This is an encore podcast episode originally aired in January of 2018.
Did you know that one of Harry’s classmates apparently vanished between first and fifth year?
I don’t mean “vanished” in the same way that Montague disappeared into a Vanishing Cabinet only to reappear a few weeks later. I mean that she was listed as an incoming First Year in book one but was missing five years later.
Her name is Sally-Anne Perks. She appears on Rowling’s draft of the original forty students — and if you don’t know what that draft is, search on the Lexicon for The Class List. That list isn’t totally canon, since quite a bit of the information on it changed before making it into the books. Sally-Anne didn’t change, however. She was sorted just before Harry in chapter seven of Philosopher’s Stone. Unlike the films, the kids in the book are sorted in alphabetical order.
We don’t hear anything about Ms. Perks again. She never appears in the books. That wouldn’t mean anything, since there are a number of names which show up only once. However, there is another time that the students in Harry’s year are called off in alphabetical order, and that’s in book five. Flitwick calls groups of students to take their practical Charms exam. For example, he calls Hermione along with Anthony Goldstein, Gregory Goyle, and Daphne Greengrass.
When he gets to Harry, the book says:
Ten minutes later, Professor Flitwick called, “Parkinson, Pansy – Patil, Padma – Patil, Parvati – Potter, Harry.” — OP31
He misses Sally-Anne entirely. She should have been called just after Parvati. For some reason, Ms. Perks is no longer part of Harry’s year.
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Commentary
Notes
In the Harry Potter Lexicon Minute podcast you’ll hear the voices of our editors sharing some of the many little things which delight us about the Wizarding World. In each podcast, just a couple of minutes in length, we’ll talk about anything from cool trivia and interesting canon passages to the latest Wizarding World news. We hope you’ll join us! And we’d love to hear from you as well. Feel free to use the comment section on the blogpost for each podcast to post your thoughts.
Special thanks go to Felicia Cano who gave us permission to use her amazing artwork of Hermione reading a book for the logo, which was created by Kim B.
Check out the PodBean app here
And if you want to create a podcast of your own, check out PodBean's hosting service.
Music: "Winter Chimes" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
In the Harry Potter Lexicon Minute podcast you’ll hear the voices of our editors sharing some of the many little things which delight us about the Wizarding World. In each podcast, just a couple of minutes in length, we’ll talk about anything from cool trivia and interesting canon passages to the latest Wizarding World news. We hope you’ll join us! And we’d love to hear from you as well. Feel free to use the comment section on the blogpost for each podcast to post your thoughts.
Special thanks go to Felicia Cano who gave us permission to use her amazing artwork of Hermione reading a book for the logo, which was created by Kim B.
Check out the PodBean app here
And if you want to create a podcast of your own, check out PodBean's hosting service.
Music: "Winter Chimes" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Pensieve (Comments)
Tags: inconsistencies missing mystery