From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  1 00:18:11 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:18:11 -0000
Subject: Did you LIKE Snape?
In-Reply-To: <g4beau+vsc6@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4bt43+draa@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183531

> > Mike:
> > All part of my reason to despise the Snape at the end of PoA, from 
> the Shack onward to the end. When he bound and gagged Lupin, refusing
> to listen to the other side, that was it for me. Harry showed more
> maturity in that situation than Snape did.
> 
> Carol responds:
> 
> Now, granted, he was too incensed and too convinced that Sirius Black
> had betrayed Lily (and intended to kill Harry) to listen to reason,
> but that's not the reason he bound and gagged Lupin. He did that as a
> safety precaustion because it was a full-moon night and Lupin, who had
> forgotten or neglected to take his potion, was about to transform into
> a werewolf.

Montavilla47:
I just had to clip this because it suddenly struck me as hilarious the way
that Snape is screaming "Werewolf!  Werewolf!" in the Shrieking Shack and
everyone (including me) is thinking, "Oh, how speciest of him!  Lupin 
can't help his furry little problem!"

Right.  Lupin can't help it, but that doesn't change the fact that he's about 
to transform into one.

Poor Snape.  He's stuck in a room with a ticking time bomb, and Hermione's
sitting there, going, "Professor... shouldn't we take the time to listen to this
terribly long story about your teenage years?"






From willsonkmom at msn.com  Tue Jul  1 00:24:18 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:24:18 -0000
Subject: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4btb5+vd3b@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4btfi+svja@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183533

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> 
wrote:
>
> My son and I just read the best book. I"ve got to tell you about 
it. 
> We've been reading it together for a while, just in short bursts 
from 
> time to time. But now that school is out, we were able to dedicate 
more 
> time to reading. Then today, with about 3 1/2 chapters to go we 
> couldn't stop.
> 
> We spent the day laughing at our jokes about the characters, 
chewing 
> our nails over characters' pending fates, sighing at the deaths, 
> cheering the many acts of bravery, predicting outcomes, moaning 
over 
> the bad fortunes at one point and laughing that the fortunes turned 
> back around. Then the dawn broke in glorious colors and the hero 
was 
> victorious!
> 
> Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What a book! And nothing like 
the 
> one with the same title that I read last year.
>
Oops, forgot to sign this:
Potioncat




From POWERBABE7 at aol.com  Tue Jul  1 00:22:13 2008
From: POWERBABE7 at aol.com (POWERBABE7 at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:22:13 -0400
Subject: CHAPDISC: DH 23, Malfoy Manor
In-Reply-To: <g4bqqo+scs1@eGroups.com>
References: <g4bqqo+scs1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <8CAA927A45A37D1-16C4-24EC@webmail-nf16.sim.aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183534

>> Zara:
>> 8) What did you think was the explanation for Dumbledore's 
>> eye in the broken mirror?
>
> Jack-A-Roe:
> That had me confused. Was Dumbledore going to do a Gandalf 
> and appear from what we thought was his death? Was his death 
> faked? I also couldn't remember the color of Sirius' eyes, 
> and could it possibly be him.


 If I remember correctly... The eye in the mirror was not 
Dumbledore. It is revealed to be his brother Aberforth toward 
the end of DH.

Gina



From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  1 00:54:57 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:54:57 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC: DH 23, Malfoy Manor
In-Reply-To: <002f01c8d85b$541a1c40$2a7deacd@YOUR37E34C38B1>
Message-ID: <g4bv91+lrb2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183535

Jerri wrote:
>
(Quoting Zara's summary) 
> >Hermione silently points her wand at Harry and casts a hex that
makes his face swollen and painful.

Jerri: 
> For a moment I thought that this was a betrayal.

Carol responds:

So did I. Only for a moment, but still, it was a shock.

Jerry wrote: 

> What a coincidence!  In fantasy worlds like Tolkien's where the 
characters acknowledge some supernatural force helping the side of 
good, when things would seem to be coincidence, reference to this 
supernatural force allows this reader to accept the coincidence for 
the sake of the story.  I miss that in the Harry Potter books.  <snip>
In today's world I suppose that JKR felt she had to keep the books
secular, but the loss of involvement of "God" or "god" or "gods" or
"angels" or whatever makes it a bit more difficult for me to swallow
the number of coincidences needed to make things work out.  And this
chapter is full of them.  <snip examples>

Carol responds:

I hadn't thought about the absence of a supernatural explanation, but
I also noticed the number of coincidences, starting with, if Harry
hadn'e insisted on saying Voldemort (against Ron's advice and all
common sense) and in so doing summoned the Snatchers, HRH wouldn't
have found out that Bellatrix had a Horcrux hidden in her vault. But
it isn't just coincidences, it's deus ex machina-style contrivances (I
want to say dei ex machinae, but I'm not sure of the plural. Geoff?),
from the mirror that Aberforth just happens to be looking into
bringing Dobby at just the right moment to the escape by dragon
(conveniently almost blind and impervious to HRH's presence a few
chapters later). I'm not even going to talk about wand loyalties,
which isn't exactly a deus ex machina, but how convenient that
snatching a wand from Draco not only makes Harry master of the
hawthorn wand (Draco's) but the infamous Elder Wand as well! (Not
harping, Lynda. I just noticed an extraordinary number of coincidences
in this book, more so than in other books in the series.) 

Jerri wrote:
<snip>
> I do think that by DH JKR had decided to not have V allow werewolves
to be full members of the Death Eaters, and this was one of the ways 
she chose to try to show this.  I am not sure if she had reached this
conclusion in HBP, when Greyback is able to get onto the spell blocked
tower, which supposedly required a Dark Mark to get past the barrier,
at that point in time. <snip>

Carol responds:

IIRC, the spell blocking the stairway was cast when the DEs and
Greyback were already on the stairs, blocking it behind them. The only
DE (or at any rate, seeming DE with a Dark Mark) who actually ran
through it was Snape. Thorfinn Rowle had destroyed the archway with a
badly aimed spell, breaking the barrier, before the DEs, Draco, and
Harry came down the stairs. Had he not done so, Harry would not have
been able to get through. (I may have a few details wrong; my point is
that Fenrir never passed through the barrier.) And note, as I
mentioned in my response to Zara's questions, that he can't just pass
through the Malfoys' gate by holding up his Dark Mark as Yaxley and
Snape do in the first chapter of DH. The gate assumes a very
threatening appearance and he has to state his reason for being there.
)All this is from memory, so again, I may be wrong on a few points.)

> > 4) What did you think of Draco in the scene where he is asked to
identify Harry?
> 
> I think it was actually pretty brave of Draco.  If Lord V ever 
suspected that he had refused to identify Harry on purpose he (and
probably his family) would be toast.  Since Harry's appearance was 
messed up a bit, Draco apparently felt he could get away with not 
being sure.  I think that Draco hadn't liked watching the things that
had been happening at Malfoy Manor.  I imagine that the death of the
Muggle Studies teacher wasn't the only nasty thing Draco had 
experienced during the time this book takes.  Draco didn't want to see
people he knew die horribly in front of his eyes, even HRH.  He either
didn't know what he could do to help, or wasn't willing to go as far
as to help, but he wasn't going to work against them either, if it was
avoidable.

Carol responds:
Again, I agree with you. He probably had to witness horrible things
and he certainly knew that Ollivander and Luna, an innocent old man
and a fellow student from Hogwarts, were prisoners in his family's
secret room (surely the same one that he mentioned in CoS), he
actually was forced by Voldemort to Crucio Ollivander himself while
HRH were at 12 GP. Contrast this suffering Draco, the unwilling but
helpless instrument of Voldemort, with the bullying braggart of the
earlier books, the one who was sure that he was on the winning side
and was happy that "Mud-Bloods" and "blood traitors" were going to be
killed off. That Draco Petrified Harry and stomped on his fingers and
nose, covered him with his own Invisibility Cloak and left him on the
train to be returned to Platform 9 3/4 (admittedly Harry had been
spying on him and had previously hexed him and his friends beyond
recognition, not to mention helping to send his father to prison, but,
still, the revenge is a bit extreme). That Draco had openly expressed
the hope that Hermione would be killed by the Basilisk and told his
mother that the (imaginary) stench she was smelling came from a
"Mud-Blood" (Hermione). I could cite other examples, but I think the
"progress" from Pure-Blood supremacist bully to eager young Death
Eater honored to carry out the mission that LV has entrusted to him
(killing DD) is sufficiently clear and that Draco, especially
early!HBP Draco with the Draco of DH is marked. Even in the
Sectumsempra scene, where Draco has been crying from terror and
despair, he still fights Harry and views him as a deadly enemy; he
still sees killing Dumbledore as a duty; and he still cheers when he
succeeds against all hope and all odds at repairing the Vanishing
Cabinet. Only on the tower with Dumbledore, faced with killing a sick
and helpless old man and listening to that old man talk of mercy do we
see a change. Draco has come to see, with DD's help, that he is not a
killer. From that time on, he's a reluctant Death Eater. All he wants
is what he can't have, to get out without being killed and betraying
his family to their deaths. Whether his views on Pure-Blood
superiority ever change, I don't know, but his views on torture and
murder and extortion certainly have. He will never be Harry's friend,
but as an adult, he acknowledges him with a nod. (Whether Harry
returns it is irrelevant here.) That's a marked contrast to the
behavior of his father and Mr. Weasley in Flourish and Blott's in CoS.
It may not be much, not the complete volte face that some readers were
expecting. But for Draco Malfoy, so sure that he and his father were
superior beings on the winning side, it's a lot, IMO.

Jerri:

> Up until this chapter I wasn't sure how much Bellatrix knew about
the horcrux's.  I assume from this chapter that she at least knew
about the Cup, having been given the job of keeping it safe in her
Gringotts vault.  She may or may not have known that there were others
as well. I would guess that she thought the Cup was the only horcurx,
or at least the only one she knew about. <snip>

Carol responds:

I don't think that she knew it was a Horcrux, only that it was (as she
thought) "his most precious [possession]." (She wouldn't have known
that it was one of, at the time, five such possessions.) She would
have known that the cup, as Helga Hufflepuff's sole remaining relic,
was immensely valuable, not to mention that it was valuable in itself
as a superbly crafted goblin-made gold artifact, no doubt invested
with magical powers (Hepzibah Smith said so, anyway). That he would
entrust her to hide and protect such an object was an honor she was
sure he would bestow on no one but herself, his most loyal and trusted
follower. But just as he didn't tell Lucius Malfoy that the valuable
Dark magical artifact entrusted to him was more than the means of
opening the Chamber of Secrets and releasing the basilisk, he would
not, i think, have told even Bellatrix that the cup was even more
valuable than it appeared, encasing a precious piece of her master's soul.

Jerri:
> The fact that Snape was the most important DE that we know about,
who wasn't entrusted by V with the secret of a horcrux might show that
V thought that Snape was the one who would be the biggest potential 
danger if Snape were to turn against V?  Or was putting Snape in as 
Headmaster V's way to have Snape guard the Diadem? <snip>

Carol responds:

When LV entrusted the cup to Bellatrix (who had a strongly protected
Gringotts vault) and the diary (which was supposed, at some point
chosen by LV, to be placed in the hands of a Hogwarts student) to
Lucius, having hidden the others himself, Snape was quite young, only
about twenty-one, and had probably just been sent to Hogwarts to spy
on Dumbledore. LV chose other, somewhat older followers to guard his
precious Horcruxes. As for making Snape headmaster of Hogwarts (where
he had been for years), I don't think it had anything to do with the
Horcrux (which Snape knew nothing about, in any case), I think he was
rewarding Snape for killing Dumbledore by giving him the position he
requested in the new government. And, of course, LV would have seen
the advantages to himself of placing Snape in that position
(advantages that were, of course, delusory since Snape was working
against him). 

Carol, still struggling to get caught up on posting!





From willsonkmom at msn.com  Tue Jul  1 12:26:28 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:26:28 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC: DH 23, Malfoy Manor
In-Reply-To: <8CAA927A45A37D1-16C4-24EC@webmail-nf16.sim.aol.com>
Message-ID: <g4d7pk+oghu@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183536

 >Gina:
>  If I remember correctly... The eye in the mirror was not 
> Dumbledore. It is revealed to be his brother Aberforth toward 
> the end of DH.
> 


Potioncat:
But we didn't know that at the time. Earlier in the book, when we first 
saw the eye, I thought that perhaps DD wasn't dead. That was because it 
was the only explanation I could think of. (OT note: The only 
explanation of which I could think?)

By this point, I thought it was portrait DD. I never even thought of 
Abeforth, although we'd been told how much he resembled Albus.




From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Tue Jul  1 18:49:44 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:49:44 -0000
Subject: 23, Malfoy Manor
In-Reply-To: <g4bqqo+scs1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4du88+cpft@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183537

Fabulous summary, Zara, thank you!

Zara:
> 2) Greyback takes the party to Malfoy Manor rather than 
> summoning Voldemort himself. Harry surmises this is because 
> Greyback is not a marked Death Eater. What do you think? 
 
Jack-A-Roe replied:
> I thought Harry was correct. There is no way that Voldemort would 
> have ever marked a werewolf. I don't think that Voldemort thinks of 
> them as anything but "cannon fodder."

SSSusan:
I totally agree with Jack-A-Roe on what Voldy probably thought of all 
werewolves.


Zara:
> 4) What did you think of Draco in the scene where he is asked to 
> identify Harry?
 
Jack-A-Roe replied:
> I thought he still didn't have much of a spine. He knows he isn't 
> cut out for the DE's, but he isn't able/willing to stand up to 
> them. Giving a non answer is his best bet at surviving....a very 
> slytherin trait.

SSSusan:
Hmmm.  I guess that is a fair way to view it.  OTOH, the truth is 
that, as I was reading this for the first time, I was *surprised* and 
actually *pleased* that Draco went as far as he did.  Not too long 
before this, he wouldn't have hesitated to have identified them as 
quickly, loudly and sneeringly as he could have.  

This was such a great way of showing the torment Draco was 
experiencing, I thought.


Zara:
> 5) Lucius, Bella, and Greyback all argue over who should get 
> what credit for the capture. What does each hope to gain?

SSSusan:
I don't have much to add to the great responses I've already seen -- 
Lucius wanted his status (and his/a wand) back; Bella wanted Voldy's 
approval and hopefully his lurve; Greyback wanted to be seen as 
useful and probably as worthy of reward.


Zara:
> 9) "May your loyalty never waver again", Voldemort said to Peter 
> after giving him the silver hand in GoF. Now we know what he meant. 
> What did you think of Peter's death? Did you like or dislike the 
> way it ended his story? Do you see any special meaning in it?

SSSusan:
"Now we know what he meant."  Yep, we certainly did find out.  And I 
couldn't help but think, "Man, Voldy, you ARE one cruel dude!"  I 
mean, putting a curse like that on the silver hand of the one who 
assisted him in his resurrection?  Who CARES what Wormtail's motives 
were; he did it.  And to put such a curse on the "reward" and not 
warn Wormtail openly?  Well, it *was* very "Voldemort" of him.

Did I like it?  I did like it.  The only thing I didn't like was how 
quickly it all played out.  No chance for a speech or anything, you 
know? ;)


Zara:
> 12) What did you think was going on with Voldemort in this 
> chapter? What ideas did you have concerning the identity of the old 
> man in the tower?

Jack-A-Roe said:
> I had no doubts as to who the old man was. 

SSSusan:
Yeah, at this point, it seemed pretty obvious who the old man was, I 
agree.  Honestly, I think the first time I read it, I sat up a little 
straighter, thinking, "This is all coming together now."


Zara:
> 13) Can someone explain to me why Dobby's death is the one death 
> in this book that originally did, and still does, move me to tears, 
> even though I always found him annoying? 

SSSusan:
This surprised me a TON, as well.  I mean, not that it moved YOU to 
tears, heh, as I didn't know that, but that it moved ME to tears.  
Dobby had been a big enough of an annoyance in my mind that I didn't 
particularly enjoy re-reads of COS, and yet I burst into tears when 
this happened.

I think Jack-A-Roe has again captured a good portion of the cause for 
the emotional response (thanks, Jack-A-Roe!):
> To me, Dobby represented innocence. All he wanted was to be free of 
> the Malfoy's and to be able to work. Helping Harry out was probably 
> a dream of his. He was childlike in his simplicity.
> 
> His death seemed to be the death of innocence. It's effect on Harry 
> was devastating and was the kick in the rear that Harry needed to 
> try and finish his quest.

SSSusan:
Yes, Dobby was loving and faithful to Harry, and in spite of all 
those annoying traits & misguided attempts to help over the years, he 
wanted nothing but to serve Harry and to keep him safe.  In his own 
way, he was very *sweet.* 

Maybe, too, it was just what I'd call "the cumulative factor."  
Someone ELSE close to Harry?  We already had had Sirius' and DD's 
deaths, then Moody and also the horrible Hedwig death.  To add Dobby 
was just yet another blow awfully hard to endure.  

Harry's response to Dobby's death is precisely why I love the next 
chapter so much....

Siriusly Snapey Susan





From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Tue Jul  1 19:55:36 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:55:36 -0000
Subject: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4btfi+svja@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4e23o+htd4@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183538

Potioncat wrote:
> > My son and I just read the best book. I"ve got to tell you about 
> > it. We've been reading it together for a while, just in short 
> > bursts from time to time. But now that school is out, we were 
> > able to dedicate more time to reading. Then today, with about 3 
> > 1/2 chapters to go we couldn't stop.
> > 
> > We spent the day laughing at our jokes about the characters, 
> > chewing our nails over characters' pending fates, sighing at the 
> > deaths, cheering the many acts of bravery, predicting outcomes, 
> > moaning over the bad fortunes at one point and laughing that the 
> > fortunes turned back around. Then the dawn broke in glorious 
> > colors and the hero was victorious!
> > 
> > Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What a book! And nothing 
> > like the one with the same title that I read last year.


SSSusan:
Wow!  How wonderful for you that this 2nd experience was so much 
different and *better.*  Can you say more, 'cat?  Can you tell us 
what you think might have been different this go-round?

Honestly, I know some folks who truly enjoyed it the first time but 
thought perhaps re-reads might not be as positive after reading a 
great deal of criticism and hearing a lot of disappointment and even, 
well, some anger about DH.  (I'm one of those folks who worried some 
about that... although re-reads have been just great for me.)  So 
it's interesting that your re-read was actually a lot better than 
your first read.  I'd love to know if you can pinpoint anything that 
made it a different & better book for you!

Siriusly Snapey Susan






From iam.kemper at gmail.com  Tue Jul  1 20:23:58 2008
From: iam.kemper at gmail.com (kempermentor)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:23:58 -0000
Subject: 23, Malfoy Manor
In-Reply-To: <g4du88+cpft@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4e3ou+sf5d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183539


> > Zara:
> > 9) "May your loyalty never waver again", Voldemort said to Peter 
> > after giving him the silver hand in GoF.  What did you think
> > of Peter's death? ...Do you see any special meaning in it?
 
> SSSusan:
> And I couldn't help but think, "Man, Voldy, you ARE one cruel dude!"
> I mean, putting a curse like that on the silver hand of the one who 
> assisted him in his resurrection?  Who CARES what Wormtail's motives 
> were; he did it.  And to put such a curse on the "reward" and not 
> warn Wormtail openly?  Well, it *was* very "Voldemort" of him.

Kemper now:
I thought it was pragmatic of Voldy.
If you date someone who is cheating on their spouse, they might
eventually cheat on you as well.

Kemper




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  1 20:29:43 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:29:43 -0000
Subject: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <4867EBBC.40507@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <g4e43o+kj8c@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183540

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Lee Kaiwen <leekaiwen at ...> wrote:
>
> I've a nagging feeling I'm misreading you here; maybe I'm sparring with 
> windmills.

Carol responds:
Your nagging feeling is right. :-)
> 
Carol earlier:
> JKR had every right as an author to kill off characters in the way
she saw fit and to bring in the Deathly Hallows, in particular the
Elder Wand, just as we as readers have every right to wish that we
hadn't. What we can't do, however, is to judge such authorial
decisions as flaws in the books comparable to the various Flints and
inconsistencies, which *are* errors
> 
> CJ:
> If by "not comparable to" Flints, et alia, you mean "of a
qualitative difference with", I'd agree. One would certainly not want
to compare a structural flaw with a minor math error.
> 
> However -- and this is where I may be flailing at phantoms -- I read
you as saying we're not allowed to judge them as flaws. Full stop. I
think as readers we have every right to judge whether an authorial
decision as significant as the introduction of a major plot line
succeeds or fails literarily. Of course, Flints and math errors are
relatively easily 
> corrected in future editions. Structural integrity (or lack thereof) is 
> much more difficult.

Carol responds:
That's not what I meant at all, and I apologize for wording my
statement as if I were determining what anyone is "allowed" to do.
What I meant is that it's a mistake to expect the author, any author,
to meet our expectations. We quite literally *can't* expect that
because it's illogical and impossible for an author to do so even if
she wished to do so. That's very different than my arbitrarily
asserting without authority that we *may* not do so. 

I'm saying that we can't count the disappointment of our hopes and
expectations (for example, my hope that Snape would live and that his
motivation would be other than or more than love for Lily) as flaws.
By the same token, her decision to bring in the deathly hallows plot
is not, in and of itself, a flaw in the books, however much some of us
(and I include myself in that number) may wish that she had not done
so. The handling of the hallows plot itself, particularly its
complexity and confusion and unresolved questions, is another matter.
Of course, we can and (IMO) should discuss such matters as the
development of plotlines and whether, in our view, they succeeded or
failed, just as we have every right to criticize outright errors
(Flints, math errors, inconsistencies) as well as the improbabilities,
coincidences, and dei ex machinae (or whatever the plural is!) that
abound in DH.

I would be very interested, in fact, in a discussion of real or
perceived structural flaws.

On another note, I don't rank small errors in math (which we all know
that JKR is incapable of performing, even to the extent of determining
the age of a given character at a given time) on the same level as
inconsistencies, such as the handling of Unforgiveable Curses in GoF
as contrasted with their handling in DH. An author has an obligation
to check her fictional facts and get them right and to maintain a
consistent attitude toward what she presents as evil, whether it's the
WW's treatment of House Elves or Harry's sudden right to use
Unforgiveable Curses. Her failure to define Dark magic clearly and
consistently is, IMO, one such failure. Another is the inconsistent
depiction of wand properties and wand loyalties. But her choice to
kill a particular character in a particular way or to reveal only a
tantalizing glimpse of the WW in her epilogue, leaving many questions
unresolved (a *good* thing, in my view--I'd rather *not* know what
happened to every character) is her decision, which we're free to like
or dislike, but which can't objectively be called a flaw in the
construction of the book, only an authorial decision that some of us
would have preferred that she didn't make.

So, in short, my point is that our subjective likes and dislikes, our
unfulfilled hopes and thwarted expectations, while we have every right
to express them, cannot be viewed as objective flaws in the works.
Such flaws do, however, exist, and they include quantifiable errors
and verifiable inconsistencies, which, again, we have every right to
point out (or try to resolve through explanations that may or may not
convince other readers, such as Pippin's attempt to reconcile the
timing of Lily's letter to Sirius Black with the timetable we were
given for the Fidelius Charm and the betrayal by Wormtail in PoA).

Now personally, and this has nothing to do with my previous post, I
prefer to analyze the books rather than criticize them, in the sense
of finding fault. I'd rather analyze character development and
motivation or literary techniques than point out flaws. That doesn't
mean that we "can't" (or rather, *may* not) criticize the books. Of
course, we can (may). I just think that it's a good idea to
distinguish between our personal preferences, what we wish JKR had
done, especially in the last book) and actual flaws and errors in the
books (of which there are many, some minor and some not). Her
"failure" to meet our expectations (and I'm not quoting anyone here)
is not a failure at all, only an unwillingness on the part of some
readers to accept the story that she chose to tell. (Their disliking
it does not, of course, make it "bad" writing judged by objective
criteria. And even the extent to which objectively determinable flaws
mar the work is subjective.) 

At any rate, I'm certainly not trying to thwart discussion, only to
state that JKR has every right to write the book her way, even if we
don't like it. And we have every right to point out flaws (or simply
to analyze the text), but we shouldn't (IMO) hold her to unrealistic
expectations such as satisfying our own particular hopes and desires.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about structural flaws in the
plot, which I assume that you'll support with canon. I agree with you
that the deathly hallows plot could have been better handled and that
it presents certain complications that might better have been avoided.
IMO, structuring the book around the school year when HRH weren't at
Hogwarts and their isolation from the WW at large also presented
problems which JKR could have avoided either by keeping the kids at
school or shortening the time frame covered by the last book. Even
with McGuffins, erm, Horcruxes and Hallows to pursue or not pursue,
there's a lot of unfilled time that might have been avoided by
restructuring the books. IOW, I think we're in agreement here and that
you misread my post, which I admit could have been more effectively
(and less peremptorily) worded.

Carol, snipping the discussion of McGuffins, in which I think I agree
with CJ but am not entirely sure




From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Tue Jul  1 20:55:33 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:55:33 -0000
Subject: 23, Malfoy Manor
In-Reply-To: <g4e3ou+sf5d@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4e5k5+efdl@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183541

Zara:
> > > 9) "May your loyalty never waver again", Voldemort said to 
> > > Peter after giving him the silver hand in GoF.  What did you 
> > > think of Peter's death? ...Do you see any special meaning in it?

SSSusan:
> > And I couldn't help but think, "Man, Voldy, you ARE one cruel 
> > dude!" I mean, putting a curse like that on the silver hand of 
> > the one who assisted him in his resurrection?  Who CARES what 
> > Wormtail's motives were; he did it.  And to put such a curse on 
> > the "reward" and not warn Wormtail openly?  Well, it *was* 
> > very "Voldemort" of him.
 
Kemper now:
> I thought it was pragmatic of Voldy.
> If you date someone who is cheating on their spouse, they might
> eventually cheat on you as well.


SSSusan:
Heh, well yes, it was pragmatic of him.  And quite smart in a purely 
tactical sense, for the reason you state.  Certainly, too, Voldy 
didn't have any compassion nor true any appreciation or gratefulness 
inside him.  So for all that, I shouldn't have been surprised that he 
did this; I just hadn't thought of it beforehand.

Siriusly Snapey Susan, enjoying thinking about the Potterverse again 
after some forced time away because of work







From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  1 21:23:04 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:23:04 -0000
Subject: Lily's Letter was Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <g4av85+u4jh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4e77o+ef7q@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183542

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> 
wrote:
 
> Jen: It could be a situation where Sirius sent the broom because he 
> couldn't be there for the party but Lily didn't get around to 
> thanking him until Oct.


zanooda:

Thank you, Jen, for offering another solution for the problem :-). It 
is the one that I thought of myself at first, while trying to solve 
this puzzle :-). Both scenarios (1. Sirius sending his present in 
October instead of July/August, and 2. Lily sending the thank you 
letter three months later than she should have :-)) are theoretically 
possible. But both situations ar rather unusual, so I would expect 
Lily to mention this in the letter. Wouldn't she write something 
like "Sorry it took me so long to answer"? Politeness (and logic) 
would require it, right :-)? I still think that it's JKR's little 
mistake.


> Jen wrote:
 
> Evidence against that idea is why Lily didn't mention the thank you 
> coming 3 months late.  Not that she had to explain it but it would 
> make the timing of the letter match up with other evidence.  And 
> wouldn't Sirius have had more contact with them?  He'd at least 
> like to know how the Potters were faring and that Harry received 
> the broom.


zanooda:

I agree with every word :-).


> Jen wrote:  

> My last thought is why should one detail take so much discussion 
> from readers to figure out?!?  It shouldn't imo.  The letter 
> should be clear, having a date on the letter for instance to 
> signify to the reader when events are occurring, since what's 
> in the letter is important for backstory (among other things).  


zanooda:

Well, I wouldn't say that Lily's letter is *that* important to the 
story, but the timing is not very clear, and for some reason it gets 
on my nerves :-). It's an individual reaction, I guess. As I said, 
there are other details that don't bother me at all, but this one 
does ;-(. 

Another thing that irritates me every time I read it is why would DD 
put the ring on his finger? He knew better than anyone how the Stone 
worked, and it was *not* by putting it on the finger! I just can't 
understand why he would do it. It should be "I took it" or "I touched 
it", not "I put it on"! 

I know that it doesn't matter for the plot, but again, for me 
personally it's irritating (sorry, Lynda :-)). I know it shouldn't 
be, because this is such a small detail, but it is, and there is 
nothing I can do about it! And I am one of those who liked this 
book :-)! As I said, it's just some sort of individual reaction, 
which I can't control :-).




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  2 02:21:40 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:21:40 -0000
Subject: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <g4e43o+kj8c@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4eonk+mas9@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183543

> Carol responds:
> What I meant is that it's a mistake to expect the author, any author,
> to meet our expectations. We quite literally *can't* expect that
> because it's illogical and impossible for an author to do so even if
> she wished to do so. That's very different than my arbitrarily
> asserting without authority that we *may* not do so. 

Montavilla47:
You may be surprised, but I agree with you on this, Carol.  There
are things that personally disappoint me, but I don't think it's
JKR's responsibility to make me happy with what happens--
especially since there are roughly upteen billion other readers
with their own expectations out there and she couldn't possibly
please everyone.

If I can use a small example:  Just before HBP came out, I read
a fanfic in which sixth year Harry resumed Occlumency lessons
with Snape.  It was such a logical development of the set up in
OotP, that I came out of thinking that JKR would *have* to do
something similar, but subconsciously knowing that she 
couldn't, because it was very long story and barely touched on
anything else.  There was no way she devote that much space to
it.

And she didn't.  Instead, she accomplished much the same thing
(although stopping short of the resolution in the fanfic) by having
Harry get to know Snape through the Potions book.  Personally,
I was disappointed we didn't get more Occlumency lessons.  But at
the same time, what JKR did was brilliant.

So, I think readers will be disappointed if they think a story is 
going to a specific place.  However, they will forget that 
disappointment quickly if the story goes some place better.

Carol:
> I'm saying that we can't count the disappointment of our hopes and
> expectations (for example, my hope that Snape would live and that his
> motivation would be other than or more than love for Lily) as flaws.

Montavilla47:
Right.  I don't like we never got that scene in which Harry and Snape
"meet up" that JKR implied in her Melissa/Emerson intervew was 
coming.  But, I felt that Harry did come to a resolution about Snape
and the readers certainly know now where Snape stood.  So, I can't
claim that the plotline wasn't resolved.

Plus, I think JKR left enough wiggle room in Snape's storyline to 
read an expansion of his Lily-love--so that it may not have been
his entire motivation.

Carol:
> By the same token, her decision to bring in the deathly hallows plot
> is not, in and of itself, a flaw in the books, however much some of us
> (and I include myself in that number) may wish that she had not done
> so. The handling of the hallows plot itself, particularly its
> complexity and confusion and unresolved questions, is another matter.
> Of course, we can and (IMO) should discuss such matters as the
> development of plotlines and whether, in our view, they succeeded or
> failed, just as we have every right to criticize outright errors
> (Flints, math errors, inconsistencies) as well as the improbabilities,
> coincidences, and dei ex machinae (or whatever the plural is!) that
> abound in DH.
> 
> I would be very interested, in fact, in a discussion of real or
> perceived structural flaws.

Montavilla47:
Oh, can I start? :)

I'm not going to go on and on, actually.  I think the biggest
flaw was JKR's desire to push the resolution of every storyline
as far back as possible to create a boffo third act.

That's the way you're supposed to structure a film--set up in 
the first act, development through the second act, and a third
act that feels like a thrill ride.  

But it's not necessary in a book, and I think it hurt DH.  

Why, for example, did we have to wait until Chapter 30-something
to see Ron and Hermione kiss?  Frankly, I didn't care if we ever
saw that, and I thought that was pretty much all sorted out in HBP,
anyway.  That it wasn't, and was resolved in the middle of the 
battle because of some throwaway reference to elves didn't add
to the climax, it took away from all three storylines.  

Likewise, we didn't need the Percy storyline to resolve that
late in the plot.  There were many places that Percy might have
returned to the Weasley clan with more impact.  For example,
he might have come back when his brother was poisoned, or
at Dumbledore's funeral.  Instead, the storyline was extended
beyond reason and the reconciliation was rushed, becoming 
(to my mind) an annoying distraction from the preparations
for the battle and Harry's search for the Ravenclaw Horcrux.

There was a total chaotic feel to the battle that I think was
good.  I loved most of the details, but disliked how over-
stuffed it was with "big" moments.  (Much as I personally
dislike Molly's Bitch line, I don't really mind the moment
itself, because it really is just a supporting moment and adds
to what is going on.)

Carol:
> On another note, I don't rank small errors in math (which we all know
> that JKR is incapable of performing, even to the extent of determining
> the age of a given character at a given time) on the same level as
> inconsistencies, such as the handling of Unforgiveable Curses in GoF
> as contrasted with their handling in DH.

Montavilla47:
I'm going to praise JKR here, because I think that one of the real 
strengths of the series is that it made readers want to do all those
things teachers make you to do stories--for fun.  It was *fun* to 
work out timelines and try to figure out how much older Lucius 
Malfoy was than Snape.  I had great fun trying to figure out 
how long it took Harry to get from Hogwarts to London in OotP, even
if, ultimately, it didn't make much sense.  

It was fun to tease out the alchemical symbolism and try to see if 
there were secret messages being sent in the Droobles Bubble Gum
wrappers.  Or if Hermione was experimenting with love potions on 
Harry and Ginny in HBP.

It was more fun than I can say to contemplate such theories as 
ESE!Lupin ad ESE!Minerva.  JKR gave us an extremely rich 
tapestry to work with--Flints and all.

(Having read the court transcripts for the Vander Der Ark case,
it tickles me to no end that the word "Flint" was introduced into
testimony and legally defined.)

Carol:
> An author has an obligation
> to check her fictional facts and get them right and to maintain a
> consistent attitude toward what she presents as evil, whether it's the
> WW's treatment of House Elves or Harry's sudden right to use
> Unforgiveable Curses. Her failure to define Dark magic clearly and
> consistently is, IMO, one such failure. Another is the inconsistent
> depiction of wand properties and wand loyalties. 

Montavilla47:
I'm glad to hear you say that, because I'm genuinely unsure whether
the inconsistency is accidental or intentional.  I feel like its a failure,
but there is that possibility that it's all a massive joke on the reader
and that somewhere JKR is laughing herself silly on how seriously 
we all took that "Dark Magic" stuff.

Carol:
> But her choice to
> kill a particular character in a particular way or to reveal only a
> tantalizing glimpse of the WW in her epilogue, leaving many questions
> unresolved (a *good* thing, in my view--I'd rather *not* know what
> happened to every character) is her decision, which we're free to like
> or dislike, but which can't objectively be called a flaw in the
> construction of the book, only an authorial decision that some of us
> would have preferred that she didn't make.

Montavilla47:
Agreed.

Carol:
> Now personally, and this has nothing to do with my previous post, I
> prefer to analyze the books rather than criticize them, in the sense
> of finding fault. I'd rather analyze character development and
> motivation or literary techniques than point out flaws. That doesn't
> mean that we "can't" (or rather, *may* not) criticize the books. Of
> course, we can (may). I just think that it's a good idea to
> distinguish between our personal preferences, what we wish JKR had
> done, especially in the last book) and actual flaws and errors in the
> books (of which there are many, some minor and some not). Her
> "failure" to meet our expectations (and I'm not quoting anyone here)
> is not a failure at all, only an unwillingness on the part of some
> readers to accept the story that she chose to tell. (Their disliking
> it does not, of course, make it "bad" writing judged by objective
> criteria. And even the extent to which objectively determinable flaws
> mar the work is subjective.) 

Montavill47:
Well, hmm...  I think people have been pretty good at distinguishing
between their personal expectations and the "flaws."  And it's been
very helpful to me.

For example, I thought the lack of resolution to the Slytherin/other
houses divide was a flaw.  Magpie's posts have helped me see that
that wasn't so much a flaw as authorial choice.  (Although JKR
has muddied that by saying that the Slytherins returned to fight
when that definitely isn't in the books--if she intended to have
them return and forgot to put that detail in, is that a flaw?  Or 
are her statements irrelevant?)





From willsonkmom at msn.com  Wed Jul  2 11:47:21 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:47:21 -0000
Subject: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4e23o+htd4@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4fps9+p7m8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183545

 
> 
> SSSusan:
> Wow!  How wonderful for you that this 2nd experience was so much 
> different and *better.*  Can you say more, 'cat?  Can you tell us 
> what you think might have been different this go-round?

Potioncat:
One difference, I think, is that it's been nearly a year since I read 
it the first time--so there was time to recuperate from the emotions 
of the first session. We read these books so fast when each of them 
came out; Hedwig, Moody, Snape, Lupin, Tonks, Fred, and all the 
others died within hours of each other. For me, DH was one dark book. 
As I finished it this time, I realised Harry felt the same way at the 
end of the day that I had---only he had 19 years before the epilogue.

More importantly, I read it with someone who had fresh eyes. All 
Michael wanted to know was 'Does Harry live?'. Well, and to a much 
lesser degree, 'Is Snape friend or foe?'. He was convinced Snape was 
foe, up to the moment the memories started pouring out. He didn't 
need to know what they were, he just knew. 

It's taken us nearly a year to read it and I thought several times 
that he had lost interest, but he wanted to continue. It was at 'the 
Sacking of Severus Snape' that his interest really became piqued. I 
guess that's when the adventure began. 

It was so much fun to see his reaction as the plot moved on. He'd 
stop me to make some comment, much like the ones we've made here. But 
it was a new idea to him, not one that he had endlessly debated.

(Oh, but the look on his face when he saw Snape's Silver Doe Patronus 
and there was the beat in time while it sunk in. I wish I'd had a 
camera.)

He was in it for the adventure and that grounded my reading of it. If 
I started getting teary-eyed or choked-up, the amused look on his 
face would make me laugh and we'd keep reading. Yes, he was moved by 
deaths---particularly Fred's, Lupin's and Tonks's, but not to same 
extent as I was. I'm something of a goof-ball about fictional 
characters' deaths; I still have to leave the room when Bambi's 
mother dies.

He was very concerned for Harry, but his eyes shined as Harry pushed 
on. He cheered as Neville challenged LV after they thought Harry had 
died. It was watching his reaction to the characters' bravery that 
made me see the book differently. Because you know, I had never 
picked up on that bravery before. I hadn't seen the spirit and 
determination to fight to the end. 

It was also pretty cool that Michael had decided earlier that it was 
going to be Neville and Harry who brought down LV. As far as he's 
concerned, he was right.

> SSSusan:
> Honestly, I know some folks who truly enjoyed it the first time but 
> thought perhaps re-reads might not be as positive after reading a 
> great deal of criticism and hearing a lot of disappointment and 
even, 
> well, some anger about DH.  
>snip> 

Potioncat:
There are still areas of the book that have flaws and areas that seem 
a bit off to me. That didn't keep me from enjoying DH this time. But 
I think it's important to just read the book, and to avoid the 
temptation to stop and critique it as you go along.

What I would really suggest to everyone, is that if you ever have the 
chance to read these books to a young person, do it! And if you don't 
like to read aloud, get the audio-books and listen together. 

It is so much fun to see the difference a few years makes!




From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  2 16:15:00 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:15:00 -0000
Subject: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4fps9+p7m8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4g9i4+hi23@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183546

---  "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> wrote:
>
> >...
> 
> Potioncat:
> There are still areas of the book that have flaws and areas 
> that seem a bit off to me. That didn't keep me from enjoying
> DH this time. But I think it's important to just read the book,
> and to avoid the temptation to stop and critique it as you go 
> along.
> 
> What I would really suggest to everyone, is that if you ever 
> have the chance to read these books to a young person, do it!
> And if you don't like to read aloud, get the audio-books and
> listen together. 
> 
> It is so much fun to see the difference a few years makes!
>

bboyminn:

More instinctively than by any conscious choice, when I read,
I switch off my critical mind. I take my seat, tighten the
passenger restrain, feel the anticipation build as I clickity
clack to the top of the first hill, then ZOOOM, the roller
coaster ride in on. I just take it as it comes. If it has the
power to hold my interest, then, in my mind, it is a 
successful book. 

Partly, the books are written, you can't change them, no 
amount of whining or crying will alter so much as a single 
drop of ink, so just enjoy the ride. 

I think I can safely say that all the books are successful in
my mind because I can pick up any HP book at random, open to a
page at random, start reading, and I am instantly pulled 
into the world. Instantly the ride is on.

So many people complain about the 'camping trip' in DH, but
consider everything that happens on that trip. It starts with
the Trio breaking in to the Ministry. We have Ron leaving, 
Godrics Hollow, a visit to Xenophile Lovegood, the capture
by the Snatchers, Ron returning including the mysterious
doe and the destruction of the first Horcrux, the escape
from Malfoy Manor, the death of Dobby, the arrival at Shell
Cottage and the accompanying revelations, the break-in at
Gringotts, and eventually, the arrival at Hogwarts. That's
hardly dull. 

Lastly, consider this, you have built an indelible memory 
with your child. A bonding experience that will endure for
a lifetime. Trivial as this event might be, I hardly
think your son will ever forget it. The day my Mom and I
shared this adventure together. Too few children get to 
share such a great adventures with some one they love. 

That more than anything is the legacy of Harry Potter; all 
the wonderful times we shared together.

Steve/bboyminn





From afn01288 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  2 16:48:31 2008
From: afn01288 at yahoo.com (Troy Doyle)
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 09:48:31 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 23, Malfoy Manor
Message-ID: <105237.19051.qm@web53210.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183547


Zara:
> 13) Can someone explain to me why Dobby's death is the one death 
> in this book that originally did, and still does, move me to tears, 
> even though I always found him annoying? 

afn:? It's been interesting to see that so many of us found this induced tears.? The death of Hedwig was a surprise (I initially thought though that Hagrid had died after the chase and crash), but not nearlly as moving to me as Dobb's death.? I cried my eye's out the first time I read it and can't read it now without doing so.
?
So, why did it move us to tears?? My first thought was that after reading straight through the book immediately upon delivery, I was getting a bit exhausted and bleary eyed by the time I got to that chapter.? But that doesn't change the continuing response or the annoyance factor.? 
?
I too found Dobby annoying in earlier books and distracting before HBP and DH.? From the initial annoyance though, his character has developed and the sort of "idiot" shallow character we first saw back when he was introduced has been so much more developed through the series.?He has taken on a much fuller characterization.? Maybe we've come to see him as a "person" like the other characters we care about so much.? He certainly distinguished himself from other house elves and became unique among others in the WW.? He takes on a fierce loyalty and care for others and willingness to sacrifice himself not unlike our human heroes.
?
Probably, the answer lies in that even upon re-reading we have gone through so much by this point in the story that his quick heroic rescue and equally quick demise is still startling.? We may be so overwhelmed that this plot twist is unexpected (it was too me) and tragic that the initial annoyance pales.? In short order we get a re-cap of his selfless care for Harry and of his strength to overcome fear of former masters and seek independence and his brand of dignity even if other house elves don't.
?
He comes in and bravely saves the day.? He shows love and determination against great odds.? Yet just a quickly he is gone.? Harry found Dobby annoying at first too, but like Harry, the loss is dramatic and heart rending.
?
--- afn
?
?
?
?
?


      

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From sartoris22 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul  3 17:14:39 2008
From: sartoris22 at yahoo.com (sartoris22)
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:14:39 -0000
Subject: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4g9i4+hi23@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4j1dv+denl@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183548

I agree with Steve. The books become part of a wonderful shared
experience into a fascinating imaginative world.

Forgive me if I'm not following protocol--I'm a first timer--but I'd
like to comment on why Dobby's death is so affecting. Perhaps it's
because of Harry's reaction to it and the graveside scene, where Luna
gives such a touching and fitting eulogy. And Harry refusal to use
magic to dig Dobby's grave adds another layer of pathos to the
moment. Besides, Dobby's death exemplifies the novel's theme of
choice and foreshadows Harry's ultimate moment of bravery and
sacrifice.


sartoris22






From gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk  Thu Jul  3 20:37:42 2008
From: gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk (Geoff Bannister)
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:37:42 -0000
Subject: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a Book
In-Reply-To: <105237.19051.qm@web53210.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <g4jdam+gg3s@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183549

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Troy Doyle <afn01288 at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> Zara:
> > 13) Can someone explain to me why Dobby's death is the one death 
> > in this book that originally did, and still does, move me to tears, 
> > even though I always found him annoying? 
> 
> afn:? It's been interesting to see that so many of us found this induced tears.? The death 
of Hedwig was a surprise (I initially thought though that Hagrid had died after the chase 
and crash), but not nearlly as moving to me as Dobb's death.? I cried my eye's out the first 
time I read it and can't read it now without doing so.

Geoff:
In my case I deny that I was moved at any point to tears, it was just 
something in my eye.

But I felt most for Hedwig. Possibly because her death was the first 
in the book which impacted with me. Charity Burbage was, in a sense, 
just a name.

Hedwig was, after Hagrid, only the second creature Harry encountered 
in the Wizarding World and reminded me of dogs in our world. I have 
two Border Collies who we have had from pups. They are faithful to a 
fault and have an uncanny knack of knowing what we are about to do. 
They follow uncomplainingly and are sometimes just there when you 
want to sit in silence. I see Hedwig like this. We have commented here, 
and on Main, that owls seem to possess a measure of understanding 
and Hedwig seems no exception to that. At the Dursleys, she has been 
the reminder of Harry's link to the WW especially when he has been 
cut off for one reason or another.

Nope. For me, it was Hedwig becoming an innocent casualty of war 
which hit me harder than even some of the human losses.

Looking at DH as a whole, my first reaction nearly a year ago was 
that I generally enjoyed the book. With re-reads, I feel there could 
have been some trimming in places but there are times when I will 
read a specific few pages because they are one which are my 
favourites,

I have said already  - more than once(!) - that the book really takes 
off for me with Harry's return to the forest and the walk through it 
but above all, the symbolism when the sun rises across the window 
sills of the Great Hall as Harry faces Voldemort for the last battle. It 
has the same feel of coming triumph as that when Gandalf appears 
in the rising sun at Helm's Deep in "The Two Towers".

But last year was the final stage of a journey in the company of Harry 
and friends which I would not have missed. Apart from the books, I 
have made many acquaintances and friends on the group; we have 
agreed - and disagreed - about the story and also, in some cases 
our contacts have spread beyond OT and Main to sharing thoughts 
on many other topics.

So I believe that the HP books have added to my own experience and 
I am glad that I went to see the second film (ssh!) back at the end of 
'02 because that's where it all started for me.

Geoff
[reaching for a tissue to get whatever it is out of his eye..
:-)]




From jpbear2 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  4 12:51:42 2008
From: jpbear2 at yahoo.com (Jake cohn)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:51:42 -0000
Subject: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4g9i4+hi23@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4l6cu+m19i@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183550

> > Potioncat:
> > There are still areas of the book that have flaws and areas
> > that seem a bit off to me. That didn't keep me from enjoying
> > DH this time.

> bboyminn:
> So many people complain about the 'camping trip' in DH, but
> consider everything that happens on that trip. ...snip...


For me, the time the trio spent in the woods camping was a slow point,
Ron did get a bit whiny, and the text from the Life of Albus
Dumbledore not the most gripping part. But from the time Neville comes
out of the painting BOOM how can you not stop reading the last 180
pages. Those 180 pages make up by far any slow parts of the book.

For me, its not just 'wow what a book' but an incredible amazing seven
book story, and some of the best parts were waiting in book stores
with other Potter fans for the stroke of midnight to get the next
installment of Harry Potter. The very first time I read the book I was
sitting on the edge of my chair even though I was tired having been up for 20 hours, but I couldn't put the book down.

Can you tell me of any other book or books that can do that?

jpbear2





From sweenlit at gmail.com  Fri Jul  4 17:27:11 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 10:27:11 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a Book
In-Reply-To: <g4jdam+gg3s@eGroups.com>
References: <105237.19051.qm@web53210.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	 <g4jdam+gg3s@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807041027h5b9a633fka01c68055248dd93@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183551

After the iniatial shock, I no longer cry over Dobby's death. Dobby died
doing exactly what he wanted to do. Prortecting Harry Potter. Hedwig,
however still moves me to tears. Unlike Dobby, she died in a cage. No way to
escape. No chance to fight. That is what seems to me so terriebly unfair
about Hedwig's death.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Fri Jul  4 17:50:48 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 10:50:48 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4l6cu+m19i@eGroups.com>
References: <g4g9i4+hi23@eGroups.com> <g4l6cu+m19i@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807041050m42bfffd2yd1c29c6cd2a33525@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183552

jpbear2:
For me, its not just 'wow what a book' but an incredible amazing seven
book story, and some of the best parts were waiting in book stores
with other Potter fans for the stroke of midnight to get the next
installment of Harry Potter. The very first time I read the book I was
sitting on the edge of my chair even though I was tired having been up for
20 hours, but I couldn't put the book down.

Can you tell me of any other book or books that can do that?
jpbear2

Lynda:
This has been my point for a year now! Not that the books don't have flaws
or that there are no dropped storylines, etc. but that what other seven book
series has done what this one has? None that I've seen.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  4 18:08:57 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:08:57 -0000
Subject: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a Book)
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807041027h5b9a633fka01c68055248dd93@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g4lovp+fur7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183553

Lynda wrote:
>
> After the iniatial shock, I no longer cry over Dobby's death. Dobby
died doing exactly what he wanted to do. Prortecting Harry Potter.
Hedwig, however still moves me to tears. Unlike Dobby, she died in a
cage. No way to escape. No chance to fight. That is what seems to me
so terriebly unfair about Hedwig's death.

Carol responds:

I agree that Hedwig's death was sad and moving--and traumatic for
Harry because he had to explode her cage and, as with Sirius Black,
has no time to mourn and no body to bury. Her death is also highly
symbolic. Along with the destruction of Harry's Firebolt, which falls
to earth at about the same time, it severs Harry's last tie with his
past and Hogwarts, along with the last vestiges of his innocence. I
imagine that JKR thought Hedwig's death was necessary. Hedwig would
either have been confined to a cage at the Burrow to keep her from
following Harry, a cruelty she would not have understood and might not
have survived, or she would have tried to follow Harry. Since she
could fly to and from 12 GP unaffected by the defensive spells, she
might have been able to penetrate the defensive magic around the
camping places, revealing Harry's whereabouts (as a less conspicuous
bar owl would not). 

JKR has said herself that a children's author, as she calls herself,
must be ruthless. She could not allow herself to "sentimentally" cling
to Hedwig. Harry's suffering must be complete, his ties to his
Hogwarts "home" (and the Burrow and, later, 12 GP) completely severed.
In her view, it had to be HRH (and, for awhile, only Harry and
Hermione) alone in the wilderness. He loses even his wand, which he
had been counting on to attack Voldemort's and which is also his
"friend" and companion as well as his weapon. (At least he gets the
wand back; the Elder Wand's last deed is to restore the beloved holly
wand.)

I realize, of course, that I'm assuming authorial intention here,
which is always dangerous. But whether JKR *intended* the symbolism or
not, and whether she intended to eliminate Hedwig as, well, a danger
and a distraction or not, her death does serve those purposes, just as
DD's death, which also serves a lot of other purposes, including
throwing the suspicion of murder and betrayal on Snape, gets the old
mentor out of the way, as JKR said herself.

Carol, who would *not* have killed Hedwig if she'd written the book
because she'd have kept the Trio at Hogwarts :-)




From willsonkmom at msn.com  Fri Jul  4 19:55:44 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:55:44 -0000
Subject: AU (was Re: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a Book)
In-Reply-To: <g4lovp+fur7@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4lv80+jauv@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183554


> 
> Carol, who would *not* have killed Hedwig if she'd written the book
> because she'd have kept the Trio at Hogwarts :-)

Potioncat:
As if Snape didn't already have a difficult enough time that year as 
it was. How could he have protected Harry from LV?

Then again, I wouldn't have killed Hedwig, Dobby, Lupin, Tonks, 
Moody, Fred or Snape. Wouldn't have been much of a book.

One of the best moments reading DH with my son was just after we 
discovered Colin Creevey had died. "Wasn't he Muggleborn?" I asked.

My son thought a moment, "Hey, he shouldn't have been at Hogwarts! 
Just, think, if J. K. Rowling had a better memory, Colin would still 
be alive today."

OK, no more sweet, reading with my son stories.  ;-)






From Meliss9900 at aol.com  Fri Jul  4 20:26:07 2008
From: Meliss9900 at aol.com (Meliss9900 at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 16:26:07 EDT
Subject: [HPforGrownups] AU (was Re: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a ...
Message-ID: <ca3.35c8d2c7.359fe15f@aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183555

In a message dated 7/4/2008 2:56:09 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
willsonkmom at msn.com writes:

<One of the best moments reading DH with my son was just after we  
<discovered Colin Creevey had died. "Wasn't he Muggleborn?" I  asked.

<My son thought a moment, "Hey, he shouldn't have been at  Hogwarts! 
<Just, think, if J. K. Rowling had a better memory, Colin  would still 
<be alive today."






Actually IIRC Colin wasn't attending Hogwarts during the school  year.  He 
arrived with the others to fight at the end.  Or at least  that's what I always 
figured had happened.
 
Melissa



**************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for 
fuel-efficient used cars.      (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Fri Jul  4 20:58:05 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:58:05 -0000
Subject: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <g4e43o+kj8c@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4m2st+7ckq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183556

Carol:
> Of course, we can and (IMO) should discuss such matters as the
> development of plotlines and whether, in our view, they succeeded or
> failed, just as we have every right to criticize outright errors
> (Flints, math errors, inconsistencies) as well as the
improbabilities, coincidences, and dei ex machinae (or whatever the
plural is!) that abound in DH.
> 
> I would be very interested, in fact, in a discussion of real or
> perceived structural flaws.

Pippin:
IIRC, the ancients didn't perceive the deus ex machina as a flaw. They
considered it reassuring to know that fate favored the righteous and
that mortals had the protection of divine powers. While there are no
divine characters in the story, they are invoked at the beginning of DH:

"We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth./Now hear, you blissful
powers underground-answer the call, send help./Bless the children,
give them triumph now."

There were many times in the saga when unlikely coincidence came into
play  and there are some sequences of events which seemed reasonable
at the time but more unlikely in retrospect. How strange  that
Diary!Riddle chose to summon the one power in the castle that could
destroy him, and that Harry unwittingly transferred that power to
Gryffindor's Sword! 

But the bad guys got their share of dumb luck: Pettigrew's escape and
Fudge's refusal to believe Voldemort's return come to mind.

Of course the Trio keep making stupid mistakes in DH -- we have to see
that they are favored for their courage and loyalty, not books and
cleverness.  

Carol: 
> On another note, I don't rank small errors in math (which we all
know that JKR is incapable of performing, even to the extent of
determining the age of a given character at a given time) on the same
level as inconsistencies, such as the handling of Unforgiveable Curses
in GoF as contrasted with their handling in DH. An author has an
obligation to check her fictional facts and get them right and to
maintain a consistent attitude toward what she presents as evil,
whether it's the WW's treatment of House Elves or Harry's sudden right
to use Unforgiveable Curses. Her failure to define Dark magic clearly
and consistently is, IMO, one such failure. Another is the
inconsistent depiction of wand properties and wand loyalties. 

Pippin:

 You seem to be treating Dark Magic as if it had to  have some
defining characteristics in order to be a valid category. That's
probably what Aristotle would have said. But  psychologists say
Aristotle was wrong: that's not the way the mind categorizes information. 

Take rock music as an example: The Beatles are a rock group and The
White Album is a rock album.  But  Revolution No 9 is probably not
what most of us think a rock song sounds like. Still,  it doesn't
invalidate the categorization of the Beatles or the album. People
don't listen to  No 9 and get  confused about how rock is supposed to
sound, even if they know nothing at all about music theory. And they
don't develop trouble imagining or recognizing The Beatles sound. 

The mind categorizes by association, not logic. The wizards, who
aren't known for their logic in any case, do not have to have a
technical or logically consistent definition of dark magic in order to
use the category.

IMO, what needs to be consistent in the portrayal of evil is not the
logic of classifying evil acts but the mental revulsion associated
with them. Readers may cheer at the crucio, reading it as a blow
against evil. But AFAIK, no one cheered when Harry said "I see
what Bellatrix meant. You have to really mean it." 

The crucio is put in its place as evil when we're reminded that it's
Bellatrix's signature spell. Not to mention that it would be hard for
any British schoolchild to develop positive associations with
something called "the cruciatus curse" in any case. 

Similarly, the evil of slavery is vaguely defined as a concept, but
made clear by association: the characters, without exception, are
happiest when they can choose for themselves, even if what they want
is bad for them (or us.) 

(Side note, for this Independence Day: If none of the Founders
were really okay with slavery, would that mean  that they never, ever
wondered if a slave would bring them a snack? )

Another facet of the psychology of categories is 'extension' --
unconsciously we extend the category by forming mental models that
fill in missing information.

Back in Book One, Ollivander said  that the wand chooses the wizard,
and let us know that wizards may have more than one wand. He
remembered Lily choosing her first one. He never said that once a wand
chooses you, it's yours for life. But many readers took that as given,
based perhaps on similar motifs in folklore and fiction.

 I don't think surprising us by allowing us to make false
assumptions and then contradicting them is a flaw, in the sense that
the author has some obligation not to do that. In a story where much
depends on the meaning and use of categories, especially stereotypes,
it makes sense that the author would like to show us how our minds
play tricks on us.

Pippin
who screamed out loud on learning that the term "Flint" has made it
into the annals of history

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/8359

 






From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  4 22:30:32 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:30:32 -0000
Subject: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <g4m2st+7ckq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4m8a8+1ne2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183558

Carol earlier:
> > Of course, we can and (IMO) should discuss such matters as the
development of plotlines and whether, in our view, they succeeded or
failed, just as we have every right to criticize outright errors
(Flints, math errors, inconsistencies) as well as the improbabilities,
coincidences, and dei ex [machina] that abound in DH.
> > 
> > I would be very interested, in fact, in a discussion of real or
perceived structural flaws.
> 
> Pippin:
> IIRC, the ancients didn't perceive the deus ex machina as a flaw.
They considered it reassuring to know that fate favored the righteous
and that mortals had the protection of divine powers. While there are
no divine characters in the story, they are invoked at the beginning
of DH:
> 
> "We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth./Now hear, you blissful
powers underground-answer the call, send help./Bless the children,
give them triumph now."

Carol responds:

Which does not change the fact that *modern critics* in general
consider the deus ex machina (not the literal device but the
figurative application of the term) to be a flaw in a modern work of
literature. And I read JKR's epigraph not as the invocation Aeschylus
intended but as an indication that "the children" (HRH) are her heroes
and avengers (even though they shed no blood in the process of
avenging the WW).

Pippin: 
> There were many times in the saga when unlikely coincidence came
into play  and there are some sequences of events which seemed
reasonable at the time but more unlikely in retrospect. How strange 
that Diary!Riddle chose to summon the one power in the castle that
could destroy him, and that Harry unwittingly transferred that power
to Gryffindor's Sword! 
> 
> But the bad guys got their share of dumb luck: Pettigrew's escape
and Fudge's refusal to believe Voldemort's return come to mind.
> 
> Of course the Trio keep making stupid mistakes in DH -- we have to
see that they are favored for their courage and loyalty, not books and
cleverness.  

Carol responds:

That's an interesting reading though not the only possible way of
looking at it. I see some of the instances you mention (e.g.,
Wormtail's escape, which was brought about in part through Harry's
mercy) as the unintended consequences of our choices. Good intentions
result in evil and evil intentions result in good throughout the
series. But not all coincidences in the series and particularly in DH
necessarily illustrate a theme or motif. For example, Aberforth
apparently *just happened* to be looking into the mirror when Harry
needed help. Did Albus Dumbledore do something to that mirror, which
Aberforth just happened to buy from Mundungus, when Albus explained to
Aberforth how the mirror worked, as he must have done? Is it some
extension of "Help will always come at Hogwarts to those who ask for
it" (which seems to mean, "Help will usually come to Harry when he
asks for it and once to Neville when he doesn't ask")? Or is it all
just coincidence--nothing to do with courage, as far as I can see, and
everything to do with "sheer dumb luck," to quote McGonagall (I hear
Maggie Smith saying the words and can't remember whether they were
also in the book version of SS/PS).
> 
Carol earlier: 
> > Her failure to define Dark magic clearly and consistently is, IMO,
one such failure. 
> 
> Pippin:
> 
>  You seem to be treating Dark Magic as if it had to have some
> defining characteristics in order to be a valid category. That's
> probably what Aristotle would have said. But  psychologists say
> Aristotle was wrong: that's not the way the mind categorizes
information. <snip>
> The mind categorizes by association, not logic. The wizards, who
> aren't known for their logic in any case, do not have to have a
> technical or logically consistent definition of dark magic in order
to use the category.

Carol responds:

I'm not talking, necessarily, about the WW having a consistent
definition of the term, though I would expect the experts to agree on
what it means, and surely the students should be taught in DADA what
they're fighting against. (Snape's metaphor for the Dark Arts as a
many-headed monster is poetic (does he secretly read Greek mythology?)
but not particularly helpful in actually defining the concept. But I
meant that *JKR* fails to provide the reader with a useful definition.
If the mind works by association (and I'm not disputing associational
psychology though I think association is only one mental process, and
no one has figured out exactly how the mind works or whether all minds
work in the same way) then perhaps Dark magic is the magic associated
with Salazar Slytherin and the members of his House or (how's this for
a circular definition?) Dark magic is the magic performed by Dark
Wizards? Not helpful, right? Even Voldemort occasionally performs a
spell that is not, in itself, Dark (such as creating the bubble that
encloses Nagini) and even Harry, our hero, sometimes performs spells
that we've been taught are the Darkest of the Dark except for AK
(which can also, as Snape shows, be used for the greater good.
(Sidenote: I'd like to know whether Molly Weasley and any other "good
guy" who killed a DE at the Battle of Hogwarts used AK. What's all the
duelling for if the only spells in the arsenal of the good guys and
the bad guys are Stupefy and AK? Where are all those wonderful Dark
spells that Bellatrix bragged about knowing in OoP? What were the good
guys using when they didn't Stun their opponents or Disarm them?)

I'm saying, and you probably disagree with me, that it's JKR's
responsibility to distinguish between Dark and Light magic. What is
it, exactly, that James Potter, that arrogant little bully, was so
opposed to? If only we could have seen those spells that Mulciber cast
or tried to cast that Lily objected to as Dark so we could distinguish
them from, say, using Scourgify (normally a household cleaning spell)
on an unarmed opponent so that he chokes on the soap bubbles or
Levicorpus, which can't be Dark because darling James uses it and is
thought funny by students in all Houses (except its inventor when it's
turned on him)?

Forgive me for desiring consistency in both definitions (even
definition by example would help as we have few curses that are
defined as Dark and most if not all of them are at some point used by
a good guy). What principle, what distinguishing characteristic,
defines a Dark spell (or potion)? Sure, using your idea of
association, I can come up with my own ideas--I'm pretty sure that the
potion and accompanying spells that Wormtail performs in the
churchyard in GoF are Dark and that Nagini is Dark, but my having to
arrive at my own definition, which no doubt differs from that of other
readers, remains, IMO, a flaw in the books. The author has the
responsibility, again IMO, to establish a clear and consistent
morality in the books, and in this instance, defining what is and is
not Dark magic is part of that morality. And to start out by having
the reader think that certain spells are ignoble (DD can perform them
but is, according to McGonagall, too noble to do so) and then having
the hero perform some of those same ignoble spells cannot be called
consistent and, at the least, causes confusion and disagreement among
readers.
> 
Pippin:
> IMO, what needs to be consistent in the portrayal of evil is not the
logic of classifying evil acts but the mental revulsion associated
with them. Readers may cheer at the crucio, reading it as a blow
against evil. But AFAIK, no one cheered when Harry said "I see what
Bellatrix meant. You have to really mean it." 

Carol responds:

I'm not so sure. Harry, the hero, feels no revulsion during or after
casting the Crucio, and McGonagall calls it "gallant" (and no, I don't
for a moment accept the alternate definitions you proposed earlier for
that adjective, which is associated in the minds of young readers
familiar with that old-fashioned word as entirely good (think little
James's idea of chivalry). Nor do I recall any reaction whatever from
the bystanders when Harry made his remark about Bellatrix's comment,
as if he now understands something a teacher has told him ("I see now
what Professor Snape meant when he said that you had to pay attention
to the directions on the board"). A lot of readers felt revulsion (and
anger) when Harry cast that Crucio, lowering himself to Amycus's level
when neither he nor anyone else was in danger simply for the
satisfaction of punishing Amycus. The problem, for me, is that *Harry*
didn't feel it, and neither did anyone else in the scene that we know
of. (Note, too, the tingling sense of power and control that fills
Harry as he casts the Imperius Curse. I, as an adult reader, see how
that sense of power could become addictive to someone like Mulciber,
the Imperius specialist, or to the Crouches, but Harry fails to note
its significance. As for child readers, it probably went right by them.)

Pippin: 
> The crucio is put in its place as evil when we're reminded that it's
Bellatrix's signature spell. Not to mention that it would be hard for
any British schoolchild to develop positive associations with
something called "the cruciatus curse" in any case. <snip>

Carol:

But what is *Harry* doing casting a sadist's signature spell and not
even regretting it? And unless a child is familiar with words such as
"excruciating" or "crucify," do you really think that the term itself
(as opposed to its effects, which have been frequently described)
would prevent them from "developing positive associations" with it?
Remember Ginny referring to Sectumsempra, which Snape himself calls
Dark magic and which could have caused Draco to bleed to death,
"something good"? And Harry, knowing that it's Dark magic, tries to
use it on Snape (whom he admittedly considers a murderer, but how is
he better than Snape if he resorts to Snape's own Dark magic in an
attempt to make Snape bleed to death--a fate he escapes by easily
deflecting Harry's spell only to suffer the same fate at the fangs of
Nagini). 

As far as I can see, Harry never does come to any conclusion about
what Dark magic is and why his father had such an aversion to it and
whether he should share that aversion.

Pippin:
>  I don't think surprising us by allowing us to make false
assumptions and then contradicting them is a flaw, in the sense that
the author has some obligation not to do that. In a story where much
depends on the meaning and use of categories, especially stereotypes,
it makes sense that the author would like to show us how our minds
play tricks on us.

Carol responds:
Yes and no. Obviously, the detective story elements of the plot, with
the carefully planted red herrings, and the whole Snape arc, depend on
the reader's making false assumptions (or at least having doubts as to
where Snape's loyalties lit). But that's not the same as being
inconsistent, saying one thing in one book and another thing in
another. (See the ongoing discussionof the Fidelius Charm, for
example.) Or take wands. Yes, she's trying to build on what Ollivander
told Harry in SS/PS, that the wand chooses the Wizard (it was, of
course, Lily wand that chose her and not the other way around) and
that a Wizard will never have such good results with another Wizard's
wand, an idea that's partially borne out by Neville's experience with
his father's wand and Harry's with the Snatcher's wand and Hermione's
with Bellatrix's in DH but only partially elsewhere (Ron has no
particular difficulties with Charlie's wand until it gets broken). In
DH we get the new information about wand loyalty, but we're also told
by Ollivander that any wizard can use any wand if he's any wizard at
all. (All three wands that Harry snatches from Draco send out Stunning
Spells together even though only Draco's has been "won" from him, but
the Snatcher's wand won't work for him at all.) My impression is that
she hasn't thought it out. it's not our minds playing tricks on us;
it's JKR not being completely consistent and not rereading her earlier
books.

I reiterate that the author of a series has an obligation to reread
the previous books and attempt to avoid any inconsistencies. Wand
properties are crucial and should be written in her notes, along with
the passages in the books that refer to them. The effects of a spell,
such as Impedimenta, should not vary from book to book. (It's as if
she gave Ron blue eyes in one book and brown eyes in another, only on
a more complex level.)
> 
> Pippin
> who screamed out loud on learning that the term "Flint" has made it
into the annals of history
> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/8359

Carol:
Screamed in delight or screamed in horror? (Sorry; I don't have time
to look up the relevant post.)

Carol, who still wants to hear what others have to say about flaws in
plot structure, preferably supported by solid evidence and canon citations





From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 01:15:46 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 01:15:46 -0000
Subject: Why so long for the last Horcrux? & the Nagini factor
In-Reply-To: <001501c8d84b$dc90c0c0$2a7deacd@YOUR37E34C38B1>
Message-ID: <g4mi02+3h3j@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183559

> > kennyg1864 wrote:
> > I just discovered that *Harry's* death was to be the 7th H:
>
> > DD: "He seems to have reserved the process of making
> > Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths.
>
> >  I am sure that he was intending to make his final
> > Horcrux with your death." (HBP, ch 23)
>
> > However, this doesn't change that LV waited almost 35 years,
> > since he didn't know of the Prophecy until 1980.
> 
>
> Jerri responded:
> 
> "Maths again!"
> 
> <snip> 
>  That aspect of the books is one I have to just let roll 
> by with a "it's just a book/series" shrug, rather than 
> try to analyze or try to make things fit.

Mike:
I don't think I even have to get my plot-hole filler out for this 
one. Let's see.

Riddle had gotten his hands on the Horcrux book and learned how to 
make them before that chat with Slughorn. At least that's what 
Dumbledore surmised according to Harry. <DH, p.103> Personally, I 
surmised that Riddle had made his first Horcrux before that chat. 
There is no canon for this, only JKR interview info, which I don't 
count as canon. But it fits the mold; if Riddle was already armed 
with the Horcrux info when he went to find his father and was already 
a powerful enough wizard to effectively employ an AK, I think he was 
also able to make his first Horcrux from his fathers murder.

My second postulation is that Riddle didn't manage a second Horcrux 
until Hepzibah Smith's death, when he got his hands on the two 
founder objects. Just a guess, but I thought he'd made the Hufflepuff 
cup into one from the H-puff decendent's death.

That's only two Horcruxes by the time he leaves Britain on his dark 
arts exploration quest, which lasted for around ten years. Did he 
make any, some, or all of the other 3 Horcruxes during this time? We 
have no way of knowing. Based on his appearance at his interview with 
Dumbledore, ca Jan 1947, my guess would be that LV made at least one 
more during these 10 years. 

But I surmised that he didn't yet make all of them. Harry noted LV's 
appearance during his Pensieve visit of DD's memory as: 

"His features were not those Harry had seen emerge from the great 
stone cauldron almost two years ago.They were not as snake-like,... 
and yet he was no longer handsome Tom Riddle." <HBP, p.441>

Since these physical changes seem to be driven by making Horcruxes, 
it stands to reason that LV had more than one more to make from the 
time of the DD interview until the resurrection in GoF. And though he 
was no longer the handsome TR from the H. Smith memory, he doesn't 
seem to have made a whole 4 more transformations by the time of the 
DD interview.

This is a long way of saying that I don't think LV waited 35 years 
between Hx-5 to his attempt at Hx-6. I think he made at least one and 
possibly two more Horcruxes between the DD interview in 1947 and that 
fateful evening in Holloween 1981.

As to kennyg's DD quote above, I think DD was making a guess here and 
was only partially correct. Which is another way of saying he was 
wrong. It appears that LV would have been happy to make Horcruxes 
from significant deaths, but based on his use of the Muggle Frank 
Bryce's death to make Nagini!Crux, for LV the play was the thing. He 
may have been intending to make that Horcrux with Harry's death, but 
when that didn't happen he used the next convenient death to make 
that one. 

If Carol and I are right, the Prophesy was made then told to LV at 
the time of Harry's conception, around Holloween 1979. This seemed to 
be when LV decided to divest himself of his Horcruxes and have them 
hidden away. This guess is based on *who* he gave his Horcruxes to. 
One to Bella and one to Lucius, meaning he waited until this 
generation of DEs came onboard before he started handing them out. He 
hid the locket himself, around this time. Best guess is that he hid 
the Diadum, which he probably picked up and Horcruxified during those 
10 years of travel, during that DD interview. No idea when he hid the 
Ring in the Gaunt hovel.

Which brings us to his last Horcrux and my final speculation.

Hermione, reading from the Horcrux book, told us that a Horcrux can 
flit in and out of it's encasement if someone gets emotionally close 
to it. That's what happened to Ginny in CoS. LV seemed to be 
emotionally close to Nagini, and only Nagini, enough so that this 
Horcrux could have been flitting out to inhabit LV's body. 

There's no way to guess what might happen when his own soul piece 
flitted into his own body. Did it try to possess it like the Diary 
soul piece possessed Ginny? Was it trying to rejoin with it's *home* 
soul piece? 

Since the Diary soul piece reflected the Riddle at the time of it's 
encasement (16-year-old Tom), did this piece take on the 
characteristics of the deformed, pain-ridden, fetal Baby!Mort of the 
time when it was made? Was this piece more deranged than the already 
deranged Voldemort, having survived for those 13 years without it's 
mind? And if so, could the flitting in and out of this piece have 
been a factor in the stupidification of the LV in DH that I and many 
other percieved?

Just a few speculations.

Mike




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 03:07:10 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:07:10 -0000
Subject: Why so long for the last Horcrux? & the Nagini factor
In-Reply-To: <g4mi02+3h3j@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4mogu+8qmq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183560

Mike wrote:
> <snip>
> Riddle had gotten his hands on the Horcrux book and learned how to 
make them before that chat with Slughorn. At least that's what 
Dumbledore surmised according to Harry. <DH, p.103> Personally, I 
surmised that Riddle had made his first Horcrux before that chat. 
There is no canon for this, only JKR interview info, which I don't 
count as canon. But it fits the mold; if Riddle was already armed 
with the Horcrux info when he went to find his father and was already
a powerful enough wizard to effectively employ an AK, I think he was
also able to make his first Horcrux from his fathers murder.


Carol responds:

Just for clarification: You think that the diary (the first Horcrux)
was made when Tom was sixteen (based on the age of memory!Tom, who
turns out to be a soul bit), but you think that he waited to make it
till after he had killed his father? Why not make the Horcrux at the
same time as he made the diary, from Moaning Myrtle's soul bit? (Her
death significant as his first murder and the proof that he's the Heir
of Slytherin.)

Obviously, he hadn't made the second Horcrux when he talked to
Slughorn because he was wearing the ring, but once he found out that
more than one Horcrux was (theoretically) possible, surely he went
ahead and made the second Horcrux from the ring, using his father's
murder, so, IMO, he he'd made two when he visited Hepzibah Smith.
(He's not wearing the ring, so he must have already made that second
Horcrux, right?)

Mike: 
> My second postulation is that Riddle didn't manage a second Horcrux
until Hepzibah Smith's death, when he got his hands on the two founder
objects. Just a guess, but I thought he'd made the Hufflepuff cup into
one from the H-puff decendent's death.

Carol:
Where does the ring Horcrux fit into this picture? And surely, he'd
have used his father's soul for it rather than for the diary, which,
if I understand your argument correctly, is the only Horcrux you think
he'd made at that point?

Mike: 
> That's only two Horcruxes by the time he leaves Britain on his dark
arts exploration quest, which lasted for around ten years. Did he 
make any, some, or all of the other 3 Horcruxes during this time? We
have no way of knowing. Based on his appearance at his interview with
Dumbledore, ca Jan 1947, my guess would be that LV made at least one
more during these 10 years. 

> But I surmised that he didn't yet make all of them. Harry noted LV's
appearance during his Pensieve visit of DD's memory as: 
> 
> "His features were not those Harry had seen emerge from the great 
stone cauldron almost two years ago.They were not as snake-like,...
and yet he was no longer handsome Tom Riddle." <HBP, p.441>
> 
> Since these physical changes seem to be driven by making Horcruxes,
it stands to reason that LV had more than one more to make from the 
time of the DD interview until the resurrection in GoF. And though he
was no longer the handsome TR from the H. Smith memory, he doesn't 
seem to have made a whole 4 more transformations by the time of the DD
interview.
> 

Carol responds:

I agree that he clearly made at least one more and probably more than
that between the murder of Hepzibah and the DADA interview to alter
his appearance so significantly. But I disagree about the number of
Horcruxes he'd made at the time of the DADA interview.

The first Horcrux (the diary, made at Hogwarts) seems to have made no
perceptible difference in his appearance except an occasional red
gleam in his eyes, perceptible in Memory!Tom in CoS. (I can't remember
whether we see the red gleam in the Slughorn memory or not.) The
second (the ring, made at Hogwarts or soon after, probably shortly
after the Slughorn interview in his sixth year) seems to have made him
slightly thinner and paler, but this change only enhanced his good
looks, as we see in the Hepzibah chapter. (The red gleam also appears
when he looks at the cup and the locket.)

The third Horcrux would logically have been made (as you say) using
Hepzibah's murder (only you call that the second Horcrux, leaving out
the ring for some reason): she was the owner of the cup (and locket)
and an heir of Helga Hufflepuff, so her soul bit is "significant". I
think he must have made that Horcrux immediately, having both a soul
bit and an appropriate object at hand. Whether he was too excited by
having Slytherin's locket in his possession to wait to make the fourth
Horcrux, we don't know, but if he used a Muggle tramp as JKR says in
her interview, that must be the case. (Canon itself doesn't tell us.)

Why did Tom disappear at this time? Did he think that he might be
suspected as the murderer despite framing Hokey? I don't think so.
What about the thief, surely the same person, if it wasn't Hokey? It
seems that neither Mr. Borgin and Mr. Burke nor the Smith family
suspected him. There was no hue and cry about the theft, nor was it
associated with his disappearance. I think he could have stayed if he
had so chosen, getting away with both theft and murder through his own
slipperiness, if not for one small detail that gave everything away:
the third (cup) and probably the fourth (locket) Horcrux altered his
appearance so drastically that Dark Artifact experts like Mr. Borgin
and Mr. Burke would strongly suspect or even *know* that he had stolen
those valuable objects and made them into Horcruxes. Stolen, highly
valuable objects in combination with a suspicious death supposedly
committed by an aging House-Elf *and* the greatly altered appearance
of their brilliant and once-handsome young clerk? No wonder Tom
Riddle, now irretrievably Lord Voldemort, left town. (IMO, of course.)

Mike:
> This is a long way of saying that I don't think LV waited 35 years 
between Hx-5 to his attempt at Hx-6. I think he made at least one and
possibly two more Horcruxes between the DD interview in 1947 and that
fateful evening in Holloween 1981.

Carol responds:

At that point there's something like a ten-year gap, during which he
was surely searching for and may have found the Ravenclaw tiara.
Whether he had made this fifth Horcrux when he applied for the DADA
position, I don't know. I think not, based on the alterations that had
not happened yet. (Not as snakelike as he would later be.) And what he
was doing during those years, aside from "consorting with the worst of
our kind" (clearly not Grindelwald, however) and gathering a few of
his former school "friends" as the first few Death Eaters, I can't say.

But then he disappears from sight *again*, not to surface till ca.
1970, some fourteen years or so later and wages VWI for eleven years.
I doubt that he made another Horcrux during that time. The Voldie who
appeared on the scene ca. 1970 (having probably been gathering DEs and
other followers, willing and otherwise, before that time, probably
looked exactly as he did at Godric's Hollow, so snake-faced and scary
looking that he terrified a child who, at first, thought that he was
wearing a costume. 

We know what happened after that--Vapor!mort, possession of Quirrell,
Vapor!mort again, Fetal!mort, and a last Horcrux, not counting Harry's
scar, made using the soul bit from Frank Bryce's murder: Nagini. That
Horcrux does not affect his appearance, which quite possibly couldn't
be any less human than it already is. When he regains his body, he
looks, apparently, exactly as he did on the night of Godric's Hollow,
before he lost not one but two more soul bits (one entering Harry's
open cut and the other, eventually, encased in Horcrux!Nagini).

I didn't mean to go into so much detail. I agree that there are huge
gaps in Voldemort's history and we can't be exactly sure when each was
made. But my guess is that the first two, the diary and the ring, were
made while he was still at school; the next two, the cup and the
locket, very soon if not immediately after Hepzibah Smith's murder;
the diadem some indefinable time after the DADA interview but before
VW1. The others--Nagini and the Scarcrux--we know about.

It's not quite what I originally thought, but, oh, well. It's the best
I can do based on the canon we have now, supplemented by an
uncanonical (IMO) interview.

I don't have any comments at the moment on the rest of the post, but I
may come back to it. This response is too long already.

Happy Fourth, Mike and anyone else who celebrates this uniquely
American holiday!

Carol, heading off to watch the fireworks on TV because it's too hot
to watch them live





From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 03:13:10 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:13:10 -0000
Subject: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <g4m2st+7ckq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4mos6+1r9o@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183561

> Pippin:
>  You seem to be treating Dark Magic as if it had to  have some
> defining characteristics in order to be a valid category. That's
> probably what Aristotle would have said. But  psychologists say
> Aristotle was wrong: that's not the way the mind categorizes information. 
> 
> Take rock music as an example: The Beatles are a rock group and The
> White Album is a rock album.  But  Revolution No 9 is probably not
> what most of us think a rock song sounds like. Still,  it doesn't
> invalidate the categorization of the Beatles or the album. People
> don't listen to  No 9 and get  confused about how rock is supposed to
> sound, even if they know nothing at all about music theory. And they
> don't develop trouble imagining or recognizing The Beatles sound. 

Montavilla47:
The Beatles are sometimes categorized as "Pop" and they are 
sometimes categorized as "Rock."  I'm not sure if that helps or 
hinders your point.  

When I look at their body of work and what has been recorded about
them, what I see is a group that took in every influence that it could,
combined it with their sound (and George Martin's considerable
producing skill) to make something that became the gold standard.

For example, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is obviously 
influenced by Dylan's stuff.  And of course, there's all that Ravi
Shankar sound in the later years.

Pippin:
> The mind categorizes by association, not logic. The wizards, who
> aren't known for their logic in any case, do not have to have a
> technical or logically consistent definition of dark magic in order to
> use the category.
> 
> IMO, what needs to be consistent in the portrayal of evil is not the
> logic of classifying evil acts but the mental revulsion associated
> with them. Readers may cheer at the crucio, reading it as a blow
> against evil. But AFAIK, no one cheered when Harry said "I see
> what Bellatrix meant. You have to really mean it."
> 
> The crucio is put in its place as evil when we're reminded that it's
> Bellatrix's signature spell. Not to mention that it would be hard for
> any British schoolchild to develop positive associations with
> something called "the cruciatus curse" in any case. 

Montavilla47:
I suppose the main danger is that the British Schoolchildren will
emulate the wizards in developing (or perpetuating) their fuzzy
logic.  

If JKR had written this book about musicians rather than wizards,
and I was expected to side with the rockers and reject the ways of 
the pop singers, I would expect her to lay out the differences 
between rock and pop.  And, if Harry suddenly singing pop 
songs, I'd expect his rocker friends to either question his taste or
go, "Hey, that sounds groovy.  Maybe we ought to rethink our
differences!"

Otherwise I might just finish the book wondering if there really
is a difference between rock and pop and why everyone made
such a fuss about it in the first place.

Because I remember them doing that.

Pippin:
> Similarly, the evil of slavery is vaguely defined as a concept, but
> made clear by association: the characters, without exception, are
> happiest when they can choose for themselves, even if what they want
> is bad for them (or us.) 
> 
> (Side note, for this Independence Day: If none of the Founders
> were really okay with slavery, would that mean  that they never, ever
> wondered if a slave would bring them a snack? )

Montavilla47:
I expect they would simply ask for one.  Or a servant (since they
had those, too).  Ah, the good old days.

Of course, most of us are probably as hypocritical.  We don't like
global warming, either.  But that doesn't stop me from thinking
about taking my car to work.

But in a series that was described by its author as talking about
the evils of excess carbon emissions, I'd find it odd that the hero,
after vanquishing the evil gas producers jumped into his sports
car and drove off into the sunset.

Pippin:
> Back in Book One, Ollivander said  that the wand chooses the wizard,
> and let us know that wizards may have more than one wand. He
> remembered Lily choosing her first one. He never said that once a wand
> chooses you, it's yours for life. But many readers took that as given,
> based perhaps on similar motifs in folklore and fiction.

Montvilla47:
This isn't my issue, but I don't think people are upset because wands
can change allegiance.  I think what upsets people is how complicated
and convoluted the whole Elder Wand story was.

That and Dumbledore setting Snape to get killed by Voldemort for 
a wand he doesn't control.*

*That would be my issue.







From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sat Jul  5 03:52:04 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:52:04 -0000
Subject: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <g4mos6+1r9o@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4mr54+faa9@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183562

> Montavilla47:

> If JKR had written this book about musicians rather than wizards,
> and I was expected to side with the rockers and reject the ways of 
> the pop singers, I would expect her to lay out the differences 
> between rock and pop.  And, if Harry suddenly singing pop 
> songs, I'd expect his rocker friends to either question his taste or
> go, "Hey, that sounds groovy.  Maybe we ought to rethink our
> differences!"
> 
> Otherwise I might just finish the book wondering if there really
> is a difference between rock and pop and why everyone made
> such a fuss about it in the first place.
> 
> Because I remember them doing that.

Magpie:
Well, yeah. There are these random lines about hating characters 
because they're drawn to the Dark Arts when Dark Arts don't really 
seem to be a problem at all. And it doesn't seem like it's supposed 
to be hypocritical at all. And it's not like "Dark Arts" isn't 
obviously supposed to refer to something bad. it's not asking so much 
to expect that the author has a clear idea of what she means when she 
says it.

And I think she does, based on stuff she says. It's just not a really 
technical idea, imo. She refers to hexes and curses as being dark 
magic, but obviously often finds it admirable when some characters 
use it. I think when she has a character not like the Dark Arts it's 
supposed to refer to some vague thing that goes along with the bad 
qualities that character has.

I also don't think that Harry's reference to Bellatrix's lesson 
wasn't cheer-worthy. It's the action hero quip that caps off putting 
the bad guy in its place. Did it remind me that this was Bellatrix's 
spell and so in some way not a good thing for Harry to use? Not at 
all. I thought the line was just more coolness on Harry's part. 

 
> Pippin:
> > Similarly, the evil of slavery is vaguely defined as a concept, 
but
> > made clear by association: the characters, without exception, are
> > happiest when they can choose for themselves, even if what they 
want
> > is bad for them (or us.) 
> > 
> > (Side note, for this Independence Day: If none of the Founders
> > were really okay with slavery, would that mean  that they never, 
ever
> > wondered if a slave would bring them a snack? )
> 
> Montavilla47:
> I expect they would simply ask for one.  Or a servant (since they
> had those, too).  Ah, the good old days.

Magpie:
I don't even understand the connection. Whether anybody ever wondered 
about a slave bringing them a sandwich, they weren't characters in a 
book that uses that as part of its happy ending last line that shows 
that all the troubles are over.

Of course, some of the signers of the Declaration were okay with 
slavery, or okay with it enough. If you own a slave, you're probably 
somewhat okay with it. Like Harry. 

> 
> Pippin:
> > Back in Book One, Ollivander said  that the wand chooses the 
wizard,
> > and let us know that wizards may have more than one wand. He
> > remembered Lily choosing her first one. He never said that once a 
wand
> > chooses you, it's yours for life. But many readers took that as 
given,
> > based perhaps on similar motifs in folklore and fiction.
> 
> Montvilla47:
> This isn't my issue, but I don't think people are upset because 
wands
> can change allegiance.  I think what upsets people is how 
complicated
> and convoluted the whole Elder Wand story was.
> 
> That and Dumbledore setting Snape to get killed by Voldemort for 
> a wand he doesn't control.*
> 
> *That would be my issue.

Magpie:
My problem's got nothing to do with thinking your wand could never be 
taken from you or used by anyone else. We see people using other's 
wands--but yes, previously it did seem to be established that your 
wand chose you and that was it. I think there was still openings for 
new information about a wand being taken--I just wouldn't have 
assumed it to be happening all the time.

For me it's the obvious value that comes out on top. We start out 
with a quasi-romantic relationship of a wand choosing a wizard due to 
things they have in common, a common desire to learn etc. Then that's 
wiped out by the outclause that if you overpower a person and take 
their wand you own it more. Power wins because that's what was 
apparently needed for Harry to win on a technicality (Draco disarmed 
Dumbledore first, and Harry already happened to yank his wand out of 
his hand earlier). That's not just a little thing that can be thrown 
in without affecting the earlier version. It had to go and now it's 
gone. You only have that first relationship with your wand if 
nobody's every grabbed it from you. Then it will transfer its loyalty 
to the more powerful wizard. 

-m




From beatrice23 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 14:25:10 2008
From: beatrice23 at yahoo.com (Beatrice23)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:25:10 -0000
Subject: AU (was Re: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a ...
In-Reply-To: <ca3.35c8d2c7.359fe15f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <g4o086+df02@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183563

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Meliss9900 at ... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 7/4/2008 2:56:09 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
> willsonkmom at ... writes:
> 
> <One of the best moments reading DH with my son was just after we  
> <discovered Colin Creevey had died. "Wasn't he Muggleborn?" I  
asked.
> 
> <My son thought a moment, "Hey, he shouldn't have been at  
Hogwarts! 
> <Just, think, if J. K. Rowling had a better memory, Colin  would 
still 
> <be alive today."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Actually IIRC Colin wasn't attending Hogwarts during the school  
year.  He 
> arrived with the others to fight at the end.  Or at least  that's 
what I always 
> figured had happened.
>  
> Melissa
> 
Beatrice:  While it is possible that Colin arrived with other 
members of the DA, I think that there are also two possibilities:

1.  That Colin was attending school - McGonnagall actually addresses 
him and Peakes in the Great Hall during the evac and tells them both 
to leave.  Which sounds to me like he was among the students and 
came down from the tower to hear the announcements.  In this case it 
might be a filk UNLESS....

2.  Colin only ever mentions his father when he discusses his home 
life.  I think that he indicates that his father is a postman or a 
milkman?  There is no mention of a mother, so his mother may have 
been a witch and either died or left Colin and Dennis (I think it is 
important to mention that there are two boys in the same family with 
magical abilities as it is unusual to have a muggleborn with magic 
powers, but to have TWO in the same house seems like either one 
parent is / was a witch or wizard or perhaps the father is a 
squibb).  At any rate there is probably enough room here to say that 
the Creeveys could have documented a wizarding parentage in some 
fashion...

Anyway it isn't a definitive response, but there is a possibility 
that it isn't a mistake just that JKR knows more of the back story 
here than is revealed in the novels.




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sat Jul  5 16:47:44 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:47:44 -0000
Subject: AU (was Re: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a ...
In-Reply-To: <g4o086+df02@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4o8jg+8quj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183564

Beatrice:
> Anyway it isn't a definitive response, but there is a possibility 
> that it isn't a mistake just that JKR knows more of the back story 
> here than is revealed in the novels.

Magpie:
I've always thought the two Creevey Muggleborns were a bit odd, but I 
think they are definitely Muggleborn. That's important in CoS. Colin is 
attacked by the Basilisk. I think Dean is the only student we know of 
who thinks he's Muggleborn but really isn't according to JKR. I think 
it's just a flint that Colin's at school. Even if he had a secret 
magical parent like Dean the DEs wouldn't know that--Dean's not at 
school because he's thought to be Muggleborn. Colin's officially 
Muggleborn too.

-m





From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 17:43:40 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:43:40 -0000
Subject: AU (was Re: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a ...
In-Reply-To: <g4o8jg+8quj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4obsc+shmi@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183565

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie" <sistermagpie at ...> wrote:
>
> Beatrice:
> > Anyway it isn't a definitive response, but there is a possibility 
> > that it isn't a mistake just that JKR knows more of the back story 
> > here than is revealed in the novels.
> 
> Magpie:
> I've always thought the two Creevey Muggleborns were a bit odd, but I 
> think they are definitely Muggleborn. That's important in CoS. Colin is 
> attacked by the Basilisk. I think Dean is the only student we know of 
> who thinks he's Muggleborn but really isn't according to JKR. I think 
> it's just a flint that Colin's at school. Even if he had a secret 
> magical parent like Dean the DEs wouldn't know that--Dean's not at 
> school because he's thought to be Muggleborn. Colin's officially 
> Muggleborn too.
> 
> -m

Montavilla47:
My guess would be that it's a compound flint.  That JKR made Colin
a muggleborn in CoS because she needed him to be petrified.  But,
then she introduced Dennis, she forgot that Colin was muggleborn
and so gave him a wizarding brother.

That reminds me:  Whatever happened to Justin Finch-Fletchley?  I
don't think he ever made another appearance after CoS.  Do you 
suppose his parents actually took him out of school upon learning
that he had spent several months as a statue?






From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 18:00:09 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:00:09 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4mr54+faa9@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ocr9+4cm8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183566

--- "sistermagpie" <sistermagpie at ...> wrote:
>
> >....
> 
> Magpie:
> ... There are these random lines about hating characters 
> because they're drawn to the Dark Arts when Dark Arts don't
> really seem to be a problem at all. ... it's not asking so 
> much to expect that the author has a clear idea of what she 
> means when she says it.
> 

bboyminn:

Well, there is part of the problem; first, you are assuming
what is and what isn't 'Dark Arts'. You say 'Dark Arts don't
really seem to be a problem at all...' but what are you 
referring to? Do you mean Harry's use of an Unforgivable?

If so, do you have proof that Unforgivables are truly 
classified as Dark Arts? Certainly they are bad, but does
that automatically make them 'Dark Arts'? 

There is the downfall of most, you are assuming certain things
are Dark Arts when really you have nothing but your opinion to
back that up. Do the books specifically say what is and what
isn't classified as a Dark Art? 

Was Harry using an Unforgivable a good thing? No, it was 
certainly a bad thing and a wrong thing, but it was those things
within a certain context. Harry was provoked, not just by the
incident with McGonagall, but through years of continued
oppression, abuse, and cruelty. Further, he was in an unusual 
situation. He was in the very heart of the lion's den. He was 
in a sufficiently dangerous situation, having invaded Hogwarts, 
that virtually any action could be justified against people who
would have killed him and his friends in a heartbeat. 

> A.... 
> 
>  
> 
> > 
> > Pippin:
> > > Back in Book One, Ollivander said  that the wand chooses
> > > the wizard, and let us know that wizards may have more 
> > > than one wand. He remembered Lily choosing her first one.
> > > He never said that once a wand chooses you, it's yours 
> > > for life. ...
> > 
> > ...
> 
> Magpie:
> ...
> 
> ... We start out 
> with a quasi-romantic relationship of a wand choosing a wizard
> due to things they have in common, a common desire to learn 
> etc. Then that's wiped out by the out-clause that if you 
> overpower a person and take their wand you own it more. Power
> wins because that's what was apparently needed for Harry to 
> win on a technicality (Draco disarmed Dumbledore first, and 
> Harry already happened to yank his wand out of his hand 
> earlier). That's not just a little thing that can be thrown 
> in without affecting the earlier version. It had to go and 
> now it's gone. You only have that first relationship with 
> your wand if nobody's every grabbed it from you. Then it will
> transfer its loyalty to the more powerful wizard. 
> 
> -m
>

bboyminn:
First - Harry /already/ yanked WHOSE wand out of WHOSE hand
/earlier/? 

The problem with this discussion is the people keep thinking
that wands operate with clearly defined logic and against a
set of clearly defined rules. They do not. 

Ollivander with his many years of experience, and a long
ancient family history of wand making doesn't full understand
this aspect of wands. That makes it clear that it is not cut
and dried. 

People always question how the DA club could train without
their wands constantly changing allegiance. But those training
session are voluntary. The attacker has no real intent to 
defeat, and the attacked has no real intent to be defeated. 

Further, let's go to an even more extreme example. Let's say
that two opposing wizards duel. One wizard absolutely crushes
and defeats the other, then simply turns and walks away 
leaving the defeated wizard and defeated wand together. 

Will the allegiance instantly change hands? Will the defeated
wizard lose a degree of power in his wand? I don't think so.
I think the defeated wand will have an affinity for the 
defeating wizard, but if he doesn't claim his prise, if he 
doesn't claim the spoils of war, then the wands allegiance
gradually drifts back to it's original owner. 

He might have some downturn in the quality of his spell work,
but I think gradually as it becomes clear that the defeating
wizard has relinquished all claims, his spell work would
return to normal. The wand would retain its affinity for its
original owner. 

Notice that Harry didn't just borrow Draco's wand, he 
forcefully took it from Draco and kept it for his own use.
I suspect, if he had taken Draco's wand, used it for what he
needed in the moment, the tossed the wand aside. It would 
have retained its affinity to Draco. 

Further Harry has a path of logic that says Draco defeated
Dumbledore, I (Harry) defeated Draco, which, in turn, makes
me that Master of the Elder Wand. Yes, Harry thinks that,
but does he or we know it for a fact. Maybe, as so often
happens, Harry simply got lucky and defeated Voldemort by
accident. 

Maybe rather than switching allegiance to Draco or in 
Voldemort's mind, to Voldemort via break in to Dumbledore's
tomb and/or defeating/killing Snape, the wand simply kept 
its allegiance with Dumbledore, and since Harry was clearly 
friends with and bend on avenging Dumbldore, the wand 
merely had sympathy for Harry; sympathy, not allegiance.

My point after all this rambling, is that there is no precise
logic or clear set of rules for wands changing allegiance.
Consequently, it doesn't and won't make sense to us who try
to find the logic or define the rules. This is magic at its
deepest, and if you read Ollivander's statements on the matter,
they are very vague and imprecise.

Hey...I'm just saying.

Steve/bluewizard 






From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sat Jul  5 18:47:42 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:47:42 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4ocr9+4cm8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ofke+13be@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183567

> > Magpie:
> > ... There are these random lines about hating characters 
> > because they're drawn to the Dark Arts when Dark Arts don't
> > really seem to be a problem at all. ... it's not asking so 
> > much to expect that the author has a clear idea of what she 
> > means when she says it.
> > 
> 
> bboyminn:
> 
> Well, there is part of the problem; first, you are assuming
> what is and what isn't 'Dark Arts'. You say 'Dark Arts don't
> really seem to be a problem at all...' but what are you 
> referring to? Do you mean Harry's use of an Unforgivable?

Magpie:
I'm referring to stuff that I have reason to think actually are Dark 
Arts. Unforgivables are taught in DADA--defense against the Dark 
Arts. I was actually referring to JKR describing hexes and curses as 
dark arts on her website as well, with curses being darker than hexes 
etc. Sectumsempra is also said to be dark magic by its creator and 
Harry uses it twice. (I would also include the creation of Inferi and 
Horcruxes under Dark Arts.)

But the fact that we can't assume that a curse to torture somebody is 
a dark art is exactly why we're all wondering about it. The fact that 
you can bring up Harry's use of a curse called unforgivable which the 
kids are taught about in a class about Defense against the DARK ARTS 
that is made purely to torture somebody, a favorite of DEs and say 
maybe they don't qualify because Harry did it and Aurors have used 
it...sounds like the Dark Arts are pretty poorly defined. Which is 
what it seems like in canon. But I think the canon I'm using (though 
some of it is website) to figure out what JKR would describe as the 
Dark Arts makes sense. 

Steve: 
> Was Harry using an Unforgivable a good thing? No, it was 
> certainly a bad thing and a wrong thing, but it was those things
> within a certain context. Harry was provoked, not just by the
> incident with McGonagall, but through years of continued
> oppression, abuse, and cruelty. Further, he was in an unusual 
> situation. He was in the very heart of the lion's den. He was 
> in a sufficiently dangerous situation, having invaded Hogwarts, 
> that virtually any action could be justified against people who
> would have killed him and his friends in a heartbeat. 

Magpie:
So it's not Dark because Harry had a lot to be upset about. Snape 
created Sectumsempra under similar duress, I think he would say. But 
if the Dark Arts are actual Arts that include specific spells I don't 
see why that would change due to how Harry felt and how justified he 
was for wanting to sadistically enjoy hurting someone for a moment. 
Why can't he just want to use a Dark Art in some instances? Are the 
Dark Arts just forever some unknown and undefined thing so that Harry 
and James can disapprove of their enemies' obsession with and 
anything they might do is totally different? Maybe, but it's 
understandable why some of us then find the whole concept of Dark 
Arts a little useless in that case. 



> > Magpie:
> > ...
> > 
> > ... We start out 
> > with a quasi-romantic relationship of a wand choosing a wizard
> > due to things they have in common, a common desire to learn 
> > etc. Then that's wiped out by the out-clause that if you 
> > overpower a person and take their wand you own it more. Power
> > wins because that's what was apparently needed for Harry to 
> > win on a technicality (Draco disarmed Dumbledore first, and 
> > Harry already happened to yank his wand out of his hand 
> > earlier). That's not just a little thing that can be thrown 
> > in without affecting the earlier version. It had to go and 
> > now it's gone. You only have that first relationship with 
> > your wand if nobody's every grabbed it from you. Then it will
> > transfer its loyalty to the more powerful wizard. 

> bboyminn:
> First - Harry /already/ yanked WHOSE wand out of WHOSE hand
> /earlier/? 

Magpie:
Harry already yanked Draco's wand out of Draco's hand before facing 
Voldemort and has become its master.

Steve:
> 
> The problem with this discussion is the people keep thinking
> that wands operate with clearly defined logic and against a
> set of clearly defined rules. They do not. 

Magpie:
Sometimes, they do. Actually, usually they do. DH spends a lot of 
time showing us wands switching allegience if they're "won" and not 
switching allegience if they're not. Harry has a whole speech 
explaining how he's got the hawthorn wand at the at the end. It's not 
a mystery, it's explained very straightforwardly. As opposed to when 
Harry's wand fights against Voldemort on its own. That's an example 
of a wand not following clearly defined rules. Wands switching 
allegience to the person who won them is not--however Ollivander says 
it's complicated to incorporate the earlier idea.

Steve:> 
> People always question how the DA club could train without
> their wands constantly changing allegiance. But those training
> session are voluntary. The attacker has no real intent to 
> defeat, and the attacked has no real intent to be defeated.

Magpie:
But in DH we have plenty of examples where there was an intent to 
defeat and the wands switch allegience. Easy as that. 

Steve: 
> 
> Further, let's go to an even more extreme example. Let's say
> that two opposing wizards duel. One wizard absolutely crushes
> and defeats the other, then simply turns and walks away 
> leaving the defeated wizard and defeated wand together. 
> 
> Will the allegiance instantly change hands? 

Magpie:
You have divest the person of their wand. If he's still holding it or 
he just drops it it won't. If you disarm him it will. There is a 
logic to the wand switching in DH. Ollivander's statements aren't 
really that vague or imprecise. He makes them sound that way with 
references to things being complex, but what he actually says is 
striaghtforward and is demonstrated to be straightforward throughout 
the book.

Could there be loopholes? I'm sure there could be. But none shown so 
far. There's nothing particularly confusing in what we see. With all 
that information I don't see why I would say "But maybe Harry's 
wrong" about being the master of the wand in the end. Unless I just 
wasn't satisfied and wanted to make up something better.

-m




From iam.kemper at gmail.com  Sat Jul  5 19:04:19 2008
From: iam.kemper at gmail.com (kempermentor)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:04:19 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4ocr9+4cm8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ogjk+u3s7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183568

>> Magpie:
>> ... There are these random lines about hating characters
>> because they're drawn to the Dark Arts when Dark Arts don't
>> really seem to be a problem at all. ... it's not asking so
>> much to expect that the author has a clear idea of what she
>> means when she says it.

> bboyminn:
> Well, there is part of the problem; first, you are assuming
> what is and what isn't 'Dark Arts'. You say 'Dark Arts don't
> really seem to be a problem at all...' but what are you
> referring to? Do you mean Harry's use of an Unforgivable?
>
> If so, do you have proof that Unforgivables are truly
> classified as Dark Arts? Certainly they are bad, but does
> that automatically make them 'Dark Arts'?
>
> There is the downfall of most, you are assuming certain things
> are Dark Arts when really you have nothing but your opinion to
> back that up. Do the books specifically say what is and what
> isn't classified as a Dark Art?

Kemper now:
There seems to be a bit of heat in this argument...
As to this last question: Yes.  Snape labels his spell (sectumsempra)
as a Dark Art.  Though he uses it 'for good' as we seen through
Snape's memories... which just goes to prove Magpie's point that Dark
Arts really aren't a big deal.  This is a bit disappointing when
looking at HBP's the Flight of the Prince who in his last lesson tells
Harry not to use any Unforgivables: some bad Dark Arts as inferred in GoF.

Moody!CrouchJr seems to present the Unforgivables as a Dark Art in the
class Defense Against the Dark Arts.

But again, the Dark Arts are only Dark Arts if for the self and not
for the greater good.  

::sigh:: I wish there were some Light Arts.

Kemper




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 20:38:51 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:38:51 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4ocr9+4cm8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4om4r+h59j@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183569

> bboyminn:
> Well, there is part of the problem; first, you are assuming
> what is and what isn't 'Dark Arts'. You say 'Dark Arts don't
> really seem to be a problem at all...' but what are you 
> referring to? Do you mean Harry's use of an Unforgivable?
> 
> If so, do you have proof that Unforgivables are truly 
> classified as Dark Arts? Certainly they are bad, but does
> that automatically make them 'Dark Arts'? 

> There is the downfall of most, you are assuming certain things
> are Dark Arts when really you have nothing but your opinion to
> back that up. Do the books specifically say what is and what
> isn't classified as a Dark Art? 

Montavilla47:
Well, that's the problem isn't it?  We don't know what 
the Dark Arts are, and yet we're given--twice, I believe--
Jame's "hatred for the Dark Arts" as his saving grace.

We have Lily making a distinction between James'
high-spirited hexing of people and Mulciber's "evil"
use of Dark Magic against Mary McDonald.  She isn't
talking about his intent.  She's talking about the type
of magic he used.

We're given Snape's love of the Dark Arts as something
that is--if not worse--certainly questionable about his
personality.  Of course, I don't see any real evidence 
that Snape "loves" the Dark Arts.  But, apparently, the
evidence that Sirius gives--of Snape knowing more
hexes and curses than any one else is reason enough
to target him.

bboyminn:
> Was Harry using an Unforgivable a good thing? No, it was 
> certainly a bad thing and a wrong thing, but it was those things
> within a certain context. Harry was provoked, not just by the
> incident with McGonagall, but through years of continued
> oppression, abuse, and cruelty. 

Montavilla47:
But not at the hands of Amycus.  That's really like saying that
if Draco were beaten by his father, he would be justified in 
torturing Harry for being rude to Narcissa in Madame Malkins.

bboyminn:
>Further, he was in an unusual 
> situation. He was in the very heart of the lion's den. He was 
> in a sufficiently dangerous situation, having invaded Hogwarts, 
> that virtually any action could be justified against people who
> would have killed him and his friends in a heartbeat. 

Montavilla47:
No, they would not have killed him in a heartbeat.  They were 
under strict orders (as Harry was aware) *not* to kill him, but 
to summon Voldemort.  Which had already happened at that
point.






From catlady at wicca.net  Sat Jul  5 21:04:11 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:04:11 -0000
Subject: strangle hand / slavery / genetics / Mulciber
Message-ID: <g4onkb+612r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183570

SSSusan wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183537>:

<< I couldn't help but think, "Man, Voldy, you ARE one cruel dude!" I
mean, putting a curse like that on the silver hand of the one who
assisted him in his resurrection? Who CARES what Wormtail's motives
were; he did it. And to put such a curse on the "reward" and not warn
Wormtail openly? Well, it *was* very "Voldemort" of him. >>

Yes, *very* Voldemort of him -- too pleased with his own cleverness to
care about practicalities. If he killed off every servant who had even
one momentary wavering thought of disobedience, soon to be suppressed
if the servant lived a moment longer, he would have no servants left.
I believe he really wants to kill people (and destroy things) more
than he wants to live forever or rule countries.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183556>:

<< (Side note, for this Independence Day: If none of the Founders
were really okay with slavery, would that mean that they never, ever
wondered if a slave would bring them a snack? ) >>

As someone already replied, wouldn't they have ordered someone to
bring them a snack rather than wondering? It seems to me that
wondering would apply to if they were a guest in a house, they would
wonder if their hostess would send them a snack i.e. order a slave to
bring it to them.

For what, if anything, it's worth, Thomas Jefferson wrote somewhere
that he expected the justice of Providence to strike Americans down as
punishment for slaveholding, but he would never have hesitated to
order a weary slave to wake up and fix him a meal.

Beatrice wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183563>:

<< (I think it is important to mention that there are two boys in the
same family with magical abilities as it is unusual to have a
muggleborn with magic powers, but to have TWO in the same house seems
like either one parent is / was a witch or wizard or perhaps the
father is a squibb). >>

If the inheritance of magic were simple ordinary Mendelian genetics,
then clearly magic is the recessive allele m and Muggle is the
dominant allele M. The witches and wizards are homozygous double
recessive mm, and clearly the parents of Muggle born witches and
wizards must be heterozygous Mm. Each offspring of a pair of
heterozygotes has one chance in four of being double recessive. That's
not bad odds for having more than one Muggleborn witch or wizard from
the same parents.

Montavilla47 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183569>:

<< We have Lily making a distinction between James' high-spirited
hexing of people and Mulciber's "evil" use of Dark Magic against Mary
McDonald. She isn't talking about his intent. She's talking about the
type of magic he used. >>

I'm probably just ignorant, but it really never occured to me that
Lily was objecting to the *type* of magic Mulciber used. I thought she
was objecting that whatever Mulciber had done to Mary was not a
temporary injury quickly and totally cured by Madam Pomfrey. My dirty
mind suggested that Mulciber had put a spell on Mary to make her have
sex with him (and maybe several of his friends) but I can't think how
Snape would have excused that as 'it was funny'. Maybe he enspelled
her to fail an OWL exam in her best subject.





From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 22:18:30 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:18:30 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4om4r+h59j@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4orvm+pivg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183571

---  "montavilla47" <montavilla47 at ...> wrote:
>
> ...
> 
> bboyminn:
> > Was Harry using an Unforgivable a good thing? No, it was 
> > certainly a bad thing and a wrong thing, but it was those
> > things within a certain context. ...
> 
> Montavilla47:
> But not at the hands of Amycus.  That's really like saying that
> if Draco were beaten by his father, he would be justified in 
> torturing Harry for being rude to Narcissa in Madame Malkins.
> 

bboyminn:

Not at the hands of Amycus, but only because Amycus never got
the chance. Given his treatment and torture of students for
minor infractions, which Harry was well aware of and therefore
constitutes /part/ of the provocation, Amycus would have
tortured Harry or anyone else in a blink. 

Further, Amycus is a willing and eager participant in the
torture and murder of random people, and in the overthrow
of the duly elected and/or appointed government. I would
say that random torture, murder, sedition, and open revolt
put this person in the realm of a terrorist. And as such,
a policy of shoot first and ask questions later would not
be out of order. 


> bboyminn:
> > Further, he was in an unusual  situation. He was in the 
> > very heart of the lion's den. He was in a sufficiently 
> > dangerous situation, having invaded Hogwarts, that 
> > virtually any action could be justified against people who
> > would have killed him and his friends in a heartbeat. 
> 
> Montavilla47:
> No, they would not have killed him in a heartbeat.  They were 
> under strict orders (as Harry was aware) *not* to kill him, 
> but to summon Voldemort.  Which had already happened at that
> point.
>

bboyminn:

OK, let me amend that then, Amycus would have directly and
actively conspired to cause Harry's death, and would have
easily and casually killed any student, teacher, parent, or
random person that he thought threatened him in even the
slightest way.

No matter how you slice it and dice it, this was an incredibly
dangerous man with many equally dangerous accomplices, in an
incredibly desperate situation (Voldemort has been called). 

I just don't see how Harry could have possible been in a more
dangerous and potentially deadly situation. Consequently, I
say, rules of war are in force. You see the enemy; you shoot
him, no questions asked. 

Further more, as I have pointed out several times before,
Harry did not extend the 'torture'. It lasted two seconds
and wasn't repeated. He did what he had to do and stopped.
I find it hard to believe that some one can be hurt within
any definition of torture when it only lasts 2 seconds and 
is only done once. No matter how painful, that just doesn't
fall into the realm of torture in my book.

Back on the issue of wands; yes, we hear Harry's explanation
of events (regarding the transfer of the Elder Wands 
allegiance), but we actually don't see any indication or 
proof that he is right. 

Since Draco never touches the wand, we get no chance to see
Draco demonstrate the power of the wand in his hands. We
know Voldemort has the wand, but he also feels it is not
delivering on the spectacular abilities it promised. We never
see Snape use the wand, so we don't know if the allegiance
transferred to him when he killed Snape. Harry and the 
narrative suppose not. But we don't get to see. 

Neither do we really get to see Harry us the wand to its
fullest. He does repair his original wand, but was that
because he was the Master, or was it merely that the wand
was sympathetic to Harry. 

Did the black thorn wand (isn't the the one he previously
obtained from Ron?) not work for Harry because he was not
its Master, or was it simply because the wand was 
UNsympathetic to Harry. 

By 'sympathetic' or 'unsympathetic', I am merely referring to
the general compatibility between wizard and wand. It's the
'wand picks the wizard' in varying degrees. Harry is
probably more compatible, though not totally, with Hermione's
wand, so it works well for him. He is more compatible with
Ron's wand, though again not totally, so Ron's wand works for
him. Obviously, Harry was completely incompatible with the
black thorn wand. 

So, are we seeing allegiance, or lack thereof, or are we 
simply seeing an unsympathetic incompatibility between wand 
and user? Remember Harry is not the Master of Herione's wand
nor Ron's wand, yet the work acceptably well for him. 

In a sense, it doesn't matter, Harry simply needs to believe
it in that moment in order to make Voldemort believe it and
therefore let his guard down. Voldemort lets his guard down,
and that lets Harry into his mind, into his thoughts. If 
Harry is in Voldemort mind, then he can predict when the 
final spell is coming, and he can cast his simultaneous
counter curse. Perhaps, that simultaneous counter curse was
all that was necessary for Harry to win, and the rest was
just a good story that Harry made up to calm his fears.

Certainly, I could be wrong, but I could be right too,
because, while we have in-book speculation, we see no 
confirming action.

Hey...it's just a thought.

Steve/bboyminn





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul  5 23:30:16 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:30:16 -0000
Subject: AU (was Re: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a ...
In-Reply-To: <g4o086+df02@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4p068+2mrg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183572

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Beatrice23" <beatrice23 at ...> wrote:

> Beatrice:  While it is possible that Colin arrived with other 
> members of the DA, I think that there are also two possibilities:
 
> 1.  That Colin was attending school - McGonnagall actually addresses 
> him and Peakes in the Great Hall during the evac and tells them both 
> to leave.  Which sounds to me like he was among the students and 
> came down from the tower to hear the announcements.  In this case it 
> might be a filk UNLESS....


zanooda:

If you believe JKR's interviews (because not everyone does :-)), she
said that Colin was not attending Hogwarts. She answered this question
 in the Web Chat last July. Her exact words were: "Colin wasn't a
student. He sneaked back with the rest of the DA, along with Fred,
George and the rest. He ought not to have stayed behind when
McGonagall told him to leave, but alas - he did". 





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 00:01:30 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:01:30 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4orvm+pivg@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4p20q+bdpd@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183573

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:

> Voldemort lets his guard down,
> and that lets Harry into his mind, into his thoughts. If 
> Harry is in Voldemort mind, then he can predict when the 
> final spell is coming, and he can cast his simultaneous
> counter curse. 


zanooda:

But didn't Harry loose his link to LV's mind when the soul bit inside
him perished? I thought Harry and LV didn't have the direct link
anymore during the last confrontation. Maybe they were connected for
so long that Harry just knew LV well enough to guess when he was going
to strike. But I don't think Harry could get into LV's mind anymore,
without the soul-bit.




From kersberg at chello.nl  Sat Jul  5 17:36:44 2008
From: kersberg at chello.nl (kamion53)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:36:44 -0000
Subject: AU (was Re: Hedwig's death (Was: 23, Malfoy Manor/What a Book)
In-Reply-To: <g4lv80+jauv@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4obfc+o8gd@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183574

---  "potioncat"  wrote:

> One of the best moments reading DH with my son was just after
> we discovered Colin Creevey had died. "Wasn't he Muggleborn?"
> I asked.

> My son thought a moment, "Hey, he shouldn't have been at
> Hogwarts! Just, think, if J. K. Rowling had a better memory,
> Colin would still be alive today."

> OK, no more sweet, reading with my son stories.  ;-)

Kamion replies:
You're correct that Colin was not supposed to be at Hogwarts as
being Muggleborn, but in the Battle of Hogwarts neither was Cho
Chang, who graduated - for as much there were graduations that
year - the year before. Colin as well as Cho responded to the
messages sent out through the coins of Dumbledore's Army, sent
by Fred and George and only returned at that critical moment
to Hogwarts, with fatal complications for Colin. Needless to
say his death was a completely unneccesary one and it baffled
me what purpose it served.



From catlady at wicca.net  Sun Jul  6 03:51:28 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:51:28 -0000
Subject: Are we being too critical? (was: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue))
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0806271704o4a8b8815i99f015763e7bf26@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g4pfg0+8ps8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183575

Lynda Cordova wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183487>:

> I have a good friend who refuses to go to any of Shakespeare's
> plays because she has a problem with the way he lived his life.
> To her that negates any great poetry/playwriting he did, although 
> she recognizes he had great talent. 

I wonder how she could object to Shakespeare's personal life, when
there is strong disagreement as to who Shakespeare was. 

The page
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92236768>
contains text of an article about people wonder who wrote those
Shakespeare plays and audio of an article about people who believe
that the Earl of Oxford wrote those plays.




From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 05:35:46 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:35:46 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4p20q+bdpd@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4plji+4v1o@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183576

---  "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
>
> ---  "Steve" <bboyminn@> wrote:
> 
> > Voldemort lets his guard down, and that lets Harry into 
> > his mind, into his thoughts. If Harry is in Voldemort mind,
> > then he can predict when the final spell is coming, and he
> > can cast his simultaneous counter curse. 
> 
> 
> zanooda:
> 
> But didn't Harry loose his link to LV's mind when the soul 
> bit inside him perished? I thought Harry and LV didn't have
> the direct link anymore during the last confrontation. 
> 
> Maybe they were connected for so long that Harry just knew
> LV well enough to guess when he was going to strike. But I
> don't think Harry could get into LV's mind anymore,
> without the soul-bit.
>

bboyminn:

Very interesting point. The actual connection isn't crystal 
clear but it is implied.

"The moment, he (Harry) knew, was seconds away."

"Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could
/feel/ the curs coming, feel it building inside the wand 
pointed at his face."

I assumed that the connection was still working and that
part of Harry's plan was to make Voldemort lose control
to the extent that he telegraphed his final move.

Though perhaps without the Soul-Fragment in Harry, a
degree of connection between them was maintained by Harry's 
blood. That seems a bit of grasping at straws.

Or, if we are to believe the last quote above, maybe Harry, 
as Master of the Elder Wand, was drawing a sense of Voldemort's
intent from the wand. Though that shoots down my theory in
spades. 

Still though, Harry clearly seems to have an intuitive sense
of Voldemort's intent, whether it is pure intuition, the
blood connection, some residual remnant of the soul piece, or
blind dumb luck, something seems to be there.

Again...very interesting point.

Steve/bboyminn




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Sun Jul  6 06:59:26 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008 23:59:26 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Are we being too critical? (was: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue))
In-Reply-To: <g4pfg0+8ps8@eGroups.com>
References: <43e41d1e0806271704o4a8b8815i99f015763e7bf26@mail.gmail.com>
	 <g4pfg0+8ps8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807052359o498376ebn367e0834e0f293d7@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183577

I wonder how she could object to Shakespeare's personal life, when
there is strong disagreement as to who Shakespeare was

-----------

Lynda:

You know about that, and I know about that, but my friend hasn't bothered to
take step one to find out anything more than what was told her as a
teenager/young woman. She's heard tidbits of the theories of course, but
she's made up her mind and it will take a lot of jarring to uncork that
bottle.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From leahstill at hotmail.com  Sun Jul  6 09:37:30 2008
From: leahstill at hotmail.com (littleleahstill)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:37:30 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4orvm+pivg@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4q3or+1o14@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183578

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:
>> OK, let me amend that then, Amycus would have directly and
> actively conspired to cause Harry's death, and would have
> easily and casually killed any student, teacher, parent, or
> random person that he thought threatened him in even the
> slightest way.
> 
> No matter how you slice it and dice it, this was an incredibly
> dangerous man with many equally dangerous accomplices, in an
> incredibly desperate situation (Voldemort has been called). 
> 
> I just don't see how Harry could have possible been in a more
> dangerous and potentially deadly situation. Consequently, I
> say, rules of war are in force. You see the enemy; you shoot
> him, no questions asked. 

Leah: Except that Harry didn't 'shoot' him.  If you're happy with 
Harry using Unforgiveables, then an AK would actually have made more 
sense in that it would have removed Amycus permanently as a danger.  
If we're talking about Hary responding as a soldier to a 'dangerous 
and potentially deadly situation' then he did probably the worst 
thing he could, inflaming an enemy without taking him out of the 
action on a temporary or permanment basis. If McGonagall hadn't been 
there too, Harry could have been in some 
trouble. 'Stupefy', 'Petrificus 
Totalus, 'Expelliarmus', 'Incarcerous' would all have been far more 
effective in disabling Amycus and allowing him to be removed as an 
active participant in battle. Harry merely indulged an impulse to 
cruelty, which did nothing to Amycus once the curse stopped. (note 
that when Harry is Crucio'd at the end of HBP he immediately resumes 
his pursuit of, and attack on, Snape.    

> 
> Further more, as I have pointed out several times before,
> Harry did not extend the 'torture'. It lasted two seconds
> and wasn't repeated. He did what he had to do and stopped.
> I find it hard to believe that some one can be hurt within
> any definition of torture when it only lasts 2 seconds and 
> is only done once. No matter how painful, that just doesn't
> fall into the realm of torture in my book.

Leah: I assume that stubbing out a cigarette on a child only takes 
about two seconds. Ir's still torture. Harry can only have been  
Crucio'd in the Forbidden Forest for a very short time before Snape 
stepped in, but Rowling's description is of agonising pain. I would 
like to have read the reader reaction if Snape had said, "Carry on 
with that, Amycus (or whoever), as long as it's only for a little 
while, it's not torture".  As to Harry, he did not do 'what he had 
to do'.  As pointed out above, he had a number of options, all of 
which would have been more effective than the curse he employed.

My concern here is not to excuse Amycus, who is indeed a 
thoroughly nasty piece of work, but with Harry's eagerness to put 
himself, however briefly, on the same level and with the eagerness 
of the author (either in person or through McGonagall) and some of 
the readership to excuse him on the grounds that what Harry does has 
to be right. 
Leah     




From sartoris22 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 04:01:26 2008
From: sartoris22 at yahoo.com (sartoris22)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:01:26 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4p20q+bdpd@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4pg2m+thdp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183579

> zanooda:
>
> But didn't Harry loose his link to LV's mind when the soul bit
inside
> him perished? I thought Harry and LV didn't have the direct link
> anymore during the last confrontation. Maybe they were connected for
> so long that Harry just knew LV well enough to guess when he was
going
> to strike. But I don't think Harry could get into LV's mind anymore,
> without the soul-bit.

Were all of Harry's Voldermort-like powers due to his being a
horcrux? For example, is that why Harry can talk to snakes? Or did
Lily's love cause some transfer of powers that had nothing to do with
Harry being a horcrux? By the way, why is Harry a horcrux if
Voldermort didn't intend it? If that is explained in the book, can
someone point me to the page-hardcover edition. I've reread Harry's
train station sene with Dumbledore, but I didn't find it.

sartoris22





From only4yahoogroups at gmail.com  Sun Jul  6 10:10:54 2008
From: only4yahoogroups at gmail.com (only4groups2008)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:10:54 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4q3or+1o14@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4q5ne+lpsk@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183580

>
> Leah: I assume that stubbing out a cigarette on a child only takes
> about two seconds. Ir's still torture. Harry can only have been
> Crucio'd in the Forbidden Forest for a very short time before Snape
> stepped in, but Rowling's description is of agonising pain. I would
> like to have read the reader reaction if Snape had said, "Carry on
> with that, Amycus (or whoever), as long as it's only for a little
> while, it's not torture".  As to Harry, he did not do 'what he had
> to do'.  As pointed out above, he had a number of options, all of
> which would have been more effective than the curse he employed.
>
> My concern here is not to excuse Amycus, who is indeed a
> thoroughly nasty piece of work, but with Harry's eagerness to put
> himself, however briefly, on the same level and with the eagerness
> of the author (either in person or through McGonagall) and some of
> the readership to excuse him on the grounds that what Harry does
has
> to be right.


Can I say that I totally, totally agree with this post.

The one thing which defeats me about the Harry Potter books is that
Harry, apparently, can do no wrong.  Harry can use unforgiveable
curses, but that's fine.  Harry can treat people as he has been
treated and hated himself, but that's fine, he will still do it with
other people.  (Sirius also suffered from this, as per his treatment
of Kreacher).

On the other hand, put such behaviour into the hands of, say, the
Malfoys, and this brands them totally evil, rotten to the core etc
etc.

For the first three books I enjoyed the characters as a whole, from
Order of the Phoenix onwards I got increasingly tired of Harry
himself, and his attitude and behaviour.  By the end of the series I
didn't like him at all.

Apparently it is fine for Harry to sneer, attack, be totally rude
(for example to Narcissa Malfoy in Half Blood Prince), but not for
anyone else to do it.

It spoils the books for me.  I think J K Rowling took a wrong turn
about half way through the series.  I am sad that some readers seem
to have taken that turn with her.

Kate




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 13:11:52 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:11:52 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4q5ne+lpsk@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4qgao+ril5@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183581

Kate:
<SNIP>
> Apparently it is fine for Harry to sneer, attack, be totally rude
> (for example to Narcissa Malfoy in Half Blood Prince), but not for
> anyone else to do it.

Alla:

Who advanced this argument?

Kate:
> It spoils the books for me.  I think J K Rowling took a wrong turn
> about half way through the series.  I am sad that some readers seem
> to have taken that turn with her.


