>It's really sad that so many people are so generally distrustful of others that they need to know a person for ten years or have them sign some legal document in triplicate before they trust them in their house alone for a couple days.

No, you think about it. The LW wasn't asking to know the visiting roommate for 10 years. But s/he didn't know her for a single DAY--the mother came right from the start. And we're not talking a "couple days"--we're talking at least a week with no end in sight.

I dated a guy named Rob Anderson in high school one summer. He took me bowling. He seemed nice enough, just not very interesting. I hope he didn't devolve into THIS Rob Anderson.

Looking at all these theories, all I'm sure is that no one can say that JKR is predictable, that's for sure.

I expect that Neville will have a huge part in the final battle. But I will go through some serious grieving if he's killed off. He's had such a difficult life and deserves good things to happen to him.

Summer of 66 I think, suburb of Chicago. If you're THAT Rob Anderson, you were on the debate team and we were partners for one tournament.

Hermione's origins in literature or mythology do not, in my mind, support her death in the book. In Greek mythology, the character Hermione doesn't bear any resemblance to this character, and in any event doesn't seem to have a tragic death. JKR is English, and so I suspect if she took the character from literature rather than mythology, she took it from Shakespeare, not from any plays on which he may have taken inspiration in writing The Winter's Tale. In that play, Hermione either really was turned into a statue or hidden away for a time, but either way she is "reanimated" and very much alive at the end of the play.

JK Rowling is a mother, and not a teenager. I really doubt her plan was to kill Harry. And I really doubt she hates him and wants him dead lo these many years later.

Cedric is already one "boy who died." Harry is the ONLY "boy who lived." So nope, he's not going to die unless it's a momentary passage.

o l j b is right that 15-year-olds can be insufferably self-righteous and judgmental. I hate the DARE program for the suspicion and judgmentalism it seems to foster in children. One of my children refused to take an aspirin even when he had excruciating headaches, so paranoid did he become of EVERY drug. On the other hand, this 15-year-old's mother's habit is illegal and could potentially land her in prison. And, as with all major addictions, the very fact that she can't quit ironically means that she really should quit.

Parents HAVE, don't earn, their authority over their children (though some squander their right to have this authority). But teenagers are in the horrible and dangerous position of no longer being children, yet not quite being adults. I'd be sorely disappointed in my children when they were in their teens if they didn't feel comfortable questioning authority, including mine. In this nether world they're old enough to start not just forming but living by their own sense of right and wrong. And living in a haze smoking an illegal drug that could land one in prison is, quite arguably, wrong in most people's books. The boy's insufferable inflexibility in his ultimatum is rather like his mother's insufferable inflexibility in refusing to consider his stance--in other words, it seems to be an inflexibility he's come by through nature or nurture, from her.

So if the boy is going to grow up undamaged by this, it's time for mom to grow up. I just hope she does, especially because I'm reading this barely a week after a woman near and dear to me was convicted of a felony and sent to maximum security prison without telling anyone in her family, leaving her 25-year-old twin sons to figure out what the hell happened to mom???