thin skin / list / Horcrux!Stunned!Neville /Harry's soul/orphanage/positives

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Elfun Deb wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3229 :

<< And the other disappointment is a nagging feeling I've always had
that JKR just doesn't "get" characters like Percy, and that lacking
appreciation for his inner struggles, assumes that the overly
sensitive deserve to be driven away with mean-spirited jokes, and then
blamed when they do leave. >>

Alas, that may well be what she believes in real life. The thick-
skinned often consider thin-skin to be a moral flaw like avarice or
cowardice. The Sorting Hat has said that Gryffindors are distinguished
by courage and chivalry, but thick-skin may be part of its definition
of 'courage'. So why was Percy in Gryffindor?

Furthermore, I very much get the feeling from Rowling's interviews in
which the topics of depression or Harry's emotions have come up, that
altho' she has intellectually learned that mental illnesses are
diseases to be medically treated, she still emotionally feels that
they are shameful signs of moral weakness that should be overcome by
willpower. It makes sense to me that she would be no more tolerant of
thin-skin than of having 'had a bad war' (as the Little Hangletonians
said of Frank Bryce).

Pippin wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
old_crowd/message/3241 :

<< I've (snip) never seen a comprehensive list of everything that
needs to be resolved for a satisfactory conclusion. Is there one?
::googles, doesn't find much:: Let's start one! >>

*My* most burning question remains: In the Potterverse, what is a
warlock? I suppose JKR doesn't have an answer, that she just sometimes
used that word instead of wizard because it sounded good. G'rrr.

I'd also like to know what were the 12 OWLs that Bill and Percy and
Barty Jr got, since IIRC we have canon only for 11 OWLs that Hermione
got, but I don't believe she'd get fewer than they did.

If "all the Weasleys" have "more children than they can afford", where
are Ron's cousins?

JKR said that Mrs Figg does a roaring trade in cat-Kneazle cross-
breeds, but who would pay MONEY for a cat-kneazle cross? (Hermione,
but that isn't a whole lot of business.)

There are surely other burning loose ends on my mind, but I never
remember them when called upon.

I can't believe you didn't include:
Why did Dumbledore trust Snape? (and maybe: why did Hagrid trust
Snape?) Maybe you'd add it to << Which side is Snape really on/what
happened on the tower? >> or << Snape and Lupin patronus and/or
boggart >> (SSSusan mentions "DD's trust of Snape" in passing in
3245.) (Kneasy finally mentioned it again in 3307.)

I can't believe YOU didn't include: Is Lupin ESE?

<< Harry/Ron/Hermione/Neville career plans/NEWTs >> They won't need
career plans if they're all killed in Book 7. 

Mooseming wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3265 :

<< If Voldy declares that his final HRX is in an innocent
(unconscious) third party, say, oh I don't know, um, Stunned Neville,
what`s to be done?

Should Neville be killed so that Voldy can be destroyed? Is the
purposeful killing of an innocent ever justifiable? (snip)  the last
HRX must not be destroyed and thus Voldy gets to win this round, at
least until Neville shuffles off the mortal coil. Nothing to stop
Voldy repeating the process with a succession of vessels either! >>

Why would anyone believe anything Voldie says? Is there a test to find
where the Voldie-soul-fragment is? There must be, as you have Snape
using it to find that actually Neville's WAND is the Horcrux, not
Neville.

But supposing that Stunned!Neville were the final Horcrux, surely
there is some way to imprison Voldie with anti-Apparation spells,
strip him of his magic, maybe even keep him Stupefied for the rest of
Neville's life. That would stop him from 'repeating the process with a
succesion of vessels"!

Pippin wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
old_crowd/message/3272 :

<< Harry often errs, especially when he doesn't consider the
consequences of what he's doing. But he has never considered a moral
consequence and thought, "I don't care, I'm going to do it anyway" or
"Serve them right" or "It doesn't matter as long as it's not (fill in
the blank) who gets hurt." >>

Off the top of my head, he thought 'served them right' when he saw by
Ron and Hermione's minor injuries that Hedwig had followed his
instructions to bite them until they wrote answers.

Jen wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3296
:

<< For me, anyway. I could feel little but compassion for Riddle, and
his deprivation cast an even brighter light on Harry's resources. >>

It had almost the opposite effect on me. While I have believed since
CoS that Riddle was born a sociopath, I had imagined that the Muggle
orphanage had been a cruel place which had mistreated him, like Oliver
Twist or such, thus causing his hatred of Muggles. But HBP showed that
the orphanage, while not the greatest home for a child, was not a
cruel place (unlike the Dursleys!). 

Sure, the Matron drank too much and there weren't enough staff for
each child to have a Mama, but they *tried*. The children were allowed
toys and even a *pet* (the pet rabbit that Riddle murdered) and their
annual outing was supposed to be *fun*. A cruel orphanage's annual
outing might have been to a creepy old graveyard to hear a sermon on
Hellfire, or to a garbage dump to do volunteer work sorting out the
paper, tin, and other things for the War Effort.

Parker wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_
old_crowd/message/3315 :

<< But I'm not hearing anything on the positive side here. All I'm
hearing is she's left holes here, there's plot inconsistencies there,
and so on. So I'll throw out another question--what do you *like*
about the books? What does she do well? >>

The posts since you asked the question include mention of the
positives: a richly detailed invented world, characters with human
motivations and human flaws, humor and sarcasm, references to
folklore/mythology/history that we can feel clever for recognizing....