Alla:

J.K. Rowling took a wrong turn half way through the series... I guess 
the wrong turn would be that she told the story that she wanted to 
tell and not the story that some readers wanted her to tell. I 
believe that this is a sign of a good writer and courageous writer, 
who listens to her inner voice and not to everybody else.

Oh, and yes, I am one of the readers who have taken that "wrong" turn 
with her. But please do not be sad about me at least. I am quite 
fine, thank you. 

For years when I participated in Snape/Harry debates, I absolutely 
refused to think that people who think that how Snape treats Harry 
and Neville support child abuse in RL or some rubbish like that. 
Because I thought that cheering for fictional character means just 
that cheering for fictional character.

But apparently it is quite all right to think that people who 
**understand** not excuse, mind you, **understand** why the teenager 
who just listened to nasty stories of what Amicus did to his fellow 
students, who already had watched his nearest and dearest fall in the 
battle, who saw Neville's scars, and who watched Amicus spat on his 
head of the house and could not cope with this seeming nothing, but 
IMO last drop, apparently it is quite all right to think that 
sympathizing with what this teenager did, somehow reflect poorly on 
the readers.

Not in my opinion. 

Alla




From only4yahoogroups at gmail.com  Sun Jul  6 13:32:16 2008
From: only4yahoogroups at gmail.com (only4groups2008)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:32:16 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4qgao+ril5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4qhh0+rgna@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183582


>
> Alla:

>
> Oh, and yes, I am one of the readers who have taken that "wrong"
turn
> with her. But please do not be sad about me at least. I am quite
> fine, thank you.
>



Thank you for illustrating so finely, with just the amount of sneers,
exactly what my post said.

How kind of you to do that.

If you want to prefer whinging, whining, Harry - who behaves in no
better fashion than his so called 'enemies', that's fine.

Personally I prefer fan fiction these days.

At least in fan fiction people are allowed to change.  In JK
Rowling's
world, despite the fact of two wizarding world wars, x-number of
years
down the line, the same Weasley who sneered at Draco Malfoy and
branded
him at 11 years old, behaves in exactly the same manner with Draco's
11
year old son.

There is therefore little point in the whole series of books.
Nothing
changed.  And probably nothing changed because 'our hero' Harry, was
little different from Voldermort, in behaviour and thought.


Kate



From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 13:41:06 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:41:06 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4qhh0+rgna@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4qi1i+fhi3@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183583

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "only4groups2008" 
<only4yahoogroups at ...> wrote:
>> Thank you for illustrating so finely, with just the amount of 
sneers,
> exactly what my post said.
> 
> How kind of you to do that.
> 
> If you want to prefer whinging, whining, Harry - who behaves in no
> better fashion than his so called 'enemies', that's fine.

<SNIP>



Alla:

You misunderstood. I take no issue whatsoever with you condemning 
Harry or any other characters, I take a huge issue with you 
condemning readers who like Harry or for any other viewpoints, really.

It is fun to defend characters, but readers just simply should not be 
defended in my opinion, since readers have right to think anything 
about the characters and not to be insulted for that. And when I am 
told that readers who understand what Harry did support torture in 
RL, you bet I will take offense. (No, you did not say that, it is 
from the post few days ago).

Topic of the discussion are books, not readers after all.




From leahstill at hotmail.com  Sun Jul  6 14:31:59 2008
From: leahstill at hotmail.com (littleleahstill)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:31:59 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4qgao+ril5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ql0v+dcrf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183584

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> Alla:
>
> For years when I participated in Snape/Harry debates, I absolutely 
> refused to think that people who think that how Snape treats Harry 
> and Neville support child abuse in RL or some rubbish like that. 
> Because I thought that cheering for fictional character means just 
> that cheering for fictional character.
> 
> But apparently it is quite all right to think that people who 
> **understand** not excuse, mind you, **understand** why the 
teenager 
> who just listened to nasty stories of what Amicus did to his 
fellow 
> students, who already had watched his nearest and dearest fall in 
the 
> battle, who saw Neville's scars, and who watched Amicus spat on 
his 
> head of the house and could not cope with this seeming nothing, 
but 
> IMO last drop, apparently it is quite all right to think that 
> sympathizing with what this teenager did, somehow reflect poorly 
on 
> the readers.
> 
> Not in my opinion. 
> 
> Alla

Leah: I can understand why Harry acted as he did. That doesn't mean 
that I have to think what he did was right.  Understanding that 
someone was driven to take an action is not the same as condoning 
it.  It is possible to understand why someone is driven to commit 
murder, but it doesn't mean the murder has to be condoned.

I don't think anyone is criticising anyone for 
showing 'understanding' or accusing anyone of supporting torture in 
the real world.  The post I was replying to did not say that Harry 
used Crucio because of his inner suffering.  It set out a military 
motive for his doing so, and stated the poster's opinion that 
Harry's Crucio did not amount to torture. This is providing reasons 
or 'excusing' Harry's action.

Harry used a curse which is apecifically designed to inflict pain, 
nothing else.  I can see that after the events of the past two years 
leading up to that moment, he has been in great stress/danger etc 
and that might all have exploded at that moment.  What I find odd, 
is Rowling, having designated these curses as Unforgiveables and 
having always written in a negative way about them, and indeed 
having made it clear through Harry's own suffering that Cruciatus 
inflicts agonising pain, gives Harry no moment of self-reflection or 
self-doubt, has him praised as 'gallant' etc.  I personally find 
that to be both a moral and literary flaw in the writing, which I am 
entitled to express.   

If readers want to emphasise with Harry at that point, that's 
understandable.  I can emphasise too, up to a point. What strikes me 
as odd is tne number of people who are indeed prepared to excuse 
rather than merely understand the action.  I just wonder if 
this would happen if the character concerned wasn't Harry himself.

Leah 

>





From foxmoth at qnet.com  Sun Jul  6 16:48:08 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:48:08 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4ql0v+dcrf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4qt08+7pcq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183585


Leah: 
  What I find odd, 
> is Rowling, having designated these curses as Unforgiveables and 
> having always written in a negative way about them, and indeed 
> having made it clear through Harry's own suffering that Cruciatus 
> inflicts agonising pain, gives Harry no moment of self-reflection or 
> self-doubt, has him praised as 'gallant' etc.  I personally find 
> that to be both a moral and literary flaw in the writing, which I am 
> entitled to express.   

Pippin:

I always wondered if Rowling, having identified herself as a
Christian, meant to let the Unforgivable designation stand. IMO, she
does not want us to condone what Harry did. She does want us to
forgive him, either  as an adult who eventually would regret what he'd
done, or as a child who knew not what he did.

Harry is a fictional construct. He has no emotions, no self-reflection
or self-doubt, unless the reader imagines them. As a critical reader,
you may distinguish between the feelings the author describes and the
ones you attribute to Harry out of your own experience and
imagination. But the naive reader doesn't do that. 

The naive reader is not going to discount her feelings about  what
Harry did because they are not described in canon. She will assume
that what she imagines Harry feeling is what Harry actually felt. If
the reader imagines that any good person who did such a thing would
regret it deeply afterwards, and as you say, that is the thrust of the
books, then the reader who identifies with Harry will imagine that
Harry regretted it too.

Harry is admonished in canon for having performed a possibly foolish
action, if not a wicked one. The naive reader is going to see that
Harry lost his temper. Blood is described as thundering through his
brain. And the reader already knows that when people lose their
tempers they behave foolishly.

But Harry's remorse must be private. If he judged himself as an adult,
it would be cruel to ask the young reader, who thinks of Harry as a
better, more powerful version of himself, to suffer so. Judged as a
child, which he is by the standards of our world, Harry does not need
to understand the enormity of what he's done before he  can be forgiven. 

Of course, more mature readers who might like to have a child's or a
fictional hero's license to punish evil without worrying about the
consequences can  indulge that pleasure. But it's difficult to look at
the entire series and suppose that JKR thinks the  consequences of
abuse can be safely ignored. 


I think it's really reaching to present this episode as condoning
torture in some way. Notice that this is not '24' -- torture, whether
physical or magical, is *never* presented as an effective way of
getting information. And if JKR wanted us to condone the cruciatus
curse, she'd have called it something else, I'm sure.  I know that
even growing up as a Jewish child, I was vaguely aware that
crucifixion was a bad thing. Perhaps we can agree that the average
British schoolchild is at least as vaguely aware as I was?


Pippin




From HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com  Sun Jul  6 16:57:12 2008
From: HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com (HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com)
Date: 6 Jul 2008 16:57:12 -0000
Subject: Weekly Chat, 7/6/2008, 1:00 pm 
Message-ID: <1215363432.11.6606.m57@yahoogroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183586

Reminder from: HPforGrownups Yahoo! Group
 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/cal

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From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 18:53:14 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:53:14 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4qt08+7pcq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4r4aq+2vet@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183587

> Pippin:
> I always wondered if Rowling, having identified herself as a
> Christian, meant to let the Unforgivable designation stand. IMO, she
> does not want us to condone what Harry did. She does want us to
> forgive him, either  as an adult who eventually would regret what he'd
> done, or as a child who knew not what he did.
> 
> Harry is a fictional construct. He has no emotions, no self-reflection
> or self-doubt, unless the reader imagines them. As a critical reader,
> you may distinguish between the feelings the author describes and the
> ones you attribute to Harry out of your own experience and
> imagination. But the naive reader doesn't do that. 
> 
> The naive reader is not going to discount her feelings about  what
> Harry did because they are not described in canon. She will assume
> that what she imagines Harry feeling is what Harry actually felt. If
> the reader imagines that any good person who did such a thing would
> regret it deeply afterwards, and as you say, that is the thrust of the
> books, then the reader who identifies with Harry will imagine that
> Harry regretted it too.

Montavilla47:
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of the word "naive."  It seems 
to me that a naive reader would assume that Harry is feeling what he 
is described as feeling on the page, and it would take a more
sophisticated reader to go beyond the text and infer that Harry 
will at some later time feel regret for his actions.  And then take
the further step of forgiving him for a regret we don't see him feel.
Wouldn't the naive reader go for the simple reading--that Harry
is justified in his casting the curse?


Pippin:
> Harry is admonished in canon for having performed a possibly foolish
> action, if not a wicked one. The naive reader is going to see that
> Harry lost his temper. Blood is described as thundering through his
> brain. And the reader already knows that when people lose their
> tempers they behave foolishly.

Montavilla47:
I agree that it's a small intuitive leap to know that Harry has lost
his temper.  However, I think--judging from how popular these
moments are when done in, say, movies, that the audience tends
to applaud the sentiment and cheer for the hero when he loses his 
temper.

Heh.  I'm reminded of the moment in Nicholas Nickleby when
Nicholas, forced to stand by as Squeers canes Smike in front of
the student body, finally snaps.  He seizes the cane and whips
Squeers soundly, triggering a riot among the abused students,
who attack Squeers and his family and destroy the school.

Squeers makes Amycus look like Dr. Spock.  He regularly beats
the students, insults them, starves them, and torments them
by letting them know how little their families think of them by
sending them to his school in the first place.  

When Nicholas whips him, it's a supremely satisfying moment.
In the stage production, the audience literally stood up and 
cheered.  

Of course, this being Dickens (who, like JKR, described his
hero as being far from a saint and hot-tempered), there
are consequences from Nicholas's actions, even if Squeers
richly deserved his treatment.  The Squeers family becomes
great enemies of Nicholas and pays him back later.  There
is also a passage about the countryside being "littered" with
the schoolboys for weeks afterwards, begging and stealing
as they try to make their various ways home.  One of them
is found dead.  So, although Nicholas's rage is justified and
the moment is satisfying, we are reminded that the outcome
of violence was more anger and suffering.

But, more usually, these kind of moments are there to 
give a short thrill to the audience and have no ill-effects.
The one I remember (because it came out of nowhere), 
was from A League of Their Own.  The story, about the
all-female baseball league, was set in WWII.  At one point,
a telegram arrives for one of the women on the team,
but the messenger can't find the addressee, and announces
that he will go back to the office to find out who it goes
to.  This means that several of the women (who are 
married) will have to wait to learn which of them is now
a widow.

Instead, the coach (Tom Hanks), grabs the messenger
and demands the telegram.  When the messenger refuses,
Hanks punches him, takes the note, reads it, and hands it
to the unfortunate player, letting her grieve and allowing
the rest of the team to go play the game.

While the moment nicely illustrates the emotional 
experience of learning that your husband has died in war,
the nastiness of the messenger was completely unnecessary
and struck me as being unrealistic.  (Would any telegram
messenger during WWII have treated a war widow so 
callously?)  The rudeness was there in order to provide
a moment when the hero (Hanks) can use fisticuffs
to invoke a sympathetic thrill in the audience.

I believe that JKR was going for a similar moment
in DH, when Harry gives in to his temper.  The problem
is that she set those Unforgivables up to require evil
intent in order to pull off--and she had both Snape
and Bellatrix telling Harry that he wasn't "dark" enough
to use them.  Bellatrix told him that "righteous anger"
wasn't enough to cast Cruciatus.  Snape told him
"No Unforgivables for you!"

We also have Minerva--in the very first chapter of the
first book--making a distinction between Dark Magic
and everything else, by saying that Dumbledore is 
"too noble" to use Dark Magic--like Voldemort, the
arch villain of the series, does.

Pippin:
> But Harry's remorse must be private. If he judged himself as an adult,
> it would be cruel to ask the young reader, who thinks of Harry as a
> better, more powerful version of himself, to suffer so. Judged as a
> child, which he is by the standards of our world, Harry does not need
> to understand the enormity of what he's done before he  can be forgiven. 

Montavilla47:
I don't believe it's cruel for a child to vicarious feel Harry's regret.  That's
one thing stories are for--so that the reader (child or adult) can 
understand the outcomes of actions without having to experience it
directly.

For example:  In Little Women, Jo becomes justifiably angry at Amy for
burning her manuscript.  Her anger leads her to ignore Amy the next
day while they are skating on a frozen river.  Because she doesn't
warn Amy about the thin ice, Amy falls through and nearly freezes
to death.  Afterwards, Jo confesses her guilt to Marmee and the 
reader is allowed to feel every pang of anguish she does as she 
watches over her sister.  

It's not cruel for a child to read that passage.  It's moving and 
intensely emotional.  It both shows the reader the dangers of 
holding anger against another person and power of love and
forgiveness.

We've seen Harry feel regret for past actions.  Not a lot, I'll
admit.  But I recall he feels very bad when Dumbledore asks
why he and Ron stole the flying car.  Was it cruel to ask children
to read that passage?

Pippin:
> Of course, more mature readers who might like to have a child's or a
> fictional hero's license to punish evil without worrying about the
> consequences can  indulge that pleasure. But it's difficult to look at
> the entire series and suppose that JKR thinks the  consequences of
> abuse can be safely ignored. 

Montavilla47:
Of course not.  The consequences of abuse are terrible throughout
the series.  Except when it comes to Harry.  His neglect and abuse
at the hands of the Dursleys only makes him more loving.  At least,
Dumbledore seems to think so (I'm not all that convinced, myself).

And, when it's Harry or his friends doing the abusing, the outcome
seems designed to be funny.  Here are a few examples of "abuse" 
that readers find humorous:  The pig's tail on Dudley that requires
surgery to remove; the hexing of Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle that 
leaves them helpless and "slug" like; the knocking of Snape's head
on the top of the tunnel by Sirius; the comeuppance of Delores
Umbridge at the hands and hooves of the centaurs.
 
Pippin:
> I think it's really reaching to present this episode as condoning
> torture in some way. Notice that this is not '24' -- torture, whether
> physical or magical, is *never* presented as an effective way of
> getting information. And if JKR wanted us to condone the cruciatus
> curse, she'd have called it something else, I'm sure.  I know that
> even growing up as a Jewish child, I was vaguely aware that
> crucifixion was a bad thing. Perhaps we can agree that the average
> British schoolchild is at least as vaguely aware as I was?

Montavilla47:
I think JKR does a truly effective job of setting up the Cruciatus
Curse as a bad thing.  What some of us are having difficulty with
is her then having Harry use it in a moment that is set up for
us to sympathize with its use.  

The moment is not necessary simply to prove that Harry is 
no saint.  I, for one, was quite aware of that much earlier.  Either
she did it for a cheap thrill, or she did it in order to explode 
the moral system she set up in the series.

I can see why she might do either.  DH is filled with exciting
moments like this, and it may have seemed to her like just
another one--not that different from Molly's "bitch" line.

Or, she may have felt it was needed in order to set up
the reader to overlook Snape's casting of Avada Kadavra, which
is also an Unforgivable.  I read many a post pre-DH in which
readers proclaimed that, even if we learned that Dumbledore
wanted Snape to kill him, the mere fact that he used AK is
enough to condemn him forever.  But, if that were her purpose,
then it was unnecessary.  Since DH came out, I've read very
few posts arguing that Snape's action on the tower was 
wrong.  I don't think that's because Harry cast Unforgivables.
I think it was because JKR adequately explained Snape's
reasons for his actions and readers realized that Snape had
carefully considered the options before using such a drastic
measure.

Harry, on the other hand, was simply being self-indulgent.





From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 21:07:17 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:07:17 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4ql0v+dcrf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4rc65+8o44@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183588

Leah: 
I can understand why Harry acted as he did. That doesn't mean
that I have to think what he did was right. Understanding that
someone was driven to take an action is not the same as condoning
it. It is possible to understand why someone is driven to commit
murder, but it doesn't mean the murder has to be condoned.

Alla:

Yes, I also do not think that what he did was right. However, I do 
not believe that understanding what I perceive to be his reasons and 
sympathize with him and not Amicus translates in condoning it. I also 
do not believe that what he did amounts to something as serious as 
murder.
I think it was torture, very brief torture, to me completely 
understandable, and something that Amicus mightily deserved IMO. 
That's all what it was to me.

Leah:
I don't think anyone is criticizing anyone for
showing 'understanding' or accusing anyone of supporting torture in
the real world.

Alla:

I have a different opinion.


Leah:
The post I was replying to did not say that Harry
used Crucio because of his inner suffering. It set out a military
motive for his doing so, and stated the poster's opinion that
Harry's Crucio did not amount to torture. This is providing reasons
or 'excusing' Harry's action.


Alla:

So, that's not readership saying so, right? That's one reader with 
whom by the way I personally completely disagree.  I disagree with 
Harry having military motive for doing so, I disagree that it was not 
torture, I think however brief one, it was. However, again Steve 
provides reasons or excuses actions of fictional character. I also 
provide reasons based on which I understand the actions of fictional 
character. The leap that I would never make is to make a judgment 
about the reader based on his likes or dislikes in fiction.

Look, here is the example that I always use in the similar 
discussions. Say I come to you and tell you that my very favorite 
character in the HP series is Voldemort.
You are not going to tell me in response that it means that my 
inspiration in life is to be the leader of the terrorist organization 
which kills and tortures people, right? 


Leah:
<SNIP>
What strikes me
as odd is the number of people who are indeed prepared to excuse
rather than merely understand the action. I just wonder if
this would happen if the character concerned wasn't Harry himself.

Alla:

Why does it strike you as odd? No seriously, why? Should it strike me 
as odd that number of people who were preparing to excuse rather than 
understand Snape's actions towards Harry and Neville was in my 
opinion huge? And should I wonder whether that would happen if the 
character was not Snape?

I mean, of course I am deliberately making sweeping generalization 
here to make my point. I know a lot of Snape's fans who love Snape 
knowing all his faults and saying that yes he treated kids horribly 
but we still love him because he is a great character. I know a lot 
of Snape fans who gave a reason why he treated kids this way and that 
is why they understand and sympathize with him, etc, etc.

And same here, there are a lot of readers who do not condemn Harry 
for Crucio in that episode. That does not mean that all of the 
readers think it was Cool for Harry to do it.

It does strike me as odd that anyone would make any judgment about 
readers based on what they like or dislike in fiction. The very same 
issue that reader can be very much against in RL in one book reader 
may love and dislike in another.

Like I do not think that Harry asking Kreacher for a sandwich amounts 
to anything horrible. Does it really translate into me supporting 
slavery in RL?  I do not think so.  And while I have no problems 
whatsoever with Harry owning  Kreacher for example, there is a book I 
am preparing to discuss elsewhere, where **one** action of the main 
character where he basically entraps and enslaves another human being 
against his will caused this character to be on the list of the 
characters I cannot stand.  In that book I have no doubts that 
enslaved character a) would rather be elsewhere and b) that it is 
true slavery. 

At the same time when I read "Gone with the wind", I have no issues 
with slavery portrayed there. And again here is a different 
motivation for me. I do not believe that slavery as portrayed there 
is historically correct at all, but in that fictional universe, where 
slaves are treated as family members and do not want to go anywhere 
else, why would I be upset?

Again, I think it is a lie, complete lie, but in this imaginary 
universe I am fine with it, you know?

So we have three books and in each of them I have a different opinion 
about the issue of slavery "in those books" based on many reasons 
while **it does not change my stand on the issue of slavery in RL one 
bit**

What I am trying to say is that I think it is completely risky trying 
to make a judgment about real person based on only knowing this 
person's view about Harry Potter. That is why I usually prefer to 
stick to arguing about the books and not the readers.

Alla





From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 21:08:02 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:08:02 -0000
Subject: Colin Creevey: Flint or not? (was Re: Hedwig's death)
In-Reply-To: <g4p068+2mrg@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4rc7i+flbr@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183589

Beatrice wrote:  
> > While it is possible that Colin arrived with other members of the
DA, I think that there are also two possibilities:
>  
> > 1.  That Colin was attending school - McGonnagall actually
addresses him and Peakes in the Great Hall during the evac and tells
them both to leave.  Which sounds to me like he was among the students
and  came down from the tower to hear the announcements.  In this case
it might be a filk UNLESS....
> 
zanooda responded:
> 
> If you believe JKR's interviews (because not everyone does :-)), she
said that Colin was not attending Hogwarts. She answered this question
 in the Web Chat last July. Her exact words were: "Colin wasn't a
student. He sneaked back with the rest of the DA, along with Fred,
George and the rest. He ought not to have stayed behind when
McGonagall told him to leave, but alas - he did".
>
Carol responds:

Right. McGonagall says, "You, too, Creevey," when she's ordering
underage students to go to the RoR and safety rather than fight. Jimmy
Peakes would be a fifth-year Gryffindor, IIRC, so he's definitely
underage and definitely under her authority. But Colin Creevey is
either no longer a Gryffindor and therefore not bound to takeorders
from someone who's no longer his Head of House or he's a sixth year
and quite possibly of age (nearly three-quarters of the students in
any given year would have their birthdays between September 1 and
mid-May, when the battle apparently takes place).


Either Colin is still at Hogwarts and JKR, having forgotten that he's
a Muggle-born (just as she forgot that his brother Dennis was a
third-year, too young to be in Hogsmeade, in OoP), and JKR is just
covering her tracks in that interview (as she did with Harry's
inability to see thestrals at the end of GoF), or McGonagall is
treating a boy who has not been at Hogwarts all year as if she were
still his Head of House and as if she knows his exact age. (Dumbledore
certainly didn't know Hermione's exact age when he refers to her and
Harry as "two thirteen-year-old Wizards" in GoF, at which point
Hermione has been fourteen for nearly nine months.) 

Would McGonagall know that Colin, one of (at minimum) seventy
Gryffindor students who would normally attend Hogwarts (given ten per
year in a normal year; perhaps seven per year in DH, but that's still
forty-nine Gryffindors) had not yet had his birthday? I doubt it. Most
of the sixth years would be seventeen, old enough to fight, just as
most were old enough to take Apparition lessons in HBP. (Only Harry,
Draco, and Ernie attended NEWT Potions while everyone else took the
exam.) Ginny isn't old enough to fight, but she has a summer birthday,
and her family members are there to make sure she remembers that she's
still sixteen.)

Did JKR confuse Colin with Dennis (who seems to have disappeared from
the story), thinking that *Colin* is underage as Dennis would have
been? Or is she thinking, as she did with James in OoP, that because a
kid is in a given year, he's a given age (fifteen in fifth year;
sixteen in sixth year)? (James was sixteen when SWM happened, given
his March birthday, but he's referred to as being fifteen three times,
and not just by Harry, who *is* fifteen throughout fifth year because
of his July birthday.) How would McGonagall know that he was
underage--unless, perhaps, he'd somehow been at Hogwarts all year
despite being a Muggle-born and was too young to take the Apparition
test in April? And even then, he might have turned seventeen in the
weeks that followed the Apparition test.

IMO, and I'm sure others will argue with me, it's just one more
example of JKR's inability to do maths, her general forgetfulness (of
Colin's year in school in DH and Dennis's in OoP, of Colin's status as
a Muggle-born and, possibly, of Dennis's existence), and of her
lamentable tendency not to check the fictional facts in previous
books. If you have a memory like a sieve, it's best not to trust it.
(I've always thought that because JKR shares a July 31 birthday with
Harry and would not herself have changed her age during a school year,
that she somehow forgets that most people are (technically) a year
older at the end of the school year than at the beginning, whether
their birthday is in September like Hermione's or April like the Twins'.

Another thing: Colin is either seventeen or nearly seventeen and yet
he's "tiny in death"? The Creeveys are very small for their age (their
size is as exaggerated as Hagrid's in the other direction, with Dennis
being so short that when he stands on a chair he's not much taller
than the people sitting next to him), yet they can't have Goblin or
House-Elf blood if they're Muggle-borns. Is Colin *that* late hitting
puberty? (I've seen an occasional normal, healthy fifteen-year-old boy
who still looked like a child and was something like four-and-a-half
feet tall, but never a normal seventeen-year-old boy under, say, five
feet three or four. How "tiny" is Colin, and has JKR forgotten that
he's either a man or very nearly a man by WW standards? Is he still,
in her mind, prepubescent, or has she forgotten that the Creeveys are
Muggle-born and, in her imagination but not on paper, given them
House-Elf or Goblin blood?

BTW, I loved Beatrice's little slip of "filk" for "Flint." As someone
who has called Dumbledore "Voldemort," I know how easy it is to think
one thing and type another. I was wondering which tune we could use to
filk Colin Creevey--maybe some Civil War tune about a boy who goes to
war and never returns--or what's that British poem that ends, "And
never home came he"?

Carol, who expected *Dennis* Creevey to be important after all that
fuss about his falling into the lake and being tossed back into the
boat by the Giant Squid






From bawilson at citynet.net  Sun Jul  6 13:07:38 2008
From: bawilson at citynet.net (Bruce Alan Wilson)
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 09:07:38 -0400
Subject: strangle hand / slavery / genetics / Mulciber
Message-ID: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAq7J8AJNZvxGJq/KbtzLRq8KAAAAQAAAAKYNGdH5Rq02hgM2GdAK61gEAAAAA@citynet.net>

No: HPFGUIDX 183590

Anent wizardling genetics, I've always thought that there wasn't a single gene,
but a set of genes.

1. The gene or genes that allows one to sense magical energies;
2. The gene or genes that allows one to manipulate them;
3. The gene or genes that account for specialized magical abilities, like
metamophomagus, animagus, seer, etc.

If one has 1 & 2, one is a wizardling, and the genes in 3 interact with the ones
in 1 & 2 to produce whatever one's specialized abilities are--and not everyone
even among wizardlings has them.

Squibs may have 1, 2, 3, or 1 & 3.  Those who leave the wizardling world and
marry into Muggle families may pass them on; there are probably any number of
Muggles wandering around carrying partial magical genes, but until/unless they
unite with another such, they won't produce a Muggleborn wizard.  ("Magesport"
is the term I use for such.)

My theory is that mediums, psychics, and the like may have 1.  People who have
extraordinary luck--good or bad--may have 2.

Bruce Alan Wilson

"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.  Other forms of
transport grow daily more nightmarish.  Only the bicycle remains pure in
heart."--Iris Murdoch



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  6 22:38:38 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:38:38 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4r4aq+2vet@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4rhhe+lvek@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183591

Montavilla47 wrote:

<snip most of a lovely post that I agree with>

> I don't believe it's cruel for a child to vicarious feel Harry's
regret.  That's one thing stories are for--so that the reader (child
or adult) can understand the outcomes of actions without having to
experience it directly. <snip lovely example from "Little Women,"
which ought to be required reading for children of both sexes>

Carol responds:

Again, I agree. Most children, BTW, can deal with cruelty in
children's books, whether that cruelty comes from an abusive uncle or
a Dark Wizard. Surely, it's less cruel to expose them to a young hero
making a mistake and regretting it than to expose them to Harry's
suffering from the Cruciatus Curse and the whole ordeal of the
graveyard ritual in GoF. And how are children supposed to learn to
regret their own wrongdoing if their heroes can act wrongly with
impunity? How can they learn forgiveness if their heroes seek
vengeance and suffer no pangs of conscience for so doing?

Montavilla47: 
> It's not cruel for a child to read that passage.  It's moving and 
intensely emotional.  It both shows the reader the dangers of holding
anger against another person and power of love and forgiveness. <snip>

Carol responds:

Exactly. And I can think of no comparable passage in the HP books.
Harry's forgiveness of Ron for deserting him and Hermione comes close
in terms of poignance, but it involves Ron's saving Harry's life.
Harry himself has done nothing wrong (aside from the sheer stupidity
of not taking off the Horcrux before diving in), so he learns no lesson.

Earlier, when Harry quarrels with Ron in GoF and forgives him, there's
no indication that Harry was partly at fault. The same thing occurs
with Seamus in OoP. Harry does the forgiving. There's no indication
that his flying off the handle and calling Seamus's mother a liar
rather than trying to understand her Prophet-generated suspicions and
attempt to explain why she's wrong might have contributed to the
misunderstanding. What is Seamus supposed to think, given Harry's
behavior, except that his mum was right?

Never once does Harry learn a lesson like the one Jo learns. Even when
he briefly regrets his actions, for example, his use of an unknown
spell labeled "for enemies" on Draco, the regret is short-lived and he
learns no lasting lesson. Instead, he resents Snape (who has every
right and every reason to punish him) for making him miss the
Quidditch match and adds Sectumsempra to his arsenal.

He does seem to regret endangering his friends by sending them to the
MoM, but he only feels that regret and that sense of responsibility
when they're again in danger. Or he tries to exclude the friends who
have fought with him against the DEs from his Horcrux hunt, thinking
that he has to face danger alone with delegating responsibility.

Severus Snape regrets his mistakes and spends his adult lifetime
atoning for them. I don't see Harry learning any comparable lessons.
(His forgiveness of Snape, and of Dumbledore, costs him nothing. Both
of them are dead.)

I do see him, near the end, setting aside vengeance and choosing to
sacrifice himself, but I'm not sure that he's learned any moral
lesson. It's more that he does what he knows he has to do to destroy
Voldemort.

At any rate, I agree with Montavilla47: How, exactly, would it be
cruel to young readers for Harry to acknowledge his mistakes,
specifically, the impulse to give Amycus a taste of his own medicine
by stooping to his level when other spells would have been more
effective? Instead, we get the most disturbing message of all:
McGonagall, who has been held up for admiration as strict but fair
(setting aside her obvious belief in the superiority of her own
House), not only labels the Crucio as "gallant" but follows Harry's
lead by using an Unforgiveable herself, probably for the first time in
her rule-bound life.

IMO, it would have been much less cruel to young readers (who *do*
notice such things and, in my experience, are shocked by them) to have
Harry regret his actions than to force them to either reject their
hero as flawed or rationalize his behavior by finding excuses for it.

BTW, to shift gears for a moment, I agree with Alla that we should
stick to the books and not condemn other readers for their reactions.
I, too, see nothing wrong with Harry's hope that Kreacher will bring
him a sandwich, even if he actually requests one. Kreacher will be
happy to honor the request and no doubt offended if Harry sneaks into
the kitchen to make one himself (as if the other House-Elves would
allow him to do so).

As for Harry as "slave owner," how do we know that he doesn't
ultimately give Kreacher the choice of staying at Hogwarts or
returning to 12 GP, if that's where Harry chooses to live? I doubt
that he wants his freedom; I think he'd be insulted by the offer of
clothes. But I see nothing preventing Harry from solving the Kreacher
problem the same way he solved it before, by having Kreacher work at
Hogwarts instead of staying with him. Only this time it could be
worded as a request or even a choice rather than an order.

Carol, who wishes that just once Harry would make a mistake,
acknowledge that mistake, learn from the mistake, and live with the
consequences






From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sun Jul  6 23:41:10 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:41:10 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4rhhe+lvek@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4rl6m+hodk@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183592

Carol:
> As for Harry as "slave owner," how do we know that he doesn't
> ultimately give Kreacher the choice of staying at Hogwarts or
> returning to 12 GP, if that's where Harry chooses to live? I doubt
> that he wants his freedom; I think he'd be insulted by the offer of
> clothes. But I see nothing preventing Harry from solving the Kreacher
> problem the same way he solved it before, by having Kreacher work at
> Hogwarts instead of staying with him. Only this time it could be
> worded as a request or even a choice rather than an order.

Magpie:
Do we want to get into this again?:-) He's a slave owner because he 
owns a slave. We don't end with Harry asking Kreacher where he wants to 
live (Harry barely gives a thought to where Kreacher lives anyway until 
he needs him someplace so why would he start now?), we end with him 
thinking about Kreacher serving him something. Of course Kreacher 
doesn't want freedom. That's why House Elves are such awesome slaves. 
Even when Kreacher wants freedom (like the freedom not to work for 
Harry or Sirius in HBP and OotP, but to work for other people instead) 
he doesn't call it that.

His last line about the sandwich stands out not because we know whether 
or not Harry will decide to request one, or whether or not Kreacher 
would be offended if he didn't ask him to make it (he probably would 
want to make it himself--House Elves take pride in being good 
servants), but because it reminds us that Harry has Kreacher, his loyal 
slave, at his disposal as part of his everyday, Voldemort free-life. 
Whether or not one is particularly bothered by it, having a slave is 
part of Harry's happy life in the magical wizarding world. I agree 
there's plenty of reason not to be bothered by it and to think that 
this condition is a fine thing for House Elves and for Harry (Harry 
seems to agree and there's a lot of arguments in canon made for that). 
But it does seem to sometimes logically inspire justification to make 
it just a little bit more okay than it might otherwise be (just as it's 
not really torture if Harry was very upset and he didn't do it for that 
long and let's call it a strategical way to stop the guy, maybe it's 
not really slavery if Kreacher is thrilled to be owned by Harry now and 
Harry doesn't get off on being abusive about it).

For me, it seems like that Kreacher line is similar to the Crucio one. 
It's there as a pleasant, happy thing about Harry. With the Crucio he's 
taking care of a bad guy and making a cool quip. With the Kreacher line 
Harry is going to his heroic reward, all the good things he's unfairly 
taken away from by Voldemort--his cozy life, his house elf, his warm 
bed, and good food.

> 
> Carol, who wishes that just once Harry would make a mistake,
> acknowledge that mistake, learn from the mistake, and live with the
> consequences

Magpie:
The rest I agree with.:-) Twice when Harry does seem to have facing 
something like a consequence a mean teacher comes in to make Harry 
think of himself as the victim in the situation. I don't think it's 
naivite that would cause a reader to fail to impose feelings on the 
character that aren't suggested in the text. I mean, there are plenty 
of shippers sure that the couples in canon can't work because they 
themselves don't like them--iow, Hermione can't like Ron because the 
reader him/herself doesn't like Ron. But does that mean JKR intends us 
to fill in a divorce in Ron and Hermione's future? I don't.

Nor do I think Harry as described in canon will ever look back on his 
Crucio with regret. I don't think the author has a problem with it. And 
I think that readers who like the scene or just aren't bothered by it 
don't have to feel that way because they condone torture or think what 
Harry did wasn't torture. I think they are just reading the scene in 
the way it may have been intended, as a satisfying moment. Just as I 
know many readers are angered by people have problems with the Kreacher 
line, which imo is intended as just a happy ending along the lines 
of "And it was still hot" in "Where The Wild Things Are."

-m




From catlady at wicca.net  Mon Jul  7 00:05:10 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:05:10 -0000
Subject: wizarding genetics (was: strangle hand / slavery / genetics / Mulciber
In-Reply-To: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAq7J8AJNZvxGJq/KbtzLRq8KAAAAQAAAAKYNGdH5Rq02hgM2GdAK61gEAAAAA@citynet.net>
Message-ID: <g4rmjm+8d65@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183593

Bruce Alan Wilson wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183590>:

<< Anent wizardling genetics, I've always thought that there wasn't a
single gene, but a set of genes.

1. The gene or genes that allows one to sense magical energies;
2. The gene or genes that allows one to manipulate them;
3. The gene or genes that account for specialized magical abilities,
like metamophomagus, animagus, seer, etc. >>

I agree that the genetics of magic must involve quite a number of gene
pairs, because simple Mendelian inheritance wouldn't account for
wizarding folk having different amounts of innate magical power and
being better at some forms of magic than others, and the magical
alleles of these genes must be loose in the Muggle population or there
wouldn't be Muggleborns. I have tried, unsuccessfully but not very
hard, to figure out how mixing these genes around could provide
'hybrid vigor', so that Muggleborns would usually be on the high side
of the power range.

Also, part of the reason that half-and-half children (like Seamus)
usually turn out wizarding is because wizarding people are not
attracted to homozygous MM Muggles, only to heterozygous Mm Muggles,
giving their children a 50% change of being mm just from Mendelian
theory. That's harder to explain when specifying that the attractive
Muggle has to be heterozygous Aa, homozygous bb, and either CC or Cc
where 'a', 'b' and 'C' are the alleles for sensing and manipulating
magical energies. 

I can't see any reason to believe that sensing magical energies is
controlled separately from manipulating them, but it could be so. 

Metamorphmagus and Seer are talents people are born with, but Animagus
is a skill which is learned. As far as I know, any wizard or witch who
has enough raw power and works hard enough can become an Animagus,
altho' it's possible that one with a specific deficit in
Transfiguration ability just can't do it. But I think a specific
deficit would be lower than Neville, who did manage to get an OWL in
Transfiguration.

I also believe there is a great deal of non-genetic (therefore
'environmental') on the inheritance of magic. The presence of magic
selects for magical genes. A witch mother will bear only wizarding
children with her Mm mate, because her womb will select the m sperm --
where could there be more magic than inside the body of a magical
person? But the Mm mother who lives surrounded by magical people, such
as her mate, in a house held up by magic, will also be influenced to
produce m eggs. The m genes in the developing fetus will be revved up
by the nearby presence of magic, so genetically identical people could
be a Muggle and a weak wizard (Stan Shunpike springs to mind)
depending on the prenatal environment.

As you know, I could go on. And on. And on.




From catlady at wicca.net  Mon Jul  7 00:12:04 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:12:04 -0000
Subject: hating/loving Harry
Message-ID: <g4rn0k+pgoe@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183594

"only4groups2008" wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183580>:

<< Apparently it is fine for Harry to sneer, attack, be totally rude
(for example to Narcissa Malfoy in Half Blood Prince), but not for
anyone else to do it. >>

Oh, no, there are plenty of other characters for whom it is fine to do
those things. 

The author seems to think it's cute and attractive of Ginny to walk
the corridors hexing anyone she doesn't like, and fly her broomstick
straight into Zacharias Smith because his Quidditch commentary was
snotty. 

There are quite a few readers who excused everything Snape ever did
since he first swooped into the Potions classroom and made that speech
about the beauty of the softly simmering cauldon, and most of them
agree with you about Harry, altho' some think Harry was a bad guy from
the first time we saw him interacting with Dursleys, not just from
halfway through the series.

Various other readers give James and/or Sirius a pass for behavior
that disgusts most of the Snape fans. Such as making excuses for them
bullying young Severus ("Snape's Worst Memory") when even Harry
disapproved of it. 

You can count me in that group, because I feel sorry for poor Sirius
locked up in that awful house, and don't understand why some listies
hate him ... delete that, I know they hate him because Snape hates him
... why some listies judge him to be a bad person because of self-pity
 and being rude to Kreachur in response to Kreachur's rudeness to him
and his friends. It may not be *admirable* behavior, but I find it
*excusable* and not all of his personality.

"only4groups2008" wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183582>:

<< because 'our hero' Harry, was little different from Voldermort, in
behaviour and thought. >>

That's a bit much. 

When Voldemort was angry at the bad news from Gringotts, he killed his
own followers, en masse and at random, and Bellatrix's hurry to get
out of the room indicates that she didn't expect him to spare even her
from his lethal temper tantrum. Harry has had tantrums, but throwing a
badge at Ron's head cannot be compared with AK'ing a dozen or two
dozen by-standing followers.

It's pretty clear that Voldemort enjoys killing people just because he
enjoys killing people, when he's not even angry and has no strategic
purpose for killing them. 

Voldemort appears to care about Nagini, and would try to protect her
even if she wasn't his Horcrux and his weapon, but there is no human
he cares about, not even Lucius or Bellatrix.





From sweenlit at gmail.com  Mon Jul  7 02:46:47 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 19:46:47 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Colin Creevey: Flint or not? (was Re: Hedwig's death)
In-Reply-To: <g4rc7i+flbr@eGroups.com>
References: <g4p068+2mrg@eGroups.com> <g4rc7i+flbr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807061946r615bb1c9p8d87c99af2b2d158@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183595

Carol:

Dennis was a
third-year, too young to be in Hogsmeade

Lynda:

Third years can go to Hogsmeade. I'm rereading POA right now and just read
the scene where Harry tries to get Vernon to sign his permission slip
earlier today.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 04:25:11 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:25:11 -0000
Subject: Colin Creevey: Flint or not? (was Re: Hedwig's death)
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807061946r615bb1c9p8d87c99af2b2d158@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g4s5r7+8qnc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183596

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Lynda Cordova" <sweenlit at ...> wrote:
>
> Carol:
> 
> Dennis was a
> third-year, too young to be in Hogsmeade
> 
> Lynda:
> 
> Third years can go to Hogsmeade. I'm rereading POA right now and just read
> the scene where Harry tries to get Vernon to sign his permission slip
> earlier today.
> 
> Lynda
> 
Montavilla47:
I may be wrong about this, but I think Carol meant to say he was 
a second year?  He first arrived and was sorted at Hogwarts during
GoF, making him a second year in OotP, when he showed up 
in Hogsmeade with his brother for the first meeting of the D.A..

I seem to remember that the D.A. wasn't going to accept any
members younger than fourth year, which made him doubly
special.





From falkeli at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 11:08:40 2008
From: falkeli at yahoo.com (hp_fan_2008)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:08:40 -0000
Subject: Colin Creevey: Flint or not? (was Re: Hedwig's death)
In-Reply-To: <g4rc7i+flbr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4stfo+cgcr@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183597

Carol:
> 
> Right. McGonagall says, "You, too, Creevey," when she's ordering
> underage students to go to the RoR and safety rather than fight. Jimmy
> Peakes would be a fifth-year Gryffindor, IIRC, so he's definitely
> underage and definitely under her authority. But Colin Creevey is
> either no longer a Gryffindor and therefore not bound to takeorders
> from someone who's no longer his Head of House or he's a sixth year
> and quite possibly of age (nearly three-quarters of the students in
> any given year would have their birthdays between September 1 and
> mid-May, when the battle apparently takes place).

If McGonagall is running the Hogwarts defense, then she may consider
it her responsibility to make sure that no one underage is involved.
Probably about 1 in 4 students who began in CoS would still be
underage, so it's not out of the question that Colin was. It's also
quite possible that in the previous July the heads of houses
(including McGonagall) got the birthdays of the sixth-year-to-be
students in their houses, and Colin would have been on such a list.

 
> Either Colin is still at Hogwarts and JKR, having forgotten that he's
> a Muggle-born (<Snip>), and JKR is just covering her tracks in 
> that interview (<Snip>), or McGonagall is treating a boy who has 
> not been at Hogwarts all year as if she were still his Head of 
> House and as if she knows his exact age. (Dumbledore certainly 
> didn't know Hermione's exact age when he refers to her and
> Harry as "two thirteen-year-old Wizards" in GoF, at which point
> Hermione has been fourteen for nearly nine months.) 

If she's in charge of defending Hogwarts, she may consider herself
temporarily Headmistress, and in charge of who gets to be on Hogwarts
grounds. See my comment above about McGonagall knowing Colin's exact age.

 
> Did JKR confuse Colin with Dennis (who seems to have disappeared from
> the story), thinking that *Colin* is underage as Dennis would have
> been? Or is she thinking, as she did with James in OoP, that because a
> kid is in a given year, he's a given age (fifteen in fifth year;
> sixteen in sixth year)? (<Snip>) How would McGonagall know that he was
> underage--unless, perhaps, he'd somehow been at Hogwarts all year
> despite being a Muggle-born and was too young to take the Apparition
> test in April? 

If the information about the birthdays was sent in the previous July,
then Muggle-borns would have been listed.

                    HP Fan 2008




From willsonkmom at msn.com  Mon Jul  7 11:54:04 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:54:04 -0000
Subject: Colin Creevey: Flint or not? (was Re: Hedwig's death)
In-Reply-To: <g4rc7i+flbr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4t04s+qpbj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183598




> 
> Kamion replies:
> You're correct that Colin was not supposed to be at Hogwarts as
> being Muggleborn, but in the Battle of Hogwarts neither was Cho
> Chang, who graduated - for as much there were graduations that
> year - the year before. Colin as well as Cho responded to the
> messages sent out through the coins of Dumbledore's Army, sent
> by Fred and George and only returned at that critical moment
> to Hogwarts, with fatal complications for Colin. Needless to
> say his death was a completely unneccesary one and it baffled
> me what purpose it served.

Potioncat:
I think JKR gave considerable thought as to who would die and how 
they would die. Not that every reader is going to cheer her 
decisions, of course. Between this scene, and the one with Ginny 
tending the un-named girl who wanted to go home, we're reminded of 
how young these warriors are. 

Also, bodies were being brought in before Slughorn arrived with 
reinforcements. Almost all of them would have been students and we 
would have known some of them. It was kindness that we didn't see a 
list of names posted on the wall.

> >
> Carol responds:
> 
> Right. McGonagall says, "You, too, Creevey," when she's ordering
> underage students to go to the RoR and safety rather than fight. 
Jimmy
> Peakes would be a fifth-year Gryffindor, IIRC, so he's definitely
> underage and definitely under her authority. But Colin Creevey is
> either no longer a Gryffindor and therefore not bound to takeorders
> from someone who's no longer his Head of House or he's a sixth year
> and quite possibly of age (nearly three-quarters of the students in
> any given year would have their birthdays between September 1 and
> mid-May, when the battle apparently takes place).

Potioncat:
I don't think McGonagall has any hesitation about asserting her 
authority. Whether Creevey had been there all year or not would not 
have made any difference to her. He's there now, and that alone says 
he'd better take orders.

I also wouldn't put it past McGonagall to know the age of her older 
students. If she didn't, then she may be thinking he's too young just 
by his size. Creevey doesn't pipe up and say he's old enough, so she 
must be correct. He's always seemed younger than the other 
characters. So I'd guess he just made the cut-off for his year.


But, your point is more about JKR, isn't it? I forgot at the first 
read that many 6th years would be of age. Then again, I didn't write 
the book. So I'm not sure if JKR made a mistake in his age, or not. 
He certainly could be 16 and underage, but still brave and determined 
to fight.

I don't really have a problem with Colin coming with the DA. I do 
wonder where he and his brother have been all this time. Other Muggle-
borns seem to have gone into hiding. 

I see what you mean about his being "tiny in death" although it 
didn't jump out when I read it. I think JKR was going for the heart 
strings with the description. We're just to remember that he was 
physically small, but very brave.









From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Mon Jul  7 12:02:56 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:02:56 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
Message-ID: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183599

This message is a Special Notice for all members of

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups

In addition to being published onlist (available in webview), this 
post is also being delivered offlist (to email in boxes) to those 
whose "Message Delivery" is set to "Special Notices." If this is 
problematic or if you have any questions, contact the List Elves at 
(minus that extra space)

HPforGrownups-owner @yahoogroups.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

With apologies in advance for the length of this (I should be named 
Siriusly Overwordy Snapey Susan), here we go....

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 24:  The Wandmaker

Dobby has died, lying on the grass beside Harry.  Harry repeats 
Dobby's name again and again... and recalls a time not so long before 
when he knelt beside Dumbledore's silent body on the grounds of 
Hogwarts.

It takes a moment for Harry to realize that they have arrived at the 
place they'd hoped to get to ? Bill & Fleur's cottage.  The others, 
who had arrived earlier, come over to them, and after he learns that 
Hermione is okay, Harry turns back to Dobby.  He removes Bella's 
dagger from Dobby's body and wraps him in his own jacket.

Harry feels acutely both his own grief and Voldemort's rage at those 
who failed to prevent the escape from Malfoy Manor.  The grief wins 
out, and Harry speaks to Bill, saying he wants to do Dobby's 
burial "properly... not by magic.  Have you got a spade?" [UK 
hardback children's edition, pp. 386-387].

Harry begins the task, alone, "relishing the manual work, glorying in 
the non-magic of it." His scar does burn, but Harry is "master of the 
pain" [p. 387].  He feels it, yet is apart from it; he has learned to 
control it, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort.  Grief and 
mourning have driven Voldemort out, Harry believes, though he knows 
DD would have said it was love....

Harry digs and digs, long into the night. He spends the time 
reflecting while he digs ("Hallows... Horcruxes ... Hallows... 
Horcruxes...."), and a new understanding comes to him; he feels as 
though he's been "slapped awake again" [p. 387].   Harry now knows 
with certainty where Voldemort has been, whom he has killed in 
Nurmengard.  He also thinks of Wormtail and what one thought of mercy 
had done to him.  He considers how much Dumbledore had forseen 
there... and wonders how much more DD had known.  (Don't we all, 
Harry!)

Before dawn, Ron & Dean return with spades of their own.  Once the 
grave is complete, Harry wraps Dobby up more tightly, Ron places his 
own socks & shoes upon Dobby's feet, Dean adds his wooly hat, and the 
others also arrive at their sides.  Luna closes Dobby's eyes, and 
Harry places him into the grave, thinking to himself that he wishes 
Dobby could have had as grand a funeral as DD's had been.  

Luna says a farewell to Dobby, but the others are not really 
interested in final remarks, beyond "Thanks" or Harry's own "Goodbye, 
Dobby."

Harry stays while the others head back to the cottage.  Choosing a 
large, smooth, white stone and placing it upon the grave, he then 
uses one of the wands in his pocket to magically etch upon it:  "Here 
lies Dobby, a Free Elf."

When Harry finally arrives at the cottage, Bill is in the midst of 
telling the others that he has, for their safety, moved the Weasley 
family members to Aunt Muriel's, where they're protected by the 
Fidelius Charm. Bill announces he will move Ollivander and Griphook 
there as well, but Harry says no, that he needs to speak with them 
both first.  

Harry moves on to the kitchen to wash up, and while doing so, he 
stares out the window, thinking.  He contemplates how it was that 
Dobby had come to Malfoy Manor ? it was after Harry had seen the blue 
eye in Sirius' mirror and called to it for help.  He "knows" it was 
Albus Dumbledore who'd been behind it.  He also feels "closer, this 
dawn, than ever before, closer to the heart of it all." And he asks 
the Dumbledore in his mind, "Am I meant to know, but not to seek?" 
[p. 391]

Upon returning to the others, Harry insists upon seeing Ollivander & 
Griphook, separately, and immediately.  Bill erupts with a "What the 
hell's going on?" but Harry reminds him that he *can't* answer that, 
as they're on a mission.  Bill relents and asks Harry whom he wants 
to see first.  Harry, fully realizing "what hung on his decision... 
Horcruxes or Hallows?," selects Griphook.

Harry has Hermione & Ron join him in the bedroom.  When Bill brings 
him in, Griphook is still clutching the Sword of Gryffindor.  Harry & 
Griphook gaze at one another, "sizing each other up."  Griphook 
speaks first, remarking upon Harry's burial of Dobby, and 
saying, "You are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter."  When asked why, 
Griphook points out that Harry also saved a goblin, which makes 
Harry "a very odd wizard" [p. 393].  

Harry cuts to the chase and bluntly tells Griphook what he wants from 
him:  his help breaking into a Gringotts vault.  Harry knows he's 
stated this badly, but he is battling pain in his scar and images 
from Voldemort which keep trying to force their way in.  Griphook 
states the impossibility of the task and then reinterates it when 
Harry says which vault he's after:  the Lestranges'. 

Harry stresses that he's not after treasure, not after personal 
gain.  Griphook tells him that if there was any wizard of whom he 
would believe this, it would be Harry Potter.  

But then Griphook begins to speak about "wand-carriers," saying that 
the right to carry a wand has long been a source of contention 
between wizards & goblins.  Griphook says wizards won't share any of 
their wandlore secrets with goblins, but Ron quickly points out that 
goblins don't tell wizards about their special magic either.  Harry 
is impatient with all of this, saying this is not about wizards vs. 
goblins.  Griphook, however, diagrees:  "It is precisely about that!" 
[p. 395]

It is Hermione who points out that there are wizards, too, who suffer 
for being mudbloods, as well as wizards who do fight on behalf of 
goblins and elves.  (Ron squirms a little at this.)  Griphook lets go 
of the argument and instead inquires as to what they seek in the 
Lestrange vault.  Harry doesn't answer directly but tells Griphook 
that he provides their only chance.  Griphook promises to think about 
it, and Harry thanks him.

Harry silently removes Gryffindor's sword from the room as he departs.

Away from Griphook, Harry confides to Ron & Hermione that he suspects 
a Horcrux will be found in the Lestrange vault.  Hermione & Ron are 
dubious, but Harry explains how a Gringotts vault would impress 
Voldemort... and how much Voldemort trusted Bella & her husband... 
and how he doubts Voldemort would have confided to Bella that it was 
a Horcrux but would have just told her it was something treasured.  
Ron remarks, "You really understand him."  

"Bits of him," says Harry.  "Bits.  I just wish I'd understood 
Dumbledore as much" [p. 397].

Next, H/R/H go in to see Ollivander.  Approaching him, Harry is 
cognizant of Ollivander's having been imprisoned for over a year and 
of his weakened state.  Harry is also painfully aware (literally) 
that he has little time if he is to thwart Voldemort's plans.

Harry presents Ollivander with the two halves of his broken wand and 
asks whether they can be mended.  Ollivander says that a wand so 
damaged cannot be repaired by any means he knows of.

Harry next shows Ollivander the two wands which have ended up in his 
possession and asks if Ollivander can identify them.  He can:  the 
first was Bellatrix's and the second was Draco Malfoy's.  Harry 
questions the use of past tense with Draco's wand, and Ollivander 
explains that it *might* actually be Harry's now.  "The manner of 
taking matters.  Much also depends upon the wand itself.  In general, 
however, where a wand has been won, its allegiance will change," and 
points out that the best results come when there is "the strongest 
affinity" between wizard and wand [p. 399].  Harry explains how he 
took Draco's wand by force and asks if it is safe to use.  "I think 
so," is the response.  "Subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the 
conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master" [p. 399].

Ron, too, shows Ollivander the wand he has won from Peter Pettigrew.  
Ollivander tells him he may use it ? "if you won it, it is more 
likely to do your bidding, and do it well" [p. 400].

Harry asks whether *killing* a wand's former owner is necessary for 
the new owner to take true possession of a wand.  Ollivander says 
that it is not.  Heart racing, Harry next inquires about certain 
wands of legend ? wands which pass through murder.  Ollivander 
whispers his reply:  "Only one wand, I think" [p. 400].

Sensing he is honing in, Harry asks, "And You-Know-Who is interested 
in it, isn't he?" [p. 401]  Ollivander is stunned that Harry knows 
this and that he has figured out that he (Ollivander) had told 
Voldemort to borrow another's wand in order to get around the twin-
core connection.  When Harry pushes further, asking if Ollivander 
knows why this did not work -- why Harry's wand beat the borrowed 
one -- Ollivander says that he truly does not know.  It was 
just "something unique" [p. 400].

Harry turns the discussion back to "that other wand," and Ollivander 
acknowledges that Voldemort had wanted to know everything about the 
Deathstick, aka the Wand of Destiny, aka the Elder Wand, and that, 
beyond wanting to know about it, Voldemort has been seeking it.

Harry thinks (hopes?) that Voldemort might stop seeking the Elder 
Wand if he realizes that Harry's wand is broken.  However, Ollivander 
tells him that Voldemort wants the Elder Wand in its own right, in 
hopes that it will make him invincible.

Hermione is dubious about the truth of the Elder Wand, but Ollivander 
says it is quite possible to trace the wand's history.  He is 
uncertain whether it *must* pass by murder, but the history is indeed 
bloody.

Harry asks Ollivander whether he told Voldemort that Gregorovitch had 
had the Elder Wand.  Ollivander says it was a rumour only but, yes, 
he told Voldemort.

Finally, Harry asks Ollivander about the Deathly Hallows.  Ollivander 
appears to truly have no idea what the Deathly Hallows are.  Harry 
reassures an upset Ollivander that he understands Voldemort was 
torturing him for information, and encourages him to get rest.

As H/R/H walk outside, Harry is nearly overcome by the visions which 
are trying to push into his mind, but he resists, knowing that soon 
he will give in, in order to confirm his theory.  For now, though, he 
wants to bring Ron & Hermione up to speed.  He summarizes how 
Gregorivitch had had the wand but Grindelwald took it, how 
Grindelwald used it in his rise to power, how DD finally dueled 
Grindelwald and took the Elder Wand.  

"Where is it now?" asks Ron.

"At Hogwarts."  

Ron wants to go there immediately, but Harry can feel that Voldemort 
is already there and tells them so.  Ron is incredulous about the 
time "wasted" talking to Griphook, but Harry says no, that Hermione 
had been right ? DD didn't want Harry to have the Elder Wand; he 
wanted Harry to get the Horcruxes.  

Finally, Harry allows the visions to fill him up, and he sees 
Voldemort at Hogwarts with Snape... then walking alone on the 
grounds... then alongside the white marble tomb, using his wand to 
split open the tomb... DD's body revealed, the Elder Wand resting on 
his chest... and finally, Voldemort claiming the wand as its new 
owner.


QUESTIONS

1. "It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he 
knelt again beside Dumbledore's body..." [p. 386].  Is there any 
character in this series who has as much experience with old 
nightmares?  If you think there is another (or other) candidate(s), 
present the case, or the case that it *is* Harry.

2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there is, 
if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the use 
of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in the 
darkness" [p. 387]?

3.  What do you think of the description that "every drop of 
[Harry's] sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had 
saved their lives" [p. 387]?  What do you imagine Dobby would have 
thought of that?

4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has Harry 
*now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing Dumbledore 
had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does the death 
trigger this in Harry?

5.  Is there significance to JKR's choice of "Nurmengard" as a name 
for the prison?

6.  Is there significance to the fact that Harry used the wand which 
was Draco's, rather than the wand which was Bellatrix's, to etch the 
words "Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf"?  

7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that 
Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?

8.  When Harry is talking in his mind as if to DD and asks if he is 
meant to know but not to seek, he also asks, "Did you know how hard 
I'd find that?  Is that why you made it this difficult?  So I'd have 
time to work that out?" [p. 391]  What do you think is the answer to 
that?  How about what you thought on your first read?  Did you feel a 
new understanding along with Harry, or had you see his mission 
differently than he had before this dawning?

9.  Harry Potter has been derided by many for not being much of a 
thinker.  He becomes a thinker in this chapter, and quite decisive.  
What do you make of this?  Is it a change?  Did it surprise you?  Has 
it always been there?

10.  What did you think was going on when you first read that Harry 
was laboring over seeing Griphook or Ollivander first... and chose 
Griphook?  

11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's comment, "You 
are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an 
unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?

12.  Is Griphook correct that this is "precisely about" wizards vs. 
goblins?  Why did he drop the subject so abruptly?

13.  Why did Harry remove the Sword of Gryffindor when he left 
Griphook's room, and why did he not say anything as he did so?

14.  When Harry said he understood bits of Voldemort and then went on 
to say he wished he'd understood DD as much, were you surprised?  Why 
do you think he made this remark instead of sticking with Voldemort 
as the topic of his understanding?

15.  How do you react to those remarks of Ollivander's concerning 
wand ownership and control?  Since they're really JKR's words ? and 
rules ? are they reasonable? Fair?  Do they tell us enough?  
"Subtle," "complex," "usually," "in general" ? is this just the 
nature of wand lore, and it *is* nebulous and imprecise?  Or is this 
simply a way to leave open more possibilities for the author?

16.  Ollivander says he has no idea why the wand Voldemort borrowed 
failed against Harry's wand.  He says "something unique" happened.  
What was that something unique, do you think?

17.  It has long been an interest of many just what Ollivander is all 
about.  Something about the way he described Voldemort as "great"... 
something about how he made the hair stand up on Harry's neck....  In 
this chapter, we have Harry suddenly thinking about having been 
unsure how much he liked Ollivander back when they first met, and 
even now, "the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of this wand 
seemed to enthral him as much as it repulsed him" [p. 402].  And yet 
Luna seems genuinely fond of him.  What do you make of this man?

18.  How is it that, compared to the end of OOTP, Harry can be so 
certain the visions he's having are real?  We know now that they are, 
but how could he be so confident after what happened in OOTP?

19.  What did you think was coming next, as you read the end of the 
chapter and knew that Voldemort had taken possession of the Elder 
Wand?

Please feel free to add your own questions to the discussion!

Siriusly Snapey Susan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: For more information on HPfGU's chapter discussions, please see
"HPfGU DH Chapter Discussions" at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database

Next chapdisc, chapter 25, Shell Cottage ? July 21, 2008.





From willsonkmom at msn.com  Mon Jul  7 15:42:48 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:42:48 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4tdho+s9me@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183600

 
> SSSusan:
> With apologies in advance for the length of this (I should be named 
> Siriusly Overwordy Snapey Susan), here we go....

Potioncat:
Oh, no. This was very well done. 

I have to answer in bits and pieces though.
> QUESTIONS
> 
> 1. "It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he 
> knelt again beside Dumbledore's body..." [p. 386].  Is there any 
> character in this series who has as much experience with old 
> nightmares?  If you think there is another (or other) candidate(s), 
> present the case, or the case that it *is* Harry.

Potioncat:
We've seen several of Harry's dreams in canon. We've looked very 
closely at some of his dreams. Not all of them carried the meanings 
we might have thought.

We've also seen Neville having dreams, or sleeping fitfully. I know 
we've never determined that he saw his parents tortured, but we know 
that torture has shaped his life.

Based on canon, I'd say DD had experience with nightmares. That all 
these decades later he would want to bring Ariana back, tells us how 
fresh the pain remains. But the really telling part, I think, is his 
reaction to the "nightmare" caused by the green goo in the basin at 
the lake. 

My third candidate for nightmare veteran would be Snape. We don't 
have any canon that he has them, but we have the memories he kept 
protected; saw his need to protect them. We can only imagine the 
nighmare inducing experiences he's had. We know he wanders the castle 
halls at night. Perhaps it's part of 'watching over Harry', but 
perhaps there are reasons he's not sleeping.
> 
> 2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
> point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there is, 
> if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the 
use 
> of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in the 
> darkness" [p. 387]?

Potioncat:
I don't really "get" why not using magic was important, but as a 
scene to be read, it was very moving. He put great effort and time 
into preparing a resting place for Dobby. That the effort was visible 
was important.
> 

> 
> 4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has Harry 
> *now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing 
Dumbledore 
> had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does the death 
> trigger this in Harry?

Potioncat:
I think the need to compartmentalize finally arose. Well, both the 
need and the motivation.
> 
> 5.  Is there significance to JKR's choice of "Nurmengard" as a name 
> for the prison?

Potioncat:
It sounds like Nuremberg--where the WWII war criminal trials were 
held. That's what it reminded me of. The name also kept me from 
feeling sorry for the old man in the cell.
> 





From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 19:16:25 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:16:25 -0000
Subject: Colin Creevey: Flint or not?
In-Reply-To: <g4rc7i+flbr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4tq29+5vrj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183601

Sorry to cut everything, but I'm just going to make some general
comments.

Colin and Dennis in Hogsmead -

Colin, I'm pretty sure was old enough, it's Dennis that 
shouldn't have been there for the DA meeting. I'm not sure
how JKR justified that other than to say Dennis found some
way to sneak out.

Colin at the Last Battle -

Neville (I believe) used the enchanted coins to summon the
DA Club, Colin and Dennis were members of the DA Club, so 
reasonably they responded like everyone else. We may not have
seen Colin arrive, but we reasonably assume all of the DA 
returned. 

Colin is now /close/ to age 17. Though we don't know his exact 
age for sure at the moment of the final battle, he is, at 
least, age 16. 

As to Colin being small in death. I say look at Freddie 
Highmore, who is 15 and getting close to 16. He still looks
extremely young, and in the Spidewick Chronicals chronicals 
movie he plays roughly a 10 year old boy. Even Dan Radcliffe 
is barely 5'5". Though he has clear has , as seen in his Equus 
photos, developed a manly body. 

Look at Macaulay Culkin, who is currently age 28. The last 
role I remember him having was playing a 15 year old boy 
on Broadway. 

Also, look at Seamus Finnegan/Devon Murry who is 20 years old
and shorter than Dan Radcliffe.

My point is that Colin can be 16 and still be 'short in death'.

McGonagall's authority -

McGonagall was Colin Head of House and strict teacher for
years. Even if she had no authority over Colin, he would have
instinctively reacted to any assertion of authority by
McGonagall. I suspect if McGonagall ordered total strangers
to do something they would have reacted to that assertion of
authority. McGonagall just has that strict air about her.

Just a few random thoughts.

steve/bboyminn




From gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk  Mon Jul  7 20:12:56 2008
From: gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk (Geoff Bannister)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:12:56 -0000
Subject: hating/loving Harry
In-Reply-To: <g4rn0k+pgoe@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ttc8+knql@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183602

In message 182594, Catlady wrote:

"There are quite a few readers who excused everything Snape ever did
since he first swooped into the Potions classroom and made that speech
about the beauty of the softly simmering cauldon, and most of them
agree with you about Harry, altho' some think Harry was a bad guy from
the first time we saw him interacting with Dursleys, not just from
halfway through the series."

Geoff:
I have commented on the fact that I find I am posting far less frequently 
to this group than I used to. Since I joined HPFGU, almost 5 years ago in
 July 2003, I have posted 2346 messages prior to this current. Only 69 
of those have been written this year. So my output has dropped quite 
drastically. Why?

Well, some of the threads simply do not "grab" me. But I have noted in 
the past that there is a tendency at the moment for spme thread to  
become negative ones in which the naysayers take hold of the reins 
and there is a mutual airing of grouses. If anyone then tries to interject 
something positive we get replies which suggest that their writer is 
correct in his or her judgment, that anyone who disagrees is wrong 
and is taking a na?ve overview of what is really going on. So, at the 
moment, we have a "Let's bash Harry" theme nicely under way which 
gave rise to the quote above from one of Catlady's posts with which 
I started. 

Now, let me say that, if I read her post aright, the quote did not 
originate from her, but who, in their right mind (or sober), would 
dream of making such an unbelievable ? and dare I say barmy ? 
comment?

Harry being a bad guy from the beginning? Are we talking about 
the same Harry? Are we even reading the same book? We first meet 
Harry as he is about to turn eleven.  He is ignored as a person, treated 
like a slave being made to cook and do chores. He gets second-hand 
cast-offs for clothing. Although the Dursleys can get free glasses for 
him on the NHS, they can't be bothered to replace the ones repaired 
with Sellotape. Dudley's charm, ability and intelligence is flaunted in 
front of him, he gets stupid, thoughtless presents and, because of 
Dudley's interference, "At school, Harry had no one." So this is a 
portrait of a "bad guy from the first time we saw him"?

It's surprising that he /isn't/. In my teaching career and in young 
people's work in churches, I have often seen guys (in its unisex 
connotation) who had become unmanageable because of this sort 
of treatment. He has emerged from his experiences surprisingly 
well, all things considered. But many of the things which he has 
been upbraided for on this group recently are the sort of things 
which many of us might well have done ? or thought about doing 
? in our teens. I challenge anyone to say that they have never had 
a moment of overwhelming anger when they have wanted to lash 
out and hurt. I can remember times in my teens when I could almost 
sense a red mist before me and wanted to do something to display 
my fury. At moments like those we do not stop to consider the 
moral balance of our behaviour. It is one thing that I see in the 
books looking at them as a Christian. We have no plaster saints; 
all have weaknesses and failings and, conversely, the great 
majority of those on the side of evil could be redeemed given
the right circumstances. It is something that Tolkien also reveals 
in his books. It is only people such as Voldemort or Sauron who 
have so suppressed their souls and muted their consciences that 
they have placed themselves beyond the reach of love. All the 
characters are flawed. As examples, Harry has his temper, he 
seeks security and has his moments of "thinking on his feet" 
without working the outcomes through; Frodo is seduced by 
the ring and almost fails in his mission, to be ironically saved 
by another victim of its power. On the other side, Draco fails in 
his mission because his conscience comes to his rescue; Boromir 
falls because he tries to take the ring for the greater good and 
realises too late what he has done and dies trying to remedy events.

The real world is also made up of flawed people. We all have 
skeletons in the cupboard; many of us have skeletons which wild 
horses wouldn't drag out of us because of shame, embarrassment 
and guilt. I have in the past criticised the epilogue of DH because
it seemed a feeble attempt to block speculation. We are not told 
what has happened in the years leading up to the nod from Draco 
at the railway station. We do not know what Harry or Draco or many 
of the others have done ?if anything ? to try to repair matters which 
they mishandled or shied away from back in that last feverish, 
nail-biting, cliffhanging year leading up to Voldemort's downfall.

Which is a pity. Because if JKR had expanded more, we might just 
be having a thread "I'm just wild about Harry" which might have 
been a bit lighter, less soul-searching and more Harry-friendly than 
some of the current batch.






From juli17 at aol.com  Mon Jul  7 21:52:00 2008
From: juli17 at aol.com (juli17 at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 17:52:00 EDT
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
Message-ID: <d28.2e3f9fea.35a3ea00@aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183603

 
Carol wrote:

IMO,  it would have been much less cruel to young readers (who *do*
notice such  things and, in my experience, are shocked by them) to have
Harry regret his  actions than to force them to either reject their
hero as flawed or  rationalize his behavior by finding excuses for  it.



Julie:
I would add that even by having Harry regret his actions, this still leaves  
him 
a flawed hero, i.e. human. But proving himself more self-aware by  regretting
his wrong actions (not just the Crucio but the Sectumsempra  and the few 
other moments you mentioned) would *show* his growth as a human  being,
his maturation into a "better man" by the end of the series. And I believe  
that
*showing* makes a much greater impact on the reader, and makes for a  better
story, than expecting the reader just to *assume* Harry at some point off  the
page experienced regret over his wrong actions. For me and many other  
readers,
the Crucio scene would have been much improved (i.e., better written and  more
in character) if Harry had experienced at least momentary shock or regret  at
the ease with which he cast an Unforgivable that had no other purpose than  to
cause excruciating pain, and if McGonagall had shown even the slightest  hint
of dismay or disapproval at Harry's action. (And if the Unforgivables had  
been 
presented and explained in a more consistent manner.)
 
Julie, who still enjoys JKR's Harry Potter saga, but doesn't see the  problem 
with
pointing out the weaker areas of her writing, as no writer no matter how  
popular
or critically acclaimed is without weak areas (it's that being human thing  
again).
 
 



**************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for 
fuel-efficient used cars.      (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From ceridwennight at hotmail.com  Mon Jul  7 22:04:11 2008
From: ceridwennight at hotmail.com (Ceridwen)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:04:11 -0000
Subject: hating/loving Harry (reposting for lousey formatting)
In-Reply-To: <g4ttc8+knql@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4u3sr+an16@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183605

Catlady:
> > ...altho' some think Harry was a bad guy from
the first time we saw him interacting with Dursleys...

Geoff:
> Now, let me say that, if I read her post aright, the quote did not
originate from her, but who, in their right mind (or sober), would
dream of making such an unbelievable ? and dare I say barmy ?
comment?

Ceridwen:
I don't think I've ever seen such a thing posted to this group,
though I will bow to Catlady's superior knowledge of the history of
this group. I got the impression that she was distilling an attitude
found in various places, not necessarily that this was said or
written outright. I was under the impression that she was
contrasting various extremes of fandom, really, and not saying that
anyone actually said this.

Geoff:
> I challenge anyone to say that they have never had
a moment of overwhelming anger when they have wanted to lash
out and hurt.

Ceridwen:
That's fine, we've all done that to some extent or another - wanted
to lash out. Maybe some of us did lash out. Maybe some of us
accessed God or meditation or couselling and avoided actually
lashing. But, we're real.

We don't live in books. There is no set ending to our story where we
carry on in the dullness of time after the adventure is over.
Sometimes, justice is done to our satisfaction, sometimes it takes
generations after we're gone to get any sort of closure on a
problem. Fiction is the place where justice triumphs in the end,
where we can see, and have the satisfaction of seeing, an adventure
come full circle. In fiction, wrongs are righted, the just are
rewarded, the unjust are punished, and dark nights of the soul lead
to brighter mornings. We see, we go with the hero/heroine when he or
she passes through this dark night. Seeing someone else as
apparently human as we are, dealing with that stuff, usually worse
than we will ever have it, we get the courage and strength to face
our own darkness and meet the dawn.

I'm glad that Harry survived. I was a member of the IWHTL club. I
did teeter back and forth between wanting Happily Ever After and
wanting the Grey Havens, but I'm glad he lived when he defeated
Voldemort. I expected Voldemort to die in the end, I would have
hated, absolutely hated the entire series if he had lived to become
even more powerful while Harry died. I don't read books for stomach-
dropping moments like that. I read for entertainment.

Geoff:
> Which is a pity. Because if JKR had expanded more, we might just
be having a thread "I'm just wild about Harry" which might have
been a bit lighter, less soul-searching and more Harry-friendly than
some of the current batch.

Ceridwen:
Yes! See, this is what I have problems with. We never saw Harry's
dark night. I never saw his attitude changed, either radically (as
can be done in fiction) or over the period of the seven years/books
(as can also be done in fiction). It probably happened, one doesn't
live into one's thirties without some sort of wake-up. But, this is
fiction. It can, it does, redress wrongs before the end, it can, it
does, satisfy the sense of justice, it can, it does, show the
hero/heroine facing the internal crisis, which is really the most
important crisis, and which then frees that person up to go and slay
the dragon, or the snake-faced monster in this case. I never got
that in HP. Which, as you say, is a pity. I really wanted to love
the series from beginning to end (aside from Umbridge). I don't want
*that* sort of reality, where the story is so open-ended that I have
to pretend something happened which *I* (YMMV) did not see on-page.
Count me as disappointed.

Ceridwen.




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 22:26:09 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:26:09 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4pg2m+thdp@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4u561+gf4m@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183606

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sartoris22" <sartoris22 at ...> 
wrote:

> Were all of Harry's Voldermort-like powers due to his being a
> horcrux? For example, is that why Harry can talk to snakes?


zanooda:

I believe so :-). And so did Dumbledore (p.686 Am.ed). Also, JKR 
answered a question about Parseltongue in the same Web Chat (again, 
if you trust her interviews :-)):

Question: Can Harry speak Parseltongue when he is no longer a Horcrux?
Anawer: No, he loses the ability, and is very glad to do so.
 

> sartoris wrote:

> By the way, why is Harry a horcrux if
> Voldermort didn't intend it? If that is explained in the book, can
> someone point me to the page-hardcover edition. I've reread Harry's
> train station scene with Dumbledore, but I didn't find it.


zanooda:

I think that Harry is called a Horcrux because it's just easier than 
to invent some new name for his condition. Technically he is *not* a 
Horcrux, IMO, because, as you say, there was no intent and, more 
importantly, no incantation binding the soul-bit to Harry. Harry is 
Horcrux-like, but not exactly a Horcrux, IMO. However, Harry 
functioned as a Horcrux, and I think that "accidental Horcrux" 
describes well what he had become. 

BTW, it is not explained in the book, but DD *does* call Harry a 
Horcrux in "King's Cross": "You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the 
Horcrux he never meant to make" (p.709).

I've just reread your question and now I'm not sure that I understood 
it correctly :-). Maybe you were asking *how* Harry became a Horcrux, 
and not *why* he is called a Horcrux. If this is the case - DD talks 
about it a little in "The Prince's Tale"(p.686) and in "King's 
Cross"(p.709). Sorry if I misunderstood you :-)! Hope this helps, 
either way!







From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 22:54:25 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:54:25 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4plji+4v1o@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4u6r1+arj1@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183607

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:
 
> Very interesting point. The actual connection isn't crystal 
> clear but it is implied.
 
> "The moment, he (Harry) knew, was seconds away."
 
> "Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could
> /feel/ the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand 
> pointed at his face."


zanooda:

Yes, you are right, it sounds like Harry still can feel LV's 
emotions. I just think that it's not the same connection as before. 
Let's see how "the connection" is described the very last time Harry 
experienced it in "The Elder Wand": Harry's scar begins to "throb and 
pulse" as he feels LV's rage, he is even forced to bite his fist to 
stop from screaming. Then he finds himself in LV/s head again and 
looks through his eyes.

Nothing like this happens in the last confrontation. Harry feels the 
curse "building inside the wand", but in the Shrieking Shack he 
felt "Voldemort's impatience in his burning scar", or the "sense of 
fury building inside Voldemort".

I think that Harry is not linked directly to LV's mind and he can't 
get inside LV's head to look through his eyes anymore, but he still 
can "feel" LV's emotions, because he knows him very intimately, after 
all :-).
 





From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 23:02:58 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:02:58 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <d28.2e3f9fea.35a3ea00@aol.com>
Message-ID: <g4u7b2+ak0i@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183608

---  juli17 at ... wrote:
>
>  
> Carol wrote:
> 
> IMO,  it would have been much less cruel to young readers 
> (who *do* notice such  things and, in my experience, are 
> shocked by them) to have Harry regret his  actions than to 
> force them to either reject their hero as flawed or 
> rationalize his behavior by finding excuses for  it.
> 
> 
> 
> Julie:
> I would add that even by having Harry regret his actions, 
> this still leaves him a flawed hero,.... But proving
> himself more self-aware by  regretting his wrong actions 
> ... would *show* his growth as a human  being,... And I 
> believe that *showing* makes a much greater impact on the
> reader, and makes for a  better story, than expecting the 
> reader just to *assume* Harry ... experienced regret.... 

bboyminn: 

Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, I disagree. I've always 
thought one of the great attributes of the Harry Potter books
is that they are not preachy and don't offer clear moral
determinations. 

They very fact that certain aspects are morally ambiguous in 
the books, means that the reader must resolve that aspect for 
themselves. We don't need the author to resolve every moral 
issue. We need readers who are willing to think about the moral
issue and reach their own conclusions. 

Again, it is 'revelation' vs 'explanation'; revelation,
understanding that comes from within, is always a better
teacher than explanation. A story that makes you reach into
yourself, I think, is a more powerful story than one in which
the author reaches out to you.

> Julie:
>
> For me and many other readers, the Crucio scene would have 
> been much improved... if Harry had experienced at least 
> momentary shock or regret at the ease with which he cast an
> Unforgivable that had no other purpose than to cause 
> excruciating pain, and if McGonagall had shown even the 
> slightest  hint of dismay or disapproval at Harry's action. 
> (And if the Unforgivables had been presented and explained 
> in a more consistent manner.)
>  

bboyminn:

Again, I hear you saying that everything in the books needs a
clear preachy moral explanation; absolute black and white, no
shades of gray.

But ask yourself how well you know Harry having spend all 
these year with him? He seems a very morally sound person,
and consequently, I assume that he does regret his choices,
but still justifies his action under the circumstances in 
that moment.

He used Crucio against a dark and dangerous person, and he 
does it in a moment of loss of temper. He did it for two
seconds, meaning he gets no sadistic pleasure out of doing
so. He also used Crucio against a dark and dangerous person
who himself used Crucio as casually as adding sugar to his
tea. 

I don't think McGonagall approves of Harry choices, but she 
does think it 'galant' that Harry would defend her honor. But
galantly defending her honor, does not mean blanket approval
of the method he used.

From the point where Harry reveals himself to McGonagall, the
game is on. There is no time to take the moral high ground. 
Desperate times call for desperate measure, and the one and
only goal it to come out of it alive and victorious. Your 
virtue is worthless in defeat. Your virtue won't save your 
life and will likely get you killed.

So, do you want Harry to win, or do you want Harry to be 
smug in defeat know that while his world was lost, his
life was lost, that thousands will live in misery and tyranny
for the foreseeable future, at least he took the high road? 

Personally, I vote for VICTORY.

Back to some earlier aspects, I never said I /excused/ Harry.
I said I understood his actions under the circumstances. In
war you need to be hard, sometimes even heartless. The only
bleeding heart liberals that are found in war, are the ones
literally bleeding to death.

I said that Harry's action were both wrong and bad, but I
also said that I understood them. Things can still be wrong
yet justified /under the circumstances/.  

So, in conclusion, I don't need and don't want the author
to resolve every moral dilemma for me. I want her to present
moral dilemmas to me, and within certain limits allow me
to resolve them myself. I think that is one of the great
attractions of the Harry Potter books. JKR isn't preaching
morality, she is showing life, and letting us resolve the
morality for ourselves. 

You say revolution; and I say REVELATION. 

Or something like that.

Steve/bluewizard





From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 23:22:18 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:22:18 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g4u7b2+ak0i@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4u8fa+qu1r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183609

Steve:
< HUGE SNIP>
So, do you want Harry to win, or do you want Harry to be
smug in defeat know that while his world was lost, his
life was lost, that thousands will live in misery and tyranny
for the foreseeable future, at least he took the high road?

Personally, I vote for VICTORY.
<SNIP>

Alla:

So there are only two choices presented? Use Crucio or otherwise 
thousands will live in misery?
I can count more choices than that. And I can easily imagine scenario 
of not using the crucio and winning. I have no problems with Harry 
using it, but I surely do not need to pretend that those are only two 
choices in existence.

Steve:
Back to some earlier aspects, I never said I /excused/ Harry.
I said I understood his actions under the circumstances.

Alla:

Yes me too.

Steve:
The only
bleeding heart liberals that are found in war, are the ones
literally bleeding to death. <SNIP>

Alla:
What is this has to do with Harry? So as long as one is not using 
Crucio on the enemy, one is bleeding heart liberal?







From jkoney65 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul  7 23:56:42 2008
From: jkoney65 at yahoo.com (jkoney65)
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:56:42 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <d28.2e3f9fea.35a3ea00@aol.com>
Message-ID: <g4uafq+pkt2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183610

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, juli17 at ... wrote:
>
>  
> Carol wrote:
> 
> IMO,  it would have been much less cruel to young readers (who *do*
> notice such  things and, in my experience, are shocked by them) to 
have
> Harry regret his  actions than to force them to either reject their
> hero as flawed or  rationalize his behavior by finding excuses for  
it.
> 
> 
> 
> Julie:
> I would add that even by having Harry regret his actions, this 
still leaves  
> him 
> a flawed hero, i.e. human. But proving himself more self-aware by  
regretting
> his wrong actions (not just the Crucio but the Sectumsempra  and 
the few 
> other moments you mentioned) would *show* his growth as a human  
being,
> his maturation into a "better man" by the end of the series. And I 
believe  
> that
> *showing* makes a much greater impact on the reader, and makes for 
a  better
> story, than expecting the reader just to *assume* Harry at some 
point off  the
> page experienced regret over his wrong actions. For me and many 
other  
> readers,
> the Crucio scene would have been much improved (i.e., better 
written and  more
> in character) if Harry had experienced at least momentary shock or 
regret  at
> the ease with which he cast an Unforgivable that had no other 
purpose than  to
> cause excruciating pain, and if McGonagall had shown even the 
slightest  hint
> of dismay or disapproval at Harry's action. (And if the 
Unforgivables had  
> been 
> presented and explained in a more consistent manner.)
>  
> Julie, who still enjoys JKR's Harry Potter saga, but doesn't see 
the  problem 
> with
> pointing out the weaker areas of her writing, as no writer no 
matter how  
> popular
> or critically acclaimed is without weak areas (it's that being 
human thing  
> again).
>  

Jack-A-Roe:
I guess this would be more of a general opinion on this thread of the 
crucio.

I don't have any problem with Harry using the crucio on him for a 
couple of seconds. This is the guy who has been torturing his friends 
all year. Is is some sort of revenge for them, possibly. But Harry 
stops the curse quickly. To me it seems more like being hit with a 
TASER than a torture device. 

Just like a TASER, you get hit with the curse, lose control and are 
in pain. After that the subject is apprehended with no threat of 
violence to the person taking them down.

Isn't Carrow the one who hit Harry with the same curse as they fought 
their way out of Hogwarts in book 6? If so, maybe it's a bit of an 
eye for an eye type of justice.

As for Harry owning a slave:
It appears that we are trying to judge it using our moral standards. 
This appears to be different in the magical world. House elves are 
just that. They are elves who work around the house. To them, this is 
their life and they enjoy it. I don't consider it wrong to have a 
guard dog protecting my property, because that is what they do. House 
elves may be more advanced than a dog, but they still seem to have 
their own purpose. 

I don't remember an evolutionary chart of house elves or anything 
about them being forcibly enslaved. If so, could someone point it out 
to me.









 




From iam.kemper at gmail.com  Tue Jul  8 00:13:18 2008
From: iam.kemper at gmail.com (kempermentor)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:13:18 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g4u7b2+ak0i@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ubeu+c47r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183611

> Steve:
> Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, I disagree. I've always 
> thought one of the great attributes of the Harry Potter books
> is that they are not preachy and don't offer clear moral
> determinations. 

Kemper now:
They are preachy. Dark Arts bad.  Love good.  Cowardice bad.  Courage
good.  
But those are 'duhs', when it came to torture and slavery... well,
torture was bad for the first six books  and slavery was bad in
two-four, but then in the DH: torture ok and slavery ok.

But, yeah, the books aren't as preachy as the Narnia books... and
thank God for that.


> bboyminn:
> Back to some earlier aspects, I never said I /excused/ Harry.
> I said I understood his actions under the circumstances. In
> war you need to be hard, sometimes even heartless. 

Kemper now:
I disagree.  That's like saying it's okay to torture because our side
gets tortured.  How are we better than our enemy if we do the same?

Kemper




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Tue Jul  8 00:26:37 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:26:37 -0000
Subject: Epilogue (was Re: Ron and Parseltongue)
In-Reply-To: <g4m8a8+1ne2@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4uc7t+4jjg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183612

> Carol responds:
> 
> Which does not change the fact that *modern critics* in general
> consider the deus ex machina (not the literal device but the
> figurative application of the term) to be a flaw in a modern work of
> literature.

Pippin:
JKR is not writing a novel in the modern style. This is a tale about
wizards, dragons and heroes. It is not a flaw when Beowulf finds the
very sword he needs in the lair of the monster; it's psychological
truth. The lair is a "real inside your head" place -- it makes sense
that the tool you need to get out  is in your head as well. We can't
always keep ourselves from imagining monsters, but we can always
imagine that we have the power to defeat them.

 The dungeons of Malfoy Manor are not a real place either -- JKR is
not examining how someone might escape if they were actually captured
by terrorists.  

Thematically, the mirror shard is one of a number of apparently
useless items that Harry kept only for sentiment's sake. Like the
fraudulent locket and the broken pieces of his wand, he did not expect
it  to be any good. 

In the course of the story, Harry discovers there is worth in each of
these "treasures." But if it had not been for the power of love, he
wouldn't have kept those things, and he never would have discovered
the good in them. Hmmmm.



Carol:
 And I read JKR's epigraph not as the invocation Aeschylus
> intended but as an indication that "the children" (HRH) are her
heroes and avengers (even though they shed no blood in the process of
> avenging the WW).

Pippin:
There are lots of quotes about children. Why choose one that also
invokes divine powers if that is extraneous to her message?

> > 
> Carol earlier: 
> > > Her failure to define Dark magic clearly and consistently is,
IMO, one such failure. 

Pippin:
Unless dark magic is exactly what it is in the real world: a
superstition. Let's see if that works. 

The dark creatures are the ones which wizards (and Muggles, in former
times) regarded with superstitious fear. The dark wizards are the ones
who use the fear of dark magic to gain power, and the dark spells are
the ones associated with those wizards. Simple, really. 

The dark arts are not magic which is intrinsically evil, they are
magic which wizards fear above all else and which dark wizards use to
extend their power. But there doesn't have to be a reasonable basis
for the fear. Saying "Voldemort" was not actually dangerous until DH. 


That is the power that Dumbledore is too noble to  use: he tries not
use fear to gain power, in fact he sometimes bends over backwards to
avoid it. Crouch Sr. can be very anti-Dark Arts and still authorize
the use of the Unforgivable Curses because (IMO) he doesn't see
himself as creating an atmosphere of fear and terror (even though he
is.) As far as he's concerned, he's using magic to punish and avenge.
 

James is anti-Dark Arts, meaning he's against the kind of magic dark
wizards use to terrify the helpless. That he's able to torture people
with household spells doesn't signify to his immature mind. Nobody's
that afraid of scurgify and schoolyard jinxes, so they can't be that bad. 

  Snape, OTOH, invents a spell that terrifies as well as wounds his
enemies: he *wants* people to be superstitiously afraid of him. Not
just afraid of what they know he can do, but of what they *don't* know
he can do, as Harry usually is. 

We don't learn what magic Mulciber tried to use on Mary,
and  JKR doesn't give us rules for what dark magic is. There are no
rules for superstitions, and it's scarier if we don't know exactly
what it is dark wizards are supposed to be capable of doing.

In sum, people are afraid of certain  magic,  the word for that magic
is "dark"  and because they're afraid, they think it's evil, quite
apart from what harm the magic can actually do. It's no different than
the way they look at Giants or werewolves.

Harry should not be proud of channeling Bella, IMO. You have to enjoy
causing pain to use crucio, and that's possibly not something an
emotionally healthy person would feel. But I don't think it's more
evil than if Harry had brutalized Amycus with his fists. We would
probably still be having the same argument over whether he'd done the
right thing and whether JKR expected people to have mixed feelings
about it. 

In fairy tales, the reader very often isn't told what the hero or
heroine is thinking. They are not about the hero's character, they are
a way that you, the reader, can discover your own character. What
would you do, and how would you feel, if a hated enemy was at your mercy?


Carol:
The problem, for me, is that *Harry* didn't feel it, and neither did
anyone else in the scene that we know of. 

Pippin:
Well, I'm sure Amycus wasn't happy about it. <g> But if JKR wants us
to sort out our mixed feelings for ourselves, it isn't going to serve
her purpose to say how Harry feels. The point is not a touching
description of Harry's remorse, or Harry's triumph for that matter. It
is for us to see how easily righteous anger can tip into sadism,
something JKR already described when Harry was considering turning
Dudley into something with feelers in OOP.

> Carol responds:
) Or take wands. Yes, she's trying to build on what Ollivander
> told Harry in SS/PS, that the wand chooses the Wizard (it was, of
> course, Lily wand that chose her and not the other way around) and
> that a Wizard will never have such good results with another
Wizard's wand, an idea that's partially borne out by Neville's
experience with his father's wand and Harry's with the Snatcher's wand
and Hermione's with Bellatrix's in DH but only partially elsewhere
(Ron has no particular difficulties with Charlie's wand until it gets
broken). 

In DH we get the new information about wand loyalty, but we're also
told by Ollivander that any wizard can use any wand if he's any wizard
at all. 

Pippin:
It's lore, not law. Wand lore isn't science, it's a collection of
stuff that (usually) works. More like engineering. There's no reason
the wizards themselves have to understand this stuff, or that Rowling
has to think up a set of coherent technical rules for it which Harry
wouldn't understand, being a layperson, even if Ollivander did.

We don't understand how memory works, we have conflicting theories,
and yet there are memory experts and all kinds of hints, tricks and
even drugs for improving it. My impression was that Ollivander was
explaining something he himself didn't understand very well to someone
whom he was sure would understand it even less.

The wands are sentient, but they don't have human characteristics like
love. We can understand why the wizards are so reluctant to share them
with other races. Where will they be if all their wands desert them?
The wands' attraction to power  reminds me of something a
martial arts master told me once: "The first thing you need to know
about a sword is that it has no loyalty."

It doesn't matter whether Harry was bluffing on a thin hand or
absolutely certain that the Elder Wand was his when he faced
Voldemort. It wasn't his understanding of wand lore but his faith in
himself and the power of love that empowered him to do it. 

The convoluted Elder Wand plot  directs us back to Draco's story and
to the Tale of the Three Brothers. Obviously they are important. The
two "wrong" choices in the Tale turned out to be just as important as
the "right" one. What seems evil may be good that has not yet found
its purpose -- which is, if I understand what JKR has been saying, the
reason that Slytherin House was kept. 

Pippin
who hopes JKR can forgive me if she ever finds out I'm the one who
started calling errors Flints




From iam.kemper at gmail.com  Tue Jul  8 00:29:45 2008
From: iam.kemper at gmail.com (kempermentor)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:29:45 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g4uafq+pkt2@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ucdp+gcpc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183613


> Jack-A-Roe:
> I guess this would be more of a general opinion on this thread of the 
> crucio.
> 
> I don't have any problem with Harry using the crucio on him for a 
> couple of seconds. This is the guy who has been torturing his friends 
> all year. Is is some sort of revenge for them, possibly. But Harry 
> stops the curse quickly. To me it seems more like being hit with a 
> TASER than a torture device. 

Kemper now:
So after you're TASED for a couple of seconds, is your body ok like it
was three seconds earlier?  Siriusly, I don't know.


> Jack-a-Roe
> As for Harry owning a slave:
> It appears that we are trying to judge it using our moral standards. 
> This appears to be different in the magical world. House elves are 
> just that. They are elves who work around the house. To them, this is 
> their life and they enjoy it. I don't consider it wrong to have a 
> guard dog protecting my property, because that is what they do. House 
> elves may be more advanced than a dog, but they still seem to have 
> their own purpose. 

Kemper now:
I agree to an extent.  I posed earlier that House Elves are bit like
the bottoms in the BDSM community; they're into serving but there's a
safe word.  Unfortunately, the Wizarding Masters haven't given their
Slaves a safe word.  The Elves want to serve maybe but they want to
serve a Master of their choosing, again, kind of like the bottoms in
the BDSM community.
I do not think the Elves are like pets.  I'm not saying dogs aren't
self-aware, I'm saying The Elves can at use a noun and verb.

Kemper




From ceridwennight at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  8 02:18:28 2008
From: ceridwennight at hotmail.com (Ceridwen)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:18:28 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g4u7b2+ak0i@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4uipk+af93@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183614

Steve:
> He used Crucio against a dark and dangerous person...
(*snip*)
> There is no time to take the moral high ground.
> Desperate times call for desperate measure, and the one and
> only goal it to come out of it alive and victorious. 

Ceridwen:
Yup, winning is the point of engaging in warfare.  Lose, and the 
enemy tramples rough-shod over you.  They burn your fields, they take 
your women and children captive, they execute you for having 
resisted, and so on.

HOWEVER.  There are rules of war.  One of those rules today is not to 
torture.  We have more or less recently gone through a debate about 
torture and prisoners, and the verdict is, don't torture.  Rules are 
there to keep the conflict contained.  In boxing, you have the 
Marquis of Queensbury rules, in war you have the Geneva Convention.  
Soldiers on up to generals and admirals who engage in wrongful 
actions during war are tried under courts martial.  Disregard for the 
rules leads to anarchy and/or vigilante-style "justice."

Steve:
> So, do you want Harry to win, or do you want Harry to be
> smug in defeat know that while his world was lost, his
> life was lost, that thousands will live in misery and tyranny
> for the foreseeable future, at least he took the high road?

Ceridwen:
False dichotomy.  There are other options besides the Cruciatus.  For 
a couple there are Stupify and Petrificus Totalus.  Draco had Harry 
petrified and vulnerable without torturing him on the train in HBP.  
Hermione effectively gets Neville out of the way in PS/SS with 
Petrificus.  The high road doesn't wander through a graveyard.  There 
are other options.

Ceridwen.




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Tue Jul  8 02:38:17 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:38:17 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g4u7b2+ak0i@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ujup+h0qj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183615

> > Julie:
> > I would add that even by having Harry regret his actions, 
> > this still leaves him a flawed hero,.... But proving
> > himself more self-aware by  regretting his wrong actions 
> > ... would *show* his growth as a human  being,... And I 
> > believe that *showing* makes a much greater impact on the
> > reader, and makes for a  better story, than expecting the 
> > reader just to *assume* Harry ... experienced regret.... 
> 
> bboyminn: 
> 
> Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, I disagree. I've always 
> thought one of the great attributes of the Harry Potter books
> is that they are not preachy and don't offer clear moral
> determinations. 

Magpie:
Those aren't our two choices. The books already make clear moral 
determinations and preach plenty (just not to the point where they 
overwhelm the story). They're not worried about drawing clear lines 
between good and bad. In fact, I think sometimes they make it a lot 
easier to figure out good vs. bad than in real life. 

There are moral issues that aren't resolved--but in the case of Harry 
feeling badly about things, I think that's a different issue. There 
we're just talking about what Harry feels, so why would it be 
preachy? In fact we usually do get what Harry feels, he just usually 
winds up feeling justified or focusing on people who have wronged him 
instead. That doesn't make him not judgmental (often he is self-
righteous or does think about right and wrong), it just makes him a 
bit limited in his view of himself. (Occasionally the book will point 
this out, making it clear he's not reliable in a specific instance.)


> > Julie:
> >
> > For me and many other readers, the Crucio scene would have 
> > been much improved... if Harry had experienced at least 
> > momentary shock or regret at the ease with which he cast an
> > Unforgivable that had no other purpose than to cause 
> > excruciating pain, and if McGonagall had shown even the 
> > slightest  hint of dismay or disapproval at Harry's action. 
> > (And if the Unforgivables had been presented and explained 
> > in a more consistent manner.)
> >  
> 
> bboyminn:
> 
> Again, I hear you saying that everything in the books needs a
> clear preachy moral explanation; absolute black and white, no
> shades of gray.
> 
> But ask yourself how well you know Harry having spend all 
> these year with him? He seems a very morally sound person,
> and consequently, I assume that he does regret his choices,
> but still justifies his action under the circumstances in 
> that moment.
> 
> He used Crucio against a dark and dangerous person, and he 
> does it in a moment of loss of temper. He did it for two
> seconds, meaning he gets no sadistic pleasure out of doing
> so. He also used Crucio against a dark and dangerous person
> who himself used Crucio as casually as adding sugar to his
> tea. 
> 
> I don't think McGonagall approves of Harry choices, but she 
> does think it 'galant' that Harry would defend her honor. But
> galantly defending her honor, does not mean blanket approval
> of the method he used.

Magpie:
I don't hear her saying she needs a clearer, preachy moral 
explanation. It seems like she's just saying she'd find Harry more 
interesting as a person who didn't consider himself so very morally 
sound at all times. In Julie's scenario Harry would be recognizing 
that he just did something purely sadistic for the pleasure of 
causing pain, even though other spells would have been smarter and 
more in line with his previous values. And maybe he enjoyed it, but 
he did it. He and McGonagall might be uncomfortable. It's not more 
complex to just assume that Harry didn't get any of the pleasure out 
of the curse (why else did he choose that one if not for the 
pleasure?) and Amycus is a very bad man that Harry stopped. 

In canon I think the throwing of the curse is presented as 
satisfying, putting Amycus down, Harry gets his badass line about how 
the curse really works well when you really do want to cause pain (I 
took that as Harry reflecting on that very pleasure). McGonagall is a 
little taken aback but that's mostly so that Harry can give her a 
second bad ass line.

Steve:
> So, do you want Harry to win, or do you want Harry to be 
> smug in defeat know that while his world was lost, his
> life was lost, that thousands will live in misery and tyranny
> for the foreseeable future, at least he took the high road? 
> 
> Personally, I vote for VICTORY.

Magpie:
Why conflate VICTORY with Harry torturing people? Torture is not the 
best curse to use to take someone out of action, and there aren't 
really supposed to be situations where it's officially time to start 
torturing the enemy. Questioning Harry's use of Crucio here doesn't 
equate to wanting Harry to lose, or not take Amycus out, or thousands 
living in misery and tyranny. Harry's using a stunning spell would 
have worked fine.

Steve: 
> Back to some earlier aspects, I never said I /excused/ Harry.
> I said I understood his actions under the circumstances. In
> war you need to be hard, sometimes even heartless. The only
> bleeding heart liberals that are found in war, are the ones
> literally bleeding to death.> I said that Harry's action were both 
wrong and bad, but I
> also said that I understood them. Things can still be wrong
> yet justified /under the circumstances/.  

Magpie:
I definitely acknowledge the difference between excusing and 
understanding. But if thinking he should have used something else 
gets connected to preferring Harry to be smug and send thousands to 
their doom than to have him stop the Bad Bad Man it sounds like not 
only excusing his actions but admiring them.

Jack-a-row:

As for Harry owning a slave:
It appears that we are trying to judge it using our moral standards.
This appears to be different in the magical world. House elves are
just that. They are elves who work around the house. To them, this is
their life and they enjoy it. I don't consider it wrong to have a
guard dog protecting my property, because that is what they do. House
elves may be more advanced than a dog, but they still seem to have
their own purpose.

Magpie:
I actually think another problem with the way it's set up is that it 
always comes down to just looking at the nature of House Elves. 
Elves' feelings never seem to matter except when it comes to them 
liking to be slaves, apparently, as if Wizards are doing them a favor 
even when we see elves suffering in their servitude. 

I certainly respect the view that house elves are fine in their 
situation. Many in canon seem to share it. There are many reasons 
given in canon for why Wizards should feel perfectly fine having 
creatures that must obey them and call them master. They're created 
to like being slaves--so they make great slaves. I do think it's a 
sort of tricky idea, because elves always "like being slaves" even 
when we see ones that don't. The effect on Wizards having this kind 
of power over somebody who is a person, if not a human, isn't focused 
on much.

-m







From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 03:02:09 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:02:09 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g4u8fa+qu1r@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4ulbh+sc07@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183616

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at ...> 
wrote:
>
> Steve:
> < HUGE SNIP>
> So, do you want Harry to win, or do you want Harry to be
> smug in defeat know that while his world was lost, his
> life was lost, that thousands will live in misery and tyranny
> for the foreseeable future, at least he took the high road?
> 
> Personally, I vote for VICTORY.
> <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> So there are only two choices presented? Use Crucio or otherwise 
> thousands will live in misery?
> I can count more choices than that. And I can easily imagine scenario 
> of not using the crucio and winning. I have no problems with Harry 
> using it, but I surely do not need to pretend that those are only two 
> choices in existence.

Montavilla47:
Stop the world, Alla.  We're in agreement!  

> Steve:
> Back to some earlier aspects, I never said I /excused/ Harry.
> I said I understood his actions under the circumstances.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Yes me too.

Montavilla47:
Me, three.  I understand why Harry did it.  What I don't
understand is why JKR did it.


> Steve:
> The only
> bleeding heart liberals that are found in war, are the ones
> literally bleeding to death. <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> What is this has to do with Harry? So as long as one is not using 
> Crucio on the enemy, one is bleeding heart liberal?

Montavilla47:
This is the part that's going to make this post *not* the forbidden
"I agree" post.  Not because I don't agree with Alla, I do.  But 
there's something I do want to say about this "bleeding hearts" 
statement.

The stereotype is that there are these two types of reactions
people might have to war:  You can be "realistic" and do what
you must (i.e. everything) to win, or you can be a "bleeding
heart" and stick to namby-pamby rules that allow the enemy
to defeat you.

But, as far as I can tell (and my direct experience is *nil*), this
is bull.  The people who join and run our military (by which
I mean the good ol' U.S. of A) are extremely ethical people.
The military requires ethical behavior--and punishes those
who fall short of it.  That's not knee-jerk authortitarianism,
either.  It's thoughtful and based on over two hundred years
of military history and self-examination.

The rules of engagement are there because, in the big 
picture, they are the best and most practical methods for 
conducting conflict.  Everything I've ever heard from the
generals who comment on how the military works, emphasize
the importance of having rules of engagement, communicating
them to the officers and enlisted personnel, and following
them.  It's when the chain of command is confused, or the
rules are clearly laid out, or soldiers just plain disregard
what they've been taught that disasters occur.







From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 03:21:01 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:21:01 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4umet+d5h6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183617

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman" 
<susiequsie23 at ...> wrote:
<SNIP of the summary>
>> 
> QUESTIONS
> 
> 1. "It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he 
> knelt again beside Dumbledore's body..." [p. 386].  Is there any 
> character in this series who has as much experience with old 
> nightmares?  If you think there is another (or other) candidate(s), 
> present the case, or the case that it *is* Harry.

Alla:

Love this question, love but unfortunately I abandoned my rule in not 
reading other people responses before I do mine and I read 
Potioncat's post. Hey, I LOVE Potioncat's posts, can't get enough of 
them :)

So I have to agree with her, in part at least. I mean, I definitely 
think that Harry has nightmares, we KNOW at least about some of them. 
We hear he is dreaming about Graveyard in OOP, he gets this horrible 
visions. Hugs Harry :)

So where I agree with Potioncat is that Dumbledore had nightmares and 
that cave is a great indicator of that.

And I would even agree with Potioncat that Snape probably had 
nightmares. I guess dead Lily pictured prominently in them. I hope he 
had lots of them.

Let me think, I also think Sirius had nightmares about his suggestion 
to make Peter a Secret keeper and his time in Azkaban. At the top of 
my head, I cannot think of anybody else.

Oh wait, no, Molly, of course Molly. Her Boggart indicated what 
nightmares she might have had.



> 
> 2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
> point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there is, 
> if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the 
use 
> of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in the 
> darkness" [p. 387]?

Alla:

Oh I think it is very significant, I think it goes back to JKR saying 
in interviews that she does not believe in magic or something like 
that and that ending will reflect it or something like that. I guess 
the idea is that nothing superficial ( if that is the right word) 
will stand between Harry and Dobby, no silly wand waving stuff or 
anything, just grief of one heart for another being.


> 3.  What do you think of the description that "every drop of 
> [Harry's] sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who 
had 
> saved their lives" [p. 387]?  What do you imagine Dobby would have 
> thought of that?

Alla:

I think that Dobby would have appreciated that, but at the same time 
he would really not have wanted great Harry Potter to work for him.


> 4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has Harry 
> *now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing 
Dumbledore 
> had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does the death 
> trigger this in Harry?

Alla:

Actually, heee, I think that this really really does not bode well 
for Occlumency as the area of magic, I mean IMO the fact that death 
triggers it in Harry shows that it is not very, well, good.

Like nothing else can make Harry to be succesful in that, what about 
other people?

 
> 5.  Is there significance to JKR's choice of "Nurmengard" as a name 
> for the prison?

Alla:

What Potioncat said and yes, I felt for Grindelwald too.

 
> 6.  Is there significance to the fact that Harry used the wand 
which 
> was Draco's, rather than the wand which was Bellatrix's, to etch 
the 
> words "Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf"?  


Alla:

OMG, great point and I think it is subtle enough too. I do not think 
he wanted to do this honor with Bella's wand, it was too dirty.

 
> 7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that 
> Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?
> 
> 8.  When Harry is talking in his mind as if to DD and asks if he is 
> meant to know but not to seek, he also asks, "Did you know how hard 
> I'd find that?  Is that why you made it this difficult?  So I'd 
have 
> time to work that out?" [p. 391]  What do you think is the answer 
to 
> that?  How about what you thought on your first read?  Did you feel 
a 
> new understanding along with Harry, or had you see his mission 
> differently than he had before this dawning?

Alla:

Honestly and truly, I do not get a great wisdom here, you know? I 
mean, I certainly get Harry mastering the Hallows, figuring out about 
the death, etc, but what Dumbledore tried to achieve here, I really 
really do not know.

I mean deliberately slowing Harry down to make sure he does not do 
anything rush I suppose? Here is the idea Dumbledore - do **not** 
send him on this mission then in the first place.

I think Dumbledore played rather cruel game here personally and I do 
not quite see the purpose.


 
> 9.  Harry Potter has been derided by many for not being much of a 
> thinker.  He becomes a thinker in this chapter, and quite 
decisive.  
> What do you make of this?  Is it a change?  Did it surprise you?  
Has 
> it always been there?


Alla:

I loved it, I loved it sooo much, but no I do not think that it 
surprised me much. Since I am rereading the books now I can see that 
those bits and pieces about Harry being able to think deductively 
were always there. Like in the first book he figured out stuff 
several times despite being wrong about main villain.


 
> 11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's comment, "You 
> are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an 
> unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?

Alla:

Certainly I do. I said it many times that I am fascinated that with 
his horrible upbringing Harry is able to feel even brief pity for 
Malfoy and even tiny bit of pity for Riddle. God knows that even 
after books ended that is more than I was ever able to achieve about 
Riddle. There is not one sympathetic thought I can come up about him.

So, yes, I certainly think that Harry's ability to love IS unusual 
and no, by that I do not mean that he is the most loving person in 
the world. I mean that I am fascinated that with the upbringing he 
had, he was able to love **at all**.


> 14.  When Harry said he understood bits of Voldemort and then went 
on 
> to say he wished he'd understood DD as much, were you surprised?  
Why 
> do you think he made this remark instead of sticking with Voldemort 
> as the topic of his understanding?

Alla:

Because I think that despite Voldemort being forced upon Harry, 
Dumbledore was the one with whom Harry was preocupied on voluntary 
basis, Dumbledore was the one whom Harry really wanted to understand 
and felt that it was necessary for his mission.


 
> 17.  It has long been an interest of many just what Ollivander is 
all 
> about.  Something about the way he described Voldemort 
as "great"... 
> something about how he made the hair stand up on Harry's neck....  
In 
> this chapter, we have Harry suddenly thinking about having been 
> unsure how much he liked Ollivander back when they first met, and 
> even now, "the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of this wand 
> seemed to enthral him as much as it repulsed him" [p. 402].  And 
yet 
> Luna seems genuinely fond of him.  What do you make of this man?

Alla:

Truly? No clue. I do think though that he has unhealthy fascination 
of Voldemort. He was just tortured for crying out loud and he still 
does that. Sigh.


> 
> 18.  How is it that, compared to the end of OOTP, Harry can be so 
> certain the visions he's having are real?  We know now that they 
are, 
> but how could he be so confident after what happened in OOTP?


Alla:

I really am not sure, actually. I would be interested to hear what 
others say.

Thanks for the great questions :)

 





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 05:24:20 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:24:20 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4utm4+ml7b@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183618

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman"
<susiequsie23 at ...> wrote:

> 6.  Is there significance to the fact that Harry used the wand which 
> was Draco's, rather than the wand which was Bellatrix's, to etch the 
> words "Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf"?  


zanooda:

It wasn't significant to Harry, I think, because he didn't even know
whose wand he used - he chose Draco's wand because it "felt friendlier
in his hand", not because he knew it wasn't Bella's. Harry didn't know
 whose two wands he had - they turned out to be Draco's and Bella's,
but it could have been Draco's and Wormtail's, or Bella's and
Wormtail's. So when Harry used Draco's wand, it was without any
conscious thought. As for JKR, I guess she didn't want Harry to use
Bella's wand on Dobby's grave - she's just killed him after all (I
mean Bella here, not JKR :-)).

I can't say why Draco's wand felt "friendlier" to Harry than Bella's.
Maybe it's because he took it directly from its master (Draco).
Bella's wand's ownership is a little more complicated. It was actually
Ron who disarmed Bella, although it was Harry who caught the wand.
Then Harry surrendered it and Draco took it, but next Harry took it
away from Draco again. No wonder Bella's wand was a little confused
about its ownership :-).




From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 09:29:57 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:29:57 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4utm4+ml7b@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4vc2l+nqt0@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183619


> zanooda:
> I can't say why Draco's wand felt "friendlier" to Harry than Bella's.
> Maybe it's because he took it directly from its master (Draco).
> Bella's wand's ownership is a little more complicated. It was actually
> Ron who disarmed Bella, although it was Harry who caught the wand.
> Then Harry surrendered it and Draco took it, but next Harry took it
> away from Draco again. No wonder Bella's wand was a little confused
> about its ownership :-).

Zara:
Bella's is complicated, but Harry is not a candidate for that wand's 
ownership, and he is undisputedly the winner of Draco's wand. I thought 
that was the whole point of this detail, showing us that affinity of a 
wand to its master.




From falkeli at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 11:50:05 2008
From: falkeli at yahoo.com (hp_fan_2008)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:50:05 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4utm4+ml7b@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4vk9d+lemn@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183620

zanooda:

> I can't say why Draco's wand felt "friendlier" to Harry than Bella's.
> Maybe it's because he took it directly from its master (Draco).
> Bella's wand's ownership is a little more complicated. It was actually
> Ron who disarmed Bella, although it was Harry who caught the wand.
> Then Harry surrendered it and Draco took it, but next Harry took it
> away from Draco again. No wonder Bella's wand was a little confused
> about its ownership :-).
>

Or maybe the personality of the owner needs to match the "personality"
of the wand. Bella is an evil person. Her wand may work best for evil
people, completely ruling out Harry (and Hermione, for that matter). 

               HP Fan 2008




From falkeli at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 12:20:12 2008
From: falkeli at yahoo.com (hp_fan_2008)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:20:12 -0000
Subject: wizarding genetics
In-Reply-To: <g4rmjm+8d65@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4vm1s+3tue@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183621

Catlady:
> I agree that the genetics of magic must involve quite a number of gene
> pairs, because simple Mendelian inheritance wouldn't account for
> wizarding folk having different amounts of innate magical power and
> being better at some forms of magic than others, and the magical
> alleles of these genes must be loose in the Muggle population or there
> wouldn't be Muggleborns.

HP Fan 2008:
Is there a genetic basis for magic? I think I can give an explanation
which nearly fits the full picture - the exception being Dean, who
isn't explicitly mentioned in the books as definitely having a wizard
father.

With the exception of Dean, all wizards/witches we know fall into one
of the following 2 categories:
1) Children to a witch mother - even if she is muggle-born herself.
2) Full muggle-borns - no known magical ancestry.

Here is the explanation: Ordinarily, a child gets the magical status
from the mother - hence the children of a witch mother will usually be
magical, and the children of a muggle mother will usually be a muggle.
There are exceptions in both directions - known as muggle-borns and
squibs. The reason there are more muggle-borns than squibs is the fact
that the wizard population is so small relative to the muggle population.

In addition to the question of having magic, there may also be the
question of the magic being strong enough to be noticeable. Some
"squibs" may actually be wizards or witches who actually are magical,
but the magic is so weak that it can't be used. Such people may also
be born to muggle families - I believe that the mother of the Creevey
brothers may be such, explaining why both brothers are wizards.

Catlady:
> I have tried, unsuccessfully but not very
> hard, to figure out how mixing these genes around could provide
> 'hybrid vigor', so that Muggleborns would usually be on the high side
> of the power range.

Are muggle-borns definitely typically better at magic? Not so clear.
Although Hermione is clearly near the top, but beyond that things
aren't so clear. Slughorn mentions that Lily was the best, but Lupin
refers to James and Sirius (both pure-blood) as the best in their
year. And see my comment above about Mrs. Creevey, who may have been
an extreemly-weak witch.

                                                    HP Fan 2008







From kersberg at chello.nl  Tue Jul  8 13:59:11 2008
From: kersberg at chello.nl (kamion53)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:59:11 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4vrrf+d3ku@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183622

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman" 
Siriusly Snapey Susan wrote:
------(snap,snap)---------------------
> 
> 5.  Is there significance to JKR's choice of "Nurmengard" as a name 
> for the prison?
> 
-------(snap,snap)--------------------

 Kamion answers:
Nurmengard is one of those names that brings with it many 
associations and that is the coolness of JKR's writing:

One of the associations is with the Norns, the ancient goddesses of 
fate in Norse mythology, also called the Weird Sisters from wyrd=fate
Gard could be chosen because is reminds of Asgard, a place of Norse 
afterlife.... prisoners in Nurmengard were seriously struck down by 
fate and taken out from the active life in the wizards world.

But the fact, that it is describe as a prison build by Grindelwald, 
made me associate it, at the first reading aleady, with 
Buchenwald, one of the earlier concentration camps of the Nazi's, 
build in 1937 near Weimar in Thuringia. Although it was not an 
extermination camp like Auschwitz, death toll was high due to 
starvation and hard labor.
Nurmengard for me never got the association with Nurenberg like 
Potioncat got it in her answer, it's actually the first time I see 
someone make that association. Nurmengard and Buchenwald are both 
prisons, while Nurenberg is a city. I also assume, although no 
mentioning is made of it, conditions in Nurmengard, no matter who 
ruled there, were as bad as in Azkaban, as it is presented in PoA.

But I also believe that we go deeper into the meaning of Nurmengard, 
then JKR ever intended. The place is not that important and does not 
play a big role, even a role less significant then Durmstrang. So JKR 
would have chossen the first idea, that popped into her mind and 
liking the sound, did not attach any filosofic meaning to it.




From kersberg at chello.nl  Tue Jul  8 14:27:49 2008
From: kersberg at chello.nl (kamion53)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:27:49 -0000
Subject: Colin Creevey: Flint or not? (was Re: Hedwig's death)
In-Reply-To: <g4t04s+qpbj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g4vth5+19dn@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183623

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...>
wrote:
Potioncat:
> I think JKR gave considerable thought as to who would die and how
> they would die. Not that every reader is going to cheer her
> decisions, of course. Between this scene, and the one with Ginny
> tending the un-named girl who wanted to go home, we're reminded of
> how young these warriors are.
>
> Also, bodies were being brought in before Slughorn arrived with
> reinforcements. Almost all of them would have been students and we
> would have known some of them. It was kindness that we didn't see a
> list of names posted on the wall.

Kamion answers:
I agree with you that JKR gave considerable thought about who would
die, I even thinks she worked it quite through in what kind of
relation the dying stood to Harry. Throughout her work death creeps
closer and closer to Harry, starting with a brother-in-arms (Cedric),
she takes away ever more aspects of life: Cedric = friendship, Sirius
= family, Dumbledore = guidance, Moody = protection, Hedwig =
innocence, Dobby = desire for freedom.
Where does Creevey fit in? That is my problem, he does not loom high
on Harry's list and I cannot come up with an aspect, that symbolises
an important part of Harry's life. To be honest Colin Creevey was
quite dispendable. I would have had more peace with the situation
Neville was bringing in an anonymous victim, that would picture the
same state of sorrow. Maybe I just liked Colin in all his annoyance a
bit too much, to see him cast off as collateral damage.




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Tue Jul  8 15:42:56 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 08:42:56 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Colin Creevey: Flint or not? (was Re: Hedwig's death)
In-Reply-To: <g4vth5+19dn@eGroups.com>
References: <g4t04s+qpbj@eGroups.com> <g4vth5+19dn@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807080842j54f06aa7t71df72f47cee7e9e@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183624

Lynda:

I know that I'm on a short list of people here, but I never liked either of
the Creevey brothers. They were annoying and I did not find them funny in
the least. That being said, it was a bit of a shock when Colin was killed
and I did feel sad about that. So in retrospect, I guess the character grew
on me unknown.


Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Tue Jul  8 16:51:00 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:51:00 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g4ulbh+sc07@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g505tk+bsqc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183625


> Montavilla47:
> Me, three.  I understand why Harry did it.  What I don't
> understand is why JKR did it.

Pippin:
Why did George Lucas have Luke lose it and go after Vader in RotJ?
Because Luke had to recognize that he was capable of becoming what
Vader is. He had to *choose* to be a Jedi. 

The audience knows that Luke is making a wrong decision before Luke
does. We're cued by the Emperor cheering and by the music. In Rowling,
we're cued by Harry saying that he understands what Bella meant. If
Bella were there, she'd cheer, wouldn't she? She'd crucio Amycus
herself for failing the Dark Lord. 

It's  more complicated in Rowling, because in Star Wars Luke already
has a personal reason to know that it matters how he treats Vader. JKR
hasn't yet given Harry a personal reason to think that it matters how
he treats a Death Eater. But she will.

There are ways to do that besides  having someone punish or admonish
Harry. As a matter of fact Luke doesn't get punished, or admonished
either -- his mentors were telling him that killing Vader was okay.
Luke doesn't have a line where he says he was wrong. He shows us he
knows he was wrong through his actions. He acknowledges his father, he
throws the light saber away, and he honors his father in death. 


We don't get the scene that maybe some people wanted, where Harry
throws his wand away and Snape saves him. For JKR that's too easy.
IMO, she wants us to love people for their hidden worth, even if they
themselves never discover it,  even if they're broken or damaged or
not what they pretended to be. 

The way the House-elves have to punish themselves shows us how 
sometimes punishment is wrong even if the person is guilty. Why does
Harry need to be punished? Harry doesn't need to be hurt to know what
a crucio feels like. And hurting Harry wouldn't make him see that it
mattered how he treated Amycus any more than Snape's detentions made
him see that it mattered how he treated Draco.

Harry recognizes Draco's humanity when he sees that he and Draco are
in common danger from the fire. Harry hears a "thin human scream."  He
recognizes Snape's humanity when he finally believes he and Snape were
in a common struggle with Voldemort. It harks back to facing the troll
and the teachers together -- that was what made Ron and Harry start
treating  Hermione as a person like themselves instead of a teacher's pet.

If we're old enough to think that way, JKR doesn't want us to be
against torture  because torture is eeevil. She wants us to be against
torture because it causes unnecessary pain to a human being. 

Likewise she doesn't want us to be against slavery because slavery is
evil. She wants us to be against it because it's the involuntary
degradation of a human being. If we wouldn't object to House-elf
slavery if it was called something else, then it's only the name we're
objecting to, and fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.

Once you've labeled something as evil, you're saying it can't or
shouldn't be tolerated. Good people don't tolerate evil, they drive it
out. But driving out the bad leaves them to be used by the worst.
That's what happens to the werewolves and the giants. 

It's pretty clear that if a House-elf ever arose who had Dobby's
desire for independence  and Kreacher's desire for revenge, the
wizards would be in serious trouble. 

Pippin





From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Tue Jul  8 17:38:52 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:38:52 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g505tk+bsqc@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g508nc+r4dt@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183626

> > Montavilla47:
> > Me, three.  I understand why Harry did it.  What I don't
> > understand is why JKR did it.
> 
> Pippin:
> Why did George Lucas have Luke lose it and go after Vader in RotJ?
> Because Luke had to recognize that he was capable of becoming what
> Vader is. He had to *choose* to be a Jedi. 

<snip>
> There are ways to do that besides  having someone punish or admonish
> Harry. As a matter of fact Luke doesn't get punished, or admonished
> either -- his mentors were telling him that killing Vader was okay.
> Luke doesn't have a line where he says he was wrong. He shows us he
> knows he was wrong through his actions. He acknowledges his father, 
he
> throws the light saber away, and he honors his father in death. 

Magpie:
But Luke clearly recognizes exactly what you're talking about where 
Harry doesn't. That's what that whole moment is about in ROTJ. It 
changes the whole direction of the scene and leads to Vader 
destroying the emperor. Luke stops himself before he finishes Vader. 
He looks at Vader's robotic hand and then at his own robotic hand, 
getting that this is what he will become. The Emperor even says to 
kill him and "take his place at my side." And then Luke turns off his 
Light Saber and says he's a Jedi and won't turn to the Dark Side. The 
whole series is about setting up exactly that temptation, bringing 
Luke to the edge of it and pulling Vader back from over the line.

If Luke acted like Harry did, he would have not stopped himself, but 
rather blast Vader with some Dark Side lightning until he was 
unconscious, and then turned to the camera and said, "Yeah, the 
emperor was right. When you use your anger it really works." And if 
somebody happened to be standing there a little surprised and 
said, "But you do realize...?" He'd say, "Yeah, I do," and go on 
being awesome about it.

The Crucio scene and Harry's later sacrifice are not connected the 
way Luke's stopping himself and tossing away the light saber are in 
ROTJ. One is Harry being awesome, the other is Harry being awesome in 
a different way. He's not turning to the Dark Side by using his 
Crucio, he's just showing that temper he's always had. Doesn't 
interfere at all with his great power of love--he's still brave 
enough to sacrifice himself for the people he loves to bring 
Voldemort down. He doesn't have to choose one or the other.

It has nothing to do with Harry being punished. Luke isn't punished. 
He doesn't have to be punished. He just sees something true about the 
situation, sees a connection between himself and Vader that Harry 
doesn't see between himself and Amycus. Harry can rest assured that 
he doesn't want Draco Malfoy to die a horrible death without any self-
reflection.  

Pippin:
> If we're old enough to think that way, JKR doesn't want us to be
> against torture  because torture is eeevil. She wants us to be 
against
> torture because it causes unnecessary pain to a human being. 

 
> Likewise she doesn't want us to be against slavery because slavery 
is
> evil. She wants us to be against it because it's the involuntary
> degradation of a human being. 

Magpie:
These sound like very reasonable things for JKR to think, but I don't 
see where she's dramatizing these things in the scenes we're talking 
about. You still seem to be saying that by showing Harry looking cool 
using the torture curse, or by happily enjoying his slave labor who 
loves him, JKR is giving us reasons to be against torture or slavery 
in those scenes. Which makes it seem like we could read anything into 
anything to get what we want. It's not overly simplistic to actually 
illustrate the point you're trying to make in what you write. When it 
comes to other things, like the need for remorse, she doesn't mind 
spelling it out.

I assume JKR is against both slavery and torture. But I'm not sure 
that means she didn't just write a feel-good Crucio moment for Harry 
(he's never been a saint!) or wrote the Harry/Kreacher story to be 
more about the wonderful effect Harry's kindness had on pitiful 
Kreacher so he gets his happy ending now. 

Pippin:
> Once you've labeled something as evil, you're saying it can't or
> shouldn't be tolerated. Good people don't tolerate evil, they drive 
it
> out. But driving out the bad leaves them to be used by the worst.
> That's what happens to the werewolves and the giants. 

Magpie:
I have little use for labeling anything "evil" but I think I'm 
misunderstanding you here. Why would good people eschewing torture 
and slavery mean that bad people are more likely to torture and have 
slaves? Driving out giants and werewolves isn't driving out the bad, 
it's driving out people. Torture and slavery don't work that way. 
They work the opposite way?good people using them without regret 
validates them for wider use.

