HouseElves/Pettigrew/Shunpike/Bertha/Slytherin/Rewrites/Economic/Carol, Carol

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 180405

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180356>:

<< I'm going to do a Catlady-style post here, combining wholly
unrelated points that I want to respond to. >>

Once upon a time, the List Elves used to urge everyone to 'combine
posts' for the sake of list volume. Having gotten into the habit, I
can't seem to break it.

Maybe if I limited to my posts to no more topics than would fit in the
subject line, more people would read them.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180128>:

<< . Apparently, both Hermione and JKR are forgetting that when
Kreacher (n "u") originally went to visit Narcissa over the Christmas
holiday, Bellatrix was still in prison. >>

Thank you for reminding me that Bellatrix was not there to interfere
with Narcissa's scheming charm when Kreachy made his first and longest
visit to her, and she would have had plenty of time to charm him
without Bella interfering.

I think Kreachy visited Malfoy Manor several more times, for shorter
visits, after Bellatrix's arrival there. Because there must have been
some means of communication between the DEs and Kreachy, or else he
wouldn't have known WHEN to lure Sirius away and deceive Harry, and it
seems to me that having him visit Narcissa at scheduled times to
receive his latest orders would be the most workable means. Maybe
Narcissa locked Bella in a closet during those visits. 

Or, Kreachy did *adore* Miss Bellatrix; maybe he *liked* for her to
yell things like 'You stupid House Elf! Iron your hands twice!'

Hey, maybe the way Narcissa was just lovely to Kreachy was to shout
with joy: "Finally, a House Elf to replace the one my idiot husband
lost! Oh, Kreachy, there's so much work here that needs you to do.
It's been over 2 years since anyone washed a dish around here."

(Sorry, Steve bboyminn, I agree with you that "Why are you here?" is a
more likely reaction than "Clean the toilet", but I suddenly was
imagining Kreachy's idea of 'just lovely'.)

A_svirn wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180155>:

<< I am saying that from purely human point of view it is impossible
to treat your own slave with respect, because owning him or her is in
itself disrespectful. >>

That depends on the what 'respect' means, or on what Respect is.
Perhaps the list has gotten slow enough that such abstract and OT
discussions will be allowed.

<< How it is translated into elvish way of thinking is a different
matter. Perhaps he would think that kicks and slaps are the expression
of respect and affection, but we know better, don't we? >>

Maybe I agree with you that all the wizards who kick and slap House
Elves are expressing chastisement and probably anger, although perhaps
some say that corporal punishment is necessary when training House
Elves to do a new job, just as parents claim that corporal punishment
of their children is a result rather than a contradiction of their
love for the child.

But going OT, in the real world there are people who are literal
masochists, who literally get off on physical pain, in some cases so
much that they *pay* people to whip them or beat them. If a person
gets off on being kicked and slapped, and hiser partner does it on
request in order to give himer pleasure, then it may be indeed the
expression of affection.

Dillgravy wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180131>:

<< how in the heck Peter Pettigrew was sorted into Griffyndor. I don't
think he showed an ounce of bravery - exemplifying cowardice in every
situation he was in. >>

I could never be brave enough to cut off my own hand with a  knife.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180143>:

<< As for Pettigrew, I think he was the Muggle-born DE that JKR hinted
at in an interview (unless she was referring to Stan Shunpike). >>

I also think Pettigrew was the lone Muggle-born DE. I suppose there's
some room for someone to argue that wizarding secrecy would prevent
the  Ministry from sending an Order of Merlin, First Class along with
Peter's finger to his mother if she were a Muggle. Me, I think parents
and siblings and spouses of wizards are allowed to know the secret.

Do you think that Shunpike was a DE? I had taken it for granted that
he was under Imperius. Do you think that Shunpike was Muggle-born? If
so, he wasn't fond of his Muggle relatives: "Don' listen properly, do
they? Don' look properly either. Never notice nuffink, they don'."

If Pettigrew were Muggle-born, his special circumstance that led LV to
allow him to join the DEs was that he was the Potters' Secret Keeper.
If Shunpike was Muggle-born and if Shunpike was a DE, what was his
special circumstance? 

Kemper wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180149>:

<< I was under the impression that Baby!Mort already existed prior to
Bertha. My thought is that Peter impregnated (physically, not by petri
dish) Nagini. Vapor!Mort used Dark Magic to break Nature's separation
of species to possess one of Nagini's eggs. Ick! Peter ick!!! ::throws
up in mouth... swallows:: yughk >>

I suppose that's disgusting enough, but here is GoF: "But his journey
back to me was not smooth, was it, Wormtail? For, hungry one night, on
the edge of the very forest where he had hoped to find me, he
foolishly stopped at an inn for some food ... and whom should he meet
there, but one Bertha Jorkins, a witch from the Ministry of Magic?

"Now see the way that fate favours Lord Voldemort. This might have
been the end of Wormtail, and of my last hope for regeneration. But
Wormtail - displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected
of him - convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a night-time
stroll. He overpowered her ... he brought her to me."

