All Rowling's titles have that retro gee-whiz boy's-adventure air. I have to admit "Half-Blood Prince" isn't as cool as "Philosopher's Stone" or "Chamber of Secrets" or ... well, most of the others, really, but it doesn't provoke the same "You've *got* to be kidding me" reaction as "The Phantom Menace" or "Attack of the Clones," so I'm okay.
In other news, Haruki Murakami's After the Quake, a collection of stories about the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake which killed 4,000 people, is just marvelous. The stories are about people only tangentially affected by the quake, often just people from neighboring regions who only watched TV coverage, and how they go through their daily, quiet, often solitary or drifting lives, pushed just slightly out of course by this tremendous event over in the corner. The stories are really hard to describe--not slow but very careful, lucid, all these details and moments building up to something extraordinary at the end. Quiet moments of connection or disconnection, hope or despair, discovery, humor or joy or sorrow.
I too always thought Petunia is a Squib, and that her jealousy/frustration over being non-magical is what led to her rejection of the wizarding world and marrying someone who's so wholly against it.
And, refresh my memory...what's a veela?
I thought that Petunia and her family, except for her sister, were muggles. And that there was an, "Ooooh, a magical daughter -- cool!" factor in her family that made her hate her sister and other magic users. Admittedly, most of this is probably just assumptions on my part. But she seems to have a level of fear for things magical that I don't think she'd have had if she'd grown up in a magic-oriented household.
I'm with Calli, but I think Petunia's fear of magic is more a fear of all things that aren't exactly the way the neighbors do things. The Dursleys seem militantly average.
The Veela are the blonde siren-type creatures that show up in Book 4.
So, how does a wizarding family know that a child is magical or not? By if the child gets the letter from Hogwarts?
Serial:
And Lily's family being a wizarding family makes a lot of sense. Harry Poter or no, Buttmonkey would NEVER pass up an opportunity to call Harry a Mudblood, like he does Hermione.
I think a wizarding family assumes a kid is magical until proven otherwise. There are probably tests and such. Or, if you're a Malfoy, it's probably, "Hex the maid, Draco. That's my boy!"
edit: no, that'd be "Hex the house elf" most likely.
Apparently. I think Hermione describes getting the letter in the first book. So yeah, I imagine that's kind of a paradigm shift for Muggle families.
Plus, how does it work with the different schools? Do some people get acceptance letters from Hogwarts and Durmstrang and Beaubaxtons?
Her world sometimes makes my head hurt.
"Hex the maid, Draco. That's my boy!"
"Wait! *That's* not hexing!!! That's humping. Stoopid buttmonkey."
