Binns was born sometime in the 1600's and probably lasted till the late 1700's if he passed away at old age. Lumping him in with the other ghosts is a bit of a stretch (two being from Founders times and all that), but he would have been speaking a different variation of English in his lifetime.

 

Binns also seems to be more tied to the past than the other ghosts are aka he has trouble realizing that the students he has are different and seems to possibly refer to them with the names of the last classes he taught when he was alive. Nearly Headless Nick and The Grey Lady on the other hand seem to be more there as neither seem to have problems remembering individual students past or present.

Though this might be due to the fact that the other ghosts have realized that they are dead, but Binns has not yet caught that simple fact.

 

It kinda makes you wonder why Binns really sticks around...

 

What else is he gonna do?

 

Spy on Minerva or Sinistra as they take showers? :awesome

 

But not Sprout???

 

For all we know, he could be spying on Dumbledore while he's taking showers. Though, as Rowling put it, Dumbledore might actually enjoy that.

 

I always just assumed he was a boring person in real life, and had no where else to go after death.

No. Never Sprout. Ever.

 

I had to share this marvelous reply to a review I left on FFN, telling to author that he needs to proofread his work. Among many other things, he misspelled the word "tea".

I have indeed stopped reading after that chapter, because it kept getting worse and my curiosity about how bad it could become turned into disgust at the school system. My only hope is that he is a dedicated troll.

 

- Fics centered around sex. Not love or romance, just sex.

- Slash for the sake of slash.

- Unreasonable bashing. Includes but is not limited to: Manipulative Dumbledore, money-obsessed Weasleys, evil Weasley twins, physically and sexually abusive Dursleys, etc.

- Muggle and magical blending of culture, art, etc. (ie: Harry and pals going to an emo/Justin Beiber concert)

- Harry growing up in the streets and becoming the next Marcone.

- Harry with enough money to buy planets.

- House-elves suddenly becoming a threat to wizards because Harry loves them.

- Hermione's only line being "Language!"

- Ron's only line being "Bloody hell!" or "Blimey, Harry!"

- Exaggerated broadcasting of feelings, particularly characters who are definitely not likely to say anything other than "I will end you, Potter."

- Harry inherits a house with portraits/assorted objects that contain the spirits of the Founders, who proceed to teach him awesome magicks.

- Voldemort being an idiot.

- Harry being smarter than Dumbledore.

- Mind landscapes and super defenses against mind magic.

- Everyone and their mother doing Legilimency/Occlumency.

- Animagus transformations that serve no purpose.

- Vampires forced into the story simply because they're cool and hot.

- Any fic where Harry does something impressive to someone powerful or intimidating and then walks out of the room with a "and with that, Harry left, leaving a stunned silence in his wake."

- Fics where everybody is an idiot except for the main characters.



I have a lot of hate in my heart.

 

That is canon. It only works out because in canon, everyone else is an idiot too.
There are only two ways you can take it: magic is arbitrary and capricious and changes the rules as soon as you figure out an advantage, or the first character introduced into the HP-verse who has a non-humanities degree is going to rule the world pretty soon. Or it's a fairy tale and you're not supposed to role-play it, just gasp in the right places. Ahem.

Old wizarding families have portraits of dead family members, like at Hogwarts. Even if they're not as good as the real thing, canon suggests a Harry Potter who was raised by the Dursleys can benefit immensely by having access to a portrait who is willing to help him. Even if it's not someone who is smarter or more knowledgeable than Dumbledore or even Hermione. The canon protagonist is so clueless evn at seventeen years of age, a portrait of his paternal grandfather could have done him a lot of good. Or his paternal grandmother, Dorea Black Potter, whose portrait should have been hanging in Grimmould Place somewhere (she married into a respected pureblood family, after all, didn't she?).

 

I dunno, a Brutal!Legend style Harry Potter (axe and guitar) would be a pretty awesome thing to read, in my mind.

Facemelting Death Eaters? Firebolt!Deuce?

Still, I think that would be suited better for a computer game than a fan fiction.

 

We are agreed.

 

Freakin' AN's inserted in the text, or smiley or a comment from the author..... I hate that.

 

^
It's okay if it's at the beginning or end of the chapter. But in middle of a chapter is damned annoying for sure. Especially when they make lame jokes in parentheses.

 

I have spoken.

/grammar Nazi

Not that I recall, and the Lexicon has nothing. Presumably he lived through a goblin war, since he's so obsessed with them.

Not sprout? Can ghosts suffer erectile dysfunction?

Sir Nicholas did prove ghosts can become stiff, though...

Huh... I don't believe I've ever seen that one.

Yeah... as was already pointed out, this is more or less canon. I think people need to think of him less as some grand anti-Merlin, and more like what he really is: An angry man using a people's racism against themselves, in order to form a terrorist group. He doesn't live in a palace with a skull throne, he squats in abandoned buildings and his followers' homes. If he's lucky, he can find swanky digs like the Malfoy residence to hang his hat.

He's Osama Bin Laden, with less money, less tactical knowledge, fewer familial connections... He'd be living in a cave if it weren't for his followers, and the ability to use a twig to brainwash/hide from muggles.

Legit. It's supposed to be fairly uncommon.

Rage. It's right up there with Harry buying/adopting/being adopted by a slew of rare magical creatures (shadow wolves and ice tigers, or vice versa, being a prime offender), for no apparent reason, other than looking like an affluent and self-important dick.