Pippin: 
> It's pretty clear that if a House-elf ever arose who had Dobby's
> desire for independence  and Kreacher's desire for revenge, the
> wizards would be in serious trouble. 

Magpie:
The Goblins don't seem to have gotten very far in their rebellions.

-m





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 18:40:43 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:40:43 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4vc2l+nqt0@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g50cbb+k0d6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183627

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Zara" <zgirnius at ...> wrote:

> Bella's is complicated, but Harry is not a candidate for that 
> wand's ownership, and he is undisputedly the winner of Draco's 
> wand. I thought that was the whole point of this detail, showing 
> us that affinity of a wand to its master.


zanooda:

That's what I think too - Draco's wand feels "friendlier" because 
Harry is undisputedly his new master. As for Bella's wand, logically 
its new master should be Ron, but I wouldn'r say that Harry is not a 
candidate for its ownership either, especially after he took all 
three wands from Draco by force. The difference is, to me, that in 
the first case Harry is an undisputed owner, and in the second case 
he is a "disputed" owner :-).


> HP Fan wrote:

Or maybe the personality of the owner needs to match the "personality"
of the wand. Bella is an evil person. Her wand may work best for evil
people, completely ruling out Harry (and Hermione, for that matter). 


zanooda:

I'm not sure. The Elder wand worked for DD, although its previous 
owner was Grindelwald. Sure, Grindelwald doesn't seem as evil as LV, 
but still, he tortured and killed with this wand just like Bella did 
with hers. And I still don't understand how come Bella still had her 
wand after Azkaban :-).




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  8 19:36:50 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:36:50 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g508nc+r4dt@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g50fki+7550@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183628

> Magpie:
> The Crucio scene and Harry's later sacrifice are not connected the 
> way Luke's stopping himself and tossing away the light saber are in 
> ROTJ. One is Harry being awesome, the other is Harry being awesome in 
> a different way. He's not turning to the Dark Side by using his 
> Crucio, he's just showing that temper he's always had. Doesn't 
> interfere at all with his great power of love--he's still brave 
> enough to sacrifice himself for the people he loves to bring 
> Voldemort down. He doesn't have to choose one or the other.
> 
> It has nothing to do with Harry being punished. Luke isn't punished. 
> He doesn't have to be punished. He just sees something true about the 
> situation, sees a connection between himself and Vader that Harry 
> doesn't see between himself and Amycus. Harry can rest assured that 
> he doesn't want Draco Malfoy to die a horrible death without any self-
> reflection.  

Montavilla47:
Exactly!

The thing about Harry saving Draco from the fire is that there really 
isn't a point in the series--including their duel in the bathroom--
when Harry *wouldn't* have saved Draco from a fire.  At eleven, Harry
saves people.  At twelve, he saves people.  He keeps doing this
consistently in every year--whether he likes the people or not.  

So, Harry saving Draco from the fire is not a significant act in terms 
of Harry's growth as a character.  Which is why, for me anyway, the 
moment falls flat.  It's really just another moment when Harry is 
awesome with the added zest of making Draco beholden to Harry
for saving his life--like he wouldn't be anyway when Harry 
dies to save him along with everyone else.

Not to beat a dead horse of anything, but it's of a piece to me with
Ron's idea about warning the elves.  It's not a change on Ron's part
to consider the feelings of the elves.  But it's treated like some big
growth moment.  

Even Harry's sacrifice is exactly what he would have done as an
eleven year old, were he presented with the same dilemma.  Really,
Dumbledore hardly needed to bother with all that training and 
grooming.  He could have just pointed little Harry towards the 
big nasty Voldemort, given him a pat on the behind, and Harry
would have trotted off obediently to die.

Come to think of it.... maybe that *was* the whole point of 
Stone's obstacles course after all.




From iam.kemper at gmail.com  Tue Jul  8 19:39:28 2008
From: iam.kemper at gmail.com (kempermentor)
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:39:28 -0000
Subject: Goblins
Message-ID: <g50fpg+qrgo@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183629

> Magpie:
> The Goblins don't seem to have gotten very far in their rebellions.

Kemper now:
I don't know... if they are the bankers of wizarding world, then that
could make them pretty powerful at least economically.  They could
learn a lot from the US Federal Reserve, then Gringott's would've
never been threatened by the Wizards.  

Who needs wands? If you control the economy, you control the government.

Kemper




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Tue Jul  8 21:27:16 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 14:27:16 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g508nc+r4dt@eGroups.com>
References: <g505tk+bsqc@eGroups.com> <g508nc+r4dt@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807081427h42c66e2g6e1e5cd9834120a5@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183630

Magpie:
But Luke clearly recognizes exactly what you're talking about where
Harry doesn't.

Lynda:
Oh, but I think that Harry does recognize and understand this. The book is
not a movie as ROTJ was and Rowling handles it differently than Lucas
did--the styles are different in other words, but Harry gets it. He just
handles the knowledge in a different manner than Luke did.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From SnapesSlytherin at aol.com  Wed Jul  9 00:18:22 2008
From: SnapesSlytherin at aol.com (Blair)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:18:22 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5104e+cj61@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183631

> QUESTIONS
> 
> 1. "It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he 
> knelt again beside Dumbledore's body..." [p. 386].  Is there any 
> character in this series who has as much experience with old 
> nightmares?  If you think there is another (or other) candidate(s), 
> present the case, or the case that it *is* Harry.

Oryomai:
I'm not sure what I think about Harry's experience with his old
nightmares.  They seem to turn on and off.  He can completely
forget(?) what happened to Sirius, and even when reminded of it he
doesn't seem to learn his lesson.  I think that Severus might be more
haunted by his past than Harry is.  Severus never even managed to get
past his boyhood crush on Lily (I am personally of the opinion that he
would have eventually gotten over it had she lived) -- his entire life
was based on the nightmares of his past.
 
> 2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
> point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there is, 
> if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the use 
> of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in the 
> darkness" [p. 387]?

Oryomai:
Harry didn't use magic because he wanted to get out some of his
feelings.  He was able to push channel a lot of the pain over Dobby's
death into the digging of the grave.  I think that Harry begins to
understand that there are forces and feelings more powerful than magic
(love and sacrifice?  ugh...that sounds so cliche!).

> 3.  What do you think of the description that "every drop of 
> [Harry's] sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had 
> saved their lives" [p. 387]?  What do you imagine Dobby would have 
> thought of that?

Oryomai:
I think Dobby would have been honored that Harry Potter dug his grave.

 
> 4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has Harry 
> *now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing Dumbledore 
> had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does the death 
> trigger this in Harry?

Oryomai:
I have no clue.  It's something that Harry had needed to learn for a
long, long time.  Maybe he didn't want Voldy to be able to see where
he buried Dobby or where everyone was hiding?  Or maybe Dobby's death
made Harry finally realize that this was the time to act, that there
was no more time for Horcrux hunting or camping out.

> 6.  Is there significance to the fact that Harry used the wand which 
> was Draco's, rather than the wand which was Bellatrix's, to etch the 
> words "Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf"?  

Oryomai:
Well, it is the first time we see Harry using what will be known as
the Elder Wand (I'm not even going to start in on that...I'm *still*
confused).  Harry's first act with the wand wasn't an act of
destruction or an attempt to seek power...it was the burial of a
friend.  Bellatrix's wand would have felt awkward in his hand.  It
might also be a sign that Draco and Harry weren't so different after all.

> 7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that 
> Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?

Oryomai:
No.  I don't have such a high and mighty opinion of Harry.  I thought
that Harry would, at the very least, be tempted by the idea of
ultimate power for a minute.  There is not a chance in Hades that I
could have that kind of power and not use it.  Harry was in possession
of all 3 Hallows!!  I'm not that good of a person ;-)

> 
> 9.  Harry Potter has been derided by many for not being much of a 
> thinker.  He becomes a thinker in this chapter, and quite decisive.  
> What do you make of this?  Is it a change?  Did it surprise you?  Has 
> it always been there?

Oryomai:
I think it was sheer adrenaline.  Did he really have much of a choice
but to think?  The options were basically think or die.  I'm still not
sure if I believe he was a thinker...I think that he acted on his
instincts (which are always good and right, right Remus?).
 
> 10.  What did you think was going on when you first read that Harry 
> was laboring over seeing Griphook or Ollivander first... and chose 
> Griphook?  

Oryomai:
Harry decided to choose the Horcruxes over the Hallows.  He knew that
Bella believed something came out of her vault, and he wanted to know
what it was.  He knew but didn't seek.

> 11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's comment, "You 
> are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an 
> unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?

Oryomai:
I think that Harry is the closest Griphook has come to trusting a
human.  Griphook saw Harry personally dig a grave for a House Elf. 
That's not the way that wizards usually act in Griphook's experience.
 
> 12.  Is Griphook correct that this is "precisely about" wizards vs. 
> goblins?  Why did he drop the subject so abruptly?

Oryomai:
Griphook wanted the sword; if he upset Harry too much he'd never get
the sword.  It's the goblin refrain -- wizards v. goblins.  In this
case, Griphook could benefit (he might even have seen it as revenge
for centuries of mistreatment).
 
> 13.  Why did Harry remove the Sword of Gryffindor when he left 
> Griphook's room, and why did he not say anything as he did so?

Oryomai:
He was trying to keep an eye on it for as long as possible.  Since his
plan was to try to keep it to destroy the Horcruxes, he did not want
to leave it alone with Griphook.  No matter how enlightened Harry is,
he still has the prejudices of wizards engrained in his mind (History
of Magic anyone?  People say you learn better when you hear things
while asleep...)

> 15.  How do you react to those remarks of Ollivander's concerning 
> wand ownership and control?  Since they're really JKR's words ? and 
> rules ? are they reasonable? Fair?  Do they tell us enough?  
> "Subtle," "complex," "usually," "in general" ? is this just the 
> nature of wand lore, and it *is* nebulous and imprecise?  Or is this 
> simply a way to leave open more possibilities for the author?
Oryomai:
Ugh.  The whole "wand thing" was such a complete and total muck up. 
They're a way for her to be able to wrap everything up in a nice neat
bow even though it makes less than no sense to some of her readers. 
It's nebulous and imprecise -- it appears to go against what we've
known for the sake of a deus ex machina (A ha!  The Deathstick is
mine!  I stole it from Draco!  Somehow, his wand turned into it!  Ha
ha!).  I can't even really talk about it....

> 17.  It has long been an interest of many just what Ollivander is all 
> about.  Something about the way he described Voldemort as "great"... 
> something about how he made the hair stand up on Harry's neck....  In 
> this chapter, we have Harry suddenly thinking about having been 
> unsure how much he liked Ollivander back when they first met, and 
> even now, "the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of this wand 
> seemed to enthral him as much as it repulsed him" [p. 402].  And yet 
> Luna seems genuinely fond of him.  What do you make of this man?

Oryomai:
I think Ollivander is deeply and truly interested in wands.  He's
upset about what's happening around him, but he's completely entranced
by the wand lore around it.  Luna has the same kind of out there
personality type that Ollivander does, and I imagine that she found
the idea of wandlore as interesting as he did (hey, they had to talk
about something in captivity).

> 18.  How is it that, compared to the end of OOTP, Harry can be so 
> certain the visions he's having are real?  We know now that they are, 
> but how could he be so confident after what happened in OOTP?

Oryomai:
Because he doesn't learn from his old nightmares.


Oryomai, who hopes that her chapter discussion goes as well as this one!




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Wed Jul  9 01:55:26 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:55:26 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g515qe+bnae@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183632

One of my favorite chapters, and so many good questions!  Thanks SSS, 
especially for adding the quotes to your questions. :)

> 2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
> point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there is, 
> if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the
> use of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in 
> the darkness" [p. 387]?

Harry's growing obsession with the Hallows is a dangerous venture 
because he's seeking a magical solution to the problem of defeating 
Voldemort.  Harry temporarily turns his back on DD's belief that 
Harry's power is his human feelings and relationships rather than 
magical ability.  His obsession and resulting impulsiveness led to 
their capture and ultimately, to Dobby's death.  Digging the grave by 
hand was a penance, as well as the first time Harry was forced to 
slow down for reflection about his plan to unite the Hallows.  

> 3.  What do you think of the description that "every drop of 
> [Harry's] sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who
> had saved their lives" [p. 387]?  What do you imagine Dobby would 
> have thought of that?

I think it's meant to be a poignant moment.  It didn't quite sound 
right to me.  Dobby wouldn't be happy that Harry Potter was digging 
his grave when Dobby should be doing the work!  Harry's act would 
send Dobby swooning about Harry's goodness.  

> 4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has Harry 
> *now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing 
> Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does
> the death trigger this in Harry?

It's not a permanent control since LV's thoughts come unbidden to him 
again later on.  I took the explanation in the book at face value: 
Grief for Dobby helped Harry shut his mind to LV just as grief for 
Sirius stopped LV from possessing him.  Strong feelings of loss for a 
loved one repel LV.
 
> 5.  Is there significance to JKR's choice of "Nurmengard" as a name 
> for the prison?

I thought of the Nuremberg trials as others mentioned.  JKR hinting 
that Grindelwald seized power at nearly the same time as Hitler was 
seizing power also reminded me of connections to Nazi Germany and 
concentration camps. (Do those dates still work out, the GW rose to 
power during WWII?)

> 7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that 
> Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?

I felt confident only because the pages remaining were growing 
smaller and smaller, lol.  Seriously, that section of the chapter is 
one of my favorites in DH, the part about Dumbledore knowing Ron 
would want to return to Harry, that Peter was capable of feeling some 
remorse, that Harry would be able to reject the power & glory of the 
Hallows when once he realized the cost. 


> 8.  When Harry is talking in his mind as if to DD and asks if he is 
> meant to know but not to seek, he also asks, "Did you know how hard 
> I'd find that?  Is that why you made it this difficult?  So I'd 
> have time to work that out?" [p. 391]  What do you think is the
> answer to that?  How about what you thought on your first read?  
> Did you feel a new understanding along with Harry, or had you see
> his mission differently than he had before this dawning?

I think that's the right answer, that Dumbledore knew Harry was a 
Seeker at heart and the goal of the Seeker is to grab the Snitch to 
end the game.  For a short time, Harry believed uniting the Hallows 
was the way to end the game.  I didn't think seeking the Hallows was 
the right thing for Harry to do because his obsession led him to 
*want* to get into LV's head.  That seemed like a bad idea. I 
expected LV would sense a change in Harry and open the connection 
again.  But since Voldemort was deeply obsessed himself at the 
moment....

> 10.  What did you think was going on when you first read that Harry 
> was laboring over seeing Griphook or Ollivander first... and chose 
> Griphook?  

I can't remember now!  I figured Harry had a wand question for 
Ollivander, but don't remember if I figured out that Griphook might 
help them retrieve the Hufflepuff cup at Gringotts.  
 
> 11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's comment, "You 
> are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an 
> unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?

This was a little overdone imo.  Griphook appears to think all 
wizards are the same: out to get the goblins.  There are reasons why 
he thinks that.  Yet he's traveled with wizards during the year who 
helped keep him safe & didn't betray him, and he's met Bill who not 
only works with goblins but calls some of them friends.  Why does he 
consider Harry so unusual just because he dug Dobby's grave without 
magic?  Dean & Ron helped too.  


> 12.  Is Griphook correct that this is "precisely about" wizards vs. 
> goblins?  Why did he drop the subject so abruptly?

Griphook, and later Bill, contribute more mature views of the 
situation than Hermione's somewhat naive response that Mudbloods are 
as low as goblins or elves in the new order.  When you start out 
lower than a human, it's a safe bet you'll remain that way under an 
oppressive regime.  It's true though that Mudbloods are the main 
target during the story.  (As an aside, I don't agree that goblins 
are equal to elves because Goblins control the money with no apparent 
checks/balances on their institution.)  

Griphook drops it because he's supposedly seeing Hermione as an 
unusual witch on the same level as Harry.  Personally I think he 
dropped it so Hermione would be quiet.

 
> 13.  Why did Harry remove the Sword of Gryffindor when he left 
> Griphook's room, and why did he not say anything as he did so?

He doesn't trust Griphook.
 
> 14.  When Harry said he understood bits of Voldemort and then went
> on to say he wished he'd understood DD as much, were you 
> surprised?  Why do you think he made this remark instead of 
> sticking with Voldemort as the topic of his understanding?

Because understanding Dumbledore is equally important to him by this 
point.  He hopes his decision to destroy Horcruxes rather than 
seeking Hallows is the right one, but he doesn't know for sure.  If 
he understood DD better he'd have more certainty about his decision.

 
> 16.  Ollivander says he has no idea why the wand Voldemort borrowed 
> failed against Harry's wand.  He says "something unique" happened.  
> What was that something unique, do you think?

I guess it's the answer DD gave Harry in the King's Cross chapter, 
that Harry's wand recognized LV and regurgitated Voldemort's own 
magic against him.  


> 17.  It has long been an interest of many just what Ollivander is
> all about.  Something about the way he described Voldemort 
> as "great"... something about how he made the hair stand up on
> Harry's neck....  In this chapter, we have Harry suddenly thinking 
> about having been unsure how much he liked Ollivander back when 
> they first met, and even now, "the idea of the Dark Lord in
> possession of this wand seemed to enthral him as much as it
> repulsed him" [p. 402].  And yet Luna seems genuinely fond of him.
>  What do you make of this man?

Ollivander is all about great magic coming from great wands imo.  
He's not as concerned about the type of magic as the power.  That 
concept is the very thing Harry rejects when he seeks the Stone but 
not to use it, or decides not to seek the Hallows or to give up the 
Elder wand in favor of his original wand.  He rejects the idea that 
powerful magic is the highest calling.  Mainly the two are 
philosophically opposed more than anything else.  







From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  9 02:25:24 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:25:24 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco WAS :Re: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g50fki+7550@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g517ik+g1vn@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183633

Montavilla47:
Exactly!

The thing about Harry saving Draco from the fire is that there really
isn't a point in the series--including their duel in the bathroom--
when Harry *wouldn't* have saved Draco from a fire. At eleven, Harry
saves people. At twelve, he saves people. He keeps doing this
consistently in every year--whether he likes the people or not.

So, Harry saving Draco from the fire is not a significant act in terms
of Harry's growth as a character. Which is why, for me anyway, the
moment falls flat. It's really just another moment when Harry is
awesome with the added zest of making Draco beholden to Harry
for saving his life--like he wouldn't be anyway when Harry
dies to save him along with everyone else.
<SNIP>

Alla:

I disagree. I do not believe that during seven books Harry would have 
ever had an inclination to save Draco from the fire, so yes for me it 
is a big character growth moment. Harry saves people, but I remember 
Harry happily leaving Draco in the compartment of the train and doing 
swat to help them in GoF. Mind you, I am not begrudging him one bit, 
I think for what Draco did in GoF he deserved all he got and more, 
but saving Draco's life?

When does Harry ever express the desire to do that?

Yes, absolutely he saves people since he was eleven, but to me the 
writer showing how the quality that is very significant for Harry 
grows is precisely that ? showing character growth.

And to me it starts in HBP when Harry feels small pity for Draco and 
then it translates into Harry saving him. 

So yes that was very significant for me. 

Oh and about Harry saving people he does not like. Um, I do not 
remember him  deciding to save Crabbe at all. Does not sound to me 
that Harry's goal in life is to save everybody, and nevertheless he 
chooses to save Draco, somebody whom IMO he would not have given a 
second thought a year ago either.

JMO,

Alla





From willsonkmom at msn.com  Wed Jul  9 02:35:07 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:35:07 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5184r+csjs@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183634

Potioncat, now answering the second half of SSSusan's questions:
 
> 6.  Is there significance to the fact that Harry used the wand 
which 
> was Draco's, rather than the wand which was Bellatrix's, to etch 
the 
?? words "Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf"?  

Potioncat:
I haven't had time to read the chapter myself, so I'm taking 
Zanooda's word that Harry didn't know whose wand he was using and 
that it wasn't significant to him. From a literary standpoint, it's 
ironic that the wand belonged to Dobby's former master.
> 
> 7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that 
?? Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?

Potioncat:
I hate to admit it, but I was completely lost by this point in the 
book, and I'm not sure I know where I am now. I think I would be just 
as tempted as DD to use the stone, at least for a few moments.
> 
 
> 9.  Harry Potter has been derided by many for not being much of a 
> thinker.  He becomes a thinker in this chapter, and quite 
decisive.  
> What do you make of this?  Is it a change?  Did it surprise you?  
Has 
?? it always been there?

Potioncat:
Perhaps it's part of his maturation. He's had to learn this year to 
think before he acts.
> 
> 10.  What did you think was going on when you first read that Harry 
> was laboring over seeing Griphook or Ollivander first... and chose 
?? Griphook?  

Potioncat:
I hate to admit it, but I was completely lost by this point--still am.
> 
> 11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's comment, "You 
> are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an 
?? unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?

Potioncat:
Yes, he is. There may be more unusual wizards than Griphook realizes, 
but Harry is one of them. I think he really does respect Griphook---
I'm not sure if respect is the right word--that is, I don't think 
Harry sees Goblins as less than wizards. Harry still puts his own 
needs first in this situation, but he isn't dismissing Griphook as 
something beneath him. That's how Harry has approached all the new 
types of people: House-elves, Centaurs, Giants(well, one), etc.
> 
> 12.  Is Griphook correct that this is "precisely about" wizards vs. 
?? goblins?  Why did he drop the subject so abruptly?

Potioncat:
Because Goblins are creepy.

OK, I think he didn't want to get into 'why' he thought it was about 
wizards vrs goblins. Even if he thinks Harry is unusual, Griphook 
isn't ready to trust him.
> 
> 13.  Why did Harry remove the Sword of Gryffindor when he left 
?? Griphook's room, and why did he not say anything as he did so?

Potioncat:
Because, it is about wizards vrs goblins. Because Harry believes the 
Sword of Gryffindor is his sword, not Griphook's. Or rather that it 
belongs to Hogwarts's, not to the goblins.
> 
> 14.  When Harry said he understood bits of Voldemort and then went 
on 
> to say he wished he'd understood DD as much, were you surprised?  
Why 
> do you think he made this remark instead of sticking with Voldemort 
?? as the topic of his understanding?

Potioncat:
Harry is trying to follow DD's lead, but DD left him very little to 
go on. He has DD's example of studying Tom Riddle to understand and 
to anticipate what LV was up to. I'm sure he wishes he could study DD 
to find out his own mission.
> 
> 15.  How do you react to those remarks of Ollivander's concerning 
> wand ownership and control?  Since they're really JKR's words ?V and 
> rules ?V are they reasonable? Fair?  Do they tell us enough?  
> "Subtle," "complex," "usually," "in general" ?V is this just the 
> nature of wand lore, and it *is* nebulous and imprecise?  Or is 
this 
?? simply a way to leave open more possibilities for the author?

Potioncat:
Yes.

Oh, you wanted a longer answer.

The only thing I would have liked to have seen, is some sign in 
earlier books about wand loyalty. We were all expecting to see a 
difference when Ron got a new wand and when Neville got a new wand. 
Yet nothing at all was said, nor was anything shown that a new wand 
made any difference. Just that little bit would have provided some 
foreshadowing.

I think subtle, complex, etc. etc, are reasonable. The whole point 
was that LV didn't fully understand exactly what was going on, or how 
the Elder Wand worked. So I think it was a fair presentation. 

It makes sense to me that how a wand transfers loyalty can be 
influenced by many factors and that even wandmakers don't understand 
it. Especially since wizards aren't logical and may not have the 
mental tools to work it out.

But yes, it did give the author some wiggle room. 

> 
> 16.  Ollivander says he has no idea why the wand Voldemort borrowed 
> failed against Harry's wand.  He says "something unique" happened.  
?? What was that something unique, do you think?

Potioncat:
Well, I didn't know then, but having read the book I know. 

<spoiler coming>
It was the fact that LV had used some of Harry's blood.


> 
> 17.  It has long been an interest of many just what Ollivander is 
all 
> about.  Something about the way he described Voldemort 
as "great"... 
> something about how he made the hair stand up on Harry's neck....  
In 
> this chapter, we have Harry suddenly thinking about having been 
> unsure how much he liked Ollivander back when they first met, and 
> even now, "the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of this wand 
> seemed to enthral him as much as it repulsed him" [p. 402].  And 
yet 
?? Luna seems genuinely fond of him.  What do you make of this man?

Potioncat:
What 'I' think is that Ollivander is a Ravenclaw and has some of the 
Ravenclaw weaknesses. I think he is so focused on wand magic, that he 
doesn't connect it to the horror of the situation. Knowledge for 
knowledge's sake isn't  the best thing. But I do not think he is a 
bad person, nor would he have used a wand, or his knowledge of wands 
for Dark purposes. 
> 

> 
> 19.  What did you think was coming next, as you read the end of the 
> chapter and knew that Voldemort had taken possession of the Elder 
?? Wand?

Potioncat:
It seemed that things just kept getting worse for Harry.












From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  9 04:03:21 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:03:21 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g5104e+cj61@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g51daa+qo10@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183635

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Blair" <SnapesSlytherin at ...> wrote:

> Well, it is the first time we see Harry using what will be known as
> the Elder Wand (I'm not even going to start in on that...I'm *still*
> confused).  Harry's first act with the wand wasn't an act of
> destruction or an attempt to seek power...it was the burial of a
> friend.  


zanooda:

It wasn't the Elder wand, it was just Draco Malfoy's wand - hawthorn
and unicorn hair :-). The Elder wand was still in Dumbledore's tomb at
that time, Draco never had it and never knew he was its master.




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  9 04:30:19 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:30:19 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g5184r+csjs@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g51esr+f86d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183636

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

> I haven't had time to read the chapter myself, so I'm taking 
> Zanooda's word that Harry didn't know whose wand he was using and 
> that it wasn't significant to him. 


zanooda:

Thank you for your trust :-)! It goes like this: "He then felt in his
pocket for a wand. There were two in there. He had forgotten, lost
track; he could not now remember whose wands these were; he seemed to
remember wrenching them out of someone's hand. He selected the shorter
of the two, which felt friendlier in his hand and pointed it at the
rock" (p.481 Am.ed.) Later Harry asked Ollivander to identify the two
wands (p.493) - he still didn't know which was which.

Earlier, when Harry took the three wands (Draco's, Bella's and
Wormtail's) from Draco, he gave one of them to Ron without knowing
whose it was (p.474), so it means that Harry didn't even know which
two of the three were in his pocket and couldn't consciously choose
not to use Bella's wand.

BTW, you are right to trust me about the DH quotes - it so happened
that I had to check two DH translations - the official one and an
amateur one (lots of mistakes in both :-)). I had to compare the
original with both translations sentence by sentence, and believe me,
now I know this book practically by heart :-).




From mookilie2003_1 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul  9 05:08:33 2008
From: mookilie2003_1 at hotmail.com (mookilie2003_1)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:08:33 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g51daa+qo10@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g51h4h+d9mi@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183637

> > Oryomai wrote:
>
> > Well, it is the first time we see Harry using what will be known
> > as the Elder Wand (I'm not even going to start in on that...I'm
> > *still* confused).  Harry's first act with the wand wasn't an
> > act of destruction or an attempt to seek power...it was the
> > burial of a friend.
>
>
> zanooda:
>
> It wasn't the Elder wand, it was just Draco Malfoy's wand -
> hawthorn and unicorn hair :-). The Elder wand was still in
> Dumbledore's tomb at that time, Draco never had it and never
> knew he was its master.


mookilie2003_1:

I totally agree, I'm confused about how Harry was able to kill
Voldemort with what was supposed to be the Elder wand but turned out to be Draco's wand.  I've read a couple of theories that seemed to make sense but I can't be certain.  She really needs to make that one little part clear.  Then I can really say that the seventh book was the best book ever written.  I think it is now, but it's still a bit confusing. Maybe we'll understand when she puts out the encyclopedia.



From kenadams705 at btinternet.com  Wed Jul  9 14:47:57 2008
From: kenadams705 at btinternet.com (ken302532)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:47:57 -0000
Subject: Wizard genetics
In-Reply-To: <g50fki+7550@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g52j2t+dhl0@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183638

> Catlady:
> I agree that the genetics of magic must involve quite a number of
> gene pairs, because simple Mendelian inheritance wouldn't account
> for wizarding folk having different amounts of innate magical
> power and being better at some forms of magic than others, and
> the magical alleles of these genes must be loose in the Muggle
> population or there wouldn't be Muggleborns.
>
> I have tried, unsuccessfully but not very
> hard, to figure out how mixing these genes around could provide
> 'hybrid vigor', so that Muggleborns would usually be on the high
> side of the power range.


If I understand Catlady  correctly this is termed Polygenic
inheritance, multiple genes, this is actually quite common. Polygenic inheritance for example controls human height, very variable. In poylgenic inheritance the more genes there are for e.g. height, the taller one is, recessive genes don't count/ operate. Obviously if there are many genes for a character the chances of there being hybrid vigour are increased.

The way I envisage this working for control of different levels of
magical power is there to be a series of polygenes, which may be recessive or dominant, the greater the number of dominant genes for magic the more powerful the wizards potential.

Enjoying your debates.
KEN








From foxmoth at qnet.com  Wed Jul  9 19:23:59 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:23:59 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco WAS :Re: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g517ik+g1vn@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5338f+asil@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183639

> Alla:
> 
> I disagree. I do not believe that during seven books Harry would
have  ever had an inclination to save Draco from the fire, so yes for
me it  is a big character growth moment. Harry saves people, but I
remember  Harry happily leaving Draco in the compartment of the train
and doing  swat to help them in GoF. 

Pippin:
Harry does not feel inclined to save Draco from the effects of sectum
sempra. He does nothing to help, not even asking Myrtle to get
someone. He kneels by the bleeding, shaking Draco and denies
that he meant it. All he wants is to proclaim his innocence.

He feels a tiny drop of pity when Draco flees with Snape, and wonders
to what use Voldemort will put him, but all he does when he finds out
is feel sick. Those left at Malfoy Manor are punished after Harry
escapes, but Harry does not seem to care that Draco must be among them.  

Harry has saved enemies in the past, but only incidentally, when his
friends were in jeopardy too. He saved Pettigrew only to keep Sirius
and Lupin from being killers. Dumbledore had it exactly right: Harry
did what James would have done.

When he tried to save Pettigrew at Malfoy Manor, it was after
Pettigrew had  shown remorse. Harry had suggested in PoA that 
Pettigrew could be given to the dementors, and he said earlier in PoA
that Sirius deserved to have his soul sucked out.  He never felt any
pity for Quirrell or for Crouch Jr. at all.

Harry's code  was basically the same tit for tat as Malfoy's: love
your friends, hate your enemies. Harry just had a longer list of
friends.  It wasn't until Harry realized they were about to die in
such a terrible way that he  thought an enemy was worth saving in his
own right.


Alla:
> Oh and about Harry saving people he does not like. Um, I do not 
> remember him  deciding to save Crabbe at all. 

Pippin:
He does scan the room looking for Crabbe as well as Draco and Goyle.
The text hints delicately that someone has already died, "seeking a
limb or a face that was not yet charred like wood..."


Pippin




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Wed Jul  9 20:00:50 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:00:50 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g50fki+7550@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g535di+lf97@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183640


> Montavilla47:
> Exactly!
> 
> The thing about Harry saving Draco from the fire is that there 
really 
> isn't a point in the series--including their duel in the bathroom--
> when Harry *wouldn't* have saved Draco from a fire. 

Magpie:
I wasn't even thinking of it in those terms--though yeah, I think at 
worst Harry was like James. He hated Snape, but he didn't want him 
dead. This was the only time when the possibility came up.

I was thinking about how when Harry did almost kill Malfoy by 
accident, the idea that he wanted him dead on any level is not what's 
dramatized in the text at all. Harry knows he didn't want him dead, 
he didn't know what the curse did. The other reactions we get, iirc, 
are Ron saying that of course what he did wasn't good, but the book 
was helpful. Ginny (Harry's soulmate) says it's good Harry had 
something up his sleeve. Hermione, who's never liked the book, begs 
Harry to think of Quidditch. Snape goes back to his own issues. 
Nobody ever fears that Harry really wanted to murder Draco or could 
become a killer. He's still unique for his ability to love and lack 
of interest in the Dark Arts.

Harry has a twinge of conscience showing that he gets that it was 
serious, and he says "NO!" when it happens, even if there's nothing 
he can do in those few seconds. He thinks of the book as a tame dog 
that just bit him (iow, it's not Harry who's the dog who suddenly 
attacked, it's the book--Snape's the one who's going to become a DE). 
But he fairly quickly moves on to thinking about other people are 
able to treat him after the incident. 

So yeah, I don't see a particular character growth in saving Draco. 
The movement there was Harry's drop of pity and realizing that Draco 
wasn't a killer. His actually going into the room to rescue Draco 
goes above and beyond just not wishing him dead, but it's not 
surprising or a turnaround for Harry, imo. As you say, he had a 
saving people thing before (this is pointed out more than once), so 
however he felt about Malfoy before saving anybody (especially not 
somebody designated in the text as at least quasi-innocent) can't be 
described as a big change.

-m




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  9 20:05:49 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:05:49 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g535kv+qdr8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g535mu+88l5@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183642

reposted to put spoilers in subject heading

Pippin:
<SNIP>
> Harry's code was basically the same tit for tat as Malfoy's: love
> your friends, hate your enemies. Harry just had a longer list of
> friends.  It wasn't until Harry realized they were about to die in
> such a terrible way that he thought an enemy was worth saving in his
> own right.

Alla:

Right, agreed. You know, I keep wondering again what character 
development means exactly, since maybe we are again thinking of 
different definitions. (Not Pippin and me, but Montavilla and me and 
whoever thinks that Harry's character just did not develop).

Because to me character development's means any changes in the 
character throughout the book, no matter how small and those changes 
really do not have to be earth shattering for me to qualify as such.

Although since I completely agree with what Pippin wrote, I think 
learning to save your enemies qualifies like rather significant 
character change.

I guess all I am asking is why if you think that Harry did not change 
in the ways you (generic you) wanted him to change, that must mean 
that Harry did not change at all? ( This is from no particular post, 
but the general sense I get from several)

So he for example did not have the moment of reflection about how bad 
it was to use Crucio, or at least he did not have the moment that we 
are privy too, I still think that it is perfectly okay to imagine 
such moment, but he grew to value the lives of his enemies. That is 
not a change? Not in my book, even if it builds upon the quality he 
already had.

I am thinking about another wizard Harry from the Dresden files 
series whom I grew to adore. So far I had read all available ten 
books in these series and I happen to believe that Harry's character 
developed and rather significantly at that. But under the standards 
which are applied to our Harry's character I am not sure if Harry 
Dresden's character would be agreed upon as evolving.

You know why? Because Harry still **is** a good guy. He did already 
learned that his mentor is not a squeaky clean wizard Harry imagined 
him to be and it took him two or three books to come to terms with 
and forgive the guy. Although I wonder if Harry forgave himself first 
and foremost for putting Ebenezer McCoy on pedestal too high.

Oh yes and another, what I perceive to be a change in Harry Dresden's 
character is that he learned to ask for help. In the first books he 
is trying to do everything himself and fight all the evil under the 
sun himself because he wants to protect his friends so badly.

He learned to respect his friends' wishes when they say that they 
want in on the battle with evil.  

So what I am trying to say is that while Harry Dresden does not mind 
seeing good in people, during ten books I am still to see him 
deciding that he oh so critically misjudged a bad guy and had that 
angst moment that he was so wrong and his enemies are really not his 
enemies, etc, etc.

That must mean that he did not change at all I guess?

I mean, why the changes should be earth shattering to qualify as such?

Why does the fact that Draco Malfoy hesitates to recognize Trio is 
not a big change for him? Would he have hesitated several years ago? 
I do not think so. Only several months passed after Tower after all 
and I would assume that Draco is still changing.




> 
> Alla:
> > Oh and about Harry saving people he does not like. Um, I do not 
> > remember him  deciding to save Crabbe at all. 
> 
> Pippin:
> He does scan the room looking for Crabbe as well as Draco and Goyle.
> The text hints delicately that someone has already died, "seeking a
> limb or a face that was not yet charred like wood..."

Alla:

Thanks.





From foxmoth at qnet.com  Wed Jul  9 21:56:33 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:56:33 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g508nc+r4dt@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g53c6h+5ojb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183643

> Magpie:
> But Luke clearly recognizes exactly what you're talking about where 
> Harry doesn't.

Pippin:


 What about the crowd pleaser moments that came before, when Luke used
Vader's signature move to break into Jabba's Palace, and  when he blew
up the sail-barge even though Jabba was already dead? There were a
bunch of slaves, dancers and musicians who may not have wanted to be
there any more than Han did. What did they ever do? But hey, I cheered
as loud as anybody.

Maybe I'm the only one who thought about that sometime after I'd left
the theater, and maybe I'm not,  but it doesn't change the moral
lesson one bit.  What Luke needed to learn was not that he shouldn't
kill  unless he had to. He knew that. What he had to learn was that if
he let his mind fill with anger and fear, he'd kill whether he had to
or not.  

When Snape shouts at Lily "in his humiliation and his fury, the
unforgivable word" that's the same lesson, IMO. We know Harry gets it,
because he changes his analysis of what happens. He no longer believes
that Snape called Lily a mudblood because he hated her.

The adjective throws us back to Harry's unforgivable curse. Maybe 
McGonagall did think Harry was being gallant in an unironic sense,
though the italics make me doubt it. But it doesn't matter.   

Whether the reader sees it in this example or not, the larger lesson
is this, as Yoda might put it: Rage and humiliation not make one gallant. 

> Magpie:
> These sound like very reasonable things for JKR to think, but I
don't  see where she's dramatizing these things in the scenes we're
talking  about. You still seem to be saying that by showing Harry
looking cool  using the torture curse, or by happily enjoying his
slave labor who  loves him, JKR is giving us reasons to be against
torture or slavery  in those scenes. 

Pippin:
Harry is a happy slave-owner whose non-human slave feels greatly
honored to serve him. That has little to do with human slavery as we
know it, because most human slaves don't see slavery as a great
honor. The hypothetical slave-owner reading the books is in a
better position than we to know that. 

 It's like if you were to dramatize your opposition to capital
punishment by showing a parade of prisoners tearfully confessing,
saying how honored they are to pay the price for their crimes, and
happily throwing themselves into the noose.


> Magpie:
> I have little use for labeling anything "evil" but I think I'm 
> misunderstanding you here. Why would good people eschewing torture 
> and slavery mean that bad people are more likely to torture and have 
> slaves?

Pippin:
I didn't mean that. I meant that if the wizards drive out the people
who  sometimes let their minds fill up with rage because they've been
so deeply hurt, those  people will be used by those who have no
conscience at all.  

> Magpie:
> The Goblins don't seem to have gotten very far in their rebellions.

Pippin:
It seems to be a Mexican standoff. The goblins have control of the
financial system, and a lock on the secrets of treasure-hunting,
mining and magical metallurgy, despite the wizards' attempts to wrest
them away.  The wizards have the government and the wands despite the
goblins' attempts to do likewise.

Goblin/wizarding society is dependent on both.

Meanwhile, the two rebellious house elves in canon both get exactly
what they want. I'd say that the elves are potentially more dangerous. 

Pippin




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  9 22:33:48 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:33:48 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g51h4h+d9mi@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g53ecc+tqou@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183644

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mookilie2003_1" 
<mookilie2003_1 at ...> wrote:

> I'm confused about how Harry was able to kill Voldemort with 
> what was supposed to be the Elder wand but turned out to be 
> Draco's wand.  


zanooda:

I'm sorry, but I'm confused about what you are saying :-). Draco's wand 
and the Elder wand are two different things, and they certainly didn't 
turned out to be one another. Or did I misunderstand what you wrote? 

Harry took Draco's wand from him at Malfoy Manor and used it ever 
since. LV had the Elder wand, which he took from Dumbledore's tomb. 
These were the two wands Harry and LV used in their last confrontation. 
However, LV was not really the Elder wand's master, Harry was.

When Draco disarmed Dumbledore on the tower in HBP, he became the 
master of the Elder wand, but the wand fell off the tower and Draco 
never took possession of it. He continued to use his own wand, until 
Harry took it from him. 

The book implies that when Harry took Draco's wand by force (disarmed 
him), he became not only the master of Draco's wand, but the master of 
the Elder wand as well, because the Elder wand knew that its master 
(Draco) was disarmed and it switched allegiance from Draco to Harry. I 
agree that this part is not very convincing, but that's what the book 
says :-).

Also, you are not exactly right in saying that Harry killed LV. Harry 
didn't really kill him, it was the Elder wand who recognized its true 
master, Harry, and turned against LV: "Voldemort was dead,killed by his 
own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, 
staring down at his enemy's shell" (p.744, Am.ed.)

To round it up: 1. Draco's wand and the Elder wand were two different 
things that had nothing to do with each other, except that at first 
Draco was the master of both and then Harry became one :-), 2. LV was 
killed by the Elder wand, but not by Harry's hand. When Harry 
used "Expelliarmus" in the last confrontation, the Elder wand flew out 
of LV's hand and turned LV's own AK against him. 

That's how I see it all, anyway :-). Sorry again if I misunderstood 
you :-).





From jkoney65 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul  9 23:02:35 2008
From: jkoney65 at yahoo.com (jkoney65)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:02:35 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g53g2c+b0un@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183645


> QUESTIONS
> 
> 1. "It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he 
> knelt again beside Dumbledore's body..." [p. 386].  Is there any 
> character in this series who has as much experience with old 
> nightmares?  If you think there is another (or other) candidate(s), 
> present the case, or the case that it *is* Harry.

Jack-A-Roe:
I would say that Dumbledore has lived with the nightmare of his 
sister getting killed and probably relived it many times. Add in the 
number of deaths in the previous wars and I would think it would 
cause him to have nightmares.


> 
> 2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
> point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there is, 
> if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the 
use 
> of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in the 
> darkness" [p. 387]?

Jack-A-Roe:
Doing it manually allowed Harry to feel every bit of the loss. It 
also allowed him to work out his frustrations and grief by doing a 
mindless physical activity. 

They haven't done much physical activity since they camp magically. 
It's amazing how excercise can help clear your mind when all of your 
stress has been accumulated mentally.

As his stress fades and his mind clears he is able to think about the 
problem and it leads to the "understanding blossom(ing) in the 
darkeness."


> 
> 3.  What do you think of the description that "every drop of 
> [Harry's] sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who 
had 
> saved their lives" [p. 387]?  What do you imagine Dobby would have 
> thought of that?

Jack-A-Roe:
I think the description fits. He is doing it manually and feels 
closer to Dobby and feels like he is honoring Doby in the best way 
that he can. Doing it manually is much more personal than just doing 
it magically.

I think Dobby would have been overwhelmed that Harry put that much 
effort into something for him. He also would have been upset that 
Harry did something himself for a "lowly" house elf.


> 
> 4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has Harry 
> *now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing 
Dumbledore 
> had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does the death 
> trigger this in Harry?

Jack-A-Roe:
Snape's lessons were a fiasco. Their approaches to life are 
completely different and so are the way they learn things. Snape was 
either unwilling or unable to adjust his teaching style to help Harry 
learn.

The death triggers it because Harry is emotion based in his learning 
of this subject. The death brought it all together.


> 
> 5.  Is there significance to JKR's choice of "Nurmengard" as a name 
> for the prison?

Jack-A-Roe:
I think she did it to reinforce the Grindelwald/WW II connection.


> 
> 6.  Is there significance to the fact that Harry used the wand 
which 
> was Draco's, rather than the wand which was Bellatrix's, to etch 
the 
> words "Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf"?  

Jack-A-Roe:
I think it was ironic that the wand was of Dobby's former master.


> 
> 7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that 
> Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?

Jack-A-Roe:
No, I wasn't sure that Harry could know and not seek. I couldn't have 
done it either without the help of my friends.


> 
> 8.  When Harry is talking in his mind as if to DD and asks if he is 
> meant to know but not to seek, he also asks, "Did you know how hard 
> I'd find that?  Is that why you made it this difficult?  So I'd 
have 
> time to work that out?" [p. 391]  What do you think is the answer 
to 
> that?  How about what you thought on your first read?  Did you feel 
a 
> new understanding along with Harry, or had you see his mission 
> differently than he had before this dawning?

Jack-A-Roe:
I didn't put it all together during the first time I read the book.



> 
> 9.  Harry Potter has been derided by many for not being much of a 
> thinker.  He becomes a thinker in this chapter, and quite 
decisive.  
> What do you make of this?  Is it a change?  Did it surprise you?  
Has 
> it always been there?

Jack-A-Roe:
I never thought he wasn't much of a thinker. He was usually 
unmotivated. It's when all hell brakes loose that Harry starts 
putting things together.


> 
> 10.  What did you think was going on when you first read that Harry 
> was laboring over seeing Griphook or Ollivander first... and chose 
> Griphook?  

Jack-A-Roe:
Since he was going to see both of them, I didn't think it mattered.


> 
> 11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's comment, "You 
> are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an 
> unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?
> 
Jack-A-Roe:
He is unusual in that he doesn't think down on someone because they 
aren't a wizard. That doesn't seem to be the case with most of the 
wizarding world.


> 12.  Is Griphook correct that this is "precisely about" wizards vs. 
> goblins?  Why did he drop the subject so abruptly?

Jack-A-Roe:
It only is because Griphook believes it to be so. Much like the 
prophecy was only important because Voldemort thought it was.

He dropped the subject because he wasn't going to get the argument he 
wanted and he wasn't going to convince the "unusual" wizard.



> 
> 13.  Why did Harry remove the Sword of Gryffindor when he left 
> Griphook's room, and why did he not say anything as he did so?

Jack-A-Roe:
Because it was important to his cause and he wasn't going to leave it 
with anyone else. Especially someone who hadn't agreed to help him 
yet.


> 
> 14.  When Harry said he understood bits of Voldemort and then went 
on 
> to say he wished he'd understood DD as much, were you surprised?  
Why 
> do you think he made this remark instead of sticking with Voldemort 
> as the topic of his understanding?


Jack-A-Roe:
By then Harry had an understanding of Voldemort and what motivated 
him. He never studied Dumbledore and the clues DD left confused Harry.



> 
> 15.  How do you react to those remarks of Ollivander's concerning 
> wand ownership and control?  Since they're really JKR's words ? and 
> rules ? are they reasonable? Fair?  Do they tell us enough?  
> "Subtle," "complex," "usually," "in general" ? is this just the 
> nature of wand lore, and it *is* nebulous and imprecise?  Or is 
this 
> simply a way to leave open more possibilities for the author?

Jack-A-Roe:
The wand stuff was confusing then and it still is now since we seem 
to talk about again and again. It also means we can't pin the author 
down and say she made a mistake


> 
> 16.  Ollivander says he has no idea why the wand Voldemort borrowed 
> failed against Harry's wand.  He says "something unique" happened.  
> What was that something unique, do you think?

Jack-A-Roe:
It could be the double horcrux connection between Harry and Voldemort 
or it could be that Harry beat Voldemort's wand in the graveyard and 
this one knows that or possibly Voldemort didn't win the borrowed 
wand and so it won't work for him.


> 
> 17.  It has long been an interest of many just what Ollivander is 
all 
> about.  Something about the way he described Voldemort 
as "great"... 
> something about how he made the hair stand up on Harry's neck....  
In 
> this chapter, we have Harry suddenly thinking about having been 
> unsure how much he liked Ollivander back when they first met, and 
> even now, "the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of this wand 
> seemed to enthral him as much as it repulsed him" [p. 402].  And 
yet 
> Luna seems genuinely fond of him.  What do you make of this man?

Jack-A-Roe:
Just like we have computer geeks, he's a wand geek.


> 
> 18.  How is it that, compared to the end of OOTP, Harry can be so 
> certain the visions he's having are real?  We know now that they 
are, 
> but how could he be so confident after what happened in OOTP?

Jack-A-Roe:
I would guess that Harry has gotten better and reading the visions. 


> 
> 19.  What did you think was coming next, as you read the end of the 
> chapter and knew that Voldemort had taken possession of the Elder 
> Wand?

Jack-A-Roe:
I was thinking that Harry was in even deeper trouble than he was 
earlier.


Great job on the summary and the questions!




From SnapesSlytherin at aol.com  Thu Jul 10 01:17:16 2008
From: SnapesSlytherin at aol.com (SnapesSlytherin at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:17:16 -0400
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g53ecc+tqou@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <8CAB041D38AC3F1-E58-3DE4@MBLK-M27.sysops.aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183646

Zanooda:
I'm sorry, but I'm confused about what you are saying :-). Draco's wand

and the Elder wand are two different things, and they certainly didn't

turned out to be one another. Or did I misunderstand what you wrote?

<snip description>


Oryomai:
I can only speak for me, but the book gave me the impression that 
Draco's wand was the Elder Wand?  Let me try to explain it better.  
When I read the book, I got the impression that Draco's wand somehow 
became the Elder Wand?  The entire "wand" thing was just so utterly 
lame and complicated to me that I had a lot of trouble sorting it out.  
I thought that Draco's wand became the Elder Wand when he disarmed 
Dumbledore.  Well, then it makes even less sense to me!
Okay, Draco disarmed Dumbledore.  So the Elder Wand was loyal to him.  
The big question for me now is this: why does it matter that Harry 
disarmed Draco if the wand Draco was using is not the Elder Wand?  
Draco's "regular" wand was still loyal to him when he got control of 
the Elder Wand, right?  How does the fact that Harry has possession of 
Draco's "regular" wand affect the Elder Wand?

Oryomai
Who's even more confused now...



From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 10 01:25:29 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:25:29 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g535mu+88l5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g53oe9+hclp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183647

> Pippin:
> <SNIP>
> > Harry's code was basically the same tit for tat as Malfoy's: love
> > your friends, hate your enemies. Harry just had a longer list of
> > friends.  It wasn't until Harry realized they were about to die in
> > such a terrible way that he thought an enemy was worth saving in his
> > own right.
> 
> Alla:
> Right, agreed. You know, I keep wondering again what character 
> development means exactly, since maybe we are again thinking of 
> different definitions. (Not Pippin and me, but Montavilla and me and 
> whoever thinks that Harry's character just did not develop).

Montavilla47:
I'm hard pressed to find an enemy to prove that Harry would have
saved an enemy's life before he saves Draco from the fire.  But 
I don't think that proves that he wouldn't have.

The only example I can think of is Peter.  Harry intervenes to 
save his miserable hide, even when he knows that Peter 
directly told Voldemort how to find his parents, knowing that
Voldemort would kill them.

But I do think that if Harry would have let Draco burn to death in
the fire, it would have put him pretty much on the same moral
level as Snape was when he came to Dumbledore begging for
Lily's life, but not for James and Harry's.  Perhaps this is just
one more thing that Harry and Snape have in common.  But, it 
seems from the text that we're supposed to think Snape pretty
low and heartless to hold such indifference towards his enemy.

And did Draco ever come up to the level of enemy?  He was 
an annoyance and a bully, but was he an *enemy*?  The closest
he came to being Harry's enemy was in HBP, when Harry thinks 
that Draco is up to something and that he is a Death Eater.

And yet, Harry is still horrorstruck when he accidently slashes
Draco.  If he doesn't seek help at that point, it's because it 
arrives before he gets out of the shock of what he did.  I didn't
get the slightest hint, reading that scene, that Harry would have
let Draco die without trying to help.

There's really only one place in the whole series where I think
Harry watches someone die without trying to help.  That's when
Snape dies.  That's after the moment when he saves Draco, so
I don't think Harry had really made that growth moment from
saving friends to saving enemies yet.  Assuming that he had
that jump to make in the first place.

Alla:
> I guess all I am asking is why if you think that Harry did not change 
> in the ways you (generic you) wanted him to change, that must mean 
> that Harry did not change at all? ( This is from no particular post, 
> but the general sense I get from several)

Montavilla47:
I do think Harry changed from the beginning of the series to the end.
I think he did become more thoughtful and less rash.  You could 
even say that Harry changed from being horrified at the Dark Arts, to
finding them useful and kind of awesome.

Which puts a little different spin on those Unforgivables.  Maybe 
they aren't evil at all.  Maybe they're just *adult* and it's a sign of
Harry's maturity that he's able to use them with impunity.

Or, maybe it's to show that he's *better* than Dumbledore, since
he's able to use spells that are too much of a temptation for 
Dumbledore.






From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 10 02:07:19 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:07:19 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g53c6h+5ojb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g53qsn+inn2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183648

> > Magpie:
> > But Luke clearly recognizes exactly what you're talking about 
where 
> > Harry doesn't.
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> 
>  What about the crowd pleaser moments that came before, when Luke 
used
> Vader's signature move to break into Jabba's Palace, and  when he 
blew
> up the sail-barge even though Jabba was already dead? There were a
> bunch of slaves, dancers and musicians who may not have wanted to be
> there any more than Han did. What did they ever do? But hey, I 
cheered
> as loud as anybody.

Magpie:
That's what I said, that the Crucio was a cheering moment. 

But if we're talking about the scene with Vader, that's all about 
building to whether Luke is going to go over to the Dark Side by 
killing Vader because he's angry and hates him.  SW hammers this idea 
for its hero, HP doesn't. I'm absolutely fine saying that Harry's 
Crucioing Amycus is like Luke blowing up the barge (of course as a 
Jedi he wouldn't torture--that's why people are always stuck on that 
Crucio, because it's the torture curse). But then compare it to that 
scene. It doesn't match up with the scene with Vader. Going over to 
the Dark Side isn't a theme for Harry the way it is for Luke. HP 
doesn't encompass SW (and SW doesn't encompass HP). 

Pippin: 
> Maybe I'm the only one who thought about that sometime after I'd 
left
> the theater, and maybe I'm not,  but it doesn't change the moral
> lesson one bit.  What Luke needed to learn was not that he shouldn't
> kill  unless he had to. He knew that. What he had to learn was that 
if
> he let his mind fill with anger and fear, he'd kill whether he had 
to
> or not.  

Magpie:
And Harry learned other stuff. Harry's mind filling with anger and 
fear and making him kill whether he wants to or not and basically 
becoming Voldemort is not really a danger. 

HP and SW have very opposing views on anger and vengeance, after all. 
They also lead to the opposite ending--Luke can feel the good in 
Vader, calls to him as his father and saves Anakin. Riddle's a 
psychopath and all the taunting to feel some remorse isn't going to 
make him feel it.

Pippin: 
> When Snape shouts at Lily "in his humiliation and his fury, the
> unforgivable word" that's the same lesson, IMO. We know Harry gets 
it,
> because he changes his analysis of what happens. He no longer 
believes
> that Snape called Lily a mudblood because he hated her.

Magpie:
How does Snape calling Lily a slur that he calls all other 
Muggleborns teach Harry that he himself is in danger of being filled 
with anger or fear or he'll become evil? Harry figured out that Snape 
didn't call Lily a Mudblood because he hated her because he found out 
Snape adored her and was her friend and lost her because he got into 
DE stuff. (Harry would never call Hermione a Mudblood.) When Harry 
saw the memory the first time he had no reason to think Snape really 
hated Lily personally, just that he was a Pureblood supremist so 
hated any Muggleborn. Snape was eaten up by his hatred but Harry 
wasn't. Harry saw an object lesson in somebody else. (I mean, of 
course Snape was eaten up by hatred. He was Snape. That was clear in 
the first book. Peter was eaten up by cowardice.) Harry was never 
going to become a DE. Luke might have become a Sith Lord. 

Pippin:
> The adjective throws us back to Harry's unforgivable curse. Maybe 
> McGonagall did think Harry was being gallant in an unironic sense,
> though the italics make me doubt it. But it doesn't matter.   
> 
> Whether the reader sees it in this example or not, the larger lesson
> is this, as Yoda might put it: Rage and humiliation not make one 
gallant. 

Magpie:
If Luke had used the Force to torture Yoda would have stopped him and 
said "NO" and taken it very seriously since it's laid out as a huge 
danger. Why would the message of a reliable, good character saying 
something is gallant (even if she's still shocked by it and has more 
to say before Dirty Harry cuts her off) be that Harry's just done 
something extremely ungallant?

 
> > Magpie:
> > These sound like very reasonable things for JKR to think, but I
> don't  see where she's dramatizing these things in the scenes we're
> talking  about. You still seem to be saying that by showing Harry
> looking cool  using the torture curse, or by happily enjoying his
> slave labor who  loves him, JKR is giving us reasons to be against
> torture or slavery  in those scenes. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Harry is a happy slave-owner whose non-human slave feels greatly
> honored to serve him. That has little to do with human slavery as we
> know it, because most human slaves don't see slavery as a great
> honor. The hypothetical slave-owner reading the books is in a
> better position than we to know that. 
 
>  It's like if you were to dramatize your opposition to capital
> punishment by showing a parade of prisoners tearfully confessing,
> saying how honored they are to pay the price for their crimes, and
> happily throwing themselves into the noose.

Magpie:
I thought you were saying that JKR was making a statement against 
slavery with the elves. Or were you just saying that JKR in real life 
wants us to dislike slavery but isn't making that point in the books 
with the house elves?

I don't have a problem with JKR creating this situation with non-
humans for whatever reason. I just think that's what it is--slavery 
with a lot of the things that make people uncomfortable removed a lot 
of the time, and the last shot of it we see is fairly positive. It 
conforms to some of the arguments for human slavery that were lies. 
(I think if this were read by a 19th century slaveowner they'd 
probably take the House Elves as fine stand-ins for human slaves.) I 
still don't think JKR supports human slavery. (I also don't think 
that slavery becomes okay if the slave thinks it's an honor--not that 
all the house elves we see in canon always do think it's an honor.)

Montavilla47:
I'm hard pressed to find an enemy to prove that Harry would have
saved an enemy's life before he saves Draco from the fire. But
I don't think that proves that he wouldn't have.

Magpie:
He saves Dudley at the beginning of OotP after he's just been 
fighting with him.

-m




From willsonkmom at msn.com  Thu Jul 10 03:00:42 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:00:42 -0000
Subject: Libatius Borage or, What's in a Name
Message-ID: <g53u0q+tia7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183649

Does anyone remember the fun we had discussing the name Libatius 
Borage just before HBP came out? Libatius is a form of libation, 
which is generally a type of intoxicating beverage. (Thanks, 
Lexicon.). Borage is an herb that is used to treat several different 
conditions. I just came across one of its uses in my work. 

No, I don't make potions! Who said that? Shesh, what kind of nurse do 
you think I am? 

There is a National Institute of Health study being done on the 
effects of a medication to improve sexual arousal in women. The 
primary ingredient is borage. In fact, one version is in the stores 
now.

Think about it! In HBP in the very first NEWT Potions class Slughorn 
warns of the dangers of obsessive love and demonstrates a powerful 
love potion. Several plot lines involve the use and misuse of love 
potions. Love in its variations is a major theme of HBP. 

Then JKR creates a magical Potions book and gives the author the name 
Libatius Borage. Libatius or libation is a sort of potion. Borage 
promotes arousal, an aspect of love. So that makes one version of the 
name Libatius Borage to be Love Potion.

Who thinks JKR didn't know that?

Potioncat





From tfaucette6387 at charter.net  Thu Jul 10 03:05:59 2008
From: tfaucette6387 at charter.net (anne_t_squires)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:05:59 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <8CAB041D38AC3F1-E58-3DE4@MBLK-M27.sysops.aol.com>
Message-ID: <g53uan+ilhg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183650


> 
> 
> Oryomai:
> I can only speak for me, but the book gave me the impression that 
> Draco's wand was the Elder Wand?  Let me try to explain it better.  
> When I read the book, I got the impression that Draco's wand somehow 
> became the Elder Wand?  The entire "wand" thing was just so utterly 
> lame and complicated to me that I had a lot of trouble sorting it out.  
> I thought that Draco's wand became the Elder Wand when he disarmed 
> Dumbledore.  Well, then it makes even less sense to me!
> Okay, Draco disarmed Dumbledore.  So the Elder Wand was loyal to him.  
> The big question for me now is this: why does it matter that Harry 
> disarmed Draco if the wand Draco was using is not the Elder Wand?  
> Draco's "regular" wand was still loyal to him when he got control of 
> the Elder Wand, right?  How does the fact that Harry has possession of 
> Draco's "regular" wand affect the Elder Wand?
> 

Anne Squires:

I look at it like this:

1.  DD's wand is the Elder Wand.

2.  Draco disarmed DD. This made Draco the master of the Elder Wand.  

3.  Draco kept his wand but did not take possession of the Elder Wand.
Two wands owed allegiance to Draco.  Draco's wand and the Elder Wand.

4.  The Elder Wand  was buried with DD.  Later LV stole it from DD's
grave.  LV mistakenly thought that Snape was the master of the wand
b/c Snape had killed DD.  LV did not realize that at the time of DD's
death the Elder Wand had already shifted its allegiance.  At the time
of DD's death no wand (that we know of) owed any allegiance to him.

5.  Harry later defeated Draco and took possession of Draco's wand. 
At that point all wands that owed allegiance to Draco shifted their
allegiance to Harry.  That's two wands.  Harry became the master of
Draco's wand and the master of the Elder Wand.  Even though the Elder
Wand was never physically in Draco's possession or in Harry's possession.

6.  Snape's death was completely pointless.  LV thought Snape was
master of the Elder Wand.  That's why he killed him.  LV knew that
Snape had never had possession of the wand; but, LV still thought the
wand owed its allegiance to Snape.  So although LV had stolen the wand
quite some time earlier and had possessed the wand for a while, he
realized he was not the wand's master.  With Snape's death LV
mistakenly believed that he had become the wand's master.

7.  Harry was the master of Draco's wand, the wand he was using during
the final confrontation.  Harry was also master of the Elder Wand, the
wand LV was using.  Harry had been the Elder wand's master ever since
he had taken Draco's wand.  So, Harry was master of both wands in the
duel.

All of this is just the way I read it; but, it makes sense to me.  I
hope it clarifies things.

Anne T. Squires





From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 10 03:12:55 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:12:55 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g53oe9+hclp@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g53unn+gibb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183651

Montavilla47:
I'm hard pressed to find an enemy to prove that Harry would have
saved an enemy's life before he saves Draco from the fire. But
I don't think that proves that he wouldn't have.

The only example I can think of is Peter. Harry intervenes to
save his miserable hide, even when he knows that Peter
directly told Voldemort how to find his parents, knowing that
Voldemort would kill them.


Alla:

Pippin addressed it well. Harry saved Peter really not for Peter, 
didn't he? He did it to stop Sirius and Remus from being killers. I 
do not see what other additional motivations are present in Harry's 
saving Draco.


MOntavilla47:
But I do think that if Harry would have let Draco burn to death in
the fire, it would have put him pretty much on the same moral
level as Snape was when he came to Dumbledore begging for
Lily's life, but not for James and Harry's. Perhaps this is just
one more thing that Harry and Snape have in common. But, it
seems from the text that we're supposed to think Snape pretty
low and heartless to hold such indifference towards his enemy.


Alla:

Quite honestly I do not quite see how it is relevant to what level of 
morality it would put Harry had he let Draco burn in the fire. Harry 
did save him after all. Are you saying that it is not possible that 
author meant to imply that Harry was on that hypothetical level of 
morality before?

I mean, he did leave him in compartment, did he not? It was not the 
same thing of course and I of course do not think it tells much about 
his morality except that he deservingly thought of Draco as enemy, 
but to me it is similar.

Montavilla47:
There's really only one place in the whole series where I think
Harry watches someone die without trying to help. That's when
Snape dies. That's after the moment when he saves Draco, so
I don't think Harry had really made that growth moment from
saving friends to saving enemies yet. Assuming that he had
that jump to make in the first place.

Alla:
To me the fact that he saves enemy and IMO makes that jump does not 
mean that it is now absolutely guaranteed that he will be saving all 
enemies, after all he did not make his sacrifice just yet.

But I thought he was simply in shock to do much if anything for 
Snape. I mean, if you are arguing that he would have been helped 
Draco had he not been in shock over what he had done, can't the same 
be true here?

I mean it is not my argument, I think in HBP Harry was not just quite 
there yet and here he was in too much shock IMO.


Magpie:
<SNIP of the whole post>
He saves Dudley at the beginning of OotP after he's just been
fighting with him.

Alla:

Now that is hard to address, absolutely. Here Harry does not do it 
for anybody but just because he is saving Dudley and I certainly 
think he qualifies as enemy.

The only thing I can say is that Dudley is still family, bully as he 
is and that maybe easier for Harry to do that, but it is rather lame 
answer, so I will think about it some more.

JMO,

Alla





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 10 03:23:30 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:23:30 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <8CAB041D38AC3F1-E58-3DE4@MBLK-M27.sysops.aol.com>
Message-ID: <g53vbi+tumi@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183652

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, SnapesSlytherin at ... wrote:

> Okay, Draco disarmed Dumbledore.  So the Elder Wand was loyal to him.  
> The big question for me now is this: why does it matter that Harry 
> disarmed Draco if the wand Draco was using is not the Elder Wand?  
> Draco's "regular" wand was still loyal to him when he got control of 
> the Elder Wand, right?  How does the fact that Harry has possession of 
> Draco's "regular" wand affect the Elder Wand?


zanooda:

Yeah, I hear you :-)! As I said in my post, this part of the story
doesn't sound very convincing to me, but this is exactly what the book
says: Harry took Draco's wand, but he also became the master of the
Elder wand, even though Draco never even touched it. I suppose the
Elder wand just knows that its master is disarmed (defeated), even
when it is not present at the scene and not used in the battle :-).
However, I disagree with you about one thing: I believe that the
scenario I described makes more sense than Draco's wand turning into
the Elder wand - there would be no explanation at all for such a
transformation :-)!




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Thu Jul 10 15:42:02 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:42:02 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g53qsn+inn2@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g55aka+9vhr@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183653

  
> 
> Magpie:
> And Harry learned other stuff. Harry's mind filling with anger and 
> fear and making him kill whether he wants to or not and basically 
> becoming Voldemort is not really a danger. 

Pippin:
Harry didn't become enough like Voldemort to want to take over the WW,
bwahaha! But he did become enough like Bella to cruciate Amycus.
JKR leaves it to the audience to notice that, which is to her credit,
IMO. 

Magpie:
> 
> HP and SW have very opposing views on anger and vengeance, after all. 
> They also lead to the opposite ending--Luke can feel the good in 
> Vader, calls to him as his father and saves Anakin. Riddle's a 
> psychopath and all the taunting to feel some remorse isn't going to 
> make him feel it.

Pippin:
That's your interpretation. Mine is that Riddle's not a psychopath
once he takes his little dunk in Harry-juice. He's an ex-psychopath
who still thinks like one, out of habit  and unwillingness to risk
change. 

What's the first thing he says when he emerges from the cauldron?
Before he tortures Wormtail some more, or goes for his wand, or even
before he examines his reconstituted body? "Robe me." Hah! He's eaten
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil all right, he just
doesn't realize. 

He can't manage to  kill Harry outright the way he offed Cedric a
moment before, the way he killed James without even letting him go for
his wand.  Voldie's suddenly got this urge to make it a duel. Is he
just taunting Harry, or is there something in him making him feel that
it won't really count unless Harry has some chance?  

> 
> Magpie:
> How does Snape calling Lily a slur that he calls all other 
> Muggleborns teach Harry that he himself is in danger of being filled 
> with anger or fear or he'll become evil?

Pippin:
It makes him/us understand that he was able to do the cruciatus curse,
say the unforgivable word, because he was filled with fury and
humiliation. If he had  truly been acting out of need and chivalry, he
wouldn't have been able to do it. 

Harry might never have become a DE. But in torturing Amycus, was he
not, for that moment, just as ruthless and cruel as Amycus? He doesn't
*stay* that way -- he doesn't let ruthless and cruel behavior become a
habit the way Crouch Sr did. But that's not to say he couldn't. He
didn't, because he saw the danger of it in the pensieve. Snape
couldn't have one set of people that he tried to treat fairly, and
another set that he could treat however he pleased. It didn't work. 
It didn't work for Dumbledore either.

But, unfortunately, that doesn't stop people from trying.  


> 
> Magpie:
> If Luke had used the Force to torture Yoda would have stopped him
and  said "NO" and taken it very seriously since it's laid out as a
huge  danger. 

Pippin:
Yoda wasn't there when Luke used the Force to choke the pig guard on
his way into Jabba's Palace. Dumbledore wasn't there when the
Marauders were abusing Snape. Lupin was there, but he didn't have the
guts to speak up about it.   Sometimes there's no one there to say
"No" -- that's why we have to learn to say it for ourselves, and  what
might happen if we don't, including the fact that the consequences may
not be immediately obvious. 

> Magpie:
> I thought you were saying that JKR was making a statement against 
> slavery with the elves. 

Pippin:

Would Harry have been satisfied to wear ugly clothes, live in his
cupboard and do chores for Petunia all his life if only she had
treated him with kindness and respect? The question makes no sense,
since respect for Harry entails respect for his needs and wishes. 

Respect for the House-elves entails respect for their needs and
wishes, which have to be determined individually since not all Elves
need or want the same thing.  That is a statement against slavery or
any other institution which denies people their individuality and
exploits them against their will.

The books have been out for a while. They've been read by untold
thousands of  educators, librarians, child psychologists and parents.
If the children of the world were being seduced into slavery by HP,
I'd think the experts would have noticed by now. <g> 

There are people  warning against HP  who are so terrified of
witchcraft that they don't want their children to even imagine having
that kind of power. Okay. But most of us think that the  books teach
about how to use power responsibly.


> Magpie:
> He saves Dudley at the beginning of OotP after he's just been 
> fighting with him.

Pippin:
True. But he had to drive the dementors off anyway, to save himself. I
give Harry full marks for helping Dudley to get home. But he wasn't
putting himself in any more danger by doing it.

Harry doesn't set out to become a hero and become something else in
the course of his journey. But he has to grow in order to become a
hero who can save the WW from Voldemort. If anyone had told him, at
the age of eleven, what he was going to have to go through to save the
WW, he'd probably have stayed in the cupboard. I would.


Pippin






From foxmoth at qnet.com  Thu Jul 10 18:01:24 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:01:24 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g53vbi+tumi@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g55ipk+ifvh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183654


> 
> zanooda:
> 
> Yeah, I hear you :-)! As I said in my post, this part of the story
> doesn't sound very convincing to me, but this is exactly what the book
> says: Harry took Draco's wand, but he also became the master of the
> Elder wand, even though Draco never even touched it. I suppose the
> Elder wand just knows that its master is disarmed (defeated), even
> when it is not present at the scene and not used in the battle :-).

Pippin:
"Time and space matter in magic" but not always. If Harry can sense
his connection with Voldemort over hundreds of miles, see what
Voldemort sees, and even think his thoughts, then why shouldn't the
Elder Wand be able to sense its connection with its master? 

A wand is a stick of wood. It doesn't have any physical senses, so why
should it be limited by them? It has  magical ones, some of which
obviously work over long distances, as with Summoning Charms.


The Elder Wand has to be able to tell that its old master has been
defeated, and by whom, for the legend to work at all. Xenophilius
implies that the wand isn't anyone's for the taking when its old
master dies. "The trail goes cold with Arcus and Livius. Who can say
which of them really defeated Loxias, and which took the wand? And who
can say who may have defeated them?" 

IOW, to  take gain the powers of the Elder Wand, it isn't enough to
find out whether Arcus or Livius took the wand, and so trace its
current whereabouts. It's also important to know which of them
defeated Loxias,  because only the successor of that person is true
master of the wand and can yield its allegiance to the one who defeats
him. 

Pippin









From goodgracious at juno.com  Thu Jul 10 04:59:16 2008
From: goodgracious at juno.com (Grace Donaldson)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:59:16 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g544v4+70ak@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183655

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman" 
<susiequsie23 at ...> wrote:
> 2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
> point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there 
is, 
> if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the 
use 
> of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in the 
> darkness" [p. 387]?

yraiym:
As Jack-A-Roe said, physical labor helps clear the brain.  Also, in 
this Harry is showing deep love and respect for Dobby ? not a mushy 
emotional love, but love-in-serving, as Dobby had shown Harry all 
along.  Dumbledore has been saying all along that Love is the most 
powerful "magic" of all, and that wizards need to show more respect 
for house elves.  In this act of love and respect, in grieving for 
Dobby as he would for a good friend, Harry embraces what Dumbledore 
believed and taught, and perhaps opened his ability to grasp many of 
the other things Dumbledore had tried to teach or hint at.

> 3.  What do you think of the description that "every drop of 
> [Harry's] sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who 
had 
> saved their lives" [p. 387]?  What do you imagine Dobby would have 
> thought of that?

Yraiym:
To tell the truth, I think this is one of the most beautiful parts 
of all the books: Harry shows another admirable aspect of Christ 
figures.  The Christ has been quoted as saying, "I came not to be 
served, but to serve, and to give my life for many."  I do not 
believe that these books have a hidden Christian agenda of 
proselytizing or are Christian allegory, but I do enjoy the 
traditional literary and mythic themes woven into this story. 

I think Dobby would have turned himself inside out with 
embarrassment at being served in such a way by the great Harry 
Potter.  But for him to be a free elf, I would think Dobby would 
need to not only be able to speak negatively of his former masters 
without having to punish himself, but he would need to be able to be 
served by humans/wizards.
 
> 4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has 
Harry 
> *now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing 
Dumbledore 
> had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does the death 
> trigger this in Harry?

yraiym:
I see three components involved: 1) realization of the danger, 2) 
love for others, and 3) an exercise of the will.

In OOTP, Chap 21, Harry saved Mr. Weasley's life; until the 
discovery in Chap 34 of OOTP that Voldy could manipulate what Harry 
saw, could deceive him, Harry thought this was only an asset: the 
Order of the Phoenix had direct access into Voldy's mind!  The chap 
34 discovery shook him, however.

Now, Harry is choosing to act on his love for Dobby.  Dobby died for 
Harry's sake; Harry is choosing to return some of that love in the 
actions he is undertaking.  After this third profound loss for Harry 
(Sirius, Dumbledore, Dobby), he sees the path more clearly and 
becomes increasingly determined to stop Voldy from killing others ? 
first those dearest to him, but also the entire wizarding world, 
other magical beings, Squibs, "Mudbloods", and Muggles.

My understanding of Occlumency is that it is an exercise of the 
will, as is overcoming the Imperius curse.  Recall in OOTP (p. 682 
Am ed), "The truth was that he was so intensely curious about what 
was hidden in that room full of dusty orbs that he was quite keen 
for the dreams to continue" ? driven by curiosity, Harry didn't want 
to stop seeing these dreams in OOTP.  But realizing the danger and 
motivated by love, he is now concentrating on the tasks ahead of him 
and therefore exercises his will to shut out Voldy's thoughts and 
feelings.

> 7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that 
> Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?

Yraiym:
Because I admire the Faramir of the book LotR (as opposed to the 
alterations made in his character on screen), I believed it 
possible, and hoped Harry would prove to be such a hero, too.  Could 
I?  I hope, but don't know that I have good enough a character.

> 8.  When Harry is talking in his mind as if to DD and asks if he 
is 
> meant to know but not to seek, he also asks, "Did you know how 
hard 
> I'd find that?  Is that why you made it this difficult?  So I'd 
have 
> time to work that out?" [p. 391]  What do you think is the answer 
to 
> that?  How about what you thought on your first read?  Did you 
feel a 
> new understanding along with Harry, or had you see his mission 
> differently than he had before this dawning?

Yraiym:
The first time I read it, I hadn't put it all together yet.  But on 
a second/third reading, I think the answer is, "Yes, he knew how 
hard it would be for Harry because of his own struggle, and as he 
will tell Harry at King's Cross, that IS why he made it so 
difficult, hoping that slowing Harry down would help him see clearly 
that the real task was destroying the horcruxes, not going for the 
hallows."

On my first reading, I was worried that Harry was getting 
sidetracked (or that JKR was getting sloppy in her writing!) from 
the task Dumbledore gave him before he died.  Dumbledore, for all 
his mistakes, still had shown great wisdom, and we are never given a 
full picture of just how much Dumbledore guessed or knew; my bets 
were with whatever he suggested (including trusting the slippery 
Snape).

> 11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's 
comment, "You 
> are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an 
> unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?

Yraiym:
I thought we were being beaten over the head with something we could 
already see for ourselves: Harry claimed a house-elf among his 
friends, pitied even Tom Riddle, remained Dumbledore's man even when 
Dumbledore was dead and being "disgraced" by the papers, had been 
the youngest seeker on the Gryffindor team in 100 years, and had a 
bad-ass broomstick until the beginning of this final book.

> 12.  Is Griphook correct that this is "precisely about" wizards 
vs. 
> goblins?  Why did he drop the subject so abruptly?

Yraiym: Cause everybody knows Hermione is always right.  Nope, no 
idea really.

> 15.  How do you react to those remarks of Ollivander's concerning 
> wand ownership and control?  Since they're really JKR's words ? 
and 
> rules ? are they reasonable? Fair?  Do they tell us enough?  
> "Subtle," "complex," "usually," "in general" ? is this just the 
> nature of wand lore, and it *is* nebulous and imprecise?  Or is 
this 
> simply a way to leave open more possibilities for the author?

Yraiym:
Yup, I think it's a way to bring in the "god of the machine."  While 
I am understand what was happening as, "Since I disarmed Draco, all 
wands that belonged to Draco now accept me as their master," the 
part about "all wands" was a bit of a surprise at the end and didn't 
taste right, nor why the AK curse would rebound on Voldy.

> 16.  Ollivander says he has no idea why the wand Voldemort 
borrowed 
> failed against Harry's wand.  He says "something unique" 
happened.  
> What was that something unique, do you think?

Yraiym:
Um, I assumed it was the way the wand followed Voldy and shot that 
powerful spell at him apart from Harry's control.  And I was happier 
not having any attempt to explain it; let it be something nobody 
understands.

> 18.  How is it that, compared to the end of OOTP, Harry can be so 
> certain the visions he's having are real?  We know now that they 
are, 
> but how could he be so confident after what happened in OOTP?

Yraiym:
IMO, these are visions of Voldy weak and vulnerable; his plans are 
failing ? these are not the sort of visions he would try to plant on 
Harry.  He's out of control and can't contain his emotions and 
thoughts enough to block Harry as he could in HBP.  

> 19.  What did you think was coming next, as you read the end of 
the 
> chapter and knew that Voldemort had taken possession of the Elder 
> Wand?

Yraiym:
Oh Crap!  Well, okay, don't desecrate a tomb, and keep the horcruxes 
as the focus of your quest, but couldn't you at least have kept that 
wand out of Voldy's clutches?  Oh, but he's broken a taboo, breaking 
into Dumbledore's tomb.  Nothing good can come of that for Voldy; 
it's part of the rules of faerie.

Thanks for a great summary and discussion questions that got me 
thinking on things!

And thanks for reading my first post to this group. :-)




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 10 20:27:55 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:27:55 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g55aka+9vhr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g55rcb+3f2o@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183656

> > Magpie:
> > And Harry learned other stuff. Harry's mind filling with anger 
and 
> > fear and making him kill whether he wants to or not and basically 
> > becoming Voldemort is not really a danger. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Harry didn't become enough like Voldemort to want to take over the 
WW,
> bwahaha! But he did become enough like Bella to cruciate Amycus.
> JKR leaves it to the audience to notice that, which is to her 
credit,
> IMO. 

Magpie:
But is is he becoming like Voldemort in any particularly bad way 
that's a danger to his soul? Since Harry never revisits this impulse 
as something bad, and goes on to have Dumbledore tell him how good he 
is, and nothing ever comes of this scene, maybe his using a Crucio 
isn't saying Harry is like Voldemort in any way he has to worry 
about. Maybe, as someone else said, he's just becoming an adult and a 
badass, or maybe it's just showing the effects of war. I think the 
whole "the good guys are becoming what they despise" that many people 
saw pre-DH was just an illusion, which is why there's no big climax 
or resolution to it. JKR doesn't credit anyone for picking up on her 
meaning when they ask her about this scene outside of the books.

There's a difference between Harry doing something like the DEs and 
that indicating a thread where Harry is in danger of becoming a bad 
guy. I just don't see that. 


> Magpie:
> > 
> > HP and SW have very opposing views on anger and vengeance, after 
all. 
> > They also lead to the opposite ending--Luke can feel the good in 
> > Vader, calls to him as his father and saves Anakin. Riddle's a 
> > psychopath and all the taunting to feel some remorse isn't going 
to 
> > make him feel it.
> 
> Pippin:
> That's your interpretation. Mine is that Riddle's not a psychopath
> once he takes his little dunk in Harry-juice. He's an ex-psychopath
> who still thinks like one, out of habit  and unwillingness to risk
> change. 

Magpie:
Okay, he gets an injection of Harry blood and therefore becomes 
empathetic (despite Harry himself doing Crucio). I don't see much 
practical difference between an actual psycho and a person who thinks 
like one because he doesn't realize he isn't one anymore, it's that 
unnoticeable. Riddle's new ability to feel remorse through the Harry 
juice does not produce any real suspense as to whether he'll turn, so 
it might as well not be there even if it's there. Vader's whole story 
is about losing his humanity and getting it back, with the important 
relationship to his son being a catalyst. He's aware of his better 
feelings. 

Pippin:
> 
> He can't manage to  kill Harry outright the way he offed Cedric a
> moment before, the way he killed James without even letting him go 
for
> his wand.  Voldie's suddenly got this urge to make it a duel. Is he
> just taunting Harry, or is there something in him making him feel 
that
> it won't really count unless Harry has some chance?  

Magpie:
Yes, he's just taunting Harry. He's done in by his own arrogance. He 
has to prove that he's better than Harry, that Harry didn't defeat 
him fairly, in front of the DEs--that's why it doesn't count if Harry 
doesn't have a parody of a fighting chance. So he plays with him like 
a cat plays with a mouse, torturing him before he AKs him. I don't 
see Voldemort displaying much compassion there. Killing Harry 
outright would have been less cruel in that scene. Had something 
bizarre not happened with the wands Harry would have been just as 
dead, despite naked!Voldemort asking for a robe when he steps out of 
the cauldron.
 
> > Magpie:
> > How does Snape calling Lily a slur that he calls all other 
> > Muggleborns teach Harry that he himself is in danger of being 
filled 
> > with anger or fear or he'll become evil?
> 
> Pippin:
> It makes him/us understand that he was able to do the cruciatus 
curse,
> say the unforgivable word, because he was filled with fury and
> humiliation. If he had  truly been acting out of need and chivalry, 
he
> wouldn't have been able to do it. 

Magpie:
Snape used the word Mudblood because he was angry and humiliated. I 
see no reason why, having seen that in the Pensieve, Harry would 
suddenly start thinking that that's why he was able to cast Crucio, 
and therefore regret his Crucio and in general see himself as having 
gone down the same path. Because I don't remember Harry making that 
connection. I don't make it either. 

Pippin: 
> Harry might never have become a DE. But in torturing Amycus, was he
> not, for that moment, just as ruthless and cruel as Amycus? He 
doesn't
> *stay* that way -- he doesn't let ruthless and cruel behavior 
become a
> habit the way Crouch Sr did. But that's not to say he couldn't.

Magpie:
Since he didn't with no difficulty, "not to say he couldn't" doesn't 
have much relevence to the story. 

Pippin:
 He
> didn't, because he saw the danger of it in the pensieve. Snape
> couldn't have one set of people that he tried to treat fairly, and
> another set that he could treat however he pleased. It didn't work. 
> It didn't work for Dumbledore either.

Magpie:
I don't see how Snape's story kept Harry from becoming Crouch, since 
he was never on that road. I also don't connect Snape's story to 
Harry regretting his Crucio or thinking he shouldn't have treated 
Amycus however he pleased (within Harry's own good guy limits), or 
regret any action he'd ever taken against a bad guy that he didn't 
regret before. To be honest, I also don't see Dumbledore or Harry 
being particularly charged with having two sets of rules for people 
they treat fairly or not. 
 
> > Magpie:
> > If Luke had used the Force to torture Yoda would have stopped him
> and  said "NO" and taken it very seriously since it's laid out as a
> huge  danger. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Yoda wasn't there when Luke used the Force to choke the pig guard on
> his way into Jabba's Palace. Dumbledore wasn't there when the
> Marauders were abusing Snape. Lupin was there, but he didn't have 
the
> guts to speak up about it.   Sometimes there's no one there to say
> "No" -- that's why we have to learn to say it for ourselves, and  
what
> might happen if we don't, including the fact that the consequences 
may
> not be immediately obvious. 

Magpie:
Luke has a storyline about his learning it, culminating in the 
big "will he stop himself from killing Vader" scene. Harry has a 
scene where he watches Snape's life story and learns that the man's 
been protecting him all along and regretted getting his mother 
killed.  There's a difference between recognizing flaws in yourself 
(on the page/screen) and recognizing the tragic flaws of other 
people. 

Pippin:> 
> The books have been out for a while. They've been read by untold
> thousands of  educators, librarians, child psychologists and 
parents.
> If the children of the world were being seduced into slavery by HP,
> I'd think the experts would have noticed by now. <g> 
> 
> There are people  warning against HP  who are so terrified of
> witchcraft that they don't want their children to even imagine 
having
> that kind of power. Okay. But most of us think that the  books teach
> about how to use power responsibly.

Magpie:
I never said the books were seducing anybody into slavery. I said 
they show their hero owning an elf slave in a cozy arrangement that 
pleases both of them at the end. That is using his power responsibly 
in this story. I can describe that situation in canon the way I see 
it without making hysterical claims about the books making previously 
anti-slavery 21st century kids pro-slavery for humans. Many people 
are offended by the idea that Kreacher would even be called a slave 
since he's happy. Hey, Harry's just respecting Kreacher's wishes 
there (now that Kreacher's wishes have changed).
 
> > Magpie:
> > He saves Dudley at the beginning of OotP after he's just been 
> > fighting with him.
> 
> Pippin:
> True. But he had to drive the dementors off anyway, to save 
himself. I
> give Harry full marks for helping Dudley to get home. But he wasn't
> putting himself in any more danger by doing it.

Magpie:
Harry's already had a scene where someone who has made his life 
miserable is beset by danger and he saves his life. He's already 
shown us that his impulse is to protect the kid who's bullied him if 
that kid is in danger. He's already shown the bravery to put himself 
in mortal danger or sacrifice something important to himself to 
rescue someone else, even someone who isn't special to him. It's a 
different situation, even more dramatic and heroic, but not 
particularly new behavior for Harry.

-m




From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Thu Jul 10 21:09:13 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:09:13 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g53oe9+hclp@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g55tpp+gdiq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183657

montavilla47 wrote:

> Which puts a little different spin on those Unforgivables.  Maybe 
> they aren't evil at all.  Maybe they're just *adult* and it's a 
> sign of Harry's maturity that he's able to use them with impunity.
> 
> Or, maybe it's to show that he's *better* than Dumbledore, since
> he's able to use spells that are too much of a temptation for 
> Dumbledore.


SSSusan:
Oh, now that's interesting!

So you're saying that, rather than Harry being *worse* than DD 
because he used Unforgivables which DD was "too noble" to use, Harry 
is *better* than DD because he *could* them and was strong enough not 
to "turn Dark" in the process.  Is that what you're getting at?

If so, does that mean that you think DD didn't use Unforgivables 
*not* so much because he was too noble, but because he feared he was 
too weak and might give in to the power of using Dark curses?

Or am I misreading you entirely? :)

Siriusly Snapey Susan






From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Thu Jul 10 21:26:56 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:26:56 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g55aka+9vhr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g55ur0+4d2f@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183658

> > Magpie:
> > He saves Dudley at the beginning of OotP after he's just been 
> > fighting with him.

> Pippin:
> True. But he had to drive the dementors off anyway, to save 
> himself. I give Harry full marks for helping Dudley to get home. 
> But he wasn't putting himself in any more danger by doing it.

SSSusan:
I don't know.  He wouldn't have been in more danger from the ministry, 
because he had already used magic in front of a Muggle, but he *could* 
have high-tailed it out of there a whole lot faster if he wasn't 
lugging Dudley along with him.  To me, that did leave him open to more 
danger.

I took this action towards Dudley as something that *really* spoke 
volumes about what Harry is all about, about what he can stand by and 
let happen and what he can't.  


Pippin: 
> Harry doesn't set out to become a hero and become something else in
> the course of his journey. But he has to grow in order to become a
> hero who can save the WW from Voldemort. If anyone had told him, at
> the age of eleven, what he was going to have to go through to save the
> WW, he'd probably have stayed in the cupboard. I would.
> 

SSSusan:
Do you really think so?  

While I agree with you that he had to grow along the way, in order to 
become a hero, I don't think he'd have stayed in his cupboard.  *I* 
would have, but I don't think Harry would have. :)

He might well have doubted that he could do anything, that he could BE 
a hero, but I don't think he'd have run & hidden.  I mean, honestly, 
it's only a few months later, and Harry's still 11, when he decides he 
*will* risk his life and face Fluffy and all those professorial 
enchantments & protections, to prevent Voldemort from gaining the Stone.

True, he doesn't yet know the prophecy, but he knows Voldy tried to 
kill him once and will again if he returns.  I think a lot of this was 
in Harry all along, from the get-go.

Siriusly Snapey Susan





From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 10 22:57:43 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:57:43 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g55tpp+gdiq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g56457+2sg6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183659

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman" <susiequsie23 at ...> wrote:
>
> montavilla47 wrote:
> 
> > Which puts a little different spin on those Unforgivables.  Maybe 
> > they aren't evil at all.  Maybe they're just *adult* and it's a 
> > sign of Harry's maturity that he's able to use them with impunity.
> > 
> > Or, maybe it's to show that he's *better* than Dumbledore, since
> > he's able to use spells that are too much of a temptation for 
> > Dumbledore.
> 
> 
> SSSusan:
> Oh, now that's interesting!
> 
> So you're saying that, rather than Harry being *worse* than DD 
> because he used Unforgivables which DD was "too noble" to use, Harry 
> is *better* than DD because he *could* them and was strong enough not 
> to "turn Dark" in the process.  Is that what you're getting at?
> 
> If so, does that mean that you think DD didn't use Unforgivables 
> *not* so much because he was too noble, but because he feared he was 
> too weak and might give in to the power of using Dark curses?
> 
> Or am I misreading you entirely? :)
> 
> Siriusly Snapey Susan

Montavilla47:
You're not misreading me.  I was being a little tongue in cheek when
I wrote that, but I think the reading is supported by the text.

We start the series with McGonagall (in the very first chapter) praising
Dumbledore as "too noble" to use Dark Magic.  He tuts in return, looking
pleased, if I recall.

In the fourth book, the Unforgivables are introduced as the worst curses
imaginable--used mainly by the Death Eaters.  We're also told that
Crouch, Sr. authorized their use, but only because times were desperate
and that its a mark in Moody's favor that he only used them when he 
truly needed to.

In OotP, we're told by Bellatrix that "righteous anger" isn't enough to
cast a Crucio.  You must really enjoy causing pain.  (Something which
was extrapolated between HBP and DH to include the Avada Kadavra--
one could only cast the AK, readers theorized, if you really hated the
person in front of you and really, really wanted them dead.)

Much of the condemnation by readers for Snape after HBP was 
bolstered by his use of the AK, rather than a more forgivable spell that
would have killed Dumbledore just as much.  Moreover, we got this
question about *all* the Prince's spells.  Hermione wouldn't participate
in any conversation covered by Muffliato, and she reminded Harry that
Levicorpus was used by the DEs in GoF to torment muggles.  Even Snape
told Harry that Sectumsempra was Dark Magic.

But, in DH, these objections to Dark Magic melt away like the snow in 
spring.  Hermione regularly uses Muffliato to ward their tent.  Levicorpus
is used to help Harry get the Hufflepuff cup (although why Wingardium 
Leviosa wouldn't work is puzzling).  Sectumsempra is used to save Lupin.
We learn that AK was used as the quickest, most humane way to 
kill Dumbledore.  And Harry uses both Imperius and Crucio to perform
heroic feats.

Whereupon his use of the Dark Magic is praised by McGonagall as 
"gallant" (how far is "gallant" from "noble"?) and emulated.

Dumbledore was tempted in his youth by power and Dark Magic.  
He gave in to that (along with his lust) and disastrous things took
place.  Forever after, he shrank from the temptation of love (he 
remained celebate), power (he refused the Ministry three times), 
and Dark Magic (he famously never used Dark Spells).

Harry, however, is stronger than Dumbledore.  Like Dumbledore
with Grindlewald, he is offered the gift of sexual love by Ginny.  But, 
unlike Dumbledore, he doesn't fall into that trap and lose his primary
values.

Like Dumbledore, Harry has his own private army. But he quickly
drops the D.A., proving himself able to resist the temptation of 
power.

Unlike Dumbledore, Harry is able to use Dark Magic without 
becoming tainted by it.  He is able to draw on the lesson that
Bellatrix taught him, but his power of love keeps him from
any kind of seduction the Dark Arts might hold. 

It's almost a parallel to the Hallows, isn't it? Dumbledore 
gave in to temptation with them, and died for his weakness.
In addition to becoming the Master of Death, Harry became 
the Master of Magic--able to use both Light and Dark 
magic.  

Is that sort of like Luke restoring balance to the Force?








From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Fri Jul 11 02:37:25 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:37:25 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g56457+2sg6@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g56h15+79b9@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183660

montavilla47 wrote:
<snip oodles>
> Harry, however, is stronger than Dumbledore.  Like Dumbledore
> with Grindlewald, he is offered the gift of sexual love by Ginny.  
> But, unlike Dumbledore, he doesn't fall into that trap and lose his 
> primary values.
> 
> Like Dumbledore, Harry has his own private army. But he quickly
> drops the D.A., proving himself able to resist the temptation of 
> power.
> 
> Unlike Dumbledore, Harry is able to use Dark Magic without 
> becoming tainted by it.  He is able to draw on the lesson that
> Bellatrix taught him, but his power of love keeps him from
> any kind of seduction the Dark Arts might hold. 
> 
> It's almost a parallel to the Hallows, isn't it? Dumbledore 
> gave in to temptation with them, and died for his weakness.
> In addition to becoming the Master of Death, Harry became 
> the Master of Magic--able to use both Light and Dark 
> magic.  


SSSusan:
I like what you wrote.  I like it very much.  But just one thing I 
still have to wonder about.

This bit about DD having been *unable* to use Dark Magic, while Harry 
could without being tainted by it.  That's speculation, no?  I mean, 
not the part about Harry -- we can gather than Harry wasn't tainted 
(in the sense of being seduced, long-term, by the Dark Arts).  And 
yes, DD gave into the seduction of the Hallows.  

But do we *know* that the reason DD didn't use the Unforgivables was 
truly because he was scared to, or couldn't bring himself to for fear 
of the seduction of them?  Do we *know* it wasn't actually what 
McGonagall said -- that he was "too noble," or, put differently, that 
he simply chose not to?

You may be speaking more broadly of DD and Dark Magic as a whole, 
though, whereas I'm thinking in particular of the Unforgivables.

Siriusly Snapey Susan






From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 11 03:47:16 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:47:16 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g55ipk+ifvh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g56l44+bh9r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183661

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:

> "Time and space matter in magic" but not always. If Harry can sense
> his connection with Voldemort over hundreds of miles, see what
> Voldemort sees, and even think his thoughts, then why shouldn't the
> Elder Wand be able to sense its connection with its master? 


zanooda:

Yes, I understand all this, and for me personally Harry becoming the
Elder wand's master works reasonably well :-). All I want to say is
that taking a wand from somebody and becoming this wand's master is
much, much more straightforward than taking a wand from somebody and
automatically becoming the master of some other wand which is not even
there. I'm not saying it's impossible or unbelievable, it's just more
complicated than  the first scenario, and I can see that some readers
are confused and not at all convinced :-). As for myself, I don't mind
this part of the story, especially now, after thinking about it for
some time (from last July :-)).




From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 11 05:31:19 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:31:19 -0000
Subject: The Elder Wand's Allegiance (Was: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker)
In-Reply-To: <g56l44+bh9r@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g56r77+hf21@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183662

> zanooda:
> 
> Yes, I understand all this, and for me personally Harry becoming
> the Elder wand's master works reasonably well :-). All I want to
> say is that taking a wand from somebody and becoming this wand's
> master is much, much more straightforward than taking a wand from
> somebody and automatically becoming the master of some other wand
> which is not even there. 

Mike:
I think Anne Squires's explanation is excellent. I'd recommend anyone 
who is confused by the Elder Wand thing, read it:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183650

There is one part where I'd like to add my understanding of what's 
going on which may help some folks. [Warning: I may be getting too 
technical and/or anal for your taste. But that's me, sorry! ;-)]

>>> Anne:
5. Harry later defeated Draco and took possession of Draco's wand.
At that point all wands that owed allegiance to Draco shifted their
allegiance to Harry. That's two wands. Harry became the master of
Draco's wand and the master of the Elder Wand. Even though the Elder
Wand was never physically in Draco's possession or in Harry's 
possession. <<<

Mike:
Some have questioned how the Elder Wand could know that Harry had 
seized Draco's wand by force and had become the master of Draco's 
Hawthorn wand. My explanation is that the Elder Wand didn't know when 
Harry took Draco's wand, didn't even know that Draco was it's master. 
It only knew that the master of the Hawthorn wand was it's master 
too. So, when Harry shows up for the showdown vs Voldemort with the 
Hawthorn wand in hand, he is the de facto master of the Elder Wand.

My interpretation is that the Elder Wand is not so sentient as to 
understand people speaking. So Harry's explanation to LV was no help 
to the Elder Wand. 

But wands do recognize magic and do recognize other wands. So wands, 
including the Elder Wand, will recognize another wizard's magic when 
employed against it or against the master to which it is magically 
connected. So, when Grindelwald used the Elder Wand to stun 
Gregorovitch, the Elder Wand recognizes Grindelwald's magic being 
employed through itself to defeat it's previous master. Hence, it's 
change of allegiance. 

Wands will also recognize other wands used to perform magic, since 
that other wand is magically connected to a wizard and that wizard's 
magic. This was magic at work in the Priori Incantatum scene in GoF. 
Harry's and LV's wands recognized each other when they connected, so 
they then recognized the other's master. Then, in the "Seven Potters" 
in DH, Harry's Phoenix wand recognized LV by his magic and reacted 
independent of Harry against Harry's recognized enemy. Admittedly, 
this part is a little foggy to me, this whole acting independent 
thing. But even Dumbledore only had a guess, so I guess I'll chalk it 
up to the one-off connection that Harry has to LV through the soul 
piece.

Neither do I think the Elder Wand knew that Draco was his master nor 
that it's erstwhile master (Draco) was dispossessed of the wand that 
defeated his old master, Dumbledore. In order for the Elder Wand to 
recognize Draco as it's master, Draco would have need actually 
possess and use it and it would have to sense Draco's magic as the 
magic that disarmed Dumbledore, it's old master.

Since that never happened, the Elder wand was reduced to recognizing 
the Hawthorn wand as the *wand* that disarmed Dumbledore. Therefore, 
whosoever wielded the Hawthorn wand as master would be recognized by 
the Elder Wand as it's master. That was Harry; when Harry performed a 
spell through the Hawthorn wand the Elder Wand immediately recognized 
the Hawthorn wand and therefore immediately recognized Harry as it's 
master.

In my understanding, Harry officially became master of the Elder Wand 
when he used it for the first time to repair his Phoenix wand. Until 
that happened, the Elder Wand was still beholden to whoever had the 
Hawthorn wand. But once Harry used it, it recognized Harry's magic 
and therefore Harry; just as when Grindelwald used the Elder Wand to 
stun Gregorovitch to become it's master.




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 11 05:44:22 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:44:22 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g56h15+79b9@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g56rvm+1h40@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183663

> SSSusan:
> I like what you wrote.  I like it very much.  But just one thing I 
> still have to wonder about.
> 
> This bit about DD having been *unable* to use Dark Magic, while Harry 
> could without being tainted by it.  That's speculation, no?  I mean, 
> not the part about Harry -- we can gather than Harry wasn't tainted 
> (in the sense of being seduced, long-term, by the Dark Arts).  And 
> yes, DD gave into the seduction of the Hallows. 
> 
> But do we *know* that the reason DD didn't use the Unforgivables was 
> truly because he was scared to, or couldn't bring himself to for fear 
> of the seduction of them?  Do we *know* it wasn't actually what 
> McGonagall said -- that he was "too noble," or, put differently, that 
> he simply chose not to?
> 
> You may be speaking more broadly of DD and Dark Magic as a whole, 
> though, whereas I'm thinking in particular of the Unforgivables.

Montavilla47:
You have to remember that I came up with theory about twelve hours
ago. :)

It's pure speculation.  Dumbledore never says that he's afraid to
use Dark Magic or Unforgivables.  But he does say something about
being afraid of power.






From sweenlit at gmail.com  Fri Jul 11 05:53:43 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:53:43 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g56rvm+1h40@eGroups.com>
References: <g56h15+79b9@eGroups.com> <g56rvm+1h40@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807102253l41e6b130s5ab34c6f36447e88@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183664

Mantavilla47:
It's pure speculation. Dumbledore never says that he's afraid to
use Dark Magic or Unforgivables. But he does say something about
being afraid of power.

Lynda:
Dumbledore thought that, given his youthful delvings into dark magic that
the seductive influence poir had on him would be too much for him to handle
and could presumably turn him into another megolmaniac similar to
Grindelwald or Voldemort. So as for being afraid to use Unforgivables, its a
possibility. Another lure of power.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Fri Jul 11 14:11:12 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:11:12 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g55rcb+3f2o@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g57pm0+ltuh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183665

> Magpie:
> Luke has a storyline about his learning it, culminating in the 
> big "will he stop himself from killing Vader" scene. Harry has a 
> scene where he watches Snape's life story and learns that the man's 
> been protecting him all along and regretted getting his mother 
> killed.  There's a difference between recognizing flaws in yourself 
> (on the page/screen) and recognizing the tragic flaws of other 
> people. 

Pippin:
I'm not sure I understand. Either way, the audience can recognize
tragic flaws in the characters. Hamlet never actually blames himself
for being indecisive, does he?

But I'll accept that the main story line isn't about getting Harry to
see that he's flawed.

OTOH, it doesn't seem to be about becoming a badass wizard either. 

Harry is preoccupied with the question of who he can trust.

And that's what our debate is about, isn't it? Are we, the readers,
supposed to trust Harry to do the things that we know still need to be
done in the WW? 

 It's not like we're disagreeing that House-elves are exploited, the
government should be reformed, non-wizards should be respected and
Slytherins should not be treated like they're the short bus, even if
some of them are,  er, challenged, morally speaking. <g>

I think JKR had Harry violate taboos so we could be faced with the
same doubts about him that he had about Snape and Dumbledore.   But we
don't get the luxury of looking inside his head. We're left to judge
Harry's character based on the actions we know about, just as we would
in real life.

I don't think there's a wrong answer, it's just that much of the story
becomes pointless if you don't think the Trio could really make much
difference with the rest of their lives.

Pippin





From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Fri Jul 11 14:21:31 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:21:31 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g56rvm+1h40@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g57q9b+6orc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183666

SSSusan:
> > But do we *know* that the reason DD didn't use the Unforgivables 
> > was truly because he was scared to, or couldn't bring himself to 
> > for fear of the seduction of them?  Do we *know* it wasn't 
> > actually what McGonagall said -- that he was "too noble," or, put 
> > differently, that he simply chose not to?
 
Montavilla47:
> You have to remember that I came up with theory about twelve hours
> ago. :)
> 
> It's pure speculation.  Dumbledore never says that he's afraid to
> use Dark Magic or Unforgivables.  But he does say something about
> being afraid of power.


SSSusan:
LOL, pure speculation is fine.  I just wanted to make sure it was 
speculation and that I didn't simply miss some obvious things in the 
text. :D

I think, as Lynda pointed out in another response to this, what you 
described as a possibility definitely *fits* with what we know of DD; 
thus, it wouldn't be a surprise if it were the truth.  I just think 
that it also could fit with the DD we know that the *other* option 
was the truth:  that he truly didn't feel it was best or right to use 
Unforgivables/Dark Magic.

Siriusly Snapey Susan






From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 11 14:45:01 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:45:01 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again BIG SPOILERS for TIGANA
In-Reply-To: <g57pm0+ltuh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g57rld+rsgu@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183667

Pippin:
<SNIP>
> I think JKR had Harry violate taboos so we could be faced with the
> same doubts about him that he had about Snape and Dumbledore.   But 
we
> don't get the luxury of looking inside his head. We're left to judge
> Harry's character based on the actions we know about, just as we 
would
> in real life.
> 
> I don't think there's a wrong answer; it's just that much of the 
story
> becomes pointless if you don't think the Trio could really make much
> difference with the rest of their lives.

Alla:
OMG Pippin so well said and I again find myself agreeing with you and 
want to mention the event from Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay that I 
mentioned few days ago.

So basically at some point one of the main characters who is engaged 
in great and noble cause, and I say it without any irony whatsoever, 
to me his cause is great and noble decides that he needs a wizard to 
help his cause. Mind you this character cannot perform any other 
magic, but by the virtue of his birth he can make a wizard to serve 
him.

And lo and behold that is what he does, he enslaves the wizard. 
Basically poor man must go where he orders him and do his bidding or 
suffer pain. And believe me, this man would much rather NOT be there.

I will make the point related to Potterverse, I promise, just bear 
with me. So at some point the guy, who made wizard to serve him 
forcefully seems to realize that no matter what ends do not justify 
the means and there are limits he is willing to go to even for his 
noble cause and he lets wizard go.

Do you guess how this plotline is resolved? Well, wizard decides that 
he likes the cause after all and he will help them out.

So do you know how it relates to what Pippin just wrote in my mind?

I am not sure if I *buy* that the guy who did the enslaving did it 
because he truly understood that the ends do not justify the means 
and he has no right to violate the desires of other human being who 
would much rather not to be there. I am not sure if I realize it 
**despite the fact** that guy says that he did, loud and clear. I 
have a sneaking suspicion that the bastard did it because he saw 
already that wizard  begins to accept their cause and it is much 
better to have him there freely doing what needs to be done rather 
than to waste a mental energy trying to force him, especially for the 
last battle.

I am not sure I buy it **because** of his actions, because him not 
releasing the wizard earlier when he was upset and suffered one time 
even physically when he tried to run away, etc.

Now, in Potterverse as you said we are left to judge Harry's 
character based on the actions we know about, and those actions to me 
say much more than moment of Harry beating himself over the head 
about Crucio would have said. I trust that teenager who saves Draco 
from the fire, who shields everybody including Narcissa would have 
indeed realized that using Crucio is a wrong thing to do. Do I read 
it in canon? No, but I believe that my trust is valid based on the 
actions which I have read in canon.
As I said, sometimes even if character speaks that he was wrong, I do 
not trust him, I just do not believe him based on what he did 
previously. But I do believe in Harry.

Now to go an a little tangent I still think that even though in their 
moral core books are simplistic enough, JKR  writes with enough 
subtlety to show how the characters are changing .

Take Hermione saving Xeno Lovegood. I just realized recently that I 
think it is meant to tell us that Hermione may not be so sure that 
traitor always needs to be marked and punished if there are 
mitigating circumstances ? re infamous Marietta. Hermione takes care 
of saving Xeno who betrayed him because his daughter was taken, which 
is sort of reversal of situation with Marietta, isn't it? Wasn't the 
argument that she did it because her mother was involved? I mean, I 
know that her mother was working for the ministry, so she was 
involved, I just never bought it, and I thought that to show it 
Marietta should have gone to her mother instead of Umbridge, but if 
she was, well I find it interesting.

JMO,
Alla






From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 11 17:36:09 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:36:09 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g57pm0+ltuh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g585m9+pjr7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183669

> Pippin:
> I'm not sure I understand. Either way, the audience can recognize
> tragic flaws in the characters. Hamlet never actually blames himself
> for being indecisive, does he?
>
> But I'll accept that the main story line isn't about getting Harry
to
> see that he's flawed.

Magpie:
Yes, it has been confusing, which is surprising because I feel like
I'm just making a simple point which is that in order to make a point
in a story you make a point in the story. Clear premises are very
important, no matter how complex the narrative. Hamlet thee play is 
obviously making that a major theme that causes things to happen. He 
certainly knows that he's indecisive. He's dealing with that the 
entire play.

There is no parallel over-arching theme for Harry in going over to
the Dark Side. It's not a real threat in the story. On the contrary,
the opposite point is established more than once, so it can't just be 
thrown in at the same time. To try to make the analogy to SW, the 
Force being strong in Luke is established. There is no real strand in 
the story about a threat of Luke not having enough access to the 
Force, even though there are scenes where he's struggling to use it. 
His strength is part of what's at stake.

The idea that Harry could become like Voldemort is not ever presented
as a problem in the story. It's not presented in this scene as a
problem either. It's just Harry using a Crucio and moving on. Yes,
the fact that Harry uses a Crucio at all shows a development from the
11-year-old who couldn't have used it, and the 15-year-old who didn't
get how to do it right. "War is hell" seems to apply. But we can't 
just raise it to the level of the idea in SW or say it's the same 
thing in a story that hasn't laid out the same ideas. If this was 
laid out as a threat we wouldn't need Harry to tell us he'd realized 
he was becoming like Voldemort for us to get it. (There would have to 
be some moment of realization on his part, imo, because of the nature 
of the revelation. You don't realize you're becoming exactly what you 
despise without noticing you realized it, imo.) 

Pippin:
> OTOH, it doesn't seem to be about becoming a badass wizard either.

Magpie:
No, that's not the primary theme either. However Harry being a
powerful Wizard who's growing in his abilities is far more
established than Harry ever going over to the Dark Side is. Harry
having a moment where he strikes a blow against bad guys in the name
of justice is nothing new for Harry, it's always been part of what
his character does and it doesn't conflict with what he stands for. 
It supports the main theme. Throwing in that Harry is becoming 
corrupted is more of a problem. In fact, since we're talking about 
author intention it's relative that in interviews since the series 
ended JKR has moved us even further *away* from this idea, not closer 
to it.

Pippin:

> Harry is preoccupied with the question of who he can trust.
>
> And that's what our debate is about, isn't it? Are we, the readers,
> supposed to trust Harry to do the things that we know still need to
be
> done in the WW?

Magpie:
Actually, that seems like yet another new debate. We weren't talking
about whether Harry would do the things we think need to be done in
the WW. The story isn't about what Harry's going to do after the book
is over. If anyone is worried about that the author has pretty
clearly said that we should trust Harry to do all those things, which
gives us the limited information that the author intends for him to
be trustworthy in that regard. I certainly didn't doubt that I was
supposed to think Harry's experiences were supposed to have made him
an excellent steward for the WW. There might be some dissonance
between that and the way he really came across to me, but I wasn't
surprised when the author gave her opinion on it.

Where this does reflect what we were discussing is that I honestly
don't see anywhere we're supposed to doubt Harry will make it through
as a good guy. I don't think there is any place where the story
raises any such doubts. It explicitly raises the doubt that he won't
defeat Voldemort, that he won't be happy and that he won't survive,
not that he will be corrupted and made evil. I think the book makes
clear that he's not Snape or Dumbledore. (And imo all the times where 
it seems like the book is veering towards the idea that the good guys 
are becoming bad all lead nowhere, and that, coupled with things the 
author has said about it, leave me fairly confident that I just 
misinterpreted that whole idea and the author was never intentionally 
going that way.

Alla:
Take Hermione saving Xeno Lovegood. I just realized recently that I
think it is meant to tell us that Hermione may not be so sure that
traitor always needs to be marked and punished if there are
mitigating circumstances ? re infamous Marietta. Hermione takes care
of saving Xeno who betrayed him because his daughter was taken, which
is sort of reversal of situation with Marietta, isn't it? Wasn't the
argument that she did it because her mother was involved? I mean, I
know that her mother was working for the ministry, so she was
involved, I just never bought it, and I thought that to show it
Marietta should have gone to her mother instead of Umbridge, but if
she was, well I find it interesting.

Magpie:
I think it was simply that Xeno was sympathetic and Marietta was not
based on many things that are different in their situations. In both
cases Hermione's imo supposed to be the voice of justice. She simply
judges differently in both cases because they are different. Xeno 
would have been punished by DEs while Marietta was being punished by
Hermione. Xeno's daughter is kidnapped by DEs. Marietta's mother just
works at the Ministry. I have no trouble believing that Hermione, like
JKR as per interviews, simply sees Xeno as deserving of mercy and
Marietta deserving of punishment and uses Hermione to voice her
judgment in both cases. They're not the same case twice. (Nor is our
third traitor, Peter.)


-m




From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Fri Jul 11 21:39:37 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:39:37 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g544v4+70ak@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g58jup+602u@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183670

I have enjoyed very much reading listees' responses to the CHAPDISC 
questions, and I wanted to do a little responding myself.

SSSusan's Question 1:
> > Is there any character in this series who has as much experience 
> > with old nightmares?

Alla replied:
> And I would even agree with Potioncat that Snape probably had 
> nightmares. I guess dead Lily pictured prominently in them. I hope 
> he had lots of them.

SSSusan:
LOL, Alla!  You will never change in this area, will you? ;))


SSSusan: I think I found the responses to question about Harry's 
grave-digging sans magic to be the most interesting to read through.

Question 2:
> >  Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
> > point in Harry's journey. What significance do you think there 
> > is, if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without 
> > the use of magic? Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] 
> > in the darkness" [p. 387]?

Alla wrote:
> Oh I think it is very significant, I think it goes back to JKR 
> saying in interviews that she does not believe in magic or 
> something like that and that ending will reflect it or something 
> like that.  I guess the idea is that nothing superficial ( if that 
> is the right word) will stand between Harry and Dobby, no silly 
> wand waving stuff or anything, just grief of one heart for another 
> being.

SSSusan:
It had never occurred to me to think back to JKR's comments about not 
believing in magic herself.  That's a fascinating connection.  Of 
course, I like bringing in Snape's "no silly wand-waving" as well. ;)

Oryomai suggested: 
> Harry didn't use magic because he wanted to get out some of his
> feelings. He was able to push channel a lot of the pain over Dobby's
> death into the digging of the grave. I think that Harry begins to
> understand that there are forces and feelings more powerful than 
> magic (love and sacrifice? ugh...that sounds so cliche!).

SSSusan:
Re: "ugh... that sounds so clich?!"... 

Maybe that's exactly why JKR *showed* it and didn't *say* it! >;)


Jen: 
> Harry's power is his human feelings and relationships rather than 
> magical ability. His obsession and resulting impulsiveness led to 
> their capture and ultimately, to Dobby's death. Digging the grave 
> by hand was a penance, as well as the first time Harry was forced 
> to slow down for reflection about his plan to unite the Hallows.

SSSusan:
Here is another interpretation of this act which had never occurred 
to me:  Harry digging Dobby's grave was his *penance.*  I'm sure 
Dobby would have hated for Harry to think of it that way, but now 
that it's been pointed out to me, I do believe it fits with Harry's 
personality for it to have been his penance.  Or, in my own personal 
view, perhaps both a penance *and* Harry's GIFT to Dobby.

I also really liked what Yraiym wrote on this topic.
Yraiym:
> I think Dobby would have turned himself inside out with 
> embarrassment at being served in such a way by the great Harry 
> Potter. But for him to be a free elf, I would think Dobby would 
> need to not only be able to speak negatively of his former masters 
> without having to punish himself, but he would need to be able to 
> be served by humans/wizards.

SSSusan:
For someone who's been around this list for over 5 years, I love it 
when I encounter things which are totally new to me, things which I 
had never considered.  I felt there was a nugget of true insight here 
which, while it may have been plain to others before, decidedly had 
not been plain to me -- this notion that while Dobby would have hated 
Harry serving him by digging the grave without magic, for Dobby to 
have been *truly* a free elf, he would have needed to be able to 
allow a wizard to serve him.  In his own way, Harry was showing him 
this.

I found such a rich pool of responses to this question about why 
Harry elected to NOT use magic when digging the grave, and the 
possibilities really made my day.  The "end" of magic, no silly wand-
waving; iow, "forces and feelings more powerful than magic." Harry's 
penance for the part he played in Dobby's death.  Harry's gift to 
Dobby.  His gift to himself, in taking the time to reflect which he 
needed to.  Harry's "message" that Dobby must allow others to serve 
him as well.


> > Question 8. When Harry is talking in his mind as if to DD and 
> > asks if he is meant to know but not to seek, he also asks, "Did 
> > you know how hard I'd find that? Is that why you made it this 
> > difficult? So I'd have time to work that out?" [p. 391] What do 
> > you think is the answer to that? How about what you thought on 
> > your first read?

Jen:
> I think that's the right answer, that Dumbledore knew Harry was a
> Seeker at heart and the goal of the Seeker is to grab the Snitch to
> end the game. 

SSSusan:
I totally agree with this.  It was in Harry's nature to be a Seeker.  
Yes, yes, I know that he wasn't so much an *intellectual* seeker, but 
in the sense Jen uses it ? as a Seeker trained to grab the goods and 
end the game, Harry was a natural.  I can understand why it might 
have taken some internal wrestling to realize that he *wasn't* 
suppose to Seek this time.


> > Question 14. When Harry said he understood bits of Voldemort and 
> > then went on to say he wished he'd understood DD as much, were 
> > you surprised? Why do you think he made this remark instead of 
> > sticking with Voldemort  as the topic of his understanding?

Jen said: 
> Because understanding Dumbledore is equally important to him by this
> point. He hopes his decision to destroy Horcruxes rather than
> seeking Hallows is the right one, but he doesn't know for sure. If
> he understood DD better he'd have more certainty about his decision.

and Alla said:
> Because I think that despite Voldemort being forced upon Harry, 
> Dumbledore was the one with whom Harry was preocupied on voluntary 
> basis, Dumbledore was the one whom Harry really wanted to 
> understand and felt that it was necessary for his mission.

SSSusan:
I like these two answers together.  The sort of pragmatic side of 
things in Harry's desire to understand DD so that he could know 
whether he was making the right choices on this mission.  But also 
the idea that maybe it wasn't *all* about that.  Maybe there was also 
a measure mixed in of Harry's life having been so deeply intertwined 
with DD that he had an internal need to know DD, and *if it weren't 
for the mission,* he might have the opportunity to focus on 
understanding DD better.  Perhaps it was the mission which forced him 
to put this on hold?


> > Question 18. How is it that, compared to the end of OOTP, Harry 
> > can be so certain the visions he's having are real? We know now 
> > that they are, but how could he be so confident after what 
> > happened in OOTP?

Yraiym:
> IMO, these are visions of Voldy weak and vulnerable; his plans are
> failing ? these are not the sort of visions he would try to plant on
> Harry. He's out of control and can't contain his emotions and
> thoughts enough to block Harry as he could in HBP.

SSSusan:
I noticed that most responders didn't elect to say anything about 
this question, or at least not a whole lot.  Heh, I wouldn't have had 
much to say either; I just asked the question to see if anybody had 
any thoughts on it.  I think Yraiym's is an excellent insight -- that 
the *nature* of the visions in DH were quite different from the ones 
in OOTP.  Once Harry came to understand how Voldy had manipulated him 
in 5th year, if he were to think about the kinds of Voldy!visions 
he's seeing now, Yraiym is right that they weren't the kinds of 
things Voldy would be sending along in order to trick or trap Harry; 
in fact, some were things he might not be happy to know Harry could 
see or sense.

Siriusly Snapey Susan






From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 12 07:08:17 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:08:17 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g58jup+602u@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g59l91+qmjp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183671

> SSSusan:
> I found such a rich pool of responses to this question about why 
> Harry elected to NOT use magic when digging the grave, and the 
> possibilities really made my day.  The "end" of magic, no silly wand-
> waving; iow, "forces and feelings more powerful than magic." Harry's 
> penance for the part he played in Dobby's death.  Harry's gift to 
> Dobby.  His gift to himself, in taking the time to reflect which he 
> needed to.  Harry's "message" that Dobby must allow others to serve 
> him as well.

Montavilla47:
I'll throw another perspective into the pot, then.  When I read this 
scene, it reminded me very much of a similar scene from another 
book.

It's the second book from the Lymond Chronicles, written by
Dorothy Dunnett.  Lymond is a sort-of-a ne'er do well (except
he's always doing well) Scottish lord in the sixteenth century.  At 
the end of Queensplay, a character that he found too pathetic to
deal with dies--and he finds the body in a suitably horrid, dramatic
way.  

Whereupon he (and a friend who happens to be there) dig the grave
by hand.  Not that he'd use magic, because it's historical fiction
and not fantasy.  But they do it by hand and it takes a long time.
It's the emotional climax of the book.  It's also the point in the 
series when Lymond (who spent most of the book in this frenzy
of debauchery) realizes that he needs to stop evading responsibility
and start doing something with his life.

It strikes me that this is what JKR may be heading towards with the
scene.  That this is the moment when Harry gets his head 
together and stops flailing around.  And it's because he finally gets
that people are dying--and there *is* something he can do about
it.






From lilandriss at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 12 05:44:06 2008
From: lilandriss at yahoo.com (Alanna)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:44:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: What a Book!
In-Reply-To: <g4fps9+p7m8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <433394.55498.qm@web53405.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183672

Potioncat:

<<<He was in it for the adventure and that grounded my reading of it. If I started getting teary-eyed or choked-up, the amused look on his 
face would make me laugh and we'd keep reading. Yes, he was moved by 
deaths---particular ly Fred's, Lupin's and Tonks's, but not to same 
extent as I was. I'm something of a goof-ball about fictional 
characters' deaths; I still have to leave the room when Bambi's 
mother dies.>>>>

  

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: "No man should outlive his fictional Wizard!"

  
  Lanna *G*



From jaynesmith62 at btinternet.com  Sat Jul 12 20:04:51 2008
From: jaynesmith62 at btinternet.com (Jayne)
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:04:51 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g59l91+qmjp@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5b2p3+5bg7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183673

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47" 
<montavilla47 at ...> wrote:
>

> > 
 
> I'll throw another perspective into the pot, then.  When I read 
this 
> scene, it reminded me very much of a similar scene from another 
> book.
> 
> It's the second book from the Lymond Chronicles, written by
> Dorothy Dunnett.  Lymond is a sort-of-a ne'er do well (except
> he's always doing well) Scottish lord in the sixteenth century.  At 
> the end of Queensplay, a character that he found too pathetic to
> deal with dies--and he finds the body in a suitably horrid, dramatic
> way.  
> 
> Whereupon he (and a friend who happens to be there) dig the grave
> by hand.  Not that he'd use magic, because it's historical fiction
> and not fantasy.  But they do it by hand and it takes a long time.
> It's the emotional climax of the book.  It's also the point in the 
> series when Lymond (who spent most of the book in this frenzy
> of debauchery) realizes that he needs to stop evading responsibility
> and start doing something with his life.
> 
> It strikes me that this is what JKR may be heading towards with the
> scene.  That this is the moment when Harry gets his head 
> together and stops flailing around.  And it's because he finally 
gets
> that people are dying--and there *is* something he can do about
> it.
>

Yes that is a good conection. My two favourite authors writing about 
basically the same thing, Choice, but in different ways.
Harry I think matures a lot in this scene and so does Francis in QP  

Jayne
A Dorothy Dunnett fan and Of course JKR 




From SnapesSlytherin at aol.com  Sat Jul 12 21:49:09 2008
From: SnapesSlytherin at aol.com (SnapesSlytherin at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:49:09 -0400
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g53uan+ilhg@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <8CAB2804004736F-B38-5797@mblk-d16.sysops.aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183674

> Oryomai:

> I can only speak for me, but the book gave me the impression that

> Draco's wand was the Elder Wand?  Let me try to explain it better.

> When I read the book, I got the impression that Draco's wand somehow

> became the Elder Wand?  The entire "wand" thing was just so utterly

> lame and complicated to me that I had a lot of trouble sorting it 
out.

> I thought that Draco's wand became the Elder Wand when he disarmed

> Dumbledore.  Well, then it makes even less sense to me!

> Okay, Draco disarmed Dumbledore.  So the Elder Wand was loyal to him. 


> The big question for me now is this: why does it matter that Harry

> disarmed Draco if the wand Draco was using is not the Elder Wand?

> Draco's "regular" wand was still loyal to him when he got control of

> the Elder Wand, right?  How does the fact that Harry has possession 
of

> Draco's "regular" wand affect the Elder Wand?

>



Anne Squires:

5.  Harry later defeated Draco and took possession of Draco's wand.

At that point all wands that owed allegiance to Draco shifted their

allegiance to Harry.  That's two wands.  Harry became the master of

Draco's wand and the master of the Elder Wand.  Even though the Elder

Wand was never physically in Draco's possession or in Harry's 
possession.


7.  Harry was the master of Draco's wand, the wand he was using during

the final confrontation.  Harry was also master of the Elder Wand, the

wand LV was using.  Harry had been the Elder wand's master ever since

he had taken Draco's wand.  So, Harry was master of both wands in the

duel.


Oryomai
But why would the allegiance of both wands transfer?  I understood it 
that you had to win the allegiance of *each* wand.  The Elder Wand had 
no reason to switch its allegiance to Harry.  Harry took Draco's 
original wand.  I'm also wondering how Voldy thought he would get the 
allegiance (although I wouldn't put it beyond him to have never asked 
about it, believing that force was sufficient).  I know that the WW 
isn't the most logical place on the planet, but now I even more firmly 
believe that this Who's on First wand allegiance switch during the 
pivotal battle is a complete and total cop out on the part of JKR.  To 
me, it comes across as very sloppy.

Oryomai








From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 12 23:12:59 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:12:59 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-The Elder wand
In-Reply-To: <8CAB2804004736F-B38-5797@mblk-d16.sysops.aol.com>
Message-ID: <g5bdpr+8a3m@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183675

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, SnapesSlytherin at ... wrote:

> But why would the allegiance of both wands transfer?  I understood 
> it that you had to win the allegiance of *each* wand.  The Elder 
> Wand had no reason to switch its allegiance to Harry.  Harry took 
> Draco's original wand.


zanooda:

Maybe we are supposed to look at it this way: the Elder wand doesn't
need to be *taken* from its master to change allegiance. Maybe the
only thing it needs is for its master to be defeated. In WW to be
disarmed means to be defeated - a wandless wizard just doesn't stand a
chance.  Even if it was some other wand that was taken from its
master, the Elder wand will know and it won't want to stick with a
loser :-). It only respects a winner - the more powerful, the better :-).


