"But what I don't understand, inspector..."

[pippin_999]

Richard AKA GulPlum:
<snipping most of a very long post>

Quirrell can't touch Harry, but why are we to deduce that this is
salient, considering few people shake his hand or otherwise touch 
him (the stereotype of the non-tactile Brit has a huge element of 
truth in it).


Pippin:
The handshake is a non-clue as far as Quirrell
is concerned. What it does tell us that a servant of Voldemort 
who is not being possessed can touch Harry, which has
implications for ESE!Lupin.

 However, anyone who was willing to consider suspects other than
Snape would light at once on Quirrell. He was obviously lying 
about the turban, he was the only other character Hermione 
encountered in the broomstick hex episode, (that JKR  had to 
obviously violate one of the rules of narrative technique to keep 
from telling the reader when Harry regained control
of his broomstick is a clue in itself) and  we could deduce 
that the Troll was Quirrell's obstacle and that therefore he did
indeed have a gift with them. We couldn't have guessed that 
Voldemort was actually possessing Quirrell, but we didn't need to 
know that to figure out who the villain was. 


Of course all this is hindsight, as I  read each book  for the first
time completely immersed in Harry's point of view
and don't bother to try to solve the mystery as I read. *Harry* does
not get enough information to figure things out, but Dumbledore 
and Hermione  do, and they always let us know  Then, if you had the 
patience, you could stop and try to solve the mystery, though not 
necessarily using the same clues that they have. 

For example, anybody who wanted to know what was being 
hidden under the trapdoor could have looked on the front cover
(at least in the British edition) and could also have looked up 
Nicholas Flammel in a perfectly ordinary and unmagical library.
Your clue to do that is that Paracelsus, Merlin and the like are
also real life legendary figures.

In CoS when Hermione says, "I've just realized..." and rushes off to 
the library,  the reader has enough information to guess that the 
monster is a basilisk (it petrifies, the dead roosters, Salazar's
interest in snakes). 

She also rushes off to the library  in GoF, which
is the reader's cue that there's enough data to guess how
Rita Skeeter is getting her information. We already know about
animagi at that point and a beetle or insect is mentioned at the 
scene of each one of Rita's scoops.

In GoF, Dumbledore sends for Winky, which tells us he has 
solved the mystery and gives us an additional hint as to who
the impostor is. At that point we have the Tom Riddle grave 
as our clue to young Barty's name. We should have started 
being suspicious of Fake!Moody when he lied to Harry about 
Crouch not being on the map any more. Harry never realized 
that this was a lie, but we should have --You. Can't. 
Disapparate. From. Hogwarts.


Richard AKA GulPlum:
We don't even know that the central mystery in CoS is not the Chamber 
itself; but who's attacking the pupils (and yet more importantly,
how). 

Pippin:
Dumbledore tells us this flat out: The question is not *who*," said
Dumbledore, his eyes on Colin."The question is, *how*..."

Richard AKA GulPlum:
And we have no basis to assume that Ginny is responsible until we're
told.

Pippin:
She's the only character with a diary.  We  also know that only a
Gryffindor can have stolen the diary back from Harry, that the 
thief is not one of Harry's roommates (they wouldn't have had to 
ransack the place) or a member of the Quidditch team (they have 
alibis).  It also can't be one of the basilisk's victims. That leaves
Ginny, along with Lavender and Parvati, among the Gryffs we
know by name.

Ginny is repeatedly mentioned as being distraught, pale, 
sickly, etc.

Richard AKA GulPlum
Perhaps we should see significance in PoA when we're informed that
Scabbers has a toe missing when the kids are in Diagon Alley (or that 
the shopkeeper wonders about any power he might have), but this, 
the first time we're informed that Scabbers isn't whole, is part of
the description of his being run down. 

Pippin:
Ron says he was like that when he got him.

Richard AKA GulPlum:
And the lessons about Animagi only become important in 
retrospect. Unlike Hermione, we don't have information about lunar
cycles to correlate with Lupin's illnesses, so we can't guess at his
condition.

Pippin:
We don't get the lunar cycle info on Lupin. We do get his name,
Remus Lupin, and plenty of people guessed that he was a werewolf
on that basis.

 Scabbers behaves in a very unusual fashion for a rat
in his big scene in Book One, and people did guess there was 
something funny about him even before PoA.

A big part of why people say the Potterverse doesn't work mechanically
is the vagueness about Lupin's transformation cycle, but that's part
ofthe plot. Fergoshsakes, she gives us the answer: "I am able to curl
up in my office, a harmless wolf, and wait for the moon to wane
again."


There you have it. The transformation is controlled by the  waning 
(and waxing) of the moon, nothing else. 

Not elevation, not visibility, whatever Harry thinks. You
can predict it from a chart, as Hermione does, and you could expect
some of Lupin's  absences to occur in daytime, which they do.
Otherwise, how would Hermione have even known about them?

Other vagueness like the number of students at Hogwarts, or the 
day of the week term starts, are not relevant to the plot. Errors
which*are* relevant to the plot, like the wand order screw up, have
been corrected, in fact JKR had to rewrite much of GoF because she
noticed a plot hole. If she didn't care about stuff like that, she
could have saved herself a lot of work.

Pippin