Don't you know? He's got a secret fetish D8 he'd spend all his time in there.

 

To be fair to Syed, haven't a few authors actually acknowledged his points(or rather, cherry picked a few) from time to time in the threads?

 

Here's a relatively small point that's been bothering me lately:

why isn't Dumbledore an animagus? He's a Transfiguration prodigy, he understands the Theory (he helped McGonagall when she was becoming one), he is the kind of person who would do it, and seeing how the Marauders (who are, no matter how you put it, students) and Rita Skeeter (who was probably not a great witch) managed to do it, he probably could have done it.

Also, as a broader question, why aren't there more animagi? I get why it isn't exactly taught, but again: if the Marauders and Skeeter managed to do it, it probably is relatively simple: not easy, obviously, but perfectly possible. Seriously, if I went to Hogwarts I would have so given it a try, even I ended up with a boring animal.

 

Why isn't Dumbledore an animagi? Probably because there isn't much to gain from being one and he has better things to do with his time like running a school or stealing from orphans bank vaults.

Same answer for why there aren't very many animagi. It's definitely not "relatively simple", it takes years to sometimes become an animagi. The marauders and Skeeter had good reasons to put in the effort, but most of the time it's simply not worth the effort. Personal skill in transfiguration doesn't seem to count for much either - James was supposed to be pretty talented and Pettigrew was by all accounts shitty at magic, but they both mastered it in a similar time frame.

 

Not many benefits to being able to transform into an animal at-will? Maybe not in peace-time...

 

Not many benefits keeping in mind we're talking about wizards. I doubt there's anything Dumbledore could do through becoming an animagus that he couldn't through other, easier magic. I'm not saying there aren't benefits, just that considering how much effort you have to put in they're not good enough for most people.

 

I agree with both posts above. Comparing what Dumbledore is capable of and the benefits of being a animagus, it seems that in his case, the benefits would be far too low. Really, how much did McGonagall use her animagus after book 1? Not once, if I'm not mistaken. Nor is it mentioned after book 4, when the shit gets serious.

About so few trying it, I think in the likes of this: It would be the same of learning Japanese to a western person. It will be difficult, it will take years and lot of work (and no doubt it will have lots of boring theory), also lots of little details. Unless you were you sure you're going to use it for work/related or you love japanese culture (aka the ideia of being an animal), it seems like a ton of work, for very few benefits.

 

You could probably take that a step or two further as well. If you're going to learn a foreign language, especially one that uses different sounds, the earlier the better, especially if you're still young enough that you haven't trained your ear to the degree that you don't naturally hear any other sounds but that of your mother tongue. (I still can't hear the sound that's between a 'b' and a 'p' in Korean, but my Korean friends swore there was one).

I'd say it'd be the same with being an Animagus. Once you get a firm hold on your magic, there's a window of time in which it's easier to learn to become one. After that, you can still do it, but it becomes progressively harder as your body/magic gets used to working in only one way.

 

Whats everyone take on the Tonks/Remus pairing?

 

I'm divided between considering it Remus' one chance of happiness to kind of creepy age-wise.

 

Disliked it. Tonks is awesome and not remotely compatible with Lupin, who is also awesome in a complete other way, and the age thing is just... To me, this was a major asspull, just to add drama. I think pairing Tonks and Sirius, would make more sense. It still would annoy me the same and even squick me more, but there would more sense in that.

 

Sirius? Thats incest. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks Tonks deserves better than a 40-year old werewolf?

 

I pretty much ignored those parts of the books cause the image of Remus/Tonks messed with my mental image of uber!hawtness Tonks. If Remus was still relevant after POA, then it might have been different story.

 

To be fair, Remus is in his 30s.

And why should it matter that Remus is a werewolf? Regardless of how you feel about them, it should not matter that he is a werewolf.

 

Eh Magicals live to 100+ so I don't think age is relevant.

 

I dislike Lupin/Tonks, as much as I dislike Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione. I don't know what JK bases relationships off of, but nearly all of her pairings were total crap. The only one that I like is James/Lily, but that's because she didn't really give them an love story that unfolded before our eyes and I'm able to make up their story for myself in a satisfactory way. I honestly can't think of any other pairings that I liked even remotely.

Lupin/Tonks, however, is number one on my dislike list, as my opinion of Lupin is lower than low and I feel that for how awesome of a character Tonks was she deserved someone much better. And no, I don't dislike Lupin because he was a werewolf. Rather, I dislike him for his irrelevance after the third book, the continual apathy that he treats Harry with from the first time he is introduced, and the repeated cowardice he displays throughout the series, while using his disease as a crutch. In my eyes, he was a very weak character.

 

Lupin continues to fight for a society that hates him. Not being able to handle interpersonal relationships well is not necessarily a sign of weakness.

 

Completely agree, he is awesome, but he just doesn't seem anything at all like Tonks, I just can't understand how those two could remotely work.

About the incest, isn't Tonks like his second degree cousin? Here we have a more narrow view on incest, cousins aren't incest to me, squick, yeah, but not incest. Like a 40 year old with a 16 year old, very squicky, but not pedophilia, here.

 

You mistake my words. I do not define Lupin as a weak person, but rather a weak character. Should I meet and know him in real life, I would regard him as the person that he is, but as he is a fictional character and supposedly plays a role in the HP story, I judge him so. In accordance, I find his character weak and almost useless. The fact of the matter is that the story could have easily been told without him in it.

Lupin has no particular impact on Harry, does nothing to better Harry's situation outside of teaching him the Patronus (which the DADA professor that year, had it not been Lupin, could have easily done the same without question, as JK clearly want Harry to learn the charm), and seemed to fall back on his illness throughout the series to keep from ever becoming pivotal to the story.

tldr: Lupin is a waste of words, all around, in the HP series.