> Oryomai wrote:

> I'm also wondering how Voldy thought he would get the 
> allegiance 


zanooda:

By killing off all the previous owners :-)? Seriously, that's what he
did :-)! He killed Gregorovitch and Grindelwald. I think that when LV
figured out that DD was the next master of the wand and took it from
his grave he believed that the wand was his, because DD was killed on
his orders and because he (LV) "removed it (from the tomb) against its
last master's wishes" (p.742). I suppose he thought this was enough,
but when the wand didn't work for him as well as it should have, he
decided, for good measure, to kill also Snape. He probably didn't know
the details of what happened on the tower, or he would have killed
Draco as well.




From catlady at wicca.net  Sun Jul 13 01:04:02 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:04:02 -0000
Subject: re Wizarding Genetics
Message-ID: <g5bka2+sd9a@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183676

HP Fan 2008 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183621>:

<< Ordinarily, a child gets the magical status from the mother - hence
the children of a witch mother will usually be magical, and the
children of a muggle mother will usually be a muggle. >>

I agree that the children of a witch mother will be magical if the
father has any magic genes at all (unless the child has the Squib
syndrome). As I wrote << The presence of magic selects for magical
genes. A witch mother will bear only wizarding children with her Mm
mate, because her womb will select the m sperm -- where could there be
more magic than inside the body of a magical person? >>

It seems that the wizarding folk do not agree that the child of a
Muggle mother and a wizard father will usually be a Muggle, because
they say 'Half-blood' rather than something like for Mumdim or Nomaff
for 'Mum uses magic, Dad is Muggle" or 'No Magic Father'.

Of course, the children of wizard father, muggle mother of whom the
wizarding folk know would be the ones I described as << the Mm mother
who lives surrounded by magical people, such as her mate, in a house
held up by magic, will also be influenced to produce m eggs. >> They
wouldn't know the children of the Muggle woman who conceived during a
one-week romance with a stranger, whom she didn't know was a wizard,
while on holiday in a foreign country. After that one week, her
exposure to magic is so limited that it would taken some *very* heavy
gene combinations for her child to develope magic. And if that
happened, the wizarding folk, not knowing who the father was, would
assume the child was a complete Muggle-born.

<< In addition to the question of having magic, there may also be the
question of the magic being strong enough to be noticeable. Some
"squibs" may actually be wizards or witches who actually are magical,
but the magic is so weak that it can't be used. >>

That's a good point. We'd have to invent a reason WHY it's so weak,
because it appears that Squibs can be born to two magically strong
parents as well as to two magically weak parents.

<< Such people may also be born to muggle families - I believe that
the mother of the Creevey brothers may be such, explaining why both
brothers are wizards. >>

My idea was that, in addition to both Creevey parents being Mm, there
was a wizarding family living in the house next door, thus exposing
Muggle Mrs Creevey to magic.

Bruce Alan Wilson wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183590>:

<< Anent wizardling genetics, I've always thought that there wasn't a
single gene, but a set of genes.

1. The gene or genes that allows one to sense magical energies;
2. The gene or genes that allows one to manipulate them;
3. The gene or genes that account for specialized magical abilities,
like metamophomagus, animagus, seer, etc.

(snip) Squibs may have 1, 2, 3, or 1 & 3. >>

I've always believed that Squibs, having two wizarding parents, have
the normal supply of wizarding genes. Their lack of magic power COULD
be due to a rare double-recessive anti-magic gene, but I doubt it. I
think it is due to pre-natal or peri-natal environmental factors, and
therefore a Squib could have fully magical children, and OUGHT to be
considered a pureblood by the bloodists.

<< Those who leave the wizardling world and marry into Muggle families
may pass them on; there are probably any number of Muggles wandering
around carrying partial magical genes, but until/unless they unite
with another such, they won't produce a Muggleborn wizard. >>

Yes. I believe the heterozygous Muggle must unite with another
heterozygous Muggle AND some exposure to magic during pregnancy to
produce a Muggleborn. Not necessarily direct exposure, but living on
the same block as a witch or wizard or powerful magical artifact would
suffice. (I typo'ed 'artifcat' and decided that a pet half-Kneezle
would suffice.)

<< ("Magesport" is the term I use for such.) >>

Such what? Muggleborn wizards? Their parents?

**** Elaboration on "peri-natal environmental influence' on Squibs and
Muggleborns

My theory has a subset which can be rejected without rejecting the
rest of the theory, that there is a set number of people in this world
with wizarding powers. The magic behaves as if it has certain amount
of will of its own and upon the death of a wizarding person, it goes
to a suitable new-born person. The suitability of the new-born person
depends first on genetics and how much magic affected those genes
prenatally, second on how much magic is already around the new-born
person, third on how near in space and time the birth is to the death. 

Thus, a Squib is a child who was born with all the genes and pre-natal
and peri-natal exposure to magic to be wizarding, but no wizard died
close enough around the time they were born.

And a Muggleborn is born when a wizarding person died and no wizarding
child was born around that time. 

'Around' is a loose term: it could be that a wizard died and his magic
went to a Muggleborn that day, and the next day a wizarding child was
born and didn't get magic until another wizarding person died a year
later. But a wizarding child born during that year would be closer in
time and get the magic and leave the first hypothetical a Squib. (And
giving a millimeter of truth to the evil government's claim that
Muggleborns had stolen their magic from a wizarding person.)

I like this sub-theory for its irony that Voldemort's war against
wizards who didn't want to exterminate Muggleborns resulted in killing
many pure-, full-, and half-blood wizarding folk whose magic went, on
their deaths, to create an unusually large number of Muggleborns.
(Because wizarding folk, other than Molly and Arthur, were having the
same or fewer children than usual during the dangerous war times.)

Then any 'baby boom' at the end of the Voldemort war (births would
outnumber deaths) would result in an unusually high number of Squibs.
I think the usual number of Squibs is one or two per generation.

*** One thing this sub-theory needs is a reason why the number of
people with wizarding magic, after growing along with the rest of the
human population for many many millennia, would suddenly become fixed
at a certain number.





From catlady at wicca.net  Sun Jul 13 01:24:27 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:24:27 -0000
Subject: Wand Lore /  Colin Creevey / Dennis Creevey / Harry: Bad Guy? / That Crucio
Message-ID: <g5blgb+p7q1@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183677

Carol wrote in 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183558>:

<< In DH we get the new information about wand loyalty, but we're 
also told by Ollivander that any wizard can use any wand if he's 
any wizard at all. >>

I objected to Ollivander saying that. I had previously objected to 
Hermione telling Harry that about the blackthorn wand. Harry and 
Hermione have strong magic power, but Harry can't get results from 
the blackthorn wand and Hermione has trouble with Bellatrix's wand 
because those wands are So Far out of tune with them. If a 
conquered wand does indeed voluntarily bend to its new master's 
will, it must also re-tune to its new master's radio frequency / 
cryptographic key / shoe size / choose your own metaphor. 

Besides attunement, I gather that some wands are simply weaker 
than others, and might have chosen a weaker wizard who wouldn't be 
able to ask more of the wand than it could deliver. 

Carol wrotre in 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183589>:

<< Another thing: Colin is either seventeen or nearly seventeen 
and yet he's "tiny in death"? The Creeveys are very small for 
their age (their size is as exaggerated as Hagrid's in the other 
direction, with Dennis being so short that when he stands on a 
chair he's not much taller than the people sitting next to him), 
yet they can't have Goblin or House-Elf blood if they're 
Muggle-borns. Is Colin *that* late hitting puberty? (I've seen an 
occasional normal, healthy fifteen-year-old boy who still looked 
like a child and was something like four-and-a-half feet tall, but 
never a normal seventeen-year-old boy under, say, five feet three 
or four. How "tiny" is Colin, and has JKR forgotten that he's 
either a man or very nearly a man by WW standards? Is he still,
in her mind, prepubescent, or has she forgotten that the Creeveys 
are Muggle-born and, in her imagination but not on paper, given 
them House-Elf or Goblin blood? >>

In RL, I'm 5 foot 2 barefoot (a good way to measure since I am 
barefoot as much as possible, including taking off my sandals at 
work) and I've met adult men who are seriously shorter than me, 
normally proportioned, fathers, and with professional careers. (I
haven't met Clinton's Secretary of Labor Robert Reich but he is
reported to be 4 foot 10 inches, and to have begun one speech about
... maybe it was the financial future of Social Security ... by 
saying: "This is a hard problem... I was 6 foot 5 when I started 
working it." I've never checked whether the children of these 
quite short RL Muggles are also short, but it could be that all 
the Creeveys are just extremely short. Without Goblin or House Elf 
blood. (As Steve bboyminn already wrote.)

<< Would McGonagall know that Colin, one of (at minimum) seventy
Gryffindor students who would normally attend Hogwarts (given ten 
per year in a normal year; perhaps seven per year in DH, but 
that's still forty-nine Gryffindors) had not yet had his birthday? 
I doubt it. Most of the sixth years would be seventeen, old enough 
to fight, >>

She could use her authority to order him out because he's so 
short, even if he is old enough. Her authority is because she 
reacted to the crisis situation by giving orders, but it can be 
justified as she is the previous Deputy Headmaster when the 
Headmaster has left and the current Deputy Headmaster (which of 
the carrows was it?) is on the other side. (As HP Fan 2008 and 
Potioncat already wrote.)

<< expected *Dennis* Creevey to be important after all that fuss 
about his falling into the lake and being tossed back into the
boat by the Giant Squid >>

So did I, and I sort of expected that the Giant Squid would be 
involved in the last book, perhaps wrangled by little Dennis. Of 
course, I also expected Viktor to have a bigger appearance in the 
last book, such as being a teammate on the Horcrux hunt. 

Montavilla47 wrote in 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183596>:

<< I may be wrong about this, but I think Carol meant to say he 
was a second year? He first arrived and was sorted at Hogwarts 
during GoF, making him a second year in OotP, when he showed up
in Hogsmeade with his brother for the first meeting of the D.A. >>

I agree that's what Carol meant. I don't think it was a Flint, as 
I don't believe that canon showed that students can only sneak to 
Hogsmeade if they have the Marauder's Map. If he's small enough, 
he could have hidden under a large older students cloak.

<< I seem to remember that the D.A. wasn't going to accept any
members younger than fourth year, which made him doubly special. >>

Which was fine with me while I expected Dennis to have a special role.

Geoff wrote in 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183602>:

<< Now, let me say that, if I read her post aright, the quote did 
not originate from her, but who, in their right mind (or sober), 
would dream of making such an unbelievable ? and dare I say barmy 
? comment? Harry being a bad guy from the beginning? >>

You're right that that is not my opinion. I think Harry is a good 
guy, altho' I object to that Cruciatis curse and to weasel-wording 
his bargain with Griphook.

<< Are we talking about the same Harry? Are we even reading the 
same book? We first meet Harry as he is about to turn eleven. He 
is ignored as a person, treated like a slave being made to cook 
and do chores. He gets second-hand cast-offs for clothing. 
Although the Dursleys can get free glasses for him on the NHS, 
they can't be bothered to replace the ones repaired with 
Sellotape. Dudley's charm, ability and intelligence is flaunted in
front of him, he gets stupid, thoughtless presents and, because of
Dudley's interference, "At school, Harry had no one." So this is a
portrait of a "bad guy from the first time we saw him"? >>

I read some people a few years ago, I think on this list, but 
maybe elsewhere, who kind of agreed with the Dursleys about 
going-on-11 Harry, altho' I don't recall anyone ever praising 
Dudley. 

They said Harry was disrespectful of authority (Uncle Vernon, Aunt 
Petunia, Mrs Figg, teachers) and downright rude. They said he 
should be grateful to the Dursleys for housing, feeding, and 
clothing him. They said he was greedy and selfish and extravagant 
(and just like Dudley) for wanting new instead of hand-me-down 
clothes. They said he was cruel and selfish for being glad that 
Mrs Figg had broken her leg.

They said he was disobedient and a liar for scheming to get one of 
those letters for himself. They said he was violent because he and 
Dudley had a *truly brotherly tussle* over who got to listen at 
the keyhole and who had to make do with under the door.

I don't understand their viewpoint any more than I understand the 
well-explained viewpoint of the listie who loved Snape and hated 
Harry because Snape punished Harry for exchanging raised eyebrows 
with Ron during the first Potions class.

I was happy that he replied to Dudley's saying 'Let's practise 
stuffing heads into the toilet like they do to new students at 
Stonewall Comprehensive" by saying "No, thanks, I don't think the 
poor old toilet has ever had anything as nasty as your head in 
it." I viewed it as evidence that the Dursleys hadn't managed to 
crush his spirit, rather than as sassiness that OUGHT to be crushed.

<< It's surprising that he /isn't/. In my teaching career and in 
young people's work in churches, I have often seen guys (in its 
unisex connotation) who had become unmanageable because of this 
sort of treatment. He has emerged from his experiences surprisingly
well, all things considered. >>

I completely agree with you, and think that it was foolish of 
Dumbledore to put Harry with the Dursleys if Dumbledore wanted 
Harry to grow up full of love. I am sure there was more to Harry's 
psychological survival than just that he was a resilient child. 
Even resilient children need one supportive adult in their lives.

I had a theory that Lily-in-his-head was that one supportive 
adult, that she had used her last magic to give power to her 
baby's memory of her so that alone in the cupboard with the 
spiders, she could come out (almost like Diary!Tom) to hug her 
baby and tell him he was a good kid and she loved him. But that is 
NOT what is shown in the scene of Lily's death in LV's memory in DH.

Steve bboyminn wrote in 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183608>:

<< Again, I hear you saying that everything in the books needs a
clear preachy moral explanation; absolute black and white, no
shades of gray. >>

No, it isn't.

Okay, I can't speak for Julie, but I can speak as a person who 
wishes the Cruciatis scene had been at least a little different. I 
say *the Cruciatis scene* should have had a little touch of preachy
moralty, not that *everything in the books* should have one. 

For examples, I loved the first book, even before the climax's big 
reveal, because Harry was NOT shown as a plaster saint who was 
always perfectly virtuous (see above reply to Geoff, about sassing 
Dudley and tussling with Dudley), and altho' I'm not happy that 
Harry planned to cheat Griphook, I don't think the text should 
have moralized about it.

<< So, do you want Harry to win, or do you want Harry to be smug 
in defeat know that while his world was lost, his life was lost, 
that thousands will live in misery and tyranny for the foreseeable 
future, at least he took the high road? >>

I hate to disagree with you, steve, as we agree about so much, but 
I strongly disagree that Harry's Cruciatis helped him WIN or was 
justified by  military necessity. I agree with those who pointed 
out that it was militarily stupid not to have used Stupefy, Petrify,
or even AK instead. (acknowledgement that many, many listies already
said so)

I agree that Amycus deserved it, but I think it is very difficult 
to argue that Harry has an ethical right to hand out unilateral 
quick justice during combat, and MUCH easier to argue that it was 
natural for him to lose his temper. But I want the morality 
preachment with the temper.

<< In war you need to be hard, sometimes even heartless. >> 

That point was made, or attempted to be made, by Snape and 
Dumbledore on the Lightning-Struck Tower.

<< The only  bleeding heart liberals that are found in war, are 
the ones literally bleeding to death. >>

I wish Rowling would write a novel discussing whether it's moral 
to be defeated, but in this series she showed that people can make 
a big contribution to the war effort by being killed without 
attempting self-defense, most clearly by Lily Potter.

<< I don't think McGonagall approves of Harry choices, but she
does think it 'gallant' that Harry would defend her honor. But
gallantly defending her honor, does not mean blanket approval
of the method he used. >>

Exactly. I would have liked it so much better if she had SAID 
"That was very gallant of you, Potter, but Stupefy or Petrify or 
Incarcerous would have been more prudent", or "That was very 
gallant of you, Potter, but I can defend myself" or even "If you 
must use an Unforgivable Curse, Potter, choose a useful one."

If McGonagal hadn't said anything different, still I would have 
liked it better if she had used Petrify and Leviosa to move 
Amycus and the other bad guy instead of Imperius.

If the Cruciatis scene hadn't been anything different, still I 
would have liked it better if I had SEEN Harry later regretting 
having used Cruciatis rather than having to assume it.

I'm just saying what I would have liked better, not what Rowling 
would have had to have written to be an ethical person or a better 
writer. However, I don't agree with the people who say that 
Rowling would have been a *worse* writer if she had put a little 
touch of preachy morality into the Cruciatis scene. She would have
written it well enough that Steve, Pippin, etc wouldn't think it was
preachy.





From greatraven at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 13 08:19:52 2008
From: greatraven at hotmail.com (sbursztynski)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:19:52 -0000
Subject: Libatius Borage or, What's in a Name
In-Reply-To: <g53u0q+tia7@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5cdr8+k3ib@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183678

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> wrote:
>
> Does anyone remember the fun we had discussing the name Libatius 
> Borage just before HBP came out? Libatius is a form of libation, 
> which is generally a type of intoxicating beverage. (Thanks, 
> Lexicon.). Borage is an herb that is used to treat several different 
> conditions. I just came across one of its uses in my work. 
> 
> No, I don't make potions! Who said that? Shesh, what kind of nurse do 
> you think I am? 
> 
> There is a National Institute of Health study being done on the 
> effects of a medication to improve sexual arousal in women. The 
> primary ingredient is borage. In fact, one version is in the stores 
> now.
> 
> Think about it! In HBP in the very first NEWT Potions class Slughorn 
> warns of the dangers of obsessive love and demonstrates a powerful 
> love potion. Several plot lines involve the use and misuse of love 
> potions. Love in its variations is a major theme of HBP. 
> 
> Then JKR creates a magical Potions book and gives the author the name 
> Libatius Borage. Libatius or libation is a sort of potion. Borage 
> promotes arousal, an aspect of love. So that makes one version of the 
> name Libatius Borage to be Love Potion.
> 
> Who thinks JKR didn't know that?
> 
> Potioncat

Sue says:

Chuckle! Of course she knows it. As a matter of fact, if you go through all those book lists 
in all the novels you will find cheeky names that are appropriate to the books. I'm sure she 
would be very disappointed if she thought her fans HADN'T noticed! :-) 
>





From kaamita at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 13 15:23:57 2008
From: kaamita at yahoo.com (Kaamita)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:23:57 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <MABBJPGEHBDBAKHGIBPOCEDGCAAA.klaatu@primenet.com>
Message-ID: <g5d6md+ii5@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183679

I recently convinced a friend to read Harry Potter. It has been three 
days, and she is now on GoF. Well, after looking at these CHAPDISC 
threads, I decided to go back through some old messages to find out if 
there were any discussion questions for the other books. (I haven't 
found any yet) Well, I came across a thread asking what you thought was 
the scariest character. Well, now that the series is finished, I 
thought I would answer. 

I think that probably the scariest character would be Umbridge. She was 
so mean, and horrible. It was like she lacked even the smallest thread 
of humanity, and punishment was horrible for anyone who didn't agree 
with her.

Heather




From HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com  Sun Jul 13 16:56:47 2008
From: HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com (HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com)
Date: 13 Jul 2008 16:56:47 -0000
Subject: Weekly Chat, 7/13/2008, 1:00 pm 
Message-ID: <1215968207.8.71326.m57@yahoogroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183680

Reminder from: HPforGrownups Yahoo! Group
 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/cal

Weekly Chat
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Notes:
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From sartoris22 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 13 17:34:46 2008
From: sartoris22 at yahoo.com (sartoris22)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:34:46 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <g5d6md+ii5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5debm+lsr5@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183681

Heather wrote:
> ... I came across a thread asking what you thought was
> the scariest character. Well, now that the series is finished, I
> thought I would answer.
>
> I think ... the scariest character would be Umbridge. She was
> so mean, and horrible. It was like she lacked even the smallest
> thread of humanity, and punishment was horrible
> for anyone who didn't agree
> with her.

Sartoris22:

I find the Riddle of book 6 the scariest character, particularly when
he's at the orphanage. To contemplate the birth of evil is quite
unsettling to me. I wonder if the young Riddle could have been
saved, was there any capacity for love at all. We know that Snape was
capable of love--why not Riddle? In all his years at Hogwarts,
Riddle, apparently, was never smitten by or attracted to a girl. I
find that chilling. (Assuming, of course, that Riddle was straight.)
By the age of twelve, Riddle has already decided that he didn't need
or want love in his life. That's really scary to me. He seemed to be
a complete preteen sociopath-- a frightening thought.




From CatMcNulty at comcast.net  Sun Jul 13 19:21:53 2008
From: CatMcNulty at comcast.net (Cat)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:21:53 -0000
Subject: What is your favorite Name in JKR's world? (Was: ..., What's in a Name)
In-Reply-To: <g5cdr8+k3ib@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5dkkh+t4l5@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183682

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sbursztynski" <greatraven at ...>
wrote:
>
>Snip<
> Sue says:
>
> Chuckle! Of course she knows it. As a matter of fact, if
> you go through all those book lists in all the novels you
> will find cheeky names that are appropriate to the books.
> I'm sure she would be very disappointed if she thought her
> fans HADN'T noticed! :-)


Cat says:

 Jo's creative flare and cheeky humour in the inventing and
crafting names of characters, spells, places, whatever ...
is absolutely wonderful and has always facinated me! It also
is a terrific method of foreshadowing, without having to
resort to a lot of tedious exposition.

Wingardium Leviosa =  Wings ... flying. Leviosa ... levitate,
It is rather obvious what the spell is supposed to do.

The names of the authors of the school books ... Phyllida
Spore, Newt Scarmander, Arsenius Jigger, et al. Just by
reading the names it was obvious what type of book they
would write.

When I first read the name Sirius Black ... I KNEW that a
BLACK DOG had to have something to do with his character.
Sirius ... The Dog Star.  Black ... is usually associated
with something "dark" or "negative"...or something that
shuns the light and is therefore hidden. Dogs are also loyal,
protective. The black (hidden) aspect of his character ...
his REAL character and hidden agenda was not revealed until
late in the book.

Remus Lupin ... Remus was one of the twins that was suckled
by a She-Wolf and legend has it that he and his twin brother
Romulus were the founders of Rome. Lupin ... well lupus is
Latin for wolf. It was inevitable that he be a werewolf.

Luna (Loony) Lovegood ... Luna = Moon. The full moon is
associated with crazy (lunatics)or excentric behavior.
Lovegood ... she is a Lovely, Loving, and gentle character.
She sees the "good" in all ... even the people that steal
her stuff and make fun of her. The constant references to
her prominent eyes and the surreal perception and unabashed
honesty ... is quite refreshing.

...This may be a good lesson for all parents ... be careful
what you name your child because they may surely live up to
it.

So ... What is your favorite name in JKR's world?

Just Curious
Cat







From kaamita at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 13 19:22:56 2008
From: kaamita at yahoo.com (Heather Hadden)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:22:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <g5debm+lsr5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <372114.83619.qm@web56511.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183683

Sartoris22 wrote:

>I find the Riddle of book 6 the scariest character,
>particularly when he's at the orphanage. To contemplate
>the birth of evil is quite unsettling to me. I wonder if
>the young Riddle could have been saved, was there any
>capacity for love at all. We know that Snape was capable
>of love--why not Riddle? In all his years at Hogwarts,
>Riddle, apparently, was never smitten by or attracted to
>a girl. I find that chilling. (Assuming, of course, that
>Riddle was straight.) By the age of twelve, Riddle has
>already decided that he didn't need or want love in his
>life. That's really scary to me. He seemed to be a complete
>preteen sociopath-- a frightening thought.


You are so right. I forgot all about that. Could he have
been saved? I believe that everyone could be saved, but
you have to want to be saved, and obviously, he didn't
want to be saved. I think that the only thing that he
loved was power. I honestly think that finding out he was
a wizard, and going to Hogwarts was probably the worse
thing that could have ever happened to him. Though, he
could have just ended up as a horrible?serial killer in
the muggle world, he was so full of hatred.

Heather








From lwalsh at acsalaska.net  Sun Jul 13 19:44:38 2008
From: lwalsh at acsalaska.net (Laura Lynn Walsh)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:44:38 -0800
Subject: [HPforGrownups] What is your favorite Name in JKR's world? (Was: ..., What's in a Name)
In-Reply-To: <g5dkkh+t4l5@eGroups.com>
References: <g5dkkh+t4l5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <605A86D9-E1E9-4C8D-A9BB-FCB6A377D647@acsalaska.net>

No: HPFGUIDX 183684


On 2008, Jul 13, , at 11:21, Cat wrote:

> So ... What is your favorite name in JKR's world?
>
> Just Curious
> Cat

Well, it isn't my FAVORITE name, but I was playing
scrabulous lately and had the opportunity to look
up the meaning of daedal, which means:

1. Ingenious and complex in design or function; intricate.
2. Finely or skillfully made or employed; artistic.
(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/)

Now, I have never taken Latin or Greek, so I am
sure quite a few of her names have missed me, but
I was pleased to find the meaning of Daedalus
Diggle's name.

Laura W
-- 
Laura Lynn Walsh    lwalsh at acsalaska.net
http://llwcontemplations.blogspot.com



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 13 19:56:26 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:56:26 -0000
Subject: Wand Lore /  Colin Creevey / Dennis Creevey / Harry: Bad Guy? / That Crucio
In-Reply-To: <g5blgb+p7q1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5dmla+jam2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183685

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)" 
<catlady at ...> wrote:
 
> I objected to Ollivander saying that. I had previously objected to 
> Hermione telling Harry that about the blackthorn wand. Harry and 
> Hermione have strong magic power, but Harry can't get results from 
> the blackthorn wand and Hermione has trouble with Bellatrix's wand 
> because those wands are So Far out of tune with them. 


zanooda:

I agree with this idea in general, I just want to say that 
Hermione's "trouble" with Bella's wand seems to be more of a 
psychologic nature to me. In Harry's case his initial incompatibility 
with the blackthorn wand was obvious - we witnessed him try and fail 
to cast very simple spells. 

As for Hermione, she only *said* that the wand was giving her 
trouble, but she was never actually shown to fail to cast a spell. On 
the contrary, she used Bella's wand very efficiently at Gringotts and 
later at Hogwarts. She even dueled with Bella using Bella's own wand, 
and quite successfully (whose wand did Bella take :-)?

What I want to say is that if Harry's problem with the blackthorn  
wand is, as you say, a compatibility problem, Hermione's problem 
seems to be a psychological problem (the wand being Bellatrix's 
etc.). Either that, or the connection grows stronger with time ("You 
just need to practice" :-)). We were also not shown if 
Harry's "relationship" with the blackthorn wand improved over time. 
Maybe it did!

I believe that Hermione's affinity to Bella's wand was not as weak as 
she claimed - her original wand even had the same core, iirc. The 
proof is that the wand served Hermione well at Gringotts and at 
Hogwarts, despite the fact that she didn't won it from Bella 
personally. JMO :-). 




From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Sun Jul 13 19:59:36 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:59:36 -0000
Subject: Previous CHAPDISCs (was: Scary Characters)
In-Reply-To: <g5d6md+ii5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5dmr8+j7em@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183686

Heather:
> I recently convinced a friend to read Harry Potter. It has been 
> three days, and she is now on GoF. Well, after looking at these 
> CHAPDISC threads, I decided to go back through some old messages to 
> find out if there were any discussion questions for the other 
> books. (I haven't found any yet) 


SSSusan:
Just as an FYI, Heather (and anyone else curious about this), we have 
had chapter discussions of previous books.  In the database section 
of HPfGU [ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database ], 
you will find a database for all the posts which were chapter 
summaries for Half-Blood Prince. 

I thought there was one for at least OotP, too, but I don't see it 
just now.  If I locate it elsewhere at Main, I'll let you know, but 
at least this will give you the post numbers for all the HBP CHAPDISC 
summaries.

Siriusly Snapey Susan





From CatMcNulty at comcast.net  Sun Jul 13 21:51:46 2008
From: CatMcNulty at comcast.net (Cat)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:51:46 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <372114.83619.qm@web56511.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <g5dtdi+id8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183687

> Sartoris22 wrote:

> >I find the Riddle of book 6 the scariest character,
> >particularly when he's at the orphanage. To contemplate
> >the birth of evil is quite unsettling to me. I wonder if
> >the young Riddle could have been saved, was there any
> >capacity for love at all.
<snip>
> >That's really scary to me. He seemed to be a complete
> >preteen sociopath-- a frightening thought.
> snip>

Heather wrote:
> going to Hogwarts was probably the worse thing that could
> have ever happened to him. Though, he could have just ended
> up as a horrible serial killer in the muggle world, he was
> so full of hatred.


Greetings!

This thread has been very interesting! Yes I do believe that
the Book6/Riddle was indeed scary ... a pre-teen pschopath ...
absolutely! Seeing the de-humanization of Tom Riddle was
chilling.

In another post Sister Mary Lunatic mentioned Fudge. I see
Fudge more as a myopic, dangerous power-hungry ineffectual
bureaucrat ... Infuriating to be sure! Not scary per se but
definitely pathetic!

But the character that I find truly terrifying is Greyback
... His deliberate, savage, cruel victimization of innocent,
helpless children ... he maims them for life ... his
deliberate cruelty is so completely unforgivable it makes
me shudder.

The Carrows fall into this catagory (but not to such an
intense degree) because they too prey upon the young and
defensless...they are nasty pieces of work to be sure.

JMHO
Cat



From sartoris22 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 14 02:23:33 2008
From: sartoris22 at yahoo.com (sartoris22)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:23:33 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <g5dtdi+id8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5edb5+nq6r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183688

> Cat
> This thread has been very interesting! Yes I do believe that
> the Book6/Riddle was indeed scary ...
<SNIP>
> But the character that I find truly terrifying is Greyback
> ... His deliberate, savage, cruel victimization of innocent,
> helpless children ... he maims them for life ... his
> deliberate cruelty is so completely unforgivable it makes
> me shudder.


Sartoris22:

I find Greyback an interesting choice, but he seems, perhaps, the
perverse response to prejudice. As Lupin informs us, Umbridge got a
law passed that makes it practically impossible for werewolves to
find employment. Clearly, the werewolves would eventually revolt, and
producing more werewolves would be one way to do it. The magic
community discriminated against so many others--elves, giants, and
goblins, to name a few--that it isn't surprising that some of them
might revolt, which is something both Hermione and Dumbledore warn
against in the books.



From sartoris22 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 14 02:36:52 2008
From: sartoris22 at yahoo.com (sartoris22)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:36:52 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <372114.83619.qm@web56511.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <g5ee44+entc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183689

> Sartoris22 wrote:
> >I find the Riddle of book 6 the scariest character,
<SNIP>

> Heather (snipped):
> You are so right. Could he have been saved?

> I honestly think that finding out he was a wizard, and going
> to Hogwarts was probably the worse thing that could have ever
> happened to him. Though, he could have just ended up as a
> horrible?serial killer in the muggle world, he was so full
> of hatred.

Sartoris22:

I see your point about Riddle discovering his magic identity, but
Hitler didn't have magic--unless one believes "Hellboy"--and he
caused mass destruction and genocide. Still, honing his powers
clearly made Riddle a different kind of threat, but like Hitler, he
couldn't have caused so much suffering if weak people didn't follow
him.



From happyjoeysmiley at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 14 04:37:22 2008
From: happyjoeysmiley at yahoo.com (Happy Smiley)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:37:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Scary Characters
Message-ID: <214604.45435.qm@web46216.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183690

I think Bellatrix and Barty Crouch Jr. are also befitting nominees for "Scariest Character" title.

After some thought, I feel Bellatrix is more maniacally-obsessed-with-Voldy than scary while Barty Crouch Jr. is scary. Especially because he tries to hide his horrible character beneath a please-let-me-go-I'm-innocent mask (a ferocious werewolf in unicorn's skin!) and also because of the way he spoke to Harry after Harry returned to Hogwarts with Cedric's body. To know what all he had been doing in Mad Eye's disguise was indeed horrible!

~Joey



From kernsac at gmail.com  Mon Jul 14 05:08:07 2008
From: kernsac at gmail.com (Peggy Kern)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:08:07 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Scary Characters
References: <214604.45435.qm@web46216.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <011601c8e56f$9bd6b810$6401a8c0@user2b3ff76354>

No: HPFGUIDX 183691

I think Bellatrix and Barty Crouch Jr. are also befitting nominees for 
"Scariest
Character" title.

Peggy now:  I think Barty Crouch Sr. would be a good nominee too.  Without 
his concern for upholding his reputation, events couldn't have unfolded like 
they did in GoF.

Peggy 




From susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net  Mon Jul 14 11:12:45 2008
From: susiequsie23 at sbcglobal.net (cubfanbudwoman)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:12:45 -0000
Subject: Previous CHAPDISCs (was: Scary Characters)
In-Reply-To: <g5dmr8+j7em@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5fcbd+odli@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183692

Heather:
> > I recently convinced a friend to read Harry Potter. It has been 
> > three days, and she is now on GoF. Well, after looking at these 
> > CHAPDISC threads, I decided to go back through some old messages
> > to find out if there were any discussion questions for the other 
> > books. (I haven't found any yet) 
 
SSSusan, previously:
> Just as an FYI, Heather (and anyone else curious about this), we 
> have had chapter discussions of previous books.  In the database 
> section of HPfGU 
> [ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database ], 
> you will find a database for all the posts which were chapter 
> summaries for Half-Blood Prince. 
> 
> I thought there was one for at least OotP, too, but I don't see it 
> just now.  If I locate it elsewhere at Main, I'll let you know, but 
> at least this will give you the post numbers for all the HBP 
> CHAPDISC summaries.

 
SSSusan:
Replying again to say that, with the help of some of the other list 
elves, I am now armed with information on how to find more. :)  

Because Yahoo!Groups limits any group to just 10 databases, the 
information for the older chapter discussions was moved to the Files 
section of HPfGU.  There is a folder there, called "Structured 
Discussions" which contains the information we have on previous 
CHAPDISCs.  This link should take you to that folder:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Structured_Discussio
ns/
(and if it doesn't, just go to the Files section and scroll down to 
the "Structured Discussions" folder ;-)).

There, you will find such files as:
* NewDiscussions.htm [which was for books 1-3 but also unfortunately 
is just a schedule -- no precise posting dates or post numbers]
* GoFChapters.htm 
and
* OotP_Chapter_Discussions 

If you're specifically interested in OotP, you can follow this link
directly to the information for that:  http://tinyurl.com/77ult 

Siriusly Snapey Susan





From dragonkeeper012003 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 14 06:24:56 2008
From: dragonkeeper012003 at yahoo.com (David)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:24:56 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <g5d6md+ii5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5erfo+so37@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183693

Heather wrote:
<snip>
> Well, I came across a thread asking what you thought was the scariest
> character. Well, now that the series is finished, I thought I would
> answer.
>
> I think that probably the scariest character would be Umbridge.


I also found Delores Umbridge to be scary. She doesn't care whether
she does anything wrong as long as order is preserved in her view.
She is always convinced that what she does is right and would do
anything to keep her position, even manipulate Fudge. I think she was
worse than Lucius Malfoy in that department.

Voldemort was a murderer, but he did know right from wrong and didn't
care. Umbridge had no such scruples. Right and wrong is whatever the
Minister decided it was.

David




From CatMcNulty at comcast.net  Mon Jul 14 20:12:14 2008
From: CatMcNulty at comcast.net (Cat)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:12:14 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <g5edb5+nq6r@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5gbuu+mv0e@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183694

Cat
> > This thread has been very interesting! Yes I do believe that
> > the Book6/Riddle was indeed scary ...
> <SNIP>
> > But the character that I find truly terrifying is Greyback
> > ... His deliberate, savage, cruel victimization of innocent,
> > helpless children ... he maims them for life ... his
> > deliberate cruelty is so completely unforgivable it makes
> > me shudder.


Sartoris22:
> I find Greyback an interesting choice, but he seems, perhaps, the
> perverse response to prejudice. As Lupin informs us, Umbridge got a
> law passed that makes it practically impossible for werewolves to
> find employment. Clearly, the werewolves would eventually revolt,
> and producing more werewolves would be one way to do it. The magic
> community discriminated against so many others--elves, giants, and
> goblins, to name a few--that it isn't surprising that some of them
> might revolt, which is something both Hermione and Dumbledore warn
> against in the books.


I can see your point in that perhaps it is a perverse response to
prejudice and I do agree there was provocation for Greyback's "revolting" (yes take that both ways) behavior, HOWEVER, I
still do not believe that it is justification or a viable excuse for
it. Mistreatment that one receives does not entitle one to mistreat
others.

Greyback CHOSE to terrorize and prey on the most helpless and
innocent ... ones that were absolutely no threat to him, ones that
were in no way responsible for his situation ... THAT is what I found
particularily heinous and indefensible. Choosing to prey on innocents.

Greyback is the remorseless "predator personality" (psychopath) that
in the muggle world would be a child abuser, animal abuser, sexual
molestor, serial murderer, etc.

So yes, I still see Greyback as being the most scary (from my POV)
because of his unbridled and deliberate cruelty.

Cat




From mariawang14 at yahoo.ca  Tue Jul 15 04:15:49 2008
From: mariawang14 at yahoo.ca (Maria)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:15:49 -0000
Subject: Scary Characters
In-Reply-To: <g5gbuu+mv0e@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5h89l+db98@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183695

> Joey:
> I think Bellatrix and Barty Crouch Jr. are also befitting
> nominees for "Scariest character" title.

Cat wrote
> > This thread has been very interesting! Yes I do believe that
> > the Book6/Riddle was indeed scary ...
> <SNIP>
> > But the character that I find truly terrifying is Greyback
> > ... His deliberate, savage, cruel victimization of innocent,
> > helpless children ... he maims them for life ... his
> > deliberate cruelty is so completely unforgivable it makes
> > me shudder.

Maria writes.

I have to agree that Bellatrix and Crouch Jr. are few of the more
crazy people. Bellatrix is so twisted in her own little way, you
know she is completely obsessed with Voldemort. She is considered
one of the more cruel Death Eaters; she is a complete sadist. Her
brief stay in Azkaban only served to loosen the knot.

Greyback is scary because of his barbaric way of life, taking joy
in targeting the innocent kids.  He has lost all humanity and is
more compelled by his animal instincs and desires...for humans.
Quote:

['Reckon she'll let me have a bit of the girl when she's finished
with her?' Greyback crooned, as he forced them along the
corridor. 'I'd say I'll get a bite or two, wouldnt' you, Ginger?']
Taken from DH, p. 375 British Verison. Greyback is speaking of
Hermione; Now this is just creepy. 'A bite or two' can have both
sexual and cannibalistic associations.

As for another character I believe is frightening is Lucius Malfoy.
Though not in the same way as Bellatrix or Greyback. Lucius is
intimidating due to the influence and power he has in Wizarding
society. Lucius often resorts to bribery and blackmail to get what
he wants. The kind of power he holds over the government and
Minister is what makes him an intimidating and formidable opponent.
You do not want to get on the wrong side of this man. Of course,
there is always the fact that he is also a sadist.

As for Voldemort? I found him most disturbing in the 1st chapter
of DH.



From goodgracious at juno.com  Tue Jul 15 05:09:02 2008
From: goodgracious at juno.com (Grace Donaldson)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:09:02 -0000
Subject: Changes to JKR official site - or bad memory?
Message-ID: <g5hbde+prgf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183696

I thought for sure that a year ago I got two ideas from JKR's 
official website:

1) It was highly unadvisable to make any living creature a horcrux, 
and impossible to make a *person* a horcrux, and

2) In the Fidelius Charm, if the Secret Keeper dies (oh blin - was 
it the Secret Keeper or the subjects of the FC? oh dear; I wish I 
could find where I read this!), the secret dies with him/her -- and 
I thought she explicated this further by saying that no one new 
could be brought into the secret.  This one seemed to be written 
post-PoA, as no reference was made to DD being secret keeper for the 
OP HQ.  (Two problems: if she actually said this, there are problems 
for at least one of the FCs we know about: How could everyone find 
the Potters' house in Godric's Hollow, since PP was still alive?  
Unless, of course, it is that if the *subjects* die, then the charm 
breaks and everyone can find the hidden location.  Second problem: 
was Hermione just plain wrong, and created greater difficulties than 
necessary, because she couldn't actually bring Yaxley into 12GP?)

I remember studying her website last year before DH came out, and 
while I wasn't a member of this group, I was formulating theories of 
what would happen in the final book.  Some of my theories were based 
on what I *thought* was canon.  Now I can't find these two points on 
her site.  Did I actually read these things on her website, or did I 
read them somewhere else (eg, an interview on Mugglenet), or did an 
imposter write them, and I believed she actually said these things?  
Does anyone else recall reading these two explanations, and if so, 
where?

Thanks,
yraiym




From leahstill at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 15 08:08:07 2008
From: leahstill at hotmail.com (littleleahstill)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:08:07 -0000
Subject: Changes to JKR official site - or bad memory?
In-Reply-To: <g5hbde+prgf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5hlt7+tlvr@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183697

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Grace Donaldson" 
<goodgracious at ...> wrote:
>
> I thought for sure that a year ago I got two ideas from JKR's 
> official website:
> 
> 1) It was highly unadvisable to make any living creature a 
horcrux, 
> and impossible to make a *person* a horcrux, and
> 
> 2) In the Fidelius Charm, if the Secret Keeper dies (oh blin - was 
> it the Secret Keeper or the subjects of the FC? oh dear; I wish I 
> could find where I read this!), the secret dies with him/her -- 
and 
> I thought she explicated this further by saying that no one new 
> could be brought into the secret.  This one seemed to be written 
> post-PoA, as no reference was made to DD being secret keeper for 
the 
> OP HQ.  (Two problems: if she actually said this, there are 
problems 
> for at least one of the FCs we know about: How could everyone find 
> the Potters' house in Godric's Hollow, since PP was still alive?  
> Unless, of course, it is that if the *subjects* die, then the 
charm 
> breaks and everyone can find the hidden location.  Second problem: 
> was Hermione just plain wrong, and created greater difficulties 
than 
> necessary, because she couldn't actually bring Yaxley into 12GP?)
> 
> I remember studying her website last year before DH came out, and 
> while I wasn't a member of this group, I was formulating theories 
of 
> what would happen in the final book.  Some of my theories were 
based 
> on what I *thought* was canon.  Now I can't find these two points 
on 
> her site.  Did I actually read these things on her website, or did 
I 
> read them somewhere else (eg, an interview on Mugglenet), or did 
an 
> imposter write them, and I believed she actually said these 
things?  
> Does anyone else recall reading these two explanations, and if so, 
> where?
> 
> Thanks,
> yraiym

Leah: I don't remember JKR mentioning the living horcrux on her 
site, but that might just be my memory.  I think in HBP, which I 
can't access at the moment, Dumbledore talks about Nagini being a 
possible horxrux and this being a risky thing to do.  However, the 
idea that when a Secret Keeper dies, the secret dies with them, was 
most definitely on the website, and I am pretty sure it was in the 
FAQs section, which contains answers to readers' questions. I have 
just checked and it is no longer there.  I remember when DH came 
out, there was quite a bit of comment on how the theory behind 'Dead 
Secret Keeper' had changed; that and the fact that Hermione had 
changed from a 'Hernione Jane' as per interview to 'Hermione Jean'.

Leah 




From willsonkmom at msn.com  Tue Jul 15 11:40:16 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:40:16 -0000
Subject: Changes to JKR official site - or bad memory?
In-Reply-To: <g5hbde+prgf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5i2b0+4hf7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183698

 "Grace Donaldson"  
 
 Did I actually read these things on her website, or did I 
> read them somewhere else (eg, an interview on Mugglenet), or did an 
> imposter write them, and I believed she actually said these things?  
> Does anyone else recall reading these two explanations, and if so, 
> where?



Potioncat:
The comment about the SK is at JKR's website, go to FAQ, then to the 
FAQ Poll. The answer in behind the Dark Mark.





From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 15 15:39:08 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:39:08 -0000
Subject: Changes to JKR official site - or bad memory?
In-Reply-To: <g5hbde+prgf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5igas+1m2b@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183699

---  "Grace Donaldson" <goodgracious at ...> wrote:
>
> I thought for sure that a year ago I got two ideas from JKR's 
> official website:
> 
> 1) It was highly unadvisable to make any living creature a 
> horcrux, and impossible to make a *person* a horcrux, and
> 

bboyminn:

Almost, this is not from the website but from the books. 

---Half-Blood Prince Am.Ed. HB ---

"I don't think so," said Dumbledore. "I think I know what
the sixth Horcrux is. I wonder what you will say when I 
confess that I have been curious for a while about the 
behavior of the snake, Nagini?'

"The snake?" said Harry, startled. "You can use animals as
Horcruxes?"

"Well, it is inadvisable to do so," said Dumbledore, "because
to confide a part of your soul to something that can think 
and move for itself is obviously a very risky business...."

- - - end quote - - - 

But, I don't recall anywhere where it specifically says that
it is /impossible/ to make another human into a Horcrux. It
is just implied that it is inadvisable to make living things
into Horcruxes.

If this is in reference to Harry being a Horcrux, remember
Harry wasn't a true Horcrux, being an accidental-Horcrux,
Harry was only Horcrux-like. In the moment that Voldemort
first tried to kill Harry, a fragment of Voldemort's soul
latch on to the only living thing it could find. But that
is very different than the spells and procedures required
to intentionally encapsulate a portion of your soul into
an inanimate object.

So, Harry is similar to a Horcrux, but not truly a Horcrux.


> 2) In the Fidelius Charm, if the Secret Keeper dies ..., the
> secret dies with him/her -- and I thought she explicated this 
> further by saying that no one new could be brought into the 
> secret. 
>
> ...
> 
> Thanks,
> yraiym
>

bboyminn:

The JKR website response can be read here -

http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq_poll.cfm

This has been discussed before, but I think people who have a
problem with it are taking it too literally. JKR is bound by
personal honor to tell the truth, but she is not bound at any
given minute to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

She is perfectly able to tell partial truths or even misleading
truths. Here statement on the Secret Keeper refers to a specific
moment in time - "...remain as it was at the moment of their 
death". That doesn't mean that more details can't come to light
AFTER the moment of death. 

JKR told the truth as far as she took it; she just left out a
few later details that would have spoil the plot if they had
been revealed at that time. 

So, while some have a problem with this, I don't. I think JKR
is being truthful as far as she took it, but just because she
stopped at a convenient point, doesn't mean there wasn't more
to say.

Steve/bboyminn




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Tue Jul 15 17:11:27 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:11:27 -0000
Subject: Wand Lore /  Colin Creevey / Dennis Creevey / Harry: Bad Guy? / That Crucio
In-Reply-To: <g5blgb+p7q1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5ilnv+h4gv@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183700

Catlady: 
> I completely agree with you, and think that it was foolish of 
> Dumbledore to put Harry with the Dursleys if Dumbledore wanted 
> Harry to grow up full of love. I am sure there was more to Harry's 
> psychological survival than just that he was a resilient child. 
> Even resilient children need one supportive adult in their lives.

Pippin:
Harry had the Voldie soul bit, which did not want its container to be
destroyed, and the protective power of his mother's love. But I don't
think he suddenly became depressed and angry in OOP. I think before he
knew he was magical, his depression expressed as feelings of
helplessness, and his anger bled off as accidental magic. 

It might be just as well that Harry did not discover his magical
powers until he was old enough to control them, though I don't think
that was why Dumbledore allowed the abuse to continue. I think he was
afraid that he would show the worst side of himself if he tried to
stop it, as Harry showed the worst side of himself in trying to stop
Amycus.

Catlady: 
> Okay, I can't speak for Julie, but I can speak as a person who 
> wishes the Cruciatis scene had been at least a little different. I 
> say *the Cruciatis scene* should have had a little touch of preachy
> moralty, not that *everything in the books* should have one. 

Pippin:
In OOP Harry discounted everything Hermione and Dumbledore preached
about Sirius and Kreacher, just as Sirius had, and just as Snape
ignored what Lily tried to tell him about his friends in DH. This
suggests that JKR thinks that unfortunately the  people most in need
of preachy morality are  the least likely to be affected by it.

Fake!Moody says he is not there to  teach them about the Unforgivable
Curses so they can do them, but so that they can understand what they
are up against. I think that is why we had to see Harry give in to
using Cruciatus and not be admonished about it. That is what we are up
against. Remember, there are times when we ought to stand up to our
friends.

Sirius said that times like Voldemort's rise to power bring out the
best in some people and the worst in others. Obviously he thought they
would bring out the best in him. But we saw  that he was wrong: they
brought out both. I think that's true for all the characters in DH.
They are all stretched to their limits, good and bad. We had to see
the worst in Harry as well as the best.

I believe when Harry put aside the Elder Wand, he was showing that he
had learned that he and his friends did not deserve to be invincible.
He changed the unbeatable wand for the phoenix feather wand, which
could be   broken, and has been lost  many times, to Neville and Lupin
as well as to Harry's enemies. Harry is showing that he believes there
could be times when he deserves to be opposed.

If JKR had made all this explicit, then it would be her taking a stand
against what Harry did, not us. That would be too easy. 
 
Pippin






From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 15 20:38:18 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:38:18 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g4t0lg+tgke@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5j1rr+c097@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183701

> Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 24:  The Wandmaker 
<snip thorough and accurate summary>
 
> QUESTIONS
> 
> 1. "It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he 
knelt again beside Dumbledore's body..." [p. 386].  Is there any 
character in this series who has as much experience with old 
nightmares?  If you think there is another (or other) candidate(s),
present the case, or the case that it *is* Harry.

Carol:

Again, I'm responding without having read anyone else's responses,
partly for the sake of time and partly because I don't want to be
influenced by anyone else's ideas.

We don't generally get into anyone else's mind, so it's hard to answer
this question. However, I'd wager that Neville also has "old
nightmares" dating to the time of his parents' being Crucio'd into
insanity. I suspect that both Dumbledore and Snape suppressed their
nightmares (DD's relating to Grindelwald and Ariana and Snape's to the
Prophecy and Lily's death) usng Occlumency. Harry not only doesn't
know Occlumency but he also has a variety of bad experiences to dream
about, with the flash of green light and the cold laugh displaced by
Cedric's death in the graveyard and his own experience with being
tortured. Whether he also dreams about the MoM and, later, the cave
and/or Dumbledore's death, I don't recall. Sorry I can't come up with
a better answer. :-)

> 2. Many readers feel that the death & burial of Dobby is a turning 
point in Harry's journey.  What significance do you think there is, 
if any, in the fact that Harry prepared Dobby's grave without the use
of magic?  Why does it lead to "understanding blossom[ing] in the 
darkness" [p. 387]?

Carol:
I think, on the one hand, it finally gives him a chance to
symbolically bury his dead, and in burying Dobby by hand using a
Muggle spade (conjured by Bill, along with the other two spades? I
can't imagine Bill keeping spades on hand), he has time to think and
to grieve, as he did with Dumbledore but not with Hedwig or Sirius
(yes, he had to weeks to mourn Sirius but not to be healed of his
grief and guilt because there was no memorial service and he was
separated from his fellow mourners). I think that the simple physical
act of digging Dobby's grave is in itself a release as a magically dug
grave would not be. (Cf. Hagrid, who dug Aragog's grave by hand.) And,
of course, there's the matter of Horcruxes vs. Hallows, in which Harry
comes to the "right" decision, that is, the one that Dumbledore
ostensibly would have wanted and the one Hermione feels is right. It's
also the one decision that will enable him to sacrifice himself when
the time comes. If he'd had the wand and Snape had found a way to
communicate with him, would he have risked all, or would he have
counted on the wand itself and/or the combined presence of the Three
Hallows to protect him against Voldemort--who, of course, would still
be attached to the earth through the existence of one or more
Horcruxes? Yep. Like it or not, it seems to be the right decision. And
love does have something to do with it. Dobby's heroic death saving
Harry and his friends no doubt prepares Harry for what he doesn't yet
know that he'll have to do--willingly walk to his "death" to save the WW.
> 
> 3.  What do you think of the description that "every drop of 
[Harry's] sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had
saved their lives" [p. 387]?  What do you imagine Dobby would have
thought of that?

Carol:
He would have understood. His whole life had been spent working for
wizards, the last six years willingly serving Harry at every
opportunity. Even though Dobby used magic to do his work and
consequently had an easier time (except for the Malfoys' cruel
punishments) than many a human slave, he would still have understood
the significance of work as a gift to someone you love and as an
expression of gratitude: Dobby worked for Harry not only because he
was the Boy who Lived and Dobby's hero, but also, and perhaps
primarily, because Harry freed him from the Malfoys. Now Harry, in
turn, works for the dead Dobby, who saved him and his friends from
death, returning to the home of his feared and hated former masters to
do so.
> 
> 4.  Why, after all this time and all the various efforts, has Harry
 *now* managed to "learn control at last... the very thing Dumbledore
had wanted him to learn from Snape" [p. 387]?  Why does the death
trigger this in Harry?

Carol:
Very good question, and I'm tempted to say "because it's convenient
for JKR's plot." However, I suppose it harks back to his ability to
force Voldemort out of his mind through love (grief, compassion) when
Voldemort possessed him in the MoM. Standard Occlumency based on sheer
will power doesn't work for Harry, but feelings that Voldemort has
never experienced and can't understand serve the same purpose with
regard to the scar link. It's yet another form of love magic, I
suppose; another way of showing that love is stronger than any form of
Dark Magic.
> 
> 5.  Is there significance to JKR's choice of "Nurmengard" as a name
for the prison?

Carol responds:

It's German or German-sounding and it resembles the name of the Nazi
prison Nuremberg. I don't speak German, so I don't know whether the
etymology has any further significance. However, as someone pointed
out online, it's a bit ominous that Nurmengard still contains at least
one prisoner (or did until Voldemort murdered him). Is it now used for
the equivalent of Nazi war criminals, that is, Grindelwald and his
allies? Did GG *have* any allies or minions, or did he work alone?
Probably another detail that JKR didn't think about.
> 
> 6.  Is there significance to the fact that Harry used the wand which
was Draco's, rather than the wand which was Bellatrix's, to etch the
words "Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf"?  

Carol:
For one thing, he didn't capture Bellatrix's wand from Bellatrix. Ron
disarmed her but Draco snatched it up again, possibly preventing it
from switching loyalties since he intended to return it to Bellatrix,
and then Harry snatched it from Draco, who was not its master. Given
the complexities of wand ownership and the strong bond that the wand,
Bellatrix's partner in crime, would have formed with her, I think that
wand was probably still loyal to her. I'm surprised that Hermione
could use it at all, which seems to violate all the rules of wand
loyalty and behavior that we know about. (Cf. Harry with the
Snatcher's wand.) However, even if the wand had switched its loyalty
to Harry, I'm sure that he would have considered it inappropriate to
use the wand of Dobby's murderer to carve his epitaph. At least Draco
was an unwilling participant in the whole debacle. (I could talk more
about wand loyalties here, but I think I've stated the main points of
my position.) At any rate, compassion trumped irony in this instance.
> 
> 7.  As you read this the first time, did you feel confident that
Harry could know and not seek?  Could YOU have known & not sought?

Carol:
Another good question. I think that he didn't quite trust himself,
which is why he chose to talk to Griphook first. If he'd talked to
Ollivander first, he might have rushed to Hogwarts, anticipating
Voldemort's action and either confronting him prematurely, before all
the Horcruxes were destroyed, or violating DD's grave himself and
snatching the Elder Wand. It might have been impossible, then, to
return to Shell Cottage and arrange with Griphook to break into the
Lestrange's vault. At any rate, having made the decision to talk to
Griphook first shows that he had already, in effect, chosen Horcruxes
over Hallows and that he could, indeed, know without seeking. 

As for me, I'm quite sure that I could know without seeking. I'm not
made for perilous quests, as I think Frodo said at some point, and I
certainly would rather use words than weapons!
> 
> 8.  When Harry is talking in his mind as if to DD and asks if he is
meant to know but not to seek, he also asks, "Did you know how hard 
I'd find that?  Is that why you made it this difficult?  So I'd have
time to work that out?" [p. 391]  What do you think is the answer to
that?  How about what you thought on your first read?  Did you feel a
new understanding along with Harry, or had you see his mission 
differently than he had before this dawning?

Carol:
It's really difficult to remember my first reaction, when I was
reading for the emotional experience and for information (who lived
and died, the truth about Snape, how it would all end, etc.). 

As for what I think now, it's obvious that DD set up the Resurrection
Stone to be released only at the bitter moment of self-sacrifice
(whether its mere presence in the unopened Snitch would have protected
Harry if he had all three Hallows in his possession, I don't know).
And perhaps he did count on Hermione's hesitation in investigating the
Hallows to slow Harry's pursuit of them, which certainly does take on
the coloring of an obsession when the other two are trying to continue
the pursuit of the Horcruxes, clueless though they are as to the
whereabouts of the things. It's certainly quite possible that DD,
knowing Harry's penchant for action over contemplation, did try to
slow him down. However, there were other obstacles. He couldn't openly
give Harry either the Sword of Gryffindor, which had to be earned
through valor, etc., or the Resurrection Stone, which had to be hidden
in such a way that only he could access it and only at the proper
time. Even Hermione's gift (and Ron's, though it doesn't relate
directly to Horcruxes vs. Hallows) had to be given without
explanation, as a mystery to be solved, to avoid interference by
Scrimgeour, or worse, confiscation by his DE successor. At any rate, I
think now that DD had every reason for caution, including the reasons
Harry cites.
> 
> 9.  Harry Potter has been derided by many for not being much of a
thinker.  He becomes a thinker in this chapter, and quite decisive. 
What do you make of this?  Is it a change?  Did it surprise you?  Has
it always been there?

Carol:
I think that Harry has been starting to think things out since the
disastrous MoM expedition. Despite his lamentable tendency to blame
Snape for Sirius Black's death, he has at least been less rash most of
the time. He and his friends carefully plan the invasion of the MoM,
for example (although they don't anticipate what will happen when they
get inside, and rashness strikes again when Harry takes Mad-eye's
magic eyeball). The Godric's Hollow experience may well have made him
more cautious, as well. Regardless of what Lupin says, Harry's
instincts aren't always on target, and thinking things out has always
been Hermione's forte, not his. However, the decisiveness once he's
made up his mind doesn't surprise me. Harry has always been decisive
(unless you count hesitating to teach DADA lessons). That's why he,
not Ron or Hermione, is the leader of their little group. (That and
being the one who will ultimately have to face Voldemort!) 
> 
> 10.  What did you think was going on when you first read that Harry
was laboring over seeing Griphook or Ollivander first... and chose
Griphook? 

Carol: 
I had only the vague idea that talking to Ollivander related to wands
and therefore must have something to do with the Elder Wand. I don't
remember what I thought about Griphook or whether I realized that it
must have something to do with Gringotts and Bellatrix's vault. I
probably didn't realize that it meant the difference between going
after the Elder Wand and letting Voldemort take it. However, by that
time, after staying up past 1 a.m. just to get the book and hours of
straight reading with almost no break and very little food, I was not
in peak mental condition!
> 
> 11.  What, in your opinion, was carried in Griphook's comment, "You
are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter"?  Do you think Harry is an
unusual wizard?  If so, in what way(s)?

Carol:
Certainly, his experiences are unique, as is his link to Voldemort,
and he's unusual in being a Parselmouth, not to mention having blood
protection in various forms. His greatest skill, flying/Quidditch,
doesn't even come into play in this book. But aside from these talents
and what experience has made him, I don't think he's all that unusual.
He's a better young man than his father, equally courageous and more
compassionate, but his magical powers (the Patronus perhaps excepted)
are not exceptional. He's certainly no match for Snape, much less
Voldemort, in the dueling department, for example. In fact, it's his
very ordinariness in many respects (an incompletely educated, very
young wizard against the greatest Dark Wizard of the century, if we
believe the hype that makes Voldemort greater than Grindelwald) that
makes his achievement special. 

But, of course, that not what Griphook meant. He was talking about
Harry's burial of a House-Elf without magic (which may well be a
first) and his saving the life of a Goblin (which probably isn't
unique but is no doubt unusual). But I think that Griphook, having no
compassion and no scruples himself, expects others, especially
Wizards, to be like himself. IOW, he underestimates Wizards in
general. Hermione's views of House-Elves (and Goblins) in general are
more liberal than Harry's (Harry is treating the House-Elves and
Goblins he encounters as individuals without thinking of them as
underprivileged groups). Dirk Cresswell and Bill Weasley are more
knowledgeable about Goblins than Harry, actually speaking with them in
their own language and even personally liking some Goblins. Would
either of those men have rescued a Goblin if they could have done so?
Yes, I think they would have. And so, if she hadn't been injured and
didn't panic so easily, would Hermione.

Unusual Wizard? Yes and no, IMO. 
> 
> 12.  Is Griphook correct that this is "precisely about" wizards vs.
goblins?  Why did he drop the subject so abruptly?

Carol:
It's not about Goblins and Wizards at all. It's about Harry vs.
Voldemort. IMO, he drops the subject because one of the "wand
carriers," Hermione, persuades him that she's as much a victim of
persecution as he is and that she does care about the plight of
Goblins and House-Elves. Not one to admit that he's wrong, Griphook
simply shifts the subject to Harry's reason for wanting to break into
the Lestranges' vault. (I think he's also curious as to what they're
up to and what they want from him. Greed--hope of thw sword of
Gryffindor as a reward for his services--may also be a factor, as it's
certainly his reason for ultimately agreeing to work with them.)
> 
> 13.  Why did Harry remove the Sword of Gryffindor when he left
Griphook's room, and why did he not say anything as he did so?

Carol:
Because if he left the Sword in Griphook's position, he'd have no
bargaining chip. He can't appeal to Griphook's compassion or good
nature. And not saying anything is simply common sense. He didn't want
to call anyone's attention to it, which might raise a discussion and
ruin everything.
> 
> 14.  When Harry said he understood bits of Voldemort and then went
on to say he wished he'd understood DD as much, were you surprised? 
Why do you think he made this remark instead of sticking with
Voldemort as the topic of his understanding?

Carol:
I've never thought about the subject switching, to tell the truth. I
suppose it's because Dumbledore has been on his mind since the
beginning of the book, and he's as much interested in discovering the
truth about DD (somewhere between Elphias Doge's blind devotion and
Rita Skeeter's snide insinuations) as he is in finding the Horcruxes.
The Horcruxes are a duty imposed on him; the truth about DD is his
personal obsession or quest. And, of course, the Hallows vs. Horcrux
question again places DD at the forefront of his mind. In any case,
there's not much to understand about Voldemort. He wants immortality
and power and will do anything to get and/or preserve them. He has no
mercy or compassion even for his followers. He expects blind devotion
and unquestioning service. He may be powerfully magical and well
versed in the Dark Arts, but he's not at all complex. Dumbledore is
another matter altogether, a riddle whose solution this group will
probably never agree on. At this point, though, "What did Dumbledore
want me to do?" is virtually synonymous with "What is the right thing
to do?" As for what Voldemort wants, it's obvious.
> 
> 15.  How do you react to those remarks of Ollivander's concerning
wand ownership and control?  Since they're really JKR's words ? and
rules ? are they reasonable? Fair?  Do they tell us enough? "Subtle,"
"complex," "usually," "in general" ? is this just the nature of wand
lore, and it *is* nebulous and imprecise?  Or is this simply a way to
leave open more possibilities for the author?

Carol:
In a way, she's covering her tracks since wands don't always follow
the rules that she's set out. But I personally like the
open-endedness, giving wands a bit more awareness and power of choice
than would be implied if a wand *always* bent its will to that of its
captor. I think, for example, that a long-term bond between wand and
Wizard (Bellatrix's wand--which, BTW, ought to have been confiscated
when she was sent to Azkaban) would not be as easily broken as a
short-term bond (Wormtail's new and made for him by Ollivander). The
wand *chooses* the Wizard in the first place and it learns along with
the Wizard, implying that it's not merely sentient (able to perceive
and feel) but capable of something resembling human thought, the
ability to make choices (to bend or not bend its will to that of its
captor). The Elder Wand is apparently unique in *always* choosing the
Wizard who captures it by force, and even it is forced to choose
between the Wizard who disarmed Dumbledore (Draco) and the Wizard who
snatched Draco's own wand, not the Elder Wand itself. I think, and no
doubt some readers vehemently disagree, that the Elder Wand learns of
Draco's disarming only when Harry talks about it and at that point
*chooses* to give him his loyalty. (Apologies for jumping ahead to
later chapters, but it's pertinent here.) So, yeah. I think that
Ollivander, the wand expert, is right. Wandlore is complex. He's
studied it for years if not decades, and even he doesn't know
everything about it. I would guess, BTW, that each individual wand is
different, just as Ollivander indicates in SS/PS. Just because two
wands are the same length, made of the same type of wood and the same
kind of core doesn't make them identical, but they'd be more similar
in temperament and in the kind of Witch or Wizard they would choose
than wands of a different size, wood, and core type. Ollivander may
even have created certain wands to have an affinity with different
skills (e.g., Charms or Transfiguration) as SS/PS implies.

Good for Ollivander for using "in general" and other qualifying terms.
Let's have no absolutes in wandlore. And, besides, JKR would be
violating her own rules if those rules were absolute.
 
> 16.  Ollivander says he has no idea why the wand Voldemort borrowed
failed against Harry's wand.  He says "something unique" happened.
What was that something unique, do you think?

Carol:
IIRC, Dead!Dumbledore gives the best explanation we're going to get in
"King's Cross," something about Harry's wand having absorbed some of
Voldemort's Dark Magic in the Priori Incantatem incident in the
graveyard. Clearly, it also recognizes Voldemort as its own and
Harry's deadly enemy (more evidence that wands are more than
sentient--it acted of its own volition, not Harry's). My guess is that
it used one of Voldemort's own Dark Spells against him. Why it didn't
use an AK, I don't know. Maybe it sensed that Harry couldn't kill LV
or didn't want that particular spell used against him. After all, it
would know Harry pretty well after six years of learning magic with him.
> 
> 17.  It has long been an interest of many just what Ollivander is
all about.  Something about the way he described Voldemort as
"great"... something about how he made the hair stand up on Harry's
neck....  In this chapter, we have Harry suddenly thinking about
having been unsure how much he liked Ollivander back when they first
met, and even now, "the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of this
wand seemed to enthral him as much as it repulsed him" [p. 402].  And
yet Luna seems genuinely fond of him.  What do you make of this man?

Carol:
I think that his scholarly interest in wands is no different from a
history professor's fascination with, say, medieval warfare. He's very
much an expert in his own complex field (imagine being able to make
wands and to have some notion what the specific powers and strength of
each wand would be). He remembers every wand he's ever made, in itself
an extradordinary feat. But he seems to be at a loss outside his field
of expertise. He knows nothing about the Hallows. Quite possibly, he
can't make a potion to save his life. He's more timid than I expected
though granted, he's an old man made increasingly weak by prolonged
imprisonment. He's no braver than the average Wizard when it comes to
torture (quite possibly he was a Ravenclaw). I don't judge him for his
academic interest in wandlore and his fascination with Voldemort as a
study in power--at least he's apparently repulsed as well as
fascinated (rather like a kid looking up poisonous snakes on the
Internet or a reader of vampire novels). Nor do I blame his weakness
any more than I blame Xeno Lovegood's (though I find myself admiring
Grindelwald's courage in contrast to Ollivander's timidity--or
cowardice if you prefer--even though Ollivander is essentially
harmless and GG was a tyrant and mass murderer).

As for why Luna would like Ollivander, and vice versa, it's that
Ravenclaw eccentricity, IMO. They're kindred spirits. She may well
have listened to his wandlore when he had the strength to talk about
it; her unquenchable cheerfulness and optimism undoubtedly made his
imprisonment more bearable than it had been before her arrival. (She
may even have him believing in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks!) I used to
think that they must be related given their misty silver eyes. I would
have liked for Luna to take over his wandmaking business in the
absence of an heir. Oh, well. At least they became friends and he made
her a free wand.
> 
> 18.  How is it that, compared to the end of OOTP, Harry can be so 
certain the visions he's having are real?  We know now that they are,
but how could he be so confident after what happened in OOTP?

Carol:
Because his scar hurts much more than it did when he thought that
Sirius was imprisoned (except during the original "vision"), because
he's not having repeated dreams that seem designed to lure him
somewhere, and because they show him what Voldemort is doing,
following a logical progression in quest of something that turns out
to be the Elder Wand. He sees Voldemort pick up the photo that he,
Harry, dropped, and he even follows him into Gregorovitch's mind.
These are clearly not implanted visions that Voldemort wants him to
see. In fact, Voldemort would no doubt much rather Harry wasn't seeing
them.

The question, for me, is not why Harry believes the visions to be real
but why LV is no longer using Occlumency against Harry. Maybe he
doesn't sense Harry's presence and so feels that it's no longer
necessary? Or maybe he's so intent on his new plans, first the
takeover of the MoM and then the Elder Wand that he forgets about
Harry? Maybe it's a necessary Flint because JKR needs him to have
access to LV's mind?
> 
> 19.  What did you think was coming next, as you read the end of the
chapter and knew that Voldemort had taken possession of the Elder Wand?

Carol:

I wish I could remember. I don't think I *thought* anything. I only
felt a terrible apprehension. Events seemed to have reached a climax.
And what do we get in the next chapter? An interlude at Shell Cottage!

SSS: 
> Please feel free to add your own questions to the discussion!

Carol:

How could Bellatrix still have the wand that Ollivander had made for
her decades before? Surely it would have been confiscated when she was
sent to Azkaban? (I'm also wondering how Hermione could use that wand
so effectively, but that part of the question technically belongs to
the "Gringotts" chapter.

Carol, thanking SSS for a great discussion and sure that her responses
are just as "overwordy" as SSS's very thorough synopsis





From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 15 21:27:46 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:27:46 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g4rl6m+hodk@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5j4oi+refr@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183702

Carol earlier:
> > As for Harry as "slave owner," how do we know that he doesn't
ultimately give Kreacher the choice of staying at Hogwarts or
returning to 12 GP, if that's where Harry chooses to live? I doubt
that he wants his freedom; I think he'd be insulted by the offer of
clothes. But I see nothing preventing Harry from solving the Kreacher
problem the same way he solved it before, by having Kreacher work at
Hogwarts instead of staying with him. Only this time it could be
worded as a request or even a choice rather than an order.
> 
> Magpie:
> Do we want to get into this again?:-) He's a slave owner because he
owns a slave. We don't end with Harry asking Kreacher where he wants
to live (Harry barely gives a thought to where Kreacher lives anyway
until he needs him someplace so why would he start now?), we end with
him thinking about Kreacher serving him something. Of course Kreacher
 doesn't want freedom. That's why House Elves are such awesome slaves.

Carol again:
That and the fact that they can perform their duties using magic
rather than manual labor like human slaves. :-) 

Magpie:
> Even when Kreacher wants freedom (like the freedom not to work for
Harry or Sirius in HBP and OotP, but to work for other people instead)
he doesn't call it that.
> 
> His last line about the sandwich stands out not because we know
whether or not Harry will decide to request one, or whether or not
Kreacher would be offended if he didn't ask him to make it (he
probably would want to make it himself--House Elves take pride in
being good servants), but because it reminds us that Harry has
Kreacher, his loyal slave, at his disposal as part of his everyday,
Voldemort free-life. <snip>

Carol responds;

IMO, Harry's still owning Kreacher at the end of the book, and still
treating Kreacher as he did at 12 GP where Kreacher was happy (once he
accepted Harry as his master) is only a problem for readers who
expected Harry to free the Houwe-Elves at the end of the book. I never
had any such expectation. House-Elves are hermione's pet project and
crusade, not Harry's, and even if it were feasible to free them all at
once 9which it isn't), he doesn't have the means or the authority.

As I said in another post, Harry almost never thinks of generic
House-Elves, and when he does, it's the happy House-Elves at Hogwarts
that come to mind. For him, House-Elves are important only as
individuals: Dobby, who was first a nuisance and then a friend, and
who was forever indebted to Harry for freeing him (not that he was all
that free--he still served the Wizard(s) of his choice with little or
not pay); Winky, whom he couldn't really help because all she wanted
was to return to the master who had fired her; and Kreacher, who is at
first an enemy and then a loyal and happy servant.

House-Elves in general are not Harry's problem, but what to do with
Kreacher is. He can't free Kreacher, who is, at first, too dangerous,
and in any case would probably be as distraught as Winky about being
fired. At first, Harry solves the problem by sending Kreacher to
Hogwarts, attempting only once to make use of him there and finding it
futile. (Kreacher had no choice but to spy on Draco, but he was not
about to report any useful information about him.) Later, he comes to
terms with Kreacher, thanks to Hermione, and Kreacher is ecstatically,
violently, tearfully happy. At that point, the obvious solution is to
let Kreacher be a typical House-Elf, clean and happily subservient.
When Harry can't come home (and DEs apparently invade 12 GP), Kreacher
returns to Hogwarts, evidently making friends with the House-Elves,
considering that they follow him into battle. (They absolutely don't
want to give up the excellent working and living conditions at
Hogwarts to be brutally mistreated by DEs.)

Once Voldemort is defeated, Harry once again has to deal with Kreacher
(not House-Elves in general, only the House-Elf he inherited). What,
exactly, are his choices? He can free Kreacher, which Kreacher would
take as an insult and which would make Kreacher incurably unhappy. He
can leave him at Hogwarts, which might or might not make Kreacher
happy. Or he could take him with him to 12 GP, which undoubtedly
*would* make Kreacher happy.

Assuming that Harry requests that sandwich, which Kreacher would be
happy to make for him (and insulted if Harry made for himself), he
could easily thank Kreacher for his part in the battle and even offer
him the reward of Kreacher's choice (maybe the Hogwarts/12 GP choice).

I really don't see what else Harry can do with Kreacher, nor do I see
anything to be disturbed about. (It's not as if Kreacher were a human
slave who would naturally resent his servitude and would not be
capable of magic. A human slave would *want* his freedom. Kreacher
doesn't, and freedom would be an unmerited punishment rather than a
reward.)

Now if Harry went to a House-Elf auction to buy Kreacher a wife so
that his family would have Kreacher's descendants as hereditary
slaves, I'd be disturbed. But Kreacher is not a purchase Harry made.
He's an inherited obligation that Harry can't get rid of. The only
solution that I can see is to treat Kreacher as Kreacher wants to be
treated (not as a human being in his position would want to be
treated) and to make the best of the situation. Maybe Harry can offer
him a retirement pension at some point or Hermione can establish a
retirement community for House-Elves, but until that time, Harry is
stuck with Kreacher, who will live and die a House-Elf bound by
loyalty and tradition to the House of Black.

I don't know what kind of ending you expected, but one way or another,
JKR would need to show that Harry still has his contented little
House-Elf. As I said, Harry can't free Kreacher, much less all the
House-Elves at Hogwarts or in the WW.

For myself, I'd have liked it better if Harry summoned Kreacher to
thank him for bravely leading the House-Elves into battle. But free
him? Kreacher isn't Dobby and would never accept it. It would only
break his heart.

Carol, who figures that Kreacher only has a few more years to live,
anyway, and hopes that Harry's children were born after Kreacher's death







From goodgracious at juno.com  Tue Jul 15 21:11:41 2008
From: goodgracious at juno.com (yraiym)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:11:41 -0000
Subject: Changes to JKR official site - or bad memory?
In-Reply-To: <g5igas+1m2b@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5j3qd+glhv@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183703

> bboyminn:
> 
> The JKR website response can be read here -
> 
> http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq_poll.cfm
> 
> This (Fidelius Charm problems) has been discussed before, 

yraiym:
Okay, I have been wading through several years of discussion to find 
pertinent posts, and found that it was a pretty hot topic just three 
weeks ago (Sorry to be such a noob: I only joined up a week ago). To 
my relief, I can still add something to the discussion, though 
several things have been cleared up for me in previous discussions.

bboyminn:
> She is perfectly able to tell partial truths or even misleading
> truths. Here statement on the Secret Keeper refers to a specific
> moment in time - "...remain as it was at the moment of their 
> death". That doesn't mean that more details can't come to light
> AFTER the moment of death. 

yraiym:
You have hinted at these other details in other posts.  One 
possibility that has been tossed up for consideration is that the 
information still existed in writing (as Harry learned of the 
location the OP in OotP), and so could be passed on in that way.  

Let me propose another possibility: though this is NOT on the page, 
Dumbledore could have prepared the FC in such a way on 12GP, or 
changed it during the course of HBP such that, when he died (or even 
when Sirius died!), all those in on the secret became SKs.  There is 
no canon that I know of to support this, but is this the sort of 
thing you have in mind, the "as it was at the moment of their death"?

from the post 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183412
bboyminn wrote:
As to Hermione bringing Yaxley inside the bounds of the
Fidelius, how is that a conflict. Where willful of not,
she still brought someone inside the bound and thereby
revealed the secret. Although, this is never really proven.

yraiym:
Good point, and one I had noticed.  It is quite possible that Mr. 
Weasley and Hermione are wrong: the OP have NOT become SKs.  So, 
when Hermione brings Yaxley along, and notices on the doorstep that 
his grip loosened, she was wrong in attributing it to him thinking 
they had arrived at their destination.  It is just possible that he 
was magically forced out of the bounds of 12GP, as Hermione did not 
have the ability to let him in on the secret.  I think this seems 
very plausible, as it's one of those classic kind of 
misunderstandings that leads to a more complicated plot: "If only 
they had realized that they had not become SKs, they wouldn't have 
needed to camp out!  Ron wouldn't have been splinched!  They would 
have been well-fed!  Etc."  But then a big chunk of the book falls 
out (I know, to the relief of many: but how else would Snape send 
them the sword, to be heroically retrieved by Harry and Ron?).

My 2 cents, 
yraiym






From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 15 22:20:54 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:20:54 -0000
Subject: Changes to JKR official site - or bad memory?
In-Reply-To: <g5j3qd+glhv@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5j7s6+s5ll@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183704

---  "yraiym" <goodgracious at ...> wrote:
>
> > ...
> 
> bboyminn:
> > She is perfectly able to tell partial truths or even 
> > misleading truths. Here statement on the Secret Keeper 
> > refers to a specific moment in time - "...remain as it 
> > was at the moment of their  death". That doesn't mean 
> > that more details can't come to light AFTER the moment 
> > of death. 
> 
> yraiym:
> You have hinted at these other details in other posts.  ...
>
> ... another possibility: though this is NOT on the page, 
> Dumbledore could have prepared the FC in such a way on 12GP,
> or changed it.. such that, when he died ..., all those in on
> the secret became SKs.  There is no canon that I know of to
> support this, but is this the sort of thing you have in mind,
> the  "as it was at the moment of their death"?
> 


bboyminn:

I can't say that's not possible. It also, tangentally, brings
up some points I've made before, neither the characters in
the books nor the author nor any one else, speaks in absolute
truths. When Hermione says that Yaxley can not get into 
Grimmauld Place because she thinks she revealed the secret to
him, that's not fact, that's Hermione's interpretation.

When, Flitwick describes the Fidelius Charm, he is not 
necessarily making a complete all-inclusive all-defining
statement of fact. I take it as him merely given in a basic
illustrative explanation for the benefit of someone who has
never heard of it.

In the case of JKR and the statement in question, she answers
the question within limits. She is not giving a complete
all-inclusive all-defining explanation. She is giving a limited
explanation that goes as far as she takes it.

JKR explains the status of the Fidelius Charm at the moment of
the Secret Keeper's death. But she makes no mention and gives
no explanation of what happens after the Secret Keeper's death.

Apparently, after the Secret Keeper dies, those who know the
Secret become mini-Secret Keepers. 

It seems that that is true to the best of the knowledge of 
the involved characters, so we can take it as reasonably
likely truth.

If I can illustrate -

JKR: "I have a blue car."

We later learn it is a blue Ford. We can really call her a
liar or claim she made a mistake because she failed to 
mention that the blue car was a Ford. 

Her statement is true as far as she took it, but that doesn't 
mean there can't be more truth to it. Again, the problem 
only occurs if a person takes her original statement as 
complete all-inclusive all-defining truth. Which upon thinking
about it, we should have know that there was more to the
story.

> from the post 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183412
> bboyminn wrote:
> As to Hermione bringing Yaxley inside the bounds of the
> Fidelius, how is that a conflict. Where willful of not,
> she still brought someone inside the bound and thereby
> revealed the secret. Although, this is never really proven.
> 
> yraiym:
> Good point, and one I had noticed.  It is quite possible that
> Mr. Weasley and Hermione are wrong: the OP have NOT become 
> SKs.  So, when Hermione brings Yaxley along, and notices on 
> the doorstep that his grip loosened, she was wrong in 
> attributing it to him thinking they had arrived at their 
> destination.  It is just possible that he was magically 
>forced out of the bounds of 12GP, as Hermione did not 
> have the ability to let him in on the secret.  ...
> 
> My 2 cents, 
> yraiym
>

bboyminn:

I think we can reasonably conclude that all those who knew
the Secret are now Secret Keepers. Note I said /reasonably/
not absolutely; there is a small element of doubt. 

As to what happened to Yaxley, we can't know because Harry
is our point of view character and he isn't there to see
what happens, nor is anyone else.

You may be right, Yaxley may have been thrown out of the 
boundary of the charm, or he may have simply fallen out as
Hermione makes her escape. It may be that he never fully
realize where he was, and since he didn't grasp it while
in the boundary of the charm, he may not actually know.

But again, this all happens off-screen/off-page, out of
Harry's sight, so all we have are Hermione and Harry's 
speculation about what /might/ have happened. 

I'm sure in the end, after Voldemort's defeat all these minor
detail were ironed out, but we simply don't get to see them
so we simply don't get to know for sure. 

Steve/bluewizard




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Tue Jul 15 23:42:44 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:42:44 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <g5j1rr+c097@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5jclk+9b6e@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183705

> 
> Carol:
> 
> How could Bellatrix still have the wand that Ollivander had made for
> her decades before? Surely it would have been confiscated when she
was sent to Azkaban? (I'm also wondering how Hermione could use that
wand so effectively, but that part of the question technically belongs
to the "Gringotts" chapter.

Pippin:
Bella's a clever witch. She could have found a way to hide it before
she was captured. But since the damage to Mad-eye indicates she went
down fighting,  I think she must have recovered it once Voldemort took
over the ministry. Her wand was evidence of her crimes; I don't think
it would have been destroyed while she was still under sentence.

Hagrid's case was different since apparently the charges against him
were dropped.

Pippin







From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 00:42:26 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:42:26 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g535mu+88l5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5jg5i+pf63@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183706

Alla wrote:
> 
> <snip> I keep wondering again what character  development means
exactly, since maybe we are again thinking of different definitions.
<snip>
> 
> Because to me character development's means any changes in the 
character throughout the book, no matter how small and those changes 
really do not have to be earth shattering for me to qualify as such.

Carol responds:

Maybe it would help to look at some definitions of character types.
Obviously, Harry is what E. M. Forster would call a "round" (complex,
many-faceted) character as opposed to a "flat" (one-dimensional)
character like Umbridge or Amycus Carrow or Madam Hooch.

But is Harry "static" (unchanged by the events around him) or dynamic
(changed in some fundamental and lasting way by those events)?
Obviously, Harry changes from year to year as he grows up. Harry at
eleven and Harry at seventeen are as different as any real-life little
boy from the teenager he develops into. But is child!Harry the same
person in all other respects except size and hormones as teen!Harry?

We see what seems to be a fundamental change at the end of SS/PS when
he's learned who he is: he's no longer the little nobody who sleeps
under the stairs but a famous Wizard. And yet the basic elements of
Harry's character remain stable. Possibly learning who he is merely
*revealed* those traits to Harry and to us.

We also see a change at the end of OoP when he leads the way out of
Platform 9 3/4 rather than meekly following the Dursleys. But is that
a fundamental change, a step toward leadership, or is it just a
reaction to the Order members confronting the Dursleys?

Another change involves his ability to judge other people. Harry is,
at first, rather a bad judge of character. Setting aside Ron vs.
Draco, where he makes the right but obvious choice, and the later
friendship with Hermione, which stems from confronting a Troll
together, he seems to misjudge a lot of people, especially the fake
Mad-eye Moody, Luna, Neville, and Snape. The first has to be revealed
before his eyes as Barty Crouch Jr. and to tell his story under the
influence of Veritaserum before Harry can see the truth. Luna and
Neville he learns to judge correctly after the MoM, and even more,
after the Battle of Hogwarts. Snape has to leave him a vial full of
memories as he dies (which Harry has to visit in the Pensieve) before
he can judge him clearly. Is having the scales lifted from his eyes,
learning to respect Snape and admire his courage, a fundamental change
that qualifies Harry as a dynamic character?

We can compare Harry with both Snape and Dumbledore, also "round"
(complex) characters who are dynamic only in the change from their
youthful delusions, for which both feel excruciating remorse, but as
adults are static (unchanging). They only *appear* to be dynamic as
their true nature is revealed--bit by bit in the earlier books but in
large chunks in DH.

FWIW, here are the definitions of "dynamic character" and "static
character" from a pretty good website on literary terms:

"Dynamic Character  A dynamic character "is one who is modified by
actions and experiences, and one objective of the work in which the
character appears is to reveal the consequences of these actions." 
(Harmon, Holman page 89)

"Static Character  "A static character is one who changes little if at
all.  Things happen to such a character without things happening
within.  The pattern of action reveals the character rather than
showing the appearance of changing simply because our picture of the
character is revealed bit by bit; this is true of Uncle Toby in
Tristram Shandy, who does not change, although our view of him
steadily changes." (Harmon, Holman page 89)"

I have no idea who Holman Harmon is, but the website can be found at 

http://home.earthlink.net/~milam/tlwl/lwlterms.html

if anyone is interested. Other definitions can be found on other websites.

My inclination at the moment is to believe that while Harry develops
and changes in small ways (and certainly changes his view of Snape!),
he remains essentially the same person that he was at eleven. Our
choices *reveal* who we are (which is not to say that we can't change,
as DD and SS did in their youth, but their choices reveal rather than
create that change).

And yet Harry does give up the pursuit of revenge, not only against
Snape (whose death shocks rather than gratifies him) but against
Voldemort himself, instead offering himself as a sacrifice and then
trusting to luck or fate and the Elder Wand and Expelliarmus to
destroy Voldemort rather than "murdering" him as he had expected to
do. Another change, which comes almost too late, is his decision to
rely on others to help him rather than doing everything himself, with
a bit of help from Ron and Hermione.

At any rate, I agree with Alla that Harry grows and develops to some
degree over the series, but I'm not at all sure that those changes are
sufficient to classify him as a "dynamic character" in the technical
sense I'm discussing here.

We could ask the same question of Ron and Hermione. Neville, OTOH, is
quite clearly a "dynamic character." He always had that courage in him
(like the fattest and most timid Hobbit), but only in DH does he
emerge as a leader, fearlessly confronting Voldemort even when he's
lost his wand and slaying the dragon--erm, snake--like a hero out of
myth or legend. Luna, bless her, is static. It's only Harry's view of
her, not Luna herself, that changes.

Does Harry change "within"? Is one objective of the work (or the
author, assuming that we can infer her intentions) to show the effects
of those events and actions on Harry?

Compare Frodo, who is obviously changed by his experiences, including
his own failure (and its near-disastrous consequences), to the point
where even Saruman says, "You have grown, Halfling."

Can we say of Harry that he has grown (other than growing from boy to
man)? Or is the journey to adulthood (the whole concept of a
Bildungsroman) sufficient to make him a "dynamic character"? Does he
change even as much as Pippin in LOTR? What do you think?

Carol, who thinks that Harry's character growth can be measured in
inches and poor Frodo's in miles




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 16 01:23:51 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:23:51 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5j4oi+refr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5jij7+p4kh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183707

> Carol responds;
> 
> IMO, Harry's still owning Kreacher at the end of the book, and still
> treating Kreacher as he did at 12 GP where Kreacher was happy (once 
he
> accepted Harry as his master) is only a problem for readers who
> expected Harry to free the Houwe-Elves at the end of the book. 

Magpie:
>From what I've read it seems like it's a problem for people who 
wanted the Elves freed and also for people who figured if they 
weren't freed Harry wouldn't own one happily like that was a fine 
thing. I personally never saw how House Elves would be freed and I'm 
not really bothered by Harry owning Kreacher at the end. But it does 
read to me as Harry accepting his place as a master with a non-human 
slave. The system is okay, flawed as it is.

I'm trying to imagine the ethical problem of a House Elf abolitionist 
with an elf who didn't want to free the elf because it would hurt the 
elf--though again we should note that House Elves' desire not to be 
free is probably the only House Elf wish that always gets respected 
by Wizards. I mean, Harry *could* free Kreacher. He could have let 
Kreacher choose his master and then hand him over--it's Kreacher who 
*can't* do things due to enchantment. Harry's the master and can 
always do what he wants. He *didn't* let Kreacher choose his own 
master because that would have been dangerous. (And then he gave him 
orders against Kreacher's wishes because it was useful to Harry.) I 
suppose an abolitionist who didn't want to free the elf (to avoid 
Winky-like despair) would try to refrain from ever give orders and 
try to work something out with the Elf.

Carol:
At that point, the obvious solution is to
> let Kreacher be a typical House-Elf, clean and happily subservient.

Magpie:
Exactly. The obvious solution appeared when Kreacher's wishes 
supported Harry. Before that the solution was to have Kreacher serve 
Harry against his will. Being a slave isn't a problem until he had a 
wish that went against his orders. I'm not worried about the 
character of Kreacher himself--presuambly he'll spend the rest of his 
life happy now that he likes Harry. It probably doesn't bother him 
that he could still be owned by someone he didn't like. 


Carol:
> I really don't see what else Harry can do with Kreacher, nor do I 
see
> anything to be disturbed about. (It's not as if Kreacher were a 
human
> slave who would naturally resent his servitude and would not be
> capable of magic. A human slave would *want* his freedom. Kreacher
> doesn't, and freedom would be an unmerited punishment rather than a
> reward.)

Magpie:
I'm not disturbed by it, but I do think it's weird for there to be 
nothing else Harry can do with Kreacher than to accept his service as 
a loyal slave. For me it's not as simple as saying that a human slave 
would want his freedom and therefore if Kreacher doesn't there's no 
problem. This is what I've tried to explain before but I don't seem 
to do it very well, that it seems somehow sneaky for it always to 
come down to the problem lying with the House Elves. I'm not 
articulate enough or maybe educated enough in this sort of thing to 
describe what rubs me the wrong way about the argument, but it just 
sounds suspiciously convenient for the masters. House Elves aren't 
human but it seems like in the abstract the argument could apply to 
slavery as a concept, whoever is involved in it. It's like an 
abstract problem: can you find something wrong with slavery if a 
person wants to be a slave? And I feel like it would still be wrong. 
And I suspect there have been plenty of human slaves throughout 
history who did have reasons to want to be slaves.

-m




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 16 01:28:50 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:28:50 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5jg5i+pf63@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5jisi+tt8g@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183708

Carol:
Neville, OTOH, is
> quite clearly a "dynamic character." He always had that courage in 
him
> (like the fattest and most timid Hobbit), but only in DH does he
> emerge as a leader, fearlessly confronting Voldemort even when he's
> lost his wand and slaying the dragon--erm, snake--like a hero out of
> myth or legend. 

Magpie:
I considered him to have done that in PS when he attacked Crabbe and 
Goyle and also won the last ten points for standing up to the Trio.  

Neville grows up and there are more superficial changes to him, but I 
think Neville's choices show who he is in first year and he just 
keeps showing that same character throughout. Other people finally 
see him as the brave person he always was, and Neville loses his 
outer timid demeanor, but I really don't think his character 
fundamentally changes at all. It might take Harry longer to see him 
clearly.

-m




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 01:55:09 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:55:09 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker
In-Reply-To: <8CAB041D38AC3F1-E58-3DE4@MBLK-M27.sysops.aol.com>
Message-ID: <g5jkdt+i12a@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183709

Oryomai wrote:
> I can only speak for me, but the book gave me the impression that
Draco's wand was the Elder Wand?  Let me try to explain it better.  
> When I read the book, I got the impression that Draco's wand somehow
became the Elder Wand?  The entire "wand" thing was just so utterly
lame and complicated to me that I had a lot of trouble sorting it out.  
> I thought that Draco's wand became the Elder Wand when he disarmed
Dumbledore.  Well, then it makes even less sense to me!
> Okay, Draco disarmed Dumbledore.  So the Elder Wand was loyal to
him. The big question for me now is this: why does it matter that
Harry  disarmed Draco if the wand Draco was using is not the Elder Wand?  
> Draco's "regular" wand was still loyal to him when he got control of
the Elder Wand, right?  How does the fact that Harry has possession of
 Draco's "regular" wand affect the Elder Wand?
> 
> Oryomai
> Who's even more confused now...

Carol responds:

I know that others have tried to explain the situation, but I wanted
to clear up one point. Draco's wand, which is made of hawthorn wood,
never became the Elder Wand, which is made of elder wood. It would be
interesting to consider the supposed properties of elder and hawthorn,
but I can't get into that right now.

At any rate, in the final confrontation, Harry is using the hawthorn
wand that he snatched from Draco and of which he has become the
master, according to Ollivander. At any rate, that wand feels
"friendly" to his hand, unlike the wand that Ron took from the
Snatcher (I can never remember what kind of wood that one was made of,
but Harry can't even get the thing to work).

Voldemort is using the Elder Wand, thinking that he's its master
because he's just killed poor Severus.

Look at the narrator's description of the scene and the accompanying
dialogue:

"Harry twitched the hawthorn wand [formerly Draco's], and he felt the
eyes of everyone in the Hall upon it.

"'So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?' whispered Harry. 'Does
the wand in your hand [the Elder wand] know that its last master was
Disarmed? Because if it does . . . I am the true master of the Elder
Wand'" (DH am. ed. 743).

If wands, which are sufficiently sentient to hear and understand
spells (even nonverbal ones), can also hear and understand English
spoken by Wizards, the wand now knows that Harry is its master even if
it didn't know that before Harry told the tale (which appears earlier
on the same page, but which I didn't include here). Or it may have
magically sensed the Disarming of Draco, which I find harder to believe.

They shout their spells, Avada Kedavra and Expelliarmus respectively,
and "Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder
Wand fly high, <snip> spinning through the air toward the master it
would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last.
And Harry, with the unerring skill of a Seeker, caught the [Elder]
wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, <snip> killed by his
own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand,
staring down at his enemy's shell (744).

So Harry's Expelliarmus, cast with the hawthorn wand, works normally,
as if Voldemort hadn't even cast a spell, and he ends up with both
wands in his hand. The AK, however, doesn't work at all. Instead, it
collides with Harry's spell and backfires on Voldemort, apparently
because the Elder Wand recognizes Harry as its master and refuses to
kill him. Why the Expelliarmus isn't also deflected, I don't know, but
apparently, both spells hit Voldemort, one Disarming and the other
killing him.

At any rate, the hawthorn wand doesn't become the Elder Wand. They
remain completely distinct, with Harry as master of both of them (as
well as his own broken holly wand, which the Elder Wand will later
repair).

Carol, wondering whether Harry ever returned Draco's wand, which, I
think, would return to its original allegiance under those circumstances




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 02:27:09 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:27:09 -0000
Subject: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g56h15+79b9@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5jm9t+hg66@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183710

SSSusan wrote:
<snip>
> 
> This bit about DD having been *unable* to use Dark Magic, while
Harry could without being tainted by it.  That's speculation, no?  I
mean, not the part about Harry -- we can gather than Harry wasn't
tainted (in the sense of being seduced, long-term, by the Dark Arts).
 And yes, DD gave into the seduction of the Hallows.  
> 
> But do we *know* that the reason DD didn't use the Unforgivables was
truly because he was scared to, or couldn't bring himself to for fear
of the seduction of them?  Do we *know* it wasn't actually what
McGonagall said -- that he was "too noble," or, put differently, that
he simply chose not to? <snip>

Carol responds:

Doesn't Dead!DD say in "King's Cross" that he was permitted to use the
Elder Wand because he won it from Grindelwald, but not to kill with
it? My sense of that passage is that he's afraid of being seduced by
the Elder Wand itself, of becoming another Voldemort or Grindelwald if
he uses it to kill. He may have extended that self-prohibition to any
other Dark spell, particularly the Unforgiveables. And certainly,
given his prowess with that wand, he had no need to perform Dark
magic. He could defeat anyone, even Voldemort (who resorted to
possessing Harry when he couldn't outduel or kill DD).

It's canon that DD fears the seduction of power, which is why he
refused to become Minister of Magic. It's also canon that a wand forms
a bond with its master. If he used the Elder Wand to kill or torture
his opponents, his scruples would erode away, and he'd probably accept
the position of Minister as well. The temptation to be a second
Grindelwald might be too much to resist.

Carol, who wouldn't trust Dumbledore anywhere near the One Ring
because he's more like Saruman the White than Gandalf the Grey 





From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 04:44:22 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:44:22 -0000
Subject: Wizard Population (was: Wizarding Genetics)
In-Reply-To: <g5bka2+sd9a@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5jub6+8svq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183711

> Catlady wrote:
> 
> My theory has a subset which can be rejected without rejecting
> the rest of the theory, that there is a set number of people in
> this world with wizarding powers.
>  -<snip>-
> 
> *** One thing this sub-theory needs is a reason why the number of
> people with wizarding magic, after growing along with the rest of
> the human population for many many millennia, would suddenly become
> fixed at a certain number.

Mike:
I agree with the multiple magical gene theory. That one makes sense 
to me. I could even be convinced that two magical people (James & 
Lily) produce offspring (Harry) with a kind of super-magical gene, 
like a mm-mm. So Harry could marry a Muggle with an MM gene-set and 
still he would be guaranteed one generation more of magical 
offspring. That is, he would contribute a mm instead of just a single 
m, which would crowd out the M that his Muggle wife contributed. This 
is kind of a reverse to your hybrid vigor.

But, though I go along with your your limited number of magicals sub-
theory as a general postulation, you've stated the problem with this 
theory in specific. I have a different take on the reason for limited 
magicals. Try this one on for size. ;-)

When the magical genes mutated into being in pre-history, the 
humans/wizards of that time didn't know or understand their magic. 
They continued to live amongst and intermarry with non-magicals and 
the occasional other magical. Sometime around 1000 BC, magicals 
started to learn how to harness their magic abilities. This is also 
when magical men (protowizards) started seeking out magical women 
(protowitches) for procreation. Thus beginning the consolidation of 
the magical genes. These would be the first "pure-bloods".

But magical folk continued to intermarry with non-magical folk, so 
though there was a subset of people trying to keep the wizarding 
genes within their own group, the rest continued to pass on the 
genes, but amongst an ever increase non-magical population. This 
meant that the wizarding population wasn't increasing along with the 
general population. With those wizards withdrawing to marry only 
other wizards, the reduced amount of magical genes mixing with Muggle 
genes was falling further and further behind the population curve. 
That and the Muggle carriers would continue to be diluted through the 
generations so that some strains/threads of magical genes just died 
out.

Upon the segregation of wizards through the statue of secrecy, 
Muggle-wizard unions would have dropped off precipitiously. Now, the 
percentage of muggles that carried the recessive magical genes would 
continue to decrease. Soon after this time, the subset that had 
continued with the pure-blood tract would have been intermarrying to 
such a degree that we would have started to see families like the 
Gaunts, at the end of their line. Ron was right. If the wizards 
didn't get outside of their closed society, intermarrying would have 
produced lots of Gaunt-like families.

Muggle-borns will continue to decrease as the chances of two 
recessive magical gene carriers meeting becomes more remote. That's 
if wizards stop seeding the Muggle population with their magical 
genes. As long as some wizards continue to marry Muggles at about the 
same rate as the pure-blood families die out, the wizarding 
population remains stable. 

Then again, Harry's great-grandchildren, if his progeny continues to 
marry other magicals, will probably be considered to be pure-blood. 
That's if that categorization survives.

Mike




From iam.kemper at gmail.com  Wed Jul 16 06:53:02 2008
From: iam.kemper at gmail.com (kempermentor)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:53:02 -0000
Subject: Elves again was: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g5jij7+p4kh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5k5se+smbu@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183712

> Magpie:
> ...snip...
> I'm trying to imagine the ethical problem of a House Elf abolitionist 
> with an elf who didn't want to free the elf because it would hurt the 
> elf--though again we should note that House Elves' desire not to be 
> free is probably the only House Elf wish that always gets respected 
> by Wizards. I mean, Harry *could* free Kreacher. He could have let 
> Kreacher choose his master and then hand him over--it's Kreacher who 
> *can't* do things due to enchantment. Harry's the master and can 
> always do what he wants. He *didn't* let Kreacher choose his own 
> master because that would have been dangerous. (And then he gave him 
> orders against Kreacher's wishes because it was useful to Harry.) I 
> suppose an abolitionist who didn't want to free the elf (to avoid 
> Winky-like despair) would try to refrain from ever give orders and 
> try to work something out with the Elf.
 
Kemper now:
Kreacher wanted a different master other than Harry initially.  He
wanted to serve Bella or Draco.  He rebelled as best he could the
commands given to him by Harry pre-DH.  Nowhere in the books do the
Elves claim to desire slavery.  They express a desire to serve.  Even
though Dobby wants to be free from the Malfoys, he still wants to
serve and is apparently willing to be paid a meager wage to do so (why
no wizard/witch would take him up on that is beyond me; no wonder
Muggles almost wiped them out.)  Wizards/witches used the desire
(compulsion?) to serve a master to enslave them.  Dobby is not
enslaved at Hogwarts, no enchantment keeps him there (based on the
wage and the ability to go to Harry-neither his master nor
employer-when called), but he stays because he loves working for his
new master.


> Magpie:
> ... It's like an 
> abstract problem: can you find something wrong with slavery if a 
> person wants to be a slave? And I feel like it would still be wrong. 
> And I suspect there have been plenty of human slaves throughout 
> history who did have reasons to want to be slaves.

Kemper now:
That question doesn't refer to the Elves.  I address the Elf issue,
the question should be: if you want a servant and someone is willing
to serve you, is there anything wrong with that?  

Assuming that both beings are of age, my answer is 'no'.  Morality
only enters into issue if the server no longer wants to serve and the
'master' does something to hinder the server from his/her choice to leave.

Kemper





From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 16 14:26:25 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:26:25 -0000
Subject: Elves again was: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g5k5se+smbu@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l0eh+9hvc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183713


> Kemper now:
> Kreacher wanted a different master other than Harry initially.  He
> wanted to serve Bella or Draco.  He rebelled as best he could the
> commands given to him by Harry pre-DH.  Nowhere in the books do the
> Elves claim to desire slavery.  They express a desire to serve. 

Magpie:
Yes, exactly. The slavery is not that they serve people--you can 
serve people without being a slave. It's Kreacher not having the 
freedom to choose who and when he serves that makes him a slave. He 
can only try as best he can to get around the enchantments or lash 
out passive-aggressively as he did in OotP and HBP. 

> > Magpie:
> > ... It's like an 
> > abstract problem: can you find something wrong with slavery if a 
> > person wants to be a slave? And I feel like it would still be 
wrong. 
> > And I suspect there have been plenty of human slaves throughout 
> > history who did have reasons to want to be slaves.
> 
> Kemper now:
> That question doesn't refer to the Elves.  I address the Elf issue,
> the question should be: if you want a servant and someone is willing
> to serve you, is there anything wrong with that?  
> 
> Assuming that both beings are of age, my answer is 'no'.  Morality
> only enters into issue if the server no longer wants to serve and 
the
> 'master' does something to hinder the server from his/her choice to 
leave.

Magpie:
I agree that if you want a servant and someone is willing to serve 
you there's nothing wrong with that. But the Elf situation goes 
beyond that, and that's where they run into trouble. Kreacher wanted 
to serve and so did Dobby. Neither of them ran into trouble because 
they didn't like serving people. They ran into trouble when they were 
forced to serve against their will. That trouble remains even when 
it's hidden by a pleasant situation. Kreacher is in the same 
situation he was in OotP. He's just happy with that situation now.

There's nothing wrong with employing a servant or accepting the 
services of someone who wants to serve you (well, that could lead to 
some problems for you but there's nothing wrong with it in itself). 
There is, imo, something wrong with accepting ownership of a person 
in a situation where they're compelled to serve you. That part of it 
is hidden once Kreacher wants to serve Harry, but they're actually in 
the same situation. And we can't quite just brush it aside by saying 
that if Kreacher wanted to leave Harry and serve someone else Harry 
would just let him and thus he isn't a slave, because Harry actually 
didn't do that. Perhaps he'd do it now or in the future because he 
now has reason to want to make Kreacher happy, but that still comes 
down to Harry's needs and wishes.

-m




From willsonkmom at msn.com  Wed Jul 16 14:36:57 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:36:57 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5jg5i+pf63@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l129+eaqf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183714


> Carol responds:
 
> But is Harry "static" (unchanged by the events around him) or 
dynamic
> (changed in some fundamental and lasting way by those events)?


Potioncat:
I do so enjoy this type of thread.

Questions:
1. Is static and dynamic simply types, without value? 

2. Is there some literary rule or tradition that a character should 
be one or the other? 

3. What are some examples of other static and dynamic characters?

4. Sirius Black went from a reckless, wild youth to a marose, bitter 
man. Is that dynamic?

Potioncat, who only threw in the Sirius question to keep the post 
canon based.




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 15:25:06 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:25:06 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5jij7+p4kh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l3si+nesn@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183715

> > Carol responds;
> > 
> > IMO, Harry's still owning Kreacher at the end of the book, and still
> > treating Kreacher as he did at 12 GP where Kreacher was happy (once 
> he
> > accepted Harry as his master) is only a problem for readers who
> > expected Harry to free the Houwe-Elves at the end of the book. 

Montavilla47:
I think it depends on what you look at as the problem.  I'm quite
willing to agree that staying on as Harry's slave and bringing him
a sandwich is fine for Kreacher.  It's what he wants to do from 
all that we can see.

I thought what JKR did with the House Elves was really interesting
in GoF.  Because, you know, there have been societies in which
the institution of slavery did seem to work.  The concept of 
consistently being paid for your labor is only a few hundred 
years old.

And I can't say that JKR didn't develop her theme of House-Elf
slavery:  She did.  So, that isn't really a *problem.*  

Does it seem like I have a problem when I point out that 
the conclusion she reaches is that slavery is okay as long as
you treat your slaves well?

What I mind is having to deal with Hermione's obsession on the
subject for two books--then have her completely drop the 
S.P.E.W. project as soon as her friend acquires a slave.

But, then in DH, Hermione takes a *different* stance (she adopts
Ron's stance, actually, that the slaves ought to do what they 
want to do and ought to be treated kindly about it), and we're 
supposed to pretend that this was her perspective all along.

Now, it's not like you can't connect the dots between anti-slavery
Hermione of GoF and pro-slavery Hermione of DH.  But, in 
order to do so, you have to make up a couple of the dots yourself.

It does a certain violence to a character when you give her a
burning passion for two years, have her completely drop it
in a third, and then have rekindle that passion in a different 
direction without filling in the spots between.  It makes her
seem very shallow.

And really, it reduces the whole slavery question to is a 
backdrop to the more burning question of whether or not
Ron will get some nookie.

Montavilla47






From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 15:55:37 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:55:37 -0000
Subject: Elves again was: Wands and Wizards...Again
In-Reply-To: <g5l0eh+9hvc@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l5lp+ugcp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183716

Magpie:
<HUGE SNIP>
 And we can't quite just brush it aside by saying 
> that if Kreacher wanted to leave Harry and serve someone else Harry 
> would just let him and thus he isn't a slave, because Harry 
actually 
> didn't do that. Perhaps he'd do it now or in the future because he 
> now has reason to want to make Kreacher happy, but that still comes 
> down to Harry's needs and wishes.

Alla:

Okay, I know that I cut important points of your argument, but I did 
it just to show what bothers me in this argument, I think the first 
half of your sentence shows that perfectly actually.

It is the " and we can't just brush it aside" part of it.

I get this feeling that every time when we are discussing house elves 
and slavery, the argument that basically accepts the situation with 
Harry, Kreacher and sandwich one way or another and in large because 
Kreacher is indeed willing and happy to serve Harry somehow gets 
dismissed as not, I don't even know what the word is here? Not 
thought out enough? As if only the reader sat down and thought about 
it, she would see the light. 

I mean, you (hypothetical you) think that this is exact analogy to 
human slavery? I can see where you are coming from, really and I 
respect this argument.

But when I say that I do not buy House elves situation as exact 
analogy of human slavery, I am not brushing anything aside. I 
considered all the facts, I came to different conclusion than you 
did, that is all.

To me, House elves slavery does not even come CLOSE to human slavery 
and no, 
it does not all come down to Harry's needs and wishes to me.

As far as I am concerned, if it makes elves happy so be it. And when 
Kreacher wanted a different master, he should have gotten different 
master. At the end of the novel he does not want a different master, 
he is happy, so I really do not see a problem here. If he still 
wanted different master, I would absolutely see a problem though.

JMO,

Alla




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 15:57:27 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:57:27 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5l129+eaqf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l5p7+cl5s@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183717

> > Carol responds:
>  
> > But is Harry "static" (unchanged by the events around him) or 
> dynamic
> > (changed in some fundamental and lasting way by those events)?
> 
> 
> Potioncat:
> Questions:
> 1. Is static and dynamic simply types, without value? 

Montavilla47:
General Disclaimer:  Your Mileage May Vary.

Both static and dynamic characters have value in a work
of fiction.  

We like to see characters change.  But, not all characters
can, or the work would become chaotic.  We need a few
static characters to provide support for those who are 
changing.

With longer works, I don't see why characters might not
switch parts--a static character might become dynamic
and then settle into being static again.


> 2. Is there some literary rule or tradition that a character should 
> be one or the other? 

Don't know.
 
> 3. What are some examples of other static and dynamic characters?

Well, Ebenezer Scrooge would be an example of a dynamic character, 
wouldn't he?  He goes from being a crochety old miser to being the 
man who best kept Christmas.

In trying to think up other examples, I wondering how much a 
character needs to change in order to be considered dynamic.  Is
Mrs. Coulter dynamic because she goes from destroying children
to loving her daughter?  Does Jo March change from being the 
awkward ugly duckling teen to the strong, loving woman--or is
she simply growing up?  (Likewise Amy, who goes from brat to 
gentle lady of the manor?)  Dido Twite likewise goes from brattiness
to confidence and courage over the course of about two books, but
her transformation seems more dynamic than Amy's, since she was
really headed in a bad direction in "Black Hearts in Battersea."

Does Huck Finn change, or does he remain the same?  When he
famously declares he'll go to hell rather than let Jim be sent back
into slavery is that a change or would he have always felt that way?

>4. Sirius Black went from a reckless, wild youth to a marose, bitter 
> man. Is that dynamic?

I think he changed from the couragous, driven man he was in PoA,
to the morose, bitter one in OotP.  But it's hard to say whether he 
was changing, or whether this was simply part of his personality
Harry hadn't had a chance to see before.

Which is where it becomes tricky, right?  Because the seeds are
always there in the character to begin with.

If you have watched the "Up" documentaries (which follow a 
group of British schoolchildren from the ages of 7 through--
I think they are up to age 49 now), you'll see that the people
go through tremendous changes.  They change jobs, they
change spouses, they have children, their parents die....  One
of the girls goes from being a nervous wreck at 21 to a 
beaming, radiant mother at 28.

But, you can always see the seed of their adult lives in
the children that they were.





From foxmoth at qnet.com  Wed Jul 16 16:35:51 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:35:51 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5jij7+p4kh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l817+s0re@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183718

Magpie:
 It's like an  abstract problem: can you find something wrong with
slavery if a  person wants to be a slave? And I feel like it would
still be wrong. 

Pippin:
The moral objection to involuntary servitude lies in the "involuntary"
part. One could object to  servitude itself because it's unequal and
potentially vulnerable to abuse. But all dependent relationships are
like that.

If Kreacher was working for wages and had the full and equal
protection of wizarding law (for what that's worth <g>) Harry could
still give him an abusive order, and Kreacher could still feel
financially or socially or psychologically pressured to carry it out.
That would be blackmail and immoral. But we don't usually say that a
relationship is immoral simply because the potential for blackmail exists.

Pippin
  




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 16 16:48:23 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:48:23 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? /Wands and Wizards
In-Reply-To: <g5l129+eaqf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l8on+6896@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183719

> Questions:
> 1. Is static and dynamic simply types, without value? 

Magpie:
Imo, yes.

> 2. Is there some literary rule or tradition that a character should 
> be one or the other? 

Magpie:
Not at all. Some types of stories require one and some the other or 
both. I think because the modern novel is often very character-based 
people think character development is essential, but not all stories 
are character-based or deal with lots of development or need to. 
Sometimes it seems like some assume that static characters=badly 
written, as if it's a flaw if it's not there, even when the author 
him/herself wasn't interested in it. Tolkien didn't like modern 
novels or character development so it shouldn't be an insult to say 
his books aren't about that, and yet for some people it is. Things 
happen to his characters that make them change--obviously Sam and 
Frodo have very different lives than they would have otherwise. But 
they don't change in the sense of starting off as one person and 
really fundementally changing. On the contrary, the quest more brings 
out things they always were, and we watch them rise to that challenge.

I think JKR's work is similar. Part of the appeal of the books is how 
she shows familiar characters throughout the books and uses them like 
chess pieces that make the plot happen. If Snape had been a different 
type of person or James a different type of person, this might never 
have happened. But they were the person they were--and we can see 
that as clearly at 11 as we can at 39. It's not that they don't grow 
at all, but it's not about them fundementally changing. The earliest 
thing we see Snape doing in his life is looking hungrily at Lily, and 
that same kind of longing will drive the rest of his life. And even 
if it hadn't been Lily herself that was his focus, that core of Snape 
was always important. I think that's also partly why it's so 
satisfying to re-read, because we can see these clues placed early 
on. We're not watching people change, we're seeing who they are as 
shown by their choices. 

(And for goodness sake, so much of the universe is based on the 
notion of people being born who they are. They're constantly meeting 
up with personality tests and carrying the results around with them 
in such way: their house, their animagus form, their wand core, their 
wand wood, their Patronus, etc...)
 
> 3. What are some examples of other static and dynamic characters?

Magpie:
Static character: Indiana Jones, Hercule Poirot...

Dynamic character: Prince Zuko, Harvey Cheyne Jr...

But there's lots of room in between, I think.
 
> 4. Sirius Black went from a reckless, wild youth to a marose, 
bitter 
> man. Is that dynamic?

Magpie:
Nope, imo. He's the same man dealing with different circumstances. In 
fact, we're even given a moment where he's faced with the mistakes of 
his youth and says he'd make the same choice again. He regrets 
nothing!

Alla:

Okay, I know that I cut important points of your argument, but I did
it just to show what bothers me in this argument, I think the first
half of your sentence shows that perfectly actually.

It is the " and we can't just brush it aside" part of it.

I get this feeling that every time when we are discussing house elves
and slavery, the argument that basically accepts the situation with
Harry, Kreacher and sandwich one way or another and in large because
Kreacher is indeed willing and happy to serve Harry somehow gets
dismissed as not, I don't even know what the word is here? Not
thought out enough? As if only the reader sat down and thought about
it, she would see the light.

Magpie:
Maybe I should have just said that I can't brush it aside. But I 
said "we" because I think it's inherent in the situation. It's not 
that I think other people would "see the light" if they thought about 
it, but that if we're thinking about the situation--no matter what 
conclusions we draw from it (and I don't think everyone has to draw 
the same conclusions)--that's part of the situation we have to 
consider. 

For instance, I'd use the same phrase if I was saying this, which is 
looking at a different part of it: House Elves are under enchantment, 
yes, but they want to serve Wizards. And we can't just brush [that 
desire of theirs] aside because we see the real pain that Winky went 
through when she was freed against her will.

It's not that I'm saying that if everybody thought about it they'd 
see that House Elves must be owned, I'm just saying that if you're 
thinking about the problem "they should be freed" isn't a simple 
solution because it doesn't take that into account. Just as with this 
if we say that Harry would let Kreacher serve whoever he wanted to 
serve if he wanted to serve someone other than Harry so it's not a 
problem one would obviously have to say "But Kreacher did want to 
serve someone other than Harry and Harry didn't let him. (Not meaning 
that as a scolding of Harry, whose reasons for not freeing Kreacher 
or sending him to Bellatrix of Draco are understood, but as showing 
how the power imbalance works.)

Alla:
To me, House elves slavery does not even come CLOSE to human slavery
and no,
it does not all come down to Harry's needs and wishes to me.As far as 
I am concerned, if it makes elves happy so be it. And when
Kreacher wanted a different master, he should have gotten different
master. At the end of the novel he does not want a different master,
he is happy, so I really do not see a problem here. If he still
wanted different master, I would absolutely see a problem though.


Magpie:
Actually, I was not saying that House Elf slavery in general comes 
down to Harry's wishes. I was saying that a House Elf's situation as 
an Elf is decided by the wishes of his master. Even in the case of 
Kreacher that's true throughout. If he should have gotten a different 
master, he couldn't. The conflict has disappeared by the end of the 
story because Kreacher doesn't want a different master. Kreacher 
changed, not his situation. When Harry was faced with Kreacher 
earlier he didn't give him his freedom because it would have been 
dangerous to Harry and his friends.

Pippin:
The moral objection to involuntary servitude lies in the "involuntary"
part. One could object to servitude itself because it's unequal and
potentially vulnerable to abuse. But all dependent relationships are
like that.

Magpie:
No, I don't think that's all of it. I think the system where the 
House Elf is owned is something to object to. That's why the 
involuntary comes into it. It is not only vulnerable to abuse it's 
arrange for abuse. If everything elves did in canon was voluntary, we 
would not have a lot of the storylines we have in canon for House 
Elves. 

Pippin:
If Kreacher was working for wages and had the full and equal
protection of wizarding law (for what that's worth <g>) Harry could
still give him an abusive order, and Kreacher could still feel
financially or socially or psychologically pressured to carry it out.
That would be blackmail and immoral. But we don't usually say that a
relationship is immoral simply because the potential for blackmail 
exists.

Magpie:
Yes, even people who are free and have rights and legal protection 
can be vulnerable to being blackmailed or coerced illegally. I think 
they're still in a better position. Being a House Elf cuts out all 
potential for blackmail or psychological pressure because you don't 
need that much effort and it's not illegal to force them to do things 
against their will. 

-m




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 17:08:14 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:08:14 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5l129+eaqf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l9tu+n85m@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183720

Carol earlier:
>  
> > But is Harry "static" (unchanged by the events around him) or 
dynamic (changed in some fundamental and lasting way by those events)?
> 
> 
> Potioncat:
> I do so enjoy this type of thread.

Carol again:

I'm glad.
>
Potioncat: 
> Questions:
> 1. Is static and dynamic simply types, without value? 

Carol:

I'm sorry. I don't understand the question. They're not absolutes, if
that's what you mean. And "static" is not a bad thing or a value
judgment. For example, Faramir in LOTR is a static character. He
begins and ends as wise, brave, and good, untempted by the One Ring or
by power. Mr. Weasley in HP is likewise a static character, kindly,
Muggle-loving, and dominated by his wife to the end.
> 
> 2. Is there some literary rule or tradition that a character should
be one or the other?

Carol:
No. It's only a way of looking at a character. Does he (or she) change
fundamentally, learn a lesson or undergo an experience that alters his
(or her) behavior or outlook on life permanently? 

Potioncat: 
> 3. What are some examples of other static and dynamic characters?

Carol:
Take David Copperfield, who takes half the book to realize that his
ideal wife is not Dora but Agnes. That's a fundamental, life-changing
decision even though it relates "only" to domestic bliss (which was a
big deal to the Victorians). Even Pollyanna, who preaches optimism to
everybody then falls and becomes bedridden and has to learn to
practice what she preached is an example of a dynamic character, if a
rather simplistic one.
> 
> 4. Sirius Black went from a reckless, wild youth to a marose, bitter
man. Is that dynamic?

Carol:

We need to look at Sirius Black as we see him in the books, not his
off-page, youthful self. He goes from a half-mad escaped prisoner
intent on murdering his former friend to a man Harry is happy to
accept as his godfather in a few short chapters, changed, I suppose,
by Harry's act of mercy, so in PoA he seems to be a dynamic character.
When we next hear of him, he's something like he must have been before
the Potters' death, fleeing from WW "justice" on a stolen hippogriff
which probably provides the same sort of thrill as a flying
motorcycle. Still in the Harry's concerned godfather phase, he comes
to Hogwarts to live off rats and sleep in a cave just to be near and
(theoretically) protect Harry. As an Order member confined to the
house, he changes again, becoming moody and morose, happy only when
Harry is near him (perhaps living in the past and half-believing that
Harry is James). He continues to live vicariously through Harry, again
becoming the recklessly brave Order member who dies fighting
Bellatrix. Aside from the escape from Azkaban-induced near-madness,
are these fundamental changes or are they all aspects of his inborn
personality: recklessness, arrogance, brooding when he can't find an
outlet in action, living in the past? Or is the brooding a remnant of
his time in Azkaban? I don't think there's an absolute correct answer.
He fluctuates, certainly, but does he develop? I'd say that he has two
life-changing experiences, twelve years in Azkaban and Harry's mercy.
After that, he's what circumstances make him, depending on whether
he's free to be his reckless self or confined to a home he hates. Had
he been sent back to Azkaban for murdering Wormtail (assuming that he
didn't have his soul sucked) I think he'd have slid quickly into
madness--which would, of course, have made him a dynamic character
albeit a tragic one.
> 
> Potioncat, who only threw in the Sirius question to keep the post 
canon based.
>
Carol:
Now she tells me! :-)

How about Percy Weasley? He's still more concerned with rules and
authority than the rest of his family, to judge from the epilogue, but
he learns that authority isn't always right and that family is more
important than his career. That moment when he makes a joke and Fred
laughs and suddenly Percy is holding the dead Fred in his arms is
almost unbearably poignant. I think it's a permanent lesson even
though Percy will never stop being pompous.

Carol, who doesn't have any absolute answers but is only presenting
these categories as a way of examining character development




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Wed Jul 16 17:53:06 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:53:06 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Saving Private Draco SPOILERS for Dresden files
In-Reply-To: <g5jm9t+hg66@eGroups.com>
References: <g56h15+79b9@eGroups.com> <g5jm9t+hg66@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807161053l5a08b8bdsa0e5461e1fc7b9b9@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183721

Carol:
Carol, who wouldn't trust Dumbledore anywhere near the One Ring
because he's more like Saruman the White than Gandalf the Grey

Lynda:
At least Dumbledore, for the most part anyway, recognized his weakness and
was able to stay away from the lure of power. Saruman had no such insight.

Lynda--who is currently about halfway through reading the first Dresden
Files novel--again.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 18:09:54 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:09:54 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5l3si+nesn@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5ldhi+s2qj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183722

Carol earlier:
> > > 
> > > IMO, Harry's still owning Kreacher at the end of the book, and
still treating Kreacher as he did at 12 GP where Kreacher was happy
(once he accepted Harry as his master) is only a problem for readers
who expected Harry to free the Houwe-Elves at the end of the book. 
> 
Montavilla47 responded:
> I think it depends on what you look at as the problem.  I'm quite
willing to agree that staying on as Harry's slave and bringing him a
sandwich is fine for Kreacher.  It's what he wants to do from all that
we can see.

Carol again:

Exactly. And surely it's Kreacher's happiness, not Harry's, that
matters most here. If they're both happy, all the better.

Montavilla 47: 
> I thought what JKR did with the House Elves was really interesting
in GoF.  Because, you know, there have been societies in which the
institution of slavery did seem to work.  The concept of consistently
being paid for your labor is only a few hundred years old.

Carol:
True, and the WW is medieval in some respects (class structure and
technology, for example). But human slaves never had the psychological
need to serve that characterizes House-Elves, so the analogy is imperfect.

Montavilla47:
> Does it seem like I have a problem when I point out that the
conclusion she reaches is that slavery is okay as long as you treat
your slaves well?

Carol responds:
I'm sorry if my use of the word "problem" offended you. But I don't
quite agree with your conclusion. JKR is not condoning human slavery;
she's dealing with a single House-Elf and a single House-Elf owner who
didn't choose his situation. Harry must deal with the situation as
best he can, and the short-term solution is certainly to treat
Kreacher as he wants to be treated and let him be a typical House-Elf
(which is a whole lot better than mistreating him so that he rebels by
living in filth and muttering to himself). It's even possible that
Kreacher may pick up more enlightened views from his new master. But
poco a poco. You can't ethically free a House-Elf who still views
freedom as a threat and an insult and you certainly can't ethically
send him from his home with no prospect of employment elsewhere.
(Maybe Hogwarts would accept him, but what if he'd rather stay with
Master Harry at 12 GP?)

It's not a matter of "the House-Elf question." It's a matter of what's
best for the individual House-Elf in Harry's care, Dobby being dead.
(Wouldn't Dobby also have chosen to serve Master Harry, for small
wages and clothes, if he'd lived?) Why not make Kreacher happy, as he
would have done for Dobby if Dobby had survived?

Montavilla47: 
> What I mind is having to deal with Hermione's obsession on the
subject for two books--then have her completely drop the S.P.E.W.
project as soon as her friend acquires a slave.
> 
> But, then in DH, Hermione takes a *different* stance (she adopts
Ron's stance, actually, that the slaves ought to do what they want to
do and ought to be treated kindly about it), and we're supposed to
pretend that this was her perspective all along.
> 
> Now, it's not like you can't connect the dots between anti-slavery
Hermione of GoF and pro-slavery Hermione of DH.  But, in order to do
so, you have to make up a couple of the dots yourself.
> 
> It does a certain violence to a character when you give her a
burning passion for two years, have her completely drop it in a third,
and then have rekindle that passion in a different direction without
filling in the spots between.  It makes her seem very shallow.
<snip>
>
Carol responds:

I understand your feelings and I agree that there's a gap during which
Hermione's view apparently changes but the reader doesn't know what's
going on in her mind. But I disagree that her changed perspective
makes her shallow. (If it appears that way, perhaps it's a flaw in the
writing.)

