I finished the book about a week after it came out due to work and school not leaving me much time. (On a side note, I ordered it through Amazon using the free shipping method and somehow got it the day of release anyway. Apparently Amazon shipped out all copies, regardless of shipping method, a few days before and they were sitting in warehouses until the official release.) I then went on vacation and after coming back totally forgot about this thread. I’ve finally slogged through the whole thing and figured I’d address a few points that haven’t been addressed yet.
[QUOTE=Lilacs]
Did Snape’s portrait appear on the wall in the Headmaster’s office? I don’t remember reading that he was there, and I think he ought to have been. Or, did the school believe he was not an official headmaster?
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
They only put former headmasters’ portraits in the office, so the only time Snape’s portrait would be likely to be hanging there would be in the epilogue, and the head’s office isn’t seen in the epilogue.
[/QUOTE]
As mentioned in the interview with Rowling that was linked to in this thread, but not before either of you posted, Snape abdicated his position, so he doesn’t get a portrait.
[QUOTE=Equipoise]
The only thing that really confused me was that I thought Marvolo Gaunt was an ancestor to Salazar Slytherin, but this seemed to indicate that he (and therefore Tom Riddle) was a descendant of Ignotus Peverell. But so was Harry, so Tom Riddle and Harry were related somehow? Ah, never mind, my brain got fuzzy at some point, so I must have misunderstood. A re-reading will take care of it.
[/QUOTE]
Someone mentioned in the thread how if you go back far enough, all pureblood families are related. However, Gaunt was not an ancestor to Slytherin, he was a descendant of him. He also was not descended from Ignotus Peverell, but from Cadmus Peverell, Ignotus’s brother. (Whether there is any direct descent between Peverell and Slytherin I don’t think is mentioned. Gaunt could be descended from one of them on his father’s side and the other on his mother’s side.)
[QUOTE=Liche]
Minor mis-edit, but Hermione at one point says she has never done a memory charm, even though she did exactly that on her parents. Maybe she forgot…
[/QUOTE]
When I first read that in the book it struck me as odd as well. However, I figured it was a case of two different things mistakenly being referenced in the same way. Since the memory charms mentioned in previous books are the type along the lines of the neuralizer from Men In Black, i.e. they permanently change the memory, I imagine the charm she did was a temporary thing where her parents older memories are still there but short cirucited to the new memory. That way it’s easily reversible without any permanent changes. Rowling later says as much in the interview linked earlier. But you are right that it is a mis-edit since they should have distinguished the two in the terminology, which they didn’t.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
Why did Dumbledore see himself with thick, woolen socks, in the Mirror of Erised? What was the reference?
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
Do you really think Dumbledore lied to Harry about seeing a pair of socks? I’d like to think that he didn’t, and that the whole sock thing was a sign of how he’d reached some kind of nirvana stage by that point in his life. Just a pet theory of mine. I guess we’ll never know.
[/QUOTE]
Rowling has said she finds socks funny. It is also why a sock was the article of clothing used to free Dobby. Dumbledore no doubt saw something else, as has been speculated in this thread.
[QUOTE=Threadkiller]
JKR said that someone will manage magic very late in life in Book 7: who will it be?
How was Harry found with Wormtail as secret keeper
[/QUOTE]
For the first question, she may have been referring to Trelawny, who I don’t believe had performed any actual spells up to that point. Otherwise, it was probably something she mentioned and then changed her mind about (wouldn’t be the first time).
For the second, it was easy. The secret keeper is simply the only one allowed to share a secret, but many people can be in on the secret. In fact, it is impossible for anyone else in on the secret to tell anyone. That’s the nature of the charm. And anyone the secret keeper tells, is effected by the charm as well. So everyone in the old OoTP no doubt knew where the Potters were hiding out. However, only Wormtail had the power to tell others. So Dumbledore and the rest knew where to find Harry.
Granted, as Marlitharn mentions, this doesn’t explain how Ron was able to tell Dobby where Bill’s house was, since Bill was secret keeper of that little tidbit.
[QUOTE=Velma]
I need to go back and re-read the Godric’s Hollow portion. Did Nagini actually live inside Bathilda and make her corpse walk around? For how long? That was pretty creepy.
[/QUOTE]
Yes. Yes. For a few months (I believe the thinking is she died not too long after she did the interview with Skeeter). Yes.
[QUOTE=aktep]
So after Harry separated from Voldemort’s soul: is Harry still a parselmouth?
[/QUOTE]
Nope. (See aforementioned interview.) But I bet he can still say “open” in parseltongue.
[QUOTE=DeadlyAccurate]
Well, Molly Weasley did. I think the main reason is that killing someone rips a part of your soul away. As much as I cheered for her attack, I felt sorry for Mrs. Weasley, because while I’m sure she would do it again in a heartbeat she was likely quite devastated about it afterward.
[/QUOTE]
The impression I got was that she wasn’t out to kill Bellatrix. It doesn’t mention any use of the Avada Kedavra on Molly’s part. Just that she aimed a curse which happened to strike right at Bellatrix’s heart. The Sectasempra curse that Snape used to (accidentally) remove George’s (Fred’s?) ear, and the curse that Umbridge used to scar Harry’s hand through the magic quill were both serious curses that weren’t among the “Unforgiveables”. I think Molly just got lucky with a shot.
But speaking of curses, I agree that Harry’s use of the cruciatus surprised me. Especially since McGonagall didn’t even react. While use of the Imperius curse could be justified by the good guys in certain circumstances, this scene flies in the face of the whole “we are defined by the choices we make theme” prevalent in the books.