[the_old_crowd] My husband had a Snapethought (and an OT story)

[Catherine Coleman]

In message <bg6hob+ge3v at ...>, Amanda <editor at ...> writes
>Jan has gotten through the pensieve scene. And his basic take is that
>James was your basic BMOC (big man on campus), a jock, like the guy
>that walks around with a football under his arm. Yeah, I got that
>much. But the thing I missed was what he considered the obvious
>parallel to Snape's being taunted--not Harry in the graveyard, but
>the DEs at the World Cup. Down to the same spell, he said, and he's
>likely correct; the Robertsons were held in midair and at one point,
>the Mrs. was flipped upside down.
>
>I had completely missed this, and found it chilling, especially the
>similarity of treatment of the victim. I'm at work now, can't analyze
>much, but I was stunned that I'd totally missed this and wanted to
>get other thoughts. Thoughts?
>
>~Amanda

I had a similar thought, but it was almost an aside - in message # 201, 
I said:

"Even the Death Eaters left the
muggles' underwear on (I hope). Another thought - anyone think that
this is where the Death Eaters got the idea from in the first place?"

I haven't really thought about it much more beyond that - but it makes 
sense in a way.  If Snape was hanging out with a bunch of students who 
became Death Eaters, and if any of them witnessed this scene, then it is 
possible they remembered and copied it.

But yes, chilling in the extreme.  I was really unhappy about the 
parallels it is impossible not to draw between James and some of the 
more unpleasant characters in the books.

Now, a wee little OT story, which had me in stitches when I first read 
it....

Many of you know that I moved house recently (hence little or no 
Internet time and pulling out of Nimbus at the last minute, which was 
very frustrating).  Anyway, I've moved to a tiny little village in 
Norfolk which is in between one largish village, Shipdham, and a very 
small town, Watton (it would take you two minutes to walk down the High 
Street).  That's all the background you need.  Anyway, the previous 
occupants of our house left us a pile of local magazines and newspapers 
to give us some local flavour, including a monthly paper, "The Wayland 
News".- it's the kind of paper which has headlines such as "Afternoon 
Tea", "Stools",  "Thank you from Doreen",  "Organ Recital at St Mary's, 
Watton", "Norfolk Squit" and "Cancelled! St. Mary's Church Hobbies 
Exhibition", so I'm pretty sure that the Leaky Cauldron would not have 
picked this up (Heidi, I apologise if you did!), so here is a snippet:

"It's not often you get a film star coming along to a local carnival, 
but the BBC Norfolk website has friends in high places.  That's how we 
got Chris Rankin, who plays Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter films, to 
come down to answer questions from the crowd about his forthcoming 
movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Chris said how pleased he was to be in Watton for the day, "It's nice to 
come and do something outside of Dereham.  I've done a lot of public 
appearances around my village of Shipdham but never come to Watton 
before so it's great to be here."  "

Bear in mind that Watton is only about *Four Miles* away from Shipdham, 
and that Shipdham probably has a couple of pubs, a village hall and that 
is it.  He must be a favourite guest judge at all those village fetes.

Catherine, sick of jam making, and missing London (kind of)