replies to many, many, many posts

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 170114

Dana wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/169382>:

<< If Snape truly was defected and believed in the wrongs of LV's ways
because of the killings of innocent people then his friends should be
punished for their involvement in these killings but Snape never rats
on his friends. >>

What is the canon that Snape never ratted on his friends? It is canon
that Rosier and Wilkes were both killed by Aurors, and that Rosier was
killed while resisting arreast; I think Wilkes also was resisting
arrest. Maybe the Aurors knew where to lurk to catch them committing a
crime because Sevvie had told his friends' crime plan to Dumbledore.
Making Sevvie parallel to Peter as someone who left the side to which
he had pledged allegiance and gave the other side information that led
to the death of his friends. Of course it is only parallel if saving
the lives of innocent victims is less important than not ratting out
your friends and/or betraying your loyalty.

Kreachur and Dobby have the same kind of parallel -- House Elves who
act to the harm of their owners because there is some other wizard
they like better. Canon even calls our attention to this parallel;
when Harry was worried that Kreachur's absence is dangerous, he told
Sirius that Kreachur could leave the house without permision because
Dobby had been able to leave the house without permission.

Again I ask, why isn't he named Kreachy?

On another tentacle, if Snape was loyal to LV and went to spy on DD
for LV, LV wouldn't mind sacrificing a couple of low ranking Death
Eaters to prove Snape's bona fides to DD. Loyalty to LV creating
murderous betrayal of friends -- LV seems to like that.

Sherry wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/169391>:

<< Ok, anyone else have any favorite Harry moments? >>

"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at
Stonewall," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"

"No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's never had anything as
horrible as your head down it -- it might be sick." 

This shows that Harry has not had the spirit beaten out of him by
Dursley oppression. 

Amanda predicted in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/169417>:

<< (2) Hermione discovers the tarot and thus they realize they are
looking for, among other things, Rowena Ravenclaw's wand. >>

*If* the Founders' souvenirs are based on the Tarot (and I admit that
sword, cup, and locket fit pretty well to sword, cup, and coin), then
I object that Rowling gave the water symbol (cup) to the Founder of
the earth house (Hufflepuff) and the earth symbol (the locket) to the
Founder of the water house (Slytherin). 

Tarot fans have an ongoing disagreement whether Swords or Rods is Air
or Fire, but who could disagreement that Gryffindor is the fire house
and Ravenclaw is the air house? I'd love for brainy Ravenclaw's
souvenir to be a pen or a book or a scroll.

<< (13) Snape will remain Snape and operate on his own terms to the
end. Whatever he does to save Harry or the cause, whenever he does it,
he will do it in his particularly nasty and cruel manner, without one
shred of softening at all. We will be denied any dewy-eyed scene of
forgiveness. >> 

I like to think that Harry will get into a deadly trap because of his
own recklessness and jumping to conclusions, and realise he is doomed
-- when Snape comes to save him, in some way that involves leaving
Snape behind to die. Harry of course objects, and Snape, with sarcasm
that I can't even dream of matching, says that he is only rescuing
Harry because Harry is the only one who can defeat Voldemort, but
being willing to save Harry's life does not mean that he is willing to
spend one more moment than necessary suffering Harry's obnoxious
presence, so -- "Out, Potter!"

<< Snape cannot forgive himself for his past and for what he did to
Dumbledore, and true Slytherin that he is, nobody else's forgiveness
matters. >>

I think that will be to readers' imaginations.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/169634>:

<< Whoa! In what way is being asked a few questions by a school
teacher the same as being attacked by a vicious dog? >>

Being asked a few questions isn't the same, but cracks about "Our new
-- celebrity" and "fame clearly isn't everything" is. A Legilimens
should be able to see that Harry isn't puffed up by his fame, and
couldn't he knock Harry off any potential DE pedestal by exposing his
ignorance without adding snide comments? Well, no, but only because
Snape can't do much of anything without adding snide comments. 

I preferred your previous theory that Snape knows that Harry *should*
hate him for his role in killing James and Lily, and therefore makes
sure that Harry does hate him.

