Many responses (Molly's age, Hagrid, JKR stuff, unforgivables, etc) - also, Moody's Eye

[Random832]

No: HPFGUIDX 173902

(I hit some odd keys and the window closed, if I sent a previous message 
in this thread please disregard/delete)

> bboyminn:
> 
> On the first point you are wrong. Molly mentions, the
> previous Game Keeper, the previous Caretaker, and mentions
> the Whomping Willow was planted after she was in school. 
> 
> Filch, the Caretaker, has been on the job 25 years. The 
> Whomping Willow was planted when Lupin came to school, 
> that means Molly was there before Lupin, Snape, the
> Marauders, and most likely Malfoy. The Marauders were 
> there more than 20 years ago.

Random832:
Right, but we don't know that she's any more than a decade, or even a
year, older than Lupin etc.

(I've always seen Arthur and Molly as being about half a decade older
than Snape, Harry's parents, etc, and Lucius being in the same year as
them. I'll also add that IMO the difference between Lucius and Arthur's
interactions in book 2, and Harry and Draco's in the epilogue, at, as I
see it, _about_ the same age (give or take a couple years) seems symbolic.)

> bboyminn:
> As to Hagrid and Ogg, what difference does it make if
> Hagrid was Gamekeeper or Assistant Gamekeeper, it still
> happened 50 years ago. Hagird is not exactly a pixie;
> he is a little hard to miss whether he is stumping 
> around the grounds as Gamekeeper or Assistant Gamekeeper.

Random832:
A good portion of the grounds is the Forbidden Forest - which is, well,
Forbidden (and, anyone not "in the know", particularly a little kid who
might be utterly terrified by someone 10 feet tall and likely well over
half a ton, might assume he lives there)

> bboyminn:
> And how long do you imagine Hagrid would be Assistant? 
> ...5 years? ...10 years?

Random832:
Until Ogg retires, and Hagrid's competence has nothing to do with this.

> bboyminn:
> He seems to have a natural
> affinity for animals, I imagine he took to the job
> very quickly.

Random832:
Right, took to the job of assistant gamekeeper, and thus would naturally
be the first candidate for the gamekeeper job once the existing one dies
or retires.

> Allie:
> > How would the elder wand know that Harry, unseen, defeated its "true"
> > master, Draco, when the wand was possessed by a third party at the
> > time?

Random832:
magic, of course.


JKR Chat:
"How exactly do muggleborns receive magical ability?
JKR: Muggle-borns will have a witch or wizard somewhere on their family
tree, in some cases many, many generations back. The gene re-surfaces
in some unexpected places."

Random832:
Whoa. Kind of turns the whole "blood doesn't matter" message inside-out. 
Also means the department of mystery findings about muggleborns is going 
to be harder to overturn (since while the conclusions about "theft" are 
wrong, the basic findings are true rather than being something wholly 
fabricated by Voldemort and Umbridge)

Also, how far back, exactly? All of humanity is descended from the same 
person some 8,000 years ago (at the most conservative estimate - it's 
considered more likely to be something like 3,000 years ago).

J.K. Rowling:
My very earliest plan for the story involved somebody
managing to get to Hogwarts when they had never done magic before,
but I had changed my mind by the time I'd written the third book.

Random832:
Whoa - didn't the 'late in life' quote come from some time after the 
fifth book came out? Or was that just people in here digging it up and 
hyping it on the assumption that that was the 'something more' to 
Petunia? (muscatel writes: "when she volunteered that information back 
in 1999, she'd already finished PoA and had embarked on GoF") Maybe 
she'd still hoped to work it in somehow.

-- On unforgivables:
A lot of people have said a lot of things about this and I don't have 
anything to quote - I do think that at least under the laws that were in 
effect before the ministry was taken over, they were truly 
_unforgivable_ - the law did not admit any exceptions, defenses, or 
anything beyond the fact of having done it. That's why they're 
"unforgivable".

---- Now, an old response that I wrote before DH came out but slipped
through the cracks without being sent ---

Pippin:
> > But elves do not deserve to be inferior because they can adapt
> > to their inferior status,

Random832:
It's a human assumption that working without payment makes them
inferior.

---MOODY'S EYE---
Two things - the fact that it can see through Harry's "perfect" 
invisibility cloak, and the fact that it was so significant Umbridge 
went back and stole it after Moody fell to his death, to hang on her 
door. It would seem this is no run-of-the-mill magical eye.