Arianna / Thestral/Selkies/Lavender

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 184271

Alla summarized Chapter 28 in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184243>: 

<< [Aberforth] wanted to quit school and care for Ariana, but Albus
insisted that he should finish his education. >>

Of course, in our RL, that is the only adult and responsible position
that Albus could have taken in that matter -- in our RL, there is no
value more important than that all children finish high school. But in
the Potterverse wizarding world, it turned out to be the wrong
decision. Aberforth didn't need NEWTs to raise goats and run a bar,
and he would have taken better care of Arianna than Albus did. If
Albus had been elsewhere, he wouldn't have gotten entangled with
Grindelwald and Arianna wouldn't have died. 'Elsewhere' couldn't have
been his planned Grand Tour - every gossiping tongue would have
condemned Albus if he had left two minors alone at home so he could
sight-see - but it could have been continuing his education by working
for some of those famous pen-pals of his.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184252>:

<< future generations of wizarding children will write "has Harry read
this book?" beside the thestral entry >>

Not beside the entry in the Muggle edition, which says nothing about
thestrals having reptilian scales and skeletal faces, and eating meat,
which is not normal for horses. Indeed, when FB was published, listies
envisioned thestrals as magnificent black Pegasi like the daddy
Pegasus in FANTASIA except maybe with a flowing mane, and that the
invisibility was something the thestral could turn on and off at will.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184253>:

<< why "selkies" is lowercased and "Merrows" is capitalized, I can't
guess) >>

Rowling capitalized words that she thought she had invented and
lowercased words that she thought already existed. I'm more accustomed
to spelling it 'silkie' but American Heritage Dictionary has it as
'selkie', coming from a dimunitive of 'seal'.
<http://www.bartleby.com/61/59/S0245950.html> I also think there's a
difference between changing shape between seal and human versus always
being the shape human from the waist up and fish from the waist down,
but that's just a Muggle opinion.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/184269>:

<< [Lavender] must be a Half-Blood to have such a pet -- I originally
thought that she was a Muggle-born) >>

A witch can have a pet bunny as suitably as a pet cat, dog, rat, or
toad. The aspect (!) that made me think she was Muggleborn was that
she had *believed* the Hogwarts letter that said students could bring
a cat, owl, or toad, and not bought her bunny to school. Even a
Muggleborn should have been able to figure out, in two years, that
Ron's rat and Lee's tarantula weren't breaking any rules. 

Also in PoA, another clue that Lavender was not raised in the
wizarding world is when Miss Trelawney told Harry that he had the
Grim. "He could tell that he wasn't the only one who didn't
understand; Dean Thomas shrugged at him and Lavender Brown looked
puzzled, but nearly everybody else clapped their hands to their mouths
in horror."