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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180421

Carol earlier:
> <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). >>
Catlady responded:
> 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'."
> 
Carol again:
Actually, I agree with you. I only raised the possibility that JKR
might have had someone other than Peter in mind, and I couldn't think
of anyone who might fit the bill other than Stan Shunpike, who was
never proven to be under the Imperius Curse (We have only Harry's word
for it, and evidently Stan "put some work in [the Snatcher's] way,"
which seems to indicate that they see him as being on Voldemort's
side. (Oddly, it doesn't seem to matter to anyone that Pius Thickness
was Imperiused; he's treated like a bad guy. Pimple-faced, seemingly
gullible Stan seems to be regarded the same way, at least by Lupin
early on in DH. I suspect that Lupin would have killed Stan if he'd
encountered him in the Battle of Hogwarts, but maybe he'd have
remembered what Harry said about killing people who get in his way
being Voldemort's job.) I wonder, BTW, which House Stan was Sorted
into. He must have received a Hogwarts letter as a magical child
recorded by the magical quill, and surely he would not have turned
down the invitation. (He becomes a conductor on the Knight Bus, not on
a Muggle bus or train, indicating that he's at home in the WW, as do
the remarks you quoted.)

Another possibility for the Muggle-born DE is Fenrir Greyback, but
he's not a full-fledged DE (AFAIK, he wasn't part of the chase in the
Seven Potters segment) and IMO, he's probably not a Muggleborn. The
likelihood of a child of Muggles being bitten by a werewolf *and*
becoming a wizard (learning to Apparate despite not being allowed to
attend Hogwarts) is just too slim in my opinion.

Anyway, one question I wish that JKR had answered in DH is what
happened to the Imperius victims, at least three of whom we know by
name, assuming that Stan is one. (The third is Rosmerta, Imperiused in
HBP.) I'm not counting Travers, who seems to have gotten over Harry's
weak Imperius sufficiently to fight on LV's side in the Battle of
Hogwarts. (We're not told what happens to the old goblin, either, but
if Travers got over it, he probably did, too.)

Catlady:
> 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?  <snip again>

Carol:
He certainly seems to like glory, whether it's the reflected glory of
being seen by the Minister of Magic in Harry Potter's company or the
imaginary glory of being in line to be "the youngest ever Minister for
Magic." Later, he boasts to his friends that he has a connection with
Death Eaters, surely for similar reasons, and finds himself in Azkaban
as a consequence. (Evidently, joking about DEs in the 1990s WW is like
joking about a bomb in an airport in our own world. Or bragging that
you have Al-Quida connections might be a closer analogy.) But that
explains only Stan's motivation, not why DD would accept his services
if he were Muggle-born. Maybe he's only allowed to wear a DE robe and
hood but doesn't have a Dark Mark, a la Greyback, yet he's flying with
the DEs and chasing Harry, which suggests that, yes, he's a DE,
despite the dazed look on his face that Harry interprets as indicating
that he's Imperiused. (We didn't see any such indication with Rosmerta
or Pius Thicknesse. In fact, he seems to be people who are Confunded,
such as Confundungus, who have that look.)

I'm quite aware that I haven't presented a convincing argument, only
various points tossed together to make of what we will. I think you're
right that Stan's not a Muggle-born, but is he a DE or just a fellow
prisoner who was freed with the DEs and then Imperiused? I'm beginning
to think that they started brainwashing/recruiting him when he was in
prison, and by the time of the prison breakout, he'd been persuaded
that he was on their side along. Not the brightest young man in the
WW, our Stan.

Catlady: 
> 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. <snip>

Carol responds:
Not to mention that Goblins trading with Muggles would be a rather
serious breach of the Statute of Secrecy and require a lot of Memory
Charms that could be easily avoided by having the Muggles deal with
Squibs or undercover wizards. (If LV were in power, fully and
effectively and not sidetracked by the search for a more powerful
wand, trade with Muggles would probably be eliminated, and any Muggles
who survived would be enslaved. Muggle money would be worthless pieces
of paper, with the coins melted down and any real silver or gold
extracted out of them. Just my unproveable opinion.)
> Catlady:
 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.

Carol:
Of course, she has the right to have opinions about her own
characters. But it still sounds to me as if she sees the views she
expresses in interviews as equal to what's in the books and her own
"intentions" as indisputably present in canon. She reminds me of
Petunia viewing Dudley as perfect and thinking that she perfectly
understands him. Editors and literary critics exist for a reason;
authors are seldom if ever the best judges of their own books, just as
we on this list are seldom the best judges of the persuasiveness of
our own arguments, being already persuaded, in most cases, that we're
right.
> 
Carol:
> << Ron knowing about the Hand of Glory that Draco supposedly owned >>
Catlady: 
> I promise you on my word of honor -- on the lives of my cats! -- 

Carol:
No, no! Not your cats!

Catlady:
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. 

Carol responds:
And I swear to you on my honor (not on the lives of my nonexistent
cats, though--How about the soul of my father, Domingo Montoya--never
mind!) that I *did* notice the inconsistency immediately, and it
bothered me. Neither Ron nor Harry could have seen Draco showing off
the Hand of Glory at Hogwarts. It was a Dark artifact and would have
been confiscated (surely, neither Filch nor Snape would have allowed
it, nor would any other teacher or staff member). Filch was searching
students for Dark Artifacts in HBP, and Draco had no reason to buy it
before that (and if he somehow got it past Filch and was showing it
off in the Slytherin common room, Harry wouldn't know). <snip>

What Harry saw, and did not report to Ron on-page even though he had
the opportunity, was Lucius *refusing* to buy Draco the Hand of Glory
in CoS. The time to mention it (since it wasn't referred to again in
CoS) would have been in HBP when HRH followed Draco to Borgin and
Burkes to find out what he was up to, but JKR missed that opportunity,
too, instead having it seem that Draco had it all along and Ron knew
about it. We still don't know how he got it or how it was smuggled
into the school; maybe Borgin was under orders to hand it over to the
DEs when the cabinet was repaired. (We really don't know how Draco did
much of anything in HBP thanks to his refusal to share information
with Snape and the limitations of Harry's PoV. I want to know more
about Imperiused Rosmerta and how the necklace came into her hands,
but that's never explained, either.)
>
Catlady:
> 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:
Maybe, but how would Harry and Ron have known about it? And even if
Filch, who was confiscating everything from Fanged Frisbees to
Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, didn't find it, Mrs. Norris can spot
trouble a mile away. I doubt that he bought it before he had a use for
it (the Vanishing Cabinet plan). And if he'd bought it earlier and
kept it at home, Arthur Weasley's second raid on the Malfoy Manor (in
HBP) would have discovered it.

Nope. IMO, it's just like Sirius Black's letter in DH, which is
inexplicably in 12 GP and refers to a date much too early for DD to
have the Invisibility Cloak or Wormtail, not yet the Secret Keeper, to
be plotting betrayal.
 
Catlady:
> 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:
Exactly.
> 
Catlady:
> 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. 

Carol:
But you're having to reach for a logical explanation here. None is
given in the books, possibly because JKR forgot that it would not have
been sent to that address in the first place. I've given my reasons
for thinking that Slytherin students could easily have been among the
crowd that Slughorn led, but the narrator's limited point of view
can't explain that letter. I prefer the simplest explanation, the same
was as for the Prefect badge being the wrong color(s) and Ron's
knowing about Draco's Hand of Glory: JKR forgot what she'd previously
written.
> 
Carol, snipping the stuff we agree on and hoping with all her heart
that "hiser" and "himer" <snipped from catlady's post> don't become
part of the English language