No, the reason why Ginny couldn’t go with Harry like Ron and Hermione was that Dumbledore told Harry to not tell anyone but Ron and Hermione about the Horcruxes. Harry refused to reveal it even to McGonagall or to Rufus Scrimgeour because those were Dumbledore’s orders. Nothing to do with age.
Again, not true. By that point in the series, only purebloods were at Hogwarts, which was under Voldemort’s indirect control all year. If Voldemort won the Battle of Hogwarts, the children who were being sent away from there would continue to live their lives in something of a fascist police state, but they certainly weren’t in immediate danger of death (as they would have been in the middle of a heated battle) or personal enslavement, as long as they and their families were reasonably obedient to the Death-Eater regime.
That depends on the game. It would be highly irregular for a football player (either version) to do that… But on the other hand, most chess matches end when one player concedes, and it’s considered a breach of etiquette to drag the game out all the way to checkmate. Maybe the Done Thing in quidditch is just more like chess than it is like football.
That said, though, others are right that the match wasn’t lopsided enough yet for a gesture like that.
Okay, a few other vague thoughts on the quidditch thing:
Possibly there’s a value seen in playing to the best likely score, instead of trying every slim chance to eke out a win. Therefore, you’d have to consider that if you don’t grab the snitch now and lose by 10 points, you might end up behind by 300 points or more later.
Also; was it clear that he was aware of the score when he caught the snitch? From the descriptions of quidditch games, I can see that it might be hard to keep track while playing Seeker.
But we’re not talking about any organized military (or wizarding) operation; the Battle of Hogwarts was pretty chaotic, as I remember it. I don’t think that any of this really applies.
Besides, it never got to that question in the book. It was a simple business of denying agency to 11 to 16 year old kids in a situation where a lifetime of either freedom or enslavement was on the line for them.
Probably have my timeline wrong, but Krum was 18 or so, right? With Hermione waiting on the sidelines, likely wanted the game to end so he could get back to snogging.
FordPrefect – Krum didn’t know Hermione then. He didn’t meet her until he came to Hogwarts for the Tri Wizard Tournament.
Yeah, I guess that was one of Jo’s flaws. Like I said, Quidditch would’ve been awesome without Snitch, although perhaps it could be worked in better? Like it awards you extra points if you get it, but it doesn’t end the game?
Of course that’s how we see it, but probably not how Harry sees it.
As far as money – I don’t think you can conjure up money in the wizarding world. (I think it’s like food). And if you could, it would wreck the economy (Hello, inflation?)
Ah yes, money is one of Five Principle Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration.
-Molly pouring the sauce from her wand – they might already have said sauce. And speaking of Molly, mild mannered? Are you kidding? That woman is a tiger – she could get Chuck Norris to eat his broccoli.
(And Sirius always struck me as a lady’s man – you just know he got all the chicks at school)
Dumbledore creates chairs out of thin air at a Christmas dinner and at the courtroom of Harry’s trial for using magic. They can reverse the process too making them disappear and that is a question the Ravenclaw door asks as a riddle for entry. Where do vanished objects go. McGonagall answers " "Into non-being, which is to say, everything.
As to the kids fighting Genny enters the fight as do other minors. Colin Creevey dies in the battle at 16.
My main complaint is the lazy black-and-white ideas Rowling has.
Harry = the good guy, so he’s amazing at magic, better than Ron at almost everything, rich, brave, clever, a brilliant flier and seeker, etc. Tri-wizard tournament for older students? It’s cool - Harry can beat them all. Hermione is supposed to be a great witch but Harry can normally compete without even trying.
As others have mentioned, Slytherins are 99% evil. It would be great to see Slytherins telling Voldemort to piss off, even having the house as a whole standing up to him (to Voldemort’s surprise) at some point. Why the hell would a school have an evil house?
My second complaint is Voldemort = Sauron.
Evil Guy comes along, almost wins, gets beaten back and “killed”, which actually turns out to mean he becomes disembodied and kept alive by another physical object (or objects) which contain his essence in some way. Evil Guy lies low for a while, during which time everyone thinks he’s dead. Then some wizard (Dumbledore = Gandalf) comes along and realizes he’s in hiding, rebuilding his strength slowly and secretly as a non-physical form, gathering his allies, so the wizard tries to tell people. “Ha ha! Evil Guy is dead, shut up silly wizard!” the people say. Evil Guy grows in strength, becoming more and more open, while people continue to deny it, more and more fruitlessly. Fortunately, in the end Evil Guy loses thanks to someone who is obviously completely unsuited to taking him down after getting pushed into it thanks to bullshit excuses from people who really should be dealing with it themselves.
