POA Ch-5 - He forgot that he remembered.

[zanooda2]

No: HPFGUIDX 181621

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> wrote:

> Harry wouldn't have chance to see the hoofprints, wasn't it raining 
> the first time he rode the carriages?


zanooda:

As a matter of fact it was, but in the rain it is actually easier to
notice someone invisible, as the water runs down the creature's skin.
And I'm not talking about Harry here (he rarely pays attention to
anything :-)), but about someone more observant, like Hermione. 

BTW, the carriages in the book, unlike those in the movie, are
covered, they are even called stagecoaches there, and Hermione looks
out of a window. I wonder why they changed this in the movie. So that
Harry could look at another carriage and see Cho there :-)?


> potioncat:
 
> It was Hagrid who tamed the Thestrals, so I wonder how long they've 
> been used to haul the carriages? Maybe none of the Weasley kids knew 
> about them.


zanooda:

Well, Charlie would know about Thestrals, at least in theory.
Thestrals are NEWT level material, and Charlie definitely took COMC
NEWT class with Professor what's-his-name :-). I also believe that
Thestrals pulled the carriages at least for a few years. There are a
hundred or more Thestrals in the forest, to pull a hundred carriages. 

Hagrid started with one male and five females, right? If we assume
they had 5 foals(sp?) the first year, that will make 11 horses. Even
if the foals are all females, they have to grow up to reproduce. This
means that the second year we'll have only 5 new foals again, which
makes 16 in all. The third year we'll have 10 foals (again, assuming
that all the first foals were females), and 26 total. 

I'm pretty sure I made some mistake in my calculations :-), but it
seems obvious that it would take a while to get to a 100 horses herd. 


> potioncat: 
 
> But the real reason is, that both JKR and DD are very careful 
> about keeping secrets.  Between them, they conspired to keep 
> Harry far away from all things magical until just the right moment.


zanooda:

Yeah, I know that :-). I am not saying that JKR should have revealed
Thestrals before the right moment. I just think that the kids couldn't
have failed to notice that "someone" invisible was pulling the
carriages. It would have been a mystery anyway, because they wouldn't
have known who this "someone" was.