[the_old_crowd] Re: OOP: The tragedy of Petunia Dursley

[Monika Huebner]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 22:09:05 -0000, "psychic_serpent"
<psychic_serpent at ...> wrote:

>So why should they treat the boys so differently if they were trying 
>to squash the magic out of both of them?  I think the logical answer 
>would have to be that they're not--

Agreed. It would be highly unlikely that they would use so utterly
different methods to reach the same goal.

>McGonagall tells Dumbledore, in PS, before Harry is left with the 
>Dursleys, that Dudley was kicking his mother earlier that day.  
>(Wasn't he a one-year-old at the time?)  

He was fifteen months old, so he could very well have been walking
(and kicking) his mother. Or wasn't this your point?

>Oh, I think I have a couple of pretty good candidates for what 
>Dudley might have been reliving when he was approached by the 
>dementor, although I think it's a toss-up between the time Hagrid 
>gave him a pig's tail and the Ton-Tongue-Toffee incident.  Although 
>you never know with Dudley--it could have been that he was reliving 
>the moment on his eleventh birthday when his Knickerbocker Glory 
>wasn't up to his usual standards. <eg>

Maybe, but I don't think so. ;-) Maybe he isn't the king at Smeltings,
maybe the students aren't the only ones equipped with sticks... Or
maybe you're right and it's just his diet that was so traumatic for
him that the Dementors made him relive it. <g>

>Maybe it's just me, but I don't see much difference between the 
>scariness of the phrases, "Dudley with a magic wand" and "Dudley 
>with an armed nuclear device."

Lol. You're absolutely right, but every wizard (if he isn't
ostracized) has a wand, and it's much more difficult to obtain a
nuclear device in the Muggle world.

>  I think it might be Petunia as well, 
>which would make it even more unlikely that she'd attended Hogwarts 
>and was expelled, but now that Arabella Figg has been introduced as 
>a Squib, she might be the dark horse candidate here.  Did JKR use 
>the feminine pronoun, "her" to describe this person? 

I think so, but I don't remember exactly, so I wouldn't put my hand
into the fire for it. Arabella could very well be the one.

> Otherwise, 
>Filch might also a possible late-magic-bloomer. ::shudder::
>
>--Barb, who thinks "Filch with a magic wand" is as scary an idea  
>as "Filch with a Bazooka"

Oh no! She wouldn't do this to us, but then, maybe she will. <g>
JKR has surprised me way too often.

Monika