teachers / Snape / Diary / WOMBAT / Wolfsbane Potion / Sorting

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 170391

Mike Crudele concluded
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170362>:

<< Maybe a slightly more entertaining way to put forth my opinion on
the mechanics of Horcrux creation and what happened at GH. >>

Quite entertaining!

Bart wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170135>:

<< That's standard operating procedure for American teachers, at
least. The theory, at least, is that if you have one person in the
class who knows all the answers, the rest of the class gets lazy. The
basic message is, "Does anybody know the answer? Yes, Hermione, I know
you know the answer, but you ALWAYS know the answer, and that will be
considered in your grade, but I want to give the other
students a chance." >>

I've always believed that the message IS "I hate you for being smart.
You must be forced to be stupid in the name of all students being
equal. I will give you a very low grade because I grade on Improvement
and you improved very little because you knew so much to start with."
I have been reinforced in this opinion by some posts on list, from
alleged teachers praising the way Snape deals with Hermione.

Of course, I am VERY not wise, or I would have followed the example of
wise students, who deliberately put wrong answers on the pre-test and
pretended not to know the answers when called on, so their large
fraction of right answers on the final demonstrated A+ Improvement.

JW wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170236>:

<< [Snape] despises EVERYONE, regardless of race, creed, bloodline, or
species of origin. He is an equal-opportunity miscreant. >>

Canon has yet to show any sign of Severus despising Lucius, Draco, or
Narcissa, and only highly controversial signs of Severus despising
Dumbledore -- when is he showing his true thoughts and when is he
putting on an act because he's a spy? Actually, I don't recall canon
showing any sign of Severus despising Fudge or Scrimgeour, even tho'
they *deserve* to be despised.

Goddlefrood wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170257>:

<< From what little can be gathered of the split soul pieces (thinking
particularly of the diary revenant) they appear to have some
independent power. >>

The Diary is not a typical Horcrux, because first a 'memory' was
housed in it and later a fragment of 'soul' was added. It appears that
most Horcruxes don't contain a 'memory'. 

We know that Pensieve magic can turn a memory into a 3-D all-senses
virtual environment that Harry can walk around in, and it can cause a
3-D miniature image of a person to rise from the magic fluid and
speak. At least one of the Diary pages functioned like a Pensieve that
Harry fell into. 

And the lifesize lifelike Tom outside the Diary might have started as
an audioanimatronic hologram rising up from the page. Before the soul
fragment was added, the memory hologram would acted on its programming
instead of having free will; it would have remained attached to the
page instead of roaming freely. But if the memory hologram hadn't been
there for the soul fragment to occupy, I say the soul fragment would
have stayed inert. 

The Diary also wrote replies to Harry, as we saw the Marauder's Map
write replies to Snape; maybe the Map, at least the insult portion,
was powered by the Marauders putting memories in it. 

Alla wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170258>:

<< First of all I must say I was blinking when I saw the question that
even suggests that some decision of Ministry can have good effect on
everyday WW life, >>

I blinked when I saw the choices for 'best' and the choices for
'worst' were the same list. I also chose '(d) the 1865 decision to
leave full control of Gringotts in the Goblin hands' as the best, but
my reasoning is that if the Ministry had taken control of everyone's
money, they would either have stolen it all or really screwed up the
economy with inflations and depressions.

I'm not sure whether 'a) the creation of the international statute of
Wizarding secrecy in 1692' or 'e) the Wand band of 1631, which forbade
non-human magical beings to carry wands' is worst. 

The Statute of Secrecy has allowed them to keep their culture, which
is good, but long ago I read a very persuasive essay that the need for
constant and rapid enforcement of the Statute of Secrecy resulted in
an official State of Emergency ever since, which is why imprisonment
without trial and other violations of human rights are allowed, which
is bad. 

Depriving non-humans of their wands is pure racism. (Some will say
that species aren't races. On the other tentacle, the existence of
cross-bred people like Fleur a quarter-Veela and Flitwick with a bit
of Goblin in his genealogy, suggests that they ARE NOT different
species.) 

It is a big step toward making any wizarding human more powerful than
any non-human (there are exceptions, such as House Elf magic doesn't
need wands and is human-controlled by enslaving the House Elves, and
Veela powers don't need a wand either). When the people of other races
factually have less power, it's easier to think of them as inferior
and easier to ignore their rights and easier to ignore their needs and
desires and easier to ignore their ideas. 

