HBP various responses and thoughts

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Amy Z" <lupinesque at y...> wrote:
> I love this so much I have to reuse it.  Bravo, Eloise!
> 
 There was an old man with a beard
Who said "It is just as I feared
 I drank lots of potion
Then swam in the ocean
And now I confess I feel weird."

Amy complained of clunkiness.

Pippin:
I think this is JKR making it easy for her younger readers and non-
obsessive fans. We may not appreciate those adverbs, and references 
to the backstory we could recite in our sleep, but I think they do. I
would have, as  a youngster. It's like the reason kids like to watch
cartoons; all the emotions are telegraphed larger than life, you 
don't have to deduce them from the context. The style is deliberately
pulpy -- and she couldn't get away with half the plot twists if it
wasn't.

Amy:
> Sorry, Pippin, and I'm going to have to eat a flock of crows if ESE!
> Lupin comes true, but I just don't get this:
> 
> >The mystery is the identity of the traitor 
> 
> We know the traitor.  His name is Peter Pettigrew and he confessed
in  detail.  


PIppin:

No, he didn't. The more you read his confession the more gaps
and suspicious areas it has. He mouths like he's been hit with a 
silencing spell  at one point, (and now we know there's nonverbal, 
wandless magic), no one ever explains why he needed to kill all 
those Muggles, no one ever explains *how* he did it -- if Voldemort 
knew a spell that would kill everyone within twenty feet of himself,
don't you think he'd use it to perpetrate a few  mass Muggle killings 
now he's back? 

Instead he's got to resort to blowing up bridges and setting giants 
loose --In the words of the immortal Nero Wolfe, pfui!

The one point where Peter sounds sincere is where he takes
credit for putting Sirius in Azkaban, I'll grant you, but that's
because he thinks *Sirius* is the traitor. After all, if Peter didn't 
out himself as secret-keeper, the logical person to suspect would be 
Sirius himself. Read it again, and see how Peter's manner changes when
Harry finally says he believes Sirius. If Peter were truly the spy,
thiswouldn't change anything for him, he should go right along
with his poor, innocent me act...after all he's kept it up for
a year of spying, why change? Harry hasn't got a shred of proof.

But that's  the point when it all becomes
clear to Peter -- Lupin is the DE, and he'll kill them all if Peter
doesn't play along. Notice that Peter never begs mercy from Lupin.
He knows what he's dealing with.

Just to repeat my position, because Jo deliberately blurrs things,
there are three separate crimes of which Peter stands accused:
a year of espionage against the Order, revealing the Secret to 
Voldemort, and blowing up twelve Muggles. I maintain he is
guilty only of the second, under duress, after he was outed by
Lupin, and that the Muggles were killed unintentionally in a gas
explosion triggered by a missed AK.

We don't really know who held the wand that killed Cedric.
Jo said it was Wormtail, but more than one person can use an
alias.

Amy:
> 
> I'd like to say "time will tell," but I get the feeling that if
Lupin  still looks like a good guy at the end of Book 7, you'll use 
it as  proof that he's so evil and clever he got away with murder. 
:-P

Pippin:
Nope. The theory includes a full-blown confession -- but if it 
happens I fully expect some of his fans to be saying he was confunded
or protecting somebody else. <g>

Pippin