strangle hand / slavery / genetics / Mulciber

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

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.