Snapedom

Um - wow. Interesting juxtaposition of quotes. I am going to have to think about this a bit more. My quibble, which was that James (though he was almost certainly an Animagus at the time) would have had to go into the tunnel in human form to rescue Sev, is really pretty minor compared to the rest of the essay. What it boils down to, in my mind, is what a couple of people remarked when commenting on mine on 19th-century mores: the authors of the 19th century had a coherent worldview which emerged in the stories they wrote. Rowling does not. She has lots and lots of influences, and she's just thrown them together without any regard for the implications. Sometimes I really believe she never thought about these books at all.

But I really do need to think about what your last comment may imply. It's quite disconcerting, IMO.