Skip to main content

harry potter - How did Hermione catch Rita Skeeter?


At the end of Goblet of Fire on the train back to Kings Cross the trio are sitting in the compartment when Hermione tells Harry and Ron about Rita being an unregistered animagus. She then shows them the jar with the beetle in it. I am curious to know how Hermione managed this.


I doubt that Rita willingly transformed into an animagus at Hermione's polite request, even if threatened with being exposed as an unregistered animagus.


My thoughts are that Hermione would have had to find her somewhere in the grounds already as an animagus and catch her, but then how does she have the conversation she alludes to when telling Harry and Ron about it on the train? It would have to be a two way conversation I should think, so how could Rita respond if she was a beetle?



I doubt there is anything in canon, but does anyone have a different theory?



Answer




'You're kidding,' said Ron. 'You haven't – she's not–'


'Oh, yes she is,' said Hermione happily, brandishing the jar at them.


Inside were a few twigs and leaves, and one large, fat beetle.


'That's never – you're kidding –' Ron whispered, lifting the jar to his eyes.


'No, I'm not,' said Hermione, beaming. 'I caught her on the window-sill in the hospital wing. Look very closely, and you'll notice the markings around her antennae are exactly like those foul glasses she wears.' - GoF, Chapter 37



... and THIS is the moment when it happened (right after Dumbledore had an argument with Fudge, and then sent Severus Snape and Sirius on their errands in the end of Chapter 36):




'It wasn't your fault, Harry,' Mrs Weasley whispered.


'I told him to take the Cup with me,' said Harry.


Now the burning feeling was in his throat, too. He wished Ron would look away.
Mrs Weasley set the potion down on the bedside cabinet, bent down, and put her arms around Harry. He had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother. The full weight of everything he had seen that night seemed to fall in upon him as Mrs Weasley held him to her. His mother's face, his father's voice, the sight of Cedric, dead on the ground, all started spinning in his head until he could hardly bear it, until he was screwing up his face against the howl of misery fighting to get out of him.


There was a loud slamming noise, and Mrs Weasley and Harry broke apart. Hermione was standing by the window. She was holding something tight in her hand.


'Sorry' she whispered.


'Your potion, Harry,' said Mrs Weasley quickly, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...