What about the possibility that Hermione was *wrong* in GoF and OoP,
too radical and not thinking about the House-Elves from their
perspective? It seems to me that Ron was right all along. The
House-Elves didn't want to be freed, as evidenced by their refusal to
clean the Gryffindor common room. (Their being "slaves" didn't prevent
them from making that decision; neither Wizards nor some magical
compulsion forced them to clean that room against their will.) They
*are* happy because they *are* treated well. Kreacher, in contrast, is
*unhappy* because he's treated like scum (a view that he reinforces
with his filthy loincloth and rebellious muttering) and because he has
no respect for his masters (Sirius and then Harry). IMO, Hermione
finally understands House-Elf psychology in DH, which enables her to
help Harry and Kreacher to understand and respect each other. (Ron has
understood it all along, but has failed to apply it to Kreacher.)

Because most human slaves, even those who are well treated, naturally
want to be free (as long as they still have employment and a place to
live; freedom that leads to destitution and homeless is a very dubious
gift), GoF/OOP!Hermione thinks that House-Elves want the same thing.
In HBP, we don't see her views on House-Elves, but she's obviously
aware that her friend Harry now has an unwanted House-Elf who can't
safely be freed and must, like it or not, be controlled in some way,
the most humane being to send him to Hogwarts where he can choose to
work or not. (The other House-Elves must have been as embarrassed and
disgusted by him as they were by Winky.) Possibly, Harry's dilemma
(and Kreacher's predicament) cause her to rethink the matter off-page,
to start thinking about House-Elves as beings different from human
beings with different needs and a different psychology. I don't *know*
that that's what happened, but it seems to me that she arrives at a
more mature and realistic perspective in DH. Meantime, it seems from
her conversation with Griphook that she still wants to free the
House-Elves, but it becomes a long-term goal that must be accomplished
with the House-Elves' consent and cooperation, not imposed on them
unwillingly by Wizards acting for them in their supposed interest, not
so different from missionaries converting the natives "for their own
good."

At any rate, House-Elf liberation was never a goal that HRH could
realistically accomplish, and never a concern of Ron's or Harry's,
only of Hermione's. Just as we're free to believe that Harry installed
Snape's portrait in the Headmaster's office (and, if we like, to
believe that he arranged for Snape to receive a posthumous Order of
Merlin), we're free to believe that Hermione, who seems to have a high
position in the Department of Magical Law (or Law Enforcement) in the
epilogue, continued her quest for House-Elf rights, if not for
liberation, at least for fair treatment and representation. What's
needed, IMO, is not freedom for House-Elves who don't want it, but
some way of making their voices heard. (Do they want education or
training in something besides housekeeping? Do they want opportunities
in other fields? do they want retirement benefits or vacations?
Probably not, unless they're Dobbies, but only the House-Elves know
for sure.)

But all of that is outside the scope of the books and outside Harry's
quest, which was to rid the WW of Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Any
other problems facing the WW must wait to be resolved, off-page, not
necessarily by our heroes. And meanwhile, Harry has his own personal
House-Elf. He knows exactly how that House-Elf wants to be treated.
And there's nothing for it, IMO, but to give old Kreacher what he
wants, fair treatment and the chance to serve a master he respects,
until Kreacher dies. (I'm torn about honoring Kreacher's wish, if he
still holds it, to have his head mounted in the hallway along with
those of his ancestors. I'd say that once Kreacher dies, it's time to
find a new home!)

Carol, who thinks that Hermione changes from radical idealism to a
more practical liberalism as she matures




From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 19:51:27 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:51:27 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5l129+eaqf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5ljfv+j7d8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183723

> Potioncat:
> Questions:
> 1. Is static and dynamic simply types, without value? 

Zara:
Yes. Having every character be dynamic would, as Montavilla said, 
make things too chaotic. 

> Potioncat5:
> 2. Is there some literary rule or tradition that a character should 
> be one or the other? 

Zara:
Rules are made to be broken, of course. But typically, the 
protagonist of a book is dynamic. I would say that HP conforms to 
this rule, and Harry is a dynamic character. He grows in 
understanding, it seems to me, going from a very black and white view 
of his world, to one more nuanced. His attitudes towards characters 
including his father, Sirius, ALbus, Snape, Regulus, and Voldemort, 
change and develop over the course of the series, for example.

Villains and/or antagonists are often also dynamic. I'd say in HP, 
Snape and Draco are examples. Snape ahs a dramatic, 180-degree shift 
in loyalties we learn about long after the fact; in addition to 
which, I think an argumenb can be made for a further evolution of his 
attitudes as evidences by some of the later bits of "The Prince's 
Tale" and his abandonment of the keep Harry alive for Lily plan in 
favor of Albus's plan. Draco goes fromt eh arrogant wanna-be Death 
Eater to the desperate young man who will do what it takes to keep 
himself anfd his family out of harm, but has no desire to cooperate 
with Voldemort.

It is usual for other characters than these two categories to be 
static. I think HP breaks this rule, but then it is a seven book 
series with many young characters, so I think it can do so without 
confusing us. Neville's growth being one example.





From foxmoth at qnet.com  Wed Jul 16 21:39:27 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:39:27 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5jg5i+pf63@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5lpqf+ucfq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183724

Carol: 
> Compare Frodo, who is obviously changed by his experiences,
including his own failure (and its near-disastrous consequences), to
the point where even Saruman says, "You have grown, Halfling."

Pippin:
Does Frodo change that much? He couldn't bring himself to cast The
Ring into the fire at Bag End, and he still couldn't make himself
do it when he got to Mt Doom. He was growing discontented with life in
the Shire before he left it, and he was still discontented when he
returned. 

Saruman's observation is a  strange one, because Saruman didn't know
Frodo. They'd spoken only once before, when Frodo said he'd give the
beggared Saruman some pipeweed if he had any. Saruman must be
comparing Frodo to the other Hobbits, most of whom would indeed  have
been satisfied to kill him.  (Hang on, I'm coming to a canon point here.)

But Saruman's intuition is correct. Frodo was like the other Hobbits
once, and he has indeed grown in his desire to show pity and mercy.
When Frodo first heard Gollum's story, he did not feel sorry for
Gollum and did not want to. He did not understand why Gandalf pitied
the creature  and showed him mercy, "not to strike without need." It
wasn't until he saw Gollum for himself that Frodo began to understand.

Harry was similarly bewildered by Dumbledore's treatment of Snape and
Draco. In HBP he thought Dumbledore was simply too obsessed with
seeing the good in people to recognize the bad. But Harry's plotline
is in a way the reverse of Frodo's. He'd seen Snape  all along, but it
wasn't until he learned Snape's history that he felt more than a
moment of sympathy for him. It was, as we know, too late by then for
mercy, but he did pity "Poor Severus." Harry then approves of mercy to
Draco and his family, allowing the Malfoys to remain  in the Great
Hall despite their history  as villains and enemies. 

Harry changes in another way that Frodo doesn't -- Frodo and Harry
both have zero interest in romance to start with. Frodo's sexuality
remains not so much static as non-existent. But Harry's grows, from a
shallow interest in Cho to a rewarding partnership with Ginny. It's
growth proceeding normally, but does that make it less meaningful?


Pippin




From sartoris22 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 16 16:48:18 2008
From: sartoris22 at yahoo.com (sartoris22)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:48:18 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5l5p7+cl5s@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5l8oi+jsck@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183725

> > > Carol responds:
> > > But is Harry "static" (unchanged by the events around him)
> > > or dynamic (changed in some fundamental and lasting way by
> > > those events)?

> > Potioncat:
> > Questions:
> > 1. Is static and dynamic simply types, without value?

> Montavilla47:
> 3. What are some examples of other static and dynamic characters?

Sartoris22:

I think the most frustrating character in terms of development is
Ron. His development is so inconsistent. For example, he shows
courage in the first two books by helping defeat the troll and
trying to hex Malfoy with slugs. But he then tells Hermione not
to jinx Malfoy in POA and genrerally stops defending himself
against Malfoy. He helps win the quidditch cup in book OOTP,
but then is an insecure quidditch player in HBP. Shouldn't
helping to win the cup in OOTP have given him confidence in
HBP? And what about his relationship with Hermione? In HBP
he's broken up with Lavender and is consoling Hermione at
Dumbledore's funeral. He knows he likes Hermione. However,
in DH he hasn't even asked her out yet. Of all the characters,
Rowling, to me, treates Ron the most inconsistently and unfairly.



From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 00:34:10 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:34:10 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand
In-Reply-To: <g5jclk+9b6e@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5m422+lsm7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183726

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:

> > Carol:
 
> > How could Bellatrix still have the wand that Ollivander had made 
> > for her decades before?
 
 
> Pippin:

> Bella's a clever witch. She could have found a way to hide it before
> she was captured. But since the damage to Mad-eye indicates she went
> down fighting,  I think she must have recovered it once Voldemort 
> took over the ministry. 


zanooda:

We were never given any details about Bellatrix's arrest, iirc. We
don't know if she "went down fighting", although I agree with you that
it would be out of character for Bella to come quietly. Mad-Eye's
injury (you meant the missing chunk of his nose here, right?) was
inflicted by Rosier, who chose to die fighting (GoF 589).

I agree that Bella could have hidden her wand when she saw that the
Aurors were coming for her, because maybe she was still hoping to talk
her way out of it - according to DD, the Ministry didn't have a lot of
evidence against her and her accomplices. But to be able to talk her
way out of it, Bella needed to get rid of her wand, because Priori
Incantatem would have shown the Cruciatus Curse cast recently.

This leaves one problem - how did she hide her wand? If she hid it in
the place where she was arrested, the Aurors would have found it. She
could have somehow sent her wand away (like DD sent Harry's things to
The Burrow in HBP), but wouldn't she need a wand to do this :-)? Oh
well, maybe Bella was the one who did the actual torturing, so one of
her accomplices magicked her wand away. Her wand was definitely the
most incriminating of all!

As for your idea about Bella recovering  her wand after the Ministry
takeover - I'm not sure, she had her wand in both OotP and HBP. Maybe
it was some other wand, although Hermione was sure that the walnut
wand was "the wand that killed Sirius". Maybe it was just Hermione's 
assumption, but still, I like the idea about hiding the wand better :-).




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 17 02:04:40 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:04:40 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5m422+lsm7@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5m9bo+llqr@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183727

Pippin: 
> Bella's a clever witch. She could have found a way to hide it 
> before she was captured. But since the damage to Mad-eye indicates
> she went down fighting,  I think she must have recovered it once 
> Voldemort took over the ministry. 

> zanooda:
> We were never given any details about Bellatrix's arrest, iirc. We
> don't know if she "went down fighting", although I agree with you 
> that it would be out of character for Bella to come quietly. Mad-
> Eye's injury (you meant the missing chunk of his nose here, right?) 
> was inflicted by Rosier, who chose to die fighting (GoF 589).

Jen: I think Pippin's referring to Mad-Eye's presence at the two 
prior Pensieve trials with both eyes intact (and his leg as far as we 
know).  Then he's absent at the Longbottom trial.  It's a decent 
extrapolation one of the best aurors went after the Longbottom 
torturers given the 'wave of fury' over the fate of the popular 
aurors and the timing of the event when 'everyone thought they were 
safe.'  (GOF, "The Pensieve")  Mad-Eye worked directly with the 
Longbottoms; you'd think the guy who watched Karkaroff and Bagman 
brought to justice - minor figures at best - wouldn't miss the most 
important trial of all.


> As for your idea about Bella recovering  her wand after the Ministry
> takeover - I'm not sure, she had her wand in both OotP and HBP. 
> Maybe it was some other wand, although Hermione was sure that the
> walnut wand was "the wand that killed Sirius". Maybe it was just 
> Hermione's assumption, but still, I like the idea about hiding the
> wand better :-).
 
Jen: I favor Bella hiding her wand too.  Maybe it was in her vault & 
the Goblins wouldn't let the Ministry search it because they didn't 
have proper clearance. <g>  The MOM doesn't have a system of checks 
and balances with Gringotts, right?  Not like the board of governors 
for Hogwarts.  (The board of governors is connected to the MOM, isn't 
it?)




From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 02:19:45 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:19:45 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5l8oi+jsck@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5ma81+d4fr@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183728

> Sartoris22:
> I think the most frustrating character in terms of development is
> Ron. His development is so inconsistent. For example, he shows
> courage in the first two books by helping defeat the troll and
> trying to hex Malfoy with slugs. But he then tells Hermione not
> to jinx Malfoy in POA and genrerally stops defending himself
> against Malfoy. 

Zara:
PoA has one of his shining moments of courage, though.

> PoA:
> "No, Harry!" Hermione gasped in a petrified whisper; Ron, however, 
spoke to Black.

> "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too!" he said 
fiercely, though the effort of standing upright was draining him of 
still more color, and he swayed slightly as he spoke.

> Something flickered in Black's shadowed eyes.

> "Lie down," he said quietly to Ron. "You will damage that leg even 
more."

> "Did you hear me?" Ron said weakly, though he was clinging 
painfully to Harry to stay upright. "You'll have to kill all three of 
us!"

> Sartoris22:
> And what about his relationship with Hermione? In HBP
> he's broken up with Lavender and is consoling Hermione at
> Dumbledore's funeral. He knows he likes Hermione. However,
> in DH he hasn't even asked her out yet. 

Zara:
Surely his breaking up with Lav Lav is the least of his problems in 
that department? I think he fears Hermione will not want him. In HBP 
he's still worked up about her relationship, such as it is, with 
Krum. And I don't find this entirely impossible to believe. I'm not 
suggesting he thinks she dislikes him - they, together with Harry, 
are best friends. I think he worries she is not interested "in that 
way". Isn't this the point of the scene with the locket Horcrux?





From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 02:29:33 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:29:33 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5jisi+tt8g@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5maqe+6kqf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183729

> Magpie:
> I considered him to have done that in PS when he attacked Crabbe and 
> Goyle and also won the last ten points for standing up to the Trio.  
> 
> Neville grows up and there are more superficial changes to him, but I 
> think Neville's choices show who he is in first year and he just 
> keeps showing that same character throughout. Other people finally 
> see him as the brave person he always was, and Neville loses his 
> outer timid demeanor, but I really don't think his character 
> fundamentally changes at all. It might take Harry longer to see him 
> clearly.

Zara:
To be considered dynamic, a character does not need to change 
fundamentally, at least not according to the reference I looked it up 
in. A change in insight or attitude qualifies. Neville was always 
brave, I agree. But in DH, he became a leader, and not merely by being 
brave as he always was, and happening to win a following thereby, but 
consciously. He explains to Harry in DH that he stood up to the 
Carrows, because he had seen Harry doing it in OotP with Umbridge, and 
saw/felt how important that was to him and to others.






From ceridwennight at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 17 02:51:08 2008
From: ceridwennight at hotmail.com (Ceridwen)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:51:08 -0000
Subject: Harry's Character... Saving Private... Wands and Wizards... Elves...
In-Reply-To: <g5jg5i+pf63@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5mc2s+921h@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183730

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183710
Saving Private Draco
Carol:
> My sense of that passage (DD at King's Cross)  is that he's afraid 
> of being seduced by the Elder Wand itself, of becoming another
> Voldemort or Grindelwald if he uses it to kill. 

Ceridwen:
I immediately thought of Biblical characters from the Old Testament 
who were not allowed to reach a fulfillment: Moses the fulfillment of 
entering the Holy Land because of his failings (anger), and David, 
who was not allowed to rule over a kingdom at peace because he was a 
war leader.  The Holy Land and a kingdom at peace was left for the 
next generation, as the ownership of the Hallows is left to Harry.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183706
Wands and Wizards... again
Carol:
> But is Harry "static" (unchanged by the events around him) or 
> dynamic (changed in some fundamental and lasting way by those 
events)?
*(snip)*
> We see what seems to be a fundamental change at the end of SS/PS 
> when he's learned who he is: he's no longer the little nobody who 
> sleeps under the stairs but a famous Wizard.

Ceridwen:
I think the change did happened in PS/SS, and the rest of the series 
confirmed it.  I don't think there was any further change except the 
ones you'd expect for a child growing into an adult.

I think this ties in with choices revealing instead of influencing 
who a person is.  It sounds a lot like Determinism.  The series seems 
to show, as several people have pointed out, that the core of a 
person remains static no matter what happens outside of that person 
to reveal those core characteristics.  In PS/SS, Harry learns who he 
really is, which frees up aspects of his character which were hidden 
by his self-view of the boy who sleeps under the stairs.  The real 
change for Harry is in learning information, not a movement through 
learning a lesson.  For Sirius, I think we see a reaction to his not 
being able to exercise his reckless and adventuring characteristics 
when he's stuck in Grimauld Place in OotP, not a change in 
characteristics.  So, I think the story is more of an exploration of 
those aspects of character, not a growth due to outside events and 
inner rumination or realization.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183712
Elves again...
Kemper:
> Kreacher wanted a different master other than Harry initially. 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183719
Harry's character development...
Alla:
> As far as I am concerned, if it makes elves happy so be it. And when
> Kreacher wanted a different master, he should have gotten different
> master. At the end of the novel he does not want a different master,
> he is happy, so I really do not see a problem here.

Magpie:
> Kreacher changed, not his situation.

Ceridwen:
All of that for this:
Kreacher wanted a different master at one point.  I understand, as 
Magpie and others have pointed out, that it would have compromised 
the Order for him to be sent where he wanted to be sent, but the 
point is being made that, if an elf wants a different master, he or 
she would be able to get one if he or she was not a slave.  Kreacher 
couldn't get one on his own, he needed to be given clothes in order 
to do that, and that is the one thing the Order couldn't do.  It was 
convenient for the Order to be able to keep Kreacher under his 
objections, but he was still a slave.

If Kreacher had been given his choice when he first made it, to serve 
Bellatrix or Draco, he would not have reached the point where his 
situation changed and he was content to serve Harry.  So, for me, the 
fact remains that Kreacher only changed his mind because he was not 
free to leave his position, which to me means he was a slave.

I suppose this could go along with the whole Determinism thread in 
the series: Kreacher was meant to serve Harry, so conditions made it 
impossible for him to leave his position before he found that out.  
This rubs me the wrong way, since I'm more of a Free Will type.

Ceridwen.




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 17 03:11:14 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:11:14 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5l3si+nesn@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5md8i+kqqc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183731

Montavilla:
> Now, it's not like you can't connect the dots between anti-slavery
> Hermione of GoF and pro-slavery Hermione of DH.  But, in 
> order to do so, you have to make up a couple of the dots yourself.

Jen: Why is Hermione pro-slavery in DH?  I get that she downgraded her 
grassroots liberation movement to humane treatment for Kreacher.  
Improving the lot of one house elf did a heckuva lot more than S.P.E.W 
and the wooly knitted hats combined though.  What's pro-slavery about 
Hermione trying to do something about an excruciating situation in 
front of her?




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 03:40:16 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:40:16 -0000
Subject: Neville as a dynamic character (Was: Harry's character development: Static or Dy
In-Reply-To: <g5maqe+6kqf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5mev0+f2b3@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183732

Zara wrote:
> To be considered dynamic, a character does not need to change 
> fundamentally, at least not according to the reference I looked it up 
> in. A change in insight or attitude qualifies.

Carol responds:

That's the problem: the sources are inconsistent. I even found one
that says a dynamic and a round character are the same thing, which is
simply not true.

Zara:
 Neville was always brave, I agree. But in DH, he became a leader, and
not merely by being brave as he always was, and happening to win a
following thereby, but consciously. He explains to Harry in DH that he
stood up to the Carrows, because he had seen Harry doing it in OotP
with Umbridge, and saw/felt how important that was to him and to others.

Carol:
I agree that Neville is a dynamic character, but I think that the
change in him is profound and fundamental. Yes, he was always brave,
but he was not always confident and resourceful. In books 1 through 4,
he's low man on the totem pole (though the encounter with the Crucio'd
spider in GoF marks the beginning of a change in him, IMO. Until then,
he's been terrified of Snape. Witnessing the Cruciatus Curse reminds
him that the real enemy is Bellatrix Lestrange and her DE cronies--one
of whom, unknown to him, is casting that curse). In OoP, we see a new
determination in him (though he's still struggling with his father's
wand) and a fierce courage at the MoM where he actually confronts, and
is tortured by, Bellatrix. It's odd, but I don't recall much about
Neville in HBP except that Harry treats him with more respect and
calls him a friend, but in DH, he really comes into his element,
becoming a leader and a rebel, culminating with the spectacular
slaying of the monster Nagini with a sword that gives (or lends)
itself only to valiant Gryffindors in dire peril.

Neville always had the potential to become a leader, but it takes a
crisis to bring it out. As for his self-esteem, I have a feeling that
his memory problems and lack of confidence and all the other
insecurities that he showed in the early books are pretty much a thing
of the past. Neville has admirers now, which he's never had before.
(What a change from the Yule Ball, when it was a disgrace to be his
date.) Being Neville, I doubt that he'll let it go to his head. He's
still a budding Herbology professor, after all.

Carol, noting that, yep, "budding" is a pun 





From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 17 04:27:30 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:27:30 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5maqe+6kqf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5mhni+ljl6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183733

> > Magpie:
> > I considered him to have done that in PS when he attacked Crabbe 
and 
> > Goyle and also won the last ten points for standing up to the 
Trio.  
> > 
> > Neville grows up and there are more superficial changes to him, 
but I 
> > think Neville's choices show who he is in first year and he just 
> > keeps showing that same character throughout. Other people 
finally 
> > see him as the brave person he always was, and Neville loses his 
> > outer timid demeanor, but I really don't think his character 
> > fundamentally changes at all. It might take Harry longer to see 
him 
> > clearly.
> 
> Zara:
> To be considered dynamic, a character does not need to change 
> fundamentally, at least not according to the reference I looked it 
up 
> in. A change in insight or attitude qualifies. Neville was always 
> brave, I agree. But in DH, he became a leader, and not merely by 
being 
> brave as he always was, and happening to win a following thereby, 
but 
> consciously. He explains to Harry in DH that he stood up to the 
> Carrows, because he had seen Harry doing it in OotP with Umbridge, 
and 
> saw/felt how important that was to him and to others.


Magpie:
But this happens off-screen and we're told about it. I'm not denying 
that Neville goes from a scaredy-cat who always messes things up 
because he's nervous and a leader who's confident. That is a change. 
It's just fundamental character is so important in this universe it's 
hard for me to consider him fundamentally changed. 

As a character I just tend to think of him always playing the same 
role he played from Book I. That to me seems very much the same 
throughout the books, starting back in PS. He's certainly changing. 
He's not completely static. He goes from being unconfident to being 
confident. It's an important change. It's just that fundemental 
character seems so important in this story, and Neville's choices 
showed who he was back in first year just as they did in seventh. He 
went from being the scaredy-cat who turned brave in the crunch to 
being the mild-mannered guy who turned brave in the crunch (always 
using Harry as his model). We're told he became a leader but he's not 
doing that on page because we're back in the woods with the Trio.

-m




From happyjoeysmiley at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 04:43:31 2008
From: happyjoeysmiley at yahoo.com (Happy Smiley)
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:43:31 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Scary Characters
Message-ID: <528488.71758.qm@web46210.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183734

> Peggy now: I think Barty Crouch Sr. would be a good nominee
> too. Without his concern for upholding his reputation, events
> couldn't have unfolded like they did in GoF.

> Cat: Yes I do believe that the Book6/Riddle was indeed scary
[SNIP]
> But the character that I find truly terrifying is Greyback
[SNIP]
> his deliberate cruelty is so completely unforgivable it makes
> me shudder.

> Maria: Lucius often resorts to bribery and blackmail to get
> what he wants. The kind of power he holds over the government
> and Minister is what makes him an intimidating and formidable
> opponent.

Good points indeed!

I think Crouch Sr.. and Lucius Malfoy had a similar root
cause for their actions - hunger to get the best recognition
in their respective circles. This flaw drove them to do mad
and scary things. Yet Crouch Sr. is better than Lucius Malfoy
and this, I think, is because of the difference in the society
they wanted themselves to be associated with. Cause for
Voldemort's cruelty was similar - he wanted to be both
immortal and the most powerful. These people care only
about the ends and not the means to achieve them.

I agree with Cat that Greyback's cruelty is "motiveless
malignity" but I'd also say this is similar to that of
Bellatrix and Crouch Jr. Their reward for cruelty is
nothing but a cheap sadistic pleasure. Greyback and
Bellatrix are explicit about their dirty personalities
while Crouch Jr. does it with a heart-wrenching (!)
"I'm innocent, please" cry! Urgh! Greyback seemed to
expect something in return from Voldemort as per some
of his statements in the "Malfoy Manor" chapter of DH.
How stupid of him! I really don't think Bellatrix and
Crouch Jr. were stupid enough to think that Voldemort
will do something for *them* as a reward for their
loyalty to him - they *know* he won't. Just being
with him and doing all those rubbish things they
did gave them pleasure! They didn't seem to want
anything else apart from that! *That* is scary.

Yes, both categories are not justified - both are
unforgivable, punishable, criminal categories. Yet
I think it is difficult to correct people who *enjoy*
being cruel while one may probably hope to correct
those who don't *mind* being cruel in order to *get*
something like say power / recognition.  JMHO.~Joey



From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 05:52:43 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 05:52:43 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5m9bo+llqr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5mmnb+jb04@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183735

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> wrote:

> I think Pippin's referring to Mad-Eye's presence at the two 
> prior Pensieve trials with both eyes intact (and his leg as 
> far as we know). Then he's absent at the Longbottom trial.  
> It's a decent extrapolation one of the best aurors went after 
> the Longbottom torturers 


zanooda:

Yeah, it's not in the book, but I find it very believable that Mad-Eye
was one of the Aurors that took on Bella and Co., although if he lost
his eye because of Bella, I would expect it to be mentioned. However,
he could have missed the trial for some other reason than his
injuries, IMO, especially considering how easily wounds are healed in
WW. And I still vote for Bella hiding her wand and not resisting
arrest in hopes  that the Ministry didn't have any solid evidence
against her. 

  
> Jen wrote: 

> I favor Bella hiding her wand too. Maybe it was in her vault & 
> the Goblins wouldn't let the Ministry search it because they didn't 
> have proper clearance. 


zanooda:

Right, maybe she hid the wand just in case she will be arrested, so
that it could not incriminate her. I assumed she hid it right before
being caught and I couldn't figure out how she managed to do this. But
now I think that maybe you are right about Gringotts. Maybe Bella hid
the wand there after the crime and used some other wand instead - DEs
killed many wizards and, I suppose, they had some spare wands. 




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 08:03:07 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:03:07 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5ldhi+s2qj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5mubr+rq87@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183736

> Montavilla 47: 
> > I thought what JKR did with the House Elves was really interesting
> in GoF.  Because, you know, there have been societies in which the
> institution of slavery did seem to work.  The concept of consistently
> being paid for your labor is only a few hundred years old.
> 
> Carol:
> True, and the WW is medieval in some respects (class structure and
> technology, for example). But human slaves never had the psychological
> need to serve that characterizes House-Elves, so the analogy is imperfect.

Montavilla47:
I don't know if the point is worth arguing, but if humans don't have a
psychological need to serve, then I wonder how volunteer organizations,
monasteries, convents, and temples ever get organized.


> Montavilla47:
> > Does it seem like I have a problem when I point out that the
> conclusion she reaches is that slavery is okay as long as you treat
> your slaves well?
> 
> Carol responds:
> I'm sorry if my use of the word "problem" offended you. But I don't
> quite agree with your conclusion. JKR is not condoning human slavery;

Montavilla47:
I would wholeheartedly agree with you, except that JKR drew the 
connection between the House-Elves and the horrors of slavery in an
interview.  Now, granted, she didn't specify the horrors of "human"
slavery in the interview, but I think it was implied.  

If she intends to connect House-Elves and human slavery, then
she's deliberately creating an ambiguous view of slavery.  On one
hand, it's terrible and the slaves suffer from it.  On the other hand,
the owners seem to have no choice but to go along with the system,
because the alternative, freeing the slaves, is worse.

And the best solution within the books is to accept one's place as
a slave owner and treat your position responsibly by acting in a 
kindly manner toward your slave.  In other words:  Slavery is okay
as long as you treat your slaves well.

There is absolutely no indication from the books that Hermione 
will continue to work for House-Elf rights, or to end the institution,
however poco a poco.  Just as there is no indication in the books 
that the anti-werewolf legislation will ever be overturned, now 
that the only civilized werewolf in the wizarding world is dead.

Carol:
> It's not a matter of "the House-Elf question." It's a matter of what's
> best for the individual House-Elf in Harry's care, Dobby being dead.
> (Wouldn't Dobby also have chosen to serve Master Harry, for small
> wages and clothes, if he'd lived?) Why not make Kreacher happy, as he
> would have done for Dobby if Dobby had survived?

Montavilla47:
Again, you seem to think I want something different to happen.  
I don't actually.  I'm simply telling you what message I'm getting from 
what *does* happen.

You can get a different message, if you like.  I certainly don't mind.
But I can't help noticing that, in order to get that different message,
we would need to infer things that don't happen in the books.  Such
as Hermione taking up House-Elf rights at a later point.



> Carol responds:
> I understand your feelings and I agree that there's a gap during which
> Hermione's view apparently changes but the reader doesn't know what's
> going on in her mind. But I disagree that her changed perspective
> makes her shallow. (If it appears that way, perhaps it's a flaw in the
> writing.)
> 
> What about the possibility that Hermione was *wrong* in GoF and OoP,
> too radical and not thinking about the House-Elves from their
> perspective? It seems to me that Ron was right all along. 

Montavilla47:
I agree with you.  It seemed perfectly obvious to me that Ron 
was right and that Hermione was wrong about the House Elf 
situation.  

But, since Hermione never acknowledges that she was taking
the wrong approach, it's really hard to decide whether she
matured in her thinking or simply dropped it because it became
inconvenient.   

Now, had there been a moment when she said, "You know, Ron,
you were right about the House Elves," it would have been clearer.


Carol:
>IMO, Hermione
> finally understands House-Elf psychology in DH, which enables her to
> help Harry and Kreacher to understand and respect each other. (Ron has
> understood it all along, but has failed to apply it to Kreacher.)

Montavilla47:
So, when the heck does she come to this understanding about House-Elf
psychology?  That's what I don't understand.

Carol:
> Possibly, Harry's dilemma
> (and Kreacher's predicament) cause her to rethink the matter off-page,
> to start thinking about House-Elves as beings different from human
> beings with different needs and a different psychology. I don't *know*
> that that's what happened, but it seems to me that she arrives at a
> more mature and realistic perspective in DH. 

Montavilla47:
Possibly, but we don't see her address that at all in HBP, when she
reasonably ought to have, such Harry was certainly wrestling with
the issue of owning an unwilling slave.






From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 17 13:16:58 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:16:58 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5mubr+rq87@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5ngoa+j9t1@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183737

> Montavilla47:
> Again, you seem to think I want something different to happen.  
> I don't actually.  I'm simply telling you what message I'm getting
> from what *does* happen.
> 
> You can get a different message, if you like.  I certainly don't 
> mind.  But I can't help noticing that, in order to get that 
> different message, we would need to infer things that don't happen
> in the books.  Such as Hermione taking up House-Elf rights at a
> later point.

Jen: You don't have to infer that though, you just have to infer that 
Hermione's fundamental character didn't change as is being postulated 
in the other thread, and that she continues to care about house elf 
rights like she always has.  

You answered my previous question in this post, and just like you 
would have to see an action such as Hermione demanding Harry give 
Kreacher clothes in order to believe she's anti-slavery (or other 
example that fits for you), I would need to hear Hermione say she no 
longer believes there's a problem with the house elves, that their 
condition is just fine with her, in order to make the conclusion that 
she's reversed her previous thinking and is now pro-slavery.  It's 
not there.  She continues to care about their welfare, she continues 
to exhibit a passion for injustice in other areas of DH.  As far as I 
can see, nothing's changed except the focus & scope at this 
particular point in Hermione's life.  I don't have to extrapolate 
that she does anything else later off-page to think she continues to 
believe what she always has about house elves.





From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 15:32:47 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:32:47 -0000
Subject: Neville as a dynamic character (Was: Harry's character development: Static or Dy
In-Reply-To: <g5mev0+f2b3@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5nomv+kq5n@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183738

> Carol:
> I agree that Neville is a dynamic character, but I think that the
> change in him is profound and fundamental. Yes, he was always brave,
> but he was not always confident and resourceful. In books 1 through 4,
> he's low man on the totem pole (though the encounter with the Crucio'd
> spider in GoF marks the beginning of a change in him, IMO. Until then,
> he's been terrified of Snape. 

Montavilla47:
I think it begins earlier, when he defeats the boggart in PoA.

Carol:
>Witnessing the Cruciatus Curse reminds
> him that the real enemy is Bellatrix Lestrange and her DE cronies--one
> of whom, unknown to him, is casting that curse). In OoP, we see a new
> determination in him (though he's still struggling with his father's
> wand) and a fierce courage at the MoM where he actually confronts, and
> is tortured by, Bellatrix. It's odd, but I don't recall much about
> Neville in HBP except that Harry treats him with more respect and
> calls him a friend, 

Montavilla47:
There's very little of Neville in HBP, but one of my favorite Neville
moments comes in that book.  At one point, Ron and Harry are
headed to Gryffindor Tower and have to change their course because
Peeves is blocking a corridor and demanding that students set their
pants on fire in order to pass.

A few minutes later, when they are in their dorm, Neville comes
trudging in, in order to change his pants, which are smoking.  It's
a very cute, clever joke, but it seems to me the esssence of Neville.
Although, he's not in most of the N.E.W.T. level classes that Harry
is in (or Harry is simply not bothering to notice him), Neville is 
still there, plugging away at his classes all on his own, like the
tortoise who keeps going, even when the hare is miles ahead.




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 16:00:47 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:00:47 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5ngoa+j9t1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5nqbf+gf91@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183739

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> wrote:
>
> > Montavilla47:
> > Again, you seem to think I want something different to happen.  
> > I don't actually.  I'm simply telling you what message I'm getting
> > from what *does* happen.
> > 
> > You can get a different message, if you like.  I certainly don't 
> > mind.  But I can't help noticing that, in order to get that 
> > different message, we would need to infer things that don't happen
> > in the books.  Such as Hermione taking up House-Elf rights at a
> > later point.
> 
> Jen: You don't have to infer that though, you just have to infer that 
> Hermione's fundamental character didn't change as is being postulated 
> in the other thread, and that she continues to care about house elf 
> rights like she always has.  
> 
> You answered my previous question in this post, and just like you 
> would have to see an action such as Hermione demanding Harry give 
> Kreacher clothes in order to believe she's anti-slavery (or other 
> example that fits for you), I would need to hear Hermione say she no 
> longer believes there's a problem with the house elves, that their 
> condition is just fine with her, in order to make the conclusion that 
> she's reversed her previous thinking and is now pro-slavery.  It's 
> not there.  She continues to care about their welfare, she continues 
> to exhibit a passion for injustice in other areas of DH.  As far as I 
> can see, nothing's changed except the focus & scope at this 
> particular point in Hermione's life.  I don't have to extrapolate 
> that she does anything else later off-page to think she continues to 
> believe what she always has about house elves.

Montavilla47:
You know, Jen, I think you're right.  I went to far in saying that
Hermione became "pro-slavery."   

But I still think she changed her thinking because in GoF and
OotP, she "hotly" argues against Ron's complacent attitude
toward the slavery issue--and yet, she says nothing about
it in HBP when Harry owns Kreacher and even when he forces
Kreacher to do things that Kreacher clearly doesn't want to 
do.  Harry even worries that Hermione will disapprove, but 
she doesn't... although she's willing to disapprove of other
things Harry does, like using the Prince's notes.

I don't think that Hermione needs to be perfect in order to
be a good, interesting, or likeable character, but this 
contradiction makes her seem shallow.  She's willing to stand
up to Harry when it comes to Harry doing something that
puts him ahead of her in class, but not when Harry is doing
something that goes against her political principles.

If we had had a confrontation about Kreacher between 
Hermione and Harry in HBP--and actual debate about the
problem--then it would be easier to accept the idea that
Hermione is re-thinking her position.

Instead, we get that strange (to me, YMMV) moment in
DH when Hermione tearfully points out to Harry that 
it's awful that Kreacher is beating himself up and he 
should do something.  It's strange to me, because OF
COURSE Harry is going to stop Kreacher from beating
himself up.  Not only did Harry stop Dobby from doing
that--even when he was pretty upset with Dobby--but
Kreacher's self-punishment is interfering with what 
Harry wants, which is to know what happened to the darn 
locket.

So, Hermione's tearful reminder that elves should be
stopped from hurting themselves adds nothing, changes
nothing, and only serves to show that Hermione doesn't
like seeing elves hurt themselves.... which... who does?

You and others remind me that Hermione mentions
her commitment to House-Elf rights when talking to 
Griphook.  I will confess that I had forgotten that moment,
partly because it seemed irrelevant to anything, except
trying to get Griphook to help them.  (It was sort of like her
saying that she's against global warming when we know
that she's fine with Harry driving an SUV, and gladly took
rides in it.  Or saying she's against factory farms, when
she buys groceries without bothering to check whether 
the chickens are free range or not.)

And then, the final crowning moment of the S.P.E.W.
storyline is when Hermione is so impressed by Ron
remembering the existence of the elves at Hogwarts 
that she forgets the entire war and starts making out
with him.  In remembering the elves and thinking about
their welfare--as if they were people--Ron is doing
*exactly* what he would have done in GoF or OotP.  He
hasn't changed at all--but Hermione treats it like 
he's made some huge step toward enlightenment.

Which, again, makes Hermione and her political 
cause seem shallow.  It's no longer about the
elves--it's about her hormonal response to Ron.

Montavilla47




From goodgracious at juno.com  Thu Jul 17 16:42:23 2008
From: goodgracious at juno.com (yraiym)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:42:23 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5nqbf+gf91@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5nspf+115f2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183740

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47" 
<montavilla47 at ...> wrote:

> In remembering the elves and thinking about
> their welfare--as if they were people--Ron is doing
> *exactly* what he would have done in GoF or OotP.  He
> hasn't changed at all--but Hermione treats it like 
> he's made some huge step toward enlightenment.

But when has Ron ever shown the slightest concern for House Elves 
before?  He's always treated them as beings without feelings, which 
are made to be used by wizards, and as a luxury item which his 
family never had but which he would take full advantage of given the 
chance.  So here, for the first time that I noticed, Ron is thinking 
of House Elves as thinking, feeling beings who are not just there to 
serve wizards, but to be protected from the abuses to which wizards 
are prone.  

JMO,
yraiym 




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Thu Jul 17 17:37:12 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:37:12 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5mubr+rq87@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5o008+jr4v@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183741

> Montavilla47:
> I don't know if the point is worth arguing, but if humans don't have
a psychological need to serve, then I wonder how volunteer
organizations, monasteries, convents, and temples ever get organized.
> 
> 
> > Montavilla47:
> > > Does it seem like I have a problem when I point out that the
> > conclusion she reaches is that slavery is okay as long as you
treat your slaves well?

Pippin:
Didn't you just answer your own question here? The premise of the
books is slavery would be tolerable (not "okay" -- who but a House-elf
would  *want* to be Kreacher?) if the slaves were treated well *and*
it fulfilled some psychological need to be a slave. It is not okay if
the slaves are treated well but it only fulfills the psychological
needs of the master.

It seems that most House-elves do have a "natural" psychological need
to belong to wizards. They're not magically brainwashed as Hermione
thought.  Dobby is not immune to the House-elf enchantments, so it
can't be  enchantments that make House-elves want to be owned. 

This isn't so far-fetched. We use ownership language in RL for
relationships that are okay. I belong to my spouse, my family, my
religion, I even belong to HPfGU. I would feel horrible if any of them
rejected me, and deeply insulted if any of them insinuated that I'd be
happier if I left.

However, AFAIK we humans have never felt that we should belong to our
employers. If we bond to them emotionally, it's generally beside the
work relationship, not because of it.  But except for Dobby,
House-elves do feel they should belong to their employers, and they
feel rejected or insulted if they are offered their freedom.

I think the books show clearly that slavery is horrible for humans
because humans don't have any psychological need to be slaves. They
make this point through satire, by showing how differently people
would behave if they did. 

IMO, there's an overall point in the book that you can't argue with
psychology. I think  this is what bothers people and gets mistaken for
a belief in predestination. Instead of showing that poisonous
toadstools can change their spots, the books showed that  poison can
be put to necessary and positive ends (killing slugs, for example.)


Montavilla:
> There is absolutely no indication from the books that Hermione 
> will continue to work for House-Elf rights, or to end the
institution, however poco a poco.  Just as there is no indication in
the books  that the anti-werewolf legislation will ever be overturned,
now  that the only civilized werewolf in the wizarding world is dead.

Pippin:
Hermione's last word on the subject is to proclaim her constant
advocacy for Elf-rights to Griphook. Just as with her desire for Ron,
Hermione appeared to lose interest after every setback, but she never
really did.  Why should her future life be any different?

She's not a person who gives up on anything she wants. And you can't
argue with psychology <g>.


Pippin




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 21:25:06 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:25:06 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5nspf+115f2@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5odbi+o7o0@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183742

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "yraiym" <goodgracious at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47" 
> <montavilla47@> wrote:
> 
> > In remembering the elves and thinking about
> > their welfare--as if they were people--Ron is doing
> > *exactly* what he would have done in GoF or OotP.  He
> > hasn't changed at all--but Hermione treats it like 
> > he's made some huge step toward enlightenment.
> 
> yraiym:
> But when has Ron ever shown the slightest concern for House Elves 
> before?  He's always treated them as beings without feelings, which 
> are made to be used by wizards, and as a luxury item which his 
> family never had but which he would take full advantage of given the 
> chance.  So here, for the first time that I noticed, Ron is thinking 
> of House Elves as thinking, feeling beings who are not just there to 
> serve wizards, but to be protected from the abuses to which wizards 
> are prone.  

Montavilla47:

1. When he spontaneously gave Dobby a Christmas gift.
2. When he complimented the elves on their cooking.
3. When he removed the things hiding the hats in the Gryffindor
common room, because he felt the elves deserved a *choice* about
being freed.






From foxmoth at qnet.com  Thu Jul 17 22:16:40 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:16:40 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5odbi+o7o0@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5ogc8+par8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183743

.  
> 
> Montavilla47:
> 
> 1. When he spontaneously gave Dobby a Christmas gift.
> 2. When he complimented the elves on their cooking.
> 3. When he removed the things hiding the hats in the Gryffindor
> common room, because he felt the elves deserved a *choice* about
> being freed.


Pippin:

*We* had clues that Ron cared about the Elves. But Hermione didn't.

Hermione knew about the compliment, but as far as she knew Ron valued
the Elves for their cooking, not their own sake. Hermione didn't know
about the Christmas gift, which was given in Harry's dormitory. She
didn't know about the hats being uncovered because Ron waited until
after she'd gone to bed to do it.

It's a big moment for her when she finally realizes Ron is on the
Elves' side, but not such a big moment for us, unless you've been
rooting for Hermione to get it through her thick skull that Ron was
just as concerned about elvish welfare as she was. Why else would he
have argued against her so passionately?

Pippin





From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 22:41:47 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:41:47 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5o008+jr4v@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5ohrb+h4i9@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183744

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
> > Montavilla47:
> > I don't know if the point is worth arguing, but if humans don't have
> a psychological need to serve, then I wonder how volunteer
> organizations, monasteries, convents, and temples ever get organized.
> > 
> > 
> > > Montavilla47:
> > > > Does it seem like I have a problem when I point out that the
> > > conclusion she reaches is that slavery is okay as long as you
> treat your slaves well?
> 
> Pippin:
> Didn't you just answer your own question here? The premise of the
> books is slavery would be tolerable (not "okay" -- who but a House-elf
> would  *want* to be Kreacher?) if the slaves were treated well *and*
> it fulfilled some psychological need to be a slave. It is not okay if
> the slaves are treated well but it only fulfills the psychological
> needs of the master.

Montavilla47:
I like that message, but I don't really see that it comes across
in the book.  I don't think we have any examples of slaves being
treated well, but having their psychological needs ignored at the
same time--which might demonstrate where that doesn't work.

Pippin: 
> This isn't so far-fetched. We use ownership language in RL for
> relationships that are okay. I belong to my spouse, my family, my
> religion, I even belong to HPfGU. I would feel horrible if any of them
> rejected me, and deeply insulted if any of them insinuated that I'd be
> happier if I left.
> 
> However, AFAIK we humans have never felt that we should belong to our
> employers. If we bond to them emotionally, it's generally beside the
> work relationship, not because of it.  But except for Dobby,
> House-elves do feel they should belong to their employers, and they
> feel rejected or insulted if they are offered their freedom.

Montavilla47;
The thing that House-Elves really remind me of in real life is the 
old-time relationship between servant and master--as you see it 
in the Edwardian period.  (For three excellent examples, look at 
Upstairs Downstairs, Manor House, or Gosford Park.)

In all three, the servants are shown to identify quite highly with
their masters (although not so much in Gosford Park!), and to 
find their service psychologically fulfilling.  

Although servants were paid, they had almost no say about their
lives and the masters had enormous power over them.  If they 
were dismissed without references, it was almost impossible to 
find work again.  They were meant not to be seen--if a maid was
accidentally caught doing her work by the masters, she was 
supposed to try and act invisible.

Pippin:
> I think the books show clearly that slavery is horrible for humans
> because humans don't have any psychological need to be slaves. They
> make this point through satire, by showing how differently people
> would behave if they did. 

Montavilla47:
I don't see the slaves as psychologically that different from people.
Slaves and servants identified with their masters.  The elves are 
more like an exaggeration of that identification.  Winky reminded me
of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet--who was perfectly happy being
a servant and considered herself a part of the Capulet family.  She,
too, would have been horrified if she had to leave it.

Pippin:
> IMO, there's an overall point in the book that you can't argue with
> psychology. I think  this is what bothers people and gets mistaken for
> a belief in predestination. Instead of showing that poisonous
> toadstools can change their spots, the books showed that  poison can
> be put to necessary and positive ends (killing slugs, for example.)

Montavilla47:
I like that point very much, Pippin.  I think you're right and that it is
very insightful.






From sartoris22 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 17 17:08:16 2008
From: sartoris22 at yahoo.com (sartoris22)
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:08:16 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5ma81+d4fr@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5nua0+kv7d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183745

> Zara:
> PoA has one of his shining moments of courage, though.

> > PoA:
> > "No, Harry!" Hermione gasped in a petrified whisper; Ron,
> > however, spoke to Black.

> > "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too!" he
> > said fiercely, though the effort of standing upright was
> > draining him of still more color, and he swayed slightly
> > as he spoke.

> > Something flickered in Black's shadowed eyes.

> > "Lie down," he said quietly to Ron. "You will damage that
> > leg even more."

> > "Did you hear me?" Ron said weakly, though he was clinging
> > painfully to Harry to stay upright. "You'll have to kill all
> > three of us!"

sartoris22:

My point exactly. Why would someone with kind of courage be so
insecure about playing quidditich, epecially after he's helped
his team win the cup? It isn't logical.


> Zara:
> I think he fears Hermione will not want him. In HBP he's
> still worked up about her relationship, such as it is,
> with Krum. And I don't find this entirely impossible to
> believe. I'm not suggesting he thinks she dislikes him
> - they, together with Harry, are best friends. I think
> he worries she is not interested "in that way". Isn't
> this the point of the scene with the locket Horcrux?

Sartoris22:

But Ron is trying to use the book the twins give him to
woo Hermione, so even if he is insecure about her feelings
for him, and I agree that he is, Ron is still trying to
have a relationship with her. Besides, if every guy let
his insecurities stop him from wooing a girl, there would
be far fewer relationships in the world. Many people fear
rejection, but they still, like Ron, follow their heart
anyway. I just doesn't seem that insecurity sufficiently
expalins why Ron hasn't approached Hermione before the
beginning of HBP.



From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 18 03:08:47 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:08:47 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5mmnb+jb04@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5p1fv+36is@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183746

> zanooda:
> Yeah, it's not in the book, but I find it very believable that Mad-
> Eye was one of the Aurors that took on Bella and Co., although if 
> he lost his eye because of Bella, I would expect it to be 
> mentioned. 

Jen: It's true.  I have a hard time giving up that particular 
speculation because it was one of my favorites. I thought more would 
be revealed about how Moody lost his eye and the night the 
Longbottoms were tortured.  Now I've decided JKR's choice was the 
better one, that the revelations were mainly important for Neville's 
story rather than a mystery plot.

> However, he could have missed the trial for some other reason than
> his injuries, IMO, especially considering how easily wounds are 
> healed in WW. 

Jen: Perhaps dark curses?  There's more evidence for non-healing 
wounds with DD's hands. 


> zanooda:
> Right, maybe she hid the wand just in case she will be arrested, so
> that it could not incriminate her. I assumed she hid it right before
> being caught and I couldn't figure out how she managed to do this.
> But now I think that maybe you are right about Gringotts. Maybe 
> Bella hid the wand there after the crime and used some other wand 
> instead - DEs killed many wizards and, I suppose, they had some 
> spare wands.

Jen: Dumbledore's explanation in GOF made it sound like she had time 
to hide it, that they weren't caught in the act.  I'm sure Bella 
would have her choice of wands, demanding the one she wanted!






From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 18 03:58:31 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:58:31 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5mmnb+jb04@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5p4d7+89jf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183747

zanooda wrote:
> <snip> And I still vote for Bella hiding her wand and not resisting
arrest in hopes  that the Ministry didn't have any solid evidence
against her. 

> <snip> maybe she hid the wand just in case she will be arrested, so
that it could not incriminate her. I assumed she hid it right before
being caught and I couldn't figure out how she managed to do this. But
now I think that maybe you are right about Gringotts. Maybe Bella hid
the wand there after the crime and used some other wand instead - DEs
killed many wizards and, I suppose, they had some spare wands.
>
Carol responds:

But why would Bella hide her wand when she as much as admitted to
Crucioing the Longbottoms and not only admitted to being but bragged
about being a loyal Voldemort supporter?

"The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban, we will
wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us
beyond any other supporters. We alone were faithful! We alone tried to
find him!" (GoF Am. ed. 595-96).

(Contrast that to Barty Jr. screaming that he's innocent, which is
contradicted by Bella's "we." If he weren't worthy of the dubious
honor of inclusion, she'd have said so.)

IMO, Bellatrix is proud of her crime, and her wand, along with the
others, must have revealed her guilt and that of the other three for
the jury to pass sentence with such vindictive unanimity.

So, assuming that the wands were presented as evidence, I can only
conclude that for some reason, they weren't destroyed and were somehow
recovered in time for the escaped DEs (not just Bellatrix and the
Lestrange brothers, Barty Jr. being absent for good reason) to use
their own wands at the DoM.

Either that or JKR just forgot that Bellatrix (and, by extension, the
other escapees) would have lost their wands. But Lucius, too, has his
own wand, and he was arrested after Bellatrix and the others escaped.
Some of the DEs arrested with him, for example Dolohov and the
Lestrange brothers, must have had their wands confiscated twice!

Contrast Sirius Black, who escapes *without* his wand. He's wandless
for all of GoF, apparently, and apparently only finds a wand, perhaps
his mother's or father's or an old one of his own, when he comes to
live at 12 GP.

I do wish that JKR would think about such things, but apparently, her
mind is on the main plot, chiefly on Harry, and on those important
secondary characters, Dumbledore and Snape.

Me, I care about details, which is why I'm a copyeditor.

Carol, who was in San Diego for three and a half days (Thursday
through Sunday) if anyone wondered




From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 18 05:46:03 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:46:03 -0000
Subject: Harry's Crucio - Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)
In-Reply-To: <g4ujup+h0qj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5pamr+q7k5@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183748

> > Steve: 
> > Back to some earlier aspects, I never said I /excused/ Harry.
> > I said I understood his actions under the circumstances.
> > <snip>
> > I said that Harry's action were both wrong and bad,
> > but I also said that I understood them. Things can still 
> > be wrong yet justified /under the circumstances/.

Mike:
Yes, Harry was pissed off, he'd been through alot in this book let 
alone everything that's come before. And yes, he knows that Carrow 
has been teaching and using Crucio on students, really torturing. So 
this was a loss of moralistic control, a flair of temper, and an act 
of revenge all rolled into a two second burst of anger.

Though others have tried to compare this with Star Wars and Luke, I'd 
like to offer a different comparison. Steve, you've equated this to a 
military action, so I'd like to compare this scene with "The Flight 
of the Intruder" by Steven Coonts. It's the story of an A-6 pilot 
flying off a carrier during Vietnam. 

This guy has his RIO killed sitting right next to him in the plane 
during another mindless mission bombing trees while all the juicy 
targets in Hanoi remain *off-limits*. He decides to take his revenge. 
With his new RIO, he plans and pulls of a bombing of Communist party 
HQ in downtown Hanoi. IOW, to hell with using a standard spell, he 
pulled out his Crucio, in violation of the ROE.

He got back to the ship and got called on the carpet in front of the 
captain. The captain said he understood this pilots frustration, then 
asked him a most pointed question. What if the captain, the man in 
charge of a floating arsenal that is an aircraft carrier, decided he 
wanted his revenge too? In the Potterverse, that would make him the 
equivalent of Crouch Sr authorizing his Aurors the use of the 
Unforgivables. Or worse, Voldemort ordering his DEs to commence with 
their death and destruction.

The pilot got his lesson, but did Harry? Where was Harry's captain 
explaining what this would mean writ large? Well,... actually, 
Harry's captain saw the whole thing, and all she said was, "that was 
very -- very gallant of you --" <p.594> So, what was the lesson 
Harry learned?




> Magpie:
> I actually think another problem with the way it's set up is that 
> it always comes down to just looking at the nature of House Elves. 
> Elves' feelings never seem to matter except when it comes to them 
> liking to be slaves, apparently, as if Wizards are doing them a 
> favor even when we see elves suffering in their servitude.

Mike:
Elves' feelings never seem to matter? I think the feelings of all 
three of the elves we got to know best matter a lot. They matter on 
this list, if that's what you're referring to. We have been debating 
them and their brethren for some time.

As for the *other* times, when they are suffering in their servitude, 
that's when it matters most. When Dobby suffers under the Malfoys we 
root for him to get out from under that situation. We think that's 
the right thing, *for him*. 

But Winky suffers because she's NOT in the servitude of the Crouches. 
What are we supposed to be thinking about that? Do her feelings not 
count because she *wants* to be enslaved? Or is it just Kreacher's 
feelings that count? And note, Kreacher doesn't want to be free 
either, he just wants a different master. Doesn't this take the 
matter of servitude out of the equation? If we're talking about the 
feelings of the elves, they all choose servitude, even Dobby, even 
after he's been freed.

If you mean does the Trio concern themselves with elves feelings, 
they all seem to care about Dobby and Winky. And at least Hermione 
kept trying to badger Sirius about Kreacher. Even in HBP, Hermione's 
words about elves came back to Harry on several occasions. And 
Hermione showed tearful empathy for Kreacher during "Kreacher's 
Tale". 

I also think it's unfair to call Hermione shallow for her changing 
her position on elves. SPEW was all well and good during GoF, when 
there was no Voldemort threat (that they knew of). But after 
Voldemort's resurrection, there were more important things going on 
than her worrying about the plight of elves. 

And still, she didn't drop them completely. Like I said, she tried to 
improve Kreacher's lot with Sirius. She was appalled when she thought 
maybe Harry had told Dobby and Kreacher they couldn't sleep. It seems 
to me that Hermione had pretty much given up on elf freedom by the 
end of GoF. From then on, she spoke not of freeing the elves but of 
improving conditions. 


> Magpie:
> I do think it's a sort of tricky idea, because elves always
> "like being slaves" even when we see ones that don't.

Mike:
*One*, not "one's". We see one elf that didn't want to be a slave. 
And almost his entire motivation seems to be to be rid of the 
Malfoys. He still wants to serve, he even refers to Dumbledore as his 
new master.

You know, if Dobby hadn't called himself a slave in CoS, I don't 
think it ever would have occurred to me to call these creatures as 
such. That's not the way they were written, IMO. They may be bound to 
serve the masters of their house (in the brick and mortar sense), 
their servitude seems to be more abstract than a hard and fast rule. 
We get plenty of examples of them working around their masters wishes 
when they don't like their masters. In that sense, they were written 
to be like some elves of folklore, not as slaves, IMO again.

I don't put any stock in JKR's interviews. There is nothing in canon 
that makes me think of human slavery when I see the House Elves. So 
that leaves JKR's interviews, wherein she drew the parallels to human 
bondage. I think JKR fancied herself as making all these noble 
statements, when she really didn't write her books any way like that. 
It's wishful thinking and self-delusion on her part, methinks. But 
then, I also didn't picture Dumbledore as gay. Just because she did 
doesn't mean she wrote him that way for us to discern. And just 
because she thought she was making a comment on human slavery with 
the elves condition, I didn't see her write that. 

Mike




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 18 06:31:22 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:31:22 -0000
Subject: Harry's Crucio - Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)
In-Reply-To: <g5pamr+q7k5@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5pdbq+6ggb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183749

> Mike:
> I also think it's unfair to call Hermione shallow for her changing 
> her position on elves. SPEW was all well and good during GoF, when 
> there was no Voldemort threat (that they knew of). But after 
> Voldemort's resurrection, there were more important things going on 
> than her worrying about the plight of elves. 
> 
> And still, she didn't drop them completely. Like I said, she tried to 
> improve Kreacher's lot with Sirius. She was appalled when she thought 
> maybe Harry had told Dobby and Kreacher they couldn't sleep. It seems 
> to me that Hermione had pretty much given up on elf freedom by the 
> end of GoF. From then on, she spoke not of freeing the elves but of 
> improving conditions. 

Montavilla47:
Do you mean by the end of GoF or OotP?  In OotP, Hermione is so
committed to freeing the slaves that she tries to trick them into it
with the hats.

She *may* have changed her mind by HBP, but IIRC, she doesn't
say *anything* about elves in the entire book, so it's hard to tell.

> Mike:
> You know, if Dobby hadn't called himself a slave in CoS, I don't 
> think it ever would have occurred to me to call these creatures as 
> such. That's not the way they were written, IMO. They may be bound to 
> serve the masters of their house (in the brick and mortar sense), 
> their servitude seems to be more abstract than a hard and fast rule. 
> We get plenty of examples of them working around their masters wishes 
> when they don't like their masters. In that sense, they were written 
> to be like some elves of folklore, not as slaves, IMO again.

Montavilla47:
This is something that real life slaves did, too.

Mike:
> I don't put any stock in JKR's interviews. There is nothing in canon 
> that makes me think of human slavery when I see the House Elves. So 
> that leaves JKR's interviews, wherein she drew the parallels to human 
> bondage. 

Montavilla47:
Well, I would assume she was drawing parallels when she had Dobby
call himself a slave, and Hermione calling the House-Elves at Hogwarts
slaves.  I think that qualifies as canon.

Mike:
>I think JKR fancied herself as making all these noble 
> statements, when she really didn't write her books any way like that. 
> It's wishful thinking and self-delusion on her part, methinks. But 
> then, I also didn't picture Dumbledore as gay. Just because she did 
> doesn't mean she wrote him that way for us to discern. And just 
> because she thought she was making a comment on human slavery with 
> the elves condition, I didn't see her write that. 

Montavilla47:
I think that's as likely to be the answer as my thesis that she *intended*
to support a gentler, kinder institution of slavery.




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 18 14:00:02 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:00:02 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5o008+jr4v@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5q7l2+clee@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183750

> > > Montavilla47:
> > > > Does it seem like I have a problem when I point out that the
> > > conclusion she reaches is that slavery is okay as long as you
> treat your slaves well?
> 
> Pippin:
> Didn't you just answer your own question here? The premise of the
> books is slavery would be tolerable (not "okay" -- who but a House-
elf
> would  *want* to be Kreacher?) if the slaves were treated well *and*
> it fulfilled some psychological need to be a slave. It is not okay 
if
> the slaves are treated well but it only fulfills the psychological
> needs of the master.

Magpie:
I think that's a valid interpretation of what's presented in canon--I 
agree it's the conclusion everybody reaches there. But not every 
reader agrees with that premise about slavery. I don't happen to 
agree with it, for example. I think the set-up between Wizards and 
Elves is inherently bad and nothing in elves' psychology makes them 
need to be slaves, just to serve. It's just as destructive to Elf 
psychology as it would be to a human to have to serve someone they 
don't want to serve.

Pippin: 
> It seems that most House-elves do have a "natural" psychological 
need
> to belong to wizards. They're not magically brainwashed as Hermione
> thought.  Dobby is not immune to the House-elf enchantments, so it
> can't be  enchantments that make House-elves want to be owned.

Magpie:
Kreacher has no natural psychological need to belong to Harry or 
Sirius. He wants to belong to someone else.

Pippin:
> 
> This isn't so far-fetched. We use ownership language in RL for
> relationships that are okay. I belong to my spouse, my family, my
> religion, I even belong to HPfGU. I would feel horrible if any of 
them
> rejected me, and deeply insulted if any of them insinuated that I'd 
be
> happier if I left.

Magpie:
But you don't literally own your spouse. This isn't a metaphor for 
elves, they're actually owned.

Pippin: 
> However, AFAIK we humans have never felt that we should belong to 
our
> employers. If we bond to them emotionally, it's generally beside the
> work relationship, not because of it.  But except for Dobby,
> House-elves do feel they should belong to their employers, and they
> feel rejected or insulted if they are offered their freedom.

Magpie:
But feel wretched and depressed when they're owned by somebody they 
don't want to be owned by. Iow, the unfairness of the situation 
actually is a problem for elves, they just don't talk about it as 
wanting their freedom. We actually do see them wanting the freedom to 
choose their masters.

Pippin: 
> I think the books show clearly that slavery is horrible for humans
> because humans don't have any psychological need to be slaves. They
> make this point through satire, by showing how differently people
> would behave if they did. 

Magpie:
Again, I agree. It creates a situation where slavery is okay as a 
concept (without making any argument for humans being slaves). I just 
don't happen to agree that slavery with the premise. For me, House 
Elf slavery carries with it some of the same wrongs as human slavery, 
because I don't think the objection to slavery is only that a 
particular human doesn't want to be a slave. What you've described 
there to me isn't an anti-slavery argument, since slavery as a 
concept is being argued positively, just while taking it for granted 
that of course none of the human characters want to be slaves. If a 
person was like a house elf it would be okay for them too in that 
case. There are women who believe women should be subservient to 
their husbands, for instance, and they can do that, but I don't think 
there should be laws that force them to do that even if they want 
them. There are people who like to be slaves and set up a 
slave/master relationship--usually it's a sexual need. But they're 
not actually slaves because that's a illegal. They indulge the need 
but don't lose their rights. 

Pippin: 
> IMO, there's an overall point in the book that you can't argue with
> psychology. 

Magpie:
I accept this point being made in the books but if it is, I still 
find this idea completely self-serving and shallow on the point of 
wizards. Hey, there's just nothing they can do. Far be it for them to 
argue with the psychology of House Elves that makes them want to be 
owned. Even when two out of the three elves we meet have storylines 
where they are suffering because they don't want to be owned by the 
people who own them.

Pippin:
I think  this is what bothers people and gets mistaken for
> a belief in predestination. Instead of showing that poisonous
> toadstools can change their spots, the books showed that  poison can
> be put to necessary and positive ends (killing slugs, for example.)

Magpie:
Yeah, I would agree with that premise too being in the books. But I 
still think that in many cases, including house elves, it's just a 
self-serving rationalization for taking advantage of others or 
failing to make an effort that would lead to something better.

> Pippin:
> Hermione's last word on the subject is to proclaim her constant
> advocacy for Elf-rights to Griphook. Just as with her desire for 
Ron,
> Hermione appeared to lose interest after every setback, but she 
never
> really did.  Why should her future life be any different?
> 
> She's not a person who gives up on anything she wants. And you can't
> argue with psychology <g>.

Magpie:
I assume she will continue the advocacy she had in DH. Which as 
you've argued here can be pro-slavery for House Elves (because she 
believes it fulfills some psychological need for them to be owned) 
but thinking masters should treat their slaves well.

-m




From juli17 at aol.com  Fri Jul 18 17:25:47 2008
From: juli17 at aol.com (juli17 at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:25:47 -0400
Subject: House Elves (was Wands and Wizards)
In-Reply-To: <1216385253.2555.18194.m46@yahoogroups.com>
References: <1216385253.2555.18194.m46@yahoogroups.com>
Message-ID: <8CAB71273BDFCF8-468-AAD@webmail-dd19.sysops.aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183751



Montavilla47:
Do you mean by the end of GoF or OotP? In OotP, Hermione is so
committed to freeing the slaves that she tries to trick them into it
with the hats.

She *may* have changed her mind by HBP, but IIRC, she doesn't
say *anything* about elves in the entire book, so it's hard to tell.


Julie:
I assumed that Hermione gave up a losing battle. She got absolutely nowhere with
wizards or house elves on the issue, and I think it's a logical assumption that she
finally quit trying to force something unwanted down the throats of the house elves.
What else could she do beyond her final?flat-out trickery? Nothing.

I do agree that JKR could have resolved the issue much better by directly addressing
Hermione's change of heart, but I am one of those who sees it again as a logical 
assumption that Hermione finally realized the house elves do not want to be free.
Or, more accurately, they don't want to be independent; rather?they want to serve 
wizards. What I would see as a compromise is what I can easily envision Hermione
realizing, once she gave up on her radical and unworkable concept of liberating the
house elves from lives they desire (for the most part). That would be, elves should be
nominally free, to come and go between wizarding families as they please as servants
rather than slaves. They don't want to be paid, they want to be part of a "family" they
love. But they should never be forced to stay with a family who mistreats them. 

Yep, JKR could have done?much better?with this issue, IMO. But even as ske wrote it, I
don't see Hermione giving up her idealism entirely, merely adopting a more modulated 
approach. She can't fight if no one else, including the "victims", will join her. But in the
future, should she approach the issue from a position of influence--which I don't doubt she
will-in a less radical manner, I can definitely see the house elves being free beings still
happy to serve their beloved wizards (and the wizards more aware of the value of their
house elves as part of the family, rather than as mere "slaves").

At least that's the way it reads to me :-)

Julie 


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Fri Jul 18 22:19:28 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:19:28 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5q7l2+clee@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5r4tg+3lao@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183752

> Magpie:
 I think the set-up between Wizards and 
> Elves is inherently bad and nothing in elves' psychology makes them 
> need to be slaves, just to serve. It's just as destructive to Elf 
> psychology as it would be to a human to have to serve someone they 
> don't want to serve.

Pippin:
But that comes under the "treated well" part, doesn't it? If they're 
made to punish themselves, or they are made to serve a master they
don't want to serve, they're *not* being treated well. No one in canon
claims that Kreacher is being treated well when he's being forced to
serve Sirius or Harry. Sirius doesn't care whether he treats Kreacher
well or not, and HBP Harry appears to think  that Kreacher is getting
off easy, considering.  Dumbledore knows Kreacher is being treated
badly but appears to regard that as the lesser evil (or the greater
good, if you prefer) over freeing him to die or be subject to
Bellatrix and Voldemort.

> 
> Magpie:
> Kreacher has no natural psychological need to belong to Harry or 
> Sirius. He wants to belong to someone else.
> 
Pippin:
Yup. My point is, he wants to belong to and serve some wizard. That's
the psychology of House-elves, which is different from humans in
canon. He doesn't think like we do, as Hermione puts it. There is one
House-elf in canon who wants to be treated as an equal by wizards. But
there's no human in canon who wants to belong to and serve *anyone*
the way House-elves do. Bellatrix may be slavish in her devotion to
her master, but she expects him to give her power over others in
return. She certainly doesn't expect to wash Voldie's socks or cook
his meals or clean his bathrooms. Molly does the housework cheerfully
(except for the ironing) but she doesn't want to be owned by anyone.

Whereas normally House-elves  seem to want to be owned, and to cook,
clean and tidy  houses, as  naturally as dogs chase rabbits. Even
Dobby doesn't want his day off or his wages to compensate him for his
toil. He wants them to show that work is his choice, not his master's.
But none of the other Elves feel that way.

Wizard enchantments enslave the elves so that they have to punish
themselves for disobedience and so that they can't leave their
master's house without orders. Nowhere in canon are those practices
defended as beneficial to elves. But only Hermione thinks Elves in
general would want to be free in order to escape from them. Even Dobby
doesn't think that. 

 Tune in one of those dog trainer shows and you will find people
having a terrible time with their pet because they try to treat the
dog as an equal. That makes the humans feel good about the way they
treat the dog. But unfortunately treating a dog as an equal doesn't
get you a dog that treats you as an equal in return. It gets you a dog
that acts like it has a weak leader. And that's either a stressed-out
dog, or one that continually challenges for dominance.

Somewhere out there, maybe there's a dog that "gets" equality. But
mostly they don't and most House-elves seem to be the same way. It's
part of their make-up, it's not something they can be taught. But by
the same token, humans *are* represented as having an inborn
psychological desire to be treated fairly, as equals. Lucius yields
his wand to Voldemort and can't help but expect to get something back.
But House-elves aren't like that. 

Aliens with different psychology are a common theme in science
fiction. IIRC, there's a Larry Niven book where a race of
elephant-like beings  take over the Earth. They can literally flatten
the human race -- but then they realize that unlike their
kind, the humans won't make good slaves, because they don't give up
after they've been defeated. Of course the point of the work is not to
say that slavery would be okay if we were more like  elephants, it's
to show us that we can't expect humans to peacefully acquiesce to
slavery by imagining  a race that does.  

I can understand thinking that it's just a bad example for wizards to
have so much power. But to me that's a moot point. Even if the wizards
all snapped their wands and went to live with the Muggles, they'd
still have the power to maim, kill and enslave their dependents. They 
wouldn't have the House-elves to kick around any more, just animals,
children, the mentally ill, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses,
etc, etc, etc. 
 
> Magpie:
> But you don't literally own your spouse. This isn't a metaphor for 
> elves, they're actually owned.

Pippin:
Oh, I might, if I lived some place where spouses are chattel. (Ugh!)
But you seem to be saying that if that were the case, I'd have a moral
duty not to enjoy my spouse, even if I personally gave my spouse all
the independence he desired, loved my spouse dearly, and even if my
spouse considered being unmarried a disgrace and being divorced a
worse one. 
 
> Magpie:
> But feel wretched and depressed when they're owned by somebody they 
> don't want to be owned by. Iow, the unfairness of the situation 
> actually is a problem for elves, they just don't talk about it as 
> wanting their freedom. We actually do see them wanting the freedom
to  choose their masters.
> 

Pippin:
Right, but they *don't* want the freedom of having no master at all.
Canon itself makes it clear that the Hogwarts Elves don't envy Dobby
his freedom one bit,  though the books  don't show any downside to it. 

Magpie:
 There are women who believe women should be subservient to 
> their husbands, for instance, and they can do that, but I don't
think  there should be laws that force them to do that even if they
want  them. 

Pippin:
Agreed. But you seem to be saying that  there is something morally
questionable about Harry being content to let Kreacher serve him even
if there's nothing he can do about Kreacher's attitude or the problems
of other House-elves at the moment. Like, Harry has a duty to be
miserable, and make Kreacher miserable too, because demonstrating that
in this particular instance a House-elf and and a human can manage to
get along under the current circumstances means there's nothing wrong
with them. 


Hermione argues  with the Elves in GoF until they throw her out. In
OOP she attempts to trick them. At the same time she offers kindness
and respect (but not understanding) to Kreacher and he betrays her. Is
it self-serving that she rethinks her strategy?

Pippin





From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 18 23:29:26 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:29:26 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5r4tg+3lao@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5r90m+7r4p@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183753

> > Magpie:
>  I think the set-up between Wizards and 
> > Elves is inherently bad and nothing in elves' psychology makes 
them 
> > need to be slaves, just to serve. It's just as destructive to Elf 
> > psychology as it would be to a human to have to serve someone 
they 
> > don't want to serve.
> 
> Pippin:
> But that comes under the "treated well" part, doesn't it? If 
they're 
> made to punish themselves, or they are made to serve a master they
> don't want to serve, they're *not* being treated well. 

Magpie:
It's the slavery/ownership part that makes them unable to choose 
their own masters. If they can choose who they work for and when 
they're not slaves. I agree that being owned as property and not 
being able to choose who you serve or how is not being treated well. 
Even if an individual elf is never made unhappy by that situation.

Pippin:
No one in canon
> claims that Kreacher is being treated well when he's being forced to
> serve Sirius or Harry. Sirius doesn't care whether he treats 
Kreacher
> well or not, and HBP Harry appears to think  that Kreacher is 
getting
> off easy, considering.  Dumbledore knows Kreacher is being treated
> badly but appears to regard that as the lesser evil (or the greater
> good, if you prefer) over freeing him to die or be subject to
> Bellatrix and Voldemort.

Magpie:
And they can do that because of the status of House Elves. Maybe 
nobody thinks Kreacher is being treated well in OotP and HBP but they 
use their positions of power against him because they can. If the 
situation's there, they can take advantage of it. Kreacher's 
situation hasn't changed as of DH. His feelings about it have changed 
so he's happy with it now.

 
> > Magpie:
> > Kreacher has no natural psychological need to belong to Harry or 
> > Sirius. He wants to belong to someone else.
> > 
> Pippin:
> Yup. My point is, he wants to belong to and serve some wizard. 
That's
> the psychology of House-elves, which is different from humans in
> canon. He doesn't think like we do, as Hermione puts it. <snip> 
Whereas normally House-elves  seem to want to be owned, and to cook,
> clean and tidy  houses, as  naturally as dogs chase rabbits. 

Magpie:
But Kreacher doesn't have a desire to be owned by Harry or Sirius. So 
does he really have a desire to be owned? He actually doesn't seem to 
truly want to be owned. He wants to belong to somebody in one sense, 
but not belong to somebody like property whose preferences for other 
people don't matter.

Pippin:
> Wizard enchantments enslave the elves so that they have to punish
> themselves for disobedience and so that they can't leave their
> master's house without orders. Nowhere in canon are those practices
> defended as beneficial to elves. But only Hermione thinks Elves in
> general would want to be free in order to escape from them. Even 
Dobby
> doesn't think that. 

Magpie:
If Elves can leave their master and find one they like better than 
they choose and aren't compelled to follow orders of their master 
then whatever knee-jerk reactions House Elves have to the 
word "freedom," they're not slaves. They're more like Dobby, acting 
subservient but free. Right now the ugly slavery question is mostly 
countered by the elves often being so eager to do anything they don't 
have to be forced. If Wizard's actual power and ownership was taken 
away that would imo counter it in a more significant way.

Pippin:
>  Tune in one of those dog trainer shows and you will find people
> having a terrible time with their pet because they try to treat the
> dog as an equal. That makes the humans feel good about the way they
> treat the dog. But unfortunately treating a dog as an equal doesn't
> get you a dog that treats you as an equal in return. It gets you a 
dog
> that acts like it has a weak leader. And that's either a stressed-
out
> dog, or one that continually challenges for dominance.

Magpie:
House Elves don't act like dogs, so I don't think anybody has to 
worry about being a weak leader around them. I don't think an Elf 
would be damaged if somebody allowed him to choose his master like a 
dog would be damaged by a poor owner. Their feelings are more like 
humans on this subject. The expectation of getting something back for 
service is a totally different issue.

Pippin: 
> Aliens with different psychology are a common theme in science
> fiction. 

Magpie:
Yes, I know. And I know that House Elves have different psychology. I 
disagree that their psychology as shown in canon erases all the 
ethical problems of the ownership of them by others.

Pippin: 
> I can understand thinking that it's just a bad example for wizards 
to
> have so much power. But to me that's a moot point. Even if the 
wizards
> all snapped their wands and went to live with the Muggles, they'd
> still have the power to maim, kill and enslave their dependents. 
They 
> wouldn't have the House-elves to kick around any more, just animals,
> children, the mentally ill, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses,
> etc, etc, etc. 

Magpie:
Yeah, the fact that they can always find someone to abuse doesn't 
make this particular situation any different imo.

  
> > Magpie:
> > But you don't literally own your spouse. This isn't a metaphor 
for 
> > elves, they're actually owned.
> 
> Pippin:
> Oh, I might, if I lived some place where spouses are chattel. (Ugh!)
> But you seem to be saying that if that were the case, I'd have a 
moral
> duty not to enjoy my spouse, even if I personally gave my spouse all
> the independence he desired, loved my spouse dearly, and even if my
> spouse considered being unmarried a disgrace and being divorced a
> worse one. 

Magpie:
No, I didn't say that would be your moral duty. I said I would 
consider it immoral for you to be owned as chattel no matter how you 
felt about it. Iow, I would disagree with you that it was right for 
you to not have any rights and I'd consider your suffering due to the 
lack of these rights (if you had any suffering) to be part of that. 
But even if you weren't suffering, I'd see your not having protection 
a problem. It has nothing to do with your enjoying your husband or 
not--if you have no rights it's good you can find some happiness. 
That's not a problem any more than it's a problem that House Elves 
enjoy their masters when they're happy with them. As I think I said 
before, I don't see why it would always coming down to telling the 
House Elves what to do. I think that was one of the mistakes Hermione 
made in GoF. All the wives deciding that they don't enjoy their 
marriage in the state it's in might help change things, but it's not 
the central moral problem.

 
> > Magpie:
> > But feel wretched and depressed when they're owned by somebody 
they 
> > don't want to be owned by. Iow, the unfairness of the situation 
> > actually is a problem for elves, they just don't talk about it as 
> > wanting their freedom. We actually do see them wanting the freedom
> to  choose their masters.
> > 
> 
> Pippin:
> Right, but they *don't* want the freedom of having no master at all.
> Canon itself makes it clear that the Hogwarts Elves don't envy Dobby
> his freedom one bit,  though the books  don't show any downside to 
it. 

Magpie:
Yes--unfortunately at this point there's only two possibilities 
anybody talks about--ripping them all from their masters so that they 
all fall into despair or having them owned the way they are. I think 
there's other ways to approach the problem.

 
> Magpie:
>  There are women who believe women should be subservient to 
> > their husbands, for instance, and they can do that, but I don't
> think  there should be laws that force them to do that even if they
> want  them. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Agreed. But you seem to be saying that  there is something morally
> questionable about Harry being content to let Kreacher serve him 
even
> if there's nothing he can do about Kreacher's attitude or the 
problems
> of other House-elves at the moment. Like, Harry has a duty to be
> miserable, and make Kreacher miserable too, because demonstrating 
that
> in this particular instance a House-elf and and a human can manage 
to
> get along under the current circumstances means there's nothing 
wrong
> with them. 

Magpie:
As I said, it's not about the attitude of the House Elves. I find 
something morally questionable in Harry's owning another person. I 
don't think he has a duty to make Kreacher miserable, but I'm not 
satisfied with the two choices of OMG Harry will make Kreacher 
miserable if he doesn't just stick with the status quo (not that 
Harry cared about making Kreacher miserable earlier) or there's no 
problem whatsoever. I accept that the situation is complicated, that 
it's not just a case of freeing all the elves and that will make them 
happy and there's no problems. But Harry the owner of the old servant 
is always going to be a little rancid for me. Not to the point of 
ruining in the book or anything. But I thought it was bad in HBP and 
Kreacher getting to love Harry doesn't get rid of all the ick for me.

Pippin:
> Hermione argues  with the Elves in GoF until they throw her out. In
> OOP she attempts to trick them. At the same time she offers kindness
> and respect (but not understanding) to Kreacher and he betrays her. 
Is
> it self-serving that she rethinks her strategy?

Magpie:
Not at all. Her strategy was bad. For a start, she needs to 
concentrate on Wizards instead of Elves.

-m




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 00:37:41 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:37:41 -0000
Subject: Bella's wand (was CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5p4d7+89jf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rd0l+brf8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183754

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
 
> But why would Bella hide her wand when she as much as admitted to
> Crucioing the Longbottoms and not only admitted to being but bragged
> about being a loyal Voldemort supporter?


zanooda:

She admitted it during trial, when her guilt was already proven (I
don't know how, considering there were no witnesses), so she had
nothing to loose. But right after the crime, knowing that the
Longbottoms were not in a condition to testify, she might have thought
that the Ministry didn't have any evidence against her. 

She might have thought that her wand with the Crucio on it was the
only thing that could incriminate her, so she decided to use some
other wand for a while, just in case. I think Bella really wanted to
avoid Azkaban - she was desperate to find her master and staying free
was crucial. 

If you remember, she already did it once - just like Lucius Malfoy,
she talked her way out of Azkaban right after LV's downfall (by
claiming Imperius, I suppose). In GoF Sirius said: "Crouch's own son
was caught with a group of Death Eaters who'd managed to talk their
way out of Azkaban. Apparently they were trying to find Voldemort and
return him power" (p.527 Am.ed.). This means the Lestranges managed to
avoid imprisonment then, so maybe Bella hoped to do it one more time :-).


> Carol wrote:

> So, assuming that the wands were presented as evidence, I can only
> conclude that for some reason, they weren't destroyed and were 
> somehow recovered in time for the escaped DEs


zanooda:

That's the point, *if* the wands were confiscated, I can't think of a
way for Bella and the others to recover them during their escape in
OotP, unless the wands were kept not at the Ministry, but in Azkaban,
which would be downright stupid. 


> Carol wrote:

> But Lucius, too, has his own wand, and he was arrested after 
> Bellatrix and the others escaped.


zanooda:

It's a little different with Lucius and other DEs arrested in the DoM,
IMO. They only escaped in the summer between HBP and DH, and by that
time the DEs infiltrated the Ministry. It was all different in OotP,
when Bella and others escaped. Maybe Lucius Imperiused some Ministry
worker to steal the confiscated wands from wherever they were kept at
the Ministry?
 

> Carol, who was in San Diego for three and a half days (Thursday
> through Sunday) if anyone wondered


zanooda, who *did* wonder :-)






From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 00:54:21 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:54:21 -0000
Subject: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5p1fv+36is@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rdvt+u1ms@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183755

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> wrote:

> I thought more would be revealed about how Moody lost his eye and 
> the night the Longbottoms were tortured.  Now I've decided JKR's 
> choice was the better one, that the revelations were mainly 
> important for Neville's story rather than a mystery plot.


zanooda:

Yes, I agree, but still, I really hoped to learn some more details,
for example why exactly did Bella and Co. went after the Longbottoms?
Why would they think the Longbottoms knew where Vapor!Mort was?

 
> > zanooda earlier:

> > However, he could have missed the trial for some other reason than
> > his injuries, IMO, especially considering how easily wounds are 
> > healed in WW. 
 
> Jen: Perhaps dark curses?  There's more evidence for non-healing 
> wounds with DD's hands. 
 

zanooda:

We know from LV that the Aurors were looking for him when he was in
Albania as Vapor!Mort: "I knew that the Aurors were still abroad and
searching for me" (GoF, p.653). Maybe Mad-Eye was one of these Aurors
who went abroad looking for Vapor!Mort, that's why he missed the trial
:-). 






From bawilson at citynet.net  Fri Jul 18 23:12:04 2008
From: bawilson at citynet.net (Bruce Alan Wilson)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:12:04 -0400
Subject: re Wizarding Genetics
Message-ID: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAq7J8AJNZvxGJq/KbtzLRq8KAAAAQAAAAC0Yai4NL4UeU+NaGsSvNqQEAAAAA@citynet.net>

No: HPFGUIDX 183756

I was asked what I meant by a "magesport."  I meant by it a wizard/witch child
born to two Muggle parents, and that such a child indicates an unknown Squib
ancestor on one or both sides.

Bruce Alan Wilson

"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.  Other forms of
transport grow daily more nightmarish.  Only the bicycle remains pure in
heart."--Iris Murdoch



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From willsonkmom at msn.com  Sat Jul 19 02:24:20 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:24:20 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5l9tu+n85m@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rj8k+2fl1@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183757

Potioncat:
Thank you, everyone who answered my questions. I picked one post to 
send more.

 
> Carol:
> No. It's only a way of looking at a character. Does he (or she) 
change
> fundamentally, learn a lesson or undergo an experience that alters 
his
> (or her) behavior or outlook on life permanently? 

Potioncat:
So, it's sort of 'did the events change the character?'; or 'did the 
character remain constant throughout the events?' An author could 
plan either sort of plot. 

Could it then be a flaw if the static/dynamic development doesn't 
fit? Are there certain plot types that would, if not dictate, at 
least suggest one development type over the other?

Did I read that usually only one character is dynamic in a book? So 
that it was important to see that Neville's character was dynamic, 
but we don't need to see that Mundungus is now clean and sober? (just 
for the record, I made that part up.)
 
 
> Carol:
> 
> We need to look at Sirius Black as we see him in the books, not his
> off-page, youthful self. He goes from a half-mad escaped prisoner
> intent on murdering his former friend to a man Harry is happy to
> accept as his godfather in a few short chapters, changed, I suppose,
> by Harry's act of mercy, so in PoA he seems to be a dynamic 
character.


Potioncat:
So, can it be considered dynamic if what the reader sees appears to 
change? I understand Black behaves very differently at the end of 
PoA, than he did in the middle--but I'm not sure 'he' changed as much 
as our perspective of him changed.

At the end of the 7 books, when the reader can reflect on everything 
that has appeared in canon, does the difference between canon!
youthful-Sirius (as seen in OoP and DH) and Canon!adult-Sirius make 
for a valid subject. (or did that make any sense at all?)

Pettigrew! We were told he was a hero, but we find out later he was 
not. Did the character develop or did our perspectives change? (and 
does it matter that he went from 4 legs to 2?)











From willsonkmom at msn.com  Sat Jul 19 02:30:05 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:30:05 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Re: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5p4d7+89jf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rjjd+ppmi@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183758


> Carol responds:
snip
> Either that or JKR just forgot that Bellatrix (and, by extension, the
> other escapees) would have lost their wands. But Lucius, too, has his
> own wand, and he was arrested after Bellatrix and the others escaped.
> Some of the DEs arrested with him, for example Dolohov and the
> Lestrange brothers, must have had their wands confiscated twice!

Potioncat:
As far as I know, only Hagrid's wand was snapped in two. And he didn't 
even go to Azkaban! Assuming JKR had a reason for it, is that only 
wizards who pass some OWLs get to have wands after Hogwarts? I was 
under the impression that Hagrid's wand had been mended, and didn't 
work properly. But, since Harry's wand wasn't working, I don't see how 
Hagrid's could have.

Again, it seems JKR forgot.


>Carol: 
> Me, I care about details, which is why I'm a copyeditor.
> 
> Carol, who was in San Diego for three and a half days (Thursday
> through Sunday) if anyone wondered

Potioncat:
Yes, I did. Glad you had fun!






From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 03:11:13 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 03:11:13 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Re: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5rjjd+ppmi@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rm0h+754v@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183759

> Potioncat:
> As far as I know, only Hagrid's wand was snapped in two. And he 
didn't 
> even go to Azkaban! Assuming JKR had a reason for it, is that only 
> wizards who pass some OWLs get to have wands after Hogwarts? I was 
> under the impression that Hagrid's wand had been mended, and didn't 
> work properly. But, since Harry's wand wasn't working, I don't see 
how 
> Hagrid's could have.
> 
> Again, it seems JKR forgot.

Zara:
Unless, of course, Hagrid's great mentor, the one that arranged for him 
to have a job at Hogwarts, also did something about that wand on the 
sly... <g>

Albus did have the means to fix it, we have learned.




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 03:23:21 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 03:23:21 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5r4tg+3lao@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rmn9+d4mn@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183760

Pippin wrote:
> <snip> Right, but they *don't* want the freedom of having no master
at all. Canon itself makes it clear that the Hogwarts Elves don't envy
Dobby his freedom one bit,  though the books  don't show any downside
to it. <snip>

Carol responds:

No downside except that he was knocking on doors for about a year
asking for work and being refused because he "wanted paying." And
after Winky was given clothes, she and Dobby were both jobless and
homeless until Dobby thought of asking for work at Hogwarts. (Dobby
didn't even have clothes, just his nasty old pillowcase and one old
sock.) And, for Winky, the downside involved the disgrace that all the
House-Elves associated with being "freed" (fired).

I'm sure that a lot of people on this list would love to be "free"
from their current employers who overwork them or don't pay enough or
whatever. Unfortunately, freedom doesn't pay the bills (or, in the
case of a House-Elf, doesn't provide a home to live in, food to eat,
and a family to serve).

Carol, wondering how Dobby managed to eat between the end of CoS and
the beginning of GoF considering that even House-Elf magic probably
can't conjure food





From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 03:27:06 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 03:27:06 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5rj8k+2fl1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rmua+oofq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183761

> Potioncat:
> So, can it be considered dynamic if what the reader sees appears to 
> change? I understand Black behaves very differently at the end of 
> PoA, than he did in the middle--but I'm not sure 'he' changed as much 
> as our perspective of him changed.

Zara:
That would just make it debatable. Someone who thinks he was changed by 
his experiences, would interpret Sirius as dynamic. Someone who thinks 
this was just a case of us getting to know Sirius better, would 
disagree.

I think perhaps this is the basis of my source's (Wikipedia) claim that 
usually only the protagonist and antagonist are dynamic. In a novel of 
limited length, how many characters can we hope to know well enough to 
recognize the difference between a change, and simply learning 
something new about them?

> Potioncat: 
> Pettigrew! We were told he was a hero, but we find out later he was 
> not. Did the character develop or did our perspectives change? (and 
> does it matter that he went from 4 legs to 2?)

Zara:
We don't know. Certainly, he was never the brave little Peter who 
confronted the evil traitorous Death Eater Sirius - that revelation 
does not make him dynamic, it makes us enlightened about what really 
happened. But was his decision to join Voldemort a change? I don't 
think we know enough to say, but again it is open to interpretation. I 
think not, I think it was a logical move for James's little sycophant.




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 03:58:05 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 03:58:05 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Re: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5rm0h+754v@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rood+vkqk@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183762

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Zara" <zgirnius at ...> wrote:

> Unless, of course, Hagrid's great mentor, the one that arranged for 
> him to have a job at Hogwarts, also did something about that wand on 
> the sly... <g>
> 
> Albus did have the means to fix it, we have learned.


zanooda:

That's what I thought too - that DD fixed Hagrid's wand using the
Elder wand. I just want to add that the whole broken wands thing seems
a little inconsistent. When Harry's wand was broken, he couldn't do
any magic with it at all. OTOH, in PS/SS, when Ollivander found out
that Hagrid still had the pieces of his wand, he asked him very
sternly: "But you don't *use* them?" (or something like this :-)).
Doesn't it mean that it's *possible* to use the pieces? Why couldn't
Harry use his wand's pieces then?




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 04:13:26 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:13:26 -0000
Subject: Harry's character development: Static or Dynamic? Was: Saving Private Draco
In-Reply-To: <g5rj8k+2fl1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5rpl6+kl99@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183763

Carol earlier:
> > No. It's only a way of looking at a character. Does he (or she) 
> change fundamentally, learn a lesson or undergo an experience that
alters his (or her) behavior or outlook on life permanently? 
> 
> Potioncat:
> So, it's sort of 'did the events change the character?'; or 'did the
character remain constant throughout the events?' An author could 
plan either sort of plot. 

Carol again:

Right.
> 
Potioncat:
> Could it then be a flaw if the static/dynamic development doesn't 
fit? Are there certain plot types that would, if not dictate, at 
least suggest one development type over the other?

Carol responds:
I don't want to overgeneralize, but to take a couple of examples, in a
Bildungsroman it's a given that the protagonist will mature in some
way or learn some sort of lesson. Some of Jane Austen's novels also
have the heroine learning an important lesson ("Emma," "Pride and
Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," "Sense and Sensibility" if you count
Marianne). On the other hand, a mystery or detective novel is
plot-oriented and even though the mystery is solved, the main
character isn't fundamentally changed. Inspector Grant in "Daughter of
Time" is still Inspector Grant, however much he may have learned about
Richard III. Old-fashioned romance novels often have the hero change
so that he's worthy of the heroine. Mainstream or literary novels
don't have any set conventions of that sort, but if they're
character-oriented, it's likely that the main character(s) will be
dynamic.

Potioncat:
> Did I read that usually only one character is dynamic in a book? So
that it was important to see that Neville's character was dynamic, but
we don't need to see that Mundungus is now clean and sober? (just for
the record, I made that part up.)

Carol:
You may have read that, but it's not a rule that I'm aware of. Lots of
novels, especially love stories/romances, have subplots in which a
secondary character learns a lesson or grows and changes in a way that
parallels, mirrors, or contrasts with that of the main character. But,
of course, the focus is usually on the main character.
>  
Carol earlier:
> > 
> > We need to look at Sirius Black as we see him in the books, not
his off-page, youthful self. He goes from a half-mad escaped prisoner
intent on murdering his former friend to a man Harry is happy to
accept as his godfather in a few short chapters, changed, I suppose,
by Harry's act of mercy, so in PoA he seems to be a dynamic  character.
> 
> 
> Potioncat:
> So, can it be considered dynamic if what the reader sees appears to
change? I understand Black behaves very differently at the end of 
PoA, than he did in the middle--but I'm not sure 'he' changed as much
as our perspective of him changed.

Carol:
Exactly. I'm mean, that's the question we need to ask. Certainly
Harry's perspective changed, just as his perspective of "Moody" did in
GoF. "Moody" himself didn't change in GoF itself--he just wasn't who
we thought he was. But is that the case with Sirius? Was he always as
he seems at the end of PoA or did he change from a frenzied, half-mad
would-be murderer bent on revenge (with an element of protecting Harry
in there somewhere) to a loving but still reckless godfather?

Is he a static character whose behavior alters only because of his
circumstances but whose essence remains unchanged, or does he really
recover from what seems to be near madness after Harry steps in to
save Wormtail for Sirius's and Lupin's sake?

Certainly, elements of his character remain consistent, among them
them recklessness, arrogance, and antipathy for Severus Snape. Also,
he seems stuck in the past (as do Snape and to some extent Lupin). But
I think it can be argued that, in PoA, at least, we're not seeing him
temporarily altered by circumstances; we're seeing a change from a
desire for vengeance to a desire to be a worthy godfather.

Potioncat: 
> At the end of the 7 books, when the reader can reflect on
everything> that has appeared in canon, does the difference between
canon! youthful-Sirius (as seen in OoP and DH) and Canon!adult-Sirius
make for a valid subject. (or did that make any sense at all?)

Carol:
Sure it does, whether or not he's a dynamic character. What do you
think? Did he lose more than his looks in Azkaban? Maybe, in some
ways, Azkaban *kept* him from becoming a dynamic character.

BTW, did I mention Kreacher? There's a fundamentally changed character
for you. And poor Regulus, small as his role is, changed in a
fundamental way before his death. Rather like the protagonist of a
tragedy, who learns a lesson but doesn't live to profit from it!

Potioncat:
> Pettigrew! We were told he was a hero, but we find out later he was
not. Did the character develop or did our perspectives change? (and
does it matter that he went from 4 legs to 2?)

Carol:
That's just perspective. Wormtail is a static character who doesn't't
change (unless there was some off-page alteration in him between
Hogwarts and Godric's Hollow beyond the fear of torture that led him
to betray his friends). That was just perspective--and a very clever
bit of hiding clues in plain sight on JKR's part. Even the twinge of
mercy at the end wasn't a fundamental change. It was as weak as
everything else about him. (But, hey. He's better at magic than he's
generally given credit for.) :-)

Carol, who thinks that Wormtail is a rat through and through
regardless of the number of legs, with no offense to real-life pet
rats, which she likes





From kaamita at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 19 03:23:46 2008
From: kaamita at yahoo.com (Heather Hadden)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:23:46 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Broken Wands (was Re: CHAPDISC:  DH24, The Wandmaker-Bella's wand // Longbottoms
In-Reply-To: <g5rjjd+ppmi@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <961002.68675.qm@web56514.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183764

> Potioncat:
> As far as I know, only Hagrid's wand was snapped in two. And he
> didn't even go to Azkaban! Assuming JKR had a reason for it, is
> that only wizards who pass some OWLs get to have wands after
> Hogwarts? I was under the impression that Hagrid's wand had been
> mended, and didn't work properly. But, since Harry's wand wasn't
> working, I don't see how Hagrid's could have.

> Again, it seems JKR forgot.
?
?
As far as I remember, Hagrid's wand was probably mended, but wasn't it in the handle of his pink umbrella? Also, at the beginning of OoTP, I got the impression that Harry's wand was going to be taken and snapped. (pg 27) "Ministry representatives will be calling at your place of residence shortly to destroy your wand." Then Arthur sent Harry an owl telling him not to surrender his wand.
?
Heather



From foxmoth at qnet.com  Sat Jul 19 17:06:17 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:06:17 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5r90m+7r4p@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5t6u9+rb7b@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183765

> 
> Magpie:
> And they can do that because of the status of House Elves. Maybe 
> nobody thinks Kreacher is being treated well in OotP and HBP but
they  use their positions of power against him because they can. If
the  situation's there, they can take advantage of it.

Pippin:
I can't tell you how many wizarding laws the Order broke during OOP,
though I'm sure that harboring a fugitive, resisting arrest, breaking
into government buildings, illegal use of the floo network,
trespassing in restricted areas and violating educational decrees are
some of them. But I'm afraid  legal rights for House-elves would not
have stood in their way.  

The whole WW government needs to be rebuilt and reformed into
something that decent people can respect before its laws can protect
anybody. Canon definitely shows that, it just doesn't make it a job
that three teenagers are going to be able to accomplish in their spare
time. Nor should it, IMO. I can't imagine people lining up at midnight
to purchase "Hermione Granger and the Intransigent Bureaucracy". Some
things really are better left to the imagination.<g>
 
> Magpie:
> But Kreacher doesn't have a desire to be owned by Harry or Sirius.
So  does he really have a desire to be owned? He actually doesn't seem
to  truly want to be owned. He wants to belong to somebody in one
sense, but not belong to somebody like property whose preferences for
other  people don't matter.

Pippin:
Maybe he does want that, but that isn't what freedom means to an elf
and it wasn't what it meant to Hermione. It meant *clothes*. That
would have severed Kreacher from Sirius and Harry, but also from his
home and his  ties to Walburga and Regulus. Hermione knew from her
initial researches that Elves needed better  protection and wizards
should be made to recognize their rights. That's in GoF. But she got
sidetracked by the seemingly simpler solution of clothes instead. She
chose what was easy over what was right. 

>
> 
> Magpie:
> Yes--unfortunately at this point there's only two possibilities 
> anybody talks about--ripping them all from their masters so that
they  all fall into despair or having them owned the way they are. I
think  there's other ways to approach the problem.

Pippin:
I agree. And the books hint at what they are, back in GoF. But I think
it's an important point in the books that real life situations are
complicated and knee-jerk reactions to words, be they "slavery",
"ownership" and "freedom"  or "Voldemort" aren't much use.   

Kreacher already doesn't see Harry as an owner of property, he sees
Harry as the protector of House-elves.  Harry sees Kreacher as a
powerful ally and a darn good sandwich maker. What's rancid about that?

Pippin






From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 19 20:11:58 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:11:58 -0000
Subject: Wands and Wizards...Again (Was: Epilogue ...)
In-Reply-To: <g5t6u9+rb7b@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g5thqe+tv4d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183766

> > Magpie:
> > And they can do that because of the status of House Elves. Maybe 
> > nobody thinks Kreacher is being treated well in OotP and HBP but
> they  use their positions of power against him because they can. If
> the  situation's there, they can take advantage of it.
> 
> Pippin:
> I can't tell you how many wizarding laws the Order broke during OOP,
> though I'm sure that harboring a fugitive, resisting arrest, 
breaking
> into government buildings, illegal use of the floo network,
> trespassing in restricted areas and violating educational decrees 
are
> some of them. But I'm afraid  legal rights for House-elves would not
> have stood in their way.  

Magpie:
I don't think "people will do it anyway" makes anything ethical or 
not. One doesn't have to know exactly how to fix something to say 
that it needs fixing. I don't see the last snapshot of DH showing 
anything in need of fixing on the House Elf front.

> > Magpie:
> > But Kreacher doesn't have a desire to be owned by Harry or Sirius.
> So  does he really have a desire to be owned? He actually doesn't 
seem
> to  truly want to be owned. He wants to belong to somebody in one
> sense, but not belong to somebody like property whose preferences 
for
> other  people don't matter.
> 
> Pippin:
> Maybe he does want that, but that isn't what freedom means to an elf
> and it wasn't what it meant to Hermione. It meant *clothes*.

Magpie:
Yes, I know. That's why when I talked about it I talked about looking 
at what freedom really meant and finding a way to grant *that* to the 
elves rather than pretending they either have to get clothes or be in 
the same spot they're in now.

Pippin:
> Kreacher already doesn't see Harry as an owner of property, he sees
> Harry as the protector of House-elves.  Harry sees Kreacher as a
> powerful ally and a darn good sandwich maker. What's rancid about 
that?

Magpie:
He sees Harry as the owner of himself, and Harry is the owner of him 
as property. As far as Kreacher is concerned Harry can be a protector 
and an owner of House Elves at the same time. Harry sees Kreacher as 
the House Elf he owns, who happens to also be useful. What's rancid 
about it for me is that one person owns another person as property, 
iow has a slave, in the 20th century no less. That's going to hit a 
wrong note with me, despite not having any personal investment in 
seeing the House Elves freed. That same note's been just getting 
louder for me since HBP especially.

-m




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 20 16:34:31 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:34:31 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
Message-ID: <g5vpen+djsh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183767

I'm still not clear why young Snape chooses the nickname 'Half-Blood
Prince'.  Is he motivated by pride in his heritage?  Does the name
indicate a tinge of bitterness or regret?  Is it a symbolic attempt to
cut his Muggle father out of the picture?  Well, maybe not the last
one since he claims half-blood status, unlike Voldemort.

Assuming Half-Blood Prince Snape is a 6th year the same as Harry, or
thereabouts given JKR's maths situation, he's already on the road to
following Voldemort.   Wouldn't he downplay his blood status instead
of glorifying in it?  Because he sounds proud of the name when
revealing he's the Half-Blood Prince to Harry.  Maybe he chooses the
name as a private reminder of where he came from, a hint of regret for
where he's heading.

For every answer I come up with, a counter argument pops into my head!

Mystified!Jen




From HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com  Sun Jul 20 16:57:01 2008
From: HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com (HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com)
Date: 20 Jul 2008 16:57:01 -0000
Subject: Weekly Chat, 7/20/2008, 1:00 pm 
Message-ID: <1216573021.15.21438.m44@yahoogroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183768

Reminder from: HPforGrownups Yahoo! Group
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From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 20 19:48:18 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:48:18 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Bella's wand )
In-Reply-To: <g5rood+vkqk@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g604q2+bk0s@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183769

> zanooda:
> 
> That's what I thought too - that DD fixed Hagrid's wand using
> the Elder wand.
>  <snip>
> OTOH, in PS/SS, when Ollivander found out that Hagrid still
> had the pieces of his wand, he asked him very sternly: 
> "But you don't *use* them?" (or something like this :-))
> Doesn't it mean that it's *possible* to use the pieces?
> Why couldn't Harry use his wand's pieces then?

Mike:
How's this one, can't you just picture it:
Young but massive Hagrid comes sauntering into Ollivander's shop with 
his little father in tow. Ollivander takes one look at the half-giant 
kid and knows immediately that none of his stock wands are going to 
work. So he takes Rubeus's measurements and tells him he'll be making 
him a special wand and to please come back in a week.

Well, Ollivander can see right off that this wand is going to be 
treated with some rough handling. He goes out and gets the strongest 
piece of suitable oak that he can find, then magically strengthens it 
even further, just like they magically strengthen the flying brooms. 
He makes the wand so it will bend but not break.

In due course, Hagrid gets accused of openning the CoS and the 
Ministry officials show up to mete out his punishment. This being a 
tradition laden society, it's tradition for the wand to be broken by 
hand by the person carrying out the punishment. 

Well, this guy takes Hagrid's wand in his hand and tries to snap it 
like any other wand. Nothing, no go, the wand won't break. He swings 
it at the door jamb, figuring that'll do it. Nope, still in one 
piece. Getting frustrated, he takes it over his knee. But all he gets 
out of that is a bruised knee. The wand's still holding up just fine. 
He pulls out his own wand to break it with magic, but his supervisor 
standing there stops him. "Brokewood, you know we don't do it that 
way", his boss says as he grasbs the wand away from Brokewood. The 
boss then sets the wand on the hard ground, one end propped on a log. 
He stomps on the middle and hears a crack. Picking up the wand he can 
see a fracture through the middle, even though the wand is clearly 
still in one piece.

The boss figures that this is going to have to do. Stating, "That's 
done it", he tosses the wand aside and declares the deed done. Of 
course Hagrid waits for all of them to leave and goes over to 
retreive his wand.

The story makes it way back to Ollivander. A wry smile creases the 
corners of his mouth as he satisfyingly thinks to himself, "Now 
that's an Ollivander wand, by Merlin."

So when Hagrid says he's "still got the pieces" in PS/SS, Ollivander 
knows good and well that the wand is likely to still work; that there 
really weren't pieces per se, there was one fractured but still 
continuous piece.

Mike, who had a fun time picturing the exchange between the young 
Hagrid and Ollivander, and could picture Hagrid wreaking havoc in 
the small shop as he tries out his new wand. Talk about your 
uncontrollable magic ;-)




From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 20 20:25:15 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:25:15 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands
In-Reply-To: <g5rjjd+ppmi@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g606vb+6e70@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183770

---  "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> > Carol responds:
> snip
> > Either that or JKR just forgot that Bellatrix ... would 
> > have lost their wands. But Lucius, too, has his own wand, 
> > and he was arrested after Bellatrix and the others escaped.
> > Some of the DEs arrested with him, for example Dolohov and
> > the Lestrange brothers, must have had their wands 
> > confiscated twice!
> 
> Potioncat:
> As far as I know, only Hagrid's wand was snapped in two. And
> he didn't even go to Azkaban! Assuming JKR had a reason for 
> it, is that only wizards who pass some OWLs get to have wands
> after Hogwarts? I was under the impression that Hagrid's wand
> had been mended, and didn't work properly. But, since Harry's
> wand wasn't working, I don't see how Hagrid's could have.
> 
> Again, it seems JKR forgot.
> 
> 

bboyminn:

First, let me ask what happens to the personal possessions
of muggles who are put in prison. If they are in for a short
time, say a few years of less, then they are kept and 
returned to them when they get out. Likely if they are in
for life, the personal artifacts are turned over to their
next of kin. 

Why would wands be any different? If you serve your time,
you get your wand back. If you are in for life, you personal
artifacts are turned over to your family, assuming those
artifacts are not dark or dangerous.

Consequently, their wands would not have been destroyed, and
would have been in the possession of their families. 


Broken Wands -

Hagrid -

We know his wand was snapped, but we also know the pieces
were in his umbrella. Now, when a wand is snapped, it is
difficult to hold the pieces together and use them. However,
if you put the pieces in a tube, that tube would hold them 
together in a more workable arrangement. Also, I concede that
Dumbledore may have helped things along on the sly. 

Ron -

Ron broke his wand, and did a poor basic repair of it. It
still work, just no very reliably or very well, but it worked.

Harry-

Harry's wand is broken, but he makes no effort to affect a 
mechanical repair. He did have Hermione try and magically 
repair it, but he didn't try to wrap a band around the break,
to tape or glue it together, etc..., and he accepts pretty 
quickly that the wand is broken beyond repair. 

Just a few thoughts.

Steve/bboyminn





From catlady at wicca.net  Sun Jul 20 21:09:58 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:09:58 -0000
Subject: Daedalus / Confiscated Wands
Message-ID: <g609j6+sq30@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183771

Laura W wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183684>:

<< I was pleased to find the meaning of Daedalus Diggle's name. >>

I didn't know there was such a word as 'daedal', but both it and
Daedalus Diggle were named after Daedalus, the famous artisan of Greek
mythology. He built a robot servant, he built the Labyrinth, he built
a lot of things that seemed like magic, and some king locked him and
his son Icarus into a tower so they couldn't build weapons or defenses
for any the kingdom, and he built wings of shed feathers held together
with wax to fly away. And everyone remembers that Icarus flew too
close to the sun and the wax melted and he fell and drowned in the sea
below. I had kept hoping to hear some reference to Daedalus Diggle
gadgeteering.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183701>:

<< How could Bellatrix still have the wand that Ollivander had made
for her decades before? Surely it would have been confiscated when she
was sent to Azkaban? >>

Doesn't that also apply to Lucius's wand, which LV took from Lucius
*after* Lucius was taken out of Azkaban? It seems to me that the
standard practise was that the confiscated wands of the convicts were
NOT broken, but rather stored somewhere. (Was it the Ministry or the
Headmaster who ordered young Hagrid's wand broken, and was this
apparently unusually extreme punishment chosen because he was half-Giant?)

It would make sense for them to be stored in a strong room in the
Department of Magical Law Enforcement area of the Ministry of Magic
building, from which they could be removed by more or less official
channels by members of the new (LV) regime. And from which they could
have been removed, even under the former regime, by influential people
like Lucius Malfoy. Bribe or sweet-talk the Minister to order the wand
delivered to you, or just bribe the lower ranking bloke with the key.

Since the above would make sense, it's probably not what was done.
While they could have stored the confiscated wands in an unlocked
closet at Azkaban, to make it easier for any escapee to reclaim
his/her wand, the events of the story suggest that confiscated wands
were turned over to the convict's next of kin.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183747>:

<< Contrast Sirius Black, who escapes *without* his wand. He's
wandless for all of GoF, apparently, and apparently only finds a wand,
perhaps his mother's or father's or an old one of his own, when he
comes to live at 12 GP. >>

Another hint that confiscated wands are given to the next of kin,
Sirius's parents, despite them having disowned him.





From willsonkmom at msn.com  Mon Jul 21 01:50:46 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:50:46 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g5vpen+djsh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g60q1m+f0km@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183772

 "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> wrote:
>
> I'm still not clear why young Snape chooses the nickname 'Half-Blood
> Prince'.  Is he motivated by pride in his heritage?  Does the name
> indicate a tinge of bitterness or regret?  Is it a symbolic attempt 
to
> cut his Muggle father out of the picture?  Well, maybe not the last
> one since he claims half-blood status, unlike Voldemort.
> 
> Assuming Half-Blood Prince Snape is a 6th year the same as Harry, or
> thereabouts given JKR's maths situation, he's already on the road to
> following Voldemort.   Wouldn't he downplay his blood status instead
> of glorifying in it?  Because he sounds proud of the name when
> revealing he's the Half-Blood Prince to Harry.  Maybe he chooses the
> name as a private reminder of where he came from, a hint of regret 
for
> where he's heading.
> 
> For every answer I come up with, a counter argument pops into my 
head!
> 
> Mystified!Jen


Mystified!Potioncat:
We don't know that Severus chose the nickname. Maybe it was Lucius's 
name for him. Certainly it wasn't widely used, because Lupin didn't 
recognise it. Remus might have been pretending, but I don't see that 
was any reason in this case.

It seems to me the Purebloods of the Marauders' generation may have 
been more tolerant than the Purebloods of Harry's day. It's hard to 
imagine Umbridge being so accepting of a Half-blood. Then again, 
Umbridge may have protested too much--may have had her own Muggle 
skeletons in her closet. Even though he's Half-blood, he's accepted 
by the Malfoys and rises quite high in the DEs.

We also don't know when or why Snape wrote the name. A somewhat 
bitter young man, taking potions with his one true love, may have 
written it as a bit of sarcasm towards himself. As Jen was 
suggesting, was he regretting choosing his friends over Lily?

That horrible bit of diaglogue, "It was I, the Half Blood Prince!" 
(or something close to that, I really don't want to look it up.) 
could have been simply Snape's taunting of Harry at that last moment 
before Snape left Hogwarts. This name for himself, just as much as 
SWM, may have reminded him of what he gave up.

The thing is, I can't see Severus enjoying the name or its meanings. 
For example I could imagine Sirius calling himself the "Black sheep 
of the family" and making that word play. I really can't see Severus 
doing it. (Sirius never did that in canon, I'm just making an example)

OTOH, I think JKR had lots of fun with "the Half-Blood Prince." It 
drove us crazy before the book came out. It can be taken so many 
ways, even after we know who it is.

Potioncat, just as mystified, offering more thoughts.






From willsonkmom at msn.com  Mon Jul 21 01:53:57 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:53:57 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands
In-Reply-To: <g606vb+6e70@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g60q7l+p13q@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183773

 
> bboyminn:
> 
> First, let me ask what happens to the personal possessions
> of muggles who are put in prison. If they are in for a short
> time, say a few years of less, then they are kept and 
> returned to them when they get out. Likely if they are in
> for life, the personal artifacts are turned over to their
> next of kin.

Potioncat:
Would a weapon be returned in the RW? 

OK, I know a wand is different, but you get my idea. Besides, the DEs 
broke out of Azkaban. Perhaps whomever helped them get out, also helped 
them get their wands out of storage. Still don't why they weren't 
broken. 





From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 21 03:27:22 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:27:22 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g60q1m+f0km@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g60vmq+jc8v@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183774

> Potioncat:
> For example I could imagine Sirius calling himself the "Black sheep 
> of the family" and making that word play. I really can't see Severus 
> doing it. (Sirius never did that in canon, I'm just making an example)

Zara:
I can. Sirius would do it for fun, and as a rejection of his family's 
views. He would expect James, Remus, and Peter to get a good laugh out 
of it. 

I think Severus did it in earnest, and shared it with no one. We know 
very little about his background, but we do know that for some reason, 
he wanted Slytherin House. The House of Purebloods, which he darn well 
knew he was not. To me, this suggests a conviction/desire to prove, 
that he is *as good as* a pureblood. Good enough to get into Slytherin, 
even with a Muggle father. Good enough to be a Death Eater, again 
despote his birth. That however a certain segment of wizard society 
(his family? his housemates?) might regard him owing to his parentage, 
he was still as good as any of them. In spite of his father.




From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 21 03:35:34 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:35:34 -0000
Subject: Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)
In-Reply-To: <g5pdbq+6ggb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g61066+ahtm@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183775

> > Mike:
> > SPEW was all well and good during GoF, when 
> > there was no Voldemort threat (that they knew of).
> > 
> 
> Montavilla47:
> Do you mean by the end of GoF or OotP?  In OotP, Hermione is
> so committed to freeing the slaves that she tries to trick them
> into it with the hats.

Mike:
Umm, Hermione knit the Elf hats/cozies in GoF. 
So yeah, I meant GoF.


> Montavilla47:
> She *may* have changed her mind by HBP, but IIRC, she doesn't say
> *anything* about elves in the entire book, so it's hard to tell.

Mike:
You're right about HBP. There's really only the one scene where 
Kreacher and Dobby are making their Draco reports wherein Hermione 
says anything about elves. I'm not even sure that she knew Harry was 
Kreacher's master until this scene. Harry inherited Kreacher and sent 
him off to Hogwarts all in that one evening at the Dursleys. He 
doesn't see Kreacher again until he's in the hospital wing with Ron, 
and Hermione wasn't there.

I thought she changed her stance by the beginning of OotP. Well, 
sorta. She does one time suggest to Sirius that he set Kreacher free. 
Which Sirius shuts down flat, as both Kreacher knowing too much about 
the Order and that the shock of leaving 12 GP would kill him. But 
mostly she seemed to talk of improving Kreacher's lot. I think she 
has decided to concentrate on the last two letters of her acronym, 
which was after all "Elfish Welfare" not Elfish Freedom.


> Montavilla47:
> This is something that real life slaves did, too.

Mike:
I shouldn't write posts late at night. I'm surprised you could 
understand what I wrote well enough to respond. You're right, of 
course, there wasn't any distinction between RL slaves undermining 
their masters and elves doing it.


> > Mike:
> > There is nothing in canon that makes me think
> > of human slavery when I see the House Elves.
>
> 
> Montavilla47:
> Well, I would assume she was drawing parallels when she had Dobby
> call himself a slave, and Hermione calling the House-Elves at 
> Hogwarts slaves.  I think that qualifies as canon.

Mike:
Sheesh, my post was awful, wasn't it? OK, what I was trying to say 
was that JKR's elves read like brownies or Hobs from familiar 
folklore. I know that story of the little people-like creatures that 
are rarely seen or come out only at night to clean the house they've 
been magically linked to. JKR makes her elves a lot more visible. 
That's fine, that's her spin on the tale, she's making them her own 
version.

But then she adds some nebuluous charm or enchantment or something 
that wizards have somehow tacked onto the natural elven enchantment 
to serve the house they've adopted. She never tells us what this 
charm was, how it came into being, how it now seems to now apply to 
all elves when they're born, etc. No, the only thing we get is the 
ramblings of the one odd-ball elf of the whole species that seems to 
want his "freedom". We don't know what part this added charm plays in 
the elf enchantment. 

Is it what causes their desire to serve? I doubt it. Nor do I think 
it binds them to the house, I think that's part of their natural 
state. Self-punishment? Yeah, probably added by wizards. Unable to 
disobey a direct order? I'm not sure if this is endemic to elves or a 
wizard enhancement.

Still, I'm not seeing a parallel to RL slavery, I'm seeing a parallel 
to those other elves of folklore with an added twist. I think Pippin 
said it brilliantly when she called them satire. The elves were 
mostly there for comic relief. Even Kreacher was played mostly for 
fun. What with his "once more for luck" and his antics in HBP.

IOW, JKR may have tried to draw the parallel between human slavery 
and elf enslavement by having Dobby and Hermione use the word "slave" 
or "slavery", but the elves weren't portrayed as anything like human 
slaves in the book, IMHO.

One more thing about Kreacher. The smart thing to do would have been 
to give him clothes *before* the Order took up 12 GP as its HQ. But 
I'm sure DD saw that as a death sentence for Kreacher and instead was 
hoping for Sirius to treat Kreacher with more compassion and turn him 
into an ally instead of an enemy. Sirius obviously couldn't see past 
Kreacher's adoration for Ma Black and the rest of the Black 
"royalty" to do that.

So the Order end up treating Kreacher as a captured enemy combatant, 
but without keeping him under lock and key. If they had captured a 
human enemy, they wouldn't just let him go back to the enemy either. 
So I don't see the not letting Kreacher go to serve Bellatrix or 
another Black LV supporter as worse treatment than what would have 
been given to a human.

Mike




From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 21 05:45:37 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:45:37 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g60vmq+jc8v@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g617q1+q1a9@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183776

---  "Zara" <zgirnius at ...> wrote:
>
> > Potioncat:
> > For example I could imagine Sirius calling himself the 
> > "Black sheep of the family" and making that word play. I 
> > really can't see Severus doing it. ...
> 
> Zara:
> I can. Sirius would do it for fun, and as a rejection of 
> his family's views. He would expect James, Remus, and Peter 
> to get a good laugh out of it. 
> 
> I think Severus did it in earnest, and shared it with no one. 
> We know very little about his background, but we do know that
> for some reason, he wanted Slytherin House. ... he was still 
> as good as any of them. In spite of his father.
>

bboyminn:

Notice that Severus is the Half-Blood PRINCE, not the half-
blood Snape. I think this was Snape's way of acknowledging
that his father had contaminated his pureblood stream. 

In a way, he was mocking his father for what young Snape
considered a crime. And even if his Slytherin friends knew,
they too would view it as a crime against Severus over which
he had no control. 

I've always thought that Voldemort took a similar approach.
Not so much denying his heritage, as holding it up as a
criminal perversion and contamination of the pure blood of
Salazar Slytherin. A crime of which he personally had no
control. 

Just a thought.

Steve/bluewizard





From leahstill at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 21 10:45:02 2008
From: leahstill at hotmail.com (littleleahstill)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:45:02 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g60q1m+f0km@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g61pbe+jv7t@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183777

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...> 
wrote:
 
> Mystified!Potioncat:
> We don't know that Severus chose the nickname. Maybe it was 
Lucius's 
> name for him. Certainly it wasn't widely used, because Lupin 
didn't 
> recognise it. Remus might have been pretending, but I don't see 
that 
> was any reason in this case.

Leah: Someone else's name for him is an interesting idea, and Lucius 
does sound like a possibility.  If so, it seems to have been 
confined to Slytherin, or perhaps not even as widely known as that.  
I can't see any reason for Lupin to lie either. 

> We also don't know when or why Snape wrote the name. A somewhat 
> bitter young man, taking potions with his one true love, may have 
> written it as a bit of sarcasm towards himself. As Jen was 
> suggesting, was he regretting choosing his friends over Lily?
> 
> That horrible bit of diaglogue, "It was I, the Half Blood Prince!" 
> (or something close to that, I really don't want to look it up.) 
> could have been simply Snape's taunting of Harry at that last 
moment 
> before Snape left Hogwarts. This name for himself, just as much as 
> SWM, may have reminded him of what he gave up.
> 
> The thing is, I can't see Severus enjoying the name or its 
meanings. 
> For example I could imagine Sirius calling himself the "Black 
sheep 
> of the family" and making that word play. I really can't see 
Severus 
> doing it. (Sirius never did that in canon, I'm just making an 
example)

Leah: No, I think that Severus would have enjoyed the name (and why 
write it in his book of spells and curses if he didn't?). It's a 
nice Gothic, r(R)omantic name, which fits with his drama queen side, 
all billowing cloaks and poetic speeches. I do think there's a bit 
of sarcasm there as well; he has a tendency to pontificate and then 
deflate (eg early in HBP when he's taking 70 points from Gryffindor 
for Harry's late arrival and 'Muggle attire' quite aggressively and 
then says something like "And we haven't even started pudding".)

Of course, like Severus, it's nicely double-edged and ambiguous.  Is 
it saying, "My dad may be a Muggle, but I'm still half a pureblood", 
or is it putting up two fingers at his mother's pureblood 
family, "You've got a half-blood in the family whether you like it 
or not"; certainly, if the Princes were still around, they don't 
seem to have been any help to Severus or to Eileen.  It might very 
well be both things at once, of course.

I think also there's an element of pride in it, certainly in its use 
in 'Advanced Potions'.  It's saying "I,Severus, part Muggle, part 
Prince, invented these spells. What I can do is more important than 
what I am". 


> 
> OTOH, I think JKR had lots of fun with "the Half-Blood Prince." It 
> drove us crazy before the book came out. It can be taken so many 
> ways, even after we know who it is.
> 
Leah: Yes, very much so, and of course it had to remain ambiguous 
until 'The Prince's Tale'.

bboyminn:

>Notice that Severus is the Half-Blood PRINCE, not the half-
>blood Snape. I think this was Snape's way of acknowledging
>that his father had contaminated his pureblood stream.

Leah: No reason to call himself the 'Half Blood Snape'. Everyone 
knows he's a Snape, it's what he calls himself all his life.  And 
anyone who is interested in who's included in 'Nature's Nobility' 
will know that's not a wizarding name. More importantly, there's no 
amusement in being 'The Half-Blood Snape'; it's partly the play 
on 'Prince' that's important and that can be self-aggrandising and 
self-deprecating at one and the same time.

(snip)

>I've always thought that Voldemort took a similar approach.
>Not so much denying his heritage, as holding it up as a
>criminal perversion and contamination of the pure blood of
>Salazar Slytherin. A crime of which he personally had no
>control.


Leah: But Voldemort did deny his heritage. Bellatrix screams in 
anger when Harry tells her at the MoM that Voldemort is a half-
blood. Like Severus, Tom Riddle gives himself a noble nickname at 
school.  The difference  is that he stops being Tom Riddle at all 
and becomes His Lordship.  As pointed out above, Severus is only 
ever Snape.   

Leah




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Mon Jul 21 15:44:48 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:44:48 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g60q1m+f0km@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g62atg+gdb0@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183778

> Mystified!Potioncat:
> We don't know that Severus chose the nickname. Maybe it was 
> Lucius's name for him. Certainly it wasn't widely used, because 
> Lupin didn't recognise it. Remus might have been pretending, but I 
> don't see that was any reason in this case.

Jen: Ooh, yet another possibility to consider!  My main hesitation 
about Lucius inventing the name is whether Snape would still proudly 
proclaim it at the end of HBP?  He's completely given himself over to 
Dumbledore's cause by then.  Although there is Hermione's comment: "I 
don't think he wanted to associate himself with that book," said 
Hermione.  "I don't think Dumbledore would have liked it very much if 
he'd known." (Chap. 30, HBP)  I believe that's meant to be taken as 
true, meaning there was some aspect of the Half-Blood Prince Snape 
didn't feel pride about.

Potioncat:
> The thing is, I can't see Severus enjoying the name or its
> meanings. For example I could imagine Sirius calling himself 
> the "Black sheep of the family" and making that word play. I really 
> can't see Severus doing it. (Sirius never did that in canon, I'm 
> just making an example)

> Zara:
> I can. <snip> I think Severus did it in earnest, and shared it with
> no one. We know very little about his background, but we do know 
> that for some reason, he wanted Slytherin House. The House of 
> Purebloods, which he darn well knew he was not. To me, this 
> suggests a conviction/desire to prove, that he is *as good as* a 
> pureblood. Good enough to get into Slytherin, even with a Muggle
> father. Good enough to be a Death Eater, again despote his birth. 
> That however a certain segment of wizard society (his family? his 
> housemates?) might regard him owing to his parentage, he was still 
> as good as any of them. In spite of his father.

Jen: The only thing is Snape didn't talk about Slytherin house as the 
house of purebloods on the train in the Prince's Tale; he mentions 
brains.  Are you thinking he was covering up some of his beliefs for 
Lily?  It's possible since he holds back earlier when she asks about 
her Muggle-born status.

I like your explanation, that even if Snape didn't think of Slytherin 
as the house of purebloods when he was 11, he knew how important 
divisions by blood were a few years later when Voldemort started 
gaining power.  Snape's already a proud boy with a chip on his 
shoulder by the time he starts Hogwarts.  It fits he would feel equal 
to any pureblood because of his incredible intelligence.  It's what 
he had to offer Voldemort in lieu of pure ancestry when the time came 
to join up.

