HBP various responses and thoughts

[Amy Z]

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.

I can see why she might choose it, but I still don't like it.  There 
are a hundred writers understood and loved by children who write more 
subtly.  

> 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

He didn't.  He just needed to create a big enough explosion that it 
would be plausible that there was no body, and enough chaos that no 
one would notice a running rat.  Or wolf, as the case may be.

> 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 Dark Lord has many weapons.  But how does anything you're saying 
suggest that a different person is the ESE one?  *Someone* knows how 
to blow a big crater in the street.  People used to think it was 
Sirius, and maybe he was capable of it.  Or it could be Peter, could 
be Voldemort, could be Lupin, could be all three, could be every 
witch or wizard who's ever passed her/his Charms NEWT.

I wrote:

> > 
> > 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>

LOL!  OK, folks, this is a binding magical contract (since it appears 
on TOC, after all):  If Lupin confesses to being ESE I will 
personally grovel onlist to Pippin.  After the mourning period is 
over, of course.

Amy Z C