Once more - with questions. part 1

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Barry Arrowsmith"
<arrowsmithbt at ...> wrote:
>
> Second - if Harry doesn't know what his parents and 
> family look like, how come the Mirror does? Harry didn't 
> even know that the other family members shown had 
> ever existed, so how come the Mirror plonks 'em in as 
> buckshee bonus background and classifies them as 
> 'hearts desire'?  Must have one hell of a database in 
> there, puts Google in its place, that's for sure. 

Harry remembers, at least unconsciously, what his parents looked like
(just as he unconsciously remembered his mother's last words), so the
mirror picked their images from his mind. I believe that the other
people shown were images generated by the mirror on the principle
'people of varied ages with family resemblance to Harry' rather than
pictures of real people.

> 
> And why is the inscription back-to-front to the viewer? 
> "'Cos it's mirror writing, half-wit!" came the reply. 
> "Yup. I can see that," says I, "but  why have mirror writing
> on a mirror which would require another mirror to read it?
> Seems a bit redundant to me."

It's not really mirror-writing, as the individual letters are
right-ways round altho' the words are spelled backwards. The viewer
inside the mirror has as much trouble reading the backwards letters
(unless, like my DH, he is too dyslexic to NOTICE that each letter is
backwards) as the viewer outside the mirror has reading the backwards
words.

The Mirror could be a big fake, programmed by DD to show Harry this
videoclip, show Ron this videoclip, show Hermione a videoclip that us
readers didn't get to see; then the picture of Ron older with the Head
Boy badge and the Quidditch Cup would have to be cgi, so the picture
of people who look like Harry could be cgi or real photographs because
DD did know so many people, but cgi or real doesn't make any
difference to DD's scheme. Are you suggesting that DD knew what each
kid's heart's desire was, because it was pretty obvious, or that he
was taking the opportunity to implant desires that were convenient for
him?

The Mirror could be exactly what DD told Harry it is, and still DD put
it in front of Harry as part of a plan to send Harry through those
silly obstacles to confront Voldemort -- such has been suggested by
many people on the other list, a few of whom even suggested that DD
expected Neville to be the fourth in the party, and the Devil's Snare
was intended for him, the budding herbologist, rather than for Hermione.