Carol noted in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/169699> that:

<< no matter what Severus's motives for entering the tunnel, he could
not have done so if Sirius hadn't told him how to stop the Whomping
Willow >>

Well ... if he kept watching the Whomping Willow just before the Full
Moon, he'd see Pomfrey stopping the willow, and eventually figure out
what she was doing well enough to do it himself ... 

I can't understand why (except for the sake of the plot) Dumbledore
put that end of the tunnel outdoors where everyone could see it. It
would have been much more private if he'd put it in a private room,
maybe in a dungeon, accessed from a secret passage leading from Madam
Pomfrey's office, so Remus could go to hospital wing and no one would
see Pomfrey leading him elsewhere.

Aussie Hagrid wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/169906>:

<< What if Merope had TWINS !!! Tom and Eileen. (snip) Not saying it
is true ... just What if it is true? How would that change the way
Voldemort seemed to forgive and trust Snape? How would that connect
their abilities of mind reading? >>

Well, it certainly wouldn't make Voldie like Snape any better.
Voldie's level of family feeling is shown by him murdering his
grandparents, who never did anything against him, along with his hated
father.

It might make Voldie hate Snape and decide to kill him. Maybe because
Snape represented a further mixing of Slytherin 'blood' with Muggle
'blood'. Maybe because of hatred toward his unknown twin sister, maybe
due to blaming her for their mother's death in childbirth, maybe due
to jealousy that she was adopted into a family instead of loyally
staying with him.

mjm1089 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170003>:

<< At the end of the book she does take on the boggart for the exam
and says that it was McGonagle saying she had failed everything. But
can boggarts talk? >>

Some listie suggested that Hermione was lying about what she saw the
boggart do, because really she saw it as dead Harry.

<< Any other ideas as to why Lupin didn't let Hermione tackle the
boggart? >>

Some listie suggested that he didn't want Harry to feel isolated by
being the only one who didn't get to tackle the boggart. I'm more
inclined to think that he wanted to give only Neville more points than
anyone else, so since Hermione earned her points by answering the
question, he prevented her from earning still more by combatting the
boggart.

Talisman wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170025>:

<< Yet, she also tells us that Muggle-borns can be Death Eaters * in
rare circumstances* >>

I *assume* that that statement was a reference to Peter Pettigrew.
(Since canon says that James and Sirius were purebloods and Herself
told a questioner that Remus is a half-blood, making Peter Muggle-born
maximises Maraurder racial diversity, as well as creating another
uncomfortable reason for everyone underestimating Peter.)

If so, the *exceedingly* rare circumstance was that Peter happened to
be Secret Keeper for the people whom LV was trying urgently to find
and kill. Peter claimed, and I kind of believe, that LV or powerful
agents of LV approached him, demanding information about the Potters
and the Order, and he gave the information to save his life.

Which would provide a reason for Petunia to have done some service for
LV: he or his agents gave her a little demonstration of their power to
torture and kill with impunity, and licked their chops at the
opportunity of practising on Petunia and her family.

And a reason for LV to have sent agents to Petunia: she's James &
Lily's only sibling and thus might have information about them or a
way to make them vulnerable.

Which would qualify her to be convicted of helping Voldemort, but
hardly qualifies her to be a Death Easter, despite the dramatic effect
of proclaiming 'Petunia is a Death Eater'. I mean, like, selling an
illegal explosive to an IRA operative is a crime, but doesn't make the
seller an IRA member or operative.

Anyway, if the Muggle-born Death Eater isn't Peter, who is it and what
was the special circumstance? If it was Lucius Malfoy, the special
circumstance was that he had all the British WW believing that his
bloodlines were purer than anyone's. If JKR did that, it would be a
kindness to wizarding general public, helping them to grasp that the
aristocratic Lucius Malfoy is a convicted traitor. And it would be a
kindness to Draco, helping him accept the idea that refusing to kill
people is an ideological position, not just wimpiness, by knocking a
great blow to his current ideology of pureblood supremacy by revealing
that he himself is a lowly Halfblood.

Talisman wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170035>:

<< fascinated by those long dragon fingers. >>

I thought you said he was a Hebridean Black!

