Who to trust? The more people who know about the horcruxes, the better the chance that Voldemort will find out about the search. If one Auror was captured and spilled his guts under torture, the whole thing would come apart.
Snape repeatedly asks Voldemort for the chance to go look for Harry during the battle. That was when.
There were 2 protections.
The protection offered by his mother’s sacrifice. This never expired.
The protection created by Dumbledore. Only remained in effect while Harry was underage and lived with his aunt.
Grindlewald never operated in Britain. It’s entirely plausible that a bunch of English and French wizards and witches would not recognize the mark of a dark wizard who primarily operated in Eastern Europe 50 years ago.
I stay in touch with several Snape fan journals, and they’re absolutely livid about JKR’s remarks. I watched the interview, and while I disagree with her statement about heroism, I’m not quite sure she meant it to be as negative as some fans seem to be taking it. Any thoughts?
It’s somewhat ironic that, as biased as Rita Skeeter’s book was, her facts seem to have been solid. Dumbledore really did have a sister who almost nobody knew about, and who seemed to have been kept in seclusion and died under mysterious and questionable circumstances. And I’ll bet that Dumbledore didn’t advertise the fact that he and Grindlewald were good friends back in the day.
Of course, Rita interpreted everything in the worst possible light, but I don’t think anything in her book was an outright lie.
Does anybody want to speculate on what house Ollivander the wandmaker was in? Ever since book 1, I’ve suspected he was a Slytherin. It was his comment about how Voldemort accomplished “Great things. Terrible things, but great.” Basically, he was admitting that Voldemort, as bad as he was, nevertheless became a major mover-and-shaker in wizarding society. And then in book 7, we see he is keenly interested in the Elder Wand. You know he’d love to have that wand, even though he knows he’d probably get killed over it. I think he’s an example of a good Slytherin. He’s ambitious and desires greatness, and is capable of recognizing greatness in others, but he isn’t an evil creep.
It seems to me that some characters were put in Gryffindor House mainly because they’re good guys, and not because they actually fit in there. I’ve long thought that Hermione was really more of a Ravenclaw. She’s certainly smart enough. But then, she probably wouldn’t have become friends with Harry and Ron if she was in a different house. I like to imagine that she, like Harry, was a borderline case who could have gone either way.
Then there’s Hagrid. I always imagined him as a Hufflepuff, mainly because he was so loyal to Dumbledore. Also, one of the Sorting Hat’s songs basically says that Hufflepuffs are the students who aren’t brave enough to be Gryffindors, aren’t ambitious enough to be Slytherins, and aren’t smart enough to be Ravenclaws. To be perfectly blunt about it, Hufflepuffs are the burger flippers of the wizarding world, the guys you know are probably going to be stuck in low-paying, dead-end jobs for the rest of their lives. Like Hagrid. Rowling, however, said he’s a Gryffindor. Again, I think she put him there mainly because Gryffindor is the “good guy house”
Lastly, consider Dumbledore. Based on what we learned in this last book, I think he would have been a good Slytherin. Think about it: we know he used to have dreams of greatness, but he abandoned them when he realized that power would corrupt him. And we know that he was really good at manipulating people toward his ends. As for bravery, well, he dueled Voldemort in book 5, but we never heard anything about him directly confronting Voldy at any other time. And it would seem that he put off duelling Grindelwald as long as he could. I’m not saying he was cowardly, but bravery wasn’t his foremost quality. I’d say his best fit would be Slytherin, maybe borderline Ravenclaw because he’s so smart.
Sorry if this was already posted. I read this article http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/19734081/ where the director of OotP discusses the chapter titled “Snapes Worst Memory.” I think he got it all wrong.
Who else thinks that his worst memory wasn’t of what Potter and the others did to him, but that he called Lily “mudblood” and killed his relationship with her? I do.
Honestly I don’t know why she bothered with the epilogue. Other than the bit about Harry finally respecting Snape, there really wasn’t any substance to it.
Eh, I’ve always figured the really interesting parts happen between and after the story. Sure, it may not make for exciting reading, but I’m weird that way.
It seems crystal clear to me. I hadn’t considered any other interpretation until the film. I also think she used this as justification to dump him since she didn’t like the company he kept. Which makes it all even more sad.
Also, she’s recognizable as Harry’s owl. I think it’s in OotP, but they won’t use her to send messages to Sirius when he’s hiding out. She’d be too recognizable flying in and out of his hiding place all the time.
Even if she wasn’t killed right away, she wouldn’t have been of much use to them because she’d lead Death Eaters or Snatchers to whoever she was carrying messages to, and freeing her would put her in danger anyway.
In one of the earlier books, I believe Hermione actually says that the Sorting Hat considered putting her in Ravenclaw, but she wanted to by in Gryffindor.
I think the idea is that Ravenclaws are brilliant, but they are the sort of people who want to stay in a lab-type setting & learn new things and teach, but not necessarily be adventerous.
Gryffindors don’t necessarily have to be brilliant, but they are far more adventerous.
Hermione is brilliant, but once she got over following all the rules all of the time, she was definitely a Gryffindor, IMHO. I don’t think you’d have found a Ravenclaw brewing Polyjuice potion in a girls bathroom, even if they could.
Moderator comment: Note that it is now permitted to open other Harry Potter threads. Be mindful of spoilers, but we don’t need to be as super-careful as in the last week by requiring only one thread.
Good call! I believed Snape loved Lily even before I read the 7th book, but it didn’t occur to me that his “mudblood” comment was why it was really such a horrible memory for him – whereas James and Sirius picking on him probably wasn’t anything too unusual. Makes perfect sense.
I was thinking about this as I felt this book had many more references to God (Christian) than the others. Besides Christmas break, and Easter Break the characters say “Thank God” or phrases like that more often.
For the Goblins, besides the banking, there is also the metal working. Gold and silver smithing, making Jewlery is something that is associated with the Jews. You may also point out that it is associated with Goblins but that just means that the Goblin=Jews thing is yet another thing JKR did not invent.
But what really got me was Bill’s talk with Harry about the Goblins. They can’t be trusted, be very carefull in any sort of deal you make with them, I work with them, so I know.
I mean Bill almost said “Some of best friends are Goblins”. The thing is JKR has never explained the intergration of the wizard and real world. The fact that Christianity seems to be common to wizards, so common that the school calendar’s major breaks are Christmas and Easter. When she realized that all her characters were white some token blacks and a token Asian were thrown in but, no other religion is mentioned. So the ‘goblins=Jews’ idea rears it’s head. I don’t think JKR ment it. I don’t think she put any thought into it.
Remember that this is a school in Great Britain, where the majority of the people are white and Christian, and schools generally take Christmas and Easter breaks. I doubt that she intended any more suggestion about race and religion than that. (Also, I read the chapter about Bill and Fleur’s wedding carefully, just to see what religion if any the officiant would be from, but I don’t think it was specified.)
That’s one thing I liked about the novels; she wasn’t prepared to go deep into the religious angle, so she left it out entirely. It’s a wise choice, and the incidental references to Christian holidays can just be explained by their basically being secular holidays as well.
I think if you concede the author didn’t mean it, then you have to consider the likelihood that you are reading into the book something that isn’t actually there.
I’m not a bazillionaire author of course, but if I wrote a book and someone argued that it was antisemitic, even unconsciously so, I would be hugely offended.