Seeing is believing

[prillalar]

The hp100 challenge this week is Thestrals. And while I was trying to think up a good idea for my entry, I got to wondering about them.

Hermione says, so we know it must be true, "The only people who can see Thestrals are people who have seen death." It seems from Harry's experience that you've got to see another human being die in front of you. Killing the memory of Tom Riddle isn't enough to do it for him.

Thestrals also have a keen sense of direction. Basically, you just need to tell them where you want to go and they'll take you there.

The like blood and raw meat. Oh, and they're great bony reptilian winged horses.

Some questions:

• What enables you to actually see the Thestrals? Is it some change in your vision? Are there other things you can see now too? Death-vision. Or does the death just change something in your aura that the Thestrals can sense and so they make themselves visible to you?
  
  
• Can Muggles see Thestrals?
  
  
• Why can't Harry see the Thestrals at the end of GoF? There's a scene where they all see the "horseless carriages". (OK, I know the answer to this one is that it's a big continuity error.)
  
  
• Why can't Harry see the Thestrals from the very beginning? Judging from his experience with the dementors in PoA, where he heard his mother pleading with Voldemort, he was right there when his mother was murdered by Voldemort. However, I suppose he could have heard the exchange from an adjoining room.
  
  
• How does a Thestral know where to go when you give it a London street address, like Harry does? It's a place Harry's been before, so perhaps it can somehow read the necessary info from his mind. But Hagrid says, "Once they're tamed, like this lot, yeh'll never be lost again. 'Mazin' sense o' direction, jus' tell 'em where yeh want ter go."
  
  
• Why are their names always capitalized?

Comments

[semielliptical]

You tend to ask questions that send me to my library's shelves to see if any of the HP books are available. Today I got lucky.

Why are their names always capitalized?

Doesn't JKR capitalize the names of most (all?) magical creatures? Opening to a random chapter in GoF, I see "Blast-Ended Skrewt." Though when she's just referring to "a skrewt" it's lower case.

And it's not just creatures - the students are working with Bouncing Bulbs in Herbology, and the Invisibility Cloak and the Quick-Quotes Quill also get capitalization. So I guess it's magical creatures, plants, and objects? I have no idea what the rule is called, but it seems similar to capitalization for grandma or aunt - if I refer to "my Aunt Agatha" or "a Blast-Ended Skrewt" everything is capitalized as part of a proper name, but if I said "I have three aunts" or "the students were walking the skrewts," or "six or seven thestrals," the words are not capitalized.

[semielliptical]

And I just noticed that in this - U.S. - copy of OotP, Hermione says "The only people who can see thestrals are people who have seen death." So perhaps all of this capitalization is different in the U.S. and my comments are irrelevant.

[prillalar]

Interesting -- my Canadian copy has "Thestrals" all through. Now you've got me wondering why the US version changed the capitalization!

But, yes, JKR loooooves to capitalize things. Sometimes when I write, I lowercase them, like "Apparate", because I think they look weird. But I do the same in LotR fic with "Elf", "Dwarf", and "Man".