The problem with Snape not sharing his nickname with anyone is it 
would invalidate Harry's comment at the end of HBP: "Yeah, that 
fits," said Harry. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get 
in good with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them...He's just like 
Voldemort.  Pure-blood mother, Muggle father...ashamed of his 
parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave 
himself an impressive new name - *Lord* voldemort - the Half-Blood 
*Prince* - how could Dumbledore have missed -? (HBP, chap 30)

Given that the HBP story was initially part of COS, I think Harry was 
wrong in his conclusions about Snape's similarity to Voldemort but 
right to think Snape had to work harder than a pureblood to gain 
respect in Slytherin and with LV.  


bboyminn:
> In a way, he was mocking his father for what young Snape considered 
> a crime. And even if his Slytherin friends knew, they too would 
> view it as a crime against Severus over which he had no control.

Jen: Do you mean the crime of intermarriage between a pureblood and a 
Muggle?  That his father was abusive?  I'm not sure what you mean.

Leah:
> Of course, like Severus, it's nicely double-edged and ambiguous. Is 
> it saying, "My dad may be a Muggle, but I'm still half a pureblood",
> or is it putting up two fingers at his mother's pureblood 
> family, "You've got a half-blood in the family whether you like it 
> or not"; certainly, if the Princes were still around, they don't
> seem to have been any help to Severus or to Eileen. It might very
> well be both things at once, of course.

> I think also there's an element of pride in it, certainly in its
> use in 'Advanced Potions'. It's saying "I,Severus, part Muggle, part
> Prince, invented these spells. What I can do is more important than
> what I am".

Jen: I like this version too, heh.  In-Your-Face Snape. 
Interestingly, if his motives were to stick it to his family, parade 
around who he was & what he could do, he became a man who hid his 
greatest feat of all - fooling the Dark Lord completely & becoming 
instrumental in his downfall.  

Jen, reading the series in reverse order and currently in the middle 
of HBP.




From zgirnius at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 21 18:16:35 2008
From: zgirnius at yahoo.com (Zara)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:16:35 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g61pbe+jv7t@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g62jq3+1ufj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183779


> Leah: But Voldemort did deny his heritage. Bellatrix screams in 
> anger when Harry tells her at the MoM that Voldemort is a half-
> blood. Like Severus, Tom Riddle gives himself a noble nickname at 
> school.  The difference  is that he stops being Tom Riddle at all 
> and becomes His Lordship.  As pointed out above, Severus is only 
> ever Snape.   

Zara:
Yes, whereas Snape's was known. Bella doubts whether 'her kind' ever 
graced Spinner's End prior to that chapter in HBP - the logical 
implication of which, is that she doe snto consider Snape to be "her 
kind". As you suggest in the snipped part, doubtless because she knew 
quite well there were no Wizarding Snapes.








From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 21 19:49:59 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:49:59 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g62atg+gdb0@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g62p97+lpap@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183780

Jen wrote: 

<snip>  My main hesitation about Lucius inventing the name is whether
Snape would still proudly proclaim it at the end of HBP?  He's
completely given himself over to Dumbledore's cause by then.

Carol responds:
I'm sure you're right on this point. It seems to be Severus's own
invention, personal and important to him but possibly not even known
to anyone else. Look where he writes, "This book is the property of
the Half-Blood Prince," in his tiny writing on the inside back cover,
IIRC. In any case, were he to misplace his precious book as a teenager
(not likely given his frequent use of it and the amount of spare time
he must have spent on inventing spells and potions improvements) his
fellow Slytherins could tell at a glance that it was his without
looking for the name.

Jen:
>  Although there is Hermione's comment: "I don't think he wanted to
associate himself with that book," said Hermione.  "I don't think
Dumbledore would have liked it very much if he'd known." (Chap. 30,
HBP)  I believe that's meant to be taken as true, meaning there was
some aspect of the Half-Blood Prince Snape didn't feel pride about.

Carol responds:

I disagree. Hermione herself has considered the book disreputable from
the start, partly because it enables Harry to get marks he doesn't
deserve in Potions class without even trying and partly because she
disapproves of the spells, which for the most part are no worse than
the hexes that the boys (and Ginny) use on other students all the
time. The toenail hex and Langlock are used for laughs on Crabbe and
Filch (Harry is in danger of becoming James in this book, IMO); Ron,
after the initial shock of finding himself suspended by the ankle,
regards Levicorpus as funny. Harry continues to use it even though he
knows it was used by his father to torment a wandless Severus Snape.
Hermione associates the spell with the DEs at the QWT, but she's
mistaken (or JKR is confused); while all the DEs seemed to be using a
Hover Charm (possibly strengthened by the number of people using it)
to keep the Robinson family suspended high in the air above them, only
one of them flicks a Muggle, Mrs. Robinson, upside down (Levicorpus).
another uses a different spell to make a small child spin around. In
Hermione's mind, Levicorpus is "Dark" by association, but it and the
other hexes are only relatively Dark, no more so than Stupefy or
Petrificus Totalus and less so than the curse Harry cast, intended for
Draco, that caused Goyle (IIRC) to burst out in painful boils. The
toenail hex is on a level with Draco's Densuageo, intended for Harry,
which causes Hermione's teeth to lengthen but is easily reversed by
Madam Pomfrey. Muffliato is not Dark at all; it's merely a useful
charm to allow people to talk without being overheard, along the lines
of the Impervius Charm used by Mrs. Weasley to prevent the kids from
eavesdropping. The only Dark spell that we know of in the book is
Sectumsempra, and the invention of that spell is no worse than having
been a Death Eater in the first place. I doubt that Dumbledore would
judge Snape for having invented it in his youth, considering what DD
planned with Grindelwald at a slightly older age. Besides, Snape seems
to have (deliberately or carelessly) left his Potions book in the
classroom after he left school, perhaps because he no longer needed
it; everything in it, down to the proper order of potion ingredients
(and his own improvements), was in his head.

As for an aspect of the name Half-Blood Prince that Snape didn't feel
pride about, he certainly wasn't proud of being Tobias Snape's son and
he was probably defensive about being a Half-Blood, but there's an
element of defiance in the nickname. He's *the* Half-Blood, as in "the
one and only *Half-Blood* Prince, the others being, presumably,
pureblood. In essence, as Leah suggested, he's saying that he's just
as good (clever and magically powerful, not "good" in a moral sense),
and just as much a "prince," as the other members of his family. ("The
Half-blood Lestrange" or "the Half-Blood Malfoy" wouldn't have worked
as well. Or how about "the Half-Blood Crouch"?)

Potioncat:
> > The thing is, I can't see Severus enjoying the name or its
> > meanings. <snip>

Carol:
Oh, I can. It's just the sort of sarcastic, wry humor that he would
appreciate, half self-deprecating, half-defiant. Whether he shared it
with his friends and whether they were sophisticated enough to
appreciate it, I don't know. I suspect that it was private based on
the placement of the statement of ownership. (BTW, if he didn't share
his spells with his Slytherin friends, they could have discovered them
by looking at that book, but I suspect that he kept it locked in his
trunk, protected as Harry protected his bottle of Felix Felicis and
his Firebolt.
> 
> > Zara:
> > I can. <snip> I think Severus did it in earnest, and shared it
with no one. We know very little about his background, but we do know
that for some reason, he wanted Slytherin House. The House of
Purebloods, which he darn well knew he was not.

Carol responds:
We know the reason. Eleven-year-old Severus thinks that Slytherin is
"the house for brains" (by implication, the antithesis of Gryffindor,
which he would probably associate with brawn). This impression must
have been created by his mother, herself a Slytherin. Blood has
nothing to do with his choice since he hopes that the Muggle-born Lily
will be sorted into Slytherin with him.

Zara:
 To me, this suggests a conviction/desire to prove, that he is *as
good as* a pureblood. Good enough to get into Slytherin, even with a
Muggle father. 

Carol:
Again, he evidently didn't know about the blood prejudices of his
chosen House or he couldn't have hoped that Lily would be Sorted into
it, but certainly, he viewed himself (rightly) as having brains and
talent, and he certainly wanted to be good enough to get into the
House he associated, however mistakenly, with brains. (Maybe "cunning"
and "ambition" counted as "brains" in Eileen's view?)

Zara:
Good enough to be a Death Eater, again despote his birth. 

Carol:
Well, yes, but that ambition comes later, several years after Lucius
Malfoy took him under his wing and perhaps himself become a Death
Eater, when his friends at school (fifth year and later) are openly
expressing the same ambition and particularly after Lily has ended her
friendship with him. When Severus is eleven, Voldemort has only been
back for about a year and is assuredly not recruiting children in
their first few years at Hogwarts. 

Zara:
> > That however a certain segment of wizard society (his family? his
housemates?) might regard him owing to his parentage, he was still as
good as any of them. In spite of his father.

Carol:
Yes. And, of course, his own abilities would have proven that
worthiness, not only to Severus himself, but to the likes of Lucius
Malfoy, who somehow senses a prodigy even as Severus is Sorted into
Slytherin.
>
Jen: 
> The only thing is Snape didn't talk about Slytherin house as the 
house of purebloods on the train in the Prince's Tale; he mentions 
brains.  Are you thinking he was covering up some of his beliefs for 
Lily?  It's possible since he holds back earlier when she asks about
her Muggle-born status.

Carol:
I know you're not addressing me, but I'd say "yes" to the first part
of your post and "no" to the second. He wouldn't excitedly hope that
Lily would be Sorted into Slytherin if he knew its views, and he'd
have kept quiet about it in front of Lily rather than covering up his
beliefs. Severus is already anti *Muggle* because of his father and
perhaps Petunia, but that's not the same as being anti-Muggle-born.
the only Muggle-born of his acquaintance is Lily, and she's his best
friend.

Jen: 
> I like your [Zara's??] explanation, that even if Snape didn't think
of Slytherin as the house of purebloods when he was 11, he knew how
important divisions by blood were a few years later when Voldemort
started gaining power.  Snape's already a proud boy with a chip on his
shoulder by the time he starts Hogwarts.  It fits he would feel equal
to any pureblood because of his incredible intelligence.  It's what
head to offer Voldemort in lieu of pure ancestry when the time came 
to join up.

Carol:
I agree with this paragraph. However, it's hard to say at what point
he started thinking about joining the DEs. I'd guess around fifth
year. I don't think he was fully committed to it until after Lily
ended their friendship. Apparently, Avery and Mulciber have openly
expressed their ambition to become DEs but Severus hasn't, or she'd
have dropped him long before.

Jen:
> The problem with Snape not sharing his nickname with anyone is it
would invalidate Harry's comment at the end of HBP: "Yeah, that 
fits," said Harry. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get
in good with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them...He's just like
Voldemort.  Pure-blood mother, Muggle father...ashamed of his
parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave 
himself an impressive new name - *Lord* voldemort - the Half-Blood 
*Prince* - how could Dumbledore have missed -? (HBP, chap 30)

Carol:
What's wrong with invalidating Harry's comment? He's judging Snape as
a DE, a traitor to DD, and a murderer, and he's assuming that a
superficial resemblance to Voldemort has a deeper significance than it
probably has. Severus didn't need to "play up the pure-blood side so
he could get in good with Lucius Malfoy"; Lucius seems to have taken
him under his wing from the first, probably more so when he discovers
the little boy's prodigious talents. And where do we see evidence of
Severus "trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts"? It's
Mulciber that Lily accuses of trying to use some unidentified Dark
spell. If such a thing happened, we don't see any evidence for it.
Harry is only speculating here, based on false assumptions. We can't
take his hypotheses about a man he has never understood as having any
more value than Snape's view of Harry as "arrogant" and "mediocre."
The whole point of the Snape subplot as far as Snape himself is
concerned is redemption; as far as Harry is concerned, it's
misperception, which is finally corrected, too late for Snape himself,
by "The Prince's Tale." (BTW, I don't know why, but I like JKR's
reference to him in several chapter titles as "the Prince," without
any "Half-Blood" attached to it. It's Harry's nickname for his
"friend," too, before the discovery of his identity, with no
Machiavellian connotations.)

Jen: 
> Given that the HBP story was initially part of COS, I think Harry
was wrong in his conclusions about Snape's similarity to Voldemort but
right to think Snape had to work harder than a pureblood to gain
respect in Slytherin and with LV.  
> 
Carol:
I agree that Harry was wrong in his conclusions but I'm not sure what
the subplot's originally being part of CoS had to do with it. (How
would that have worked, anyway? Two books, Riddle's diary and the
HBP's second-year Potions book (which was probably no different from
the first year's) in parallel plots? Harry as a second-year finding
Snape's sixth-year Potions book, which would not help him in Snape's
second-year Potions class, and using Snape's spells, including
Sectumsempra, in second year, all this before he learns that Snape was
ever a DE? Or maybe the plan to have Harry find Snape's book was
switched to the Riddle diary planted on Ginny when JKR discovered that
the HBP plot would not work for the second year. Surely Snape's
potions book was never intended to open the CoS. Only a Riddle Horcrux
could and would do that.

Anyway, I'm not sure that Severus *had* to work harder than anyone
else to gain the respect of the Slytherins, who must have been
impressed from the outset by his extensive knowledge of hexes (and his
ability to invent them, whenever that talent manifested itself). But
knowing Snape, who is as much a workaholic as Hermione and is almost
always *doing* something even when he's not teaching, whether it's
prowling the hallways or marking essays and potions off-page or
conducting a detention, I suspect that he worked hard as a boy, too,
not so much for approval but as a compulsion. Look at the length and
detail of his response to the DADA exam. If he worked that hard on his
other subjects (as he must have done in Potions, at least), his
friends must have considered him a swot, redeemed in their view by his
cleverness at creating hexes. (I doubt that he shared his Potions
improvements with his fellow Slytherins, but they'd have been mightily
impressed by the hexes and charms.)

 Jen: 
> I like this version [Leah's] too, heh.  In-Your-Face Snape. 
Interestingly, if his motives were to stick it to his family, parade
around who he was & what he could do, he became a man who hid his 
greatest feat of all - fooling the Dark Lord completely & becoming 
instrumental in his downfall. <snip>

Carol:
I don't think it was "in your face." I think it was personal and
secret. Imagine him presenting himself to his Pure-Blood relatives and
saying, in essence, "I'm a Prince, too. So there." They would remind
him, snidely, that technically he was a Snape. I wonder if his friends
even knew that his mother was Eileen Prince or had any knowledge of
the Prince family, which must have intermarried with other pureblood
families just as the Crouches, Blacks, Yaxleys, and Longbottoms did,
even though they don't appear on the portion of the Black family tree
that JKR has shared with us. I suspect that, with his grandfather's
death, the family, like so many others, became extinct in the male
line. (I'm reminded of the Wars of the Roses here!)

Anyway, the teenage Severus (who would have been a dynamic character
if we had seen him develop off-screen, to cite another thread) is
different in many ways from the heart-broken and repentant and bitter
adult, one of which is his ability to "act," as he puts it to Draco in
HBP, to put on an inscrutable expression (until, on perhaps three
occasions, the bottled up rage comes spewing out). I don't think that
the teenage Severus, who seems more than a bit emotional and wears his
heart on his sleeve, could have fooled anybody except those like James
and Sirius who judged him as an enemy based primarily on the House he
wanted to be Sorted into. I think he was torn between Lily and his
junior DE friends and could not commit to one or the other until Lily
rejected him and, in effect, forced his hand. But that's not the same
as deliberately disguising his true loyalties, which requires not only
a mastery of Occlumency (surely not yet acquired in SWM) and immense
self-control and determination, prompted first by his fear for Lily
and then by his promise to protect her son at whatever cost.

Carol, who should be editing but is waiting for the maintenance people
to repair her air conditioning unit before going back to work






From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 21 20:23:41 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:23:41 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g62jq3+1ufj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g62r8d+2p0t@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183781

Zara:
> Yes, whereas Snape's was known. Bella doubts whether 'her kind' ever
graced Spinner's End prior to that chapter in HBP - the logical 
implication of which, is that she doe snto consider Snape to be "her 
kind". As you suggest in the snipped part, doubtless because she knew
 quite well there were no Wizarding Snapes.

Carol:
And yet she must have known that Snape's mother was a witch.
Obviously, he's not a Muggle-born or he wouldn't have been in
Slytherin (or LV's supposed right-hand man). Also, as I've indicated
earlier, the Princes must have been Pure-bloods because "*the*
Half-Blood Prince" makes no sense unless there are or were "Pure-blood
Princes." 

So either Bella, who is at least six and possibly nine years older
than Severus (if we count the Black family tree as canon) didn't know
who Snape's mother was or she didn't know that Spinner's End (where
she had never been before) had been his childhood home--if indeed it
was. (He might have bought it as an adult--it really doesn't seem like
a home that a Muggle like Tobias Snape would have lived in in the
1070s unless he was completely dominated by his witch wife, which does
not appear to be the case.)

At any rate, obviously "our kind" can't relate to Witches and Wizards
since Snape lives there, so it must, as you say, mean "Pure-Blood."
But if Spinner's End was Snape's childhood home and if Eileen was a
Pure-blood, as I think she must have been, Bella is wrong in her
assumption, and they're not the "first of their kind" ever to set foot
there.

I realize, of course, that the point is Bella's snobbery, but she
apparently knows very little about Snape's personal history. Maybe,
setting aside some unacknowledged jealousy of the favor he's enjoying
from Voldemort, she considers him beneath her notice (in contrast to
the Malfoys).

Which reminds me, do we ever actually see Lucius Malfoy and Snape
together? I imagine that Lucius would be conscious of his superior
social standing but only mildly condescending toward the talented
younger man who had been his protege and who must still work for his
living.

Carol, who knows that Spinner's End is really a street but is using it
here metonymically to refer to the house





From foxmoth at qnet.com  Mon Jul 21 20:41:49 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:41:49 -0000
Subject: Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)
In-Reply-To: <g61066+ahtm@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g62sad+dnab@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183782

> 
> Mike:
> Umm, Hermione knit the Elf hats/cozies in GoF. 
> So yeah, I meant GoF.

Pippin:
Gosh, maybe we *are* reading different books <veg>. Hermione knitted
the elf hats over the summer post-GoF and hid them around Gryffindor
Tower during the OOP year. Ron uncovered some but apparently not all,
since the elves knew they were hidden and were so offended they
stopped cleaning GT. (chs 13 and 18 OOP) Hermione may have realized
that Dobby was taking the hats  when he arrived wearing eight of them
to warn the DA (ch 27 OOP)
> 
> 
> > Montavilla47:
> > She *may* have changed her mind by HBP, but IIRC, she doesn't say
> > *anything* about elves in the entire book, so it's hard to tell.
> 
> Mike:
> You're right about HBP. There's really only the one scene where 
> Kreacher and Dobby are making their Draco reports wherein Hermione 
> says anything about elves.

Pippin:
We do hear  indirectly about SPEW, though. The forgotten House-elf in
all this is Hokey. After experiencing her story, "[Harry] had rarely
felt more in sympathy with the society that Hermione had set up,
S.P.E.W." (HBP ch 20)

As Harry's conclusion shows, Hokey's story is the one which
illustrates that even Elves who are happy with their masters  need
civil rights. Once Hepzibah was dead, no one (except Dumbledore) cared
if Hokey was hauled off to Azkaban. I suppose Hepzibah's heirs weren't
concerned about losing the service of a very old and apparently
fatally unreliable House-elf. 


Mike:
> IOW, JKR may have tried to draw the parallel between human slavery 
> and elf enslavement by having Dobby and Hermione use the word
"slave"  or "slavery", but the elves weren't portrayed as anything
like human  slaves in the book, IMHO.

Pippin:
Exactly. Hermione's activism is well-meant, and changes *are* needed,
but she went astray in blindly trying to apply the lessons of one
culture's history to another. Despite their dependent status, mangled
English and the  superficially similar "but they're happy" excuse for
the status quo, House-elves are not 19th century Americans in tea towels. 

And, needless to say, neither are slaves  in the world today. 

Mike: 
> So I don't see the not letting Kreacher go to serve Bellatrix or 
> another Black LV supporter as worse treatment than what would have 
> been given to a human.
> 

Pippin:
Right. The Order might have had to break a few more Wizarding Laws to
do it, but that wouldn't have stopped them. As Magpie says, that
doesn't mean there shouldn't be elf rights. But my point was that you
can't get blood out of a turnip, and you can't get rights and freedoms
guaranteed by a government that's too weak and corrupt to do it. 

Any effort to get a government run by the likes of Fudge and Umbridge
to recognize elf rights would be putting the cart before the horse.

I will admit, I thought there'd  be more of a feel good resolution for
the Elves. I thought Harry would have to free them as part of his
quest, and unite the houses too. 

But now I remember what Hagrid said back in PS/SS, about
Muggles expecting wizards to provide magical solutions for all their
problems. The problems of the House-elves and the division between the
Houses are not  problems of dark magic. They're problems of greed,
prejudice, intemperance and insensitivity. There's no magical solution
for those. 


Pippin







From leahstill at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 21 22:24:25 2008
From: leahstill at hotmail.com (littleleahstill)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:24:25 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g62r8d+2p0t@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g632ap+cfkd@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183783

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> 
wrote:
>
> Zara:
> > Yes, whereas Snape's was known. Bella doubts whether 'her kind' 
ever
> graced Spinner's End prior to that chapter in HBP - the logical 
> implication of which, is that she doe snto consider Snape to 
be "her 
> kind". As you suggest in the snipped part, doubtless because she 
knew
>  quite well there were no Wizarding Snapes.
> 
> Carol:
> And yet she must have known that Snape's mother was a witch.
> Obviously, he's not a Muggle-born or he wouldn't have been in
> Slytherin (or LV's supposed right-hand man). Also, as I've 
indicated
> earlier, the Princes must have been Pure-bloods because "*the*
> Half-Blood Prince" makes no sense unless there are or were "Pure-
blood
> Princes." 
> 
> So either Bella, who is at least six and possibly nine years older
> than Severus (if we count the Black family tree as canon) didn't 
know
> who Snape's mother was or she didn't know that Spinner's End (where
> she had never been before) had been his childhood home--if indeed 
it
> was. (He might have bought it as an adult--it really doesn't seem 
like
> a home that a Muggle like Tobias Snape would have lived in in the
> 1070s unless he was completely dominated by his witch wife, which 
does
> not appear to be the case.)
> 
> At any rate, obviously "our kind" can't relate to Witches and 
Wizards
> since Snape lives there, so it must, as you say, mean "Pure-Blood."
> But if Spinner's End was Snape's childhood home and if Eileen was a
> Pure-blood, as I think she must have been, Bella is wrong in her
> assumption, and they're not the "first of their kind" ever to set 
foot
> there.
> 
> I realize, of course, that the point is Bella's snobbery, but she
> apparently knows very little about Snape's personal history. Maybe,
> setting aside some unacknowledged jealousy of the favor he's 
enjoying
> from Voldemort, she considers him beneath her notice (in contrast 
to
> the Malfoys).
> 
> Which reminds me, do we ever actually see Lucius Malfoy and Snape
> together? I imagine that Lucius would be conscious of his superior
> social standing but only mildly condescending toward the talented
> younger man who had been his protege and who must still work for 
his
> living.
> 
> Carol, who knows that Spinner's End is really a street but is 
using it
> here metonymically to refer to the house

Leah:  Spinners End was Snape's childhood home, because in his first 
encounter with Lily, Petunia scoffs at him as 'that Snape boy...they 
live in Spinners End down by the river' or words to that effect 
(don't have the book in front of me).  Petunia is almost as 
disparaging about the neighbourhood as Bellatrix :).  It sounds like 
a rough neighbourhood. Possibly Tobias inherited the house from his 
parents, though it would have beem unusual for mill workers (and 
that's what they probably were) to own a house rather than rent; 
often workers' houses were owned by the mill or factory.  Perhaps 
the house was sold off if and when the mill closed down.  The 
textile industry in the English North-West became very depressed 
during the 60s and Tobias may have been on the dole and stuck nn 
Spinners End.   

As to Bellatrix's comment, she is presumably refering to purebloods, 
but Snape's nickname makes no sense unless Eileen was a pureblood.  
I wonder if Bellatrix means 'purebloods who behave in a proper 
pureblood way'.  Had Eileen been a Black rather than a Prince, 
Bellatrix's Aunt Walburga would certainly have blasted her off the 
tapestry as a blood-traitor when she married Tobias.  

Leah (who can't recall a Lucius/Snape moment other than the greeting 
after Severus was Sorted.




From willsonkmom at msn.com  Tue Jul 22 00:39:33 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:39:33 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g632ap+cfkd@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g63a85+utng@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183784

 
> > Carol:
> > And yet she must have known that Snape's mother was a witch.
> > Obviously, he's not a Muggle-born or he wouldn't have been in
> > Slytherin (or LV's supposed right-hand man). Also, as I've 
> indicated
> > earlier, the Princes must have been Pure-bloods because "*the*
> > Half-Blood Prince" makes no sense unless there are or were "Pure-
> blood
> > Princes." 

Potioncat:
Yes, but there is "our kind" and there is 'our kind'. At the moment, 
Bella didn't like Snape and didn't want Cissy going to him for help. 
I think Bella is being particularly insulting. If she recalls that he 
is a Half-blood, then for that moment, neither he nor his mother is 
her kind---never mind that she has to play nice with Severus when the 
Dark Lord is looking.

It could also mean that his home is particularly out of the wizarding 
mainstream. But that makes no sense. 12 GP is smack in the middle of  
Muggle neighborhood.

For all that Severus seems to be accepted into Slytherin and the DEs, 
I have to believe that a time comes when his blood makes him not good 
enough. We also have Snape's comment that several DEs distrust him. 
His blood status could be a part of that mistrust.

> 
> Leah:   Possibly Tobias inherited the house from his 
> parents, though it would have beem unusual for mill workers (and 
> that's what they probably were) to own a house rather than rent; 
> often workers' houses were owned by the mill or factory.  Perhaps 
> the house was sold off if and when the mill closed down.  The 
> textile industry in the English North-West became very depressed 
> during the 60s and Tobias may have been on the dole and stuck nn 
> Spinners End. 

Potioncat:
If the English mill villages were like the US ones, they were sold 
off after the mill closed, as Leah suggested. They are still for the 
most part, depressed areas--at least in the US. I think JKR intended 
Tobias to be working at the mill during Snape's childhood, and my 
guess is that either it was bought by the Snapes later, or bought by 
Snape later. It has the advantage of being out of the way of Muggles 
and Wizards. It also has Severus close to the place where he and Lily 
had been happy.  
> 
 
> 
> Leah (who can't recall a Lucius/Snape moment other than the 
greeting 
> after Severus was Sorted.


Potioncat:
I don't think we "ever" see Snape and Malfoy--except for the greeting 
at the Sorting. But we have Black's "lapdog" jeer, Cissy's "Lucius's 
oldest friend" plea, and Delores's "Lucius speaks very highly of you" 
comment.





From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 22 01:49:30 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:49:30 -0000
Subject: Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)
In-Reply-To: <g62sad+dnab@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g63eba+avaf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183785

> > Mike:
> > Umm, Hermione knit the Elf hats/cozies in GoF. 
> > So yeah, I meant GoF.
> 
> Pippin:
> Gosh, maybe we *are* reading different books <veg>.

Mike:
Mouth, meet foot. Foot, climb right in there and get comfortable. No 
sense in getting out, you'll just be climbing back in again. Merlin's 
shorts, can I get anything right on this thread?


> Pippin:
> We do hear  indirectly about SPEW, though. 

Mike:
Harry also thinks about Hermione and her S.P.E.W. in "After the 
Burial" when Sluggy relates that he used elves to taste test the 
wine for poisons. Again, It wasn't Hermione speaking, it was Harry 
remembering Hermione's position.


> Pippin:
> The forgotten House-elf in all this is Hokey. 
> <snip canon>
> 
> As Harry's conclusion shows, Hokey's story is the one which
> illustrates that even Elves who are happy with their masters
> need civil rights. Once Hepzibah was dead, no one (except
> Dumbledore) cared if Hokey was hauled off to Azkaban.

Mike:
But Hokey wasn't treated any different than Morfin was. They were 
both framed by Riddle. See, this is another case where the elf wasn't 
treated any different than the human was or would have been. Wizard 
justice sucks, but it doesn't suck any worse for elves. BTW, I always 
had the impression that the DMLE concluded that Hokey *accidently* 
poisoned Hepzi, and therefore she wasn't incarcerated. I don't 
remember Dumbledore saying he visited Hokey in Azkaban or any other 
prison. Did I screw up, *again*?



> Pippin:
> Exactly. Hermione's activism is well-meant, and changes *are* 
> needed, but she went astray in blindly trying to apply the
> lessons of one culture's history to another. 

Mike:
Right! And that leads me to conclude that we weren't suppose to 
draw that parallel either. Regardless of what JKR averred in some 
interview. Hermione's lesson was that elves are not human slaves. So 
why should I think JKR was making a statement about human slavery?



> Pippin:
> 
> As Magpie says, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be elf rights.
> But my point was that you can't get blood out of a turnip, and
> you can't get rights and freedoms guaranteed by a government
> that's too weak and corrupt to do it. 

Mike:
No doubt, Magpie is right. But that's just one of many problems with 
wizarding society. Also, I daresay, not the most pressing, both while 
Voldemort is alive and terrorizing and after he's dead and things 
have returned to the way they were ca. 1990.


> Pippin:
> 
> The problems of the House-elves and the division between
> the Houses are not problems of dark magic. They're problems of
> greed, prejudice, intemperance and insensitivity. There's no
> magical solution for those. 

Mike:
I was rereading some of Magpie's comments on this subject and I've 
come to a new understanding of the issue. <As Magpie nods and 
thinks, "It's about time!"> 

I'm guessing that elves were at one time free to choose whichever 
house they wanted to serve, Muggle or Wizard. When wizards decided to 
segregrate themselves from the non-magical world, they endeavored to 
do the same with all magical creatures.

The house elves were an easy problem to solve (from the wizard's 
point of view). Just restrict them to only wizarding houses, and bind 
them to that house forever. Then for good measure, add on the self-
punishment clause for disobedience in hopes that this will keep them 
in their place. If a new elf needs placement, well that's the reason 
for that department in the Ministry of Magic.

But elves weren't the only beings restricted in this wizarding effort 
to remove themselves from the Muggle world. They restrict the 
centaurs to the Forbidden Forest. I don't know if there are other 
centaur herds, but I'm sure they would be likewise restricted. 
Granted, this isn't as great a hardship, as the centaurs seem to want 
to remain separated from all humans.

The giants are a different story. They were herded into some 
mountains - somewhere in Russia I think, based on Hagrid's tale - or 
killed if they didn't accede to that demand. A little tougher on them 
than on the elves, wouldn't you say? Trolls, we don't know about, but 
I'd guess they were even easier to control than the giants.

Yet remember, there were also restrictions on wizards. I'll bet Willy 
Windershins would have gotten time in Azkaban for his flouting of the 
rules if he hadn't made a deal with Umbridge. And Morfin looked like 
he was going to get time, even before he and Marvolo fought back, for 
using magic on a Muggle.  This punishment is not permanent, but it's 
there. Yes, the elves are permanently punished, but whoever said 
wizard justice was fair?

So, what's my point? That the story of the elves is not one of 
slavery, it's one of unfair and one-side restrictions in this ongoing 
wizard idea of maintaining secrecy while living amongst Muggles. It 
all comes back to that Hagrid quote in PS/SS that Pippin referred to 
in her post <and I snipped, <eg>). Wizards don't want to be inundated 
with Muggle requests for magical solutions to their problems, and 
don't want the elves to give the Muggles similiar help.

Is that fair to the elves? Is it right for wizards to unilaterally 
decide this fate for the elves? Hell no, but it's not any different 
than what they expect from the centaurs, giants, trolls, etc. And 
it's not a statement on slavery, IMO, it's a statement on the 
wizarding form of government and how they enforce and employ *their* 
laws. 

In typical wizarding fashion, they sought a magical solution to a 
problem that couldn't or shouldn't be solved by magic. <That's a *me 
too* to what Pippin said> ;-)

Mike




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 22 04:29:59 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:29:59 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g62p97+lpap@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g63no7+g4v8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183786

> Jen:
> Although there is Hermione's comment: "I don't think he wanted to
> associate himself with that book," said Hermione.  "I don't think
> Dumbledore would have liked it very much if he'd known." (Chap. 30,
> HBP)  I believe that's meant to be taken as true, meaning there was
> some aspect of the Half-Blood Prince Snape didn't feel pride about.
 
> Carol responds:
> I disagree. Hermione herself has considered the book disreputable 
> from the start, partly because it enables Harry to get marks he 
> doesn't deserve in Potions class without even trying and partly 
> because she disapproves of the spells, which for the most part are 
> no worse than the hexes that the boys (and Ginny) use on other
> students all the time. <snip>

Jen: Except that Hermione isn't disapproving during that particular 
discussion.  She's providing necessary narrative information, playing 
the role Dumbledore typically played at the end of the story.  In 
fact, she goes on to defend Snape from Harry's accusations a few 
paragraphs later.  Her research into the Prince, learning Snape was 
the author of the potions books, appears to have changed her mind 
somewhat even in the face of Snape AK'ing DD.  She never despised 
Snape as Harry did.

Snape doesn't openly associate himself with the potions book during 
the story when he's well within his rights to do so.  He could've 
gone to Dumbledore when Harry refused to give him the book but he 
didn't.  Snape could've proclaimed much earlier on, to a wider 
audience, that Harry was using his own invented spells.  Snape 
doesn't lay claim to the book or the spells until pushed too far by 
Harry, when the two of them are alone. He doesn't act like someone 
who's entirely proud of his inventions.

Carol:
> I doubt that Dumbledore would judge Snape for having invented it in
> his youth, considering what DD planned with Grindelwald at a
> slightly older age. Besides, Snape seems to have (deliberately or 
> carelessly) left his Potions book in the classroom after he left
> school, perhaps because he no longer needed it; everything in it,
> down to the proper order of potion ingredients (and his own 
> improvements), was in his head.

Jen: I doubt Dumbledore would judge Snape for inventing the book but 
he might have had a problem with Snape not destroying it, that he 
left it either carelessly or deliberately where a student could run 
across it.  Harry stops reading the book after the Sectumsempra 
incident.  What else was in the rest of the book as Snape's life grew 
darker? We'll never know but I doubt it was the fairly benign spells 
he started out creating.

> Carol:
> Yes. And, of course, his own abilities would have proven that
> worthiness, not only to Severus himself, but to the likes of Lucius
> Malfoy, who somehow senses a prodigy even as Severus is Sorted into
> Slytherin.

Jen: How could Lucius sense anything about Snape from his sorting?!? 
I don't think that moment means anything more than a prefect 
welcoming a new house member.  Lucius doesn't motion Snape to sit 
beside him even, there just happened to be an open space next to him 
and Lucius patted him as he sat down.  

> Carol:
> I know you're not addressing me, but I'd say "yes" to the first part
> of your post and "no" to the second. He wouldn't excitedly hope that
> Lily would be Sorted into Slytherin if he knew its views, and he'd
> have kept quiet about it in front of Lily rather than covering up 
> his beliefs. Severus is already anti *Muggle* because of his father
> and perhaps Petunia, but that's not the same as being anti-Muggle-
> born.  The only Muggle-born of his acquaintance is Lily, and she's
> his best friend.

Jen: I don't know, he's already pretty crazy about Lily.  Snape's 
hesitation when Lily asks if it makes a difference that she's Muggle-
born means something.  It might not mean anything about Slytherin 
house, but to me it indicates Snape knew some reason why Lily being 
Muggle-born made a difference.

>> Jen:
> The problem with Snape not sharing his nickname with anyone is it
> would invalidate Harry's comment at the end of HBP: "Yeah, that 
> fits," said Harry. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get
> in good with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them...He's just like
> Voldemort.  Pure-blood mother, Muggle father...ashamed of his
> parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave 
> himself an impressive new name - *Lord* voldemort - the Half-Blood 
> *Prince* - how could Dumbledore have missed -? (HBP, chap 30)

> Carol:
> What's wrong with invalidating Harry's comment? He's judging Snape
> as a DE, a traitor to DD, and a murderer, and he's assuming that a
> superficial resemblance to Voldemort has a deeper significance than
> it probably has. Severus didn't need to "play up the pure-blood  
> side so he could get in good with Lucius Malfoy"; Lucius seems to 
> have taken him under his wing from the first, probably more so when
> he discovers the little boy's prodigious talents. And where do we 
> see evidence of Severus "trying to make himself feared using the
> Dark Arts"? It's Mulciber that Lily accuses of trying to use some
> unidentified Dark spell. If such a thing happened, we don't see any
> evidence for it.

Jen: What's wrong is I see some truth in Harry's statement.  Not in 
scope, as you said he's misjudging Snape and assuming the superficial 
resemblance to Voldemort makes the two exactly alike.  They're not.  
But there's more evidence that a half-blood might have trouble 
fitting into Slytherin than there is evidence against it.  Lucius 
Malfoy certainly cared plenty about it, enough to make sure he 
married a pureblood and passed the beliefs on to his son, and 
Bellatrix & Narcissa were raised with the 'Toujours Pur' motto, so it 
wasn't only the current generation of Slytherins who wanted to 
associate with purebloods.  As for Snape making himself feared using 
the Dark Arts, again I don't agree with the extent of Harry's 
statement but do agree Snape used dark arts as a DE. 

Carol:
> Harry is only speculating here, based on false assumptions. We can't
> take his hypotheses about a man he has never understood as having 
> any more value than Snape's view of Harry as "arrogant" 
> and "mediocre." The whole point of the Snape subplot as far as
> Snape himself is concerned is redemption...<snip> 

Jen: Right, and redemption means there's something that needs to be 
redeemed.  Redemption for a man who never did anything wrong except 
associate with a bad crowd doesn't mean as much as one who was a full-
fledged DE, who participated in the activities of a DE, and who 
sought to change his path when he realized the consequences of his 
actions might mean the death of his beloved friend.  I see a grain of 
truth in Harry's angry statement at the end of HBP even if he draws 
the wrong conclusions about Snape's loyalty to Voldemort.




From elfundeb at gmail.com  Tue Jul 22 13:31:44 2008
From: elfundeb at gmail.com (elfundeb)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:31:44 -0400
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g62p97+lpap@eGroups.com>
References: <g62atg+gdb0@eGroups.com> <g62p97+lpap@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <80f25c3a0807220631i41b2c316u5dae0b5660c2869c@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183787

Zara:
> > I can. <snip> I think Severus did it in earnest, and shared it
with no one. We know very little about his background, but we do know
that for some reason, he wanted Slytherin House. The House of
Purebloods, which he darn well knew he was not.


Jen:
> The only thing is Snape didn't talk about Slytherin house as the
house of purebloods on the train in the Prince's Tale; he mentions
brains. Are you thinking he was covering up some of his beliefs for
Lily? It's possible since he holds back earlier when she asks about
her Muggle-born status.

Debbie:
My sense from what we see of the eleven-year-old Snape is that he was well
aware by that time that to many, if not most, in the wizarding world,
pureblood status makes a difference (thus the hesitation before he responds
to Lily's question).  As suggested elsewhere in this thread, it does not
appear that Eileen received much, if any, support from her relatives, and
Snape is far too perceptive not to know his muggle father has something to
do with it.  In any event, I read the "half-blood Prince" moniker to be a
taunt against the pureblood Princes; he's a half-blood and a Prince, whether
they like it or not, and a damn good wizard to boot.

However, assuming that Snape lived primarily in the Muggle world (I just
can't envision social visits by Eileen's family to Spinner's End and given
the abuse she suffered there, I doubt she would have invited anyone),
Snape's understanding of Slytherin House at the age of 11 would have been
based on what he learned from his mother.  And if Snape thinks it was the
house of brains, it was probably because that's how Eileen described it to
him.

Thus, I find it readily believable that Snape did not know muggleborns were
excluded from Slytherin house.  Instead, his perception may have been simply
that pureblood wizards generally looked down upon muggleborns as third-class
wizards (half-bloods being second class, as he was well aware) by all four
Houses.

Debbie


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 22 16:58:02 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:58:02 -0000
Subject: Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)
In-Reply-To: <g63eba+avaf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g653iq+pbiv@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183788

Mike wrote:
> <snip>
> When wizards decided to segregrate themselves from the non-magical
world, they endeavored to do the same with all magical creatures.
> 
> The house elves were an easy problem to solve (from the wizard's
point of view). Just restrict them to only wizarding houses, and bind
 them to that house forever. <snip>
> But elves weren't the only beings restricted in this wizarding
effort to remove themselves from the Muggle world. They restrict the
centaurs to the Forbidden Forest. <snip>
> 
> The giants are a different story. They were herded into some 
mountains - somewhere in Russia I think, based on Hagrid's tale - or
killed if they didn't accede to that demand. A little tougher on them
than on the elves, wouldn't you say? <snip>

Carol responds:

The giants are a real problem. Grawp is the only example we see of a
domesticated giant, and would it be right and fair to the giants
themselves to domesticate all of them, if that were possible? (It
would certainly be hard to hide them!)

OTOH, if they're left to themselves in their natural state, as they
presumably were before the Statute of Secrecy was passes, how can all
the Muggle mountain climbers who don't believe in giants be protected
in a Europe that's much more densely populated than it was in the
Middle Ages? Even Wizards can't always deal safely with giants, who
resent their magic.

But if giants are placed all together on a kind of reservation (what,
BTW, is preventing them from leaving?), they kill each other off
because they don't naturally live together. They really are, for the
most part and in differing degrees, as brutal and dangerous as they're
reputed to be. You can't give them rights and education and ask them
to govern themselves. They don't have that capacity, except in the
most limited form (an Alpha giant or Gurg). They can't even be given a
voice in council via Grawp because they have the intellectual capacity
of a two-year-old human child.

Even setting aside the Statute of Secrecy, which Wizards are now bound
to obey and enforce, what ought the Wizards to do about the "giant
problem"? Unlike House-Elves, Merpeople, and Centaurs, they can't be
given a home at Hogwarts, whose castle and grounds are hidden from
Muggle eyes.

Carol, wondering what Mike and others think could be safely and
humanely done about what might be called "the giant problem" (at least
they're not being bred and sold for parts like dragons!)








From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 22 18:32:31 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:32:31 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g63no7+g4v8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g65940+p72c@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183789

Jen earlier:
> > Although there is Hermione's comment: "I don't think he wanted to
associate himself with that book," said Hermione.  "I don't think
Dumbledore would have liked it very much if he'd known." (Chap. 30,
HBP)  I believe that's meant to be taken as true, meaning there was
some aspect of the Half-Blood Prince Snape didn't feel pride about.
>  
Carol earlier:
> > I disagree. Hermione herself has considered the book disreputable
from the start, partly because it enables Harry to get marks he 
doesn't deserve in Potions class without even trying and partly 
because she disapproves of the spells, which for the most part are no
worse than the hexes that the boys (and Ginny) use on other students
all the time. <snip>
> 
Jen replied: 
> Except that Hermione isn't disapproving during that particular 
discussion.  She's providing necessary narrative information, playing
the role Dumbledore typically played at the end of the story.

Carol responds:
Possibly. But Hermione is just guessing, and she isn't always right.
Now when she provides the information, based on a Daily Prophet
article, that Eileen Prince married a Muggle named Tobias Snape, we
can entirely trust her. That's not speculation or guessing at another
character's motives. *That's* Hermione providing the exposition
normally provided by Dumbledore. As for her explanation of another
character's psychology, we can take it or leave it, as we do when she
explains Cho or Sirius Black, both of whom she probably understands
better than she does the enigma that is Severus Snape.

Jen:
> In fact, she goes on to defend Snape from Harry's accusations a few
 paragraphs later.  Her research into the Prince, learning Snape was 
the author of the potions books, appears to have changed her mind 
somewhat even in the face of Snape AK'ing DD.  She never despised
Snape as Harry did.

Carol responds:

Here I agree with you. She had refused to use Muffliato when it was
the invention of an unknown boy whom she regarded with suspicion, but
now that she knows it's Snape's, she adds it to her repertoire of
protective spells in DH--very odd since she considers him to be DD's
murderer (but Harry, the future user of Crucio and Imperio, has no
hesitation in retaining Levicorpus and even Sectumsempra as part of
his arsenal). It's interesting that she argues--in the face of the
AK--that the boy Severus Snape wasn't evil ("'Evil'" is a strong
word," or something to that effect). But that doesn't change the fact
that the only Dark spell in the book that either she or Harry knows
about is Sectumsempra, and I see no reason why Snape would be afraid
to show the book itself, Sectumsempra and all, to DD if he wanted to
get Harry in trouble for using it. He *could* have ruined Harry's
reputation as Potions genius with Slughorn if he'd wanted to, as well.
(See below.)

Jen: 
> Snape doesn't openly associate himself with the potions book during
the story when he's well within his rights to do so.  He could've 
gone to Dumbledore when Harry refused to give him the book but he 
didn't.  Snape could've proclaimed much earlier on, to a wider 
audience, that Harry was using his own invented spells.  Snape 
doesn't lay claim to the book or the spells until pushed too far by
Harry, when the two of them are alone. He doesn't act like someone
who's entirely proud of his inventions.

Carol again:

But what, besides Sectumsempra, is there to be ashamed of in that
book? The spells are clever and none but Sectumsempra is Dark, and the
Potions improvements are brilliant. "Just shove a Bezoar down their
throats" is snarky, but it's a teenage boy's snark.

I think--and this is just my opinion as I have no canon to support
it--that Snape is being honorable in his way. He suspects as early as
Slughorn's Christmas party that Harry is using his old Potions book to
get results he doesn't deserve, and after Sectumsempra, he *knows* it.
The Legilimency just confirms what he already knows.

He doesn't tell Slughorn that Harry has been cheating, using his old
Potions book, which he could have proven without the book in hand by
mentioning the shortcuts and additions to the potions. He could also
have used Legilimency on Harry to find out where he hid the book and
show it to Slughorn, carefully refraining from showing him the
Sectumsempra page, but he didn't.

So either Snape has his own code of honor, which does not include
revealing to other teachers that Harry is, in his words, "a liar and a
cheat," only that he used a dangerous spell that could have killed
Draco, or he's ashamed of a single spell, Sectumsempra, which he
(understandably) does not reveal to Harry is his own invention. But as
I said before, I doubt that *Dumbledore*, who knew all about Severus
Snape's DE past and about his remorse, would have judged a teenage boy
for inventing a Dark spell, especially since (as I didn't say earlier)
he later invented or found the complicated countercurse that saved
Draco's life.

Jen: 
> I doubt Dumbledore would judge Snape for inventing the book but he
might have had a problem with Snape not destroying it, that he left it
either carelessly or deliberately where a student could run across it. 

Carol:
I doubt it. He must have done that as a boy of eighteen, eager by that
time to run off and join Voldemort's service. And, as I said, there's
only the one dangerous spell, which Harry found only through
diligently studying the cramped marginal notes (which Ron for some
reason couldn't read). The book had apparently lain forgotten for
twenty years. I doubt that DD would be unduly harsh over so minor a
matter, and Snape has endured many a rebuke from Dumbledore for more
serious matters. Again, who is Dumbledore to judge the young Severus
considering his own plans for world domination with a budding Dark wizard?

Jen:
 Harry stops reading the book after the Sectumsempra incident.  What
else was in the rest of the book as Snape's life grew darker? We'll
never know but I doubt it was the fairly benign spells he started out
creating.

Carol:
But Hermione, AFAWK, is not hypothesizing about what else might be in
the book. As far as she or Harry or the reader knows, Sectumsempra is
the Darkest spell in it. Snape is certainly never given credit (if
that's the word) for inventing any other Dark spell. Besides, Severus
would have left the book behind after his seventh year. It's not as if
he kept it with him in his DE days.
> 
> > Carol:
> > Yes. And, of course, his own abilities would have proven that
worthiness, not only to Severus himself, but to the likes of Lucius
Malfoy, who somehow senses a prodigy even as Severus is Sorted into
Slytherin.
> 
Jen: 

>How could Lucius sense anything about Snape from his sorting?!? I
don't think that moment means anything more than a prefect welcoming a
new house member.  Lucius doesn't motion Snape to sit beside him even,
there just happened to be an open space next to him and Lucius patted
him as he sat down.  

Carol responds:

I don't know the answer, but it seems like a significant moment, the
beginning of something. (And that space next to Lucius still available
after Avery and Mulciber and all the other male and female Slytherins
who would have been Sorted before the Hat reached the letter S, almost
as if it was reserved for Severus. Lucius could have arrogantly
frowned at him for daring to sit there. Instead, he pats him
affectionately.) And soon afterwards, Severus must have become what
Sirius Black snidely referred to as "Lucius Malfoy's lapdog," his way
of indicating the devotion of a little boy to a big one and the older
boy's friendly condescension. We also, from the same anti-Snape
source, that Severus as a first year knew more hexes and jinxes than
most seventh years. (How many were his own invention at that early
date is never made clear.) It makes me wonder whether Lucius could
somehow have heard of or even previously met the Prince family's
little Half-Blood grandson. He doesn't treat him like a stranger.

At any rate, it's certainly an important moment for Severus, and it
seems symbolic of his future relationship with Lucius Malfoy, which is
often alluded to but not, IIRC, actually shown. (I'd be grateful to
anyone who can show me an interaction between the adult Snape and the
adult Malfoy before DH, but I think that JKR deliberately refrained
from showing them together until after Lucius Malfoy's fall from
Voldemort's favor. And even In DH, we don't see them interacting, IIRC.)
> 
Jen: 
> I don't know, he's already pretty crazy about Lily.  Snape's 
hesitation when Lily asks if it makes a difference that she's Muggle-
born means something.  It might not mean anything about Slytherin 
house, but to me it indicates Snape knew some reason why Lily being
Muggle-born made a difference.

Carol:
But still, he tells her that she'sd better be in slytherin, which
indicates that he really believes that she could be Sorted there, and
we see his disappointment when the Sorting Hat puts her in Gryffindor.
So clearly, he doesn't know that the House he wants to be in would
reject his best friend. Maybe he would have adjusted his hopes,
choosing Lily over Slytherin or Slytherin over Lily, at an early age
if he had known it. (If only James had said something like, "Don't you
know that Slytherin House is associated with Dark magic and blood
prejudice?" intead of vaguely insinuating that it was a House for
rejects!)

Yes, he does hesitate when she asks if it makes a difference, but that
doesn't mean he's been told that it makes a difference. He may be
trying to formulate an answer, torn between his contempt for Muggles
(read Tobias and Petunia) and his feelings for Lily, as well as his
awareness that she's a talented little witch. I doubt that his mother,
who married a *Muggle*, would go around insulting Muggle-borns, and
she clearly didn't tell him that blood prejudice was traditional to
Slytherin. (She must have liked her House while she was in it; she
wasn't a "blood traitor" then.) Also, whe she was in school, the HoH
of Slytherin was Slughorn, who would have had Muggle-borns among his
favorites if his later record is any indication. It's possible that
little Severus, sneered at by his Prince relatives, sensed that the
antagonism of some Pure-Blood (not necessarily Slytherin) Wizards
against Muggle-borns would be even worse. But we don't know what he
knew, what he experienced, or what he was thinking. We only know that
he confidently hoped and expected that his Muggle-born best friend
would be Sorted with him into Slytherin, the House of "brains." (It
must have rankled that she was Sorted with those bullying little berks
he met on the train and gratified by Lily's refusal to sit by Sirius.)
> 
Jen earlier:
> > The problem with Snape not sharing his nickname with anyone is it
would invalidate Harry's comment at the end of HBP: "Yeah, that fits,"
said Harry. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get in good
with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them...He's just like Voldemort. 
Pure-blood mother, Muggle father...ashamed of his parentage, trying to
make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive
new name - *Lord* voldemort - the Half-Blood *Prince* - how could
Dumbledore have missed -? (HBP, chap 30)
> 
Carol earlier:
> > What's wrong with invalidating Harry's comment? He's judging Snape
as a DE, a traitor to DD, and a murderer, and he's assuming that a
superficial resemblance to Voldemort has a deeper significance than it
probably has. Severus didn't need to "play up the pure-blood side so
he could get in good with Lucius Malfoy"; Lucius seems to have taken
him under his wing from the first, probably more so when he discovers
the little boy's prodigious talents. And where do we see evidence of
Severus "trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts"? It's
Mulciber that Lily accuses of trying to use some unidentified Dark
spell. If such a thing happened, we don't see any evidence for it.
 
> Jen: What's wrong is I see some truth in Harry's statement.  Not in
scope, as you said he's misjudging Snape and assuming the superficial
resemblance to Voldemort makes the two exactly alike.  They're not.
But there's more evidence that a half-blood might have trouble 
fitting into Slytherin than there is evidence against it.  Lucius 
Malfoy certainly cared plenty about it, enough to make sure he 
married a pureblood and passed the beliefs on to his son <snip>.  As
for Snape making himself feared using the Dark Arts, again I don't
agree with the extent of Harry's statement but do agree Snape used
dark arts as a DE. 

Carol:
You concede that Harry is misjudging Snape and that he's exaggerating
about the Dark Arts bit, for which we see no evidence at the time of
his Sorting, so we agree there. And as I said earlier, Lucius Malfoy
had no trouble accepting the young Severus (though I suspect that
there was always a slight class distinction between them, rather like
a medieval lord recognizing and honoring a talented commoner).

I still don't think that Severus Snape "played up the Pure-Blood side"
to anyone except himself, for the reasons I expressed earlier. He may
well have played up his *talents* from the outset, and he must have
felt uncomfortable if the Slytherin common room had passwords like
"Pure-blood" in his day; he would have felt as if he were being put in
his place.

But none of that makes Harry's judgment correct. Later, he comes to
identify not only with Snape but with Voldemort as "the abandoned
boys" who found a home at Hogwarts.

At any rate, I think that Harry's comment, based as it is on hatred
and misunderstanding, is meant to be invalidated. Snape is not "just
like Voldemort" (and young Severus was not "just like" Tom Riddle).
The resemblance (witch mother, Muggle father and an apparently
self-invented nickname) is superficial and does not lead to the
conclusions Harry thinks it does based on the "murder" of Dumbledore
and the invention of Sectumsempra. We see no evidence of the truth of
any of his assumptions (using the Dark Arts so that people would fear
him, playing up his pure-blood side to "get in good" with Lucius
Malfoy). IMO, the reader is meant to accept Harry's misinterpretation,
which *seems* to follow from the events and revelations in HBP, just
as we're meant to believe that Snape betrayed and murdered Dumbledore.
But Harry's interpretation is set aside and replaced by Snape as the
"abandoned boy" who loved his mother, repented his part in her death,
and courageously opposed Voldemort--a man worthy of honor, for whom
his second son is partly named.

Jen:
<snip> I see a grain of truth in Harry's angry statement at the end of
HBP even if he draws the wrong conclusions about Snape's loyalty to
Voldemort.

Carol responds:
A grain of truth is by definition tiny amid the falsehood of the rest.
(Harry's mistaken assumptions usually contain a grain of truth. He's
seldom *completely* wrong--much like Severus Snape's mistaken
assumptions about Harry and his godfather.) That tiny element of truth
aside, however, I see a judgment, based on false assumptions, to be
reversed at the end of the series, after Harry knows the facts about
Snape and his perception is cleared. YMMV.

Carol, thinking how dull these books would be with a consistently
reliable narrator and a Harry who was always correct in his judgments!





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 22 23:28:07 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:28:07 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Bella's wand )
In-Reply-To: <g604q2+bk0s@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g65qe7+2l7p@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183790

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:

> How's this one, can't you just picture it:
> Young but massive Hagrid comes sauntering into Ollivander's shop 
> with his little father in tow. Ollivander takes one look at the 
> half-giant kid and knows immediately that none of his stock wands 
> are going to work. So he takes Rubeus's measurements and tells 
> him he'll be making him a special wand and to please come back 
> in a week.
 
> Well, Ollivander can see right off that this wand is going to be 
> treated with some rough handling. He goes out and gets the strongest 
> piece of suitable oak that he can find, then magically strengthens 
> it even further, just like they magically strengthen the flying 
> brooms. He makes the wand so it will bend but not break.


zanooda:

I very much enjoyed your "Rubeus Hagrid and his first wand" story,
Mike. I can see that you have great imagination :-). It is a very
believable story, too, but I think that maybe Ollivander let Hagrid
choose his wand first (or rather, let the wand choose Hagrid :-)), and
only then he strengthened this wand. I'm not sure that it's a very
good idea to make a wand for someone "by order", without that
"choosing-of-the-wizard" procedure. 

I know that Ollivander made such "ordered" wands for Luna and
Pettigrew, but I'm sure that he just "remade" their original wands,
meaning that, for instance, Pettigrew's original wand was also
chestnut and dragon heartstring wand. The old and the new wands
wouldn't be identical, of course, the cores being from different
dragons, but at least Olly could be sure that the new wand was
compatible with the client (PP in this case).

I think that Hagrid needed to be chosen by a wand first, and then
Ollivander could strengthen this wand, or at least he could make
another,larger and tougher wand using the same materials as in the
chosen wand (oak and whatever the core was - Olly didn't say). 

As for all these "measurements" - I don't see much sense in them.
Ollivander took Harry's measurements, but look what wands he offered
him to try - there is nothing in common between them: beechwood and
dragon heartstring, maple and phoenix feather, ebony and unicorn hair,
and many more. So what was the point of measuring the poor boy? Just
to make the whole procedure look more "science-like" :-)? 






From hickengruendler at yahoo.de  Wed Jul 23 07:36:53 2008
From: hickengruendler at yahoo.de (hickengruendler)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:36:53 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
Message-ID: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183791

I'm currently doing my exams at the university, and for my exam work at 
home I chose the topic about the most popular children's books and why 
grown ups like to read them as well.

So as a starting point, I would like to hear your reasons. What did you 
like about Harry Potter and (as long as it doesn't become off-topic) 
other children literature? What does particularly interest you in the 
series?

It would be a great help, if you could answer the questions.

Thanks in advance,

Hickengruendler




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Wed Jul 23 14:33:17 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:33:17 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g65940+p72c@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g67ffd+6sv3@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183792

> Jen earlier:
> > > Although there is Hermione's comment: "I don't think he wanted
to associate himself with that book," said Hermione.  "I don't think
> Dumbledore would have liked it very much if he'd known." (Chap. 30,
> HBP)  I believe that's meant to be taken as true, meaning there was
> some aspect of the Half-Blood Prince Snape didn't feel pride about.

Pippin:
 Snape's association with Sectum Sempra was generally known. Lupin
declares that it's a specialty of his in DH. I have a feeling
Dumbledore knew all about the potions book, and probably
arranged for Harry to have it, still hoping for some degree of
understanding between Harry and Snape. Dumbledore after all knew that
Harry was and would be subject to far greater temptations than
teen!Snape's dabblings in Dark Magic. 

On the matter of "The Prince" -- there is something of old Niccolo in
Slytherin House's open appeal to ambition and self-interest. Which
brings me to an interesting observation. The true psychological
opposite of a Slytherin is not a Gryffindor. It's a House-elf. 

Pippin




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 23 14:39:52 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:39:52 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g67fro+eq0f@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183793

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "hickengruendler" 
<hickengruendler at ...> wrote:
<snip>
> So as a starting point, I would like to hear your reasons. What did 
you 
> like about Harry Potter and (as long as it doesn't become off-
topic) 
> other children literature? What does particularly interest you in 
the 
> series?
<snip>


Well, personally for me the interest in English speaking children   
literature started simply because I needed easier books to read in 
English than I would read in Russian, vocabulary wise. Not that I 
would not read children literature in Russian, mind you, but the 
books that I read in my childhood and reread many times since then 
were teens' books really.

And then Harry came and it all began. Series grab me and wouldn't let 
go. I am sure I wrote about it in the past, but at first it was, if I 
remember correctly just such fascination and desire to know where JKR 
will take us at the end, I used to think that I would have no idea 
how it will end and multiple scenarios one more bizarre than another 
will come to my mind. After book 5 I could see of course that she 
narrowed her options, but I still could not see for sure what awaits 
us at the end and was very curious.

Of course, of course characters in the series fascinate me and get to 
me on the level of emotions, not just on the intellectually detached 
level. And when I am either strongly attached to the characters or 
dislike them passionately that for me means that the book is good, 
very good. You know, Snape and Harry ;)

And actually come to think of it I really liked how some characters 
changed at the end of the series, while retaining their inner core so 
to speak. I happen to find it very realistic.


I guess this is also relates to interaction between the characters, 
and I am sure I said that in the past, but I find Trio's friendship 
to be so touching, heartbreaking, heroic, funny, one of the best 
friendships in literature I had read, children's books or not.

What else did I like about series in general? Oh, the fact that 
sometimes I caught myself wondering if I could get into Diagon Alley 
if I go to London.

I also loved how she made creatures of mythology her own, while left 
them to be recognizable.

SO many things you know, but as you said ? this is just for starters.
Hope that helps.

Alla.





From bawilson at citynet.net  Wed Jul 23 13:22:21 2008
From: bawilson at citynet.net (Bruce Alan Wilson)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:22:21 -0400
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
Message-ID: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAq7J8AJNZvxGJq/KbtzLRq8KAAAAQAAAAKcCY/jG6gkO+SS1GtT74hwEAAAAA@citynet.net>

No: HPFGUIDX 183794

A good question, especially as so many of the comments lately have been about
what we DISlike about it.

I would have to say that I liked the fact that magic did NOT solve all the
problems;  in spite of being wizards/witches, Harry and his friends have to deal
with all the same problems and challenges that young people growing up must deal
with everywhere.

I liked the way she held up such a crazy mirror to our society.  I liked her
clever names, with all the historical, mythological, and literary allusions.  

I was reminded, in reading the series, in various ways, of C.S. Lewis, Jonathan
Swift, Charles Dickens, and E. Nesbit.

Bruce Alan Wilson

"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.  Other forms of
transport grow daily more nightmarish.  Only the bicycle remains pure in
heart."--Iris Murdoch



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From bboyminn at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 23 16:35:12 2008
From: bboyminn at yahoo.com (Steve)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:35:12 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g67mk0+eojb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183795

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "hickengruendler"
<hickengruendler at ...> wrote:
>
> ... What did you like about Harry Potter and (as long as it
> doesn't become off-topic) other children literature? What 
> does particularly interest you in the series?
> 
> It would be a great help, if you could answer the questions.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Hickengruendler
>


bboyminn:

Would I say JKRowling is a great writer? Probably not, but I
would say without hesitation that she is a great storyteller.
Whether her writing meets some technical standard of
literary excellent means little to me. It is possible to meet 
technical standards and still tell a dull rambling story. So,
first and foremost being a great storyteller is what I need
to get drawn in to a story.

Eoin Colfer does a great job of storytelling in the 'Artemis
Fowl' series. Orson Scott Card tells a brilliant job in 
'Enders Game' and the 'Enders Shadow' series. I don't think
JRR Tolkien did such a great job on 'Lord of the Rings', that
is a far more 'wordy' story with a tendency to bog down in 
the endless verbal ramblings and narrative of characters. But
Tolkien still weave together a good story; it is just harder
to trudge through it. 

JKRowling has struck a perfect balance in her writing. She 
keeps things short enough to keep the story moving fast. 
Rather than describe every little detail, she says just 
enough to let my imagination fill in the blanks and that 
makes for a much more vivid and real world. In doing so,
she prevents the stories from getting bogged down in long
droning narrative that takes forever to get anywhere. 

So, despite her very long books, there is a compactness and
efficiency to her writing. I always use Ron as an example,
Ron (or Draco) are not describe in that much detail. I think
if you look back at the descriptions of either character, 
you will find they are no where near as detailed as the
mental image you have of those characters. Again, JKR has
allowed my imagination to fill in the details. Because it
is created in my mind, that makes it far more real, detailed,
and vivid than any elaborate description she could have
written.

So, she trust the imagination of the reader. She doesn't 
preach or condescend. She doesn't dumb down the language;
instead she expects the reader to raise their reading
standards, but she does so in a subtle and undemanding way. 

She creates vivid characters that I care about and are in 
some cases more real than the people I actually know. Her
characters have a depth to them. They are also flawed. Again,
she is not preaching a simple kids morality tale. She doesn't
resolve every issue. There is an element of uncertainty in 
the books that demands that the reader think and ponder the 
meaning of people and events. But rather than being forced
to think and ponder by the demands of the books or the
author, she simply presents the subtle mystery, and we 
instinctively try to resolve it. It is demanding while at 
the same time being very undemanding. You don't /have/ to 
resolve it, but you can't stop yourself. It is another way
she engages the reader.

All these aspects combine to create very real characters in
a very real world. She engages us in the story; through
stimulated imaginations that allow us to create the world. 
Through unresolved moral dilemmas, that we must resolve for
ourselves. Through unresolved characters who are not simply 
good or bad, but are somewhere inbetween, and we must 
resolve for ourselves exactly where. We are not so much along
for the ride as we are part of the ride, and I think that
makes for very powerful, vivid, and real storyteling.

Steve/bboyminn 






From annemehr at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 23 19:49:20 2008
From: annemehr at yahoo.com (annemehr)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:49:20 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g68200+j6so@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183796

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "hickengruendler" 
<hickengruendler at ...> wrote:
>
> I'm currently doing my exams at the university, and for my exam 
work at 
> home I chose the topic about the most popular children's books and 
why 
> grown ups like to read them as well.
> 
> So as a starting point, I would like to hear your reasons. What did 
you 
> like about Harry Potter and (as long as it doesn't become off-
topic) 
> other children literature? What does particularly interest you in 
the 
> series?
> 
> It would be a great help, if you could answer the questions.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Hickengruendler
>


Well, from the beginning, I liked very much that these books were 
about a world full of magic, surprises, and mayhem that you could get 
to from your own mundane existence if only you could see the right 
door on the Charing Cross Road.

It's because I like to think that in real life, we really can have a 
richer life, if only we manage to/try to see the way.

And the magical world of the books was still very much richer, so 
much more full of possibilities, even after it became very apparent 
that there were deep troubles there, as well.

In addition to all that, I always felt there was something hugely 
compelling to me; something personally resonant in Harry's story, 
through the first four books.  From OoP on, it has become apparent 
that JKR went in a different direction that did not speak to me so 
deeply, but some day I am going to read the first four again to see 
if I can reawaken the early magic.  I figure that will be a sort of 
path into my own personality that I will follow for my own pleasure.

Finally, I was always intrigued by all those little side stories that 
in the end seemed to come to nothing.  Now, this may be the height of 
presumptiousness, but I am convinced that these are mostly the fruit 
of JKR's subconscious mind, which she may have unwittingly let loose 
to play during scenes that she wrote for "color," whereas the scenes 
that mattered most to the plot were so much more tightly controlled.  
I can't help feeling it would have helped if she had let herself tap 
these subconscious veins, but in any case, they certainly fed our 
enjoyment of the books over the years, and I still appreciate that.

Annemehr





From sweenlit at gmail.com  Wed Jul 23 20:41:24 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:41:24 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g68200+j6so@eGroups.com>
References: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com> <g68200+j6so@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807231341i704da99cnad98290555f5dd04@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183797

I started reading the series primarily because I was working as a nanny and
the kids wanted to read the books. It was always my habit to not only ask
the parents if the materials I had the kids read, watch on tv or at the
movies or read to the kids was ok with them but to review the material
myself (my guidelines were often stricter than the parents but some parents
have...ah...concerns about certain material that might be
unexpected--slightly veering here but I have a good friend who allows her
kids to play d&d type games but prohibited books and videos about ghosts,
ghouls, goblins and magic), Then, I got hooked myself.  I picked up the
first book, and got started reading and soon realized I knew exactly where
JKR was going with the story. Longterm.  I'm not saying every single thing
that happened, or every situation, but overall, from beginning to end.

As another poster mentioned, Rowling is a wonderful story teller. Not the
best author I've ever read, but she certainly knows how to start a story and
run it through to its conclusion and she does so with humor, wit and a good
sense of mystery and adventure.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 23 21:38:31 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:38:31 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g67ffd+6sv3@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g688cn+q8af@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183798

> Pippin:
> Snape's association with Sectum Sempra was generally known. Lupin
> declares that it's a specialty of his in DH. I have a feeling
> Dumbledore knew all about the potions book, and probably
> arranged for Harry to have it, still hoping for some degree of
> understanding between Harry and Snape. Dumbledore after all knew 
> that Harry was and would be subject to far greater temptations than
> teen!Snape's dabblings in Dark Magic. 

Jen: *Slaps forehead* You're right, Dumbledore must have known.  I 
was thinking since the potions book doesn't appear in Prince's Tale 
that the story was over in HBP.  In my mind that made Hermione's 
statement the final word; however, as Carol noted:

Carol: 
> I doubt that DD would be unduly harsh over so minor a matter, and 
> Snape has endured many a rebuke from Dumbledore for more serious 
> matters. Again, who is Dumbledore to judge the young Severus
> considering his own plans for world domination with a budding Dark 
> wizard?

Jen: I'm convinced now the second part of Hermione's statement was 
misdirection about Dumbledore.  It was her conclusion based on her 
impression of DD without knowing everything about him.  I'm not 
completely convinced the first part of her comment is wrong 
though, "I don't think [Snape] wanted to associate himself with that 
book."  Regardless, Snape wanted Harry to know he was the Half-Blood 
Prince, which is what mattered to the story.

Coming back full circle to my original question, why Snape called 
himself the 'Half-Blood Prince,' the replies below had so much in 
common and fit so well with Snape's character imo, that I'm going to 
borrow some combination of these explanations <g>:

Debbie:
> In any event, I read the "half-blood Prince" moniker to be a taunt
> against the pureblood Princes; he's a half-blood and a Prince, 
> whether they like it or not, and a damn good wizard to boot.

Zara:
> To me, this suggests a conviction/desire to prove, that he is *as
> good as* a pureblood. Good enough to get into Slytherin, even with 
> a Muggle father. Good enough to be a Death Eater, again despote his
> birth. That however a certain segment of wizard society (his 
> family? his housemates?) might regard him owing to his parentage,
> he was still as good as any of them. In spite of his father.

Leah:
> Of course, like Severus, it's nicely double-edged and 
> ambiguous.<snip> I think also there's an element of pride in it,
> certainly in its use in 'Advanced Potions'. It's saying "I,Severus,
> part Muggle, part Prince, invented these spells. What I can do is
> more important than what I am".

Carol:
> He's *the* Half-Blood, as in "the one and only *Half-Blood* Prince, 
> the others being, presumably, pureblood. In essence, as Leah
> suggested, he's saying that he's just as good (clever and magically
> powerful, not "good" in a moral sense), and just as much 
> a "prince," as the other members of his family. 

Jen again:  I was expecting one primary explanation when asking the 
question, one 'aha' moment.  The idea that Snape's chosen nickname 
encompasses the various contradictions in Snape's background & 
experience at Hogwarts makes the HBP story more cohesive though.  
Snape's an unusual mix in the WW, first for growing up like a Muggle 
even though he has a pureblood parent (as I understand his story), 
second for becoming a half-blood Slytherin and DE who also happens to 
love a Muggleborn.  And finally, for working all those years for
Dumbledore and the Order with only one person truly knowing his 
loyalty.  I suppose all his previous life experience made the last 
role possible.  He wasn't kidding when he said, "where do you think I 
would have been all these years, if I had not known how to act?"  He 
had to start young figuring out how to negotiate so many 
contradictions.




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 23 22:05:16 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:05:16 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g689us+cuf0@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183799

Hickengruendler:
> So as a starting point, I would like to hear your reasons. What did
> you like about Harry Potter and (as long as it doesn't become off-
> topic) other children literature? What does particularly interest you
> in the series?


Jen: I liked Harry & Dumbledore right away, was drawn in by the
mystery of Harry's life.  Puzzles are fun to me, trying to fit the 
puzzle pieces together was a big draw.  Plus JKR has a talent for 
creating interestin' characters and writing well-thought out 
psychological explanations for why characters behave as they do. I 
found her political story fascinating.

One small thing I liked was her writing Daily Prophet articles and 
letters into the story.  Writing her own fairy tale was another example 
of her creativity.

Generally re: children's lit, it's an easy read, more escapist, reminds 
me of being young again, doesn't depict violent scenes as harshly as 
adult stories.  Typically the endings are pretty predictable (that ties 
in with an easier read). 

Good luck with your exams. :)




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 24 19:00:04 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:00:04 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g67ffd+6sv3@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6ajfk+lpf1@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183800

Pippin:
>  Snape's association with Sectum Sempra was generally known. Lupin
declares that it's a specialty of his in DH. <snip>

Carol responds:

That statement has always bothered me. Lupin didn't know, any more
than Sirius Black did, that Snape had been a DE, and Severus could not
have performed a Dark Curse that Madam Pomfrey couldn't heal at
Hogwarts without being expelled. (The little cut on James's cheek
doesn't count; clearly he was not "cut always.")

How could Lupin or anyone else know that Snape had invented (or "was
associated with") Sectumsempra under those circumstances? That line
hit me with the weight of a Flint when I read it.

Lupin didn't even know that Severus had invented Levicorpus!

Carol, who knows of no other evidence besides this shaky statement to
indicate a "generally known" association between Snape and this
particular spell





From gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk  Thu Jul 24 21:13:52 2008
From: gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk (Geoff Bannister)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:13:52 -0000
Subject: DH one year on (was Re: What did you like about Harry Potter?)
In-Reply-To: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6arag+q8mj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183801

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

Hickengruendler
> I'm currently doing my exams at the university, and for my exam work at 
> home I chose the topic about the most popular children's books and why 
> grown ups like to read them as well.
> 
> So as a starting point, I would like to hear your reasons. What did you 
> like about Harry Potter and (as long as it doesn't become off-topic) 
> other children literature? What does particularly interest you in the 
> series?
> 
> It would be a great help, if you could answer the questions.
> 
> Thanks in advance,

Geoff:
It's interesting that you should ask this question because I had intended 
to start a thread with the above title on Monday, which was of course the 
anniversary of the publication of DH.

Unfortunately, as one or two people on the other groups know, fate and 
my appendix diverted me into hospital until Wednesday. While I was out 
of action in my ward, I decided to start reading the series again so am 
now sailing steadily through "Philosopher's Stone" and renewing my 
acquaintance with it, so I can belatedly marshal my thoughts.

Let me start by being general. I am a sucker for books which I can /enjoy/. 
Now this will cover children's books and also what I suppose you could label 
escapist or fantastic fiction. I would far sooner escape into a half-decent 
book of this type that a lot of the tripe which goes for adult fiction today. I 
still get a great deal of enjoyment from reading Winnie-the-Pooh because of 
the way it operates on two levels ? one for the children and a much subtler 
one which sometimes only an adult can appreciate. 

But again, LOTR ? which is not a children's book although its original 
genesis was intended to be that ? and science fiction will meet my needs. I 
was away on holiday last week and read what I still personally consider is 
one of the best SF books I have ever encountered: John Wyndham's "The 
Kraken Wakes".

Obviously, children's books come within my remit. I have mentioned more 
than once Alan Garner's books "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and "The 
Moon of Gomrath" which draw on similar material to Tolkien and Lewis and 
more recently, of course, Harry.

So, I want to enjoy. I am perhaps na?ve and like a fairly straightforward 
story line; I don't like situations where you are left wondering whether a 
character is a goodie or a baddie which is why I dislike Daphne du Maurier's 
"My Cousin Rachel" for example.

But, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Harry. I came to Harry through the 
"Chamber of Secrets" film which I saw by chance just after release  and which 
led me to the first film and the four books which were then available. Right 
from the start, I was gradually introduced to the Wizarding World, which 
basically came into my ken fully-fledged with a life of its own and a 
fascinatingly simple yet enchanting life of its own ? obviously as seen 
through the eyes of a deprived eleven year old boy for whom everything 
had been painted in sombre, restrictive colours.

The though only occurred to me today for the first time that there is a 
similarity between this and he opening chapters of "The Fellowship of the 
Ring". I should point out that I never read "The Hobbit" until many years 
after I first discovered JRRT about 1955 and so the opening of the latter 
book has that same feel to it.

But then, you begin to realise that the world has flaws. The reason for Harry's 
life with the Dursleys is revealed and the vague, dark shadow of Voldemort 
lurks in the wings. We find that the Shire is guarded and that the vague, 
dark shadow of Mordor lurks in the wings. But the books still retain a clarity, 
a crispness, a na?vit? as time goes on. Although both Harry and Frodo go 
through hard places there are still those moments such as Sam pointing 
out the star glimmering above the cloud-wrack of Mordor to remind 
them of higher things.

This is not perhaps so well-defined in HP all the time, but if you ask me 
why I like the books, it is because I reach the end feeling that I have gone 
through a huge experience - a huge pilgrimage - with Harry and his 
companions and have emerged the better for it. Considering the books as 
a whole, I must be truthful and say that there are sections which I do not 
like. But this is true of Tolkien and also of Lewis. No book can be written 
to satisfy every reader. This had to be said a year ago when a very vociferous 
group of readers failed to see any virtue in DH and allowed that to 
retrospectively colour their ongoing view of the series.

The fact remains that, for me, the ongoing march of DH's story line from 
"The Forest Again" to the magical sunrise over the window-sill onto the 
final face off between Harry and Voldemort rounds off for me what 
proudly stands alongside LOTR and Narnia on the bookshelf on /my/ 
window-sill as some of the best reading material I have come across.






From foxmoth at qnet.com  Thu Jul 24 21:39:41 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:39:41 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6ajfk+lpf1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6asqt+p30v@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183802


> Pippin:
> >  Snape's association with Sectum Sempra was generally known. Lupin
> declares that it's a specialty of his in DH. <snip>
> 
> Carol responds:
> 
> That statement has always bothered me. Lupin didn't know, any more
> than Sirius Black did, that Snape had been a DE, and Severus could
not have performed a Dark Curse that Madam Pomfrey couldn't heal at
> Hogwarts without being expelled. (The little cut on James's cheek
> doesn't count; clearly he was not "cut always.")

Pippin:
But clearly it *is* supposed to count. Why else would JKR have had
Snape cause that particular injury? If I know anything about young
men, James would have been mortified to go to Madame Pomfrey over a
slight cut on his cheek. As for squealing on a classmate, he'd have
died first. 

Snape and everybody else who used the curse at Hogwarts was probably
just a lot more careful with it than Harry was, knowing that if they
did  permanent damage with it they'd be expelled. After all, a lot of
the magic they use could be damaging if mishandled -- you could stun
or petrify someone so they fell down the stairs or over a parapet, you
could poison them with any number of potions, and so on. 

Pippin




From winterfell7 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 24 21:47:41 2008
From: winterfell7 at hotmail.com (mesmer44)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:47:41 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?)
In-Reply-To: <g6arag+q8mj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6at9t+rb5e@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183803

> Hickengruendler
<SNIP>
>> > So as a starting point, I would like to hear your reasons. What
did you
> > like about Harry Potter and (as long as it doesn't become off-
topic)
> > other children literature? What does particularly interest you in
the
> > series? <SNIP>

Winterfell:

I especially like the atmosphere of Hogwarts.  A school just for the
instruction of magic has always fascinated me.  The teaching of such
subjects as DADA and Herbology and Transfiguration is an amazing
concept in and of itself.  Also, Hogwarts became much more than a
school setting for Harry.  It was a place where he was good at
somethings, not so good at others, but where he had friends and felt
that he actually belonged somewhere special.  It was a place where he
could visit Hagrid with Ron and Hermione and enjoy the community of
his house common room. Other than the Weasleys home, Hogwarts was a
setting vividly described by JKR that made me want to go there.  I
felt at home there too.

So, for me, what I liked the most I think about Harry Potter was the
setting of Hogwarts. I wished I could have had a place like that to
go and learn magic.




From carylcb at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 24 23:41:47 2008
From: carylcb at hotmail.com (clcb58)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:41:47 -0000
Subject: Professional Quidditch
Message-ID: <g6b3vr+sr63@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183804

I've looked in the Lexicon and in Quidditch Through the Ages and can't
find the answers to some questions about Professional Quidditch, so I
thought I'd call on the collective knowledge/wisdom of this group to
see if anyone has any good ideas.

1. What time of the year are regular team tryouts held? Or do the
recruiters just make offers to players on school teams without a
tryout? Are there any "farm team" or non-pro teams that might compete
with the Hogwarts students for spots on the pro teams?

2. How long is a "season?" Do they play year-round or just during the
Autumn through Spring like the teams at Hogwarts? When would training
begin/end?

3. How many matches would be played in a "season?"

4. When is the "National Cup" awarded?

5. When would players try out and/or be named to the national team
vying for the World Cup?

That's all I can think of for now. Feel free to add to the questions
as well as the answers.

Thanks!
clcb58




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 24 23:49:04 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:49:04 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAq7J8AJNZvxGJq/KbtzLRq8KAAAAQAAAAKcCY/jG6gkO+SS1GtT74hwEAAAAA@citynet.net>
Message-ID: <g6b4dg+q4gp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183805

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Bruce Alan Wilson" 

What drew me to the series (after seeing people rave about it on a 
library list) was the humor and the sheer extravagance of it.  I 
liked that the names were funny and made puns.  I liked the detail of 
the different shops in Diagon Alley.  I liked the details of the 
castle and that everything seemed to be imbued with imagination and 
fun.

I also liked the characters.  I liked Ron and Hermione and Harry.  I 
liked the cariacatures of the teachers--which is a lot like Dickens.  

That it was written for children didn't put me off in the slightest.  
I think some of the best literature has either been written for 
children (like Alica in Wonderland) or appropriated by children (like 
Huck Finn).  

I still think that JKR did a tremendous thing with these books.  If 
nothing else (and she did a great deal more than nothing else), she 
exploded that idea that children's literature has to simple and 
written to the lowest common denominator.  She brought complexity 
back to children's books.

Montavilla47




From winterfell7 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 24 16:33:08 2008
From: winterfell7 at hotmail.com (mesmer44)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:33:08 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAq7J8AJNZvxGJq/KbtzLRq8KAAAAQAAAAKcCY/jG6gkO+SS1GtT74hwEAAAAA@citynet.net>
Message-ID: <g6aas4+6nno@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183806

Bruce wrote:
>
> A good question, especially as so many of the comments lately
> have been about what we DISlike about it.



Winterfell replies:

I also thought it was a good question in light of how many comments
lately have been negative.  Some readers forget how amazing a character Harry Potter actually is.  Some readers become upset w/ such things as Harry casting a crucio or Imperio spell in DH.  These readers said it was inconsistent w/ how these spells were portrayed and represented in previous books. I could care less if it was. These are fictional characters, not real ones and not a morality lecture.

One of the things I like most about Harry Potter was him acting in ways contrary to what we'd expect him to if he was a totally consistent character.  I loved him casting the crucio and Imperio spells.  DH was set during a Wizarding War and Harry's casting these spells helped defeat LV in the long run. Did Harry turn into a DE or become a dark wizard because of casting these spells? Of course not.  His overall good and decent character didn't seem corrupted by what he did, and I didn't doubt for a moment that it would.

I also enjoyed Snape's character in the Harry Potter books immensely.  but Snape is one of the most inconsistent characters in modern fiction.  Funny though, his inconsistencies don't seem to bother some readers nearly as much as do those of other characters.  Whether you love or dislike Snape, you can't objectively deny his inconsistencies.  He's a DE, then he isn't. He's a valued member of the OoTP yet he killed it's leader.  He loved Lily yet he treated her son terribly while protecting him from danger.  He could have turned Harry in for using the potion's book, yet he didn't.  And I'm sure all of you can come up with dozens more, as these aren't even the best one's I'd bet.

Hermione is the smartest student probably in Hogwarts, yet at times she lacks common sense and could be ruled by her emotions.  I cheered her hexing Marietta, I laugh when she panics at times and yet comes through with just the right spell to save the day. She's inconsistent, yet I loved her role in the Harry Potter books.

There are lots of inconsistencies in the Harry Potter books. I
mentioned only a few in the short time I've had to write this. But for me at least, they are what I liked most about these books.  JKR has given the literary world characters to read and re-read over again with joy and fondness.  That is one thing that I thing is consistently something for me to look forward to.

Winterfell





From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 01:01:59 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:01:59 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince and Sectumsempra
In-Reply-To: <g6asqt+p30v@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6b8m7+p2pc@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183807

> > Carol responds:
> > 
> > <snip>
> > (The little cut on James's cheek
> > doesn't count; clearly he was not "cut always.")
> 
> Pippin:
> But clearly it *is* supposed to count. Why else would JKR have had
> Snape cause that particular injury? If I know anything about young
> men, James would have been mortified to go to Madame Pomfrey over a
> slight cut on his cheek. As for squealing on a classmate, he'd have
> died first. 

Mike:
I agree with Pippin, both on the cut counting and on what James would 
have done about it. What was he going to do, complain that Snape got 
him back for hanging him upside down and filling his mouth with soap 
bubbles for no reason?  

Curious isn't it, James would have had a scar on his face just like 
Harry.

I'd like to point out that George wasn't "cut always" either. Sure, 
he couldn't have had his ear replaced because it was severed with 
dark magic. But that's quite the moot point considering they didn't 
drop down to the ground in the middle of the chase to pick up the 
severed ear, now did they? There was no ear to re-attach.

What I'm talking about is that George's bleeding *was* staunched. He 
wasn't "cut always" regardless of what was cut off. Two different 
things here. Knitting a wound versus re-attaching a severed piece. If 
you can't stop the bleeding from a Septumsempra wound without a 
specific counter-curse, then George should still be bleeding to this 
day. 

But clearly Molly stopped the bleeding, just as James must have had 
someone help him stop the bleeding, and Snape stopped Draco's 
bleeding. Harry doesn't know how to stop bleeding, he says so in the 
beginning of DH. Harry was not going to stop Draco's bleeding.

And before you say it; a generic counter-curse, such as Finite 
Incantatum, is still called a "counter-curse" though it can counter 
any number of hexes or curses. So Snape's "counter-curse" that he 
uses on Draco doesn't have to be specific to Sectumsempra. I still 
rather think it wasn't. He had to go over the wounds three times to 
knit the wounds completely, then he still thought Draco needed 
Dittany to prevent scarring. My impression of a specific counter-
curse is that you only have to use it once as long as you hit your 
target (not a problem in this case) and that a specific counter-curse 
completely reverses the effects of the curse. No need to worry about 
scars because a specific counter-curse makes it as if the original 
curse was never cast. 

JMHO,

Mike, who does agree with Carol on questioning Lupin's comment, but 
then I question all of Lupin's comments ;-)




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 03:10:33 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:10:33 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6asqt+p30v@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6bg79+v70h@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183808

Pippin earlier:
> > >  Snape's association with Sectum Sempra was generally known.
Lupin declares that it's a specialty of his in DH. <snip>
> > 
Carol earlier:
> > 
> > That statement has always bothered me. Lupin didn't know, any more
than Sirius Black did, that Snape had been a DE, and Severus could not
have performed a Dark Curse that Madam Pomfrey couldn't heal at
Hogwarts without being expelled. (The little cut on James's cheek
doesn't count; clearly he was not "cut always.")
> 
> Pippin:
> But clearly it *is* supposed to count. Why else would JKR have had
Snape cause that particular injury? If I know anything about young
men, James would have been mortified to go to Madame Pomfrey over a
slight cut on his cheek. As for squealing on a classmate, he'd have
died first. 
> 
> Snape and everybody else who used the curse at Hogwarts was probably
just a lot more careful with it than Harry was, knowing that if they
did  permanent damage with it they'd be expelled. After all, a lot of
the magic they use could be damaging if mishandled -- you could stun
or petrify someone so they fell down the stairs or over a parapet, you
could poison them with any number of potions, and so on. 

Carol responds:
I don't agree. If James, who didn't know the countercurse to
Sectumsempra, had been hit with that curse, he would have kept on
bleeding till Severus Snape, the one person who did know it (assuming
that he'd invented it at that point--it was pretty complex) performed
it on him. The teachers would not have let him stay in class with a
permanently bleeding cheek. It would have been, "Hospital wing,
Potter!" And then Madam Pomfrey would have realized that the injury,
inflicted in front of the entire fifth year class, was Dark magic that
she was incapable of healing. And Severus Snape would have been expelled.

That little cut, which was not permanent and did not even leave a scar
as far as we know, may have been a precursor to Sectumsempra, but
there's no evidence whatever that it was Sectumsempra itself. Nor did
he cast the spell aloud; it was nonverbal, so neither James nor Remus
nor Sirius would have known what it was.

Stunning and Petrifying are not Dark spells that require elaborate and
secret countercurses that only Severus Snape knows. And it wouldn't be
a matter of "squealing on a classmate"; the entire fifth year class
was watching, and any of them could have told on Snape if doing so
violated MWPP's code of honor, such as it was.

Even a carefully controlled Sectumsempra (and Severus was rather too
furious for careful control--he made a slashing movement, IIRC) would
be "cut always" without that countercurse, just as there was no
restoring George's ear through Molly's Healing magic. (I'd like to
think that Snape could have restored it, but he never got the chance.)

You may be able to reconcile Lupin's remarks with the available canon.
I can't. It makes no sense to me--unless JKR forgot--again--what she
had actually written in previous books, just as she had the incident
occur at the end of fifth year but the spells are written in a
sixth-year book. (Yes. that can be reconciled, too, but only by
finding off-page possible solutions to an on-page inconsistency.)

Carol, who doubts that "everyone else" used a curse that Severus had
marked "for enemies" and would probably only have used in the DE days
that Lupin didn't know about until after the fact





From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 03:27:48 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:27:48 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Bella's wand )
In-Reply-To: <g65qe7+2l7p@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6bh7k+rcrq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183810

> zanooda:
> 
> I very much enjoyed your "Rubeus Hagrid and his first wand"
> story, Mike. I can see that you have great imagination :-).
> It is a very believable story, too, but I think that maybe
> Ollivander let Hagrid choose his wand first (or rather, let
> the wand choose Hagrid :-)), and only then he strengthened
> this wand. I'm not sure that it's a very good idea to make a
> wand for someone "by order", without that
> "choosing-of-the-wizard" procedure.

Mike:
OK, you can be my copyeditor. ;-) I accept your amendment to my 
story. You see, this is why I loved reading this series, just to
tie into the thread asking what we liked about Harry Potter. 

JKR painted such a rich tableau of characters, that it doesn't take 
much of an imagination to put together all these little back-stories 
for our own amusements. The greatest thing she did was to give us the 
outline for many people, places and things, all facinatingly 
different from RL, but didn't smother us with her own fictional 
facts. This allowed us to use our own imaginations to fill in the 
blanks. Lots of blanks for a goofball like me to fill in. :D


> zanooda:
> 
> As for all these "measurements" - I don't see much sense in them.
> <snip>
> So what was the point of measuring the poor boy? Just
> to make the whole procedure look more "science-like" :-)?

Mike:
Sure you do. It was magic! It's all wandlore, not science, as Pippin 
pointed out. So that measuring tape wasn't taking your average, 
mundane measurements. For instance, once it found out that Harry's 
ears are more than three times as far apart as are his eyes, and that 
the length of his nose is evenly divisible into the length of his 
forearm, that meant that Harry couldn't possibly be compatible with 
any wood from the Fire thorn family. See?

It's all these little moments that go unexplained that make the story 
interesting and enriches the total package. JMHO of course, YMMV.

Mike, thanking zanooda for the editing; he will soon be sending her 
reams of similar vignettes for her to check for consistency with 
canon. JKR could've used her :))




From rint68nyr at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 03:28:06 2008
From: rint68nyr at yahoo.com (rint68nyr)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:28:06 -0000
Subject: Professional Quidditch
In-Reply-To: <g6b3vr+sr63@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6bh86+2ngg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183811

"clcb58" <carylcb at ...> wrote (snipped):

> 1. What time of the year are regular team tryouts held? Or do
> the recruiters just make offers to players on school teams
> without a tryout? Are there any "farm team" or non-pro teams
> that might compete with the Hogwarts students for spots on
> the pro teams?

Erin - These are just guesses, but since the World Cup is held in
late summer, I would guess that the season is early spring to late
summer.  So perhaps, if tryouts are held, they are in late winter?

> 2. How long is a "season?" Do they play year-round or just
> during the Autumn through Spring like the teams at Hogwarts?
> When would training begin/end?

Erin - See above

> 3. How many matches would be played in a "season?"

Erin - My guess is one match against each team, in each area.

> 4. When is the "National Cup" awarded?

Erin - National cup is probably awarded at the end of the regular
season for each country...somewhere near the beginning of August?

> 5. When would players try out and/or be named to the national
> team vying for the World Cup?

Erin - I'm thinking the winter?

Here's another Q.  In the book (QttA), it lists 13 teams in
Britain/Ireland league.  So how did it get to be just Ireland
that went to the World Cup?



From rint68nyr at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 03:35:07 2008
From: rint68nyr at yahoo.com (rint68nyr)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:35:07 -0000
Subject: Hello, Newbie here / Re: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g66n2l+qiuf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6bhlb+n7r4@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183812

Erin:

Hello,

I just found this website, and though I have enjoyed bulletin
boards on other sites, I sometimes felt silly writing to young
kids. It's nice to have an adult site for HP!

I am married, with 2 boys, and I can't wait for them to be old /
mature enough to have me read HP to them!

> Hickengruendler

> So as a starting point, I would like to hear your reasons.
> What did you like about Harry Potter and (as long as it
> doesn't become off-topic) other children literature? What
> does particularly interest you in the series?


I liked how JKR created a very complex story, and yet it all
fit together at the end.  I also liked how you would read
about things, and not think much of them, and then later on
in the book, or even a few books later, would find out that
what you had thought was an unimportant tidbit, was actually
very important to the story.  I like how JKR took real-world
myths (philosopher's stone (why did they change the name for
US?...I would have understood what they meant!), dragons,
giants, etc.), and made them fit into her story.  I liked
how she explained why we muggles have no idea about the
existence of the wizard world.  She made it seem so real
and believable...even though we know it's not.

Erin



From gav_fiji at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 03:55:15 2008
From: gav_fiji at yahoo.com (Goddlefrood)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:55:15 -0000
Subject: Professional Quidditch
In-Reply-To: <g6bh86+2ngg@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6bir3+a2mb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183813

> Erin: 
> In the book (QttA), it lists 13 teams in Britain/Ireland league. 
> So how did it get to be just Ireland that went to the World Cup?

Goddlefrood:

I'm going to give you some thinking time to answer this one 
yourself.

****************************
****************************










DREAMSPACE









*******************************
*******************************

National teams are different from club sides. Simple as that.




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 03:56:42 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:56:42 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6aas4+6nno@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6bitq+vuec@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183814

Winterfell wrote:
<snip> 
> I also enjoyed Snape's character in the Harry Potter books
immensely.  but Snape is one of the most inconsistent characters in
modern fiction.  Funny though, his inconsistencies don't seem to
bother some readers nearly as much as do those of other characters. 
Whether you love or dislike Snape, you can't objectively deny his
inconsistencies.  He's a DE, then he isn't. He's a valued member of
the OoTP yet he killed it's leader.  He loved Lily yet he treated her
son terribly while protecting him from danger.  He could have turned
Harry in for using the potion's book, yet he didn't.  And I'm sure all
of you can come up with dozens more, as these aren't even the best
one's I'd bet. <snip>

Carol responds:
It's all in how you look at it. We know as early as GoF that he was a
DE and "returned to our side" to spy for DD "at great personal risk."
So the question arises, why did he switch sides (which happens
frequently in real life, and not only among timeservers who serve the
person in power out of fear or desire for personal gain) and where do
his loyalties really lie? He's at once ambiguous and conflicted, torn
between his instincts and his given word, between love and duty on one
side and his natural unpleasantness and his bitter hatred of his
childhood enemies on the other. Most of the time he's either
inscrutable or sarcastic; he only gives his bottled up rage free rein
on rare occasions, and then it's not for the reasons that Harry and
the readers think it is (not a childhood grudge but the belief that
Sirius Black betrayed Lily to her death, for example).

His being a valued member of OoP and killing its leader is not an
inconsistency buy an irony which, unfortunately, cannot be revealed to
the other members, who must continue to believe that he's Voldemort's
loyal servant. That he treated Harry badly (I wouldn't say
terribly--Harry suffered no lasting damage from either his sarcasm or
his detentions, in contrast to the scar that Umbridge's cruel quill
left on his hand) and protected him at the same time is also an irony
(though I think that Snape could not have gotten close to Harry if
he'd wanted to given their resspective personalities and histories,
Harry's feelings about Slytherin, and Snape's need to maintain a
distance from any but his Slytherin students to avoid arousing the
suspicions of students with DE parents in case Voldemort rose again.
Protecting Harry was a *duty* and Snape was old-fashioned enough to
value that outmoded virtue. (He was probably celibate, too.) Snape had
an excellent work ethic. He never shirked or procrastinated. (Wish I
could say the same.) He didn't have to like what he did (though I
rather think he enjoyed the challenge of *acting*, fooling people,
especially Voldemort, with regard to his loyalties and intentions. And
he had an almost Gryffindor courage, too, seeming to like risking his
life, not for the sake of reckless fun but for a cause (Lily, if you
like--I think it was more complex). And I particularly enjoyed seeing
him in new situations, with Narcissa and Bellatrix (and, briefly,
Wormtail) at Spinner's End (what was the point of Wormtail's being
there, anyway?), Umbridge near the end of OoP, with Voldemort and the
DEs in "the Dark Lord Ascendant." I didn't like most of his scenes
with Dumbledore, but that wasn't Snape's fault. But I loved, "Would
you like me to do it now, or would you like a few moments to compose
an epitaph?"

Certainly, there were contradictions in his character. There are
contradictions in Dumbledore's, too--wisdom and folly, tenderness and
ruthlessness. That's realistic. Most of us have contradictory
qualities, some more than others.

Now if Snape had suddenly cheered for Gryffindor or awarded Hermione
twenty points for a clever answer or behaved in a friendly way to
Sirius Black, he'd have been inconsistent. Instead, he's an amazing
character, I would even say, a *great* character, with all due credit
to JKR for her creation, in a series that is not otherwise a literary
masterpiece.

For the person, and I'm sorry I don't remember who it was, who started
the thread on why we like the Harry Potter books, that's what it boils
down to for me--Severus Snape. Not that I don't like other characters
or certain scenes that don't include him, but he's the reason that I
read and reread the books and was in terrible suspense for the fifteen
years (okay, I'm exaggerating) between HBP and DH.

Carol, grateful that characters, unlike people in real life, can be
brought back to life by the simple turning of a page




From happyjoeysmiley at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 05:32:15 2008
From: happyjoeysmiley at yahoo.com (Happy Smiley)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:32:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HPforGrownups] What did you like about Harry Potter?
Message-ID: <821898.76219.qm@web46212.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183815

> hickengruendler:
> I chose the topic about the most popular children's books and why 
> grown ups like to read them as well.
<SNIP>
> I would like to hear your reasons. What did you 
> like about Harry Potter and (as long as it doesn't become off-topic) 
> other children literature? What does particularly interest you in the 
> series?

I feel every adult would have a child in him?/ her and most of us?can recall childhood memories with a smile on our faces.?Some?people?would give anything to go back to childhood. Also, these kind of books give an opportunity to successfully practice escapism and enter a whole new world. And, HP series does not talk about children alone - there are many significant adult characters as well. 

I like Harry Potter for its:
* Interesting and consistent definitions and descriptions of?all characters and their psyche i.e.?feelings, thoughts, actions, speech, etc.
* Good morals:?highlighting powers?of love/care/decency/forgiveness/courage/honesty etc. and highlighting?the?disgust triggered?by cruelty/bullying/racism/slave labor/gossiping/power-consciousness etc. 
* Very good effort in linking of magical theories/concepts?introduced across all 7 books
* Humour :)
* Suspense
* Smart names for books, spells [hexes, jinxes, curses!],?Hogwarts subjects
*?The lively imagination of how the magical world will be?and how they would?view us
* Vivid description of places [Whole of Hogwarts, The Burrow, Diagon alley, Hogsmeade, MOM, 12 GP, etc.], games [Quidditch, et al], animals, birds, etc.
Well, it's a whole new world - just feels good to escape and go there. :)
Hope this helps. Good luck with your work!
Cheers,?Joey

 
 


      

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 25 13:58:26 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:58:26 -0000
Subject: What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6aas4+6nno@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6cm62+i6ie@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183816

> Winterfell replies:
> 
> I also thought it was a good question in light of how many comments
> lately have been negative.  Some readers forget how amazing a 
character Harry Potter actually is.  Some readers become upset w/ 
such things as Harry casting a crucio or Imperio spell in DH.  These 
readers said it was inconsistent w/ how these spells were portrayed 
and represented in previous books. I could care less if it was. These 
are fictional characters, not real ones and not a morality lecture.
> 
> One of the things I like most about Harry Potter was him acting in 
ways contrary to what we'd expect him to if he was a totally 
consistent character.  I loved him casting the crucio and Imperio 
spells.  DH was set during a Wizarding War and Harry's casting these 
spells helped defeat LV in the long run. Did Harry turn into a DE or 
become a dark wizard because of casting these spells? Of course not.  
His overall good and decent character didn't seem corrupted by what 
he did, and I didn't doubt for a moment that it would.
> 
> I also enjoyed Snape's character in the Harry Potter books 
immensely.  but Snape is one of the most inconsistent characters in 
modern fiction.  Funny though, his inconsistencies don't seem to 
bother some readers nearly as much as do those of other characters. 

Magpie:
Having read a lot of discussions about DH and the use of Crucio, I 
don't think I've ever read anyone saying they have a problem with 
characters behaving inconsistently in DH. (I do remember some people 
feeling that Hermione was OOC in HBP, though I didn't agree.) The 
inconsistancy some people have not liked about Crucio is that they 
thought it was presented as one thing and then suddenly that meaning 
didn't matter, which has nothing to do with Harry himself behaving 
consistently. I would actually disagree with you that the characters 
in this series aren't consistent--they're remarkably so, imo. They're 
not one note, but they're not particularly inconsistent. Certainly 
not Snape. He's the same character in every book--his consistancy is 
even highlighted in a scene in DH. The fact that he was a Death Eater 
and then was not a Death Eater due to a change of heart explained in 
the book doesn't make the man inconsistent any more than Harry is 
inconsistent because he fancied Cho and then didn't fancy her. Their 
basic characters actually remained very strong throughout (and in 
Snape's case we didn't know that basic character until DH).

The problems many have with the Crucio is actually more along the 
lines of exactly what you said: "Did Harry turn into a DE or become a 
dark wizard because of casting these spells? Of course not.  His 
overall good and decent character didn't seem corrupted by what he 
did, and I didn't doubt for a moment that it would." They take issue 
with the idea that being a good and decent person means you torture 
without it suggesting a corruption of your character at all. For many 
that's sort of a backwards way of looking at it.

Which is, for me, a very interesting conversation to have about the 
book and in general, which is why what some people would 
call "negative comments" for me are the life's blood of the 
community. 

-m




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 14:47:07 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:47:07 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6cm62+i6ie@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6cp1b+ie4t@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183817

> Magpie:
<SNIP>
I would actually disagree with you that the 
characters 
> in this series aren't consistent--they're remarkably so, imo. 
They're 
> not one note, but they're not particularly inconsistent. Certainly 
> not Snape. He's the same character in every book--his consistancy 
is 
> even highlighted in a scene in DH. The fact that he was a Death 
Eater 
> and then was not a Death Eater due to a change of heart explained 
in 
> the book doesn't make the man inconsistent any more than Harry is 
> inconsistent because he fancied Cho and then didn't fancy her. 
Their 
> basic characters actually remained very strong throughout (and in 
> Snape's case we didn't know that basic character until DH).
<SNIP>


Alla:

Well, I don't know actually. I actually agree with one sentence that 
Carol wrote in this thread - it is all depends on how you look at it 
IMO.

I mean, for example you say that Snape's basic character remains very 
strong throughout the books. Well, but what IS Snape's basic 
character, you know?

If you mean that his attitudes towards Harry and other kids remain 
the same throughout the book and that **is** his basic character, 
then sure I would agree with you. If you mean that Snape loving Lily 
is his  basic character, sure I agree with it too.

But I just do not see how one can say that Snape's change of heart as 
to his being DE not makes him inconsistent character. I truly think 
it does. OR one can say that it makes him dynamic character, changing 
etc, but to me it is not mutually exclusive.

Snape changed something that as far as I am concerned was his basic 
values, so yeah I think it is inconsistent, inconsistent in a good 
way, as in changing way. I mean, I suppose that those readers who 
think that Snape was since his early childhood was nice decent 
honorable guy who just took a wrong turn in his life would probably 
argue against it, but IMO young Snape really and truly believed in 
what Voldies stood for and embraced his values.

So, yes to me him coming back is a major major change in his 
character.

JMO

Alla






From foxmoth at qnet.com  Fri Jul 25 15:09:34 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:09:34 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6bg79+v70h@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6cqbf+6ato@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183818

> Carol responds:
> I don't agree. If James, who didn't know the countercurse to
> Sectumsempra, had been hit with that curse, he would have kept on
> bleeding till Severus Snape, the one person who did know it
(assuming that he'd invented it at that point--it was pretty
complex)performed it on him.

Pippin:
If it worked that way,  George would still be bleeding, too. But canon
says Mrs. Weasley was able to stop it, though she couldn't restore his
ear.

 Probably James knew the same anti-bleeding charm, and as we know, the
scar could be restored with dittany. Canon only says there was a flash
of white light and a gash appeared on James's cheek; nothing about
gestures that I can find. We can't be sure it was sectum sempra, since
it was a non-verbal spell, but it seems an unnecessary complication
and Flinty besides to have it be something else. 

Certainly you won't deny that James used levicorpus? That was also in
the potions book. We already were told that Snape knew curses
beyond his years, and we have several other students, Hermione and
Harry among them, who learned NEWT level spells before they'd passed
their OWLs. 


> Carol, who doubts that "everyone else" used a curse that Severus had
> marked "for enemies" and would probably only have used in the DE
days that Lupin didn't know about until after the fact


Pippin:
Snape spent his DE days eavesdropping and slithering out of action,
not specializing in Sectum Sempra. But what Lily called dark
magic was being used at Hogwarts during her fifth year, by the
students who attacked Mary, and by Sirius Black who sicced a werewolf
on Severus. 

Once again, it's the House-elves, not the Gryffindors, who were truly
scrupulous about not using dark magic.

Pippin
 




From winterfell7 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 25 15:10:50 2008
From: winterfell7 at hotmail.com (mesmer44)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:10:50 -0000
Subject: Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6bitq+vuec@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183819

> Carol responds:
> <snip>
> His being a valued member of OoP and killing its leader is not an
> inconsistency but an irony which, unfortunately, cannot be revealed
to
> the other members, who must continue to believe that he's
Voldemort's
> loyal servant. That he treated Harry badly (I wouldn't say
> terribly--Harry suffered no lasting damage from either his sarcasm
or
> his detentions, in contrast to the scar that Umbridge's cruel quill
> left on his hand) and protected him at the same time is also an
irony <snip>

Winterfell replies:

Actually it is by definition both an irony and an inconsistency.  An
inconsistency is : displaying or marked by a lack of consistency,
especially not regular or predictable, erratic: inconsistent
behavior.  Snape's actions (untill the noble reasons we find out
about were later discovered) in AK'ing DD were not viewed as regular
or predictable as a member of the OotP and as a trusted friend and
colleague of DD. So they were inconsistent with his connection to
DD.  Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio
and Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading DH
who criticized Snape for using the AK curse.  It seems to be
inconsistent to criticize Harry and not Snape.  They both used
Unforgiveable Curses didn't they? Or would that be ironic?  Oh yes,
Snape's was for a good reason, that's right.  (And Harry's wasn't?)

As for Snape's behavior not being terrible or having lasting effects
on Harry, what about Snape's behavior during occlumency lessons? His
treatment of Harry during those lessons, bad or whatever, was a key
reason for Harry not learning occlumency and the main reason LV was
able to put the images of Sirius's capture in his head.  I'd say the
consequences for Harry were quite lasting.  True, it was a very
necessary plot device by JKR, but nonetheless it was Snape's bad
behavior that was the catalist for Harry's future actions.

> <snip>
Carol continues:

> Now if Snape had suddenly cheered for Gryffindor or awarded Hermione
> twenty points for a clever answer or behaved in a friendly way to
> Sirius Black, he'd have been inconsistent. Instead, he's an amazing
> character, I would even say, a *great* character, with all due
credit
> to JKR for her creation, in a series that is not otherwise a
literary
> masterpiece.
> <snip>

Winterfell:

Here, if Snape had done what Carol suggested, it would more
accurately be ironic, as irony is defined as an incongruity between
what might be expected and what actually occurs.  If Snape had
cheered for Gryffindor or awarded Hermione 20 points for a clever
answer, or especially been friendly to Sirius....it would really be
unexpected wouldn't it?




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 15:59:23 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:59:23 -0000
Subject: Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6ct8r+ebgb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183820

Winterfell:
<SNIP>
Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio
and Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading DH
who criticized Snape for using the AK curse. It seems to be
inconsistent to criticize Harry and not Snape. They both used
Unforgiveable Curses didn't they? Or would that be ironic? Oh yes,
Snape's was for a good reason, that's right. (And Harry's wasn't?)

Alla:

To be honest while I certainly agree with you in a sense that I do 
not see much difference between Snape and Harry using Unforgiveables 
in those instances, I think that Dumbledore is another person who IS 
absolutely responsible for Snape using AK.

I mean, again I think you are absolutely right and if Unforgiveables 
are bad, no matter what, then Snape should be crucified too as far as 
I am concerned. Myself  ( and this is something I would never imagine 
myself typing) I think they both have sufficient excuses and I would 
not crucify Harry OR Snape. Oh boy, somebody pinch me.

I wrote in details before as to why I would not crucify Harry and I 
would not crucify Snape because yeah, pains me to type it as it is, I 
believe Dumbledore cornered him and  left him no choice whatsoever.  
He voiced that he did not want to do it and I believe him, but who 
can resist great Albus Dumbledore.

Winterfell:
As for Snape's behavior not being terrible or having lasting effects
on Harry, what about Snape's behavior during occlumency lessons? His
treatment of Harry during those lessons, bad or whatever, was a key
reason for Harry not learning occlumency and the main reason LV was
able to put the images of Sirius's capture in his head. I'd say the
consequences for Harry were quite lasting. True, it was a very
necessary plot device by JKR, but nonetheless it was Snape's bad
behavior that was the catalyst for Harry's future actions.

Alla:

Of course.





From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 25 16:24:42 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:24:42 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6cp1b+ie4t@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6cuoa+glks@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183821

Alla:
> I mean, for example you say that Snape's basic character remains very 
> strong throughout the books. Well, but what IS Snape's basic 
> character, you know?
> 
> If you mean that his attitudes towards Harry and other kids remain 
> the same throughout the book and that **is** his basic character, 
> then sure I would agree with you. If you mean that Snape loving Lily 
> is his  basic character, sure I agree with it too.
> 
> But I just do not see how one can say that Snape's change of heart as 
> to his being DE not makes him inconsistent character. I truly think 
> it does. OR one can say that it makes him dynamic character, changing 
> etc, but to me it is not mutually exclusive.

Magpie:
For me, "inconsistent" was in this case being used as a criticism--the 
idea was that people didn't like Harry because he was nice in one scene 
and did something they considered bad in the next. It can have other 
meanings besides that: a character can be inconsistent as an 
intentional character trait, for instance. But this was about 
complaints about Harry being inconsistent, I thought, and I think all 
the characters are coherently the same people throughout canon.

But really, I guess there's a spectrum. A character who never changed 
or always did the same thing regardless of differences in a situation 
all the time would not only be boring but read as not human. All the 
characters change their behavior in some ways due to their experiences. 
I just don't think of that as such a change that the character is being 
written inconsistently. Snape started out a kid who was imo already 
aware of blood superiority (based on his hesitation about Lily being in 
Slytherin) but who also loved Lily. His change of belief didn't to me 
seem to change his character so fundamentally. 

But I realize that's really hard to pin down. It *was* a big change for 
him to give up the DEs, of course. It was a big change for Draco to go 
from thinking being a DE was cool to thinking it was awful. The 
character learned through experience in both cases. In Snape's case 
he'd made all these changes before the book started, though, so it 
wasn't really a change within the story. We just didn't know the whole 
story. Snape had always been acting on the same values we learned he 
had in DH. That he mistreated Harry but also protected him was 
contradictory but not inconsistent, imo.

Winterfell:
So they were inconsistent with his connection to
DD. Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio
and Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading DH
who criticized Snape for using the AK curse. It seems to be
inconsistent to criticize Harry and not Snape. They both used
Unforgiveable Curses didn't they? Or would that be ironic? Oh yes,
Snape's was for a good reason, that's right. (And Harry's wasn't?)

Magpie:
I wouldn't say I crucify Harry for using Crucio, but having read all 
the discussions no, Harry's didn't have a good reason according to many 
people and they've explained that pretty clearly.

At first it seemed like use of an Unforgivable was bad, period. But 
that was not the case. So it came down to judging individual uses of 
the curse. Snape is not generally criticized for performing his AK 
because he did seem to have a good reason, and his victim even was the 
one who wanted him to do it. I have not seen Harry criticized for using 
an Unforgivable in the bank either to Imperio his way in. People seem 
to see that as Harry having a good reason, as choosing to do something 
that was maybe bad because it was the most efficient way to acheive the 
greater good--any consequences were outweighed. The Crucio doesn't fit 
those circumstances for many people, as they've explained. It's not 
that hard to see why someone might think killing someone as a strategic 
move with their encouragement in order to prevent far more deaths would 
get judged differently than torturing someone out of anger. 

-m






From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 17:14:49 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:14:49 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6cp1b+ie4t@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6d1m9+ushd@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183822

Alla wrote:
> 
> Well, I don't know actually. I actually agree with one sentence that 
> Carol wrote in this thread - it is all depends on how you look at it 
> IMO.

Carol responds:
Well, at least we agree there!
> 
> I mean, for example you say that Snape's basic character remains
very strong throughout the books. Well, but what IS Snape's basic 
character, you know?
> 
> If you mean that his attitudes towards Harry and other kids remain
the same throughout the book and that **is** his basic character, 
then sure I would agree with you. If you mean that Snape loving Lily
is his  basic character, sure I agree with it too.
> 
> But I just do not see how one can say that Snape's change of heart
as to his being DE not makes him inconsistent character. I truly think 
> it does. OR one can say that it makes him dynamic character, changing 
> etc, but to me it is not mutually exclusive.

Carol:
I agree that off-page Snape or the Snape of "The Prince's Tale" is a
dynamic character, but I disagree that he's inconsistent, which is not
the same thing. (See below.) I also agree that his basic character is
subject to debate if we're talking about his motivations and actions,
but the way he's depicted--his personality, his appearance and
gestures, his manner of speaking, his openly expressed attitudes--is
consistent within the narrative framework (meaning that we're limited
most of the time to Harry's pov and only see a different side of him
in "Spinner's End"--even "The Dark Lord Ascendant," which is written
from an objective pov, gives an inscrutable Snepe who seems to be what
Voldemort thinks he is but is really Snape the actor and superb
Occlumens, consistent with what he has said or implied of himself in
OoP and HBP.) 

Alla: 
> Snape changed something that as far as I am concerned was his basic
values, so yeah I think it is inconsistent, inconsistent in a good 
way, as in changing way. I mean, I suppose that those readers who
think that Snape was since his early childhood was nice decent
honorable guy who just took a wrong turn in his life would probably
argue against it, but IMO young Snape really and truly believed in
what Voldies stood for and embraced his values.

Carol:
We're back to the point we agree on, which is that the interpretation
of character depends on how you look at it. And, FWIW, I don't see
little Severus as so much "a nice decent honorable guy" but rather as
a deprived child who was probably abused by his father, took love or
friendship where he could find it, had an unrealistic view of
Slytherin to begin with (the House of "brains") but did, possibly for
the sake of acceptance among his fellow Slytherins, eventually adopt
the views of his Slytherin friends, mixed with the conviction that he
was at least as talented and worthy of recognition as they were. And,
certainly, he took a "wrong turn" which he deeply regretted when it
led to danger and then death for the girl he loved.

But, that aside, there's nothing inconsistent about that depiction. He
became a DE through a natural progression based on character and
circumstances. His repentance of the revelation of the Prophecy and
its consequences for Lily is equally in character, and the decision to
become Dumbledore's man, risking everything in a vain attempt to save
Lily and then in a successful but covert effort to protect her son, is
a natural progression, not inconsistency but development. (I would add
his concern for others, saving the life of anyone he could save, even
an enemy like Lupin, to his development. YMMV.)

Alla:
> So, yes to me him coming back is a major major change in his  character.

Carol:
I agree. But that makes him dynamic, not inconsistent, according to
most literary critics that I'm familiar with. An inconsistent
character is one whose personality and traits are always fluctuating,
as distinct from a dynamic character who develops according to a
logical pattern. (Of course, a character can *appear* to be
inconsistent if he's viewed from an unreliable perspective, but I'm
not talking about that here.)

A character can be inconsistent for two reasons. The first is a weak
personality, easily swayed and unable to stick firmly to convictions.
Whatever we may say of Snape, I don't think we can call him wavering.
Once he makes up his mind to opppose Voldemort and protect Harry, he
never changes it, whatever his personal feelings in the matter. (He
does not, however, make up his mind to treat Harry, that "mediocre,"
"arrogant" son-of-a-Potter, nicely. <smile>)

The second reason for a character's inconsistency is bad writing. A
character who is merely a plot device can be depicted inconsistently
because the author isn't concerned with his development, merely the
uses to which he can be put. I can't think of any examples from HP at
the moment; JKR is pretty good about keeping her characters
consistent, which is not the same as keeping them from developing and
growing. (Kreacher changes and develops but there's a reason for that
change and the potential for that clean, respectful Kreacher was
always there. So he's dynamic, not inconsistent--wavering and
fluctuating for no reason.) 

I think it was E. M. Forster (but I could be wrong and will happily
accept correction) who said that inconsistency in a character is
acceptable as long as he's "consistently inconsistent."

Regarding Snape, if he'd sometimes been nice to Harry instead of
consistently critical and (seemingly) unhelpful or if he'd been seen
smiling at Lupin in the hallway (in PoA) when he usually regards him
suspiciously, that would be inconsistent. But Snape, even when we see
a new side of him (the gracious host, to Narcissa, at least, in
"Spinner's End," for example, is always in character, always Snape.
(If he's inconsistently depicted anywhere, it's in the scene from "the
Prince's Tale" where he seems terrified of Dumbledore: "Don't kill
me!" That, to me, seemed OoC for Snape.)

Harry, too, changes and develops, or at least, it can be argued that
he does. (I know that some people see him as a static character.) But
except for moments like that Crucio in DH, he's consistently depicted
and behaves in a manner consistent with his established character
traits rather than wavering unpredictably or weakly. The same can be
said for Snape, even when he's casting an AK that he doesn't want to
cast, he's still Snape in both character traits (values, motives) and
personality (speech and behavior).

Carol, who agrees completely that (young) Snape changes but sees
nothing inconsistent about that change







From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 17:53:06 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:53:06 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6cqbf+6ato@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6d3u2+h4up@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183823

Carol earlier:
> > I don't agree. If James, who didn't know the countercurse to
Sectumsempra, had been hit with that curse, he would have kept on
bleeding till Severus Snape, the one person who did know it (assuming
that he'd invented it at that point--it was pretty
> complex)performed it on him.
> 
> Pippin:
> If it worked that way,  George would still be bleeding, too. But
canon says Mrs. Weasley was able to stop it, though she couldn't
restore his ear.

Carol responds:
Let me rephrase that. He would still be *cut open* even if Madam
Pomfrey, whom we know was not a Dark magic expert, could stop the
bleeding. Unless, of course, you disregard the literal meaning of the
spell. And, as you say, Mrs. Weasley could not restore George's ear,
but she didn't know the counterspell. Snape did.

Pippin: 
>  Probably James knew the same anti-bleeding charm, and as we know,
the scar could be restored with dittany. 

Carol:
But you're missing a step. If the cut were an ordinary cut caused by
an ordinary spell (call it "Sempra" for the sake of argument), it
could be closed by the quick nonverbal spell that Dumbledore uses to
close a knife wound. (James, however, would be unlikely to ask Madam
Pomfrey for dittany and equally unlikely to have any on hand.)
However, it if were Sectum*sempra*, he could stop the bleeding, as
Mrs. Weasley did with George, but he'd be unable to close the cut
without the specific anti-Dark Magic countercurse that Snape used.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be *Dark* magic--"for enemies"--it would just
be another hex in his arsenal, no more deadly and dangerous than the
boil curse that Harry tries to use on Draco, which ends up sending
Goyle (onto whom it's deflected) to the hospital wing in agony but is
easily reversed by Madam Pomfrey, who, unlike the adult Snape, is not
a Dark Arts expert.

Pippin:
Canon only says there was a flash of white light and a gash appeared
on James's cheek; nothing about gestures that I can find. We can't be
sure it was sectum sempra, since it was a non-verbal spell, but it
seems an unnecessary complication and Flinty besides to have it be
something else. 

Carol:
Yes, it's a nonverbal spell, which means that we can't definitively
settle this disagreement. But if we look at the *effects* of the
spell--a bit of blood running down James's cheek that doesn't even
call for a visit to the hospital wing or leave a scar, much less a
gaping wound of the type left by even the controlled use of
Sectumsempra, I think it can be argued that it was only a precursor to
Sectumsempra. In fact, SWM and the so-called Prank provided sufficient
motivation for Severus to go beyond his earlier hexes (Langlock and
the toenail hex and Levicorpus) to something dangerous enough to be
marked "For enemies."

Pippin: 
> Certainly you won't deny that James used levicorpus? That was also
in the potions book. 

Carol:
Of course I don't deny that James used Levicorpus, which presents the
whole problem of inconsistency (the spell is written in the margins of
a *sixth-year* book but used in fifth year) and raises the question of
how James learned a nonverbal spell. But that's beside the point.
(It's a Flint, IMO--JKR gets James's age wrong, as well.)

The spell (a mere hex from all appearances) that Severus uses on James
is never identified. Lily, who accuses Severus's *friends* of using or
attempting to use Dark magic never charges Severus himself with the
same offense, as she certainly would have done if James had been left
with a gaping wound that Madam Pomfrey couldn't heal because it was
beyond her expertise.

Pippin:
We already were told that Snape knew curses beyond his years, and we
have several other students, Hermione and Harry among them, who
learned NEWT level spells before they'd passed their OWLs. <snip>

Carol:
That's not quite what we're told. We're told that he knew more curses
when he came to Hogwarts than half the weventh years in school at that
time. Harry and Hermione have nothing to do with it. And Black, who
may be exagerrating given the Severus we see in "The Prince's Tale,"
telling Lily that they won't get in trouble for accidental magic, only
for using a wand outside school, is talking only about the *number* of
spells that little Severus used. I don't doubt that he knew spells
beyond his years--he was evidently a prodigy and in Ron's words, a
genius--but that has nothing to do with his using Sectumsempra in this
particular scene. There's no question that he invented that spell
while he was still at Hogwarts--most likely, IMO, after his "enemies"
had given him provocation--but whether he used that spell at Hogwarts,
a Dark spell with dire consequences requiring a specialized and
elaborate countercurse, is another matter. I seriously doubt that he did. 

And even if this incident really is an example of the controlled use
of a nonverbal Sectumsempra that Madam Pomfrey or James himself,
despite not knowing the countercurse or anything about Dark magic, was
somehow able to heal, we're still left with the question of how Lupin
knew that it was Sectumsempra. The curse was nonverbal, and he didn't
know that Snape was a DE, so he couldn't have known that Sectumsempra
was his trademark curse at that time, if indeed it was.

A recognizable Sectumsempra like the one Harry used on Draco, aimed at
the neck or chest, could have killed the victim unless Severus himself
administered the countercurse. And Severus would never have been so
foolish as to use a recognizably Dark and dangerous (and probably
illegal, not being Ministry-approved) curse while he was still in
school. Had he done so, Lupin would have known about it--and
Dumbledore could never have hired him to teach at Hogwarts, repentance
or no. (Look what happened to Grindelwald at Durmstrang, who may have
used a similar curse of his own invention.)

Carol, who sees Lupin's remark as baseless if not outright
inconsistent in terms of canon, yet another flaw in DH that jars *me*
out of my state of willingly suspended disbelief





From jaynesmith62 at btinternet.com  Fri Jul 25 18:42:11 2008
From: jaynesmith62 at btinternet.com (Jayne)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:42:11 -0000
Subject: Defending Lupin/ Was Half-Blood Prince and Sectumsempra
In-Reply-To: <g6b8m7+p2pc@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6d6q3+69pp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183824

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:
> 
snip

> Mike, who does agree with Carol on questioning Lupin's comment, but 
> then I question all of Lupin's comments ;-)
>
Mike
Just popping in on this discussion to ask why you question Lupin,s 
comments. IMHO he is one of the most relaible and loyal people in the 
books

Jayne
Defending Lupin who is her favourite character 
and popping out again till next time




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 18:44:43 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:44:43 -0000
Subject: Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6d6ur+4e22@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183825

Winterfell wrote:
> 
> Actually it is by definition both an irony and an inconsistency.  An
inconsistency is : displaying or marked by a lack of consistency,
especially not regular or predictable, erratic: inconsistent behavior.
Snape's actions (untill the noble reasons we find out about were later
discovered) in AK'ing DD were not viewed as regular or predictable as
a member of the OotP and as a trusted friend and colleague of DD. So
they were inconsistent with his connection to DD.  

Carol responds:
But that doesn't make him an inconsistent character as literary
critics define the term, a point I've already discussed in response to
Alla. I agree, however, that Snape's AK is inconsistent with some
readers' expectations, at least with our conception of Snape as
Dumbledore's man. For readers who thought Snape was ESE!, it was in
character and consistent with their expectations. But that has nothing
to do with the wavering behavior of a truly inconsistent character,
who may be inconsistent through weakness or self-interest (like the
real-life Stanley brothers of the fifteenth century, who managed to
serve the House of Lancaster, the House of York, the formerly Yorkist
Earl of Warwick when he allied himself with the Lancastrians, the
House of York again, and Henry Tudor, with their "loyalty" depending
always upon self-interest and the person most likely to emerge as the
winner). Snape's behavior cannot be called "erratic" based upon one
action that is later explained. Inconsistent with the established
pattern, yes; but that doesn't make Snape an inconsistent character
once his motivation is explained.

