Narcissa / Divorce / Kill Or Not? / Returning With Slytherins?/ Myers-Briggs

Sun Feb 1 23:17:59 UTC 2009

No: HPFGUIDX 185586

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185455>:

<< [Narcissa] also, evidently, shared her husband's contempt for House
Elves (other than Kreacher) and abuse of Dobby >>

It seems to me that the Blacks must not have had a family tradition of
abusing their House Elves, despite beheading them. Because I can't
imagine Kreacher idolizing and adoring people who treated him like the
Malfoys treated Dobby, and I can't imagine Regulus sacrificing his own
life to take revenge on the Dark Lord for attempted murder of a House
Elf whom all his own family abused.

Did Narcissa take up the hobby of abusing House Elves because she had
married into it?

Or was Dobby just so obnoxious to the Malfoys, like Kreacher was
obnoxious to Sirius, that they hated him?

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185439>:

<< Formal divorce is not mentioned but at least two marriages
end in permanent separation: Voldemort's parents and Hagrid's. IIRC,
we're not told of any happy, lasting wizard/non-wizard marriages. But
even where both spouses are wizards, there are various hints that not
everyone lives happily ever after, though murder or turning your
spouse into a yak seem to be preferred over legal dissolution. >>

To which, Sandy replied in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185462>:

<< It would be nice I think to discuss this topic, especially the
angle of how do you think JKR's own life experiences regarding
marriage have effected the series? After all she has been divorced and
also seems to be happily married now. >>

I think that Rowling's presentation of marriage in the wizarding world
was much less influenced by her life experiences than by her reading
experiences. She wanted to give the wizarding world a quaint,
old-fashioned feel, resembling the Victorian children's books that are
still read, with touches of even older things, like wearing medieval
robes. Those 19th and 18th century books that are still widely read in
English-speaking countries were written in countries where legal
dissolution of marriage was almost impossible to get, so that staying
around to be abused, running away to start a whole new life, and
murder were all easier methods of dealing with an unhappy marriage.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185487>:

<< If Harry had become distracted at the critical moment ("Look! A
Blibbering Humdinger!"), if he'd miscalculated about the Elder Wand as
badly as Lupin did when he tied himself to Pettigrew, then Voldemort
might have escaped, and found a way to rebuild his powers.

Eliminating the horcruxes did not diminish the lifespan of Voldemort's
current body -- if he had surrendered or escaped, he might have lived
as long as Grindelwald. The possibility existed, and Harry would have
to have been a fool not to know it. That is where his courage lay, in
taking that risk so that he would not have to kill, and so that
Voldemort could have one final chance to repair his soul. >>

Ethics question: Harry was risking the whole wizarding world, not just
himself. Is it just selfish to risk the whole population just to avoid
tearing one's own soul? Are there situations in which it is more evil
for a good person to avoid doing an evil thing than to do that evil
thing? Like, will I blow up that spaceship full of frightened children
fleeing the plague on Wol III to prevent them landing and infecting my
planet with the plague that will kill the entire human population
within a week? If I had a for-sure way of preventing them from
landing, I could quarantine them in orbit ... but if they don't have
enough air for the quarantine period, I'm still killing them...

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185517>:

<< As someone who shares Harry's ineptitude with names and faces,
I'm not certain Harry could pick even Nott and Zabini out of a crowd
after a year's absence. I probably couldn't. >>

Nitpick: as someone who shares Harry's ineptitude with names and
faces, I think Blaise Zabini is a special case. We learned in HBP that
he was very handsome, the son of a famously beautiful witch who had
buried seven rich husbands, and "a tall black boy with high cheekbones
and long, slanting eyes". Tall makes him easier to spot in a crowd and
very handsome makes him memorable, especially with what I assume to be
an unusual combination of features in  Britain.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185534>:

<< Can you imagine Slughorn and Charlie somehow knowing how to find
the friends and families of all the students who had remained at
Hogwarts to fight? >>

Charlie has a friend who is an engineer at the Wizarding Wireless
Network and has kept his head down so far, but is willing to take the
risk of feeding their audio instead of the official audio into the
broadcasting device? Or who left the WWN to work for the Resistance,
maybe is the one who set up the Pottercast, and knows how to broadcast
a signal strong enough to overpower the official signal?

Laura Kneazlecat54 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185583>:

<< JKR doesn't show us a single Slytherin who's a decent human being
except for Slughorn, who has some pretty profound shortcomings, and
maybe Snape, depending on how you feel about him. >>

Nitpick: Did she show us anything to indicate that Phineas Nigellus
was not a decent human being, other than Sirius saying 'the most hated
Headmaster Hogwarts ever had'? I don't believe that Sirius is as big
an expert on the history of Hogwarts as, for example, Hermione is, but
I'm willing to believe that Phineas Nigellus was much hated, if only
there was anything to hint at it other than Sirius's statement and
Phineas Nigellus's snarkiness. If Hermione mentioned having read in
Hogwarts, A History, that he used Cruciatis instead of detention to
punish minor infractions, or had kids hung up in chains in the
dungeons for getting marks in the bottom quartile of their class... 

Bruce wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185564>:

<< I wouldn't be surprised if there were some schools that sorted on
the basis of the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality
I wonder if JKR knows anything about these, and if they had any impact
on her sorting? Meyers-Briggs breaks people down into 16 different
groupings, and that is divisible by four. >>

This list used to discuss which Myers-Briggs types match which
Hogwarts Houses extensively. Search on 'Myers-Briggs' on this list and
especially at
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups-Archives/messages>. I'd
never heard of the Enneagram of Personality before your post, so I
feel it's less well-known than Myers-Briggs and Rowling might not know
about it either.