To me that sounds as if Pettigrew captured Bertha before he arrived at
LV, so there was no LV-Pettigrew activity soon before Bertha.

Alla wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180157>:

<< To me it is clear that she showed that Slytherin is not all bad
through individual stories. So she left it for us to fill in. To me it
makes no difference whether they came or not, truly. I still think
that their ideology is disgusting and dilution of such ideology is a
good thing, but they are not all bad as individuals and here we go -
some of them came.

And of course Phineas' words as some people remarked make little or no
sense if they did not. To me anyways. >>

This is a forbidden "I agree" post.

Steve bboyminn wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180172>:

<< What bothers me, and what I would like JKR to clear up, is that she
opened the concept of the Houses joining together, then never followed
through on it. I needed just the briefest reference to one student who
saw Voldemort in charge as a bad thing. But it has to be a student. We
have Slughorn and Snape as 'good Slytherins', but i needed a student,
just one. Now, I propose that any student against Voldemort was
against him for very Slytherinish reason. I don't expect altruistic
Gryffindorish motivations. >>

I'm not sure that altruism is a Gryffindor trait. Chivalry is supposed
to be a Gryffindor trait, and chivalry is supposed to involve
protecting the weak, but it allows one to screw over one's equals as
much as one wants.

I don't think Rowling ever intended the concept of the four Houses
joining together, only three Houses joining together. I think when the
Sorting Hat urged all four Houses to be in harmony as ' pillars four,
Had once held up our school', that was the story getting out of her
control. Because the Potter oeuvre was not merely published but
written as a serial, neither she nor her editor could pause at the end
and go back to remove unwanted false clues. It's a pity because I
WANTED the four Houses to get together.

Even without the four Houses getting together, I, too, wanted a
student. I wanted Theo Nott to slap Pansy down: "Sit down, Pansy! Shut
up! You're a fool if you expect the Dark Lord to keep his word, or
your pure blood to keep you safe. My father was wounded in his service
and he left him to die! Just recently he killed a dozen loyal,
pureblooded Death Eaters just because he was in a rage at some bad
news. Draco, it happened at your house, tell her about it!"

Then Draco, very unhappy to be put on the spot, says that there is no
safety anywhere except in quick wits, strong wand, and family, and
he's not going to do anything to motivate the Dark Lord to harm his
mother.

Theo can snap back: "I have no one left! I'm staying here to fight
him. Better to die getting revenge for my father than thoughtlessly
crushed like a bug."

Steve bboyminn wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180246>:

<< I'm proposing that we each re-write some small aspect or scene in
the books the way we think it should have gone, or at least could have
gone. >> 

I wanted Luna to be Ollivander's grand-daughter (her late mother was
his daughter) and to be a wand-maker for her adult career. Even tho'
it was terribly cute when imprisoned Luna asked "Mr Ollivander" for
the nail, I would have preferred her to ask "Grandpa" for the sake of
my theory.

I'm almost as irritated as the Rowling-haters that Herself went out of
her way to show Zacharias Smith as a nasty coward.

I wanted a very different book 7. One in which Snape had turned to the
'good' side based on a intellectual decision that evil is bad. In
that case, what would be proof sufficient to convince a reader that DD
had been correct to trust Severus Snape completely?

One in which House Unity was a major theme. I liked the suggestion
that the representatives of all four Houses had to join together to
destroy the Horcruxes, and it would turn out that Draco, Marietta, and
Zacharias were the representatives of their Houses, so the Trio had to
make nice to them to get them to co-operate. 

I wanted the Department of Mysteries and the Chamber of Secrets to be
necessary to the solution (at least the Room of Requirement was!).

Pippin Foxmoth wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180173>:

<< Economic disaster for some is always economic opportunity for
others. >>

I don't think that's true of LV's reign. Some people may have joined
the DEs because they thought it was. But I've long believed that, no
matter how obsessed LV is with not dying, his real desire is to
destroy and destroy. I think DH confirmed it by his comtemplation that
the only time he feels -- healthy -- is when he's murdering someone.
Also by him killing all those loyal, and presumably useful, DEs in his
temper tantrum. So for a while, the end of Fortescue's ice cream shop
may be a benefit to competing ice cream shops, but eventually he'll
destroy all the ice cream shops. And all the cows, if he notices that
there are cows.

To me, LV is more like Pol Pot than like Hitler. I suppose some high
ranking Khmer Rouge profited from the genocide (financially as well as
getting their jollies); instead of destroying all the artifacts made
by civilization, they sold some of them to foreign collectors. But LV,
as a Legilimens with no feeling of comradeship at all, would welcome
the excuse to kill them for that, which is not profitable.

