Prophecy Pub/Less Than The Meanest Ghost/Black Family Tree

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3788 :

<< Snape tells Voldy.
One year later Snape is spying for DD.
Voldy takes no action on the prophecy for almost two years. 
Voldy's interpretation of the prophecy points to the Potters and
Longbottoms and it is this that causes Snape to switch sides. >>

If Snape changed sides because LV was planning to kill the Potters and
Longbottoms, LV must have taken *some* action already, at least to
analyze and interpret the prophecy and check out the birthdates of
either all new babies or all his opponents or all living wizards born
in July (surely his agents inside the Ministy and inside the Daily
Prophet can easily pluck that info from the files), and to decide whom
to target. Because if he hadn't yet decided by 1980 to target the Ls
and Ps. Snape couldn't have turned against him in 1980 because he was
targetting the Ls and Ps. 

LV may have been targetting the Potters for a long time before he
succeeded in killing them. When Harry was born, his parents were
either in hiding or about to go into hiding (from two different JKR
interviews about why Harry doesn't have a godmother), which may mean
they had already survived an attack or that one of DD's spies had
warned him that LV was targetting them (or just that they were doing
important secret work and didn't want to be interrupted). LV's
attempts to find them may have included capturing and torturing,
Imperius'ing, Legilimens'ing, or Veritaserum'ing people who seemed
likely to know something about the hiding. LV may have gotten 'warm' a
couple of times, forcing them to change their hiding place. Once he
had Peter (or Remus) under sufficient control, he may have found out
about the new hiding place while they were still moving in. It may
have been this history of LV coming closer and closer that led DD to
suggest using Fidelius.

<< Did Voldy try a soft approach before resorting to death and
destruction? Is this where the "thrice defied" fits in? And does this
link to Hagrid's comment "Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who
never tried to get 'em on his side before."? >>

Neville is a pureblood, so both his parents were purebloods, so Voldie
would probably have liked to get them on his side, in addition to
enjoying watching them kill their baby in loyalty to him. Lily was
Muggle-born, so presumably he would have required James to kill her as
well as the baby in order to join the Death Eaters.

Dungrollin wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3796 :

<<  A ghost has a mind but no body. (Assumption #2) Presumably a ghost
still has a soul that hasn't passed on to wherever these things go,
since you need a soul to have a mind, and they appear to be conscious
thinking things. >> 

According to Snape's one DADA lesson that we were permitted to see
"[a] ghost ... is the imprint of a departed soul left upon the
earth[.]" That suggests that all the ghost has/is in this world is a
mind and an image, hiser soul having 'departed' to the next world to
wait for himer. In which case, Vapormort is different from a ghost in
still having a (bit of tattered) soul as well as a mind, but no image.
(If he had NO image, how was he able to communicate to Quirrell to
seduce him?) 

So why is Vapormort, with a soul, 'less than the meanest ghost',
without a soul? The ghosts seem to be free to travel at will, as well
as playing Head Polo and making scary noises, and it seems to me that
Vapormort is unable to travel except when possessing a body. Otoh if
Voldie travelled to Britain with Quirrell by possessing small animals
until he possessed Quirrell, how could he talk to Quirrell with small
animal vocal organs? If he left the animal just long enough to speak
to Quirrell, wouldn't he be snapped like a rubber band back to Albania
as he was when he left Quirrell?

<< We never see any of the Hogwarts ghosts using magic, but Harry has
never actually asked whether they can or not. >>

That's something I've long wanted to know. I like to think that Peeves
is afraid of the Bloody Baron because the Bloody Baron is the only
ghost at Hogwarts who can do magic. My only idea as to how the BB can
still do magic despite being dead is that he was killed in some
special magical way.

(Hi, Rebecca, I never thought he might be Grindelwald. If DD
'vanquished' G by turning him into some kind of powerless ghost, why
is Peeves still scared of him? If he's a powerful ghost, how is he
'vanquished'?)

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3808 :

<< Were you aware that Harry's grandfather was:
a) named Charles
(snip)
Thought not.
Well you do now. >>

http://chance.slashcity.net/blackfamilytree.html
(About which I feel some disappointment; I thought it would be cute if
the Black family arms was solid black, or at least a black image on a
black background (which violates the color-on-metal/metal-on-color law
of heraldry, but since when do Dark Wizards care about laws?). Also,
the astronomical naming thing. It perhaps came in with Ursula (Ursus
Minor) Black nee Flint, whose son was named Arcturus (the bear-herder
IIRC), but his sister Belvina and daughters Callidora and Charis
aren't known to me as stars, constellations, planets, or moons.)