(Giving him another thing in common with his enemy Sirius, also a Black.)

Dana wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170041>:

<< Werewolves live in seclusion not because they were pushed out of
society but because most of them were pushed into seclusion be Greyback >>

Where's the canon? I know no evidence supporting your theory versus
mine -- that for hundreds of years, almost all wizarding parents of
bitten children have been so horrified and disgusted by their child's
condition, and so afraid of being socially stigmatized because of it,
that they immediately abandoned their infected child in a forest
somewhere, where it survived only by being taken in by the local
werewolf gang and taught how to live in the woods. Muggle parents
don't know about -- don't believe in -- lycanthropy so they're both
less likely to throw out their child and more likely to accidentally
be killed by their child during his/her transformation.

Phyllis Stevens wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170056>:

<< Now the interesting thing to learn for me would be if Magical gifts
are inherited from the mother or father's side. >>

I'm under the impression that they're inherited from either side. Dean
Thomas inherited magic from his unknown father and Severus Snape
inherited magic from his  mother Eileen.

(The second example needs no citation; the first is from Herself's
website: <http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=2>)

<< Can a muggle couple produce a magical child if they have never been
magical? >>

Herself seems to think it happens often. I think she somewhere used
the example of a blond child turning up in a family that's had brown
hair for generations, but that's not a very good example, because the
blond hair is a (group of) recessive gene(s) and usually comes from
(distant) ancestors who were blond, while Herself wants to say they
*never* had any ancestors that were magic. 

On the other hand, there are some well-known genetic diseases floating
around that being homozygous for kills the person before birth or at
least before puberty, so I suppose it's safe to say that they had no
ancestors who had the pure form of the disease, only ancestors who
were carriers. Sometimes the heterozygous form has an effect, like
sickle-cell disease. So I suppose that being heterozygous for the
magic gene could have an effect that might cause magic folk who fall
in love or lust with muggles to fall only for the heterozygous
muggles. And then part of the non-genetic inheritance could be that
the presence of magic gives the eggs and sperm carrying the magic
allele a big helping hand...

At least it explains why Squibs are so rare: even Squibs have the
homozygous gene for magic, but have some kind of 'birth defect' that
broke their magic. IIRC some listie posted a suggestion about the
magic needing to be activated by a virus. 

My old theory was that a person's magic is the magic of a wizard/witch
who happened to die shortly before they were born and flew into the
closest most appropriate baby it could find: geographical closeness,
youth, genetic content, and the nearby presence of other magical
people being the criteria of appropriateness. So if wizarding folk
didn't have a baby boom during the years when Voldemort and DEs were
killing so many people, their campaign to stamp out Muggle-borns
dramatically increased the number of Muggle-borns. And if the
wizarding folk had a baby boom afterwards, while fewer people were
dying, there would be an untoward high number of Squibs. I think one a
year would be considered an untoward high number, and this might
possibly be as many as half the children born. They'd go into a total
panic about it being a left-over curse from LV.

<< catlady1949 >>

My name! Did you steal it? I admit, if you got it in 1949, you had it
first.


THE REST IS TO GODDLEFROOD


Goddlefrood wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170040>:

<< Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme
Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards (snip) Of the other listed
titles Sorceror may be one Lord Voldemort covets, >>

I think Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorceror is a promotion
from Order of Merlin, First Class, Sorceror, which is a promotion from
Order of Merlin, FIrst Class.

<< One dictionary definition says - "Mugwump, Noun, Usage N. American:
A neutral or uncommitted person". >>

Yes, but it's wrong. 

The American Heritage Dictionary
<http://www.bartleby.com/61/81/M0468100.html> says
"1. A person who acts independently or remains neutral, especially in
politics. 2. often Mugwump A Republican who bolted the party in 1884,
refusing to support presidential candidate James G. Blaine."

Despite the joke in 1884 that a Mugwump has his mug on one side of the
fence and his wump on the other, he is far enough from being neutral
that he will quarrel with *his own party*. And far enough from being
independent that they formed their own party, the Indian Lodge of
Great Chief Mugwump. Kind of like the Blue Dog Democrat Caucus.

