Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180192


Magpie wrote:
> <snip> In this sentence we're talking about a narrator the author's
using to describe the scene with the author having even less reason to
lie than Dumbledore andless room for speculation. JKR might have
faults as a writer, but she's got the basic competence. If she got
information across in this convoluted a way in any other part of the
book the story would be incoherent. When Ron enters a room she says
Ron entered the room, she doesn't say: the door opened and there stood
Angelina's boyfriend--meaning Ron.
> 


Carol responds:

She doesn't say "Ron *seemed* to enter the room" or "Ron entered *what
looked like* a room." When she wants the narrator's words to be
straightforward and not subject to any interpretation other than the
obviously intended meaning, as in "Ron entered a room," they are.
However, she has often given us an unreliable narrator when Harry is
*interpreting* the scene ("He was going to die from the pain" or
"Snape was going to Crucio him into insanity"), and here she's
providing clues ("seemed," "what looked like") to a hurried
*interpretation* of a scene that Harry barely glimpses. How much
clearer can she get that "what looked like" or "seemed" is not
necessarily what *is*?

Not to mention that Harry *does not know* the people of Hogsmeade,
with a few exceptions (was Rosmerta there?), nor does he know the
parents of the students. We know that the students are all in their
pajamas, a few with traveling cloaks thrown over them. others in
dressing gowns. A quick glance won't distinguish the of-age students
of any House from their parents.

And will someone please tell me how the students who remained at
Hogwarts to fight contacted their parents? The only parents who could
have been contacted are those of the students who went with Slughorn
to the Hog's Head. Not to mention that Slughorn is not likely to
contact the parents of any students not in his own House.

Carol, who feels free to believe that Rosmerta (and Theo and Blaise)
followed Slughorn because JKR didn't specify otherwise