I believe that just because there is a Potter on the Black Family Tree
doesn't prove that that Potter is related to James and Harry. Besides,
Dorea (astronomical? connecting to the constellation Doradus seems
far-fetched) was born 1920 died 1977, ie at age 57, which is not -"she
was old and she died"- even in Muggle terms ("They were old in
wizarding terms, and they died" from
http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2005/0705-tlc_mugglenet-anelli-3.htm
)

Besides, I was hoping that James's father was named Claibourne, or at
least Clayton.

(Hi, Lyn, you posted Dorea's age before I did.)

Carolyn wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3815 :

<< So, does this mean that Callidora is the first name of Neville's
grandmother? >>

Neville's grandmother's first name is Augusta. Not only did the Daily
Prophet use it in the first chapter of HBP: << Most seem reassured by
the new Minister's tough stand on student safety. Said Mrs. Augusta
Longbottom, "My grandson, Neville >> but so does McGonagall when
telling Neville to take Charms instead of Transfiguration: "Take
Charms," said Professor McGonagall, "and I shall drop Augusta a line
reminding her that just because she failed her Charms O.W.L., the
subject is not necessarily worthless." 

Talisman wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3829 :

<< I, for one, think it would be interesting to follow the tree both
ways--back to, say, the founder's level, to see if all that snake
hardware at 12GP is there for a reason. >>

If it was *my* Potterverse, all the old Dark Wizard families would
claim to be descended from Salazar Slytherin and would have put his
serpent on their arms. I like a black serpent on a black field for the
Black arms. (In *my* Potterverse, the Malfoys are first among peers,
tracing their pureblood lineage back to 800-something BC via a
millenium or so of generations living on Avalon, and *they* claim old
Salazar to have 'married' into their family, but they still wrapped
his serpent around the sword on their arms.)

(Specifically, I think that the Malfoy dedication to their family
lineage requires selective breeding of Malfoys as much as of
Hippogryffs, and the then-head of the Malfoy family who discovered
Salazar's power and cunning, ordered each of his sisters and grown
daughters to bear a child by Salazar, and arranged marriages between
these children and the non-Salazar Malfoy children, making sure, for
example, that his oldest son's oldest son married a girl who was
Salazar/Malfoy on both sides. Parts of their family tree are tangled.)

<< So why do some people get to claim relatives, and others not? The
Gaunts claimed Salazar Slytherin as their relation, and Hepzibah
Smith claimed Helga Hufflepuff, though she characterized it as a
*distant* relation.
In both of these cases, the relation goes back about a thousand
years, and the blood must at least be traced partially through
maternal lines, accounting for the difference in surnames. >>

I *think* surnames in Britain hadn't been regularized yet in the 990s.
The 'surnames' Slytherin and Hufflepuff would have been epithets given
to the individuals and not inherited by their offspring.

Talisman wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3832 :

<< You know this *relationship* will have something to do with the
REAL reason Snape and Sirius hated each other. 
Let's just revisit the idea that this gives more acid to Sirius's dig
to Snape that 12GP is HIS house (and he's the boss of it :P) >>

We can think that Eileen Prince married the first man she could get a
Love Spell to stick on, because she was pregnant by a married wizard,
specifically Mr. Black, but I don't think JKR will put that in her book. 

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3833 :

<< Difficult to imagine that no-one else shares Slyth blood if the
pool of 'acceptable' pureblood breeders as small as yesterday's chart
indicates. Well, there is one way, but incest is such a nasty word. >>

Dumbledore mentioned the Gaunts' habit of marrying their first
cousins. Imagine, generation after generation of the Gaunt heir and
his sister each marrying their first cousin and each having a son and
a daughter so as to provide spouses for the next generation of Gaunts,
until suddenly Marvolo and his late wife were both only children, so
their son and daughter had no one to marry except each other -- no
wonder Merope preferred a Muggle! 

Nora wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3834 :

<< Andromeda most likely met Ted in Hogwarts, given the proximate
dates and the general pattern in Rowling's world, where we have
several examples of school couples marrying. Now, Sluggy tells us that
all the Blacks but Sirius were Slytherins, thus including Andromeda. I
wonder how she escaped the dominant climate of the House and time to
marry a Muggle-born guy? >>

Maybe he was a Muggle-born Slytherin? Maybe one who was so good at
Quidditch that his housemates forgot to despise him for being Muggle-born?

Kneasy wrote in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/3842 :

<< Simple, really.
Lily with red hair, DD with hair that possibly used to be red -
misdirection; a red herring.
Privet Drive is where his *mother's* blood dwells, which is how the
protection was set up.
But it was James that came from a pureblood line - and if DD could
be connected to that side of the family....  >>

Yes, but if McGonagall knew that James and Sirius were first cousins
or Dumbledore was Jame's great-grandfather, why didn't she argue with
DD's statement that the Dursleys 'are the only family he has left'.