Son of son of son of chapter 4 discussion...

[Catlady (Rita Prince]

No: HPFGUIDX 187866

Alla discussed PS/SS Chapter 4 in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187843> but everything I thought of saying in that discussion has already been posted by other people.

Potioncat wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187854>:

<< We get a nice progression as the story unfolds. Hagrid carries Baby Harry from the ruins of the house to the Dursleys'. Hagrid takes Harry from the rock to the WW. Hagrid carries Harry from the Dursleys during the 7 Potters. Hagrid carries Harry's "body" to the castle. He also carries DD's remains to the mausoleum. >>

He also takes the first-years in boats to their first entry into Hogwarts Castle. 

*Those* are the keys of which Hagrid is the Keeper, not those clunky iron things invented by Muggles. (Wizarding locks, inspired by Muggle locks, are harder to pick because they work by magic rather than by tumblers.) I think it was Hans Andreas who pointed this out.

Steve bboyminn wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187857>:

<< What if the Dursley's were religious nut who had endoctrinated Harry, and he refused on religious ground? >>

It seems that DD had scoped out Lily's sister's household long enough before Lily's death thar he already had put Mrs Figg in place to observe them. I don't know why he did that. But probably he already knew that the Dursleys weren't religious by the time he put Harry with them. Even if he knew nothing at that time, he knew from Mrs Figg by the time Harry was eleven that the Dursleys weren't religious and that Harry wasn't religious. 

If Harry had objected to magic on religious grounds, DD will have had to put something in his scheme to overcome those objections. I don't think Hagrid could act well enough to pass himself off as Elijah or John the Baptist, a prophet sent by God, but maybe DD could find some other wizard who was a good enough actor while being physically intimidating to the Dursleys.

More questions raised by these answers: 1) Why didn't Harry become religious as an act of rebellion and/or refuge from the Dursleys?

2) What did DD really expect the Dursleys to do with Harry, other than involuntarily providing magical protection? He knew a bit of how awful the Dursleys were. He hoped that they would come to love Harry, for being a helpless baby, and treat him as their own. He knew how they treated their own Dudley, and if he really had any expectation that the Dursleys might possibly treat Harry as their own, what led him to say at least Harry wouldn't be raised as a pampered prince? At least he wouldn't be raised as a celebrity (famous before he can walk or talk! famous for something he can't even remember! He will be better off as just an ordinary kid) is not the same thing as not being indulged and idolized.  

3.Why did DD scope out the Dursleys in advance? Maybe he wanted to check whether there was some way that LV could use them against Lily, maybe by putting them under Imperius to visit the Potters and assassinate Lily and James, maybe by using Petunia's body parts to make anti-Lily potions. Maybe he decided that LV *could* use them and that's why he put Mrs Figg on guard. 

Maybe DD required all Order members to make wills and appoint guardians for their children, and maybe he took it on himself to make back-up plans when the chosen guardians were also Order members (or Aurors or other high-risk professions), so it was not out of the ordinary for him to check who would care for baby Harry if Lily, James, and Sirius were all killed. DH's revelation of just how cold Albus was casts some doubt on this.

Maybe it was only the possible Prophecy Boys, Harry and Neville, for whom he made this effort. Maybe he only did it for Harry, only after he learned that LV had appointed Harry the Prophecy Boy. He had a year from the time Snape told him that LV was targeting Harry and his parents in which to make arrangements. If a year isn't long enough for a house in Little Whinging to go on the market, he could magically interfere ... inspire some suitably located homeowners with a craving to emigrate to Australia and put their English house on the market... As cold as DH showed him, maybe he struck an old widow with dementia so her children had to put her into a nursing home, or turned an old widow into a cat so Mrs Figg could just assume her identity along with her house...

Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/187858>:

<< Regardless of what JKR said off the top of her head in an interview, I can't imagine Voldemort or the DEs in general attempting to recruit Lily. Not only is she Muggle-born, she's adamantly opposed to Dark magic and DEs. ... he knew, thanks to Wormtail, that they were both members of the Order. (Merely joining the Order may constitute defying him once.)>>

We don't know how much of a fool LV was before he died the first time. The characters talk about how good he was at seducing and manipulating and deceiving people, in which case he should have known that trying to recruit Lily or James or Sirius was a waste of time, and any recruitment attempts would have been made by mere Death Eaters, maybe Lucius Malfoy, who either didn't understand how impossible it was, or who valued James's and Sirius's pure blood (for breeding purposes) more than LV did.

That Order members can be recruited by the Dark Side, Peter is proof. 

The offer to Sirius: come on, you know we're your kind of people with your kind of values. Why do you want to side with a bunch of puritan preachers who say you're a bully just because you joked a bit with some Muggle please-men while kindly saving their lives from the wizard they were pursuing and bravely capturing that wizard yourself? You know we're the real good guys because we like jokes and we honor bravery.

Sirius is not tempted by that offer because he would never turn against James, would never side with Bellatrix, and really doesn't like torture, even if he did bump unconscious Snape's head against the roof of the tunnel.

The offer to James: join our team and you can keep that red-haired Mudblood as your concubine. When we kill or enslave all the Mudbloods, we'll spare her. You can save her life and gain many other benefits at no cost to yourself except you should marry a pureblood witch and have at least three children by her, but you wouldn't have to live with her. If you want to hunt dragons or play Quidditch, you could do so whenever wherever you want, with no interface by those Muggle-loving statutes of secrecy.

James would never accept that offer because, first of all, he knows Lord Voldemort is a big liar and probably won't keep any promise to spare Lily, also he would never turn against Sirius or any of his friends, he doesn't want to enslave Muggles, and he doesn't want to demote Lily to concubine.

The offer to Lily: you know we're going to win. You know when we win we're going to kill all the Mudbloods. But we might make an exception for you and spare your life if you help us enough to earn such a reward.

Lily would just laugh nastily at them: "Do you really think that I would fight against my husband exactly when he's fighting to save MY life?"

But some [gullible] Muggle-born may have been recruited on the promise of being an exception to the mass slaughter. When fans asked Rowling (pre-HBP of course) if Snape was a pureblood, she replied that they already knew he was not a Muggleborn because Muggleborns are not allowed to become Death Eaters *except in very rare circumstances*. That made me think that there was an occasion in which a Muggleborn became a Death Eater.

That made me think that the very rare circumstance in which that happened was Peter (I had previously believed Peter to be a pureblood, but then, I had previously believed Snape to be a pureblood, altho' not a wealthy pureblood), a member of the Order willing to betray it in exchange for his life. A Secret Keeper willing to give away the secret in exchange for his life.

Yes, they did send Peter's finger and the Order of Merlin to his mother, which gave me the impression that she lived in the wizarding world, but I suppose the parents of Muggleborns, like Hermione's parents until she Confunded them, know enough about the wizarding world to understand when a bloke in robes Apparates unto their front doorstep and says 'Please sit down. I have bad news.'