What Little Niggling Details will be left?

[Dondee Gorski]

No: HPFGUIDX 170938

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:
<snip>
> And the other obvious question, how did James learn the Levicorpus 
> spell? For that matter, how did Severus invent nonverbal spells 
> before his 5th year when the Trio don't even start getting taught 
> nonverbals until their 6th year? 

Dondee:

Severus was chummy with older Slytherines who would know all about 
nonverbals and he most likely had access to his mum's other advanced 
school books. 

As for James learning Levicorpus...

Lupin said it had a "great vogue" in his day - I take this to mean 
that the Marauders were not the first to use this spell openly. I 
can see Severus inventing this spell to impress his older chums and 
then the spell was used by them against the other houses. Eventually 
how the spell worked would get around - the same way that jelly legs 
and other jinxes would circulate. We don't ever see the Trio 
learning the common jinxes of today but we see them using them when 
they face Draco & Co.

> It really seems that Hogwarts has regressed in it's student 
> advancement, compared to Snape and the Marauder's generation. 
<snip>

Dondee:

Perhaps the MOM *has* had some influence on Hogwarts cirriculum in 
the past decade or two? ::imitating an evil Umbridge giggle::

Personally, I think that Severus and the Marauders curricular and 
noncurricular achievements are not indicitave of their fellow 
classmates abilities. 

Bookish, half-blood Severus had something to prove to himself and 
his older Slytherin chums. James and Sirius were super popular, 
extremely intelligent, and way to sure of themselves - they wanted 
danger and excitement and for them that meant learning advanced 
spells. Remus was an intelligent boy with low self-esteem and a 
terrible secret who just wanted to fit in and belong. Peter, well, 
he is a bit of a foil for the others and a definite coat-tail-hanger-
on-er.

All the other student at Hogwarts quite possibly could have had more 
dramatic lives than our boys but they (excluding Lily of course) are 
not key characters in an epic 7-part story now are they? ;)

Cheers, Dondee