On the other hand, for Harry to honestly attempt to become an animagus, only for his form to be nearly useless in magical combat or infiltration (guppy, manta ray, sloth), is a decent change of pace. Not everyone can be a timber wolf the size of an economy car.

As opposed to having an 'uber kewl' animagus form{s} but never using them for anything important, other than the author checking off another item on his super!Harry grocery list. Which is, yeah, annoying.

Sad, but so true.

She and Charlus are not officially Harry's grandparents, but I like to think they are.

 

Wouldn't that be 'typed'?

 

Can ghosts projectile vomit? Because that is exactly what I did when I got that disgusting mental image about Sprout.

True, Ol' Tom was in desperate need of the Evil Overlord -list.

And Harry never did get the hang of it because of his temper, which really does make me wonder how ol' Tom ever managed to learn it seeing as he was as mentally unstable as one could get.

I can see a house elf sort of adopting Harry seeing as how most of them are quite affectionate, even Winky seemed to think that Crouch Jr. was somewhat like her own son.

Or it being an overkill in the form of a nundu or a dragon or something or something cliched like a phoenix. I can sort of accept that one out of a thousand animagi could have as many as two forms if they were of the non-magical variety, but it would require some really good writing to back it up and would need examples of others besides Harry, who had done something like that.

I don't think it's ever mentioned who Harry's other relatives are, be it paternal or maternal grandparents, which is kind of sad. But then again Hermione's parents are sadly left clueless and anonymous and uninformed.

Dan and Emma Granger are pretty much the most common fanon -names for them. And seriously if they actually knew what went on in Hogwarts they would have pulled their daughter out at least after the second year if not the first. Truth be told I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for the shouting match that was bound to happen, when Hermione went to look for her parents in Australia or where ever the hell she sent them after pointlessly wiping their minds or when what actually went on in the school was revealed.

I think Hermione's parents might have actually cut her off from the family after that seeing as she seemed to have adopted living completely in the magical world. At least for me that might have been the last straw if it had been my daughter messing with my memories without my concent.

 

No.

A: If I'd used 'typed' there, my post wouldn't have doubled as a brief quip, and I often try to soften my criticisms with humor...

Or, barring that, at least make the information more memorable.

On a related note, brevity being the soul of wit, I should have left this post at a simple 'No.'

B: The difference between 'spoken' and 'typed,' in this instance, is semantic; the reader (unless they're trying to be a dense twat) easily understands what was meant by 'spoken,' so it isn't necessary to sacrifice the humor in favor of precision.

C: One really shouldn't reply to an accurate calling out of a blatant error with petty nitpicking. It makes what could have been passed off as an honest mistake appear to be willful ignorance.

And so, feeling as though she should cling to anything that resembles her remaining family, she stays with Ron, despite his numerous character flaws, and ends up marrying him (possibly due to an unplanned pregnancy)...

The epilogue makes that much more sense to me, now. Thank you.

 

Are there actually any good fics where Hermione goes to get her parents after the war, but they don't react as gratefully as she expects?

Edit: I know a lot of people hate the idea of other schools besides Hogwarts, Beauxbattons and Durmstrang for Europe, but if you look at the numbers it is obvious that there have to be more schools to handle all the students that exist.

Hogwarts seems to teach students from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The population of England is about 51 million, Scotland is 5 million or so, 3 million for Wales and just over 6 million for Ireland. The rest of the world has many many more, hell China was already pushing a billion people already in the early 90's. In the Quidditch Cup there were probably tens of thousands of Wizards and Witches present, but many more did not show up or could not even get or afford the tickets.

Now the average student number for Hogwarts per year during Harry's time seems to have been 8 new students (5 boys, 3 girls) per house, with a maximum of 10 (5 boys, 5 girls). In Harry's year Gryffindor had Harry, Ron, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Parvati, Lavender and Hermione. Slytherin Had: Malfoy, Grabbe, Goyle, Zabini, Nott, Bullstrode, Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass (Who was mentioned in OoTP and whose little sister according to JKR married Draco later on). The other houses also seemed to have a similar headcount though it is not as accurate. So that means that Hogwarts on average had 32 out of 40 maximum students per year (224 out of 280 maximum students for all 7 years). Those numbers simply do not seem to match the ones of an actual thriving society for a large scale.

So the questions one really needs to ask are: Do the numbers really prove that the Wizards are dying out? How many wizards go to other schools or are homeschooled due to distrust towards the ministry or muggleborn or because of their financial situation? Weasleys were poor and just barely scraped through, but how many wizard families simply could not afford a boarding school? Could you see people like Morfin Gaunt actually going to Hogwarts and getting through all 7 years without murdering the muggleborns? How many potential muggleborns and their parents actually laugh at the Hogwarts acceptance letter and should a professor show up to explain things, how many of them tell the wizards to stick it where the shun don't shine? How many muggleborns actually survived to the age of 11 with people like Lucius Malfoy running around? Because personally I have no doubt that Malfoy could get his hands on the information about new students and with how corrupt the ministry was, I have no doubt he and his buddies would have gotten away with an "accidental" culling every now and then...

So all in all, I believe it is not that far fetched to think that there are many other schools needed for a thriving society, it's just a matter of poor writing for most authors, meaning it's not all that well pulled off.