It was chaotic to some extent, but they were still ordering certain people to cover certain areas of the school. Teachers were giving order to students. It was not just a free for all with kids milling around shooting spells at stuff… which is really my point. I’d rather have a small number of more mature and more reliable people at my back than a large number of unreliable kids.
The fate of those kids isn’t really relevant to my thinking here. They may desire to help, but if I’m tripping over them and being accidentally shot in the back, they’re actually more useful huddled in the basement than up in the thick of it. (Frankly, this applies to a lot of things when kids are involved. Until a certain age, it’s easier to clean the kitchen yourself than it is to get the kids to do it for you.)
Yeah, this bothered me as well, and not just this kid. The three Potter kids are James Sirius, Albus Severus, and Lily Luna. So we’ve got, between them, three Potter family namesakes (if you count Sirius as family), two Harry’s-hero namesakes, and one named after a school friend.
So did these kids have a mother? Sheesh! They couldn’t have managed one “Arthur” or “Fred” or “Molly” among the kids?
At least Ron and Hermione named their kids something new, with each of their initials (Rose and Hugo).
Besides which, the few underage students who would have been a real help, like Ginny, went ahead and ignored the orders and fought anyway. Which the teachers probably knew would happen.
I don’t think the Slytherins are evil. Originally they were just the ambitious kids, the networkers and social climbers, the kids who want to be all they can be. Kinda like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life – he wants to travel and go away to college and then become a big successful person.
And then Tom Riddle came to Hogwarts. And things changed little by little over the years and the Slytherins degraded into a group consisting mostly of snobbish rich kids, elitists who care a little too much about things like your family tree, your social standing and your wizarding blood status… and also a few who really want to go the distance and end up becoming Death Eaters, Tom Riddle’s little clique that turns into a gang of thugs.
That doesn’t mean that everyone who gets Sorted into Slytherin holds those ideals or is evil. Maybe they just want to go along with their families or their friends, and they like the perceived camaraderie of the Slytherins, like joining a fraternity or sorority. But by the time we get to the Battle of Hogwarts, there isn’t time to find out which if any of the Slytherins can be trusted, so out they go.
Yeah, they really screwed up the ending of Deathly Hallows – I wanted to see all the houses sitting together afterwards, helping one another and talking together.
Yeah, that makes sense, though it doesn’t explain why at least one of the Potter kids didn’t have a Weasley family middle name. Lots of kids from the same family have the same middle name, even if all the good Weasley first names were taken.
ETA: Or, heck, multiple middle names. That’s pretty common in Britain. So “Albus Arthur Severus Potter” or “Lily Molly Luna Potter.”
I never understood why Harry had to live with the Dursleys. The chosen one is sent to live in a normal neighborhood? With a family that doesn’t like him? And lots of odd stuff happens all the time? Protection spell or not, word is going to get out about this odd boy and where he lives.
It worked for book’s intended young audience who could imagine themselves in his place, but logistically it was rubbish.
Uh, filmore, that was explained extensively in the books.
I think “Fred” would obviously be taken by George. But I think Rowling said Charlie never gets married, plus if they named their daughter after Luna (which I thought was pretty cool, actually), why not name one of them after Neville? Like I said, I know what she was trying to do, but it was really creepy.
Yeah, there were some decent Slytherins, like Slughorn, for example, Tonks’s mother, and it’s said that Merlin was in Slytherin. I think according to the book, the Slytherin students that fought in the battle came back with Slughorn from Hogsmeade, when he went to get reinforcements.
I think MOST Slytherins are more Machiavellian than anything.
Oh, one other thing that bugged me – shouldn’t there be an “Ethics in Magic” class?
The protection that his mother left in his blood from her death required him to live with family for part of the year. There was also some sort of spell that made him and where he lived “untraceable”.
That’s why the Dursley’s had to leave before he turned 17, that spell would be broken and they would be revealed.