Anyway, my beloved AmHer left out definition 3, the one closest to the
etymology, which is "ETYMOLOGY:Massachusett mugguomp, mummugguomp, war
leader". 

Definition 3: a big shot. 

<< JKR: "Dumbledore is an old English word meaning bumblebee. >>

<http://www.word-detective.com/051600.html#dumbledore> says:

<< "Dumbledore" is a pretty obscure word, rarely heard even in Britain
and virtually unknown in the U.S. "Dumbledore," it seems, serves as
the name of two entirely different (and quite dissimilar) insects. One
is the bumblebee (which the English call a "humblebee"), the
slow-moving, helpful denizen of flower gardens. The other sort of
"dumbledore" is a nasty critter called the "cockchafer," a large, ugly
and voracious beetle which eats trees. "Chafer" is another name in
England for a beetle, and "cock" in this case is an allusion to the
size and aggressiveness of a rooster. Boy, do I not want to meet this
bug. Fortunately, "dumbledore" is almost always used to mean a bumblebee.

The "bumble" in "bumblebee," the "humble" in "humblebee," and the
"dumble" in "dumbledore" are all echoic in origin, meaning that the
words themselves are supposed to imitate the sound of a loud hum.
("Bumble" meaning "to flub" or "blunder" is an entirely different
word.) The "dore" in "dumbledore" comes from the Old English "dora,"
which meant an insect that flies and makes a loud humming sound. >>

That was too good to snip, but my point is how taken I was with the
word 'cockchafer' when I encountered it during long-ago Potterfan
research. It turns out there are *two* cockchafers, one the aggressive
June Bug described above and the other a hard-working dung beetle.

<< Several moons ago I posted something called "A Bizarre Theory on a
Grand Scale" [26]. The basic premise in that theory was that
Dumbledore had manipulated the situation in the wizarding world to get
rid of Lord Voldemort through the Prophecy. >>

Have you studied MAGIC DISHWASHER?

<< `Professor Dumbledore is Harry's real grandfather/close relative of
some description.

If Dumbledore had been Harry's grandfather, why on earth would he have
been sent to live with the Dursleys?' >>

Because DD's plan to use the Prophecy Boy as a weapon depended either
on him growing up completely ignorant of the wizarding world, or
growing up in unpleasantness, or both.

I would like for him to be Lily's great-great-grandfather, altho' one
'great' is also possible. Lily was born in 1960 according to the
Lexicon or 1957 according to me. I also was born in 1957, my late
mother was born in 1927, IIRC my late grandmother was born in 1897,
and the pattern suggests that my great-grandmother was born in 1867. 
Dumbledore, born 1840, was around 26-27 when Lily's great-grandparent
was born, and around 56-57 when Lily's grandparent was born.

I like to think that Dumbledore was married three times, the first two
times to Muggles who went and died of old age. The third time to a
witch who was a DADA specialist -- DADA professor while he was
Transfiguration professor? The position wasn't cursed before he became
Headmaster, right? 

Maybe Grindelwald was a local Dark Lord of coincidental timing, and he
killed "Mrs Dumbledore" (Professor Merrythought?) when she tried to
rescue one of her students who had been captured by Grindelwald and
therefore Albus took Grindelwald because of revenge rather than
because of public hygiene.

<< At every turn Dumbledore is aware that all bad things in the
wizarding world as it currently exists in canon flow from LV. >>

Umbridge doesn't flow from LV. Rita Skeeter doesn't flow from LV.
Gilderoy Lockhart doesn't flow from LV.

<< as the very first coup leader in this glorious land I live in said,
there is no other way. >>

It doesn't seem to interfere with YOUR freedom of expression on the
Internet.

<< What I do think about Mrs. Figg is that her maiden name was
Perkins >>

Just because of the cabbage smell? That seems very skimpy evidence.
Maybe *she* is Albus's granddaughter or great-granddaughter. How much
track do I think he keeps of his possibly numerous descendents? More
track of the wizarding ones (a reason for Malfoy to blame him for
half-bloods!) than of the Muggle ones?