To kill or not to kill and resolutions of the storylineWAS :Re: Disarming spell

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185500

Magpie wrote:
><snip> Otherwise to me 
> it's like reading the line in HBP that says something like "the next
group was all Hufflepuffs" or to describe a group of kids who show up
to try out for Gryffindor Quidditch and saying "But Harry wouldn't
recognize them all as Hufflepuffs...there must have been 
Slytherins/Ravenclaws/Gryffindors there too." It's just how the
narrator tells us what's going on. Does anyone question that line? Or
any other of the many lines like it? <snip>

Carol responds:

Funny you should ask. I've always questioned that scene for the simple
reason that more students (not counting the Hufflepuffs) try out for
the team than can possibly be accounted for by the number of students
in Gryffindor, which should total about seventy--ten per year per
House--unless Harry's year is atypical. And since his father's year
had only *four* Gryffindor boys, it doesn't seem to be (not to mention
that the teachers' already heavy classloads would be impossible, even
with magic, if the number of students in other years was much larger
than ten students per House. (I also noticed that Umbridge's DADA
class of all Gryffindors suddenly grows to thirty students.)

So, yes. Sometimes we do question the narrator--or rather the
author--when the narrator's unreliability is not a deliberate device
for misleading the reader through Harry's POV.

Carol, very happy to be discussing something other than wands even
though the point is minor!