Winterfell:
Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio and
Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading DH who
criticized Snape for using the AK curse.  It seems to be inconsistent
to criticize Harry and not Snape.  They both used Unforgiveable Curses
didn't they? Or would that be ironic?  Oh yes, Snape's was for a good
reason, that's right.  (And Harry's wasn't?)

Carol responds:
First, no one is "Crucifying" Harry. It's JKR's inconsistent attitude
toward the Unforgiveables (which appear to be misnamed) that some of
us find disturbing. And I don't hear anyone criticizing him for using
the Imperius Curse on Travers in an emergency (though I did and do
wonder why Confundus didn't suffice). Harry's use of Crucio, the
torture curse, when Stupefy would have been equally effective and he
wasn't even in danger (he was under the Invisibility Cloak) is another
matter that I won't go into here. Nothing will convince me that it was
either "gallant" or justified regardless of the nature of his enemy.
It was merely an eye for an eye, retribution of vengeance, not
self-defense.

Snape, as you know, was in a different position altogether. Dumbledore
had already asked him to kill him (in a quick and merciful way to
prevent his being tortured by the DEs or torn to pieces by Fenrir
Greyback). The AK, which causes instant death, was the obvious weapon
of choice (which again leads the reader to wonder why it's
"Unforgiveable" when other curses can cause a more painful death. I
suppose the only reason is that there's no countercurse--once hit by
that curse, you can't be saved--unless you're Harry or Voldemort.)

To sum up, Harry and Snape both used Unforgiveables in an emergency
when, it seems, no other curse would do. The Crucio, however, was
probably not the most effective weapon in Harry's arsenal if his goal
was to knock Amycus unconscious. If you choose to view torture, even
brief torture, from beneath an Invisibility Cloak as "gallant" or
necessary, I can't convince you otherwise. I simply disagree. But the
fault is not so much Harry's as JKR's for leading us to believe that
the Unforgiveables were the weapon of the enemy and that the good guys
were too "noble" to use them.

Winterfell: 
> As for Snape's behavior not being terrible or having lasting effects
on Harry, what about Snape's behavior during occlumency lessons? His
treatment of Harry during those lessons, bad or whatever, was a key
reason for Harry not learning occlumency and the main reason LV was
able to put the images of Sirius's capture in his head.  I'd say the
consequences for Harry were quite lasting.  True, it was a very
necessary plot device by JKR, but nonetheless it was Snape's bad
behavior that was the catalist for Harry's future actions.

Carol:
Snape praises Harry ("For a first attempt, that was not as bad as it
might have been")--faint praise, to be sure, but coming from Snape, it
means "Good!" Snape controls his temper when Harry uses a Protego that
results in his own memories for a moment being revealed--after all, he
has authorized Harry to use any spell he can think of to defend
himself and has placed his crucial memories in DD's Pensieve as a
precauation against exactly that occurrence. The only times when he
actually becomes angry with Harry are when Harry reveals memories that
can only be Voldemort's, not his--evidence that Harry is not
practicing Occlemency to block the scar connection. He is actually
"unnerved"--temporarily paralyzed by fear--when he sees Harry's dream
of the corridor. That uncharacteristic reaction should have told Harry
that Snape was seriously concerned for his safety. Instead, Harry
finds it mildly amusing. As for Snape's reaction to finding Harry
invading the memories that he had specifically set aside so that Harry
wouldn't see them, I think his reaction is perfectly justifiable. I'd
have exploded with anger too if some impertinent teenager dared to
invade my privacy in that way. And Dumbledore knew about it, knew the
reason that Snape angrily ended the lessons, which were ineffectual
anyway because Harry wasn't practicing his lessons. If DD had ordered
Snape to resume the lessons, he would have done so. There is no record
in canon of the adult Snape disobeying Dumbledore, regardless of his
feelings in the matter. Snape can't be blamed for Harry's failure to
practice nor for his acting on the implanted vision that LV placed in
his head. (If Dumbledore had told him, or allowed Snape to tell him,
what it was all about, Harry would have known to block those dreams.
Instead, he *wanted* to have them.)

Not even Harry himself blames Snape for the failure of the Occlumency
lessons once DD explains where the blame really lies (not counting
Harry's share, which he tactfully ignores). Harry instead chooses to
blame Snape for taunting Sirius Black, which the narrator makes plain
is the finding of a scapegoat because it's too painful to acknowledge
that he, Harry, should have known better than to go to the DoM in the
first place. (Black's own recklessness in fighting on the dais of the
veil with Bellatrix, taunting her rather than concentrating on
defending himself, is never mentioned, but the reader can see that
Black died as he would have lived, mistaking rashly fearless to the end.)

Carol, not trying to convince Steve (Winterfell), just expressing her
own views in answer to his responses




From kaamita at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 20:03:15 2008
From: kaamita at yahoo.com (Heather Hadden)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:03:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Secret-Keeper
In-Reply-To: <g6aas4+6nno@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <367137.10254.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183826

I just finished DH again. I remember the thread about the Secret-Keeper and how was Hermione able to bring Yaxley(?) to Grimmauld Place when Dumbledore was the Secret Keeper. On page 90 they talked about this.
?
"Mr Weasley explained that after the death of Dumbledore, their secret-keeper, each of the people to whom Dumbledore had confided Grimmauld Place's location had become a secret-keeper in turn." 
?
I wasn't sure if there was still a question about that, but it seems that any of the Order would be able to bring anyone there. Also, speaking of secret-keepers....when Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dobby, Griphook, Ollivander, etc all left to go to Shell Cottage, you find out that Bill was the secret keeper there. How was Harry, Dobby, etc able to get there? Bill had not told them where it was. Of course, I understand how Ron got there. I would assume that even if there was a fidelius charm on the place, those who already knew about the place, like a family member, would be able to get there. But Harry had not been there before. I could understand Harry being able to get through the fidelius charm at the Burrows as that was like a second home to him, but how did he get to Shell Cottage if he didn't aprirate with Ron?
?
Heather


      

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From kaamita at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 20:09:23 2008
From: kaamita at yahoo.com (Heather Hadden)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:09:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Snape being Half Blood Prince
Message-ID: <172948.79659.qm@web56512.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183827

People were wondering why Snape would call himself the Half Blood Prince. I tend to agree with Hermione. On page 637 we find out that?his mother's name was Eileen Prince. This?makes?Snape half a Prince. We also learn his father was muggle. So he would be a half-blood. Of course, Snape wouldn't want to claim his muggle half, so he claimed his Prince side. So, he is a half-blood and he is a Prince. Hence the name.....just my thoughts.
?
Heather


      

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From kaamita at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 18:51:24 2008
From: kaamita at yahoo.com (Heather Hadden)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:51:24 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6ct8r+ebgb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <445149.54415.qm@web56510.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183828

Winterfell:
<SNIP>
Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio
and Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading DH
who criticized Snape for using the AK curse. It seems to be
inconsistent to criticize Harry and not Snape. They both used
Unforgiveable Curses didn't they? Or would that be ironic? Oh yes,
Snape's was for a good reason, that's right. (And Harry's wasn't?)
<SNIP>

Heather:
No one mentions McGonagall using the Imperius curse on one of the Carrows while in the Ravenclaw common room with Harry and Luna.
?
Heather




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 22:23:58 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:23:58 -0000
Subject: Secret-Keeper
In-Reply-To: <367137.10254.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <g6djpu+mq8d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183829

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Heather Hadden <kaamita at ...> 
wrote:

> Also, speaking of secret-keepers....when Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dobby, 
> Griphook, Ollivander, etc all left to go to Shell Cottage, you find 
> out that Bill was the secret keeper there. How was Harry, Dobby, etc 
> able to get there?


zanooda:

I believe that when Harry and others Apparated to Shell Cottage, it was 
not yet protected by the Fidelius Charm - Bill only did it after the 
fugitives arrived and he found out that the DEs now knew that Ron was 
with Harry. It became  clear to him then that it was time for the 
Weasleys to go unto hiding. He went to the Burrow and moved the rest of 
the family to Aunt Muriel's, where they were protected by the Fidelius 
Charm, and then he came back home and cast the FC on Shell Cottage as 
well. All this happened while Harry was digging the grave, IMO. 







From gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk  Fri Jul 25 22:25:24 2008
From: gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk (Geoff Bannister)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:25:24 -0000
Subject: Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6djsk+2m03@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183830

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mesmer44" <winterfell7 at ...> wrote:
>
> > Carol responds:
> > <snip>
> > His being a valued member of OoP and killing its leader is not an
> > inconsistency but an irony which, unfortunately, cannot be revealed
> to
> > the other members, who must continue to believe that he's
> Voldemort's
> > loyal servant. That he treated Harry badly (I wouldn't say
> > terribly--Harry suffered no lasting damage from either his sarcasm
> or
> > his detentions, in contrast to the scar that Umbridge's cruel quill
> > left on his hand) and protected him at the same time is also an
> irony <snip>
> 
> Winterfell replies:
> 
> Actually it is by definition both an irony and an inconsistency.  An
> inconsistency is : displaying or marked by a lack of consistency,
> especially not regular or predictable, erratic: inconsistent
> behavior.  Snape's actions (untill the noble reasons we find out
> about were later discovered) in AK'ing DD were not viewed as regular
> or predictable as a member of the OotP and as a trusted friend and
> colleague of DD. So they were inconsistent with his connection to
> DD.  Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio
> and Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading DH
> who criticized Snape for using the AK curse.  It seems to be
> inconsistent to criticize Harry and not Snape.  They both used
> Unforgiveable Curses didn't they? Or would that be ironic?  Oh yes,
> Snape's was for a good reason, that's right.  (And Harry's wasn't?)

Geoff:
I think you choose to overlook the reason...

'Snape raised his eyebrows and his tone was sardonic as he asked "Are 
you intending to let him kill you?"
"Certainly not. You must kill me."
.... 
"If you don't  mind dying, said Snape roughly, "why not let Draco do it?"
"That boy's soul is not yet so damaged," said Dumbledore, "I would not 
have it ripped apart on my account."
"And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?"
"You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid 
pain and humiliation," said  Dumbledore. "I ask this one, great favour of 
you, Severus, because death is coming for me....... I confess I should prefer 
a quick painless exit to the protracted, messy affair it will be if, for instance, 
Greyback is involved..... Or dear Bellatrix...."
...
At last Snape gave another curt nod.
Dumbledore seemed satisfied.
"Thank you Severus..."'
(DH "The Prince's Tale"  from p.548 UK edition)

Dumbledore has effectively manoeuvred Snape into vowing to kill him and 
expressed a wish for a quick and painless exit.

Right. As Snape, how would you fulfil that vow without using Avada Kedavra 
or any Unforgiveable?

Sectumsempra perhaps? Let Dumbledore bleed to death? He is effectively 
giving a last helping and loving(?) hand to someone who has been a helper 
and mentor.

Harry hasn't actually tried to use a killing curse, only lesser Unforgiveables 
but I, for one, do not crucify him for that. He is impetuous, inexperienced 
and in a "There, but for the grace of God go I" situation. I can forgive them 
both.

No person operates without inconsistencies; if we each examine ourselves, 
we can see places where our responses to similar events have differed widely 
because our reactions - often the emotional ones - have been triggered by 
variable sets of stimuli: cold blood, the eheat of the moment, anger, sympathy, 
sadness; the list is endless.




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 22:41:14 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:41:14 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Bella's wand )
In-Reply-To: <g6bh7k+rcrq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6dkqa+glnf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183831

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:

> Mike, thanking zanooda for the editing; he will soon be sending her 
> reams of similar vignettes for her to check for consistency with 
> canon. 


zanooda:

Thank you for accepting my corrections :-). I want to say that I 
wasn't really trying to check your story for consistency with canon - 
I just thought it was a funny and fresh idea. But you are right, we 
should always perform the consistency check :-). Constant vigilance :-
)! 

Now seriously, I can't think of anything in the books that 
contradicts your idea (maybe someone else can :-)). OTOH, I also 
don't remember anything that comfirms your idea, except for the fact 
that Hagrid's wand is the longest mentioned in the books - 16 inches.

Typically lengths of the wands are in the range from 7 inches (one of 
the wands offered by Olly to Harry) to 13 and a half inches (LV's 
wand). But we still can't be sure that Hagrid's wand was custom-made 
for him, because we don't know how uncommon 16-inch wands are - if 
only one is mentioned, it doesn't mean there are no others :-).




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 25 23:07:17 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:07:17 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6d1m9+ushd@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6dmb5+hm1s@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183832

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
 
> If he's inconsistently depicted anywhere, it's in the scene 
> from "the Prince's Tale" where he seems terrified of 
> Dumbledore: "Don't kill me!" That, to me, seemed OoC for Snape.


He was distraught, Carol :-)! He was so terrified for Lily that he 
lost his nerve :-)! I can understand that. He can't always be the man 
of steel :-)! Snape was afraid DD will kill him before he had the 
time to give his warning! Then Lily won't be protected!

I personally find it inconsistent when Snape calls Lily "Lily Potter" 
in "The Prince's Tale". It happened only once (p.687), but for me 
it's very much OoC. He always called her "Lily Evans" before, even 
after she married James, and I believe it's very "Snape". I don't 
know why JKR made him say "Lily Potter" - maybe she wanted to show 
that he finally accepted the fact that Lily was James Potter's wife, 
but I don't believe he ever did - he was stubborn this way ... ;-(.


zanooda, who likes the scene on the hill ...




From winterfell7 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 25 18:38:05 2008
From: winterfell7 at hotmail.com (mesmer44)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:38:05 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6d1m9+ushd@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6d6ie+7091@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183833

>> Alla:
> > So, yes to me him coming back is a major major change in his
character.
>
> Carol:
> I agree. But that makes him dynamic, not inconsistent, according to
> most literary critics that I'm familiar with. An inconsistent
> character is one whose personality and traits are always
fluctuating,
> as distinct from a dynamic character who develops according to a
> logical pattern. (Of course, a character can *appear* to be
> inconsistent if he's viewed from an unreliable perspective, but I'm
> not talking about that here.)
> <HUGE SNIP, read the rest UPTHREAD>
>> Carol, who agrees completely that (young) Snape changes but sees
> nothing inconsistent about that change.  <snip>
>
 Winterfell:
     Change is a component of being inconsistent. Whether or not you
like the word "inconsistent", when applied generally, as properly
defined in the dictionary, not by some literary critics who love to
change and reinterpret words to suit their own pet theories, it
applies to a lot of things in JKR's writing.  Her characters change
as they grow older and face different circumstances.  Her writing
changes as it progresses from one book to the next.  Some changes,
some inconsistencies are good and make for better reading and
character development, some perhaps aren't so good when a character
you like changes in ways you don't want them to.

But just because you don't like to think of Snape as inconsistent, or
his change being inconsistent, it still applies.  It doesn't have to
be a negative thing, as many of Snape's changes were for the good.
Ultimately, he changes into a redeemed hero, (albeit unappreciated
and misunderstood hero by many who don't understand the sacrifices he
made).  And Harry's attitude toward Snape changes drastically after
DH as well, which is certainly inconsistent with how he viewed him
through 6 and 3/4 books.  I think that change was quite good and was
very happy to see him name one of his children after Severus.

But calling Snape a dynamic character is also confusing, because
according to the free dictionary, some things which are dynamic are
characterized by continuous change, activity or progress...like a
dynamic market.  I don't think of Snape as continuously changing
either, or as a person who doesn't stick to his convictions.  If
anyone stuck to his convictions in the Harry Potter series, it was
Snape.  It took us 7 books to find out why, but he did stick to what
he believed in. He was certainly consistent in that.

All I'm saying here is that inconsistencies exist in the Harry Potter
novels and I believe many of them are positive.  I concede that many
are negative, but those that are don't bother me a whole lot.  I like
characters in fiction that grow and change, who don't act
consistently all the time.  It makes for surprises and fun as a
reader.


<SNIP of the whole post basically, please read it UPTHREAD>
> Carol, not trying to convince Steve (Winterfell), just expressing
her
> own views in answer to his responses <snip>

Winterfell responds:

Thanks for the clarification and excellent explanation on this.  I
was wrong in thinking that Snape was totally to blame in this.  His
attitude was a contributory reason Harry didn't continue occlumency,
but not the main ones.  Harry is to blame for a lot of what happened
with the dreams of the Department of Mysteries to be sure.






From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 01:02:16 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:02:16 -0000
Subject: Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6dt2o+7imo@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183834

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mesmer44" <winterfell7 at ...> wrote:
>
> > Carol responds:
> > <snip>
> > His being a valued member of OoP and killing its leader is not an
> > inconsistency but an irony which, unfortunately, cannot be revealed
> to
> > the other members, who must continue to believe that he's
> Voldemort's
> > loyal servant. That he treated Harry badly (I wouldn't say
> > terribly--Harry suffered no lasting damage from either his sarcasm
> or
> > his detentions, in contrast to the scar that Umbridge's cruel quill
> > left on his hand) and protected him at the same time is also an
> irony <snip>
> 
> Winterfell replies:
> 
> Actually it is by definition both an irony and an inconsistency.  An
> inconsistency is : displaying or marked by a lack of consistency,
> especially not regular or predictable, erratic: inconsistent
> behavior.  Snape's actions (untill the noble reasons we find out
> about were later discovered) in AK'ing DD were not viewed as regular
> or predictable as a member of the OotP and as a trusted friend and
> colleague of DD. So they were inconsistent with his connection to
> DD.  

Montavilla47:
I have to agree with Carol.  In terms of a fictional character, 
consistency means that they act in ways that are consistent
with their main objectives, goals, and character traits.  It doesn't
mean that they can't surprise us.

If, for example, a character is conceived as being erratic, then
that would be "consistent," even if they acted in odd, unpredictable
ways.  Here's the first example that popped into my mind--which
may not be a great one.  If you've ever seen Robin Williams do
his act, you'd notice that he jumps erratically from thought to 
thought, from wordplay to physical comedy, even from comedy to
pathos--in milliseconds. Yet, his act was fairly consistent in its
unpredictability (until he bucked that by going into dramatic 
roles, but hey... he's mercurial.)

But Snape isn't even like that.  He's very constant.  As a child,
he values power, privacy and magic, and he values those same
things as an adult.  He desires respect and craves admiration--
none of that changes. 

What changes is his political affiliation.  Lots of people change
"sides" without changing their character.  (Most of them
would probably insist that it's the party that's changed--not
them.)  

And, consistently, Snape makes the hard choices.  That's why
Dumbledore asked him to kill him.  By doing that, Snape was
showing the highest loyalty to Dumbledore--and Dumbledore
was showing the greatest trust.  

That the Order was denied the information to understand
what was truly going on does not make Dumbledore or
Snape inconsistent.  

> Winterfell replies:
>Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio
> and Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading DH
> who criticized Snape for using the AK curse.  It seems to be
> inconsistent to criticize Harry and not Snape.  They both used
> Unforgiveable Curses didn't they? Or would that be ironic?  Oh yes,
> Snape's was for a good reason, that's right.  (And Harry's wasn't?)

Montavilla47:
It's interesting that you use the word "crucify" to describe
people criticizing Harry.  There's this trap we all tend to
fall into in discussing the series--which is to line up into
different camps.  As if, you must be either pro-Snape or 
pro-Harry, when it turns out they were on the same side
all along.  (I'm as guilty of this as anyone.)

I think Magpie's got this right.  It's not Harry that bothers
people about the use of the Crucio.  It's that the Unforgiveable
curses and "hatred of the Dark Arts" was set up as the moral
framework through which to view the characters.  By having
Harry perform Unforgiveable spells, JKR explodes that 
framework--which may be the point.  It's possible that she
has written a very dark, exisential series and the message
is that there is no moral consequence to Dark Magic.

But that's not the way it reads to me (YMMV).  The way it
reads to me is that Harry gets a pass on using Dark Spells
because he's the hero.

As to why people aren't jumping on Snape for using the
AK--I do think that's interesting, because I know a number 
of people were vehement before DH in saying that they'd
find the series immoral if JKR justified Snape's actions.

But I haven't heard that from them since the novel came out.
Perhaps they simply lost interest in the series, or arguing the
point.  Or, perhaps they finally accepted the idea (generally
known as the "Stopper Theory") once JKR made it official.

But here's, to me, what the key differences are between 
Snape's use of the AK and Harry's use of the Crucio.  

1.  At the time when Snape used the AK, it was really the best,
quickest, and most merciful of the options available to him.  
The outcome (saving Draco, Harry, and--at least from torture
and humiliation--Dumbledore) was good.  

Harry had several spells at his disposal which would have 
been more effective against Amycus.  He used the Crucio
because it was emotionally satisfying to him--not because
it was the best option.

2. Snape was very aware (and troubled) by the thought that
killing Dumbledore (let alone how) would tear his soul.  As
for whether or not it did, that question is still open.  So, 
by granting Dumbledore's request, Snape was putting his 
very soul in jeopardy.

Harry risked nothing by using the Crucio--except the 
possibility that it wouldn't work.  We expect difficult choices 
to exact a toll on those who make them--otherwise it's not a 
difficult choice.  By using the Crucio for purely self-satisfying
reasons, and by paying no psychic price for that action, 
Harry's moral value is decreased.


> Winterfell replies:
> As for Snape's behavior not being terrible or having lasting effects
> on Harry, what about Snape's behavior during occlumency lessons? His
> treatment of Harry during those lessons, bad or whatever, was a key
> reason for Harry not learning occlumency and the main reason LV was
> able to put the images of Sirius's capture in his head.  I'd say the
> consequences for Harry were quite lasting.  True, it was a very
> necessary plot device by JKR, but nonetheless it was Snape's bad
> behavior that was the catalist for Harry's future actions.

Montavilla47:
Here's where I'm going to jump merrily into the pro-Snape camp.
Snape's behavior during the Occlumeny lessons was not terrible.  
He was, for Snape, rather civil.  He, unlike all the other adults during
OotP, took time to answer Harry's questions.  He praised Harry
when Harry made progress.  He explained what Harry needed to 
do in order to learn the skill.

But, it was a difficult branch of magic to learn, and Harry
clearly wasn't ready to learn it--or motivated to do so.  So I think
it was inevitable that the lessons would end badly.  At least,
that's what Dumbledore says, and it's probably best to take that
at face value.







From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 01:36:43 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:36:43 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6cuoa+glks@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6dv3b+t8qp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183835

Magpie:
<HUGE SNIP>
It's not
that hard to see why someone might think killing someone as a 
strategic
move with their encouragement in order to prevent far more deaths 
would
get judged differently than torturing someone out of anger.

Alla:

Yes actually it is very hard for me to see that. I mean again, it is 
a strange argument for me, since I cannot criticize either Snape or 
Harry as I wrote before. BUT had Snape performed that for anybody 
else, you bet I would criticize Snape more, much more than Harry. It 
is just given their relationship as depicted in book 7, I cannot 
imagine Snape disobeying Dumbledore, I really cannot. Somebody 
killing another person seems to me to be much more permanent action 
than somebody torturing the sadist who tortured kids during the whole 
year for how much time? Couple seconds? Not cool, but does not come 
close to killing in my mind, asked for or not. Sorry, I would think 
that taking a life of the leader of the resistance with unforgiveable 
no less is much more horrible offense than what Harry did. 

But imagine a hypothetical for a second, and I know that it is going 
out of realm of the story and into the wild AU, but bear with me for 
a second. Say somebody else would have asked Snape to kill him, be it 
Arthur or Moody or anybody else and that somebody else would have 
also told Snape that it may be needed to strengthen Snape's status or 
something like that. You bet I would have expected Snape to say no. 

Killing enemy in the battle? Sure. Killing in self defense? Yes of 
course. Doing what Snape did?  As far as I am concerned he only gets 
a pass because *Dumbledore* asked him to do it. I would not doubt for 
a minute that Snape would indeed do ANYTHING for him, whether he 
wants to or not. The action itself does not become admirable in my 
mind at all, I just agree that there was nothing Snape could do 
without breaking his word, his honor, etc.


Montavilla:
<SNIP>
What changes is his political affiliation. Lots of people change
"sides" without changing their character. (Most of them
would probably insist that it's the party that's changed--not
them.) <SNIP>


Alla:

I strongly disagree. I mean sure Snape' s political affiliation had 
changed, but I would argue that it is the showing of Snape changing 
his values and therefore yes, to me it is a deep change in his 
character. It is not like Snape changed say from being Democrat to 
being Republican or vice versa, because well, those are just 
political affiliations. To me it is more like Snape changing from 
being member of KKK to being democrat or being republican or any 
other party in any other country.

I cannot say that going from being member of terrorist organization 
to being, I don't know legit member of whatever political party is 
just changing your affiliation. I think it is learning to value human 
life finally. So, no, to me constant Snape is not. He goes to me from 
being on very low stage of human beings ( yes, I have no respect 
whatsoever for members of terrorists organizations) to, well being 
deemed worthy to call himself a human being. I mean I still hate him, 
but as I said, I will not call him what in my mind I call terrorists 
whose favorite past time is torture and killing. Recently only those 
I cannot save
 I cannot imagine Snape even thinking in these terms 
when he started with Voldy. I really cannot. He IMO was worried about 
Lily and no other human being meant anything to him. 

JMO,

Alla






From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 26 02:51:29 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:51:29 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6dv3b+t8qp@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6e3fh+nej3@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183836

> Magpie:
> <HUGE SNIP>
> It's not
> that hard to see why someone might think killing someone as a 
> strategic
> move with their encouragement in order to prevent far more deaths 
> would
> get judged differently than torturing someone out of anger.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Yes actually it is very hard for me to see that. I mean again, it 
is 
> a strange argument for me, since I cannot criticize either Snape or 
> Harry as I wrote before. BUT had Snape performed that for anybody 
> else, you bet I would criticize Snape more, much more than Harry. 

Magpie:
For you to see it yourself, as in agree with it? Or hard for you to 
understand the distinctions that somebody else is making?

I mean, I don't agree with the idea that the Crucio might as well be 
a stupefy because it's only for a few seconds and it was really just 
a way to stop Amycus and it's war etc. But I don't have a hard time 
understanding where the person is coming from. I understand the 
distinction between torture being temporary and killing being 
permenant. You're looking at all the elements in play for Snape's AK, 
Harry's Crucio, Harry's Imperius and judging them based on all those 
factors. There's the reasons they're doing it, the results, the 
pressures--all those things. I mean, of course Snape performing an AK 
for another person would be different than doing it for Dumbledore--
not just because of their relationship but because a different person 
would bring lots of different circumstances as well.

But you've already gone far beyond the idea that they're both 
Unforgivables and so that's all that matters. Molly kills somebody 
too, but I'd judge that act differently than Snape's too.


Alla:
> Killing enemy in the battle? Sure. Killing in self defense? Yes of 
> course. Doing what Snape did?  As far as I am concerned he only 
gets 
> a pass because *Dumbledore* asked him to do it. 

Magpie:
I think that's probably a big reason that everybody gives him a pass. 
Both that Dumbledore as the victim asked him and was already dying 
etc. and that *Dumbledore* asked him to do it with all the authority 
and power that he has in the resistance and over Snape.

> 
> Montavilla:
> <SNIP>
> What changes is his political affiliation. Lots of people change
> "sides" without changing their character. (Most of them
> would probably insist that it's the party that's changed--not
> them.) <SNIP>
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I strongly disagree. I mean sure Snape' s political affiliation had 
> changed, but I would argue that it is the showing of Snape changing 
> his values and therefore yes, to me it is a deep change in his 
> character. It is not like Snape changed say from being Democrat to 
> being Republican or vice versa, because well, those are just 
> political affiliations. To me it is more like Snape changing from 
> being member of KKK to being democrat or being republican or any 
> other party in any other country.

Magpie:
But none of those would necessarily entail a character being written 
inconsistently. All the qualities that led Snape to the DE led him 
away from the DEs. To me it seems like Snape is written with a clear 
line of character from his earliest scene. The Marauders didn't even 
seem to think Snape changed that much from school until the present. 
I agree with Carol's view that the same things that drew Snape to the 
DEs were clear when he was a kid. Sure he changed through life. He 
had a pretty big event happen that made him see that the DEs were a 
mistake. Had Lily not died he might have found another reason to 
leave the DEs. But I still don't believe that simply leaving the DEs 
makes the character inconsistent (especially a guy whose life is 
defined by very consistent, passionate feelings about a handful of 
people). Snape raising himself in anyone's estimation doesn't mean 
that his character became inconsistent. 
> 
Alla:
I mean I still hate him, 
> but as I said, I will not call him what in my mind I call 
terrorists 
> whose favorite past time is torture and killing. Recently only 
those 
> I cannot save
 I cannot imagine Snape even thinking in these terms 
> when he started with Voldy. I really cannot. He IMO was worried 
about 
> Lily and no other human being meant anything to him. 

Magpie:
Yes, Snape learned and changed. That doesn't mean as a character he 
was inconsistent. 

-m




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 03:05:52 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:05:52 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6e3fh+nej3@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6e4ag+knq2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183837

> Magpie:
> For you to see it yourself, as in agree with it? Or hard for you to 
> understand the distinctions that somebody else is making?

Alla:

Actually, I guess it is the mixture of two parts that you wrote. I 
cannot **agree** with the distinctions that somebody else is making, 
I understand them, but I disagree with it.

Magpie:
<SNIP>
> But you've already gone far beyond the idea that they're both 
> Unforgivables and so that's all that matters. Molly kills somebody 
> too, but I'd judge that act differently than Snape's too.

Alla:

LOL, it is actually a little bit backwards. I was talking about POV 
that argues a) Harry performed Unforgiveable and that is all that 
matters, so it is horrible and and JKR was developing a theme that 
Unforgiveables are just bad, period, so she destroyed that theme by 
Harry performing Crucio and not making him agonising over it, etc.

So, if you or anybody else says that JKR destroyed that theme that 
all unforgiveables are bad by making Harry do crucio and not have him 
suffer and suffer over it, don't you think that Snape's unforgiveable 
deserves to be judged same way?

I mean, it is absolutely my view that there was no such a theme, I 
mean, I certainly thought that it was, I won't lie, but she showed to 
me in book 7 that indeed Unforgiveables should be judged based on all 
the totality of circumstances IMO. I have sero problem with it, 
really.

But if person says that Harry's unforgiveable is out of theme or 
whatever, it strikes me as inconsistent to say that Snape's AK is 
just fine.

Now if person says that he or she does not accept that it was fine in 
Harry's **individual circumstances**, but okay in Snape's 
circumstances, sure I judge circumstances differently, but I cannot 
argue with it.

And of course I will judge Molly's killing differently then Snape, 
that one was the easiest to me.

 
> Magpie:
<SNIP>
> Yes, Snape learned and changed. That doesn't mean as a character he 
> was inconsistent. 
>

Alla:

I thought I mentioned it - I am using inconsistencies as synonym to 
change in character.




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 03:43:37 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:43:37 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6dv3b+t8qp@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6e6h9+dtbd@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183838

> Montavilla:
> <SNIP>
> What changes is his political affiliation. Lots of people change
> "sides" without changing their character. (Most of them
> would probably insist that it's the party that's changed--not
> them.) <SNIP>
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I strongly disagree. I mean sure Snape' s political affiliation had 
> changed, but I would argue that it is the showing of Snape changing 
> his values and therefore yes, to me it is a deep change in his 
> character. It is not like Snape changed say from being Democrat to 
> being Republican or vice versa, because well, those are just 
> political affiliations. To me it is more like Snape changing from 
> being member of KKK to being democrat or being republican or any 
> other party in any other country.

Montavilla47:
I think it can be argued both ways, so I'm not going to actually
disagree with you.  I think it depends on what you think Snape
was signing up for--and how much you think he's really changed.

It seems to me that JKR wants us to see Snape as being very
much in the DE-Pureblood idealogy, with his love for for
Lily being an exception to that.  He goes from "save Lily" 
to "save everyone I can save."  

I guess the question is whether you see that as a big change or
not.  I don't see it as much of a change as a development.  One that
many people achieve a lot quicker than Snape does... like, by about 
age twelve, but hey.

What I get from the Snape and the Malfoys is that they (like
Teen Dumbledore), are attracted to evil idealogies for whatever
reason (intellectual curiosity?  ambition?), until they realize that
those idealogies include treating others as less than, and that 
the "others" include people they care about.

For Dumbledore, the deal-breaker was his sister Ariana.  For 
Snape, the deal-breaker was Lily.  For the Malfoys, the deal-
breaker was Draco.

There are others who have no deal-breakers.  Barty Crouch, Jr.
gladly killed his father for Voldemort.  Bellatrix would have 
gladly sacrificed her nephew and she says she would sacrifice
her sons (although she doesn't have any to sacrifice).  And, of
course, Voldemort himself has no deal-breakers, because he
cares about nobody at all but himself.

Once the deal is broken, it's broken and the only question
left is whether or not you can extricate yourself from the 
evil idealogy.  And, of course, whether you can expand from
loving one person to loving many.

Getting back to JKR, she makes it pretty clear that people
joined the DEs for a variety of reasons, and that only some of
those reasons were because the individual DE enjoyed killing
and torturing.  She also has Sirius tell us that his brother 
didn't know what he was getting into.  I don't think it's 
stretching things to imagine that other DEs, including Lucius
and Severus, went into the organization with blinkers on.

We don't know if the Malfoys ever go from loving their 
immediate family members to loving strangers.  But I think
that loving one is radically different from loving no one--and
not so radically different from loving many.

Alla:
> I cannot say that going from being member of terrorist organization 
> to being, I don't know legit member of whatever political party is 
> just changing your affiliation. I think it is learning to value human 
> life finally. 

Montavilla47:
Again, not a disagreement, but just a comment.  Belonging to a 
legitimate political party doesn't mean that you have learned to 
value human life.  You can belong to one without valuing human
life.  Or without valuing human life to the point where it's going to
interfere with a policy that ends up killing people.

Alla:
>So, no, to me constant Snape is not. He goes to me from 
> being on very low stage of human beings ( yes, I have no respect 
> whatsoever for members of terrorists organizations) to, well being 
> deemed worthy to call himself a human being. I mean I still hate him, 
> but as I said, I will not call him what in my mind I call terrorists 
> whose favorite past time is torture and killing. Recently only those 
> I cannot save
 I cannot imagine Snape even thinking in these terms 
> when he started with Voldy. I really cannot. He IMO was worried about 
> Lily and no other human being meant anything to him. 

Montavilla47:
See, I can't help thinking that a lot of people who join terrorist 
organizations are doing it because it makes sense to them as 
a way forward--like young men who join street gangs because it
gives them protection.  

When I listen to the stories of people who joined  and later left
street gangs, they usually stress how necessary it was to join up
in order avoid being hassled as a loner.  They knew that the gangs
sold drugs and killed people--there were people being killed all
around them.  They knew that joining a gang put you at risk from
being killed by a rival gang.  But *not* joining was even more
dangerous, because you'd be out there with no protection at 
all.

Even in the books, we see that there are negative consequences
to being a loner.  Both Neville and Luna are hassled by classmates.
Luna has her things stolen from her so often that she accepts it as
a fact of school life.  Neville gets petrified by Hermione, leg-locked
by Draco's gang, and turned into the butt of jokes by the twins.  
That he keeps standing up for himself is so noteworthy that he 
wins the House Cup because of it.






From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 04:05:21 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:05:21 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's)/ Tigana spoilers
In-Reply-To: <g6e6h9+dtbd@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6e7q1+eqrv@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183839

Montavilla47:
I think it can be argued both ways, so I'm not going to actually
disagree with you. I think it depends on what you think Snape
was signing up for--and how much you think he's really changed.
<SNIP>


Alla:

Well of course. As I said before, if one thinks that Snape was a 
sympathetic character who just took a wrong turn in his life, of 
course I can see that one will not see it as a deep change. Since I 
despise Snape who signed up for being part of Voldy gang ( I mean I 
despise Snape who signed out too, but for totally different reasons 
LOL), then yes I think his change was huge. IMO of course.



Montavilla:
<SNIP>
We don't know if the Malfoys ever go from loving their
immediate family members to loving strangers. But I think
that loving one is radically different from loving no one--and
not so radically different from loving many.

Alla:

See, I don't. I was having the similar conversation with someone 
about "Tigana" that I mentioned here recently. Highly recommend by 
the way if you have not read, lots of ethical questions in that 
book :)

There is a person in that book who is shown as deeply loving father, 
so deeply loving that his grief for his son causes him to cause 
grief, pain and genocide of the whole country no less. I am not being 
sarcastic by the way, all that I wrote in the previous sentence is I 
think pretty straightforward if a bit incomplete description of one 
storylines in this book. This person is also very deeply in love with 
the woman, who came to kill him since she is one of the survivors of 
that genocide. The thing is, it does not make me think of that person 
as any less evil, you know?

Why, because this love does not make this guy to take a way the 
horrible pain that he inflicted on the citizens of the country, and 
he is fully capable of doing it, since magic is involved. The fact 
that this guy is shown as capable of loving a woman makes him human 
of course, but sympathetic, why? He is still an evil man, who 
inflicts a sophisticated psychological torture on the wonderful man 
whose only fault was to defend his country from the intruders.

And now back to Potterland. See I was not impressed at all that 
Malfoys love each other. I mean, I am glad that they became human, 
but sympathetic, not to me. I mean, no, I do think that Draco 
changed, I do not feel much more sympathy for him, but to me he is 
not evil anymore. But Lucius Malfoy? He is still the same guy who 
watched how Voldemort ordered to kill one boy and tortured another 
boy, he is still the same guy who played those games to me. So he 
loves his family. I have read about maniac who raped hundreds of 
girls when I was still in Russia and in his spare time he was loving 
father and husband. A lot of evil people love their families, so it 
is not necessarily something I am very impressed with.

Montavilla47:
Again, not a disagreement, but just a comment. Belonging to a
legitimate political party doesn't mean that you have learned to
value human life. You can belong to one without valuing human
life. Or without valuing human life to the point where it's going to
interfere with a policy that ends up killing people. <SNIP>

Alla:

Yes you can, but my initial disagreement was with your comment about 
Snape changing political affiliation without changing his character 
and to me it was something more significant than changing political 
affiliation, because even though you may belong to legit party and 
not value human life, if you belong to terrorist organization, to me 
it is a very big sign that you do not value it, period. IMO of course.

I know I am not being very clear, maybe tomorrow I can phrase it 
better, but I am just disagreeing since it sounded so trivial to me, 
just the political affiliation, to me it was a big symbol, I guess, a 
metaphor that Snipe's whole mindset changed.







From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 26 04:07:44 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:07:44 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6e4ag+knq2@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6e7ug+2qno@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183840

> > Magpie:
> > For you to see it yourself, as in agree with it? Or hard for you 
to 
> > understand the distinctions that somebody else is making?
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Actually, I guess it is the mixture of two parts that you wrote. I 
> cannot **agree** with the distinctions that somebody else is 
making, 
> I understand them, but I disagree with it.

Magpie:
Right--that's all I was saying to Winterfell originally, was that 
people judge the different situations as they see them, and explain 
why they judge them the way they do. 

 
> Magpie:
> <SNIP>
> > But you've already gone far beyond the idea that they're both 
> > Unforgivables and so that's all that matters. Molly kills 
somebody 
> > too, but I'd judge that act differently than Snape's too.
> 
> Alla:
> 
> LOL, it is actually a little bit backwards. I was talking about POV 
> that argues a) Harry performed Unforgiveable and that is all that 
> matters, so it is horrible and and JKR was developing a theme that 
> Unforgiveables are just bad, period, so she destroyed that theme by 
> Harry performing Crucio and not making him agonising over it, etc.
> 
> So, if you or anybody else says that JKR destroyed that theme that 
> all unforgiveables are bad by making Harry do crucio and not have 
him 
> suffer and suffer over it, don't you think that Snape's 
unforgiveable 
> deserves to be judged same way?

Magpie:
Right, they're two different discussions. If Unforgivables are bad in 
themselves and we expect good guys never to use them (at least 
without bad consequences or worry etc) we're confused when the good 
guys use them.

But clearly that isn't true. Unforgivables aren't off limits to good 
guys. So once we know that sure we can not like that or feel confused 
or whatever--some readers really were dismayed by that. But we're 
still left with how we're going to judge the act in itself 
independently of the word "unforgivable." It seems like people are 
doing that too. That's why Harry's Crucio gets more criticism than 
his Imperio. Not just because they're both unforgivables, but because 
of what they do.

Alla: 
> I mean, it is absolutely my view that there was no such a theme, I 
> mean, I certainly thought that it was, I won't lie, but she showed 
to 
> me in book 7 that indeed Unforgiveables should be judged based on 
all 
> the totality of circumstances IMO. I have sero problem with it, 
> really.

Magpie:
Exactly. I think most people make that same distinction. My own 
impression of a lot of the discussions is that when people talk about 
Unforgivables being bad in themselves it's more part of a discussion 
of "What is Dark Magic?" discussion, since Dark Magic is more than 
once mentioned as a sign that somebody has a bad character.

Alla: 
> But if person says that Harry's unforgiveable is out of theme or 
> whatever, it strikes me as inconsistent to say that Snape's AK is 
> just fine.

Magpie:
I agree. Although, of course, somebody might say that it's bad in 
both cases but consider Snape bad anyway. So it's not like they're 
saying it's okay for Snape or Bella to Crucio and not Harry, but that 
they just expect it more from the first two.

-m




From angellima at xtra.co.nz  Sat Jul 26 04:42:11 2008
From: angellima at xtra.co.nz (Angel Lima)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:42:11 +1200
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you li
Message-ID: <000701c8eed9$f80f10f0$a164a8c0@ezybuycar.local>

No: HPFGUIDX 183841

Alla:

Snape changed something that as far as I am concerned was his basic 
values, so yeah I think it is inconsistent, inconsistent in a good 
way, as in changing way. I mean, I suppose that those readers who 
think that Snape was since his early childhood was nice decent 
honorable guy who just took a wrong turn in his life would probably 
argue against it, but IMO young Snape really and truly believed in 
what Voldies stood for and embraced his values.

So, yes to me him coming back is a major major change in his 
character.

Angel:

Poor Alla, each time I jump on the wagon it always seems to be in opposition to Alla :)  The entire argument you've put forth is self effacing.  For the simple reason, Snape had made the choice before we met him, thus what you call out of character is in fact his CHARACTER, the only character we had known and performed the same purpose and actions he did until death.  The characters misread Snape but that did not sway me as a reader.  We the readers never met the Death Eater Snape ourselves until DH. Even to his death he remained bitter, acidic, begrudgeful yet utterly sorry!

As for the whole Harry and crucio moment, that tide just won't ebb :)  It was wrong!  For a book about "the choices we make definining us" I'm sorry but it was utterly wrong if not the intent, then the fact Harry with his wholesome goodness should not have been able to perform it - daaaaaark magic it is and all!


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From rint68nyr at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 03:05:03 2008
From: rint68nyr at yahoo.com (rint68nyr)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:05:03 -0000
Subject: Professional Quidditch
In-Reply-To: <g6bir3+a2mb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6e48v+gv87@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183842

> > Erin:
> > In the book (QttA), it lists 13 teams in Britain/Ireland league.
> > So how did it get to be just Ireland that went to the World Cup?
>
> Goddlefrood:
> <snip>
>
> National teams are different from club sides. Simple as that.


Could be...but I was thinking that they take the best players from
each league...so wouldn't there be a mixture of players from
Britain/Ireland?  Of course, this is assuming that national teams are
not just club teams who won their season league title...

Erin




From rint68nyr at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 02:33:21 2008
From: rint68nyr at yahoo.com (rint68nyr)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:33:21 -0000
Subject: Harry - half-blood?
Message-ID: <g6e2dh+viqh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183843

Harry is called half-blood in the books, but isn't he more than
that? His father is pureblood, and his mother is muggleborn, but a witch,... so Harry is born from 2 magical people. How does that make Harry a half-blood?  Actually, he has more wizarding blood in him
that either Snape or LV.

Erin




From tfaucette6387 at charter.net  Sat Jul 26 07:23:48 2008
From: tfaucette6387 at charter.net (anne_t_squires)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:23:48 -0000
Subject: Harry - half-blood?
In-Reply-To: <g6e2dh+viqh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6eje4+flr1@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183844

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "rint68nyr" <rint68nyr at ...> wrote:
>
> Harry is called half-blood in the books, but isn't he more than
> that? His father is pureblood, and his mother is muggleborn, but a
witch,... so Harry is born from 2 magical people. How does that make
Harry a half-blood?  Actually, he has more wizarding blood in him
> that either Snape or LV.
> 
> Erin
>
Anne Squires: 

Yes, you are right, Harry has more wizarding blood than both Snape and
LV.  I think it's a matter of semantics.  There is never any mention
in canon (that I am aware of) of three-quarters blood or seven-eighths
blood, etc.  We really only have the three classifications:

1. Pureblood

2. Half-blood

3. Muggleborn (aka Mudblood)

If one or more grandparent is a Muggle then a person isn't classified
a Pureblood, at least not by the people who bother to classify and who
care about such things.

Anyway, according to DE philosophy (not that everyone goes along with
that philosophy) Harry can't be a Pureblood.  He's obviously not a
Muggleborn.  So, he's not in category one, he's not in category three,
so he's in category two by default.

I think Half-blood is a catch-all for any witch or wizard who is
neither Pureblood or Muggleborn, regardless of how much magical blood
they have.

I am basically restating a discussion from January.  That was a recent
discussion of this issue.  But, believe me, this has been brought up
several times before.  If you are interested in some fantastic
insights to this issue the search engine will help great deal.

I rec the following posts:

post no. 180207 What Blood Status Have Harry's Parents? - Blood in the
Eye by Steve aka bboyminn:   

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180207

and

the entire thread starting with post no. 180631 Re: Explain This Passage 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180631

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180800

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180804

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180593

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/180597



Hope this helps

Anne Squires




From gav_fiji at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 09:52:37 2008
From: gav_fiji at yahoo.com (Goddlefrood)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:52:37 -0000
Subject: Professional Quidditch
In-Reply-To: <g6e48v+gv87@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6es55+kf0c@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183845

> > > Erin:
> > > In the book (QttA), it lists 13 teams in Britain/Ireland 
> > > league. So how did it get to be just Ireland that went to 
> > > the World Cup?

> > Goddlefrood:
> > <snip>
> > National teams are different from club sides.

> Erin:
> Could be...but I was thinking that they take the best players 
> from each league...so wouldn't there be a mixture of players 
> from Britain/Ireland?  Of course, this is assuming that 
> national teams are not just club teams who won their season 
> league title...

Goddlefrood:

Once upon a time I sat on a plane next to a doctor from the 
New England region of America. This man, being a doctor, had 
achieved what I could only suppose was an advanced level of 
eduction. He was waxing lyrical about the beauties of the 
English countryside in particular, but also about the wilds 
of Scotland (he'd been to somewhere called E din burg). He 
was firmly convinced that Britain (as he named it) was a 
continent on its own and had nothing to do with Europe. I 
inquired whether he was serious, and a little discussion was 
had, a discussion that failed to convince our hero from Boston 
that Britain (his term) was not a separate continent, but part 
and parcel of the continent of Europe. There are no terctonic 
plates in either the North Sea or the English Channel, unless 
same are undiscovered.

It's surprising what occasional gems such as these one comes 
across.

I just like that story, but what has it to do, you may 
ask, with the matter at hand? Well, not a lot, to be sure; 
however, I know for a cast iron certainty that the Chudleigh 
Cannons and the other 12 members of the Quidditch League of 
what should correctly be named as the British Isles (seeing 
as the Republic of Ireland is implicitly included), are most 
emphatically not national teams. England, Wales, Scotland, 
Northern Ireland and Ireland (correctly the Republic of 
Ireland) are national teams. Scotland were, iirc from an 
interview or possibly from GoF itself, beaten in an early 
round. The other three national sides named (if they 
participate on similar lines to in football (that's 
soccer for the uninitiated)) were probably eliminated in 
preliminary or qualifying rounds not mentioned.

Goddlefrood, not expecting the Boston Red Sox to turn out
for the Olympics on behalf of the US, or whoever is the 
current World (a paper) series champion (Yankees was it?)




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 13:32:30 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:32:30 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you li
In-Reply-To: <000701c8eed9$f80f10f0$a164a8c0@ezybuycar.local>
Message-ID: <g6f91e+mi4h@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183846

> Angel:
> 
> Poor Alla, each time I jump on the wagon it always seems to be in 
opposition to Alla :) 

Alla:

That's all right really. I can handle it . ;)

Angel:
 The entire argument you've put forth is self effacing.  For the 
simple reason, Snape had made the choice before we met him, thus what 
you call out of character is in fact his CHARACTER, the only 
character we had known and performed the same purpose and actions he 
did until death.  The characters misread Snape but that did not sway 
me as a reader.  We the readers never met the Death Eater Snape 
ourselves until DH. Even to his death he remained bitter, acidic, 
begrudgeful yet utterly sorry! 
<SNIP>

Alla:

Just small correction and I totally realize I could have been 
unclear, but it certainly was not my intention to call anything that 
Snape did **out of character**. In fact I do not remember using that 
expression in this thread, but I could have of course. 

I said that I consider Snape coming back to be a CHANGE in his 
character. And I do not need to see DE Snape to decide that his 
character changed. God knows I had seen enough of child Snape and 
even of Snape who comes to Dumbledore to think that he changed.

Even Snape who comes to Dumbledore that night and whose only worry in 
the whole world is Lily and not her husband and son disgusts me very 
much. Yeah I know her husband bullied him in school. Still I think 
any human being with half a heart in his chest should feel remorse 
that he sold out the guy and the innocent baby to Voldemort. I have 
not noticed any of the kind when Snape comes to Dumbledore.

So in my opinion even that Snape who is sorry that Lily may die 
changes by the end of the book to Snape who saves Lupin.

You are right of course that we do not see DE Snape, the fact is I do 
not need to. Snape joined it, it is enough for me to imagine his 
character at that time. Yes, simply because he joined it. 

JMO,

Alla




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 26 15:41:35 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:41:35 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6ajfk+lpf1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6fgjf+uaqm@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183847

> Carol responds:

> How could Lupin or anyone else know that Snape had invented (or "was
> associated with") Sectumsempra under those circumstances? That line
> hit me with the weight of a Flint when I read it.
> 
> Lupin didn't even know that Severus had invented Levicorpus!

Jen: I assumed Lupin meant it was Snape's specialty as a DE, not at 
school. 

Lupin won't disparage Snape to Harry in HBP, when he cuts him off 
with 'People have said it many times.  It comes down to whether or 
not you trust Dumbledore's judgement.  I do; therefore, I trust 
Severus.' (HBP/Very Frosty Christmas)  All bets are off when Lupin 
believes Snape betrayed Dumbledore's trust though.  Next to the 
aurors, Lupin is depicted as the character who knows most about the 
harsh reality of battle next to the Aurors, he's the one who talks 
about the enemy they'll be facing in DH, and he believes Snape is not 
only an enemy, but a very dangerous enemy because Snape's been privy 
to Order information.  As a former DADA teacher and soldier, it makes 
perfect sense to me that Lupin would've taken time to learn more 
about Snape.  

How would he learn?  Well, Lupin is hanging around Moody for one 
thing, who 'was wearing a look of deep skepticism behind Dumbledore's 
back' in the Pensieve memory in GOF ("The Pensieve") when Dumbledore 
vouched for Snape.  Moody's the source imo, even if the words are 
Lupin's.





From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 15:51:10 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:51:10 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6fgjf+uaqm@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6fh5e+d1gg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183848

> Jen: I assumed Lupin meant it was Snape's specialty as a DE, not at 
> school. 

Alla:

I assumed both actually. What I certainly did not assume is that it 
was a Flint, lol.

What Pippin said before. JKR made sure that Snape injures James with 
that particular injury - cut on the cheek. Not the bruise, not any 
magical things appearing on him, cut. That convinces me that this cut 
was there to show that it was Sectusemptra.

Jen:
<SNIP> 
> As a former DADA teacher and soldier, it makes 
> perfect sense to me that Lupin would've taken time to learn more 
> about Snape.  
> 
> How would he learn?  Well, Lupin is hanging around Moody for one 
> thing, who 'was wearing a look of deep skepticism behind 
Dumbledore's 
> back' in the Pensieve memory in GOF ("The Pensieve") when 
Dumbledore 
> vouched for Snape.  Moody's the source imo, even if the words are 
> Lupin's.


Alla:

Good one Jen, I agree but want to suggest another possibility - 
those  twelve forever missing years of Lupin's life. The first couple 
of those years may have been Lupin's spying, no? And he may as well 
observe Snape in action. I mean, we still have Fudge's words that 
Dumbledore had SPIES, not one spy and no, I do not consider it a 
flint.

JMO,

Alla





From sweenlit at gmail.com  Sat Jul 26 16:08:00 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:08:00 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>
References: <g6bitq+vuec@eGroups.com> <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807260908q73822b64r9ac57bc648ab5df1@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183849

Winterfell:
Actually it is by definition both an irony and an inconsistency. An
inconsistency is : displaying or marked by a lack of consistency,
especially not regular or predictable, erratic: inconsistent
behavior. Snape's actions (untill the noble reasons we find out
about were later discovered) in AK'ing DD were not viewed as regular
or predictable as a member of the OotP and as a trusted friend and
colleague of DD.

Lynda:
It is not an inconsistency in Snape's character. One of the biggest
"gimme's" in HBP was the conversation with Bella and Narcissa at Spinner's
end in which Snape states "I have played my part well."  He did what he
needed to do to fulfill his promise to Dumbledore and for the memory of
Lily.  Of course the rest of the OOP could not know that he was a double
agent, there was too much of a chance of someone letting it slip.  There was
a saying in WWII days.  "Loose lips sink ships." The best way to keep lips
from being loosened is to not let people in on unnecessary knowledge. And
the knowledge that Snape was feeding LV information, false or otherwise, was
judged as just that. Unnecessary for the rest of the OOP to know.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 19:06:07 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:06:07 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Bella's wand )
In-Reply-To: <g6dkqa+glnf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6fsiv+94f0@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183850

zanooda wrote:
<snip>
> Typically lengths of the wands are in the range from 7 inches (one
of the wands offered by Olly to Harry) to 13 and a half inches (LV's
wand). But we still can't be sure that Hagrid's wand was custom-made
for him, because we don't know how uncommon 16-inch wands are - if
only one is mentioned, it doesn't mean there are no others :-).
>
Carol responds:
Probably sixteen-inch wands were uncommon, though, because they would
be unwieldy. Eleven-to-twelve inches would seem about right for an
adult, if I may judge from a twelve-inch wooden skewer, which is the
closest thing I can find to a wand! Eleven-year-old Tom Riddle was
chosen by a thirteen-and-a half-inch wand, which seems unusually long
for so young a boy, but then Tom was no ordinary wizard and that wand
was unusually powerful. James Potter's rather powerful wand was eleven
inches, the same length as Harry's holly wand. (Lily's "first wand"
was ten and a half inches; possibly she outgrew it.)

It seems absurd that Ollivander would have offered Harry a seven-inch
wand (perhaps suitable for one of the Creevey brothers). That's
shorter than an unsharpened pencil. (Try waving a pencil like a wand
and see how inadequate it feels, even if it's a fat pencil designed
for little kids.)

At any rate, the length of a wand seems to be related to its power,
but it can't be the only determinant. I doubt that Hagrid's wand was
more powerful than Voldemort's. Another reason for the varying length
seems to be what feels comfortable to the witch or wizard; a short
wand might sense compatibility with a short person--Umbridge's wand,
IIRC, is short and stubby like her fingers. Clearly, a sixteen-inch
wand would feel more comfortable to Child!Hagrid, more proportionate
to the length of his arm, than a ten-twelve inch wand, and presumably,
it was proportionately larger in diameter and heavier as well. A big
wand would sense compatibility with a (very) large child.
(Adult!Hagrid might have been better off with a twenty-inch wand of
similar materials, but even given the opportunity, I doubt that he
would have taken advantage of it, sentimental as he was.)

However, children or even adults the size of eleven-year-old Hagrid
being extremely rare (Madam Maxime was one, but she wouldn't have been
Ollivander's customer), I doubt that Ollivander had such a wand
already in stock. I suspect that it was specially made for him, based
on the magical tape measure's findings and the performance of other
wands in Hagrid's hands. (Ollivander does seem to have ignored the
tape measure with regard to Harry, but unless JKR is just creating a
humorous picture of Harry's first encounter with Ollivander (quickly
darkened by the references to Voldemort) the tape measure must have
had some function, perhaps sensing the witch/wizard's affinities for
certain woods or cores (which, in turn, perhaps had affinities with
certain abilities, such as Charms or transfiguration.)

Or we could simply trying to make sense of something that JKR wrote
for fun without forethought for the later story.

Carol, who has just now brilliantly deduced a connection between her
persistent earache and the Pacific Ocean and really, really doesn't
want to see a doctor for swimmer's ear




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 20:42:52 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:42:52 -0000
Subject: Characters inconsistencies (mostly  Snape's) WAS :Re:What did you like
In-Reply-To: <g6d6ie+7091@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6g28c+id58@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183851

Alla:
> > > So, yes to me him coming back is a major major change in his
> character.
> >
> > Carol earlier:
> > I agree. But that makes him dynamic, not inconsistent, according
to most literary critics that I'm familiar with. An inconsistent
character is one whose personality and traits are always fluctuating,
as distinct from a dynamic character who develops according to a
logical pattern. (Of course, a character can *appear* to be
inconsistent if he's viewed from an unreliable perspective, but I'm
not talking about that here.)
> > <HUGE SNIP, read the rest UPTHREAD>
> >> Carol, who agrees completely that (young) Snape changes but sees
nothing inconsistent about that change.  <snip>

>  Winterfell:
>      Change is a component of being inconsistent. Whether or not you
like the word "inconsistent", when applied generally, as properly
defined in the dictionary, not by some literary critics who love to
change and reinterpret words to suit their own pet theories, it
applies to a lot of things in JKR's writing.  Her characters change as
they grow older and face different circumstances.  Her writing changes
as it progresses from one book to the next.  Some changes, some
inconsistencies are good and make for better reading and character
development, some perhaps aren't so good when a character you like
changes in ways you don't want them to.

Carol responds:
We're talking about two different kinds of change here, character
development, which is steady and (mostly) consistent, in part the
result of a (young) character's growing maturity (its inevitable that
HRH will behave differently as first- or second-years than they do in
HBP and DH) and in part the result of a character's experiences (for
example, in Harry's case, the deaths of Cedric, Sirius Black, and
Dumbledore and in Teen!Snape's, the discovery of the peril into which
his own action has placed Lily).

That's different from an inconsistent character ("one who violates his
own psychological rules, as one writer defines the term). A character
who is inconsistent acts in a way that violates the pattern that the
author has established for him or her. Hermione cheating on an exam
would be inconsistent (though she does allow Harry and Ron to copy her
essays, which could be considered inconsistent with her reaction to
Harry's cheating in Potions by using the Prince's book and implicitly
claiming credit for his discoveries). I'm not discussing Hermione
here; I'm just using her as an example. If Wormtail suddenly started
behaving like an honorable man (the twinge of mercy doesn't
count--we've seen hints that he has a guilty conscience as far back as
GoF) that would be inconsistent. 

Inconsistencies in JKR's writing, such as her presentation of the
Unforgiveables or the differing descriptions of certain spells (e.g.,
Impedimenta and Protego) from book to book are another matter. I'm not
concerned with them here though I've discussed them in other threads.

Carol:
 
> But just because you don't like to think of Snape as inconsistent,
or his change being inconsistent, it still applies. 


Carol responds:
Steve, my dear friend, I wish you would refrain from assuming that any
position I take with regard to Snape is the result of what I want him
to be. It's not a matter of "wanting" Snape to be consistent. It's a
matter of determining whether his characterization (setting aside
Harry's pov and Snape's own "acting") is depicted consistently. Does
he behave as his motivations and personality and circumstances would
lead him to behave, or does he deviate from that pattern? It has
nothing to do with my wishes and everything to do with literary
analysis. I am using the term as literary critics (and writers and
editors) use it and discussing its applicablilty to Snape and others.

An author can choose to have a character behave inconsistently. So
long as the character is "consistently inconsistent"--that is,
inconsistency is a character trait of that character--the
inconsistency is not a flaw in the writing. (I'm trying to think of a
good example of a character, not necessarily from the HP books, who
consistently wavers or changes his mind or behaves in a manner so
unpredictable that the only character trait that can be established
for him is inconsistency, one whose inconsistency is deliberately
attributed to him by the author and remarked on by other characters.
Maybe you or others can help me.) However, if a character behaves in a
way that is inconsistent with his previous characterization, the
inconsistency is a flaw in the writing--unless, as is the case with
Snape's "murder" of Dumbledore, there's a good reason that turns out
to be very much in character. (Snape's *personality* has been
consistently depicted from the first book; his motivations, however,
have been left ambiguous until DH. The "murder" of Dumbledore turns
out to be consistent with both.) That is not to say that Snape doesn't
have *conflicting* character traits. His devotion to Lily, his loyalty
to Dumbledore, and his determination to keep his word regardless of
the cost to himself obviously conflict with his old friendships and
natural inclination toward Slytherin, not to mention his antipathy
toward Harry as James's son. These conflicting traits lead Snape to
treat Harry with contemptuous sarcasm while simultaneously protecting
him. Conflict, including internal conflict, is an essential component
of literature. In Snape's case, JKR's brilliant grasp of these
internal conflicts results in the depiction of a highly memorable
character, whose motivation is finally revealed in "The Prince's Tale."

Winterfell:
> It [inconsistency] doesn't have to be a negative thing, as many of
Snape's changes were for the good. Ultimately, he changes into a
redeemed hero, (albeit unappreciated and misunderstood hero by many
who don't understand the sacrifices he made).

Carol:
I agree that *change* isn't always a bad thing. That's the whole point
of the discussion on character development and dynamic characters. And
I agree that Snape changes and is redeemed. But that's not the same as
inconsistency. I don't understand why you want to reject useful,
established terms that allow us to make these distinctions.

Winterfell:
>  And Harry's attitude toward Snape changes drastically after DH as
well, <snip>

Carol:
Of course it does. That's part of *Harry's* character development, the
opening of his eyes and clearing of his perceptions (as symbolized by
his clear vision without glasses in "King's Cross"). But Harry's
antipathy to Snape is consistent (with only temporary lapses into
understanding and sympathy during the Occlumency lessons and the
ironic bond with "the Prince," whom he sees as a friend until he
discovers that the HBP is Snape). It takes a revelation, an epiphany,
to enable Harry to see the real Snape. 

Winterfell:
which is certainly inconsistent with how he viewed him through 6 and
3/4 books.  I think that change was quite good and was very happy to
see him name one of his children after Severus.

Carol:
But that change is not an *inconsistency* in Harry. And I absolutely
agree that the change was "quite good." The revelation in the epilogue
that he named his second son Albus Severus is one of my favorite
moments in the book. It shows that his new view of Snape, publicly
revealed before the duel with Voldemort, is no temporary insight to be
ignored or rejected later but a permanent change in his perception. 

Winterfell: 
> But calling Snape a dynamic character is also confusing, because
according to the free dictionary, some things which are dynamic are
characterized by continuous change, activity or progress...like a
dynamic market.  I don't think of Snape as continuously changing
either, or as a person who doesn't stick to his convictions.  If
anyone stuck to his convictions in the Harry Potter series, it was
Snape.  It took us 7 books to find out why, but he did stick to what
he believed in. He was certainly consistent in that.

Carol:
"Dynamic character" is simply a literary term for a character who
evolves or changes in a significant way, as opposed to one who (like
Mr. Weasley or Umbridge) remains "static" or unchanged. If you don't
find it useful, there's no need for you to use it. I only suggested it
as a way of helping us to discuss character development. I, at any
rate, find them useful. (BTW, if you want definitions of "dynamic
character" and similar terms, I'd suggest looking in a standard
glossary of literary terms rather than a generalized online
dictionary, just as I'd look in a dictionary of psychological terms
for terms related to psychology.

Regarding Snape, I agree that he ceases to be a dynamic character
after he comes to Dumbledore begging him to save Lily and commits
himself to saving her (and then her son after her death) at whatever
cost to himself. After that, he's essentially a static character (just
as Dumbledore is static after he rejects the temptations of
power)--unless you count "lately, only those whom I could not save"
evidence of further character develoment. "Static" is not a term of
condemnation. It merely indicates that a character's character traits
have already been established and he doesn't grow or develop further.
I've already cited Mr. Weasley as an example of a "static" good guy.
Flitwick and McGonagall also fit that pattern (however OoC McG's
remark about "gallant" Crucios may seem to some people--again,
inconsistency is not development). 

Winterfell: 
> All I'm saying here is that inconsistencies exist in the Harry
Potter novels and I believe many of them are positive.  <snip>

Carol:
I agree that character development is (usually) good (though a
character can change for the worse, as with Crabbe). I don't think we
disagree on anything except our definition of "inconsistent," which
I'm using as a writer, editor, or literary critic would use it and
you're using in a more ordinary sense. (It's not an actual technical
term like "dynamic character," but nevertheless it's used consistently
<g> by people associated with writing and publishing.)

Winterfell responds:
> 
> Thanks for the clarification and excellent explanation on this
[Snape and Occlumency].  I was wrong in thinking that Snape was
totally to blame in this.  His attitude was a contributory reason
Harry didn't continue occlumency, but not the main ones.  Harry is to
blame for a lot of what happened with the dreams of the Department of
Mysteries to be sure.

Carol responds:
You're very welcome. I'm glad that you liked my explanation.

Carol, providing a link to a pretty good online glossary of literary
terms, including "dynamic character":

http://www.wallkillcsd.k12.ny.us/glt.htm#_D







From foxmoth at qnet.com  Sat Jul 26 21:18:22 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:18:22 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6d3u2+h4up@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6g4au+pi6q@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183852

> 
> Carol responds:
 Unless, of course, you disregard the literal meaning of the spell.

Pippin:

How much do literal meanings matter in magic?

 "Sempra" occurs  in "Rictusempra" and that is not a spell that can't
be reversed except by a special countercurse. I think the "sempra" in 
Sectum Sempra only means that it keeps cutting as long as the caster
is waving his wand like a sword, just like rictusempra continues the
tickling effect indefinitely. 

The ability to cause multiple cuts with a single spell is what makes
it "for enemies", IMO. We don't know how effective Dumbledore's charm
would be at healing a number of deep cuts at once. Even Snape's spell
had to be repeated several times.  

But  in order to stop George's bleeding something had to keep the
blood from  leaking out of severed veins and capillaries. It's
difficult to see how that could happen if they were permanently cut open. 

Carol:
 (James, however, would be unlikely to ask Madam
> Pomfrey for dittany and equally unlikely to have any on hand.)

Pippin:

Why not?
Dittany is a real herb, and I'm not sure why James wouldn't have any,
since he would be exposed to cuts and scratches during his outings
with Lupin. I doubt he was as ignorant of healing magic as his son.
Surely it would cause comment if James showed up at breakfast with
injuries having had none at dinner the night before. 

Wikipedia says one variety of dittany is a common garden plant, and as
this is the one used for its anti-inflammatory properties it may be
the one Rowling had in mind rather than the rare Greek herb which was
said to confer courage and has to be retrieved from steep mountains in
Crete. But even so, James is wealthy and presumably less inhibited
about spending his money than Harry is. 



> Pippin:
> We already were told that Snape knew curses beyond his years, and we
> have several other students, Hermione and Harry among them, who
> learned NEWT level spells before they'd passed their OWLs. <snip>
> 
> Carol:
> That's not quite what we're told. We're told that he knew more
curses when he came to Hogwarts than half the weventh years in school
at that time. Harry and Hermione have nothing to do with it. 

Pippin:
Harry and Hermione demonstrated two ways in which enterprising
students can learn spells not generally taught to anyone their age.
Snape is at least as enterprising and far more innovative. I don't see
why it's flinty for Snape to have a 6th year potions book before 6th
year, especially since it's a used one and probably his mother's. 

Carol:
 we're still left with the question of how Lupin
> knew that it was Sectumsempra. 

Pippin:
I assume he knew that because like "levicorpus" the spell had become
known to others. Perhaps Snape shared it with his Slytherin friends,
who weren't as good at nonverbals as he was. 

Snape and James continued to duel in secret, unknown
to Lily, all through their sixth and seventh year, and I suspect
neither of them was very scrupulous about anything except getting
caught. Using a spell that could cause serious damage and might get
you expelled unless it was very carefully controlled could be a form
of one-ups-manship  just like larking around Hogsmeade with a
werewolf in tow. It's the sort of risk that appealed to James, IMO.

Lupin says that "Sectum Sempra" was "always" a specialty of Snape's.
Though I like Jen's idea of how Lupin could have learned that Snape
was using it from Moody, I think we are supposed to be disillusioned
from thinking  that Hogwarts was  an innocent place where Dark Magic
was never used except by those nasty Slytherins.

It was innocent only because we were seeing it through Harry's
innocent eyes.

Pippin





From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 22:04:12 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:04:12 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6fh5e+d1gg@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6g70s+aml4@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183853

Jen wrote:
> <SNIP> 
> > As a former DADA teacher and soldier, it makes perfect sense to me
that Lupin would've taken time to learn more about Snape.  

> > How would he learn?  Well, Lupin is hanging around Moody for one 
thing, who 'was wearing a look of deep skepticism behind Dumbledore's
back' in the Pensieve memory in GOF ("The Pensieve") when Dumbledore
vouched for Snape.  Moody's the source imo, even if the words are 
Lupin's.
> 
Alla:
> 
> Good one Jen, I agree but want to suggest another possibility - 
those  twelve forever missing years of Lupin's life. The first couple
of those years may have been Lupin's spying, no? And he may as well 
observe Snape in action. I mean, we still have Fudge's words that
Dumbledore had SPIES, not one spy and no, I do not consider it a flint.

Carol responds:
I like the suggestion that Lupin learned about Snape's use of
Sectumsempra from Moody after Snape "murdered" Dumbledore (though he
would not have learned it till the Order re-formed and maybe not until
Snape killed Dumbledore, when all the previously placed restraints in
criticizing Snape were removed). That suggestion resolves the
difficulty I was having, which was that Severus could not have
performed Sectumsempra at school or he'd have been expelled (see my
previous arguments) and Lupin could not have known that Snape had been
a DE until after Snape was sent to Dumbledore at the end of GoF (when
McGonagall, Sirius Black, and Mrs. Weasley also learned it). 

Snape had most likely joined the DEs just out of Hogwarts, revealing
the Prophecy some two years later. Some nine months or so after the
Prophecy was revealed, after Harry's birth, Snape went to Dumbledore
pleading for Lily's life and began spying for DD "at great personal
risk." Perhaps fifteen months later, after Snape (whose identity as a
 supposedly loyal DE could not have been known) was hired to teach
Potions, Harry's parents were killed, Voldemort fell, and Sirius Black
went to prison. We *know* that during this entire four-year period,
both before and after Snape secretly switched sides, Sirius Black did
not know that he'd been a Death Eater. He must have learned soon after
Snape returned from Voldemort, when the Order was officially reformed.
That Lupin also did not know about Snape's past is clear from his
conduct toward him in PoA; surely he would have said something in the
Shrieking Shack if he'd known then that Snape had been a DE. there's
no reason why he would have known if Black didn't. (Most likely DD was
keeping the identity of his valuable spy under wraps, especially given
DD's reluctance to share information.)

All of this is to say that Lupin could not have known about Snape's DE
activities, including the use of Sectumsempra, before Godric's Hollow
or learned about it at any time before the Order re-formed between GoF
and OoP. Nor was Snape likely to talk about his past as a DE with
Lupin ("Remember So-and-So, who went to hospital with cuts all over
his chest and died there because no one knew the countercurse? That
was my work.")

Moody, who, as Jen says, was deeply suspicious of Snape's transfer of
loyalty, would, however, be likely to know about Snape's use of
Sectumsempra, perhaps through the confessions of other DEs. He makes a
plausible source of information for Lupin, who could not otherwise
have known. Stll, though, I find it annoying to have to search for
explanations as to how a character could have known something. It's
like Ron knowing that Draco had a Hand of Glory (which, canonically,
he didn't because Lucius refused to by it for him) or trying to
account for Sirius Black's letter being at 12 GP. Sure, we can figure
out ways that such things could have happened, but we shouldn't have
to. JKR should have reread her own stories to make them factually
consistent and provided explanations for anything that didn't
logically follow from the previous books.

As for those missing twelve years of Lupin's life, they occur after
Godric's Hollow, at which time Snape was teaching Potions at Hogwarts
and Voldemort was hiding in vapor form in Albania. Lupin could not
have spied on Snape during that time, nor would there have been any
reason to do so.

I do agree, Alla, that DD had a network of useful spies, not just
Snape among the DEs. I suspect that Mundungus, Aberforth, and Mrs.
Figg were among them. Which still doesn't tell us what Lupin was doing
while Snape was teaching classes, marking essays, prowling the halls
and holding detentions. (As a sidenote, I suspect that Snape was
maintaining his Slytherin connections in order to spy on his friends
during holidays. Perhaps Lupin was among the werewolves?)

Carol, settling for Jen's explanation as the best she can hope for but
still not liking that line of Lupin's




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Sat Jul 26 22:44:08 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:44:08 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6g70s+aml4@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6g9bo+5jc9@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183854

Carol: 
Stll, though, I find it annoying to have to search for
> explanations as to how a character could have known something. It's
> like Ron knowing that Draco had a Hand of Glory (which, canonically,
> he didn't because Lucius refused to by it for him) or trying to
> account for Sirius Black's letter being at 12 GP. Sure, we can
figure out ways that such things could have happened, but we shouldn't
have to. JKR should have reread her own stories to make them factually
> consistent and provided explanations for anything that didn't
> logically follow from the previous books.
> 

Pippin:
It seems to me that's a matter of personal taste. JKR has corrected
the text where an error in "fictional fact" makes the storyline
impossible to resolve, for example the Wand Order and
Ancestor/Descendant flints.  But where a logical explanation can be
devised even if not intuited, why not leave it to the reader? 

Some of us enjoy that kind of thing, and rather than taking us out of
the story, it leads us deeper in. It seems to me JKR *wants* us to
take those steps, for example, to imagine that Lucius was more willing
to indulge his son against his better judgment than his treatment of
him at B&B's  would suggest, or to think that Lily's letter was
precious to Sirius and he put it by safely before he set off on his
mission of revenge. Other people may of course come up with other
explanations, which is perfectly all right as it's the process not the
outcome that's important. Interpreting a fairy tale is a very personal
journey, and as with the Tale of Three Brothers, there isn't any
"right" answer.

I think compared to other works constructed as serials, HP comes off
well in the continuity department.   LOTR doesn't count, because LOTR,
though published as a serial, was already complete and  as its author
admitted, had been largely rewritten backward. JKR did not have that
luxury.

Pippin




From rint68nyr at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 17:48:41 2008
From: rint68nyr at yahoo.com (rint68nyr)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:48:41 -0000
Subject: Professional Quidditch
In-Reply-To: <g6es55+kf0c@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6fo1p+ailf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183855


> Goddlefrood, not expecting the Boston Red Sox to turn out
> for the Olympics on behalf of the US, or whoever is the
> current World (a paper) series champion (Yankees was it?)
>

LOL  Currently, it's the Red Sox (which my husband is thrilled
about!).

So, do you think the best season players from the various clubs are
then chosen for their respective national teams?

Erin




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 23:03:55 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:03:55 -0000
Subject: Broken Wands (was Bella's wand )
In-Reply-To: <g6fsiv+94f0@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6gagr+jdmj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183856

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

> It seems absurd that Ollivander would have offered Harry a 
> seven-inch wand (perhaps suitable for one of the Creevey brothers).


zanooda:

Right, or maybe for someone like Flitwick :-)! It seems to me that
Ollivander offered Harry every single wand in the shop, because he
just loved the process so much :-).


> Carol wrote:

> a short wand might sense compatibility with a short 
> person--Umbridge's wand, IIRC, is short and stubby like her 
> fingers. Clearly, a sixteen-inch wand would feel more
> comfortable to Child!Hagrid, more proportionate to the length 
> of his arm


zanooda:

This is an interesting idea. I didn't have enough time to analyze the
 connection between the lengths of the wands and their owners' hight
:-), but I remember that another long wand in the book was
Bellatrix's, and she *was* tall. OTOH, Fleur was also described as
tall, but she had a really short wand, IIRC. 

Maybe the length of the wand depends not on the hight, but on the hand
size and on the length of the fingers. For example, LV seem to have
unnaturally long fingers, although I don't know if they were always
like this or they only became so long after he started loosing his
human appearance.




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sat Jul 26 23:26:19 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:26:19 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6g4au+pi6q@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6gbqr+an5h@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183857

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
> > 
Carol earlier:
>  Unless, of course, you disregard the literal meaning of the spell.
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> How much do literal meanings matter in magic?
> 
>  "Sempra" occurs  in "Rictusempra" and that is not a spell that
can't be reversed except by a special countercurse. I think the
"sempra" in Sectum Sempra only means that it keeps cutting as long as
the caster is waving his wand like a sword, just like rictusempra
continues the tickling effect indefinitely. 

Carol responds:
"Rictusempra," an unimportant spell that, IIRC, occurs only once in an
earlier book, is certainly an example of a spell name that can't be
taken literally. But in other instances, JKR seems to have chosen the
names of her spells with great care, possibly because the particular
spells are important. Crucio means "I torture" ("crucio -are [to
torture , torment]." Surely, that literal meaning is important.
Imperio, dog Latin for "I command", is derived from "imperiosus -a -um
[commanding]; 'sibi', [master of oneself]; in bad sense, [imperious,
tyrannical]." It's interesting that she chose this form over the
actual Latin verb "impero" ("impero -are [to impose]; hence [to
requisition, order a thing]; [to order an action to be done, give
orders to a person]; [to rule over, govern, command].") Maybe she
forgot the correct form; maybe she liked the sound of "imperio" (which
brings to mind "imperious" and related adjectives as "Crucio" brings
to mind "crucify" and "excruciating"), maybe she liked the connection
of "imperio" with "tyrannical." At any rate, the name of the spell
tells the reader (at least a reader acquainted with Latin itself or
Latin roots in English) what the particular spells, complete with
negative connotations in these two instances.

http://catholic.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=crucio&ending=
http://catholic.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=imperio&ending=

Teen!Snape somehow learned Latin (maybe Tobias sent him to a Catholic
parochial school <g>) or at least enough Latin to create spells with
appropriate names. Corpus, of course, means "body." The adjective
"livis" means "light." Putting them together and dropping the awkward
"e" gives "Levicorpus" ("light body"). Similarly, "liber" means "free"
("liber (1) -era -erum [free , independent, unrestrained; free from,
exempt]," so Liberacorpus means "free body." (Alternatively, JKR could
have been thinking of the verb "libero" ("libero -are [to set free ,
liberate, release, exempt]"), with Liberacorpus being a command ("free
or release the body"), but there's no comparable verb meaning "make
light," so she resorts to "levi" (suggesting "levitate"). "Suspendo"
might have been better ("suspendo -pendere -pendi -pensum [to hang up;
to prop up , support; to keep in suspense, leave undecided; to check,
break off]. Hence partic. suspensus -a -um, [hovering, hanging,
suspended; dependent; ambiguous, doubtful, in suspense]"). Maybe
"Suspendicorpus" sounded comic or maybe she rejected it because it
didn't alliterate with "Liberacorpus.")

At any rate, it's clear that both the HBP and his creator gave these
spells considerable thought.

http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=corpus&ending=
http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=levis&ending=

The same seems to be true to an even greater degree for Sectumsempra.
"Sempra" is a minor alteration of "semper [always , at all times]." It
does not mean and cannot be made to mean "until the action is
stopped." "Sectum" is the fourth principal part of "seco secare secui
sectum [to cut, amputate; to wound, hurt; to divide, part]; hence [to
settle disputes; to cut out, make by cutting]." I suppose that JKR
could have improved her Latin by making the spell "Secosemper" but
chose "Sectumsempra" to convey the same meaning more euphoniously.

http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=seco&ending=
http://catholic.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=semper&ending=

Pippin: 
> The ability to cause multiple cuts with a single spell is what makes
it "for enemies", IMO. <snip>

Carol:
Possibly, but I'm not aware of any canon support for that speculation.
We do, however, know that Snape himself considers it Dark magic (in
which Madam Pomfrey is canonically no expert but Snape is) and that it
requires an elaborate countercurse, different from the uncomplicated
nonverbal spell that DD used to cure a knife wound. (Snape recommends
dittany to heal the scars, but dittany would not have closed the cuts
or, probably, stopped the bleeding, as it seems to do, in DH, at
least, with such Dark magic involved.) 

Pippin: 
> But  in order to stop George's bleeding something had to keep the
blood from  leaking out of severed veins and capillaries. It's
difficult to see how that could happen if they were permanently cut open. 

Carol responds:
Possibly we're confronted here with yet another of JKR's
inconsistencies. By comparison with HBP, George ought to have bled to
death (I'm glad, of course, that he didn't). Maybe JKR has decided
that dittany will stop George's bleeding (Hermione uses it for a
similar purpose later in the book), forgetting that Snape's
countercurse first stopped the bleeding and then closed the cuts, with
dittany used only to prevent scars on Draco's body (and possibly, his
psyche or ego). Once again, JKR didn't check her facts. At any rate,
the ear can't be restored without the countercurse, leaving "his
holiness" with a permanent hole in his head (the unprotected ear
canal). Maybe "cut always" in this instance means "permanently
amputated"--unless, of course, the countercurse is performed,
magically restoring the lost ear. (Would Snape have needed to have the
severed ear in his possession to restore it to its owner, or could it
have been conjured like a Vanished object using his special spell?
Alas, we'll never know.)
> 
> Carol:
>  (James, however, would be unlikely to ask Madam Pomfrey for dittany
and equally unlikely to have any on hand.)
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> Why not?
> Dittany is a real herb, and I'm not sure why James wouldn't have
any, since he would be exposed to cuts and scratches during his
outings with Lupin. <snip>

Carol:
Okay, I'll concede that point. Maybe James had some dittany in his
Potions kit. But dittany can only stop the scarring from Sectumsempra
(HBP) or, possibly, stop the bleeding (DH). It cannot, however, close
up a wound caused by DARK MAGIC that can only be closed by an
elaborate countercurse that only Severus Snape would know and that he
might not even have invented (or discovered through research) at this
point.

I've already accepted Jen's explanation for how Lupin might have
learned about Snape's use of Sectumsempra, so I'm dropping that part
of the discussion.

Carol, for whom "cut always" means "cut always" (unless you know the
countercurse!)





From juli17 at aol.com  Sun Jul 27 00:54:15 2008
From: juli17 at aol.com (julie)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:54:15 -0000
Subject: Characters' inconsistencies WAS: Re:What did you like about Harry Potter?
In-Reply-To: <g6cqdq+mrnq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6ggvn+qfua@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183858


> 
> Winterfell replies:
> 
> Actually it is by definition both an irony and an inconsistency.  An
> inconsistency is : displaying or marked by a lack of consistency,
> especially not regular or predictable, erratic: inconsistent
> behavior.  Snape's actions (untill the noble reasons we find out
> about were later discovered) in AK'ing DD were not viewed as regular
> or predictable as a member of the OotP and as a trusted friend and
> colleague of DD. So they were inconsistent with his connection to
> DD.  Also, incidently, for those who crucify Harry for using Crucio
> and Imperius spells, I haven't heard too many people after reading 
DH
> who criticized Snape for using the AK curse.  It seems to be
> inconsistent to criticize Harry and not Snape.  They both used
> Unforgiveable Curses didn't they? Or would that be ironic?  Oh yes,
> Snape's was for a good reason, that's right.  (And Harry's wasn't?)
> 

Julie:
You hit on what is the sticking point for me, or the difference
in how I feel about Snape's AK versus Harry's Crucio. Because
Snape had a good reason, while Harry did not. Or, perhaps more
comparable, Snape's intent was to elicit a positive result--save
Draco and Harry, while sparing the already dying Dumbledore any
more pain--while Harry's intent involved nothing positive, as
he merely wanted vengeance against Carrow (and he even states 
so in the text). 

JKR herself has said that Harry's Crucio was WRONG, and that
she wanted to show Harry as human as the next person, able
to make mistakes and act for the wrong reasons. She has never
said the same about Snape's AK of Dumbledore, BTW. In fact I
have gotten the impression she believes Snape took the right
action there. 

That is certainly how I feel too--I believe that Snape
did what was right over what was easy (no one ever said 
what is right is always clean or comfortable), while 
Harry chose what was easy over what was right. (And be
assured I am referring only to these two instances, NOT to
the sum total of Snape's versus Harry's acts throughout
the books!) I also don't feel there is any inconsistency
in my view of these two acts, as I am judging each person's
intent, which to me is generally the best ethical or moral
compass of their behavior. 

Julie, who also found the inconsistency of Harry's Crucio
pertained more to the inconstant definition of Unforgivables
and their varying acceptability of use from book to book.




From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 27 03:32:49 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:32:49 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6g9bo+5jc9@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6gq91+vr7r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183859

> > Carol: 
> > Stll, though, I find it annoying to have to search for
> > explanations as to how a character could have known something. 
> > It's like Ron knowing that Draco had a Hand of Glory (which, 
> > canonically, he didn't because Lucius refused to by it for him)
>  <snip>
>
> Pippin:
> <snip>
> But where a logical explanation can be devised even if not 
> intuited, why not leave it to the reader? 
> 
> Some of us enjoy that kind of thing, and rather than taking
> us out of the story, it leads us deeper in.

Mike:
Right, Pippin, like me. :D And I don't find the Hand of Glory 
incident that hard to track. 

Harry started to tell Ron and Hermione about the Malfoys after he got 
out of Knockturn Alley, but was interrupted by Mr. Weasley. But then 
they all separated and HRH go wandering around Diagon Alley together 
for an hour. You find it hard to imagine Ron piping up with, "What 
were you going to say about the Malfoys?" Then Harry relates the 
story about the Hand of Glory and they all get a good laugh over the 
way Lucius indirectly upbraids Draco for lack of ambition.

I know I had to make that up, but there is a lot of stuff that goes 
on off page that you have to take for granted. As for Draco actually 
acquiring the Hand, we saw that on page. Draco bought something in 
B&Bs in "Draco's Detour" that he took with him under his robes. We 
just didn't know what it was at that time. Turns out it was the Hand.


> > Carol: 
> > or trying to account for Sirius Black's letter being at 12 GP.

Mike:
Well, Sirius had is own place after Hogwarts, courtesy of his Uncle 
Whatshisname. After he was sent to prison, what would you suppose 
happened to his stuff in his place? Do you suppose the Ministry would 
let his flat be turned over to the Muggles without someone going 
through there to take all the magical or magically related stuff out 
of there? And the letter and moving photograph would certainly 
qualify. 

I doubt that the Ministry would simply destroy all of Sirius's 
possessions, so what would they do with them? Send them to his next 
of kin seems the logical choice, to me. What part of this seems 
illogical or inconsistent? Like I said, not everything can make the 
page, some stuff has to be assumed. 




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 27 04:15:59 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:15:59 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6g9bo+5jc9@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6gspv+vosh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183860

> 
> Pippin:
> It seems to me that's a matter of personal taste. JKR has corrected
> the text where an error in "fictional fact" makes the storyline
> impossible to resolve, for example the Wand Order and
> Ancestor/Descendant flints.  But where a logical explanation can be
> devised even if not intuited, why not leave it to the reader? 
> 
> Some of us enjoy that kind of thing, and rather than taking us out 
of
> the story, it leads us deeper in. It seems to me JKR *wants* us to
> take those steps, for example, ....<SNIP>

Alla:

I think you touched on something very important here Pippin, 
something that I am essentially in agreement with you, but let's hope 
I can elaborate more. I maintain and always did that imagining 
something more that is on the page, **based on what is on the page** 
is a perfectly valid way to interpet the text and not going into 
realm of AU or fanfiction.

I snipped your example, I also want to add one of my all time 
favorite examples of Yarsley (?) and somebody else (HAHA and I do not 
remember name right now) working at the Ministry. I mean if one 
reader wants to say that this means nothing, that's fine, but if 
another reader like me thinks that it is  part of very well 
constructed takeover of the Ministry, I think it is an argument to be 
considered as text based argument, just the argument based on the 
subtle hint, rather then spelling something out. I mean, when I read 
two DE are working in the Ministry, I right away think that there is 
a **reason** for them to be there, even if text does not tell me that 
reason.

I do like example with Sirius' letter as well. I also as I am sure I 
mentioned before see no reason whatsover to think that Hermione 
abandoned her passion for public service and I am not even talking 
about only elves here. Why? Because Hermione did not give me a reason 
to think so, not once in the text, therefore the next step where my 
imagination takes me is to come up with any possible profession for 
her in the field of magical public service. I mean, I accept 
interviews for that, but even if I did not, I see that in canon.

I absolutely think that even when canon is closed, books do drop 
hints in some situations and invite our imagination to reconstruct 
the whole chain as we see fit, as long as it does not contradict the 
main ending, I suppose.

I am used to read like that, as I also mentioned before I read books 
like that for the most part of my life. Endings are abrupt, whole 
storylines are not resolved sometimes and reader is invited to think 
about what would happen next. And sometimes the fact that nothing 
would happened next is the whole point of the story. 

Does Eugene Onegin in the novel by Pushkin joins Decembrist rebelion 
or not? Consensus seems to be that he does, even though Pushkin is 
not saying **one word** about it in his last unfinished chapter of 
the novel. What did Pechorin in the Lermontov's "Hero of our time" 
figured about himself and life and society? I think nothing is the 
answer to that question. 

And as I said several times, the list in the russian literature of 19 
century can go on and on. I am not just talking about unresolved 
storylines, since I agree that main storylines in HP are resolved, I 
am talking about moments that are briefly touched upon and everything 
else is left to the reader.


JMO,

Alla




From catlady at wicca.net  Sun Jul 27 04:22:23 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:22:23 -0000
Subject: Hokey/Eileen/StatOfSecrecy/HalfbloodSlyths/HBP Book/Wands/Quidditch/HandOfGl
Message-ID: <g6gt5v+d2tb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183861

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183782>:

<< Once Hepzibah was dead, no one (except Dumbledore) cared if Hokey
was hauled off to Azkaban. >>

Was Hokey hauled off to Azkaban? My recollection (like Mike's in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183785>) is that
the hearing decided that she had accidentally, perhaps due to
senility, mistaken the poison for the sugar, thus accidentally
killilng her beloved mistresss, and would they send her to Azkaban for
an accident? She could have been left to molder with her grief and
guilt in Hepzibah's house (like Kreachur) or the heirs could have
given her clothes...

Leah wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183783>:

<< Had Eileen been a Black rather than a Prince, Bellatrix's Aunt
Walburga would certainly have blasted her off the tapestry as a
blood-traitor when she married Tobias. >>

I like to think that she married him because he was the only man she
could get to marry her because she 'had to get married' because she
was pregnant (with Severus) by a rich pureblood. Ideally for irony's
sake, by Sirius's father.

Mike Crudele wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183785>:

<< It all comes back to that Hagrid quote in PS/SS that Pippin
referred to in her post <and I snipped, <eg>). Wizards don't want
to be inundated with Muggle requests for magical solutions to their
problems, and don't want the elves to give the Muggles similiar
help. >>

I don't remember if I believed Hagrid's statement when first I read
SS/PS, but I sure didn't believe it once I read CoS. To me, Hagrid is
repeating the excuse for wizarding secrecy that parents tell children
too young for Hogwarts. And the textbook tale of Wendelin the Weird's
Flame Freezing Charm, while surely true in itself, is a comforting
atypical tale from that era.

The real reason for wizarding secrecy is that the wizards are scared
of Muggles, as per Professor Binns explaining that Hogwarts was built
far from prying Muggle eyes because it was a time of great persecution
of wizarding folk by Muggles. 

I feel that the pureblood mania (as distinguished from aristocracy
mania) started after they went into hiding, as a mental reaction of
wizards who were experiencing the simultaneous contrary beliefs that
wizards are more powerful than Muggles (because of being able to do
magic) and that Muggles are more powerful than wizards (enough so that
wizards have to hide in fear of them).

Jen wrore in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183786>:

<< But there's more evidence that a half-blood might have trouble
fitting into Slytherin than there is evidence against it. Lucius
Malfoy certainly cared plenty about it, enough to make sure he
married a pureblood and passed the beliefs on to his son, and
Bellatrix & Narcissa were raised with the 'Toujours Pur' motto, so it
wasn't only the current generation of Slytherins who wanted to
associate with purebloods. >>

The Blacks and the Malfoys were aristocratic pureblood families.  I
doubt they would tolerate an offspring marrying a low-class pureblood
any more than marrying a Half-blood. They associate with purebloods
whom they don't consider good enough to marry, why not Half-bloods? 

(Carol expressed it better than me in her
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183789>, "rather
like a medieval lord recognizing and honoring a talented commoner".)

(Disgression: For some reason I think of Willie Widdershins being a
low-class person like Mundungus and his colleagues and apparently most
people who hang out at the Hog's Head, altho' for all I know he is the
heir of a family even older and richer and prouder than Malfoys,
Blacks, Crouches and Macmillans, with an even posher accent and more
pronounced sneer.)

(Digression upon digression: why didn't Aberforth want to clean his
floor and his glassware and have some law-biding customers?)

To me, evidence is weak that everyone else in Slytherin House was
aristocratic. I think of Crabbe, Goyle, and Bulstrode as lower to
middle class, and therefore not particularly distressed if their
offspring marries Mundungus Fletcher, as long as Mundungus is
pureblood. (Actually, JKR's handwritten list of students in Harry's
year appeared to suggest that one of those three was Half-blood.)

(Another digression: I think social class is not the same in Britain
and USA; what class is 'yeoman'?)

Since Malfoys and Blacks are not proof that all Slytherins are
aristocratic, they can't be proof that all Slytherins are pureblood.
Half-blood is enough to be Sorted into Slytherin House. If Riddle and
Snape were discriminated against there, it could just as well be for
their poverty and low social class as for their 'Muggle' genes. 

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183789>:

<< the cramped marginal notes (which Ron for some reason couldn't read) >>

I still think young Snape put a spell on his book so it would repel
all 'prying' eyes except Lily's (which may have been an unconscious
exception or a conscious one; if the latter, he may have tried to 
make it *attract* Lily's eyes). The spell worked on our kids: it
repelled Ron by seeming illegible and repelled Hermione by pumping
up her prissery, but it attracted Harry, the one always stated to
have Lily's eyes.

And I speculate that Snape didn't leave his book in the Potions
classroom when he left seventh year. Maybe he hid it someplace,
emotionally a way to keep a part of himself at the only home 
[As Carol sain in her post previously cited: "identify not only 
with Snape but with Voldemort as "the abandoned boys" who found 
a home at Hogwarts"] where he'd been happy even for a while.  
(Another little act echoing one of Tom Riddle's big magics.) 
Maybe he kept it with him, and stored it in his Potions office 
when he returned as a professor.

I formerly suggested that the book had moved itself to the Potions
classroom, perhaps by influencing House Elves and other people to move
it from where they encountered it to somewhere closer to that book
cabinet, in order to grab Harry, but it did seem a bit far-fetched
(look! accidental pun!), even to me, that the book knew that Harry was
going to take Advanced Potions and not have a textbook. 

I (before having read Pippin's
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183792>) now
think that Dumbledore found it at some time and read it (his magic
could completely overpower young Severus's repulsion spell), and
decided to put it in the Potions classroom for Harry at the time he
decided to let Harry take Advanced Potions.

Zanooda wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183790>:

<< As for all these "measurements" - I don't see much sense in them.
Ollivander took Harry's measurements, but look what wands he offered
him to try - there is nothing in common between them: beechwood and
dragon heartstring, maple and phoenix feather, ebony and unicorn hair,
and many more. So what was the point of measuring the poor boy? >>

I don't agree with you that the compatibility of a wand should depend
on its core, wood, and length. If wands have as much free will as DH
indicated, the compatibility of a wand could depend on its personality
or on its taste in wizards. Compatibility between humans depends more
on their personalities than on their hair, eye, skin color, and their
height. If taste in wizards (like a human's 'taste' in humans to fall
in love with), then it might have something to do with the wizard's
hair color rather than the wand's wood...

I still prefer to believe that the compatibility of wand with wizard
has less to do with wands having free will than with the wand and the
wizard operating at the same 'wavelenght' of magic, like tuning a
radio. The wand's 'wavelength' can depend on the interaction between
wood, core, length, width, and decoration more than on which wood,
which core, etc.

The measuring tape in the first would probably be to distract the
customer while Ollivander Legilismens him to find his Jungian type,
and could really be measuring the customer's 'wavelength' in the
second. (This whole comment turns out to be unneccessary because Carol
covered this ground in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183850>.)

clcb58 asked about professional Quidditch in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183804>:

<< How long is a "season?" Do they play year-round or just during the
Autumn through Spring like the teams at Hogwarts? When would training
begin/end? >>

As the wizarding folk appear not to have any other team sports, I'd
think they must play year round. 

But if the season is only during Hogwarts summer holiday, that would
explain why Quidditch-mad kids at Hogwarts don't listen to the matches
on Wizarding Wireless.

Goddlefrood wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183845>:

<< England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland (correctly
the Republic of Ireland) are national teams. >>

I feel pretty sure that the wizards have one national team for
Ireland, not separate teams for Northern Ireland and Republic of
Ireland. The wizards are so old-fashioned that they probably never got
around to acknowledging that Muggle Great Britain had conquered
Ireland, so they never had to get around to acknowledging that part of
Ireland had regained its independence.

Mike Crudele wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183859>:

<< I don't find the Hand of Glory incident that hard to track. 
Harry started to tell Ron and Hermione about the Malfoys after he got
out of Knockturn Alley, but was interrupted by Mr. Weasley. But then
they all separated and HRH go wandering around Diagon Alley together
for an hour. You find it hard to imagine Ron piping up with, "What
were you going to say about the Malfoys?" Then Harry relates the story
about the Hand of Glory and they all get a good laugh over the way
Lucius indirectly upbraids Draco for lack of ambition. >>

Now that you mention it, Harry must have told Ron and Hermione about
his adventures in the cabinet at Borgin and Burk's sometime soon after
it happened. But I made up a different story when I first read that
line from Ron.

It had surely seemed to me in CoS that Draco was just looking
curiously at the Hand of Glory, not actually interested in acquiring
it. So it sprang into my mind that Draco only got an urge to own the
HoG as part of his emotional resentment response to being publicly
scolded by his father. So he bought the HoG by owl order with his
pocket money soon after arriving at Hogwarts for the CoS year, and
kept it with him thereafter. Ron and many other people saw him
demonstrating it in public which Harry did not see because Harry was
at Quidditch practise.

I never abbreviated it HoG before. Now that I have, I must figure out
a way it fits into my Hogwarts mythos.






From sweenlit at gmail.com  Sun Jul 27 16:18:18 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:18:18 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6gq91+vr7r@eGroups.com>
References: <g6g9bo+5jc9@eGroups.com> <g6gq91+vr7r@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807270918s577cb3adod1db913d63cf35c5@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183862

Carol:
> > Stll, though, I find it annoying to have to search for
> > explanations as to how a character could have known something.
> > It's like Ron knowing that Draco had a Hand of Glory (which,
> > canonically, he didn't because Lucius refused to by it for him)

Lynda:
What I do not understand is why it is annoying to think, oh, I guess that
Draco either asked his mother for the same thing, or went into town by
himself when he was older and bought himself a Hand of Glory. I have never
understood why some people have to have everything delineated to them to
understand why. After all, real people go back to the store and buy things
or have someone else purchase them for them. Is there any reason that an
author cannot expect the readers of a book to make that same logical leap?

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 27 16:34:11 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:34:11 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807270918s577cb3adod1db913d63cf35c5@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g6i823+j0tm@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183863

> Carol:
> > > Stll, though, I find it annoying to have to search for
> > > explanations as to how a character could have known something.
> > > It's like Ron knowing that Draco had a Hand of Glory (which,
> > > canonically, he didn't because Lucius refused to by it for him)
> 
> Lynda:
> What I do not understand is why it is annoying to think, oh, I 
guess that
> Draco either asked his mother for the same thing, or went into town 
by
> himself when he was older and bought himself a Hand of Glory. I 
have never
> understood why some people have to have everything delineated to 
them to
> understand why. After all, real people go back to the store and buy 
things
> or have someone else purchase them for them. Is there any reason 
that an
> author cannot expect the readers of a book to make that same 
logical leap?

Magpie:
To be fair to Carol here, I don't think she's ever needed everything 
over-explained to her. I think her point about this small detail is 
just that it seems counter-intuitive to her. (Sometimes that happens 
and there's nothing you can do about it--like who was it recently who 
was saying that she's fine with Sirius' letter being in the house but 
can't stop getting stuck on the timeline the letter suggests to her 
about Sirius' present?)

Obviously Draco did just get the Hand of Glory at some point and the 
other kids knew about it and just never mentioned it in the story. 
It's not like it's impossible that he could ever have aquired it in 
the last 4 years. We've got enough details to know something like 
that happened (he has one, so he must have gotten it somewhere). But 
we did get told that Draco didn't have the thing, and then we never 
heard anything else, and then we had the kids talking as if they 
always knew he had it when they don't have much to do with Draco to 
begin with. 

Also, I suspect the reason for this little thing is JKR herself 
possibly getting it wrong. Because I remember once on her website 
*she* referred to the Hand of Glory that Draco "got in CoS" or 
something like that, when it's the Hand of Glory Draco *didn't* get 
in CoS. So I wouldn't be surprised if she thinks the explanation for 
why Draco has this hand and why the other kids know he has the hand 
is that we saw him get it in CoS and so did Harry, who then told his 
friends. Iow, it's  Flint that requires readers to come up with a 
correction. She remembered a scene in B&B with Draco seeing and 
asking for the Hand, and thought he bought it.

-m




From HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com  Sun Jul 27 16:56:46 2008
From: HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com (HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com)
Date: 27 Jul 2008 16:56:46 -0000
Subject: Weekly Chat, 7/27/2008, 1:00 pm 
Message-ID: <1217177806.14.55730.m48@yahoogroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183864

Reminder from: HPforGrownups Yahoo! Group
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From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 27 16:58:21 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:58:21 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6gq91+vr7r@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6i9fd+1llg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183865

Carol earlier: 
> > > Stll, though, I find it annoying to have to search for
explanations as to how a character could have known something. It's
like Ron knowing that Draco had a Hand of Glory (which, canonically,
he didn't because Lucius refused to by it for him)
> >  <snip>
> >
> > Pippin:
> > <snip> But where a logical explanation can be devised even if not
intuited, why not leave it to the reader? 
> > 
> > Some of us enjoy that kind of thing, and rather than taking us out
of the story, it leads us deeper in.
> 
> Mike:
> Right, Pippin, like me. :D And I don't find the Hand of Glory 
incident that hard to track. 
> 
> Harry started to tell Ron and Hermione about the Malfoys after he
got out of Knockturn Alley, but was interrupted by Mr. Weasley. But
then they all separated and HRH go wandering around Diagon Alley
together for an hour. You find it hard to imagine Ron piping up with,
"What were you going to say about the Malfoys?" Then Harry relates the
story about the Hand of Glory and they all get a good laugh over the
way Lucius indirectly upbraids Draco for lack of ambition.

Carol:
Except that JKR frequently uses the tactic of interruption, in which a
character, usually Harry, starts to convey important information but
doesn't because he's interrupted, distracted, or has second thoughts.
It happens in PoA when he's talking to Lupin and thinks of telling him
about the "Grim" and decides not to and in HBP when he's planning to
tell Dumbledore about Draco's whoop and is distracted by Trelawney's
unintentional revelation about Snape as the eavesdropper. I'm sure
there are plenty of other instances, which you can spot yourself if
you look for them. (The secret room under the Malfoys' drawing room is
another important bit of information that never gets revealed.)

Mike: 
> I know I had to make that up, but there is a lot of stuff that goes
on off page that you have to take for granted. As for Draco actually 
acquiring the Hand, we saw that on page. Draco bought something in
B&Bs in "Draco's Detour" that he took with him under his robes. We 
just didn't know what it was at that time. Turns out it was the Hand.

Carol responds:

Draco doesn't leave the store concealing anything under his robes. He
merely asks how he would look "carrying that [the Vanishing Cabinet]
down the street," warns Borgin not to sell it, and emerges from the
shop "looking very pleased with himself" (HBP Am. ed. 126). Harry
later says that Draco has bought something, but he's mistaken. Draco
has bought nothing in this scene.

Yet Ron talks about "that Hand of glory thing Malfoy has" (quoting
from memory here) as if they have all seen it and know that it's in
Draco's possession. (Draco didn't have it in the CoS scene in the
Slytherin common room, either.)

It's yet another case of JKR not remembering what she has written
previously. (She says herself that she hasn't reread any of her books
since they were published.) It's a shame that the consistency editors
haven't caught her on these details. I wonder what they *did* catch?
(One of them noticed that Moaning Myrtle's U-bend had become an S-bend
but let it go because both were found in British plumbing!)

Carol earlier: 
> > > or trying to account for Sirius Black's letter being at 12 GP.
> 
> Mike:
> Well, Sirius had is own place after Hogwarts, courtesy of his Uncle
Whatshisname. After he was sent to prison, what would you suppose
happened to his stuff in his place? Do you suppose the Ministry would
let his flat be turned over to the Muggles without someone going
through there to take all the magical or magically related stuff out
of there? And the letter and moving photograph would certainly  qualify. 
> 
> I doubt that the Ministry would simply destroy all of Sirius's
possessions, so what would they do with them? Send them to his next of
kin seems the logical choice, to me. What part of this seems 
illogical or inconsistent? Like I said, not everything can make the
page, some stuff has to be assumed.
>
Carol:
That's possible, but it's a lot of trouble to go to in order to figure
out how the letter could have ended up at 12 GP. It wouldn't have been
sent there and he himself would not have saved a letter written to him
when he was twenty-two at the home he hadn't entered since he was
sixteen. And the Ministry certainly didn't return his possessions
after he escaped from Azkaban; he was a wanted fugitive. It's
*possible* that they thoughtfully sent all his personal possessions
(though the Minisrty, with the exception of Bob Ogden, doesn't come
across as thoughtful, particularly in Barty Crouch's days), to his
parents, but would the parents who resented their rebel son have kept
his possessions (a personal letter, a photograph of the Potters, of
all people, and even his confiscated wand) in anticipation of the
"little swine's" return? It defies belief.

As for leaving it to the reader to find a logical explanation, clearly
some readers (at least two <wink>), enjoy that sort of thing. I don't.
It's one thing to present a mystery, complete with red herrings, which
the reader can attempt to solve along with the characters (and there
are many such mysteries in the series). That's a perfectly legitimate
tactic and, for me and for many readers, one of the enjoyable aspects
of the series. I admire her for blending genres. And the books aren't
just mystery stories. They blend genres, making them worth rereading
even after they mystery is solved. So far, so good. Figuring out what
makes characters tick is also another matter. She hasn't told us
*everything* about Snape or Dumbledore, and even what she's told us is
subject to interpretation. Great. That's the way it should be.

But a letter that appears where it shouldn't be or a Hand of Glory
that the characters somehow "know" that Draco has obtained when they
don't know any such thing (Ron acts as if he's seen it, which he
canonically hasn't) is, IMO, mere carelessness on the part of the
writer. It's the opposite of a Chekhov's gun that doesn't go off.
These guns go off without having been hung on the wall. (The secret
room under the Malfoys' drawing room is an example of a Chekhov's gun
that *does* go off--five books later. Nice planning there, JKR!) Oh,
and there are those skulls that Harry describes as being in the
Slytherin common room. Funny. They weren't described when he and Ron
entered that room in CoS, yet the Snatchers (whom we're apparently
supposed to think of as Slytherins) act as if he's described the room
correctly (which it would be foolish *not* to do under the circumstances).

You and Pippin evidently enjoy figuring out how such details could be
made consistent with the rest of the story. Other readers, no doubt,
skip right over them without noticing the consistencies (or noticing
them but not caring). To me, such inconsistencies are annoying and
distracting.

Carol, who thinks that it's the author's (and editor's) job, not the
reader's, to get the fictional facts straight 




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 27 18:00:50 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:00:50 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6gspv+vosh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6id4i+dung@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183866

Alla:
> 
> I think you touched on something very important here Pippin, 
something that I am essentially in agreement with you, but let's hope
I can elaborate more. I maintain and always did that imagining 
something more that is on the page, **based on what is on the page** 
is a perfectly valid way to interpet the text and not going into 
realm of AU or fanfiction.
> 
> I snipped your example, I also want to add one of my all time
favorite examples of Yarsley (?) and somebody else (HAHA and I do not
remember name right now) working at the Ministry. I mean if one 
reader wants to say that this means nothing, that's fine, but if 
another reader like me thinks that it is  part of very well 
constructed takeover of the Ministry, I think it is an argument to be
considered as text based argument, just the argument based on the 
subtle hint, rather then spelling something out. I mean, when I read
two DE are working in the Ministry, I right away think that there is a
**reason** for them to be there, even if text does not tell me that
reason. <snip>

Carol responds:

I agree with you that we need to read between the lines. I also agree
that Yaxley's words to Voldemort in "The Dark Lord Ascending" prepare
the reader for the coup, especially the information that he has
Imperio'd Pius Thicknesse, the Head of the Department of Magical Law
Enforcement (and future puppet Minister for Magic). Having met Yaxley
and learned what he's up to (I don't think he's actually a Ministry
employee at this time, but he certainly has contacts there), we're
prepared to learn in "Magic Is Might" that he has taken over
Thicknesse's former position (so, of course, he's present with
Umbridge, the former High Inquisitor, at Mrs. Cattermole's hearing--or
rather, her inquisition). And that scene paves the way for Hermione's
accidentally revealing the secret of 12 GP to Yaxley, which I won't go
into here.

Yaxley has been introduced by name, along with Greyback and the
Carrows, in "Spinner's End" (Chekhov's gun waiting to go off). We meet
all those characters again in the tower scene when they're trying to
get Draco to kill Dumbledore. (Yaxley isn't named, but I guessed from
the planted clue that he was "the brutal-faced Death Eater," a guess
confirmed when Yaxley appears again in "The Dark Lord Ascending." The
Carrows, Yaxley, and Greyback, all DEs or quasi-DEs in the case of
Greyback, who have never been sent to Azkaban, rise to prominence in
the DEs at the expense of possibly more qualified counterparts, such
as Travers, Mulciber, Dolohov, and, of course, Lucius Malfoy
(superceded by Snape, who also has never been sent to Azkaban).

This sort of thing can be deduced from information on the page. JKR
had a reason for having Snape (in "Spinner's End") list the names of
DEs who had wormed their way out of Azkaban by, IIRC, pleading the
Imperius Curse, and had not been arrested with Malfoy in the DoM debacle. 

My point is that reading between the lines is, I agree, an important
part of understanding and interpreting a literary work, as is making
connections between various references to a character (as Harry does
for us regarding Travers, one of the DEs who attacked Mr. Lovegood and
appears again to converse with "Madam Lestrange" in the Gringotts
chapter). We can also deduce that Harry's Imperius Curses didn't
permanently harm Travers, presumably because they weren't deliberately
sustained, because Travers shows up with many other named DEs,
including Yaxley and Dolohov, at the battle of Hogwarts.

But drawing inferences is different from having to find explanations
for a letter that shouldn't be at 12 GP. Lupin's supposed knowledge
that Sectumsempra was Snape's specialty, or Ron's knowing about
Draco's Hand of Glory. One involves making connections and drawing
inferences, important skills in critical reading; the other involves
having to invent explanations for inconsistent information in the
books, sometimes within the pages of a single book. (There's also the
challenge, a legitimate and IMO, interesting one, of watching HRH
attempt to unravel various mysteries and determining just how much
they got right. Harry's explanation of Draco's excursion to Borgin and
Burke's is an interesting mixture of accurate deductions and errors.)

Carol, who would happily trace what we know and don't know about the
various DEs but realizes that such details would distract from her
argument here




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 27 18:37:41 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:37:41 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6gt5v+d2tb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6if9l+euae@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183867

Catlady wrote:
> <snip> It had surely seemed to me in CoS that Draco was just looking
curiously at the Hand of Glory, not actually interested in acquiring
it. So it sprang into my mind that Draco only got an urge to own the
HoG as part of his emotional resentment response to being publicly
scolded by his father. So he bought the HoG by owl order with his
pocket money soon after arriving at Hogwarts for the CoS year, and
kept it with him thereafter. Ron and many other people saw him
demonstrating it in public which Harry did not see because Harry was
at Quidditch practise.
<snip>

Carol responds:
Certainly, Draco (like Harry) first learned about the Hand of Glory in
that scene in CoS, and I agree with the suggestion that Draco could
have acquired it by owl order (not in reaction to his father's
treatment of him but out of practical necessity, as part of his scheme
for bringing the DEs into Hogwarts once he fixed the Vanishing Cabinet).

However, I doubt very much that he demonstrated publicly how it works.
For one thing, he needed darkness (not available at a Quidditch
match). He wouldn't have had any Peruvian Darkness Powder with him
before DH, for one, and he wouldn't have wasted it, not to mention his
desire for secrecy. Also, to demonstrate it, he'd have had to allow
someone else to hold it (only the holder can see in the darkness)--not
easily demonstrated publicly, and would Draco be willing to let it
slip from his possession into the hands of someone he couldn't see? 

Moreover, a Hand of Glory is a Dark object. If he tried to show it to
his friends outside the Slytherin common room, Mrs. Norris would have
been onto it instantly and reported to Filch. He couldn't have brought
it into Hogwarts himself because the students in HBP were probed with
Filch's secrecy sensor (Filch confiscated a shrunken head from Crabbe
or Goyle) and the owls were being searched, just as they had been in
OoP (presumably because DD and Snape had some idea what Draco was up
to). I suppose that he could have sneaked it in in his trunk, assuming
that the trunks weren't scanned with the Secrecy Sensor (though surely
they would be), but even then, neither Ron nor Draco could have seen it.

Carol, wondering how the owls, which normally fly into the Great Hall
to deliver their messages and packages unimpeded, could have been
redirected and searched




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 27 18:46:27 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:46:27 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807270918s577cb3adod1db913d63cf35c5@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g6ifq3+lcst@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183868

Carol earlier:
> > > Stll, though, I find it annoying to have to search for
explanations as to how a character could have known something. It's
like Ron knowing that Draco had a Hand of Glory (which, canonically,
he didn't because Lucius refused to by it for him)
> 
> Lynda:
> What I do not understand is why it is annoying to think, oh, I guess
that Draco either asked his mother for the same thing, or went into
town by himself when he was older and bought himself a Hand of Glory.
I have never understood why some people have to have everything
delineated to them to understand why. After all, real people go back
to the store and buy things or have someone else purchase them for
them. Is there any reason that an author cannot expect the readers of
a book to make that same logical leap?

Carol:
What's annoying (to me) is not Draco's having the Hand of Glory but
Ron's somehow knowinag about it. See my responses to other posters.

And I *don't* want everything delineated to me any more than you do. I
enjoy drawing inferences and analyzing characters' motives as much as
the next person. It's outright inconsistencies involving "fictional
facts" that I find annoying. To provide an obvious example, eventually
corrected in later editions, Ron's red and gold Prefect badge is
described as "identical" to Percy's silver one. Obviously, the badges
are *not* identical and the description of one or the other must be
changed to make it true. I would also like to have James's age in SWM
consistent with his birthdate in DH. (He should be sixteen, not
fifteen in that scene, but he's referred to three times as being
fifteen, perhaps because JKR, like Harry, has a July 31 birthday and
forgets that most students would celebrate their birthdays during the
schoolyear.)

Carol, noting that annoyance is a subjective reaction and that I'm not
trying to persuade anyone to share my annoyance, only to explain why I
feel as I do





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Sun Jul 27 19:54:20 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:54:20 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6gspv+vosh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6ijpc+nlm1@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183869

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:

> I also want to add one of my all time favorite examples of 
> Yaxley and somebody else (HAHA and I do not 
> remember name right now) working at the Ministry.


I'm not sure about Yaxley working at the Ministry, Alla. If you 
mean "The Dark Lord Ascending", he definitely couldn't be a Ministry 
worker at that time. Wasn't he apprehended at the end of HBP? 
Scrmigeour told Harry that "somebody Stupefied a DE on top of the 
tower" or something like that. 

Wasn't it Yaxley whom Harry Petrficus Totalused (not Stupefied) on the 
tower? Doesn't it all mean that Yaxley was arrested? He certainly 
couldn't work at the Ministry after that :-)! I assumed that he was 
arrested and escaped a little later together with Lucius and Co.

Maybe Yaxley worked at the Ministry before, like Avery did, but it was 
never mentioned in the book, IIRC. I thought he Imperiused Thicknesse 
not at the Ministry, but somewhere else.


zanooda, who didn't check her facts and who can be totally wrong on all 
counts :-)!




From catlady at wicca.net  Sun Jul 27 21:23:37 2008
From: catlady at wicca.net (Catlady (Rita Prince Winston))
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:23:37 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6ifq3+lcst@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6ip0p+rup@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183870

"Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183868>:

<< To provide an obvious example, eventually orrected in later
editions, Ron's red and gold Prefect badge is described as "identical"
to Percy's silver one. Obviously, the badges are *not* identical and
the description of one or the other must be changed to make it true. >>

It was corrected in later editions? Which description was decided to
be the real one?





From gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk  Sun Jul 27 22:43:34 2008
From: gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk (Geoff Bannister)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:43:34 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6gbqr+an5h@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6itmm+p8et@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183871

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
 
Carol:
> Teen!Snape somehow learned Latin (maybe Tobias sent him to a Catholic
> parochial school <g>) or at least enough Latin to create spells with
> appropriate names. Corpus, of course, means "body." The adjective
> "livis" means "light." Putting them together and dropping the awkward
> "e" gives "Levicorpus" ("light body"). 

Geoff:
Interestingly, I have always read this spell as incorporating an element 
from "levo" - to raise, i.e. I interpret the spell as "Raise body".

Carol: 
> for whom "cut always" means "cut always" (unless you know the
> countercurse!)

Geoff:
At least we read this one the same way.






From juli17 at aol.com  Sun Jul 27 22:59:11 2008
From: juli17 at aol.com (julie)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:59:11 -0000
Subject: Hokey/Eileen/StatOfSecrecy/HalfbloodSlyths/HBP Book/Wands/Quidditch/HandOfGl
In-Reply-To: <g6gt5v+d2tb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6iujv+rqeh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183872


> 
> Carol wrote in
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183789>:
> 
> << the cramped marginal notes (which Ron for some reason couldn't 
read) >>

Catlady wrote:
> I still think young Snape put a spell on his book so it would repel
> all 'prying' eyes except Lily's (which may have been an unconscious
> exception or a conscious one; if the latter, he may have tried to 
> make it *attract* Lily's eyes). The spell worked on our kids: it
> repelled Ron by seeming illegible and repelled Hermione by pumping
> up her prissery, but it attracted Harry, the one always stated to
> have Lily's eyes.
> 
> And I speculate that Snape didn't leave his book in the Potions
> classroom when he left seventh year. Maybe he hid it someplace,
> emotionally a way to keep a part of himself at the only home 
> [As Carol sain in her post previously cited: "identify not only 
> with Snape but with Voldemort as "the abandoned boys" who found 
> a home at Hogwarts"] where he'd been happy even for a while.  
> (Another little act echoing one of Tom Riddle's big magics.) 
> Maybe he kept it with him, and stored it in his Potions office 
> when he returned as a professor.
> 
> I formerly suggested that the book had moved itself to the Potions
> classroom, perhaps by influencing House Elves and other people to 
move
> it from where they encountered it to somewhere closer to that book
> cabinet, in order to grab Harry, but it did seem a bit far-fetched
> (look! accidental pun!), even to me, that the book knew that Harry 
was
> going to take Advanced Potions and not have a textbook. 
> 

Julie:
I pretty much agree with you, Catlady, including the part about
it being too far-fetched for the book to have known that Harry
was going to need an Advanced Potions textbook and then basically
present itself to him for the taking! Before DH came out, I 
suspected the book was put there intentionally by Dumbledore (or
even Snape, though he'd be less likely), as a way to teach Harry
critical Potions knowledge that he wasn't learning from the 
antagonistic adult Snape--and that Slughorn wouldn't be teaching
in the current (and inferior) 6th year Potions curriculum. I
even thought it might be another deliberate effort by Dumbledore
to build some sort of bond of understanding between Harry and
Snape. 

Alas, no such revelation appeared in DH. So the most reasonable
explanation does seem to be that Snape kept the book and stored
it in his Potions classroom. What seems odd is that he left it
behind when he switched positions to become the DADA professor,
though perhaps he'd simply forgotten its existence by that 
time, or had so many other matters on his mind--Dumbledore's
cursed hand, the Unbreakable Vow, etc--that the book slipped
his mind.

Stranger to me is that Snape didn't force Harry to give the
book back to him when he confronted Harry in HBP. Harry wasn't
willingly going to give it up of course, but I'm sure Snape
could have gotten it back on his own or with Dumbledore's help,
if he'd been determined to have it.

Or maybe he did get it back. It would be like Snape to have
some sort of tracking spell on a possession of his, so maybe
he retrieved it from the Room of Requirement later. Certainly
Harry never went back for it or even thought of it again, and
since I hate to think all that knowledge turned to ashes in the
Fiendyfire (sp?), I like the idea that Snape did retrieve it
at some point.

Julie, personally wishing we'd seen or heard about that 
Potions book again in DH.




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 00:42:13 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:42:13 -0000
Subject: Hokey/Eileen/StatOfSecrecy/HalfbloodSlyths/HBP Book/Wands/Quidditch/HandOfGl
In-Reply-To: <g6iujv+rqeh@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6j4l5+qa6u@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183873

On the subject of Snape's Potions Book:

> Julie:
> Alas, no such revelation appeared in DH. So the most reasonable
> explanation does seem to be that Snape kept the book and stored
> it in his Potions classroom. What seems odd is that he left it
> behind when he switched positions to become the DADA professor...
<snip> 

Montavilla47:
The explanation that I always found most plausible was this one:

For whatever reason, Snape's book ended up with Slughorn when
Snape left school.  When Snape started teaching, he stopped 
assigning the book to his students.  So, the elves packed up the 
book along with all the others and Snape never realized it was
in storage.

When Slughorn returned to the school and assigned the book 
again, the elves brought the old books out of storage.

As to how Snape's book ended up with Slughorn, it could simply
be that Snape donated the book to the school, or that Slughorn 
asked him for it (collecting a souvenir from a talented student).
My favorite theory involves the Marauders....

In this theory, the Marauders stole the book as one of their
delightful adventures.  In this way, they got the pleasure of 
driving Snape nuts (and to disrupt his studies)  and a chance to
study his spells.  (Of course, had they done that, Lupin should
have realized that Snape invented Levicorpus..)  Then, at the
end of the year, they simply tossed the book into Slughorn's 
common book collection--and Snape was never the wiser 
about it.

Which, of course, would make him angrier when he realized
Harry had it, because he'd assume that James kept the book
and that Harry had found it along with all his parents' 
things.

Julie:
> Stranger to me is that Snape didn't force Harry to give the
> book back to him when he confronted Harry in HBP. Harry wasn't
> willingly going to give it up of course, but I'm sure Snape
> could have gotten it back on his own or with Dumbledore's help,
> if he'd been determined to have it.
> 
> Or maybe he did get it back. It would be like Snape to have
> some sort of tracking spell on a possession of his, so maybe
> he retrieved it from the Room of Requirement later. Certainly
> Harry never went back for it or even thought of it again, and
> since I hate to think all that knowledge turned to ashes in the
> Fiendyfire (sp?), I like the idea that Snape did retrieve it
> at some point.
> 
> Julie, personally wishing we'd seen or heard about that 
> Potions book again in DH.

Montavilla47:
I like that.  I'd hate to think about that book burning up.
Maybe Draco found it when he was working on the cabinet. :)







From sweenlit at gmail.com  Mon Jul 28 02:13:49 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:13:49 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6i823+j0tm@eGroups.com>
References: <43e41d1e0807270918s577cb3adod1db913d63cf35c5@mail.gmail.com>
	 <g6i823+j0tm@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807271913o1fe2f591pae7acb7bf598d398@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183874

I wasn't meaning to be nit picky to Carol. It's neither right nor wrong to
find something like that annoying. It just is one of the many ways people
are different from one another. I've just never seen reason to over ponder
what was obviously (to me) taken care of (Draco's getting a HoG) outside of
the text.  To me, its just one of those things that would have done nothing
but lengthen the books to include and could, in fact be simply mentioned, as
it was, later in the story.
I didn't read anything about JKR having made a mistake about that and it
showing up on the website--I've only visited a dozen times or so--my
internet time doesn't take me to author's webpages often, but, if she did,
and I had realized it, I would have thought, oh she should have changed that
then!, but then let it go. Either way, it fits in the story.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 03:04:33 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:04:33 -0000
Subject: Hokey/Eileen/StatOfSecrecy/HalfbloodSlyths/HBP Book/Wands/Quidditch/HandOfGl
In-Reply-To: <g6gt5v+d2tb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6jd01+a27l@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183875

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)"
<catlady at ...> wrote:

> I don't agree with you that the compatibility of a wand should 
> depend on its core, wood, and length. If wands have as much free 
> will as DH indicated, the compatibility of a wand could depend on 
> its personality or on its taste in wizards. 


I know that you are right, because if a wand's compatibility only
depended on the wood etc., it couldn't change allegiance so easily
:-). I'm just not ready to accept this fact, I guess - it's so
illogical :-). Wands having their own personality makes them seem
alive, sentient, and it's not the idea that I can swallow easily. For
me they are still wooden sticks :-).


zanooda, who remembers how Ollivander called Fleur's wand
"temperamental" ...  