This causes the wizarding folk to have an excessively high opinion of
themselves. So they remain ignorant about a lot of things because they
think they know everything, and they take a lot of risks because
either they don't know about the risk due to their ignorance or they
think they're too powerful to be endangered by the risk, and they
never accept advice, let alone ask for advice. This arrogant careless
stupidity causes bad things to happen to them (Muggle analogy: people
build a house on a cliff edge in an area with frequent landslides,
then are surprised when their house falls down the cliff. What bad
luck! Time for federal disaster assistance so they can rebuild!) and
is the worst thing about their culture.

It is good that some wizarding folks wanted to end House Elf slavery
as recently as 1973. If they had succeeded, I don't know what would
have happened -- would there have been mass suicides, or at least
substance abuse, among heart-broken freed House Elves like Winky? Or
freed House Elves seeking revenge for generations of abuse by forming
a secret group sort of like a cross between Death Eaters (except aimed
at wizards, not at muggles) and the Mafia? Or would they have hurried
to start small businesses (many of them in food prepartion, laundry,
etc), where their talent and hard work would eventually make them
rich? There could be some kind of scenario where free House Elves,
free to use their powerful magic, defeated the Death Eaters either for
their own self-defense or out of kind concern for humans. If that
last, then failing to end House Elf Slavery was the worst decision.

But if ending House Elf slavery resulted in a lot of freed House Elves
doing a lot of different things, such that only a few of them fought
Death Eaters, then the important thing would be the effect on the
wizarding folk and their culture. People who go to a House Elf
greengrocer because she has the freshest veggies, and have to haggle
with her just like a human greengrocer, would gradually start thinking
of House Elves as people, rather than as some kind of animal/property.
That would be a start in lowering their unrealistic arrogance,
mentioned two paragraphs ago. But I don't believe that 34 years is
long enough for such a gradual process to have deeply changed the
culture yet.

Alla quoted in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170334>:

<< e) A secret task force of wizards and muggles helped allies to
victory in the second world war. >>

Does that have something to do with Dumbledore's defeat of Grindelwald
in 1945?

<< i) upon his death in battle in 1762, goblin rebel Vargot was
discovered to be a renegade house elf >>

Is this a clue that the main difference between Goblins and House
Elves is their different cultures?

Betsy Hp wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170278>:

<< The massive risk that the [Wolfsbane Potion] *isn't* taken. That
the guy has an argument with his girlfriend or finds out his mom is
dying and he forgets. >>

'Directly observed therapy' seems to work for making sure people take
their six months or one year or two years daily drugs against
tuberculosis. Why not for Wolfsbane Potion? 

But Snape as the observer didn't work because he's too stubbornly
independent. When the observer observed that the patient didn't take
his meds, the observer should notify the authorities (Dumbledore) to
get a lot of qualified people looking for Lupin to bring him in, make
him take his meds if it's not too late, or cage him until the Full
Moon has past if it is too late. 

If it were Snape AND McGonagall AND Flitwick who followed Lupin into
the Shrieking Shack, they wouldn't have waited under an Invisibility
Cloak seeking evidence; they wouldn't have threatened to set the
Dementors on both Black and Lupin without taking them back to the
Castle; without that threat, the kids wouldn't have tried to disarm
them, but three kids using the disarming spell on three adults ought
not to knock anyone unconscious.

Rebecca wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/170383>:

<< On page 399 (US hardback) Hermione is asked why she isn't in
Ravenclaw (after doing the protean charm on the coins). >> 

If assignment to Houses went by personality, I'd ask why Hermione
wasn't in SLYTHERIN. She stops at very little when she wants to
achieve her ends. Most recently, Confunding McLaggen during the
try-outs. Before that, hiding the little hats and socks under
untidiness to *trick* the House Elves into picking them up. Her
Polyjuice scheme in CoS broke a whole forest of rules. 

<< At the beginning we know that Harry is considered for Slytherin. >> 

I don't think that the Hat ever actually considered Harry for
Slytherin. I think it was just teasing him. He thought "Not
Slytherin!" so the Hat said: "Are you sure?"

<< Neville certainly seems more of a Hufflepuff. >>

Is theory that Neville, being a duffer, belongs in a House often
considered to be a bunch of duffers? It's not a fair characterization
of Hufflepuff House -- Cedric Diggory was a Hufflepuff and there was
nothing clumsy or inept or stupid about him. One of his Hufflepuff
traits was being so devoted to Fair Play that he wanted a rematch when
he caught the Snitch because the way he caught it was unfair (and not
his fault).