F&G->minors / Draco's HoG / Voldemort & the Stone / that Irish Folklore site

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Lyn wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/2778
:

<< One, I question if F&G would even consider selling such a thing to
Draco, indeed did they even intend it to be available for sale to
"minors." >>

I have a lot of trouble imagining F & G refusing to sell stuff to a
customer just because the customer is a minor (except where there is
some seriously enforced laws with serious punishment), being as how
they themselves were minors only recently, and that their market
testing indicated that Hogwarts students (mostly altho' not all
minors) are their target audience.

As businesspeople, they don't make money by refusing to sell their
merchandise. That's an argument against refusing to sell to minors and
also against refusing to sell to Slytherins. Malfoy could have had one
of his friends or hangers-on buy stuff for him.

Kelly wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_o
ld_crowd/message/2784 :

<< This was actually a small detail that jarred with me. Ron, I
believe, mentioned Draco's Hand of Glory as though he had had it
previous years, i.e. before Lucius was thrown in Azkaban. But in CoS,
I thought Lucius made it pretty clear that he felt it was an insult 
to imply his son was in the same league as thieves and plunderers. So
how did Draco get Hand? >>

That detail jarred with me just the same, so I made up a story that
Draco had bought the Hand by Owl Order after the CoS school year
began. 

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
old_crowd/message/2805 :

<<  Yet the Stone wouldn't give him a body, nor would it increase his
powers, he'd still be stuck in Quirrell. >>

I assume(d) that he would get all his innate powers back by getting
his body back -- that is, getting a body sufficiently similar to his
own. The only non-innate power I know he had was immortality, and his
graveyard speech in GoF said: "But I was willing to embrace mortal
life again, before chasing immortal. I set my sights lower 
 I
would settle for my old body back again, and my old strength." I
figured that his 'old strength' 'back again' meant all his other
magical powers.

I am not as certain as you that the Stone wouldn't give him a body, a
body sufficiently similar to his own. The Stone is more powerful than
a hunk of meat, an old bone, and a vial of blood.

Red Eye Randy wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/2832 :

<< ( who is quite amazed that anyone actually reads some
of his posts) >>

Well, of course, I read all your posts. Some are utterly excellent.

Red Eye Randy wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/2834 :

<< This link shows you the Irish origins of many of the characters in
Harry Potter. My favorite is Arthur Weasley, the "Red Haired Man" and
"Will of the Wisps" are similar to that clock of Mrs. Weasley. I think
you will see resemblances to Veelas, Thestrals, the Dementor's Kiss,
and the description of the Cave in Book 6.
http://www.irishfestivals.net/symbols.htm >>

I wish you had listed Their Word <==> HP object. Nonetheless, I went
to their site and looked up words and I can't even tell which Irish
myths you think relate to "Veelas, Thestrals, the Dementor's Kiss, and
the description of the Cave in Book 6." Veela -> The Leeanan Sidh? The
Demon Bride? Thestrals -> the Pooka in horse form? But the Thestrals'
hooves aren't on backwards, and when the kids ride them, they don't
gallop into the depths of the sea until the kids drown. Dementor's
Kiss -> The Demon Bride's kiss? The book 6 cave -> the Burren? You
left out the Grogoch's similarities to House Elves, Brownies, and all
the similar folklore beings.

I got the impression that site prettied up Ireland. For example, Wills
o' the Whisp. I already know about Will o' Whisps -- they are marsh
lights that lead night travellers astray so they get stuck and drowned
in swamps (therefore used metaphorically for splendid erroneous
theories devoutly embraced, such as by HP theorists). They are what
the Potter oeuvre calls Hinkypunks, the latter a word I first learned
from Potter. That website says: "The Will-O'-The-Wisps, or fairy
lights, are quiet and helpful. They appear in the misty Irish
mountains to help searchers to locate someone lost in a ravine or
drowned in a rocky pool."

Veelas are a very Real Life part of Slavic myth; the part of their
story in which a Veela compelled to marry the mortal man who stole her
swan skin, and keep his house and bear his children, but if she ever
gets access to her swan skin, she grabs it and flies away, has always
reminded me and Tim of the traditional Selkie stories (and some
listies of Hagrid's mum), but the part in which men who go into the
woods by night see them dancing as amazingly beautiful women and are
seduced into at least being danced to death if not left stuck to a
tree to starve to death, etc, seems to me like stories mothers and
wives make up to try to discourage their sons and husbands from
cheating on them.