From stevejjen at earthlink.net  Mon Jul 28 03:31:30 2008
From: stevejjen at earthlink.net (Jen Reese)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:31:30 -0000
Subject: Hokey/Eileen/StatOfSecrecy/HalfbloodSlyths/HBP Book/Wands/Quidditch/HandOfGl
In-Reply-To: <g6gt5v+d2tb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6jeii+mld5@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183876

> Jen wrore in 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183786>:
> 
> << But there's more evidence that a half-blood might have trouble
> fitting into Slytherin than there is evidence against it. Lucius
> Malfoy certainly cared plenty about it, enough to make sure he
> married a pureblood and passed the beliefs on to his son, and
> Bellatrix & Narcissa were raised with the 'Toujours Pur' motto, so 
> it wasn't only the current generation of Slytherins who wanted to 
> associate with purebloods. >>

Catlady:
> The Blacks and the Malfoys were aristocratic pureblood families.  I
> doubt they would tolerate an offspring marrying a low-class 
> pureblood any more than marrying a Half-blood. They associate with
> purebloods whom they don't consider good enough to marry, why not
> Half-bloods? 
> 
> (Carol expressed it better than me in her
> 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183789>, "rather
> like a medieval lord recognizing and honoring a talented commoner".)

Jen: I agree class concerns come up in the story, but class struggles 
aren't the predominant feature associated with Slytherin house.  Even 
the password is 'pureblood' in COS.  Snape is a half-blood from a 
lower class Muggle area; logically that should be two or even three 
strikes against him with someone like Lucius.  Snape's half-blood 
status should've mattered to two DE wannabes like Mulciber and 
Avery.  Apparently Snape became part of the future DE crowd of 
Slytherins without much difficulty, even when there were obvious 
reasons why he didn't belong with them.  By my deduction, that leaves 
Snape's magical prowess and his prejudice against Muggleborns/Muggles 
as the remaining reasons for Snape's easy acceptance.

Catlady:
> Since Malfoys and Blacks are not proof that all Slytherins are
> aristocratic, they can't be proof that all Slytherins are pureblood.
> Half-blood is enough to be Sorted into Slytherin House. If Riddle 
> and Snape were discriminated against there, it could just as well
> be for their poverty and low social class as for their 'Muggle'
> genes. 

Jen: To clarify, I didn't say all Slytherins are pureblood.  I said 
there's more evidence a half-blood might have trouble fitting into 
Slytherin house than there's evidence against it.  The Malfoys & 
Blacks are only one example.  The pureblood password is another.  The 
fact that Voldemort and the predominant DEs come from Slytherin and 
their organization has an agenda of blood purity is another.  Class 
isn't part of the story the way blood is.  






From willsonkmom at msn.com  Mon Jul 28 03:33:08 2008
From: willsonkmom at msn.com (potioncat)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:33:08 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807271913o1fe2f591pae7acb7bf598d398@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g6jelk+cdhe@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183877


>Lynda:
 I've just never seen reason to over ponder
> what was obviously (to me) taken care of (Draco's getting a HoG) 
outside of
> the text.  To me, its just one of those things that would have done 
nothing
> but lengthen the books to include and could, in fact be simply 
mentioned, as
> it was, later in the story.

Potioncat:
Is it over pondering? Maybe for some fans, but pondering is what we 
do best here.

I find it particularly interesting when someone gets a different 
meaning from a passage than I did. I'm generally open to either view 
being valid---even if I really think mine is correct.

For example, Lily's letter drives me crazy. All sorts of explanations 
for it have been posted; I've come up with one myself. But the fact 
remains, its location drives me crazy, as does its content. It 
doesn't bother others one bit. 

The Hand of Glory was jarring. It pulled me out of the story long 
enough for me to think, "Oh, JKR is letting us know that Draco did 
get the Hand after all." But the more the HoG is discussed, the less 
plausible Draco's having it seems. At the least, it seems an awkward 
bit of writing. (jmho)

One of my favorite discussions has been the events behind "Oops." 
This is the scene in GoF(I think) when Harry's vial of potions 
shatters on the floor. Many readers think it's very obvious what 
happened. It's so obivious that the events have been hotly debated, 
because what is obvious to one reader is not the same as what is 
obvious to another.

If we don't bring out these differences we won't have anything to 
discuss.

 





From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 03:51:05 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:51:05 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6itmm+p8et@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6jfn9+tdsb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183878

Carol:
> > Teen!Snape somehow learned Latin (maybe Tobias sent him to a
Catholic parochial school <g>) or at least enough Latin to create
spells with appropriate names. Corpus, of course, means "body." The
adjective "livis" [should be "levis"--that's a typo] means "light."
Putting them together and dropping the awkward "e" [should be
"s"--another typo!] gives "Levicorpus" ("light body"). 
> 
> Geoff:
> Interestingly, I have always read this spell as incorporating an
element from "levo" - to raise, i.e. I interpret the spell as "Raise
body".

Carol:
Yes, you must be right. I couldn't think of an appropriate verb and
"levo" didn't show up when I tried "hover." (I didn't think to try
"lift," or to try "levo" to see if there was such a verb. "Levis" was
the closest I could come to what I was looking for.) My grandson has
borrowed my Latin dictionaries and I was reduced to looking online
using the Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid.
> 
> Carol: 
> > for whom "cut always" means "cut always" (unless you know the
countercurse!)
> 
> Geoff:
> At least we read this one the same way.

Carol:

Hooray!

Carol, accepting your reading of Levicorpus, which would have been
mine if I'd found "levo" 






From sweenlit at gmail.com  Mon Jul 28 05:37:06 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:37:06 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6jelk+cdhe@eGroups.com>
References: <43e41d1e0807271913o1fe2f591pae7acb7bf598d398@mail.gmail.com>
	 <g6jelk+cdhe@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807272237t70f88d97u1a39cecdd9238d67@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183880

Potioncat:
Lily's letter drives me crazy. All sorts of explanations
for it have been posted; I've come up with one myself. But the fact
remains, its location drives me crazy, as does its content. It
doesn't bother others one bit.

The Hand of Glory was jarring. It pulled me out of the story long
enough for me to think, "Oh, JKR is letting us know that Draco did
get the Hand after all." But the more the HoG is discussed, the less
plausible Draco's having it seems. At the least, it seems an awkward
bit of writing. (jmho)

Lynda:
Lily's letter doesn't bother me. It seems to me that Sirius kept it with him
(maybe he had a mokeskin bag like Hagrid gave Harry) or some other means of
concealment and once he was back at his house he would take it out to read
it occasionally.

And I don't see why Draco's having a HoG isn't plausible. He either bought
it on his own when he was older and getting around on his own or Daddy
relented at a later date, or Mummy. Or even auntie Bella.

And of course we should discuss these things. As you say, we read the same
passages and come to widely varied conclusions.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 05:41:15 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:41:15 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6ijpc+nlm1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6jm5r+imk9@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183881

> > Alla wrote:
> 
> > I also want to add one of my all time favorite examples of 
> > Yaxley and somebody else (HAHA and I do not 
> > remember name right now) working at the Ministry.
> 
> zanooda:
> I'm not sure about Yaxley working at the Ministry, Alla. If you 
> mean "The Dark Lord Ascending", he definitely couldn't be a 
> Ministry worker at that time. Wasn't he apprehended at the end
> of HBP? 

Mike:
I thought Yaxley was the big blonde DE firing off all the AKs in 
the corridor. He was described in DH as being rather larger than 
Snape. He would have been one that escaped. And since he wasn't 
caught, there would be no reason for him to be fired from a Ministry 
job, if indeed he had one at the time. 

Also, as someone who successfully took part in that raid without 
getting caught, I can see how he would think himself moving up the
DE ladder. Until, of course, he had to be Crucio-ed by Draco for 
failing to catch Harry after the wedding. ;-) 

Can I admit that I took some measure of delight in seeing these DEs 
being Crucio-ed by LV or another DE? Sorry to see Draco being forced 
to do it, but delighted that people like Yaxley were being zapped.


> zanooda:
> Scrmigeour told Harry that "somebody Stupefied a DE on top of
> the tower" or something like that. 
> 
> Wasn't it Yaxley whom Harry Petrficus Totalused (not Stupefied)
> on the tower?

Mike:
That was "Brutal Face", and I don't think we ever learned his name.


> zanooda: 
> Maybe Yaxley worked at the Ministry before, like Avery did, but
> it was never mentioned in the book, IIRC. I thought he Imperiused
> Thicknesse not at the Ministry, but somewhere else.

Mike:
That's why I thought, like Alla, that he worked at the Ministry. 
Because he was the one who Imperiused Thickness. It was him, wasn't 
it? 

Avery worked at the Ministry? Was that before he was caught in the 
MoM raid at the end of OotP?


> zanooda, who didn't check her facts and who can be totally wrong
> on all counts :-)!

Mike, who didn't check his facts either and would be delighted if it 
turns out he got something right that zanooda got wrong, because it 
would be a first ;-))




From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 14:00:41 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:00:41 -0000
Subject: How I *MIS*-read  HP books
In-Reply-To: <g6jm5r+imk9@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6kje9+ver3@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183882

> Mike earlier:
> I thought Yaxley was the big blonde DE firing off all the AKs in 
> the corridor. 

Mike - responding to himself but actually forwarding the information 
from Carol who found this:

>>> Carol:
That was Thorfinn Rowle, identified by Ron (along with Dolohov) in
"A Place to Hide."<<<


> Mike earlier:
> That was "Brutal Face", and I don't think we ever learned his name.

Mike - same thing:

>>> Carol found this quote:

"Harry's stomach turned over. One of the Death Eaters who had
witnessed Dumbledore's death was striding toward him" <DH ame. ed.
p.245>. 
Then added: "Brutal Face" *is* Yaxley. He's described in "Magic Is 
Might" as having a "scowling, slightly brutish face" <p.243>. <<<


> > zanooda, who didn't check her facts and who can be totally wrong
> > on all counts :-)!
> 
> Mike, who didn't check his facts either and would be delighted if 
> it turns out he got something right that zanooda got wrong, 
> because it would be a first ;-))

Mike now:
Just goes to show what I've always maintained; Carol and zanooda 
know canon better than anybody else I know. You'd think I'd learn my 
lesson and not challenge zanooda's knowledge. But like LV, I keep 
going back to the same well expecting different water to come out. 
Does that make me a terrorist leader or just a sociopath?




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 14:12:38 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:12:38 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6ijpc+nlm1@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6kk4m+lsr7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183883

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
<SNIP>
> I'm not sure about Yaxley working at the Ministry, Alla. <SNIP>

Alla:

Okay, I did not mean to ignore your correction I promise :)

I will be happy to say that I am wrong, but I am not ready to do that 
just yet. I just did not have time to check the quotes, but I will and 
soon.

For now I just say that if Yaxley was not working in the Ministry, how 
come he was there with dear Dolores when they did muggle born 
registration thing? He was there, no?

But in any event, I want to check where I thought I saw the source of 
two DE being in the Ministry before I bow to you :)




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 15:46:35 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:46:35 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6kk4m+lsr7@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6kpkr+ta6d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183884

zanooda wrote:
> <SNIP>
> > I'm not sure about Yaxley working at the Ministry, Alla. <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Okay, I did not mean to ignore your correction I promise :)
> 
> I will be happy to say that I am wrong, but I am not ready to do
that just yet. I just did not have time to check the quotes, but I
will and 
> soon.
> 
> For now I just say that if Yaxley was not working in the Ministry,
how come he was there with dear Dolores when they did muggle born 
> registration thing? He was there, no?
> 
> But in any event, I want to check where I thought I saw the source
of  two DE being in the Ministry before I bow to you :)

Carol responds:
I think zanooda meant that he wasn't yet working at the Ministry in
the first chapter of DH, "The Dark Lord Ascending." At any rate, we
don't know for a fact that he's working there. Certainly, he has
access to the Ministry and Ministry contacts (like Lucius Malfoy in
OoP) or he couldn't have Imperiused the Head of Magical Law
Enforcement, Pius Thicknesse, but Yaxley doesn't yet hold that
position himself, as he does when he and Umbridge hold their
inquisition for poor Mrs. Cattermole. When the Imperiused Thicknesse
becomes the puppet Minister for Magic, Yaxley takes over his old
position, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, presumably as his reward
for Imperiusing him.

As for a second DE at the Ministry, were you thinking of Thicknesse or
perhaps Runcorn? They're certainly DE sympathizers like Umbridge (at
least, Thicknesse is after he's Imperiused), but I'm not aware of a
second DE at the Ministry in the Umbridge chapters. However, we later
find that Travers and Selwyn have been sent by the Ministry to capture
Harry at Xeno Lovegood's. I take it that they, too, are Ministry
employees but not as highly placed as Yaxley. Instead, they've been
sent to do his dirty work.

Carol, noting that Thicknesse's job title is given in "Dark Lord
Ascending" and Yaxley's identical job title in "Magic Is Might" if
you're interested




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Mon Jul 28 15:58:01 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:58:01 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6if9l+euae@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6kqa9+cjvs@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183885

 
Carol: 
> Moreover, a Hand of Glory is a Dark object. If he tried to show it
to his friends outside the Slytherin common room, Mrs. Norris would
have been onto it instantly and reported to Filch. 

Pippin:
Why do you think it's a Dark object? It was offered openly  without so
much as a warning label. As Dumbledore says, "There is nothing to be
feared from a body, Harry, any more than there is anything to be
feared from the darkness." 

It's an aid to thieves and plunderers, but so are the Invisibility
Cloak and the Marauder's Map. It's  macabre,  but considering there
are skulls in the Slytherin Common Room, House Elf heads on the walls
at GP, a troll's leg in the front hall, slimy things floating in
Snape's jars, and bits of dead dragon in quite a few wands, I don't
see why preserved tissue should set off any alarm bells.

Draco could have tested the hand in ordinary darkness quite easily,
and would have had no reason not to brag about owning it before he
thought of using it as part of his plot to get DE's into the castle.  

JKR mentioned checking things in the lexicon when she didn't have her
books available, so even if she doesn't re-read  cover to cover, she
does try to get things right. I'm not surprised she doesn't re-read
obsessively the way we do. Many artists value freshness and
sensitivity over technical perfection as do many critics. It's not the
lack of wrong notes that makes a pianist a star. 

On the letter, it may be we who aren't reading canon carefully enough.
I believe the inference is supposed to be that Sirius used the letter
as a bookmark and subsequently forgot about it, just as Harry did in
PS/SS. 

In PoA, Sirius says he was planning to go into hiding as part of his
secret-keeper charade. And what do we see Harry and Hermione do as
they're planning to go into hiding? Make arrangements for their
possessions. Storage space isn't much of a problem for wizards --
there's no reason Sirius couldn't have left the book and his other
belongings with Andromeda or taken it to wherever he was planning to
hide out. Once he was settled at GP, he could have asked someone to
retrieve his stuff.  The letter would remain inside the book all
along, forgotten until Snape discovered it.

Pippin






From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 17:57:22 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:57:22 -0000
Subject: How I *MIS*-read  HP books
In-Reply-To: <g6kje9+ver3@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6l1a2+eqqa@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183886

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:

> You'd think I'd learn my lesson and not challenge zanooda's 
> knowledge. 


zanooda:

Please, Mike, continue challenging me! I insist! I know DH really 
well, but the rest of the books - not so much, and I can easily make 
a mistake, especially without checking the book, like in this case 
(thank you for the quotes, Carol :-)). 

I was sure who Yaxley was, but maybe you are right about Avery - I 
think the book doesn't say that he worked at the Ministry (I can't 
remember it now, anyway), although I always assumed that he did, and 
I'll tell you why. 

Remember Harry's dream in OotP, where LV punishes Avery for giving 
him the wrong information about the DoM (p.584-585)? Avery assured LV 
that Bode would be able to take the Prophecy. Then Rookwood, who used 
to work at the DoM, escaped from Azkaban and rejoined LV, and he 
informed his master that only Harry and LV himself could remove the 
Prophecy.

This whole conversation sounded to me as if Avery also worked at the 
Ministry, only not in DoM, but I can't remember this ever being 
stated directly. See, and you say I can't make a mistake :-)! 
Besides, Avery was arrested at the MoM together with Lucius and 
others (right, Carol?) and he couldn't work at the Ministry after 
that. So Alla obviously meant someone else who worked there, not 
Avery, but I can't think of anyone.




From horridporrid03 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 18:23:58 2008
From: horridporrid03 at yahoo.com (horridporrid03)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:23:58 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807272237t70f88d97u1a39cecdd9238d67@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g6l2ru+hukf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183887

> >>Potioncat:
> <snip>
> The Hand of Glory was jarring. It pulled me out of the story long
> enough for me to think, "Oh, JKR is letting us know that Draco did
> get the Hand after all." But the more the HoG is discussed, the less
> plausible Draco's having it seems. At the least, it seems an awkward
> bit of writing. (jmho)

> >>Lynda:
> <snip>
> And I don't see why Draco's having a HoG isn't plausible. He either 
> bought it on his own when he was older and getting around on his   
> own or Daddy relented at a later date, or Mummy. Or even auntie    
> Bella.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
For me it's not so much the fact of Draco having the HoG as how it 
affects the story JKR has been telling about Draco.  I agree with 
Potioncat that the fact shows an awkward bit of storytelling on JKR's 
part, but it's something that *can* be handwaved, as Lynda points out.

However, in doing that handwaving, we lose a large chunk of Draco's 
story.  It's that scene in CoS when Draco *doesn't* get the hand that 
lent the character so much depth and interest to me.  We were told 
Draco was a spoiled little boy, handed everything he ever desired on 
a silver platter, the wizarding equivalent to Dudley.  But what we 
*saw* was a little boy who wasn't living up to his father's 
expectations and so wasn't given what he desired.

It was a more detailed follow-up to our first ever Draco-scene where 
what he *told* Harry about himself (doted on by his parents), was 
contradicted by what we *saw* (child left alone in a store, not 
having the coveted racing broom at Hogwarts).  So not getting the HoG 
in CoS was a layering on of Draco's story. 

But when we're told, in a very off-hand, everyone-knows-this, kind of 
way, that Draco *does* have that HoG, all the carefully built (or, I 
assumed carefully built) layers collapse.  Draco really *is* the 
spoiled little boy, the wizarding equivilent to Dudley.  Either that, 
or something really interesting happened off-page (his mother defied 
his father and bought him the hand; he defied his father and bought 
himself the hand; his Aunt undermined his father and bought him the 
hand), and JKR neglected to tell us.

But the last is so detail rich, full of plot implications and such, 
that I cannot accept JKR really thought we'd do all of this in our 
heads.  The only way I can make it work for myself, is to assume that 
the depth I thought I saw wasn't really there.  For some reason, with 
Draco, JKR was going with what she *told* us, not what she *showed* 
us.  Which is annoying.  It seems that JKR meant for Draco to get the 
hand all along, and what she'd really meant to write in CoS was 
Lucius saying, "Yes of course, Draco-dear, of course you may have the 
hand."  And that changes everything.

Betsy Hp




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 19:13:00 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:13:00 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6kpkr+ta6d@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6l5ns+518q@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183888

> Carol responds:
> I think zanooda meant that he wasn't yet working at the Ministry in
> the first chapter of DH, "The Dark Lord Ascending." At any rate, we
> don't know for a fact that he's working there. Certainly, he has
> access to the Ministry and Ministry contacts (like Lucius Malfoy in
> OoP) or he couldn't have Imperiused the Head of Magical Law
> Enforcement, Pius Thicknesse, but Yaxley doesn't yet hold that
> position himself, as he does when he and Umbridge hold their
> inquisition for poor Mrs. Cattermole. When the Imperiused Thicknesse
> becomes the puppet Minister for Magic, Yaxley takes over his old
> position, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, presumably as his reward
> for Imperiusing him.
<SNIP>

Alla:

Without looking at the books yet, how do we know that he was not yet 
working at the Ministry in the first chapter of DH? Say he was 
apprehended at the end of HBP, did anybody recognize him before he 
escaped? I mean he obviously did escape, right? So who says that he 
could not have continue working at the Ministry?

I mean, if he indeed has an access to Minister, no less, isn't easier 
assumption to make that he was working at the Ministry rather than he 
did it somewhere else?

I am not trying to find a solution that will satisfy me, as I said, I 
believe that I saw a quote mentioning him working in the MoM and if I 
cannot find it, I will of course say so, but I really do not see how 
him being stupefied ( we do know for sure that it was him?) in HBP 
makes it impossible for him to work at the ministry. After all 
Scrimgeour does not name him to Harry, no?

But I will be back to this conversation after I check my sources :)

Alla


 





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 28 22:38:08 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:38:08 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6l5ns+518q@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6lhog+4l15@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183889

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:

> Without looking at the books yet, how do we know that he was not 
> yet working at the Ministry in the first chapter of DH? Say he was 
> apprehended at the end of HBP, did anybody recognize him before he 
> escaped? I mean he obviously did escape, right?


zanooda:

When I said "escaped", I meant escaped later, not from the top of the 
tower :-)! But you may be right, we don't know exactly what happened 
there. Here is what Scrimgeour said to Harry to explain how the 
Ministry knew that Harry had witnessed DD's murder: "Somebody 
Stupefied a Death Eater on top of the tower after Dumbledore died. 
There were also two broomsticks up there. The Ministry can add two 
and two, Harry" (HBP, 648 Am ed.).

You see, I understand it like this: the Ministry investigation team, 
that arrived together with Scrimgeour right after that night's 
events, found Yaxley and the brooms. Harry cast full body-bind on 
Yaxley, so he couldn't escape, unless somebody freed him.

But, as I said, it's possible to read this passage differently (which 
you probably do :-)): maybe someone else found Yaxley and the brooms 
before the Ministry representatives arrived, so they didn't actually 
apprehended him, but just were told later that he *was* there. I 
think it's less likely than the first scenario, but still possible.

You are right about the MoM being infiltrated by the DEs (and by more 
than two, IMO) - this was mentioned a few times in "The Dark Lord 
Ascending" and in the following chapters, and Yaxley *does* seem to 
be in charge of all Ministry-related operations. He definitely has 
access to some Law enforcement workers (Thicknesse, Dawlish). He also 
mentioned that the DEs "now have several people planted within the 
Department of Magical Transport", but I can't remember any of the 
planted DEs being mentioned by name.


> Alla wrote:

> I mean, if he indeed has an access to Minister, no less, isn't 
> easier assumption to make that he was working at the Ministry 
> rather than he did it somewhere else?

zanooda:

No, Yaxley didn't have access to the Minister - Thicknesse was 
*only* :-) Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement back 
then. If Yaxley had access to the Minister, he wouldn't have needed 
the help of Thicknesse and other high-ranking officials to overpower 
Scrimgeour. Yaxley's plan was to Imperius Thicknesse so that 
Thicknesse could Imperius other heads of departments. 

He said: "... as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, 
Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Minister himself 
[doesn't this mean that Yaxley himself doesn't have such a contact?], 
but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It 
will, I think, be easy now that we have such a high-ranking official 
under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they can all 
work together to bring Scrimgeour down" (DH, p.6).


> Alla wrote:
 
> I am not trying to find a solution that will satisfy me, as I said, 
> I believe that I saw a quote mentioning him working in the MoM 


zanooda:

Oh, oh, maybe it was not in DH, but somewhere in HBP? I'll be on a 
lookout for this quote too :-). Maybe I just forgot :-)! Anyway, if 
we find it, I will consider it a little Flint, LOL!


> Alla wrote:

> I really do not see how him being stupefied ( we do know for 
> sure that it was him?) in HBP makes it impossible for him to 
> work at the ministry. After all Scrimgeour does not name him 
> to Harry, no?


zanooda:

No, he doesn't :-). In fact, he just says "a Death Eater".





From foxmoth at qnet.com  Mon Jul 28 22:53:26 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:53:26 -0000
Subject: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6l2ru+hukf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6lil6+k7bn@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183890


> Betsy Hp:

> However, in doing that handwaving, we lose a large chunk of Draco's 
> story.  It's that scene in CoS when Draco *doesn't* get the hand
that  lent the character so much depth and interest to me.  We were
told  Draco was a spoiled little boy, handed everything he ever
desired on  a silver platter, the wizarding equivalent to Dudley.  But
what we  *saw* was a little boy who wasn't living up to his father's 
> expectations and so wasn't given what he desired.

Pippin:
Um, *you* lost a large chunk of Draco's story.
What I saw was that Draco does get a racing broom in CoS, and a finer
one than Harry's, a year after he asked for it. So what I saw was a
Draco whose father eventually gives him what he wants, but on the
father's terms, not Draco's. That fits with getting the Hand of Glory
sometime later, and with the loyalty to Lucius that Draco showed in
shunning the ascendant Snape.


Pippin




From gav_fiji at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 00:06:12 2008
From: gav_fiji at yahoo.com (Goddlefrood)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:06:12 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (Was Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6lil6+k7bn@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6lmtk+8s7t@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183891

> Pippin:
> So what I saw was a Draco whose father eventually gives him what 
> he wants, but on the father's terms, not Draco's. That fits with 
> getting the Hand of Glory sometime later, and with the loyalty 
> to Lucius that Draco showed in shunning the ascendant Snape.

Goddlefrood:

The obtaining of the Hand of Glory by Draco is not really a big 
problem and I have a simple solution to it. In CoS Draco covets 
the Hand, but does not get it. In HBP during his detour he is 
espied in Borgin and Burke's by the trio and he is heard to warn 
Borgin to keep something for him. The natural assumption, given 
what happens later in the book, is that he is referring to the 
vanishing cabinet. It could also be the case that, as well as 
preserving the cabinet in the shop he was reserving the Hand, 
or even buying it there and then. Why that was not explicitly 
stated on page is something I can not explain, but I think 
it's quite plausible that Draco got the hand at this point 
and that Ron noticed, hence his later knowledge of Draco's 
possession of said Hand.

Oh, also, in respect whether a Hand of Glory is a dark item, 
I am of the view that it is because:

(i) Borgin and Burke are noted dealers in dark items and their 
shop is in the underbelly of the wizarding shopping area.

(ii) Hands of Glory in literature in general are typically 
items associated with black magic.

Goddlefrood, hoping this may alleviate some issues people have.




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 01:01:26 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:01:26 -0000
Subject: Yaxley and the Ministry WAS: How we read  HP books
In-Reply-To: <g6lhog+4l15@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6lq56+no6u@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183892

> zanooda:
> 
> When I said "escaped", I meant escaped later, not from the top of 
the 
> tower :-)! But you may be right, we don't know exactly what 
happened 
> there.

Alla:

I just meant escaped fast enough for people not know who he is 
exactly be it from the top of the tower or not. And I meant he 
escaped fast enough for him to be able to stay in the Ministry 
without being thrown out as DE.


 > > Alla wrote:
> 
> > I mean, if he indeed has an access to Minister, no less, isn't 
> > easier assumption to make that he was working at the Ministry 
> > rather than he did it somewhere else?
> 
> zanooda:
> 
> No, Yaxley didn't have access to the Minister - Thicknesse was 
> *only* :-) Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement back 
> then. If Yaxley had access to the Minister, he wouldn't have needed 
> the help of Thicknesse and other high-ranking officials to 
overpower 
> Scrimgeour. Yaxley's plan was to Imperius Thicknesse so that 
> Thicknesse could Imperius other heads of departments.  <SNIP>

Alla:

I did mean Thicknesse though! Not Scrimgeour of course. I did not 
realize that I even needed to specify that.

> zanooda:
> 
> Oh, oh, maybe it was not in DH, but somewhere in HBP? I'll be on a 
> lookout for this quote too :-). Maybe I just forgot :-)! Anyway, if 
> we find it, I will consider it a little Flint, LOL!


Alla:

I cannot find it now, I thought maybe in the first chapter of HBP, I 
even did something that I did not do for a longest time ever, went to 
Lexicon. Lexicon says that Yaxley was never captured or sent to 
Azakaban, which I agree with. But I also have to say that I think 
Lexicon quotes the wrong chapter for that or maybe I missed it. 
Lexicon in Yaxley entry says that he was never captured and went to 
Azkaban. I agree with it, to me it makes a great deal of sense that 
he could infiltrate Ministry by working there and that means to me 
that he never went in Azkaban. But Lexicon gives HBP2 as support for 
that proposition and I cound not find anything in there.

So, sure I will admit defeat as to direct quote, but I reserve the 
right to come back to it when I will be rereading HBP. I do think 
though that Yaxley was placed at the ministry and stayed there to do 
the inflitration at least by implication from the 
text.









From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 03:05:22 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:05:22 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6kqa9+cjvs@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6m1di+h6i4@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183893

Carol earlier: 
> > Moreover, a Hand of Glory is a Dark object. If he tried to show it
> to his friends outside the Slytherin common room, Mrs. Norris would
> have been onto it instantly and reported to Filch. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Why do you think it's a Dark object? It was offered openly without
so much as a warning label. <snip>
> 
> It's an aid to thieves and plunderers, but so are the Invisibility
Cloak and the Marauder's Map. It's  macabre,  but considering there
are skulls in the Slytherin Common Room, House Elf heads on the walls
at GP, a troll's leg in the front hall, slimy things floating in
Snape's jars, and bits of dead dragon in quite a few wands, I don't
see why preserved tissue should set off any alarm bells.

Carol responds:
"Sold openly" by borgine and Burke, dealers in Dark artifacts. I doubt
that it would be sold openly in Diagon Alley.

The skulls that we're supposed to believe decorate the Slytherin
common room (they weren't there in CoS), probably also come from
Borgin and Burkes, where they are mentioned among the merchandise in
CoS, IIRC. Crabbe's(?) shrunken head, another Dark artifact of the
type sold by B and B, was confiscated by Filch, who found it with his
Dark detector. Just what properties a shrunken head may have in the
WW, I don't know (maybe it's used in voodoo <g>), but it's canonically
a Dark object. And a Hand of Glory is clearly a human hand, perhaps
that of a thief, cut from the living or dead body of its owner and
given rather sinister magical properties. I don't know about Snape's
dead slimy things, which seem to be related to ongoing Potions
research (why else would he have them?), but the House-Elf heads and
even the Troll's leg umbrella stand immediately caused Harry to think
(rightly) that he was in the home of Dark wizards.

At any rate, it Filch's Dark detector didn't detect the Hand of Glory,
it failed in its purpose, which was to keep the students from bringing
dangerous or sinister objects into the school. If it detected a
shrunken head, more grisly than dangerouse AFAIK, it would surely have
detected a Hand of Glory.

As for what constitutes a Dark object, I'm the first to state that HKR
hasn't given us a clear definition. But take a look around Borgin and
Burkes, or 12 GP during housecleaning, and you'll get a pretty clear
idea of the kinds of objects that the Dark detector would detect.

(An Invisibility Cloak, of course, has other purposes other than the
dark (small "d") purpose of thieving and plundering. As for the
Marauder's Map, it was labeled as an aid to mischief makers, and is at
least slightly dark, on the level of a hex rather than a curse.
Whether Filch's Dark detector was strong enough to detect it, I don't
know. Harry never had it with him when Filch searched him. (Which
leads me to wonder--was it the map rather than the bubble bath that
attracted Mrs. Norris in GoF?)

Pippin: 
> Draco could have tested the hand in ordinary darkness quite easily,
and would have had no reason not to brag about owning it before he
thought of using it as part of his plot to get DE's into the castle.
<snip>

Carol:
He could have tested it for himself, certainly. But since it gives
light only to the holder, no one else would have seen the
demonstration. Even in HBP, I've always thought that the DEs must have
had their hands on each other's shoulders, blindly following Draco
through the Peruvian Darkness Powder, with only Draco being able to see.  

Also, he would have had no reason to *own* it before HBP, having no
plans to disappoint his father by becoming a thief and a plunderer.

Pippin:
> On the letter, it may be we who aren't reading canon carefully
enough. I believe the inference is supposed to be that Sirius used the
letter as a bookmark and subsequently forgot about it, just as Harry
did in PS/SS. 

Carol:
I have no objection to its being a bookmark. What I wonder is what
it's doing in 12 GP when it would not have been sent there. Sirius had
not lived at 12 GP for six years when Lily wrote that letter. It would
have been sent to his other house. If the Ministry confiscated his
belongings, wouldn't they have kept them? If they sent his personal
belongings (even perhaps the wand that had ostensibly killed thirteen
people!) would the Black family have kept the treasured artifacts of
the son who broke his mother's heart? Alternatively, would Lupin or
Dumbledore, who thought that Sirius Black was a murderer, have found
the letter and given it to the Black family? Certainly we can rule out
a certain wizard living as a rat in the sewers.

pippin: 
> In PoA, Sirius says he was planning to go into hiding as part of his
secret-keeper charade. And what do we see Harry and Hermione do as
they're planning to go into hiding? Make arrangements for their
possessions. <snip>

Carol responds:
Interesting suggestion. But surely Sirius, granting him a practical
streak a la Hermione that we've never seen before, would have hidden
his precious possessions somewhere other than the house of the parents
who hated him?

Carol, who didn't even discuss the dating of the letter as we've been
through all that before




From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 03:10:50 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:10:50 -0000
Subject: There and Back Again - a Portrait's Tale
Message-ID: <g6m1nq+nuo0@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183894

I've been thinking about the portraits in the Potterverse, more 
particularly the Headmaster portraits. But first let me start with 
portraits in general.

I don't think there are wizard painters, at least you don't need them 
to create an animated portrait. I think what you do need is a magical 
picture frame and canvas. These are made by wizards that are a cross 
between wandmakers and the manufacturers of the photograph processing 
equipment that makes moving pictures/cards/etc. I like to think that 
there is some potion making involved in imbuing the canvas with the 
ability to host a bit of a deceased witch/wizard.

These frames can be quite pricey, depending on the size of the frame 
and the amount of detail a witch/wizard wants to include in their 
portrait. You have the Fat Lady painted simply sitting in a chair, 
there's not so much background so the frame can be bigger (and let's 
face it, it would need to be). OTOH, Sir Cadogan wanted the pastoral 
scene, plus his pony, his armor, and his sword, lance and whatnot. So 
he could only afford a smaller frame.

I think these people endowed their portraits and many of them secured 
a place at Hogwarts for their portraits to hang. Maybe not a specific 
location, that would depend on their standing within the community 
and possibly where a caretaker like Filch might choose to move them. 
But many of them would have a permanent sticking charm, or controlled 
by the current Headmaster/mistress.

Others could have hung at a previous locale and were bequeathed to 
Hogwarts for any number of reasons. I'll bet the drunk monks portrait 
was endowed by a local nobleman wizard that took a liking to this 
jolly group of clergy. He arranged for the frame and setting and 
secured each monks consent to be included in the portrait. These guys 
obviously enjoyed their wine, so why wouldn't they consent to this 
portrait? The portrait probably hung at the local monastary (a 
wizarding one), until the monastary was abandoned, destroyed, or lost 
favor of the local community. Barnaby the Barmy, he was probably 
duped into taking part in his portrait, don't ya think?

Individuals or families, like the Blacks, regularly secured their own 
frame and decided it's place within their home. This way, a Walburga 
could have her portait positioned and place a permanent sticking 
charm on it before she passed on.

What about those Headmaster portraits? Well, I think the Headmaster 
frames are magically created by the castle, in a similar fashion as 
how the Room of Requirement works. Whenever a headnaster or former 
headmaster dies and we need a new portrait, the charm is activated. 
It's part of the magic of the castle. It's similar in fashion to how 
the Black family tree automatically knows of a family event and it 
posts the name and date of birth or death of any Black family member.

Now, what did I mean by "There and Back Again"? Besides the nod to 
Bilbo for using his title, I think portraits require the consent of 
the witch/wizard to be depicted. Because I think the portrait subject 
is required to give back of him/herself to his/her portrait. I 
picture some essence, not necessarily the soul, of the wizard must be 
returned from the hereafter to animate their portrait. 

How much is given depends on how much the deceased had to give and 
how well s/he wants their portrait to interact. A Mrs. Black was 
probably not too powerful of a witch, and probably didn't value too 
much animation in her portrait. She would think it important to 
burden her family home with her regal likeness, but wouldn't place 
much stock in giving them much to converse with. She was probably not 
too gracious in that respect.

Others would make similar choices. I suppose one could choose to 
endow one's portrait with so much of their essence that there was 
little of them left to continue "the next great journey". They would 
almost be like ghosts in paint. The difference being, they could 
always reduce their paintings essence to more fully partake of the 
hereafter. I got the feeling that the Fat Lady returned a lot of her 
essence, she seemed to rather enjoy being at Hogwarts in front of the 
Gryffindor dorm entrance. Maybe she convinced Violet to give more of 
herself, too.

A very powerful wizard, which probably included most of the former 
Heads, could afford to return more of their essence to their 
portraits and still be fully immersed in that "great journey". 
Dumbledore may have even sacrificed a little more of himself to his 
portrait than he normally would have to see Harry and Snape through 
the Voldemort era. So, he delayed his "next great journey".

BTW, this means that Snape's Headmaster portrait was created 
automatically. But he had not finished with that whole crossing over 
process, whatever his equivalent of Harry's Kings Cross was, so his 
portrait was not yet animated when Harry had his final debriefing. 
Much as Dumbledore's wasn't yet animated at the end of HBP.

OK, that's my theory. What did I miss in consistency with canon?

Mike, who would probably choose to leave a Sir Cadogan type portrait 
of himself ;-)




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 03:34:29 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:34:29 -0000
Subject: How I *MIS*-read  HP books
In-Reply-To: <g6l1a2+eqqa@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6m345+s4jo@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183895

zanooda wrote:
><snip>
> Remember Harry's dream in OotP, where LV punishes Avery for giving 
him the wrong information about the DoM (p.584-585)? Avery assured LV
that Bode would be able to take the Prophecy. Then Rookwood, who used
 to work at the DoM, escaped from Azkaban and rejoined LV, and he
informed his master that only Harry and LV himself could remove the 
Prophecy.
> 
> This whole conversation sounded to me as if Avery also worked at the
Ministry, only not in DoM, but I can't remember this ever being stated
directly. <snip>

Carol responds:
I had the same impression. Why else would he have general knowledge of
the "fabled" Hall of Prophecy, as the Daily Prophet calls it
somewhere, which some Wizards aren't sure really exists, if he didn't
work in the Ministry? But he couldn't have been an Unspeakable (as
Rookwood possibly was, or else Rookwood was higher up the bureaucratic
ladder) or he'd have known that Bode couldn't touch the Prophecy. It's
not proof, it's only deduction, but I reached the same conclusion that
zanooda did for the same reasons.

zanooda;
> Besides, Avery was arrested at the MoM together with Lucius and 
others (right, Carol?) and he couldn't work at the Ministry after 
that. So Alla obviously meant someone else who worked there, not
Avery, but I can't think of anyone.

Carol responds:
Aha. This one I can answer definitively. The DEs arrested in the DoM
were Lucius Malfoy, Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, Dolohov, Jugson,
Macnair (a Ministry employee), Rookwood (a former Ministry employee),
 Crabbe, Mulciber, Avery, and the injured Nott (who may have been sent
first to St. Mungo's but was identified as one of the arrested DEs by
Blaise Zabini in HBP). Bellatrix, of course, got away. The names can
be found (not in the order I listed them) in OoP "Beyond the Veil."
FWIW, Avery is paired with macnair, a definite Ministry employee
(would-be hippogriff executioner and ambassador to the giants for
Voldemort and possibly Fudge--I think he was a double agent of sorts
since he was clearly serving two masters). If anyone wants to know
which were escapees from Azkaban and got sent back again or theories
as to which one was the Baby-Head, I'm at our service.

At any rate, as of the opening chapter of DH, I don't think that any
DEs were Ministry employees before the coup, but there were certainly
DE sympathizers like Umbridge paving the way. Maybe Umbridge's
relative Selwyn (I believe her story that she's related to them even
though, of course, that's not what the S on the locket stands for),
who apparently was not even suspected of being a DE  like Malfoy,
Avery, Yaxley, and others who pleaded the Imperius Curse, might have
been. We see him later with Travers (one of the original escapees but
not at the DoM) as a Ministry employee sent after Xeno Lovegood, so
it's at least possible, but there's no canon either way. (BTW, and
forgive me for confusing everybody with details, but JKR seems to
think that Travers was at the DoM and arrested again. In fact, he was
one of the original escapees but was not among the second batch who
escaped with Voldemort's help between HBP and DH.)

Carol, who thinks that JKR should have kept a DE history file on her
desk (or computer) to keep them straight





From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 03:56:18 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:56:18 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6l5ns+518q@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6m4d2+dp3n@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183896

Carol earlier:
> > I think zanooda meant that he wasn't yet working at the Ministry
in the first chapter of DH, "The Dark Lord Ascending." At any rate, we
don't know for a fact that he's working there. Certainly, he has
access to the Ministry and Ministry contacts (like Lucius Malfoy in
OoP) or he couldn't have Imperiused the Head of Magical Law
Enforcement, Pius Thicknesse, but Yaxley doesn't yet hold that
position himself, as he does when he and Umbridge hold their
inquisition for poor Mrs. Cattermole. When the Imperiused Thicknesse
becomes the puppet Minister for Magic, Yaxley takes over his old
position, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, presumably as his reward
for Imperiusing him.
> <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Without looking at the books yet, how do we know that he was not yet
working at the Ministry in the first chapter of DH? Say he was 
apprehended at the end of HBP, did anybody recognize him before he
escaped? I mean he obviously did escape, right? So who says that he 
could not have continue working at the Ministry?
> 
> I mean, if he indeed has an access to Minister, no less, isn't
easier assumption to make that he was working at the Ministry rather
than he did it somewhere else? <snip>

Carol responds;

I think you're misreading my post because I allowed for the
possibility that he was working for the Ministry. We just don't know
it for a fact.

I agree that he must have been Imperiused at the Ministry, but he
wouldn't have to be working there, any more than Lucius Malfoy was
when he Imperiused Podmore and Bode. All he'd need is Ministry
contacts. And he must have been reasonably close, both physically and
as a friend, to Thicknesse in order to Imperius him.

What we do know for certain is that he wasn't yet the Head of Magical
Law Enforcement, the position that he holds in "Magic Is Might,"
because as of "The Dark Lord Ascending," Thicknesse still holds that
position.

Now Yaxley, as we learn in "Spinner's End," was one of the DEs who got
off by claiming the Imperius Curse in VW1. He was not at the DoM, so
he was not sent to Azkaban at the end of OoP, either. Since he wasn't
living in poverty and disgrace, AFAWK, he must have done reasonably
well for himself and may well have been a Ministry employee between
LV1 and Dumbledore's death. We don't know. We're not given that
information.

We do know, however, that his first exposure as a DE occurs when he's
found "Stupefied" (actually Petrified) on the steps of the Astronomy
Tower in HBP. From there, we don't know what happened. He may have
been briefly imprisoned, along with the Petrified Fenrir Greyback,
after HBP, which would be early June (around Draco's seventeenth
birthday), but by mid-July, he's certainly free, as is the second
batch of arrested DEs (named in my response to Mike a moment ago). Or,
as you suggest, he could have escaped unrecognized. Scrimgeour gives
no indication that he knows Yaxley's identity. He only speaks of the
"Stupefied" DE on the stairs, (You're an ex-Auror, Minister, and you
don't know a Stunning spell from Petrificus Totalus? Or is JKR's
memory at fault again over the short space of two chapters?)

Carol, enjoying our discussion of old Brutal Face, whose identity as
Yaxley was one of her few correct predictions for DH





From mcrudele78 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 04:03:24 2008
From: mcrudele78 at yahoo.com (Mike)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:03:24 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6m1di+h6i4@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6m4qc+7nkp@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183897

> Carol:
> <snip>
> Sirius had not lived at 12 GP for six years when Lily wrote that
> letter. It would have been sent to his other house. If the
> Ministry confiscated his belongings, wouldn't they have kept them?

Mike:
I don't see why the Ministry would keep belongings of anyone. There 
seems to be a practice in the WW of making sure that families retain 
their familial possessions, unless someone like Tom Riddle can steal 
them from you. I can't see the Ministry warehousing incarcerated 
person's possessions, unless they are Dark Objects, which I could see 
them confiscating and destroying.


> Carol:
> If they sent his personal belongings (even perhaps the wand that
> had ostensibly killed thirteen people!) would the Black family
> have kept the treasured artifacts of the son who broke his
> mother's heart? 

Mike:
I think you may be forgetting the timing of Sirius being put in 
Azkaban. I can't blame you, JKR undoubtedly forgot too. (Couldn't 
resist that dig on JKR's numerological prowess.) By 1981, Regulus was 
already dead, and if you believe the Black Family Tapestry, Pa Black 
had also passed on. In OotP, Sirius said that the Blacks originally 
favored Voldemort until they found out what he was prepared to do. 
Since Voldemort was now vapor and Regulus was Inferi guest, this 
transformation of the Black opinion must have already taken place.

I mention this as a way of saying that I think Ma Black may well have 
softened her opinion of Sirius by now. She may have decided that his 
ideas weren't as bad as they once seemed.

Besides, it was said that Sirius broke his mother's heart, not that 
his mother despised him. If he broke her heart by leaving, why 
wouldn't she treasure Sirius's things as memories of the son she 
lost? Especially if she had changed her own political thinking more 
towards what Sirius's position had probably been.



> Carol, who didn't even discuss the dating of the letter as we've 
> been through all that before

Mike:
I actually was never bothered by the date. If I thought about it, I 
might find it strange. But I also wonder if we haven't imposed our 
knowledge incorrectly in this regard. 

The Potters first went into hiding, then had the Fidelius performed a 
year or so later. Could it be that Dumbledore had borrowed James's IC 
while they were still in their simply hiding phase? James still 
wouldn't want to go out without it. Maybe Dumbledore kept it all that 
time performing tests. Or maybe he did some preliminary tests, then 
had to do more research before he asked for it again to perform his 
confirming tests.

Just another possibility,

Mike




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 04:09:53 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:09:53 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6lhog+4l15@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6m56h+flgb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183898

Alla wrote:
>  
> > I am not trying to find a solution that will satisfy me, as I
said, I believe that I saw a quote mentioning him working in the MoM 
> 
> 
> zanooda:
> 
> Oh, oh, maybe it was not in DH, but somewhere in HBP? I'll be on a 
lookout for this quote too :-). Maybe I just forgot :-)! Anyway, if we
find it, I will consider it a little Flint, LOL!

Carol responds:

Brilliant analysis of the "full-body bind" on Yaxley. I'd forgotten
that Petrificus Totalus required a countercurse (or the death of the
caster!) and didn't just wear off. (Or does it?)

But as for Yaxley being mentioned as a Ministry employee in HBP, the
only reference to him by name is as one of those who escaped arrest in
VW1 (along with Greyback, the Carrows, and Fenrir Greyback--our first
introduction to any of them before the tower scene). He appears as
"the brutal-faced Death Eater" in "Lightning-Struck Tower," after
which he's Petrified and we have the remark you quoted from Slughorn
regarding the "Stupefied Death Eater." Of the group that Snape
mentions (not counting Lucius Malfoy and Avery), only Fenrir Greyback
is actually mentioned again by name before he appears on the tower.

Carol, who thinks that events must have moved very fast in the month
and a half between HBP and DH (I fully expected Snape to be a fugitive!)




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 04:36:49 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:36:49 -0000
Subject: Yaxley and the Ministry WAS: How we read  HP books
In-Reply-To: <g6lq56+no6u@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6m6p1+odg7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183899

zanooda:
> > 
> > No, Yaxley didn't have access to the Minister - Thicknesse was
*only* :-) Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement back
then. If Yaxley had access to the Minister, he wouldn't have needed 
the help of Thicknesse and other high-ranking officials to overpower
Scrimgeour. Yaxley's plan was to Imperius Thicknesse so that 
Thicknesse could Imperius other heads of departments.  <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I did mean Thicknesse though! Not Scrimgeour of course. I did not 
> realize that I even needed to specify that.

Carol responds:
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds as if you think that Thicknesse
was Minister for Magic when Yaxley Imperiused him. But he wasn't
Minister yet; he was the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, the position
that Yaxley took over when Thicknesse became Minister after
Scrimgeour's death. Sorry to repeat myself, and I apologize if that's
already clear to you. At any rate, as zanooda said, Yaxley had access
to Thicknesse but not to Scrimgeour, which is why he needed to
Imperius Thicknesse, who did have that access. Whether Yaxley was at
that point a Ministry official or only became one after the coup is
not clear, but he certainly had Ministry contacts (like Lucius Malfoy
before him, only Malfoy was friends with the Minister himself).

> Alla:
> 
> I cannot find it now, I thought maybe in the first chapter of HBP, I
even did something that I did not do for a longest time ever, went to
Lexicon. Lexicon says that Yaxley was never captured or sent to
Azakaban, which I agree with. But I also have to say that I think
Lexicon quotes the wrong chapter for that or maybe I missed it. 
Lexicon in Yaxley entry says that he was never captured and went to 
Azkaban. I agree with it, to me it makes a great deal of sense that he
could infiltrate Ministry by working there and that means to me that
he never went in Azkaban. But Lexicon gives HBP2 as support for 
> that proposition and I cound not find anything in there.
<snip>

Carol responds:
Yaxley is not mentioned in HBP chapter 1, which is largely a set of
conversations between Fudge and the Muggle Prime Minister. The only
minor official who gets mentioned there is the Muggle Herbert Chorley,
who has been made comically dangerous by a badly cast Imperius Curse.

The quote in HBP2 is not a mistake by the Lexicon. it's the one I keep
referring to about Yaxley and the Carrows escaping Azkaban the first
time around. I guess I'd better just quote it instead of just
referring to it. Snape is speaking to Bellatrix:

"You ask why I did not attempt to find him [Voldemort] when he
vanished. For the same reason that Avery, Yaxley, the Carrows,
Greyback, Lucius and many others did not attempt to find him. I
believed him finished" (HBP Am. ed. 26).

Now granted, this quote doesn't specifically say that Yaxley got off
by pleading the Imperius Curse, but we know that Lucius and Avery did
(they're named in GoF as having escaped Azkaban), and Snape, of
course, was protected by Dumbledore's testimony. So Yaxley, Greyback,
and the Carrows are listed with DEs that we know did not go to Azkaban
after VW1, and it would have been difficult for them to search for
Voldemort if they'd been sent there.

Which tells us what we already know or deduced--the Lexicon is right
that Yaxley was never sent to Azkaban (unless he had a brief stint
after Dumbledore's death). But it gets us no closer to whether he was
a Ministry employee.

Carol, who is not arguing a position here, just trying to put the
facts on the table




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Tue Jul 29 05:39:14 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:39:14 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6l2ru+hukf@eGroups.com>
References: <43e41d1e0807272237t70f88d97u1a39cecdd9238d67@mail.gmail.com>
	 <g6l2ru+hukf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807282239x78746675u22b1f1d04932bc9c@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183900

BetsyHP:
 it's something that *can* be handwaved, as Lynda points out.

However, in doing that handwaving, we lose a large chunk of Draco's
story. It's that scene in CoS when Draco *doesn't* get the hand that
lent the character so much depth and interest to me. We were told
Draco was a spoiled little boy, handed everything he ever desired on
a silver platter, the wizarding equivalent to Dudley. But what we
*saw* was a little boy who wasn't living up to his father's
expectations and so wasn't given what he desired.

Lynda:
Actually, that brought up more questions for me, when she included that bit
about him having an HoG because, as Betsy mentions, we have been told (by a
character in the story--not the narrator) that Draco is a spoiled kid who
gets whatever he wants, but Daddy refused to buy him the HoG. So. . . how
did he get it? Mum? Aunt Bella,
Goyle or Crabbe at his orders? Or did he himself get it at some time unknown
to any but the author? It adds, rather than subtracts from his story for me.
How did he get it? Now, since he's not one of the major characters for whom
we are given a storyline in the series, that how he got it was left out is
fine left to the realm of speculation for me. . . but I have a lot of fun in
the speculating although never coming to a firm conclusion.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 12:21:20 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:21:20 -0000
Subject: Yaxley and the Ministry WAS: How we read  HP books
In-Reply-To: <g6m6p1+odg7@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6n200+hhqg@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183901

> > Alla:
> > 
> > I did mean Thicknesse though! Not Scrimgeour of course. I did not 
> > realize that I even needed to specify that.
> 
> Carol responds:
> Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds as if you think that Thicknesse
> was Minister for Magic when Yaxley Imperiused him. But he wasn't
> Minister yet; he was the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, the position
> that Yaxley took over when Thicknesse became Minister after
> Scrimgeour's death. Sorry to repeat myself, and I apologize if that's
> already clear to you. <SNIP>

Alla:

Yes, you are completely wrong. I am aware that he was not a minister at 
the time. I missed the word "future" minister!

Alla.




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 22:15:33 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:15:33 -0000
Subject: How we read  HP books WAS :Re: Half-Blood Prince
In-Reply-To: <g6m56h+flgb@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6o4q5+sva6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183902

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

> I'd forgotten that Petrificus Totalus required a countercurse 
> (or the death of the caster!) and didn't just wear off. 
> (Or does it?)


I have no idea :-). I only wrote this because it was good for my 
argument :-)! If I was on the other side, maybe I would have written 
that Harry's Petrificus Totalus wore(sp?) off and Yaxley escaped :-).

Logically, Petrificus Totalus *should* require a countercurse, IMO, if 
we are to believe Harry, who thinks that DD's Petrificus Totalus was 
only lifted because DD died. I don't know if this needs to be some 
specific countercurse or maybe something like "Finite" is enough.

OTOH, it seems to me that the Stunning spell, for example, *does* wear 
off, because Stupefied people tend to rejoin the battle really 
quickly :-). Look how quickly Yaxley caught up with HRH in the Atrium 
after being stunned by Harry! Of course, there is always a possibility 
that some other Ministry worker was at the dungeons, not only Yaxley 
and Umbridge (maybe in another courtroom), so that person found them 
right after the fugitives left and "Ennervated" them :-).


zanooda, who doesn't know much about about spells and who doesn't even 
understand how exactly Confundus charm works ...






From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 22:36:13 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:36:13 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6m4qc+7nkp@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6o60t+9lg7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183903

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:

> The Potters first went into hiding, then had the Fidelius performed a 
> year or so later. Could it be that Dumbledore had borrowed James's IC 
> while they were still in their simply hiding phase? James still 
> wouldn't want to go out without it. Maybe Dumbledore kept it all that 
> time performing tests. Or maybe he did some preliminary tests, then 
> had to do more research before he asked for it again to perform his 
> confirming tests.


zanooda:

But this was the whole point of the argument - DD specifically told 
Harry in "King's Cross" that he only found out about James's Cloak and 
borrowed it a few days before James and Lily died. He said: "You have 
guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the night your 
parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously". 
And then: "I asked to borrow it, to examine it" (p.714).

I don't want to start this discussion again (and I'm grateful to people 
who offered me at least some possibilities to resolve this problem :-
)), but, according to DD, Lily's letter was written less than a week 
before her death (October). However, she goes on writing about Harry's 
July birthday, as if it's just happened. For me, this *is* an 
inconsistency, which for some reason gets on my nerves very much :-).





From horridporrid03 at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 29 23:00:49 2008
From: horridporrid03 at yahoo.com (horridporrid03)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:49 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6lil6+k7bn@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6o7f1+9rs2@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183904

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > However, in doing that handwaving, we lose a large chunk of      
> > Draco's story.
> > <snip>

> >>Pippin:
> Um, *you* lost a large chunk of Draco's story.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Yes, sorry. Editorial "we" there. :)  *I* lost a chunk of Draco's 
story, and yet one more part of the series fell far short of my 
expectations.  (Those expectations being: a fun and satisfying read. 
*g*)

> >>Goddlefrood:
> The obtaining of the Hand of Glory by Draco is not really a big
> problem and I have a simple solution to it. 
> <snip of clever solution>
> Goddlefrood, hoping this may alleviate some issues people have.

Betsy Hp:
Not for me, because it's still a dropped plot point.  Because it 
directly affects a defining scene for the character, whatever 
explanation readers come up with (simple and elegant and entirely 
plausible though they may be), it's too big a change to handle off 
page with no comment. (My goodness, it's about the character's 
relationship with his *father*! In a "coming of age" tale, no less.  
How do you get bigger than that?) I can only classify it as a Flint 
and continue on.

Of course, that's all my personal opinion.  And keep in mind that 
while the rest of the group was reading "Harry Potter and...", I was 
reading "Draco Malfoy, his favorite professor, the House of 
Slytherin, and..." (More fool me. *g*)

> >>Lynda:
> <snip>
> Now, since he's not one of the major characters for whom
> we are given a storyline in the series, that how he got it was left 
> out is fine left to the realm of speculation for me. . . but I have 
> a lot of fun in the speculating although never coming to a firm     
> conclusion.

Betsy Hp:
I'd have argued in the past (when I was young and foolish *g*) that 
Draco Malfoy *was* a major character.  *Possibly* a step or two 
behind Ron Weasley, but certainly equal to Hermione Granger (we learn 
*far* more about Draco's home life than Hermione's, for example; and 
no one ever managed to motivate Harry to do something like Draco, 
back in the day).  Which means plot points left entirely up to 
speculation are frustrating rather than fun.  I was reading to see 
what happened to Draco.  But that's not the audience JKR was writing 
for. (OotP had me worried, but I got suckered in by HBP, I'll admit.)

Betsy Hp




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Tue Jul 29 23:45:34 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:45:34 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6m1di+h6i4@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6oa2u+umlt@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183905

> 
> Carol responds:
> "Sold openly" by borgine and Burke, dealers in Dark artifacts. I
doubt that it would be sold openly in Diagon Alley.

Pippin:
Not everything B&B deals in is a dark artifact. The vanishing cabinet
isn't dark. Nor was Slytherin's locket, until TMR made a horcrux out
of it. Hepzibah deals regularly with B and B's. She was a vain and
silly witch, and a slaveowner, but does that make her dark? 

But supposing for the sake of argument, the HoG would normally
register on a dark detector...

Carol:
\ Crabbe's(?) shrunken head, another Dark artifact of the
> type sold by B and B, was confiscated by Filch, who found it with
his Dark detector.

Pippin:
Well, there you are, then. The shrunken head could've been a decoy. In
the presence of a more powerful dark artifact, an HoG might not
register, just as Riddle's magic didn't detect the presence of a
weaker wizard accompanied by the far more powerful Dumbledore.

In any case, knowing how the HoG entered the school might stop us
wondering about it, but I don't see that it would contribute much to
our understanding of the characters. Draco managed to get DE's into
the school, so it's hardly OOC that he managed to get a Hand of Glory
in as well. Nor did I think we were supposed to be that impressed with
Hogwarts precautions, considering that other contraband made its way
into the school that year. I thought it was a bit of a joke about
things like airport screening: everybody knows that they don't catch
everything. 

> Pippin: 
> > Draco could have tested the hand in ordinary darkness quite
easily, and would have had no reason not to brag about owning it
before he thought of using it as part of his plot to get DE's into the
castle. <snip>
> 
> Carol:
> He could have tested it for himself, certainly. But since it gives
> light only to the holder, no one else would have seen the
> demonstration. 

Pippin:
I'm not seeing the problem here. Draco waits till lights out in the
Slytherin dorm, gets out of bed, lights the hand, and tests to see if
anyone can see him. No one can. Experiment successful.  Draco then
shows off his acquisition in the boys bathroom, and Ron overhears.

 Ron mentions the HoG in chapter 7 of HBP, before their return to
Hogwarts, so this would have happened sometime in years 3 to 5,
probably under Umbridge's regime when the Ministry was resolutely
pretending that the students at Hogwarts were in no danger from dark
wizards at all.  

As for what Lucius would think, what he doesn't know won't hurt him.
Draco was never thrilled with Lucius's advice to keep his head down
and let the Heir of Slytherin get on with things. I'm sure Draco
thought it would be very useful for him as  a prefect to have
something like that, especially since he knew that Harry had the cloak. 

> 
> Carol:
> I have no objection to its being a bookmark. What I wonder is what
> it's doing in 12 GP when it would not have been sent there. 

Pippin:
While Sirius often acted impulsively, it's not true that he never
planned. He planned the Marauder outings and the secret-keeper switch,
which included going into hiding. Don't forget, he still had James to
help him in those days. 

If Sirius stored the book in his intended hiding place, then possibly
the Aurors never found it at all. Or, if he entrusted the possessions
he wouldn't need to someone such as Andromeda, then there's no reason
they wouldn't have remained there. Moody or some other Auror would
have scanned them for Dark evidence and not found any. 

We haven't heard of any wizarding law that allows the Ministry to
confiscate all of a Dark Wizard's belongings, IIRC. You may be
thinking of the US law that allows the government to confiscate a drug
dealers' goods, but that's not a universal practice.  Anyway, we know
that Sirius still had his Gringotts vault and enough gold to purchase
a Firebolt, and Hermione doesn't  remark about that being unusual. 

Anyway, once Sirius returned to Grimmauld Place and knew he would be
there for a while, he could have asked Lupin or someone to retrieve
his belongings for him if he didn't want to risk Dumbledore's wrath by
fetching them himself.  

 Once again, though telling us how the letter got there might stop us
from wondering about it, it wouldn't tell us much about Sirius or
Harry. And it would be OOC for Harry to wonder about it, so stopping
to explain would take us away from the story, not further into it.  

Pippin





From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 30 02:35:28 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:35:28 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6o60t+9lg7@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6ok1h+ulfq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183907

zanooda wrote:
> 
> But this was the whole point of the argument - DD specifically told
Harry in "King's Cross" that he only found out about James's Cloak and
borrowed it a few days before James and Lily died. He said: "You have
guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the night your
parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously". 
And then: "I asked to borrow it, to examine it" (p.714).
> 
> I don't want to start this discussion again (and I'm grateful to
people who offered me at least some possibilities to resolve this
problem :-)), but, according to DD, Lily's letter was written less
than a week before her death (October). However, she goes on writing
about Harry's July birthday, as if it's just happened. For me, this
*is* an inconsistency, which for some reason gets on my nerves very
much :-).
>
Carol responds:
Not to mention that Dumbledore's visit a few days before her death
means that he was in on the secret, yet he thought that Sirius was the
Secret Keeper. Wormtail could have given him the secret by owl (a
dangerous thing to do since the owl could be intercepted) with no
signature or a forged signature (or Sirius's signature on a note in
Wormtail's handwriting!!!). Or Lily *who was writing letters despite
the danger) could have invited DD to come to Godric's Hollow (not the
specific cottage) and Wormtail and Sirius together could have escorted
him there, keeping their shared secret of the SK's identity.

Sigh. I liked it better when I thought that DD wasn't in on the secret.

Or we could have the letter written in August, before the Fidelius
Charm was cast, which gets Dumbledore off the hook and fits with the
topic of Harry's birthday present but conflicts with Harry's
inferences about Wormtail's last visit and DD's statement in "King's
Cross."

Carol, getting a headache from trying to make it all fit together




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 30 03:43:13 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:43:13 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6o7f1+9rs2@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6oo0h+893d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183908

Betsy Hp wrote:
> <snip> I'd have argued in the past (when I was young and foolish
*g*) that Draco Malfoy *was* a major character.  *Possibly* a step or
two  behind Ron Weasley, but certainly equal to Hermione Granger (we
learn  *far* more about Draco's home life than Hermione's, for
example; and no one ever managed to motivate Harry to do something
like Draco, back in the day).  Which means plot points left entirely
up to speculation are frustrating rather than fun.  I was reading to
see what happened to Draco.  But that's not the audience JKR was
writing for. (OotP had me worried, but I got suckered in by HBP, I'll
admit.)

Carol responds:

I know how you feel, Betsy. Snape didn't go the direction I wanted him
to go (redeemed and alive and less of a Lily worshipper). JKR had
plans for both Snape and Draco. They just weren't the plans we were
hoping for.

That aside, I think that Draco *is* a major character in the series as
a whole, but his arc climaxed at the end of HBP. The rest is falling
action, working toward the denouement. (Okay, I'm treating him as if
he were a subplot rather than a character, but I think you see what I
mean.) In terms of *Harry's* story, Draco is reduced to a minor
character who can't bring himself to lie about HRH's identity but
doesn't want to reveal their identities, either. We see that he hates
being a DE, in marked contrast to his father, who wants nothing more
(till the battle of Hogwarts) than to get back his old position as
LV's right-hand man. And we see the same thing again in the Ror--he
doesn't want Harry hurt or killed, and not just because LV wants him
alive. (He may even be playing along with Crabbe, pretending to be
loyal. I think we're supposed to see parallels with Snape in "Flight
of the Prince," though Draco is nowhere near as "cool" (brave, fierce,
cunning, talented, powerful, clever, whatever adjectives you choose).

Draco is redeemed, sort of. But, then, he didn't commit the crime he
tried to commit throughout DH (yes, he let the DEs in and Imperio'd
Rosmerta, but he didn't kill DD), so he doesn't have to undergo the
agony of remorse like Snape (and Dumbledore).

Just as Lily and Narcissa, with Mrs. Crouch and Mrs. Weasley and even
the German woman Voldemort murders, are variations on the theme of
mother love (with Mr. Lovegood's love for his daughter as a kind of
foil to these mother's love for their mostly male children), Draco can
be seen as a variation on the theme of the reluctant young DE.

Regulus loses his loyalty immediately and takes action. Kreacher, who
has suffered horribly because Regulus eagerly and naively offered him
for LV's use, is no longer in danger; Regulus takes precautions to
protect his family by enforcing Kreacher's secrecy and does what he
can in one desperate suicidal move to strike a potentially deadly blow
to the Dark Lord. Unknown to anyone except Kreacher, he heroically
sacrifices himself in the fight against Voldemort. 

Severus, too, has endangered a loved one through his eager service to
the Dark Lord, but his loved one is still in danger. He can't save her
or protect her himself, and he has no Horcrux handy to use as a weapon
against LV. All he can do is go to Dumbledore and beg for his help,
agreeing to do "anything" if DD will protect Lily, and continuing to
do "anything" to protect Harry when DD's protection of Lily fails.
(Interesting that he's no longer begging; he's the one doing the
protecting.) He continues to protect Harry and fight LV, all the time
suffering from bitterness and remorse. Ultimately, he, like Regulus,
becomes both a martyr and a hero, but only after living in infamy as a
murderer and a traitor in the eyes of his former students and colleagues.

And then there's Draco. Unlike Severus and Regulus, the people for
whom he fears are himself and his parents, who are themselves Death
Eaters and despite Lucius's disgrace, they seem to have lost little of
their loyalty to LV and none of their disdain for lesser beings like
the Snatchers and House-Elves and Goblins and "Mud-Bloods." (Not that
any of them can compare with the lunatic devotion and sadism of
Draco's Aunt Bellatrix.) Draco has learned that there's nothing
glorious about being a Death Eater. He doesn't have it in him to kill
and he uses the Cruciatus Curse with great reluctance only under
threat and coercion. It's partly that he doesn't have the courage of
Regulus and Severus, but it's also partly that Draco's loved ones are
in his power rather than presumed dead or really dead like Kreacher
and Lily. And unlike Regulus, who had the means for retribution at
hand, or Severus, who could put his skills at acting and Occlumency
and lying and spying to work for however long it took to bring
Voldemort down, Draco has no course of action open to him except to
attend school and do the best he can under the eyes of supposed DE
Snape and the Carrows. On holidays, he can only go home to his parents
and hope that the Dark Lord doesn't show up. In the end, wandless, he
tries to block Crabbe's spells but loses his wand and does no actual
fighting, owing his life (and Goyle's) to Harry (and the reluctant
Ron) and begging a DE to spare him by saying that he's on the DE's
side (a lie, but, being wandless, there's not much else he can do
except allow himself to be captured or killed). In the end, he's
important primarily as a pawn--his wand is taken from him, making
Harry the unwitting master of the Elder wand, and his mother lies to
Voldemort so that she can get into the castle to see him.

Draco is neither a hero nor a martyr, only a chastened boy who has
learned a bitter and valuable lesson. Whether he has changed his views
on Pure-Blood supremacy, we don't know, but he has certainly changed
his views on how far he'll go to support them. He has his family and
his life (and just possibly Aunt Bellatrix's wealth, if Rodolphus is
also dead). It's unlikely that Draco would have become a martyr. He's
not the self-sacrificing type. But he might have been a hero if he'd
had the opportunity. Would he have fought that DE if he'd had a wand?
Maybe not because he still feared for his parents, but maybe so, if he
thought he had a chance of winning. (A nice silent Stupefy, for
example.) And if one or both of his parents had been killed by
Voldemort, I think we'd have seen a different Draco, one who, like
Regulus and Severus, had a cause, and nothing to lose but his own life.

I didn't even go into his character development, but we can see his
change and growth, his progression toward evil and his movement away
from it, more clearly than in any other character. Just contrast the
Draco of "Draco's Detour" with the Draco of "The Dark Lord Ascending."

Carol, who thinks that Draco is much more than a plot device,
important both in terms of theme and character





From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 30 04:06:42 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:06:42 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6oa2u+umlt@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6opci+rt0r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183909

 Carol:
> \ Crabbe's(?) shrunken head, another Dark artifact of the
> > type sold by B and B, was confiscated by Filch, who found it with
> his Dark detector.
> 
> Pippin:
> Well, there you are, then. The shrunken head could've been a decoy.
In the presence of a more powerful dark artifact, an HoG might not
> register, just as Riddle's magic didn't detect the presence of a
> weaker wizard accompanied by the far more powerful Dumbledore.

Carol:
I suppose. It would at least explain why the shrunken head was
mentioned. But we shouldn't have to go to such lengths to figure out
how Ron knew about the Hand of Glory that Lucius didn't buy, Harry
didn't mention, and Ron didn't see.

Pippin: 
> In any case, knowing how the HoG entered the school might stop us
wondering about it, but I don't see that it would contribute much to
our understanding of the characters. 

Carol:
True, but it would keep us from being sidetracked and annoyed by
inconsistencies.

Pippin:
Draco managed to get DE's into the school, so it's hardly OOC that he
managed to get a Hand of Glory in as well. <snip>

Carol:
He got the DEs in through the Vanishing Cabinet that it took him the
whole year to fix. He could have had a DE bring the Hand with him from
Borgin and Burke's, which would make perfect sense, but that's not
consistent with Ron's knowing about it. (BTW, he also sneaked in the
Peruvian Darkness Powder, but I suppose that, being a Weasley product,
it somehow had enchantments on it to escape detection. After all, a
love potion qualifies as "dark" and would have been detected if not
disguised as perfume, so the powder probably would be detected, too.
We're left with Filch not searching the students' trunks, which seems
out of character, not to mention risky if they're worried about Dark
artifacts being smuggled into the school. then again, it would be a
lot of work unless he enlisted the help of the House-Elves, so maybe
he didn't.

BTW, you mentioned the precautions being a joke. What, besides the
disguised love potions, got into the school that wasn't supposed to be
there? Filch was onto the cursed necklace right away (though he had to
be warned not to touch it), and the poisoned mead wasn't caught
because it was brought in by a teacher, not a student.


> > Pippin: 
> > > Draco could have tested the hand in ordinary darkness quite
> easily, and would have had no reason not to brag about owning it
> before he thought of using it as part of his plot to get DE's into
the castle. <snip>
> > 
> > Carol:
> > He could have tested it for himself, certainly. But since it gives
> > light only to the holder, no one else would have seen the
> > demonstration. 
> 
> Pippin:
> I'm not seeing the problem here. Draco waits till lights out in the
> Slytherin dorm, gets out of bed, lights the hand, and tests to see
if anyone can see him. No one can. Experiment successful.  Draco then
> shows off his acquisition in the boys bathroom, and Ron overhears.
<snip>

Carol:
I'll try to make it clearer. Sure, the experiment works for Draco. But
how is he supposed to "show off his acquisition," which allows *him*
to see in the dark, when no one else can see because they're not
holding the hand? He's not going to be stupid enough to hand it ovetr
to someone else to try out because then *he* wouldn't be able to see
and it could be taken from him by a sufficiently wily Slytherin. (and
I still say that Mrs. Norris would have scented trouble as well.)

I *think* that Draco must have sneaked it into Hogwarts in his trunk
during HBP (at a time when he was being secretive and would *not* have
wanted word to get around, especially to Snape or Dumbledore, that he
had any such artifact. And, IMO only, there's no way that Ron would
have known about it. JKR just simply forgot that Lucius had not bought
it for Draco back in CoS and that Ron had not mentioned it to Harry.

Carol, who suspects that JKR doesn't realize that readers would have
to go to such lengths to find plausible explanations for the things
she misrembered
>




From Meliss9900 at aol.com  Wed Jul 30 05:08:08 2008
From: Meliss9900 at aol.com (Meliss9900 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:08:08 EDT
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Hand of Glory
Message-ID: <c1a.4412709e.35c15138@aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183910

 
In a message dated 7/29/2008 11:07:15 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
justcarol67 at yahoo.com writes:

Pippin:
Draco managed to get DE's into the school, so it's hardly  OOC that he
managed to get a Hand of Glory in as well.  <snip>

 
It might be a simple as Draco not having had the HoG until that  night.  
After all  the other vanishing cabinet was stationed  in B&B why not leave the HoG 
there as well until it was needed to lead  the DE's into Hogwart's.
 
Melissa



**************Get fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for 
FanHouse Fantasy Football today.      
(http://www.fanhouse.com/fantasyaffair?ncid=aolspr00050000000020)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Wed Jul 30 16:51:53 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:51:53 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6o7f1+9rs2@eGroups.com>
References: <g6lil6+k7bn@eGroups.com> <g6o7f1+9rs2@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807300951w4c7bfa44p34ea7e380c0de335@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183911

.

Betsy Hp:
I'd have argued in the past (when I was young and foolish *g*) that
Draco Malfoy *was* a major character. *Possibly* a step or two
behind Ron Weasley, but certainly equal to Hermione Granger (we learn
*far* more about Draco's home life than Hermione's, for example; and
no one ever managed to motivate Harry to do something like Draco,
back in the day). Which means plot points left entirely up to
speculation are frustrating rather than fun. I was reading to see
what happened to Draco. But that's not the audience JKR was writing
for. (OotP had me worried, but I got suckered in by HBP, I'll admit.)

Betsy Hp

Lynda:

Do we really learn so much more about Draco's family life than we do
Hermione's, though.
We know from the text that Hermione has two loving parents, who, although
unfamiliar with the WW join their daughter to buy school supplies. Hermione
vacations with them in the summer in the earlier books. They are both
dentists. They do all they can to support and protect her, as she does them.
 With Draco, we learn that he has two parents who love him dearly. They are
both powerful within the wizarding world and raised him in a way they
thought was proper for their protection and the perserverence of the WW. He
also has an aunt who will do anything to support LV including putting her
own sister and nephew in jeopardy.  That's not really all that much more.

Both Hermione, Harry's second "best friend" and Draco, Harry's foe, are key
supporting characters in the story. JKR just didn't give us much in the way
of superfluous details about their lives. And Draco, not being among Harry's
mates, and living in a different dorm, isn't in the story as much as he
might have been otherwise.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From rlevatter at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 30 17:19:33 2008
From: rlevatter at yahoo.com (rlevatter)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:19:33 -0000
Subject: Who WAS the True Master of the Elder Wand?
Message-ID: <g6q7r5+fv3d@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183912

The Wand chooses the Wizard, but why?

The Elder wand chose Dumbledore over Grindelwald. Why? Because Dumbledore defeated 
Grindelwald in battle.

But that's not the only way to win the allegiance of the Deathstick.

The Elder wand chose Grindelwald over Grigorovitch. Why? Because Grindelwald was able 
to steal the wand from Grigorovitch, snatching it and leaping from a window.

So at least some time the wand's allegiance is changed by theft.

For a time Draco Malfoy was the true master of the Elder Wand, having wrested it away 
from Dumbledore in battle. But Draco never actually held the Elder Wand. One might 
imagine, then, that the allegiance the wand felt towards Draco was minimal.

How can one steal a wand from someone who leaves it lying discarded? Perhaps by simply 
picking it up. Even more so, one would think, if one had to exert a lot of effort and magic 
to acquire it. Even more so, one would think, if one were explicitly making an effort to 
acquire it. Surely breaking into a tomb guarded by enchantments does more to gain a 
wand's allegiance than jumping out a window.

So, it would seem, had Harry not bested Draco in battle only a day before, Voldemort, by 
breaking into Dumbledore's tomb and grabbing the Elder wand, would have been stealing 
it from Draco as surely as Grindelwald stole it from Gregorovitch.

But by the time Voldemort does that, Harry is actually the true master of the Elder Wand.

Does the Elder Wand know that Harry knew where it was, and purposely chose not to 
pursue it? Does the Elder Wand know that Harry knew his own choice not to pursue the 
Elder Wand meant that Voldemort would obtain physical possession of the Elder Wand?

If so, wouldn't one think that, in choosing a wizard, the Elder Wand would prefer a wizard 
that sought it out, that longed for it, rather than a wizard who let it be stolen, as 
Grigorovitch had let it be stolen so many years before?

So, given all that, and given the fact that one can be the true master of the Elder Wand and 
still lose in battle (see Dumbledore v Grindelwald), who really was, in the end, the true 
master of the Elder Wand?

Ross L.




From foxmoth at qnet.com  Wed Jul 30 21:03:26 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:03:26 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6opci+rt0r@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6qkuu+81e7@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183913

 
> Carol:
> He got the DEs in through the Vanishing Cabinet that it took him the
> whole year to fix. He could have had a DE bring the Hand with him
from Borgin and Burke's, which would make perfect sense, but that's
not consistent with Ron's knowing about it. (BTW, he also sneaked in
the Peruvian Darkness Powder, but I suppose that, being a Weasley
product, it somehow had enchantments on it to escape detection. 

Pippin:
 Fred and George can enchant things to escape detection, but it's
beyond the Malfoys or B&B? LOL! 

Ron doesn't know that Draco has the Hand of Glory at Hogwarts during
year 6 until he and Ginny see it when Draco emerges from the RoR. When
Ron mentions it earlier, in Chapter 7 of HBP, it's before the school
year has started and they're speculating about what Draco could want
repaired. Ron thinks maybe Draco could have broken his Hand of Glory,
and that's the first we hear that Draco has it.  

But it's perfectly consistent with Draco having gotten it previously,
and bragging about it. 

Carol: 
> BTW, you mentioned the precautions being a joke. What, besides the
> disguised love potions, got into the school that wasn't supposed to
be there? Filch was onto the cursed necklace right away (though he had
to be warned not to touch it), and the poisoned mead wasn't caught
> because it was brought in by a teacher, not a student.

Pippin:
The fanged frisbee that Hermione confiscates from a fourth year, plus
 Ron's malfunctioning spell-check quill, and the fact that Fred and
George never complain that the blanket ban on WWW items is hurting
their business. Harry even asks the Scooby Gang to brainstorm how
Draco could have got something past the castle's defenses after Katy
is attacked, but they blow him off. 

> 
> Carol:
> I'll try to make it clearer. Sure, the experiment works for Draco.
But how is he supposed to "show off his acquisition," which allows
*him* to see in the dark, when no one else can see because they're not
> holding the hand? 

Pippin:
The hand's not invisible. Draco  doesn't have to demonstrate it to
exhibit it  and talk about how it works. Possibly JKR might have  put
a scene like that in OOP, but really the book is long enough already.
There's nothing distracting about it, IMO, unless you were expecting 
some kind of plot development based on Lucius's refusal to buy Draco
the HoG in CoS.  But once we  learn that he gives in eventually over
the broomstick, IMO that's not important.

Pippin





From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 30 21:15:55 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:15:55 -0000
Subject: Who WAS the True Master of the Elder Wand?
In-Reply-To: <g6q7r5+fv3d@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6qlmb+91hu@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183914

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

> The Elder wand chose Grindelwald over Grigorovitch. Why? Because 
> Grindelwald was able to steal the wand from Grigorovitch, snatching 
> it and leaping from a window.
> 
> So at least some time the wand's allegiance is changed by theft.


This is not exactly right, Grindelwald not *only* stole the wand, he 
waited, sitting on a window ledge, for Gregorovitch to appear, and then 
he Stunned him, before jumping out of the window. I don't know if 
Grindelwald Stunned the wand-maker with the Elder wand or with his own 
wand, but I suppose, by Stunning him, he defeated him anyway. 

GG could have just taken the wand and gotten away, but he waited until 
Gregorovitch came to the workshop, because he knew that he needed to 
defeat the previous master of the Elder wand. I don't have the book at 
the moment, and can't give you the exact quote, but all this should be 
described in Ch. 14, "The Thief". Hope this helps,


zanooda





From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 30 21:26:13 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:26:13 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807300951w4c7bfa44p34ea7e380c0de335@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g6qm9l+qbnf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183915

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Lynda Cordova" <sweenlit at ...> wrote:
>
> .
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> I'd have argued in the past (when I was young and foolish *g*) that
> Draco Malfoy *was* a major character. *Possibly* a step or two
> behind Ron Weasley, but certainly equal to Hermione Granger (we learn
> *far* more about Draco's home life than Hermione's, for example; and
> no one ever managed to motivate Harry to do something like Draco,
> back in the day). Which means plot points left entirely up to
> speculation are frustrating rather than fun. I was reading to see
> what happened to Draco. But that's not the audience JKR was writing
> for. (OotP had me worried, but I got suckered in by HBP, I'll admit.)
> 
> Betsy Hp
> 
> Lynda:
> 
> Do we really learn so much more about Draco's family life than we do
> Hermione's, though.
> We know from the text that Hermione has two loving parents, who, although
> unfamiliar with the WW join their daughter to buy school supplies. Hermione
> vacations with them in the summer in the earlier books. They are both
> dentists. They do all they can to support and protect her, as she does them.

Montavilla47:
Leaving aside the question of whether Hermione does anything to 
support her parents (protect them, yes, support them.... eh?)

You have summed up here ALL we know about Hermione's parents.  We
don't, for example, know their first names.  Hermione has never introduced
them to Harry--he's only seen them at a distance.  We don't know how
they feel about Voldemort.  We don't know if they even know he exists.

We don't know how they feel about their daughter being petrified
for over a month during her second year.  We don't know if they even
know that that happened.  We don't know if Hermione has any brothers
or sisters.  We don't know what town (or city) she lives in.  We have
no idea what her house looks like.

We know more about Luna's family than Hermione's.

Lynda:
>  With Draco, we learn that he has two parents who love him dearly. They are
> both powerful within the wizarding world and raised him in a way they
> thought was proper for their protection and the perserverence of the WW. He
> also has an aunt who will do anything to support LV including putting her
> own sister and nephew in jeopardy.  That's not really all that much more.
> 

Montavilla47:
Here's a few more things we know about Draco's family:

We know how old Lucius is.  We know that he was once a prefect.  We
know his opinion of muggleborn, his opinion about Dumbledore, and
his opinion of Draco.  We know that he has money and that he uses it
in order to gain political influence.  We know that he and Snape were
"old friends."  We know that he beats his elves.  We know that he had
enough respect for the Dark Arts that he wanted his son to attend
a school where they were properly taught.  We know that he was 
trusted with one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.  

We know that Narcissa was a member of the Black family.  We know
what political opinions the Black family held and how strongly they
felt about them.  We know that she shares her family's racist views. 
We know that she had enough affection for her aunt's elf to treat
him kindly.  We know that she calls the shots in her immediate
family.  We know that she loves her son so much she's willing
 to beg Snape for help--and that she refused to let him go to 
school in another country.

We know the name of Draco's paternal grandfather and his
maternal grandmother (I think... do we learn Walburga's name
in the series or just on the auctioned tapestry document?)  We 
know the names of his two aunts, his two uncles-in-law, and 
his only cousin.

We know that the Malfoys live in a "manor" house, with gates
and  white peacocks.  We know what the inside of the house 
looks like--and that there's a secret room under the dining 
room.

All in all, quite a bit.






From sweenlit at gmail.com  Thu Jul 31 00:37:07 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:37:07 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6qm9l+qbnf@eGroups.com>
References: <43e41d1e0807300951w4c7bfa44p34ea7e380c0de335@mail.gmail.com>
	 <g6qm9l+qbnf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807301737j446c5fd7gb5a0ed8ae412f337@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183916

Montavilla:
Montavilla47:
Leaving aside the question of whether Hermione does anything to
support her parents (protect them, yes, support them.... eh?)

Lynda:
In the manner in which I was using the term support, yes, she does, as they
do her.

I don't recall the name of Draco's grandparents being in the books and due
to an appointment this morning I had to cut my answer a bit short.

As Hermione became more accustormed to the WW, she does distance herself
from her family, but she does still spend some time with them and if I'm not
incorrect, Hermione was supposed to have a sister, but she never got added
into the cast of characters.

As supporting characters, we don't really have to know all the details of
either Hermione's or Draco's families or home lives. If I had been reading a
story in one volume only, the lack of details might bother me more than it
does, but considering the length of the work, it doesn't. It does not take
away from the story as a whole.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 01:02:09 2008
From: dumbledore11214 at yahoo.com (dumbledore11214)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:02:09 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory / Secondary characters' story
In-Reply-To: <g6qm9l+qbnf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6r2uh+bu6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183917

> Montavilla47:
> Here's a few more things we know about Draco's family:
> 
>> <HUGE SNIP, go UPTHREAD to read what we know>
> All in all, quite a bit.
>


Alla:

In general I would agree that we know about Draco's family more than 
we know about Hermione's. Even though just as Linda I do not recall 
the names of Draco's grandparents being in the book either, or how 
old Lucius is I do not recall that being in the book too.

I mean, they are wizards, makes sense to me that they would be 
featuring in story more than muggles' family.

But that to me does not make Draco a major character by all means, 
neither to me does it mean **him** having coming of age story.

I see Draco as being an interesting piece, no more in Harry's coming 
of age story. That has nothing to do with me disliking this character 
by the way. I feel that way about stories of the characters I like 
too. 


But suggestion that Betsy made that Draco's story had been taken away 
or substantial chunk of it being taken away by Draco ending up with 
Hand's of glory, well amuses me. My opinion of course. But as far as 
I am concerned, there is **no** Draco's story in itself, just as 
there is no Sirius' story in itself, or Ron's story in itself ( whom 
I adore too by the way) or Hermione's story. IMO they all have 
stories only as much as it affects Harry. When it does not affect 
Harry, author feels free to drop the stories as she pleases or change 
them, or whatever.

We may like or dislike what she does with secondary characters, 
goodness knows I would love for Sirius to be something more than 
character that was being created only for Harry to experience another 
loss of parental figure IMO. But I believe that JKR was primarily 
concerned with telling Harry and Voldemort's story and every other 
character's story was moving around that.

I mean, it is as if I would say that substantial chunk of Sirius's 
story was taken away by killing him, I liked to imagine before I read 
OOP that Sirius will survive the war and he would be living with 
Harry's family or near it. But this story existed only in my 
imagination or in fanfiction. Author never wanted to tell that story, 
so how could it be taken away?

And yes, I believe that JKR wanted to tell the story of spoiled 
little boy, who is growing up by being touched by events of something 
bigger, by events of Harry's story pretty much.

IMO of course.

Alla




From horridporrid03 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 02:05:32 2008
From: horridporrid03 at yahoo.com (horridporrid03)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:05:32 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6oo0h+893d@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6r6lc+9n2v@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183918

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > <snip>
> > I was reading to see what happened to Draco.  But that's not the 
> > audience JKR was writing for. (OotP had me worried, but I got    
> > suckered in by HBP, I'll admit.)

> >>Carol responds:
> I know how you feel, Betsy. Snape didn't go the direction I wanted 
> him to go (redeemed and alive and less of a Lily worshipper). 

Betsy Hp:
Oh, Carol...don't even get me started on Snape's story.  It's just 
all too depressing! ;)

> >>Carol:
> JKR had plans for both Snape and Draco. They just weren't the plans 
> we were hoping for.
> That aside, I think that Draco *is* a major character in the series 
> as a whole, but his arc climaxed at the end of HBP. The rest is    
> falling action, working toward the denouement.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
And very little action, at that.  One of the most interesting stories 
in the series (for me, at least) and it fizzled away to 
nothing. ::sigh::

> >>Carol:
> Draco is neither a hero nor a martyr, only a chastened boy who has
> learned a bitter and valuable lesson.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Which could have been a cool way to go, except even all that occurs 
off-page.  As you said (in the part I snipped, because I snipped to 
quickly, sorry), we don't get to see the fall out.  How does Draco go 
on from this?  What is his philosophy now? 

> >>Carol, who thinks that Draco is much more than a plot device,
> important both in terms of theme and character

Betsy Hp:
I think he *was* but, like Snape, his role was seriously reduced in 
DH.  Which was too bad, especially considering the way I was reading 
the series. ;)

> >>Alla:
> <snip>
> But I believe that JKR was primarily concerned with telling Harry   
> and Voldemort's story and every other character's story was moving 
> around that.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Oh, I think you're totally correct about that.  The only characters 
that mattered were Harry and... (actually, I think the only important 
character was Harry; Voldemort was more the storm Harry was fighting 
than a fully formed character in his own right).  It just sucked for 
me because I wasn't that interested (especially towards the end) in 
Harry.

Betsy Hp




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 02:58:48 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:58:48 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6qm9l+qbnf@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6r9p8+h2t8@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183919

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47"
<montavilla47 at ...> wrote:

> We know the name of Draco's paternal grandfather and his
> maternal grandmother (I think... do we learn Walburga's name
> in the series or just on the auctioned tapestry document?)  We 
> know the names of his two aunts, his two uncles-in-law, and 
> his only cousin.


zanooda:

Draco's paternal grandfather's name (Abraxas Malfoy) was mentioned,
but his maternal grandmother's name - no. I'm a little surprised you
consider Walburga to be Draco's grandmother - she is his grandfather's
sister, isn't she? I had no idea that this is also called
"grandmother" :-). Does he have two maternal grandmothers then, his
mother's mother and his grandfather's sister? Seriously, I didn't know
that :-). It's a little confusing, all these family matters :-).






From sistermagpie at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 31 03:59:16 2008
From: sistermagpie at earthlink.net (sistermagpie)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:59:16 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6r9p8+h2t8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6rdak+cerb@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183920

> zanooda:

 Does [Draco]have two maternal grandmothers then, his
> mother's mother and his grandfather's sister? Seriously, I didn't know
> that :-). 

Magpie:
Remember, Draco is a Black. He might have two maternal grandmothers who 
are siblings and under the age of fourteen. 

It's a crazy family.

-m




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 04:03:06 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:03:06 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <c1a.4412709e.35c15138@aol.com>
Message-ID: <g6rdhq+67m6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183921

Melissa wrote:  
> It might be a simple as Draco not having had the HoG until that 
night. After all  the other vanishing cabinet was stationed  in B&B
why not leave the HoG there as well until it was needed to lead  the
DE's into Hogwart's.

Carol responds:
And until the Hogwarts Vanishing Cabinet was fixed. I agree that it
would make perfect sense to leave the hand of Glory at Borgin and
Burkes (I suppose that Draco would have trusted to Borgin's fear of
retribution as opposed to trusting Borgin's honesty), but that's not
what the text says. Ron somehow knows that Draco has a Hand of Glory.
IOW, he's supposdedly actually seen it at Hogwarts (or been told by
Harry that Draco's father bought it, which he didn't). 

As for Pippin's suggestion that Draco showed it off it a boys'
bathroom and Ron saw it, there's no canon to support that speculation,
and as I've already pointed out, no one could see a demonstration of
an artifact that can only be seen by the holder. Draco isn't going to
magically put out the torches in a boys' bathroom to magically
demonstrate something that can't be seen, risking boys from other
Houses coming in and relighting the torches. *If* he could demonstrate
it, and *if* he could get it into Hogwarts unconfiscated, and *if he
was willing to risk his Slytherin cronies blabbing about it in Snape's
hearing, he would have done so in the common room, where the likes of
Ron Weasley would know nothing about it.

Carol, who thinks that the simplest explanation, the only one that
doesn't require searching for unacanonical off-page solutions, is that
JKR simply forgot that Harry didn't see Draco buying the Hand of Glory
in CoS




From Meliss9900 at aol.com  Thu Jul 31 04:15:28 2008
From: Meliss9900 at aol.com (Meliss9900 at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:15:28 EDT
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Re: Hand of Glory
Message-ID: <c3d.3a5a76af.35c29660@aol.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183922

 
In a message dated 7/30/2008 11:03:35 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
justcarol67 at yahoo.com writes:

Carol,  who thinks that the simplest explanation, the only one that
doesn't require  searching for unacanonical off-page solutions, is that
JKR simply forgot  that Harry didn't see Draco buying the Hand of Glory
in  CoS



Oh I agree.  She forgot and her editors didn't catch the slip. Or if  they 
did, they didn't feel that it was important enough to warrant having  her fix 
it.  Makes one wonder why they even bothered with having a  "potter-o-lygist"
 
Melissa  
 
 



**************Get fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for 
FanHouse Fantasy Football today.      
(http://www.fanhouse.com/fantasyaffair?ncid=aolspr00050000000020)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 04:30:38 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:30:38 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807300951w4c7bfa44p34ea7e380c0de335@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g6rf5e+ggah@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183923

Lynda wrote:
> 
> Do we really learn so much more about Draco's family life than we do
Hermione's, though. We know from the text that Hermione has two loving
parents, who, although unfamiliar with the WW join their daughter to
buy school supplies. Hermione vacations with them in the summer in the
earlier books. They are both dentists. They do all they can to support
and protect her, as she does them. With Draco, we learn that he has
two parents who love him dearly. They are both powerful within the
wizarding world and raised him in a way they thought was proper for
their protection and the perserverence of the WW. He also has an aunt
who will do anything to support LV including putting her own sister
and nephew in jeopardy.  That's not really all that much more.
 <snip>

Carol responds:
The difference is that we're *told* what little we know about
Hermione's parents. (We don't even know their real first names.) they
appear in only two scenes, at Diagon Alley in CoS and at King's Cross
in OoP, and they don't have even one line in either scene.

In contrast, Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy are *shown* through action,
dialogue, and description. We know what they look like, we know their
beliefs and values, we know where and how they live (we're actually
brought inside Malfoy Manor in DH). We hear their speech patterns; we
see how they act in a crisis (Narcissa's behavior in "Spinner's End,"
"The Dark Lord Ascending," and "The Flaw in the Plan" is especially
enlightening.) We see Lucius Malfoy's fall from power to disgrace.

Nothing of the sort happens with the Grangers. We're only told that
their daughter has altered their memories, given them new names, and
convinced them (presumably through a Confundus Charm since she claims
never to have cast a Memory Charm) to immigrate to Australia.

The Malfoys are characters, more complex than they seemed to be when
they were introduced, and capable of of family affection and other
(limited) virtues despite being DEs (or associate DEs, in the case of
Narcissa, who probably wouldn't mar her lovely white skin with a Dark
Mark).

The Grangers aren't even cardboard cutouts. We learn *about* them
through exposition, not the narrative strategies of action,
description, and dialogue. They exist in the background, like the
scenery, to help round out *Hermione* as a character. What do they do
when they're not worrying about their daughter, filling patients'
cavities, or depositing their paychecks? Do they read? Hermione thinks
they'd never have heard of Nicolas Flamel, a real-life medieval
alchemist (although that might be an example of twelve-year-old
Hermione's lack of information). They have money enough to vacation in
France, they know how to ski, and they understand what a Prefect is,
but that gets us no lcoser to their personalities and values. Hermione
clearly has never discussed the WW with them because she considers it
beneath their comprehension. Is it? Probably not. But we'll never
know, because Dr. and Dr. Granger aren't characters at all. Even
Seamus's mother, Mrs. Finnegan, has a more clearly depicted character
than they do.

Carol, fearing that only Mr. Weasley would find them interesting, and
only because they know about plugs and "eckeltricity," not because
they're human beings like himself




From sweenlit at gmail.com  Thu Jul 31 05:30:52 2008
From: sweenlit at gmail.com (Lynda Cordova)
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:30:52 -0700
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)Somewhat spoilerish for Dresden Files
Message-ID: <43e41d1e0807302230y3fd701b5y602c114adf701470@mail.gmail.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183924

Carol responds:
The difference is that we're *told* what little we know about
Hermione's parents. (We don't even know their real first names.) they
appear in only two scenes, at Diagon Alley in CoS and at King's Cross
in OoP, and they don't have even one line in either scene.

Lynda now:
That's because Hermione's parents aren't part of the WW that Hermione is
becoming more and more a part of throughout the series. Yes, its sad to see
a girl who loves her parents distancing herself so much from them, but even
in real life, this happens.

I did read the series for Harry Potter's story, not Draco's, Ron's
Hermione's, Neville's or Snape's, so the lack of emphasis on their stories
doesn't bother me as much as it does some others. If the story wasn't so
lengthy to begin with (7 books, most of them well over 300 pages
individually) maybe I would be griping a bit more about the "dropping" of
storylines. I was happy to learn more about Snape and more about Dumbledore,
as we did in the last book, but every time I check the titles of the books
they start "Harry Potter and the. . ." so I expect to be reading about
someone named Harry Potter. Same when I'm reading a Dresden Files book. I
expect the story to be mostly about HD, not Bob the Skull or Michael
Carpenter the Archive, who are all supporting characters in their own right,
and with regard to the Archive have some especially intrigueing and
promising stories coming up unless the hinst deceive me.

Lynda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 05:42:16 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:42:16 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6r9p8+h2t8@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6rjbo+1ui6@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183925

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47"
> <montavilla47@> wrote:
> 
> > We know the name of Draco's paternal grandfather and his
> > maternal grandmother (I think... do we learn Walburga's name
> > in the series or just on the auctioned tapestry document?)  We 
> > know the names of his two aunts, his two uncles-in-law, and 
> > his only cousin.
> 
> 
> zanooda:
> 
> Draco's paternal grandfather's name (Abraxas Malfoy) was mentioned,
> but his maternal grandmother's name - no. I'm a little surprised you
> consider Walburga to be Draco's grandmother - she is his grandfather's
> sister, isn't she? I had no idea that this is also called
> "grandmother" :-). Does he have two maternal grandmothers then, his
> mother's mother and his grandfather's sister? Seriously, I didn't know
> that :-). It's a little confusing, all these family matters :-).

Montavilla47:
No, you're right, Zanooda.  I was thinking that she was Narcissa's 
mother,  but she's actually Narcissa's aunt-in-law.  I can't even remember 
if we really know her name or if it's just on the tapestry (where Narcissa's
mother and father's would be as well) and that just doesn't count.

And it's all pretty minor anyway.  I agree that knowing about Draco's
family doesn't make him more important to the story than 
Hermione.  Obviously!  






From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 08:03:49 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:03:49 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)Somewhat spoilerish for Dresde
In-Reply-To: <43e41d1e0807302230y3fd701b5y602c114adf701470@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <g6rrl5+ocpi@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183926

Carol earlier:
> The difference is that we're *told* what little we know about
Hermione's parents. (We don't even know their real first names.) they
appear in only two scenes, at Diagon Alley in CoS and at King's Cross
in OoP, and they don't have even one line in either scene.
> 
Lynda responds:
> That's because Hermione's parents aren't part of the WW 

Carol:

This much I agree with to some extent. However, the Dursleys aren't
part of the WW, either. Caricatures though they are, they are *shown*,
not talked about. Their words, actions, and appearance reveal who they
are. (I'm not calling them round (complex) characters, though Dudley,
surprisingly, is a dynamic character (one who changes or develops).
The Grangers are so flat as to be one-dimensional, and, of course,
can't develop because they're virtually invisible even when they're
on-page. I would say that it's not so much the Grangers not being part
of the WW as that they're barely part of the story.

Lynda:
that Hermione is becoming more and more a part of throughout the
series. Yes, its sad to see a girl who loves her parents distancing
herself so much from them, but even in real life, this happens.

Carol:

Even when we first meet them, they're nonentities from the reader's
perspective. It isn't so much a matter of Hermione growing away from
them (though I agree that she does) as a matter of their lack of
importance to the story, in contrast to the Malfoys, who are important
enough to be fully developed (admittedly more so in the later books,
but our glimpses of Lucius Malfoy show him as a distinct individual as
early as CoS).

Lynda: 
> I did read the series for Harry Potter's story, not Draco's, Ron's
Hermione's, Neville's or Snape's, so the lack of emphasis on their
stories doesn't bother me as much as it does some others. <snip>

Carol responds:

I'm not talking about subjective reactions, what a reader (you, me, or
anyone else) liked or didn't like (or about thwarted expectations
regarding storylines that went nowhere--that's Betsy's view, not
mine). I'm talking about character development as a literary
technique. Whether you care about them or not, the Malfoys are fully
developed characters, presented through the narrative strategies
(action, description, and dialogue) that authors use to bring
characters to life on the page. The Grangers, in contrast, are barely
characters at all, and what little we know is revealed through
exposition (explanation)--telling, not showing.

It has nothing to do with what we like or want. It has to do with
what's there on the page. We can picture the Malfoys in our minds. We
know what they're like as people and whether we like them or not.
(Clearly you don't, and you're not alone. We're not supposed to
approve of the Malfoys' treatment of House Elves or their support of
Voldemort and Pure-Blood supremacy or most of the other things that
they do.) The Grangers arouse no such feelings and create no such
pictures in our minds. We neither like nor dislike them. They have no
more personality than Slughorn's candied pineapple (or whatever the
stuff is called).

Even Bob Ogden and Hepzibah Smith, minor characters from memories, are
vividly drawn, caricatures though they are. The Grangers aren't drawn
at all.

Carol, who is simply trying to indicate that the Malfoys are more
fully delineated as characters than the Grangers because they, unlike
Grangers, are important to the plot, which involves much more than
Harry's conflict with Voldemort




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 08:34:58 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:34:58 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6rjbo+1ui6@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6rtfi+idic@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183927

Montavilla47:
> No, you're right, Zanooda.  I was thinking that she was Narcissa's 
mother,  but she's actually Narcissa's aunt-in-law.  I can't even
remember if we really know her name or if it's just on the tapestry
(where Narcissa's mother and father's would be as well) and that just
doesn't count.
> 
> And it's all pretty minor anyway.  I agree that knowing about
Draco's family doesn't make him more important to the story than
Hermione.  Obviously!

Carol responds:
And ye Draco's family background is important in a way that Hermione's
isn't, and JKR has even traced the descendants of Phineas Nigellus
(perhaps imperfectly) in the Black family tapestry because the Malfoys
and Blacks illustrate, among other things, the motif of Pure-Blood
supremacy, and we see the rebellion of certain members of that
family--Sirius, Andromeda, and Andromeda's daughter, Nymphadora
--against the Black family values. We also have the contrasting
brothers, Sirius and Regulus, with the surprising heroism of the one
who chose the wrong side. The whole Black/Malfoy/Tonks story is a kind
of tapestry, with interwoven threads involving the various members of
that family.

Other themes or motifs are also associated with that family, whose
members are often foils for each other and for Harry (as Snape and Tom
Riddle are also, but outside this family framework). The only other
family (excluding the Muggle Dursleys) to have anything resembling the
ties and connections and interfamily conflicts of the Blacks are the
Weasleys, who, it turns out, are part of that family, too, but, like
Andromeda and Sirius, burned off the tapestry, symbolically severed
from the family.

We could, if we liked, explore the motif of families in the HP books,
bringing in the Potters, the Longbottoms, the Crouches, and others.
The families are foils to one another, reflecting both parallels and
contrasts.

Draco's family connections are important, in terms of both theme and
plot. Hermione's are not.

It's not that Draco is more important than Hermione, but his family
connections are important. The whole plot of CoS stems from a
misguided plan by Draco's father, as the whole plot of HBP stems from
a misguided plan by Draco himself (resulting in part from his father's
failure to carry out yet another plan in OoP).

Take out Hermione and Harry and Ron lose a valuable friend--and quite
possibly their lives as early as Book 1. Take out Draco himself and
Harry loses a seemingly minor nemesis who becomes much more dangerous
to himself and others in HBP. Take out Draco's family connections and
the whole Draco/Lucius/Narcissa/Bellatrix/Andromeda/Tonks/Lupin
connection falls apart, not to mention Bellatrix/Andromeda/Sirius/
Regulus and whatever other connections are tied in with the Black
family tapestry.

Caro, typing at 1:30 in the morning on Harry's birthday and not sure
that she's making any sense at all







From foxmoth at qnet.com  Thu Jul 31 12:30:32 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:30:32 -0000
Subject: Hand of Glory
In-Reply-To: <g6rdhq+67m6@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6sb98+odjq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183928

Carol: 
> As for Pippin's suggestion that Draco showed it off it a boys'
> bathroom and Ron saw it, there's no canon to support that
speculation, and as I've already pointed out, no one could see a
demonstration of an artifact that can only be seen by the holder. 

Pippin:
I don't know why this idea is so hard to get across, but I'm not
saying that Draco actually demonstrated the HoG for Ron. I've known
kids to bring a weapon, a knife or even a gun,  to school with zero
intention of using it, just to show it off. It's cool in itself, you see?
 
> Carol, who thinks that the simplest explanation, the only one that
> doesn't require searching for unacanonical off-page solutions, is
that JKR simply forgot that Harry didn't see Draco buying the Hand of
Glory in CoS

Pippin:
Having him buy it on page wouldn't dispose of your objections about
getting it into the school or Ron knowing what it does or what it
looks like. It *would* give away a plot point and spoil JKR's joke of
hinting that something from the Borgin and Burkes scene would figure
in the story later, the joke being that   almost *everything* does --
playing cards, human bones, evil masks, glass eye, Hand of Glory, opal
necklace, poison, the shrunken head from the store across the street,
and of course the vanishing cabinet. 


It seems to me that Ron's remark about fixing the hand of glory is
there precisely because JKR thought that finding out about it for the
 first time when Ginny reports how Draco used it would be jarring. But
she couldn't let Harry know for sure that Draco had it at Hogwarts
during HBP either. He'd have reported it, for one thing. So she had
Ron mention it *before* they return to Hogwarts.

I think it's rather clever plotting, actually.

Pippin









From foxmoth at qnet.com  Thu Jul 31 12:58:26 2008
From: foxmoth at qnet.com (pippin_999)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:58:26 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6r6lc+9n2v@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6scti+pcq@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183929


> > >>Carol:
> > JKR had plans for both Snape and Draco. They just weren't the
plans we were hoping for.
> > That aside, I think that Draco *is* a major character in the
series  as a whole, but his arc climaxed at the end of HBP. The rest
is     falling action, working toward the denouement.
> > <snip>

Pippin:
Getting trapped in an inferno and having to call on your worst enemy
for aid is falling action?

 I see Draco's arc as paralleling Neville's. Over the course of the
story, Neville learned that he was more of a hero and a leader than he
ever imagined. Meanwhile Draco learned that he was less of a villain
and a follower than he thought. The tower was a turning point, not a
climax, IMO. Draco saw that he didn't want to be used by Voldemort,
but he had no purpose of his own.  

In the RoR, we finally see Draco decide and act for himself, with no
help or expectation of reward from Dumbledore or Voldemort or Lucius.
Saving Goyle was an act of no importance to anybody but Draco. He
doesn't become a leader or a hero -- but he does become a man. Which
is, um, the point of a bildungsroman, right? 


> Betsy Hp:
> I think he *was* but, like Snape, his role was seriously reduced in 
> DH.  Which was too bad, especially considering the way I was reading 
> the series. ;)
> 

Pippin:
Snape's role was *reduced* in DH? It was utterly pivotal! 

JKR switches to a more epic storytelling style towards the end of DH,
so we don't get an intimate view of *any* character compared to what
we had earlier. Even Harry's feelings are obscured. 

Partly it suits the scale of events, and partly I think she didn't
want to follow Harry into a more adult mode of thought. We have the
option of reading his actions as informed by an adult sensibility, but
it isn't forced on the reader.

Pippin






From jamiesonwolf at gmail.com  Thu Jul 31 14:40:10 2008
From: jamiesonwolf at gmail.com (Jamieson Wolf Villeneuve)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:40:10 -0000
Subject: The Tales of Beedle the Bard Available for all!
Message-ID: <g6sisa+5f1e@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183930

Hey all,

I don't know if anyone else knows about this, so I thought I'd spread 
the word. It looks like we're getting another Harry Potter book after 
all! 

You all remember how Amazon bought one of the seven copies of The 
Tales of the Beedle Bard? Well I for one lamented that we'd never be 
able to read the tales in the book. 

But I don't have to lament any more! I went on to Amazon to browse 
around and found this: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DB0HG2/ref=amb_link_7226372_5?
pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-
1&pf_rd_r=1BCX6P3G0AYXTT23AC3R&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=423015801&pf_rd_i=
1000179911

and this: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0956010903/ref=amb_link_7226372_2?
pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-
1&pf_rd_r=0HP0M7NQRWW0755TRNF8&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=423015801&pf_rd_i=
1000179911


They're publishing Tales of Beedle the Bard for the public! OMG! 
There's the standard edition at $12.99 and the collectors edition for 
$100 (guess which one I'll be buying? LOL) 

Here's the link with more information: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=ms_sbrspot_4?
ie=UTF8&docId=1000179911&pf_rd_p=421436201&pf_rd_s=center-
1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1X7A24336R1
D6FYXJ28J

It's going to be published on December 4th!!!! I know that I'll be 
buying it when it comes out even if it IS before Christmas. LOL All 
net proceeds go to benefit The Children's Voice campaign.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is published by The Children's High 
Level Group a charity co-founded in 2005 by J K Rowling and Emma 
Nicholson MEP to make life better for vulnerable children. 

So how cool is that? Not only do we get the anniversary edition of 
Philosophers Stone in Steptember, but we get The Tales of Beedle the 
Bard in December! It's a Harry Potter Year after all! 

So excited! 

Cheers,
Jamieson 




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 17:31:15 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:31:15 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6rjbo+1ui6@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6sst3+71jv@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183931

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47" 
<montavilla47 at ...> wrote:

> No, you're right, Zanooda.  I was thinking that she was Narcissa's 
> mother,  but she's actually Narcissa's aunt-in-law.


zanooda:

No, no, *you* are right :-)! I thought about it, and yes, if my 
grandfather had a sister, I would have called her Granma (paired with 
her name, though). I just don't know how this is called officially in 
English - "Grandmother-in-law", LOL?


> montavilla wrote: 

> I can't even remember if we really know her name or if it's 
> just on the tapestry (where Narcissa's mother and father's 
> would be as well) and that just doesn't count.


zanooda:

Walburga's name is on the tapestry (I mean BFT), but not in the book, 
so yeah, I guess it doesn't count :-). You are right about Abraxas 
and about Lucius's age though - these *are* in the book :-).





From jkoney65 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 17:40:22 2008
From: jkoney65 at yahoo.com (jkoney65)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:40:22 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6sst3+71jv@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6ste6+1cjj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183932

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47" 
> <montavilla47@> wrote:
> 
> > No, you're right, Zanooda.  I was thinking that she was Narcissa's 
> > mother,  but she's actually Narcissa's aunt-in-law.
> 
> 
> zanooda:
> 
> No, no, *you* are right :-)! I thought about it, and yes, if my 
> grandfather had a sister, I would have called her Granma (paired 
with 
> her name, though). I just don't know how this is called officially 
in 
> English - "Grandmother-in-law", LOL?
> 

Wouldn't this just be "Great Aunt?"

Jack-A-Roe






From gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk  Thu Jul 31 17:49:15 2008
From: gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk (Geoff Bannister)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:49:15 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6ste6+1cjj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6stur+17bj@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183933

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jkoney65" <jkoney65 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "montavilla47" 
> > <montavilla47@> wrote:
> > 
> > > No, you're right, Zanooda.  I was thinking that she was Narcissa's 
> > > mother,  but she's actually Narcissa's aunt-in-law.
> > 
> > 
> > zanooda:
> > 
> > No, no, *you* are right :-)! I thought about it, and yes, if my 
> > grandfather had a sister, I would have called her Granma (paired 
> with 
> > her name, though). I just don't know how this is called officially 
> in 
> > English - "Grandmother-in-law", LOL?
> > 
> 
> Wouldn't this just be "Great Aunt?"
> 
> Jack-A-Roe

Geoff:
I would agree that this would be the normal relationship. As an example, 
when I was a kid, my grandmother had two surviving sisters. I knew as 
a seven or eight year old that they were my great-aunts. although I 
always called them as "Auntie Lizzie" and "Auntie Nellie".

Anyway, in the UK, the suffix "in-law" is only used in conjunction with 
"sister' "brother', "son" or "daughter".






From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 19:36:25 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:36:25 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory (was: Re: Half-Blood Prince)
In-Reply-To: <g6scti+pcq@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6t47p+lmfa@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183934

Carol responds:
> > > JKR had plans for both Snape and Draco. They just weren't the
plans we were hoping for.
> > > That aside, I think that Draco *is* a major character in the
series  as a whole, but his arc climaxed at the end of HBP. The rest
is falling action, working toward the denouement.
> > > <snip>
> 
> Pippin:
> Getting trapped in an inferno and having to call on your worst enemy
for aid is falling action?

Carol responds:
Yes. Falling action isn't necessarily dull. The term doesn't relate to
perils nor does it mean that nothing happens to the character; it
relates to working toward the resolution of a plot or subplot. Draco's
plot/character arc reached its climax on the tower with his decision
not to kill Dumbledore. From that point on, he's a different Draco, no
longer seeking glory as a Death Eater but unable to escape. The
incident in the RoR doesn't change him in any way. It *reveals* the
change that has taken place in him, unwillingness to kill or injure
Harry or allow Crabbe to do so and concern for Goyle. (He even mourns
Crabbe, probably the only person to care about the brutal fool.) 

Pippin: 
>  I see Draco's arc as paralleling Neville's. Over the course of the
story, Neville learned that he was more of a hero and a leader than he
ever imagined. Meanwhile Draco learned that he was less of a villain
and a follower than he thought. The tower was a turning point, not a
climax, IMO. Draco saw that he didn't want to be used by Voldemort,
but he had no purpose of his own.  

Carol responds:
The climax *is* the turning point. That's the definition of the term.
See, for example, 

"Climax: In a work of literature, the most decisive and critical scene
or event is the climax. The climax is the major turning point of the
work; it is the culmination of the rising action, conflicts, and
complications of the story."

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/3462/allegory.htm

"Climax: The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or
story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work."

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072405228/student_view0/fiction_glossary.html

It can be argued that the tower scene is the climax of the entire
series, with DH as falling action working toward the denouement,
Harry's defeat of Voldemort. It can also be argued that the climax of
the series is the resurrection of Voldemort in GoF, from which
everything else follows. (In a classical five-act play, the climax
usually occurs in the third act. Novels generally tend to have their
climax near the end, modern expectations being different from those of
the ancient Greeks.) Obviously, in a series of seven novels, each
novel will have its own climax, which in most cases will be different
from the climax of the series. And, of course, there are complications
and conflicts throughout, which are not resolved until the end of the
novel/series even when the climax has already passed. (Harry is
"mopping up" in DH, getting rid of Horcruxes and tempted by Hallows,
but in terms of the *series*, the climax has already passed. In terms
of DH, the climax is, of course, the Battle of Hogwarts, more
specifically, I think, Harry's self-sacrifice as opposed to the moment
when he finishes him off, which is preceded by a great deal of
exposition regarding Snape and wands and which happens quickly, almost
without excitement. 

If we're looking at individual characters rather than the book as a
whole, surely, for Draco, the tower is a more "decisive and critical
scene" than the incident in the RoR, terrifying though it is. (In
terms of the book as a whole, that scene works toward the resolution
or denouement by destroying a Horcrux, one of the obstacles in Harry's
path toward defeating Voldemort.) With regard to Snape's arc, the
apparent climax is the scene on the tower, but the real climax (IMO)
occurs long before, when he repents and comes to Dumbledore to plead
for help. The denouement for Snape's arc is, of course, "The Prince's
Tale."

Obviously, this is just one way of looking at the books. If only one
interpretation were possible, literary critics would cease to exist.
All I'm saying is that "climax" and "turning point" are synonymous for
most critics.

Pippin:
 
> In the RoR, we finally see Draco decide and act for himself, with no
help or expectation of reward from Dumbledore or Voldemort or Lucius.
Saving Goyle was an act of no importance to anybody but Draco. He
doesn't become a leader or a hero -- but he does become a man. Which
is, um, the point of a bildungsroman, right? 

Carol responds:
Except that, of course, the protagonist of this particular
Bildungsroman (HP as a series) is not Draco but Harry. But if HBP (not
DH) were rewritten with Draco as the protagonist, it would, indeed, be
a Bildungsroman. We see him (from the outside) transformed by his
seemingly hopeless task, his growing peril and desperation, his
disillusionment with Voldemort and the DEs, and the confrontation with
the helpless old man that he's supposed to kill at which point he
apparently experiences an epiphany. "You are not a killer, Draco,"
says Dumbledore, and Draco at last understands that truth. His words
and actions in DH show that the transformation caused by that
realization has already taken place. The Draco of DH is not the Draco
of books 1-5. He has already has been transformed by the events of HBP. 

In HBP, Draco is also a foil to Harry (as Laertes is to Hamlet, to
provide an example that I hope will be familiar to everybody). He
throws light on Harry through a contrasting response to a situation
that parallels Harry's throughout the books--he's expected to kill a
much older and much more powerful Wizard. He, too, becomes a man, but
in a different route and in a different way from Harry, for whom the
entire series, not HBP in particular, is a Bildungsroman. (Not
coincidentally, his birthday is June 5, about the same date as the
events on the tower, which seem to take place in the first week of
June.) IMO, his actions in the RoR (and earlier, at the Malfoy manor)
*reveal* what he has become (our choices show who we are) and the
moment of transformation came on the tower with Dumbledore, symbolized
and called to our attention by the slightly lowered wand.

> > Betsy Hp:
> > I think he *was* but, like Snape, his role was seriously reduced
in DH.  Which was too bad, especially considering the way I was
reading the series. ;)
> > 
> 
> Pippin:
> Snape's role was *reduced* in DH? It was utterly pivotal! <snip>

Carol responds:
On this point, I agree with you. In terms of the defeat of Voldemort,
that is, not in terms of his character arc, which had climaxed much
earlier but neither the reader nor Harry knew the truth. In terms of
his actions in DH. particularly bringing the Sword of Gryffindor to
Harry and giving him, in a last spectacular feat of magic, the
knowledge that made his self-sacrifice both necessary and possible, he
was extremely important. And his role in the defeat of Voldemort, from
before Godric's Hollow (his sin and repentance set the events of
Harry's life in motion) till his own death, is revealed as crucial,
not to mention the thematic importance of his love and courage and
redemption (none of which makes him a kind man or an understanding
teacher--I am not trying to give Snape an undeserved halo).

Carol, attempting to look at events and characters objectively, from
the standpoint of a literary critic and using standard literary terms




From macboysmom at comcast.net  Thu Jul 31 13:13:54 2008
From: macboysmom at comcast.net (Leeann McCullough)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:13:54 -0000
Subject: Who WAS the True Master of the Elder Wand?
In-Reply-To: <g6qlmb+91hu@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6sdqi+fk2r@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183935

> "rlevatter" <rlevatter@> wrote:
> > The Elder wand chose Grindelwald over Grigorovitch. Why?
> > Because Grindelwald was able to steal the wand from
> > Grigorovitch, snatching it and leaping from a window.
> >
> > So at least some time the wand's allegiance is changed by
> > theft.
>
> zanooda:
> This is not exactly right, Grindelwald not *only* stole
> the wand, he waited, sitting on a window ledge, for
> Gregorovitch to appear, and then he Stunned him, before
> jumping out of the window. I don't know if Grindelwald
> Stunned the wand-maker with the Elder wand or with his
> own wand, but I suppose, by Stunning him, he defeated
> him anyway.
>
> GG could have just taken the wand and gotten away, but he
> waited until Gregorovitch came to the workshop, because he
> knew that he needed to defeat the previous master of the
> Elder wand.

It, The Elder Wand, must in fact be "won" from the previous
master. Just possessing it or holding it does not make one
its true master. It will work to some extent, but not to its
full potential.

One thing has bothered me about the Elder Wand. It is referred
to as "the Unbeatable Wand". If it is truly unbeatable, how
did DD beat Grindelwald? Is "Unbeatable" just a word used in
folklore?, or is it really undefeatable?

Leeann




From justcarol67 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 22:08:37 2008
From: justcarol67 at yahoo.com (Carol)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:08:37 -0000
Subject: Who WAS the True Master of the Elder Wand?
In-Reply-To: <g6sdqi+fk2r@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6td55+22ub@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183936

Leeann wrote:
> It, The Elder Wand, must in fact be "won" from the previous master.
Just possessing it or holding it does not make one its true master. It
will work to some extent, but not to its full potential.

Carol responds:
I agree with this assessment. Grindelwald makes sure that he "wins" it
by Stupefying Grindelwald, not merely stealing it. And merely taking
the wand from the dead Dumbledore, who was no longer its master,
doesn't make Voldemort its master (despite the annoying fact that we
never see the wand failing him; it creates Nagini's bubble and kills
just as effectively as the yew wand until the confrontation with Harry). 

Leeann: 
> One thing has bothered me about the Elder Wand. It is referred to as
"the Unbeatable Wand". If it is truly unbeatable, how did DD beat
Grindelwald? Is "Unbeatable" just a word used in folklore?, or is it
really undefeatable?

Carol responds:
I'm going to hazard a guess and say that, because the wand is
extraordinarily powerful and always "chooses" the victor rather than a
compatible Wizard (Draco is neither extraordinarily powerful himself
nor a murderer; he merely happened to Disarm DD, not knowing the
significance of his action) and because it has passed from hand to
hand by murder, it has come to be *regarded* as unbeatable. (It's also
called the Death Stick, for similar reasons.)

However, the master of the wand is in no sense unbeatable, since he
can lose the wand through trickery or death. And if the wand were
unbeatable, how could Draco, of all people, have Disarmed Dumbledore,
who lost the wand because he took a split second to Petrify Harry. (In
his present condition, having drunk the potion and put on the ring,
his reflexes really aren't what they once were.) If the wand were
unbeatable, it would have reacted as Harry's holly wand did against
Voldemort, casting a spell of its own volition to protect its master.
Similarly, Dumbledore, who claims that his magical skills were a shade
above Grindelwald's, defeated Grindelwald despite GG's being the
wand's true master. Adn DD in the MoM, fighting Voldemort, does not
definitively beat him (though Voldemort resorts to possessing Harry).
They appear to be equally matched; Voldemort's AK's would have killed
Dumbledore, Elder Wand or no, if it weren't for Fawkes and the
animated Fountain of Magical Brethren.

If we look at a hypothetical case, Draco as master of the Elder Wand
against Voldemort with the yew wand, who do you think would win? My
money is on the more powerful, more skilled and more ruthless
Voldemort, who would not hesitate to kill Draco while he was still
deciding what to do or trying to gather his courage.

It's quite possible that the Elder Wand, though undoubtedly powerful
and capable of attracting those who crave power, is distorted into
something greater than it really is. Voldemort, like Grindelwald,
believed the legend. No doubt GG attributed his "greatness" (to borrow
Voldemort's description of himself) as much to the Elder Wand as to
his own power, skill, and intelligence, and perhaps his reputation as
the master of the Elder Wand helped him to gather followers, but he
quite possibly gave the wand too much credit. The legend contains a
grain of truth but is not the full truth, just as Pure-Blood supremacy
contains a grain of truth, which is that Muggle blood ordinarily
contains no magic and therefore not only Pure-Bloods but Wizards in
general are "superior" to Muggles in possessing magical power. But,
like they myth of Pure-Blood supremacy, it seems (to some Wizards)
truer than it is.

Carol, who will be happy to revise these random thoughts based on the
arguments and evidence of other posters




From zanooda2 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 22:46:06 2008
From: zanooda2 at yahoo.com (zanooda2)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:46:06 -0000
Subject: Draco's Hand of Glory /Relatives
In-Reply-To: <g6stur+17bj@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6tfbe+28uh@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183937

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister" 
<gbannister10 at ...> wrote:
 
> I would agree that this would be the normal relationship. As an 
> example, when I was a kid, my grandmother had two surviving sisters. 
> I knew as a seven or eight year old that they were my great-aunts.

zanooda:

Thank you for the explanations, everyone :-). I am rather confused 
about all these relationships even in my own language, because there 
it's even more complicated than in English - we have different words 
for all your "in-laws". For example, my husband's brother and my 
sister's husband would be called differently, and I can never remember 
which one is which :-)! To return to HP - I know now that Walburga 
Black was Draco Malfoy's great-aunt, not his grandmother.


> Geoff wrote:

> Anyway, in the UK, the suffix "in-law" is only used in conjunction 
> with "sister' "brother', "son" or "daughter".


zanooda:

Carol says that my husband's grandmother is my grandmother-in-law. So 
there :-)!






From montavilla47 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 31 23:08:31 2008
From: montavilla47 at yahoo.com (montavilla47)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:08:31 -0000
Subject: Who WAS the True Master of the Elder Wand?
In-Reply-To: <g6td55+22ub@eGroups.com>
Message-ID: <g6tglf+8mkf@eGroups.com>

No: HPFGUIDX 183938

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>
> Leeann wrote:
> > It, The Elder Wand, must in fact be "won" from the previous master.
> Just possessing it or holding it does not make one its true master. It
> will work to some extent, but not to its full potential.
> 
> Carol responds:
> I agree with this assessment. Grindelwald makes sure that he "wins" it
> by Stupefying Grindelwald, not merely stealing it. And merely taking
> the wand from the dead Dumbledore, who was no longer its master,
> doesn't make Voldemort its master (despite the annoying fact that we
> never see the wand failing him; it creates Nagini's bubble and kills
> just as effectively as the yew wand until the confrontation with Harry). 

Montavilla47:
It's funny, but thinking about that image of the "laughing boy" waiting
at the window sill to stun Gregorovich really made me see Grindelwald
as not-much in the Evil Overlord department.  To be entirely honest, 
he sort of reminded me of Harpo Marx.  I mean, that's the kind of 
thing Harpo would do, isn't it?

Bear with me, because I actually have a point.  I just realized with
Carol's rundown of the Elder Wand (more myth than reality) that it 
makes a decent metaphor for the arch-villains in general.  None of 
them is really that scary by the end of DH.   

But they have these reputations as unbeatable.  Well, neither of them
was--and we never even saw anybody put up a decent fight with 
Voldemort and lose.  

I wonder if that was deliberate--it that was the
real reason we see James wandless--to deflate Voldemort as a 
scary villain.  Wouldn't he be more scary if James had actually
tried to fight him off?