Upon rereading OotP (Spoilers)

[vivien]

Two little things I keep wondering about:
The Pensieve - Snape is using Dumbledore's. Does this mean that the Pensieve is a rare thing, something too powerful or too expensive for just anyone to have? In fanon, they pop up frequently, but I'm thinking now that they are more rare.

Also, blood status. Mudblood is easy, but what are the other designations in canon. Pure blood - is that lineage with no Muggle at all, or merely a child born from a witch and a wizard. If so, then Harry would be pure blood, even with 1/4 Muggle blood. Because that example of pure blood would be way different than the Malfoy version.


One final thing - I never would ever want to get on Hermione's bad side. She's kinda ruthless, no?

I really enjoyed it more totally on this latest, slow reread. I appreciated a lot of the little things more this time.

Oh, by the way, as of Wednesday I'll be in the Land of Slow Mom Computers, and my AOL is being very difficult, so I might not be posting much from now on (I'm at the library, hence the posting - AOL keeps freezing by giving me this white screen of stillness whenver I try to link to any websites. I will be calling today with much grumpiness in my voice, cos I've been having this problem a few days now). Anyhoo, back out into the scorching heat.

Comments

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

Also, blood status. Mudblood is easy, but what are the other designations in canon. Pure blood - is that lineage with no Muggle at all, or merely a child born from a witch and a wizard. If so, then Harry would be pure blood, even with 1/4 Muggle blood. Because that example of pure blood would be way different than the Malfoy version.

The Malfoys and their ilk don't hold the majority opinion, I'd guess. They clearly hold to a combination of wizarding blood *and* social status when determining the worthiness of an individual witch/wizard, so a family like the Weasleys, who are about as "pureblood" as you can be, aren't granted any particular respect by the Malfoys because their social status is fairly low *and* because they're obviously "Muggle Lovers."

I *think* though, that as you say, *technically*, Pureblood has to do with being born to a witch and a wizard (like Harry) and not Muggleborn or half-Muggle. Draco's initial reaction to Harry in the first book would seem to confirm this. He was interested in getting to know Harry, and it seemed to be because Harry was "one of them" (and not as part of some convoluted Death Eater plot that Lucius involved him in), which suggests that Lily's Muggle-born status becomes meaningless where *Harry's* status is concerned...and *also* that James was probably from a fairly high-status wizarding family because otherwise Harry would have just been seen as another low-status, run-of-the-mill pureblood nobody by Draco (which is how Draco sees Ron).

Or I could be entirely wrong. *g*

[mcamy.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And also remember that Hagrid says that there isn't a wizarding family, by this point, who is literally pureblood. So the distinction is more traditional (the number of generations your family has been magical, or something like that) and class-based, by now, I should think, for people like the Malfoys.

[silveraspen]

Yes, indeed, Hermione is dangerously ruthless at times. I've got some thoughts baking along these lines, actually.

On the blood question: in OotP, Harry is referred to at some point (in the fight sequence, but I forget by whom) as a "halfblood." Also, Sirius, earlier in the book, when looking at the tapestry, indicates that the Malfoys have different standards of "pure" blood, and that for them any drop of Muggle blood is too much, but that others aren't quite so strict.

So, I'm guessing that the strict interpretationists/old wizarding families, such as the Malfoy family (and the Black family, except for Andromeda and Sirus, along with a very few others), require that there be no "pollution" of the bloodline by marrying anyone with Muggle ancestry at all, while others don't care so much as long as it's a few generations back and not a frequent occurrence.

[gramarye1971]

Pensieves are definitely common as fanon plot-devices (I'm guilty of it myself), but I'd imagine that they are damned expensive, or fall along the lines of family heirlooms and thus hard to come by.

Blood status is incredibly arbitrary once you get past Muggle-born. Even Malfoy doesn't deny that the Weasleys are a pureblooded family, even if they are 'blood traitors' or whatever the term is. To someone like Malfoy, Hermione's children would probably always carry the taint of having a Muggle-born mother. Even Tom Riddle, a half-blood, singles Harry out for having a Muggle-born mother. The distinction only seems to be clearest if a parent is a Muggle - we don't know if Seamus's mother was a Muggle-born witch, for example, but he's still considered a half-blood.

And yes, Hermione is ruthless. And I love her for it. I do think she needs to be put in a situation where the full consequences of her actions are brought home to her ASAP, but I'd rather have her ruthless than weak.

[lilith-morgana.livejournal.com]

Re: Pensieves - I got the impression that Harry thought the Pensieve was Dumbledore's. But that was probably just me. I definitely think a man like Snape should have one, but they're possibly very hard to purchase.

Nifty invention, I can see myself being the first in line to buy one.