Reading List

Do you want to do any planning ahead for Saturday? The CCF members on our team are you, me, Dean Thomas, Linus Moon, and Zach Smith. If you have time, maybe we could talk about who else to pick? Thomas will want to picky Ginny Weasley, if she's participating -- I don't know if this is exactly her thing. She's not bad a Charms, at least. I'm not sure if there's anyone Smith or Moon will want -- does Smith get along with anyone at all? there might be someone from his House, though.

Smith is hard to work with. So is Thomas. They're both prickly and difficult, though clever in their own way. I think this will go well if you act from the outset like you expect them to follow your lead. If you get all shy, Smith's going to try to take over and NO ONE wants that!

I'm trying to think about people I'd pick, and I think what we should try to do is think about covering as many areas of magic as we can -- and in particular we should look at where the five of us are weak, and try to come up with people who fill in the gaps. For what it's worth, Adelheid Zimmerman is quite good at Charms -- I think we should try to get her, she'll be overlooked because she's a fostered half-blood but she's quite clever. I wouldn't tell Megan Jones my secrets but she's also not bad at Charms, and Smith might be more civil if there are a few extra girls from his own House on the team. (Maybe.) Neville Longbottom is extremely good at Herbology, and I could see them throwing a Herbology task at us just because it's one of those areas so many students don't care about -- like Astronomy, but I pay attention in Astronomy because I like Professor Sinistra, so we're covered there.

I think we should grab Luna -- we're going to have to solve problems and Luna's mad about three-quarters of the time and brilliant the other quarter. She likes to look at things the other way round, if that makes sense.

If we want someone who can just barrel through every obstacle like a bull under Imperius, that's be Greg.

Are any of us good at Potions? But I think Herbology's more likely to matter than Potions, we simply won't be set up to brew anything at all.

Thanks a lot for lending me 'Pure Hunger.'

You said halfbloods aren't mentioned, but they're there, it's just they're classified as 'purebloods' because they can trace ancestry back to a pureblood wizard. I kept wondering while reading if the idea is that at some point all the half-bloods had married purebloods and then the quarter-bloods married purebloods and after enough generations no one cared anymore so everyone was just 'pure,' or if the idea is that ANYONE who has pureblood ancestry is automatically a pureblood in this world and even Amaranth could actually be a halfblood (they never say anything about her maternal grandparents, unless I missed something, I was reading sort of fast because I wanted to find out what happened next.)

I think whether or not Amaranth is related to Godric Gryffindor she'd surely have been Sorted into Gryffindor. She'd be, like, the token clever Gryffindor who's good at putting together a decent plan, but the Hat looks partly at what you want, you know? And she clearly values courage more than she values her cleverness, even though it's usually her cleverness that saves her in the end.

The author did some good research on living off the land but you know, given that she DOES have a wand she could have used it to hunt, instead of just setting snares. Unless her aim is just TERRIBLE! Although I suppose it might be noticed. The stuff about how food tastes when you're really hungry was dead on, though.