -- wouldn't he have
looked surprised if Remus told a big whopper about school days?

Jenni wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164199>:

<< Tonks is a Metamorphmagus. During the times that Lupin transforms
into a werewolf, she could change into a dog or a wolf and remain safe
with him. >>

Carol replied in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164211>:

<< As I understand it, a Metamorphmagus can change her (or his)
appearance, for example, her hair color or the shape of her nose, and
she has twice transformed herself into an older woman, but there's no
evidence that she can turn herself into an animal. (snip) So while the
Marauders' ability to transform into animals protected them from
werewolf!Remus, I don't think that Tonks's transformations would
protect her at all. She'd still be human. >>

I agree with Carol.

When Tonks makes her face look like that of an old woman, that might
have been just be aging her own face, not imitating someone else's:
she might be able to change only part of her face at a time. I've seen
no evidence that she can change enough to look like a human male, let
along a dog, and looking like a dog wouldn't mean BEING a dog. Human
internal organs, human brain, human DNA... I don't know whether it's
human odor or human essence that drives werewolves mad, but I think
she'd still have both.

<< Carol, thinking that Lupin's best hope, short of more reasonable
werewolf legislation, is to forgive and befriend the man who brewed
the wolfbane potion for him in PoA >>

Or another superb potioneer. Hector Dagworth-Granger founded a whole
society of them. And the actual inventor, Damocles Belby, is still
alive and, having been Slughorn's student, relatively young. I wonder
what JKR intended by naming him Damocles Belby -- 'sword of Damocles'
seems an ill-omened recollection, and I don't know if 'Belby' is
supposed to remind me of a bell beaker or bats in the belfry....

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/164239>:

<< You want a brutal, sadistic hero who enjoys killing? Why go to all
the trouble to turn Harry into something he isn't, when we already
have such a character? Eggplant, meet DDM!Snape. >>

*DOES* DDM!Snape enjoy killing?