Hokey/Eileen/StatOfSecrecy/HalfbloodSlyths/HBP Book/Wands/Quidditch/HandOfGl

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

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.