CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Chapter 12: The Pat

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189933


> 
> Questions.
> 
> 1. Harry learning how to produce a Patronus was one of the moments in the book
> when I was so very proud of him. What are your "being proud of Harry"
> moments?

Pippin:
I don't know that I feel possessive enough about Harry to be proud when he does well. But if I did, I think I'd be proud of him for recognizing that Sirius was telling the truth, and for standing up to Sirius and Lupin about Pettigrew. That's for this book. 

For the series, it would be naming his son "Albus Severus", refusing to take Slytherin hostages, and for refusing the Elder Wand even though Ron and Hermione wanted him to take it.

> 
>  2. Why wasn't Harry's happy memory in this chapter enough to produce a
> corporeal Patronus?

Pippin:
Because he still wanted to hear his parents' voices.


>  3. If Dementor can suck a person's soul from them, does it mean that
> Potterverse does not believe in souls' immortality? If a Dementor dies
> somehow, would the soul be released? Lupin tells Harry that a soul is gone
> forever, lost. Where is it lost in your opinion?
> 

Pippin:
It seems that Potterverse souls are immortal, in the sense that they do not age or die, but not indestructible. I suppose the lost soul is absorbed into the dementor that devoured it. Lupin says that if the dementor can, it will turn you into something like itself. Perhaps that is what he meant.

> 4. What is behind Lupin's asking Harry whether anybody deserves the
> Dementor's kiss? Is he hesitant to believe in Sirius' guilt or he is simply not
> a believer in such punishment? Any other suggestions?

Pippin:
Certainly he believed in Sirius's guilt. He accused Harry of wasting his parents' sacrifice by ignoring the threat of Black. He also said that he should have told Dumbledore what he knew about Black, and didn't because he assumed that Black was getting into the castle by using magic he'd learned from Voldemort.  That's not an assumption you'd make about someone you believed was  an innocent man. 

Lupin knows first hand what it's like to lose your humanity, to lose all human memory and sense of self. He took awful chances as a youth, but unlike Fenrir, he never deliberately tried to inflict his condition on anyone, no matter what they had done.

> 
> 5. Whose side you were on when Harry and Ron and Hermione were at odds if
> anybody's?

Pippin:
I didn't think anyone was wholly in the right. Hermione was wrong not to control her pet, and should have given Harry the opportunity to turn in the broom himself rather than telling on him. But Harry and Ron made too much of it. 

> 
> 6. Were you suspicious as to how Hermione is getting to all her classes at the
> time?
> 

Pippin:
I figured there was some magic involved, but I had no idea what it was.

> 7. Please feel free to add your own question.
Pippin:
Lupin mentions finding the boggart in Filch's file cabinet. Do you think Filch asked him to remove it or was Lupin snooping, perhaps hoping to find The Marauder's Map? 

Lupin was clearly covering up something about his relationship with Sirius and James. On your first reading of the story, did you trust  him at this point?

Pippin
thanking Alla for the questions and also  wishing a Merry Christmas to those who are celebrating