<< As for trading with Muggles, that was handled through the goblins,
who know that Voldemort and his servants keep their treasure at
Gringotts just like everyone else and won't want things too disrupted,
will they? >>

The Goblins put the Muggle money back into circulation, but I'm not
sure that means they do all the trading with Muggles. Anyway, even
Goblins would find it difficult to trade with Muggles if all the
Muggle factories and shops and farms have been destroyed and most
Muggles have been killed or fled to another country, as part of LV
enjoying destruction.

Besides, I think the Goblins would figure out that Voldemort does want
things too disrupted (and he kills too many Goblins) even before the
Muggles are wiped out.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180164>:

<< And JKR herself, acting as if she owns the characters she's sent
into the world for our enjoyment and our interpretation, drives me
insane. Reading is a creative process. It is not or should not be
indoctrination, brainwashing, with the reader seeing exactly what the
author sees, especially since the author's own interpretation is so
inconsistent and fluctuating. I think that she takes certain things
for granted and forgets that she hasn't put them into the text of the
book. >>

As you know, I'm glad Rowling answers questions, even when I don't
like the answers. I think Rowling has as much right as anyone, and
more right than most, to say what she thinks happened off-screen. I
think she may be taking remarks about the author being dead a little
too literally, that she might feel that some folks want her to die now
that her purpose on Earth has been accomplished. I think most of her
remarks that strike you as forbidding readers to interpret were really
intended to protest that she has a right to have opinions about the
characters just like the rest of us.

<< Ron knowing about the Hand of Glory that Draco supposedly owned >>

I promise you on my word of honor -- on the lives of my cats! -- that
it never occurred to me that that was an inconsistency. I promise you
that I immediately assumed, without even thinking about it, that Draco
had bought the Hand of Glory from Borgin & Burkes on some later
occasion than the one Harry saw, and that Ron knew about it because he
had seen Draco showing it off at Hogwarts. 

I had thought that Draco had merely been looking idly at it in the
scene that Harry saw, so I was surprised that he'd actually wanted it
more than I'd thought, and wondered if he had bought it as a tiny act
of rebellion against his father (and the fanfics that could inspire!). 

At the time I assumed that he'd bought it by owl order early in the
CoS school year, but now I realise that, if he had, it would have
added to the Trio's suspicion of Draco, or at least been mentioned
when they Polyjuiced into the Slytherin common room. So maybe he
bought it over the summer after CoS. Anyway, long enough before HBP
that the new anti-Dark detectors weren't in place.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180166>: 

<< And logically, the parents who followed would not be those of the
students who stayed to fight but those of the students, Slytherins
among them, who went to the Hog's Head. >>

With respect, Aberforth or Horace could have notified parents from the
Hog's Head that their offspring had stayed to fight, or some of the
underage students who left could have told their parents that
so-and-so stayed to fight, and their parents could have told
so-and-so's parents, which could have motivated some of those parents
to come fight in defense of their children.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180188>:

<< Another example is the mention of skulls in the Slytherin common
room in DH, when in fact, no such skulls are described in CoS.
Possibly she was thinking of Borgin and Burkes. (And her statement in
an interview that the Slytherin common room has an eerie beauty is not
consistent with skulls, either.) >>

Another example is between PS/SS and OoP, she forgot that Prefect
badges are silver, and thought they were red and gold as in the movie.
However, I'm sure plenty of people would think skulls not at all
inconsistent with beauty. Didn't Gaudi do an apartment building
exterior all in bones?

<< I also hated Harry's casting the Crucio, but neither incident
ruined the book for me. >>

I wished that MacGonagall's sentence that began: "That was certainly
gallant, Potter, but --" had ended "but a Stunning Spell or the
Full-Body Bind would have stopped him longer." But then she would have
had to use the Full-Body Bind and Mobilicorpus instead of Imperius to
pile the DEs like cordwood.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180200>:

<< just like the missing 24 hours she's still puzzled about, the
letter that had no way of appearing at 12 GP >>

I'm mildly surprised she can't understand that the 24 hours are
missing and that PoA!Remus transformed well after moonrise, and I hope
she doesn't make something up to conceal her error.

But it was perfectly possible for the letter to be at 12 Grimmauld
Place. If the home that Sirius bought when he was 16 was left alone
while he was in Azkaban, he had time in GoF and OoP to go there (or
send Remus there) and gather up relics that he wanted to brood other. 

If it wasn't left alone (I think he owned rather than rented, but
perhaps it was sold to pay debts or as part of the punishment),
someone packed up all the stuff from it and sent it either to Sirius's
Gringotts vault, which he still had, or to his parents' house, or to a
dump. I think it was Remus who did the packing (I still think Remus
lived with Sirius, even tho' Herself said in an interview that he
lived with James & Lily -- the young couple would want a bit of
privacy) and he wouldn't have sent it to the dump.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180292>:

<< his interpreting "Neither can live while the other survives" as
"One of us has to kill the other" makes no sense, either, at least to
me. >>

This is another forbidden "I agree" post. I wish someone could explain
that prophecy so that it makes sense to me. I wish it was "Neither can
die while the other survives", which I could understand.