**Bloody spoilers around here, handle with care**



Yes, I see your point. To be honest, I think that the mother sacrifice is a kind of "escamotage" to explain why Harry is so special. I mean, I can see a lot of parents willing to offer themselves to protect their children from the beast but we don't have other children with that kind of a scar. If parents' sacrifice could do it, it should happen several times.

But I'm with you, the idea is "you are strong because you want to, not because you're better since your birth". :)

Guessing if you can go through my poor english... :/

Though at the same time we have to remember that in real life it is often your birth (/your parents/your upbringing/etc) that does make you "better" at certain things than other people. A poor, inner city black kid in the US is not going to be as good at standardized tests as a wealthy white kid from the suburbs. And that isn't because the former is bad at testing inherently, but because of racism, the effects of poverty, and an environment that isn't conductive to learning that type of material.

And so while I am all for the "it is your who decides your destiny" thing, that really isn't entirely true, and to negate that entirely in fantasy is dumb. Little things in Harry Potter are good examples of that done well: muggle born Hogwarts kids not knowing how to play Quidditch, or what it is; their siblings/parents not having taught them any rudimentary magic (or even just seen it preformed: that has to be a huge advantage, even if we only really see people like Ron fail often as a plot device while Hermione can do anything). The access to that magical community from birth gives you a different sense of the world (not necessarily in a good way all the time - take views of Muggles by most wizards vs someone like Hermione's view) and that can definitely shape performance in both academic/magical learning and in future career/life things.

As a genetics grad student, I have to say that is kind of brilliant. There is a flaw in it, but it's not important. :)

To get into the flaw and a possible work around: The reason Huntington's has the inheritance dynamics it does is because too many tri-nucleotide repeats causes the protein to misfold. There is a threshold to this effect. Below a certain number of repeats, the protein is fine. Above it and the protein misfolding gets steadly worse (and causes on average an earlier onset of the disease). Misfolded proteins essentially poison the cell. Too many of them and they begin to agglomerate and worse they trap healthy proteins as well. Eventually the cells die of these large clumps of proteins that can't be broken down. So the flaw is that having a proteins regularly misfold is more likely to lead to death than magic. :)

However, you could apply the repeat idea to the protein's regulatory element so that expansion or contraction of the repeat region activated or repressed the expression of the gene, essentially turning whether the protein occurs in your body off or on. This would allow the same dominance/quantitative/variability dynamics without the threat of misfolded proteins.

Someone's got way too much time on her hands.

I guess she doesn't have any real-life scenarios to deal with. :-)

AHA! So THAT must be how you can take someone's wizardry away through blood-bending!

You and this woman: write a paper on this, get published, profit???? :D

I like Harry Potter but I am not a fanatic the problem I have is that the series gotten too dark starting from the 3rd Book/Movie.

I will forever love the first 2 because it felt more adventurous or something I love the fairy tale like quality even the darker moments of the first 2 fit with the fairy tale oh and I like Richard Harris' Dumbledore better then Micheal Gambon he felt more wiser and more tolerant and overall nicer

Then the 3rd movie came and all the color is gone its all dark and the characters act like they were not in a fairy tale. I like the Harry Potter's from Prisoner of Azkeban and beyond its just that the magic of the first 2 Harry Potter stories were gone

I mean honestly if Hogwarts was real I will leave after my second year.

Have you read the books? Much longer than the films and the magic is there.

No but I like to especially Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets sadly I am distracted by other stuff (like reading The Hobbit for example)

The books are much better than the movies, in my opinion. The movies do a good job bringing the world to light, but I think some of the characterization (and humor) of the books really get lost in the larger plot and story that the movies tell.
You might enjoy the later books more than you do the movies because while they are undoubtedly darker they are long enough to include important character-building moments, and a lot of humor and light-hearted moments.

I think they're also quite quick reads. So you don't have to worry about spending tons and tons of time on them (even though there are so many of them).

I agree. Apart from the old "books are always better than movies cliche", JK Rowling truly has a great writing style and a unique and "magical" usage of the English language.