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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 185527

> > Magpie:
> > I took the uncertainty to be whether or not it's ALL of their
> friends and family or just some--it's pointing to the number. ,snip>
> 
> Carol again:
> that's your reading, but I don't think you can say "it's pointing to
> the number" quite so definitively. when has Harry seen all these
> friends and families and how could he possibly know who all those
> people are?

Magpie:
Yeah, I get that, but it still makes a lot more sense to me that the 
narrator's saying "wow, it looks like they've brought everybody they 
know with them" than the narrator saying, "Well, it *seems* like 
they've brought their friends and family with them, but then I don't 
know. Perhaps they're acquaintenances or people they met on the 
street, or they don't much know them at all..."

That's a weird thing to say, imo. It makes more sense as just 
shorthand for saying they've brought with them the people the 
narrator's saying they're bringing with them, and there's a lot of 
them. Why suggest these people at all if the narrator's got no way of 
knowing who they are? Especially if what you mean to say is "A lot of 
the Slytherins McGonagall kicked out were with him, and they'd 
brought reinforcements."


> Carol again:
> 
> Let me try just one more time and then I'll let it rest. Here's the
> quote again, this time with a different emphasis:
> 
> "They [Charlie and Slughorn] seemed to have returned at the head of
> *what looked like* the families and friends of every Hogwarts 
student
> *who had returned to fight*, along with the shopkeepers and 
homeowners
> of Hogwarts." 
> 
> These students are returning to *Hogwarts*, following Slughorn and
> Charlie out of Hogsmeade, not returning to the fight. 

Magpie:
Yes, I get that completely. I'm saying I read these students 
returning to fight as including people like Dean Thomas and Cho 
Chang, who were  students who had returned to Hogwarts to fight (they 
were not already at Hogwarts, but had been students), and the more 
naturally pro-Harry students from the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables 
who had left around the same time as those Slytherins. Even 
minimizing their number as "some Ravenclaws" and "a handful of 
Hufflepuffs" doesn't change that for me. They can get reinforcements 
the same way the Slytherins could. Charlie Weasley himself was a 
family member of several former students who returned to Hogwarts to 
fight.

I understand that you're taking "students that returned to Hogwarts 
to fight" to mean the Slytherins, but even if that's exactly what JKR 
meant I don't know why she didn't just name those same Slytherins she 
spent plenty of time singling out as such earlier. I see no reason 
that Harry wouldn't see them as such. It's like she forgot the way 
she'd been characterizing the Slytherins throughout the series.

-m