A thought just occursd to me, but Hedwig should likely be showing up sometime soon
@Fencer from your past comments on her, so don't forget her either. It'll be interesting to see if Hedwig gets along well with Taylor, personally I don't see why she wouldn't. Taylor's on Harry's side so that should put her on Hedwig's good people list.
Hm. This presents an
amusing setup.
Owls. They're
owls, yeah? Very owl-y, owls, prone to doing owl-like things. In fact, owls tend to be pretty
good at being owls. They do things like snap their heads around very sharply to look at things, so look with great big eyes that seem to have a laser focus and seem to project a sharp intelligence that if unfriendly is
quite difficult to miss, and generally project a very severe semblance and attention.
Harry, as it happens, is liable to have his owl around him sometimes. That's a thing that happens. He's also liable to have his wife around him sometimes. That's a thing that happens too. There, uh... Yeah, there could be some overlap.
So, imagine one, say, Draco, maybe, or
whoever, really. Want to talk to Harry? When he and everyone else are all eating might be a good time to do it. Wander over, sidle on up to the table... and then Hedwig and Taylor Hebert turn to look in unison.
I think some people might find Taylor and Hedwig to be uncomfortably,
unreasonably alike in some ways.
I can confirm that Linguists are on the "the language is constantly evolving and thus the standards must move with the times" side of the equation. Most linguists have long since accepted that trying to constrain language is an exercise in both futility and frustration and are actively pro-change.
There is distinction between organic mutation and propagation of ignorance, apathy, or stupidity. Yeah, language changes, constantly, to the point that most readers here could upon reflection find there to have actually been some significant shifts even just in the last decade. That is entirely separate from the fact that someone holding a position of authority saying that something is a certain way doesn't make it it "right" by any kind of arbitrary inherent virtue; such someone holding a nominal position of authority on the matter is fallible... and depressingly often either can't be bothered to invest in quality or has been largely set up for failure or at least disadvantage. So too, likewise, the argument that one option has no value beyond usage works both ways, not just in favour of newer contrariness, but some options do the
job of language better than others.
Whether it's a matter of the distinction between making singular and plural nouns possessive, or the Oxford Comma, or if it's the difference between written notation for "its" and it's" like all the homophones for "there" or
whatever, the purpose of language is to communicate ideas, and there are efficient, functional options that get meaning across concisely and without ambiguity, and options that
don't do that. Linguistic options that do language better... are better at doing language, indeed.
If a given word ends in -s and has an apostrophe thrown onto the end of it to make it possessive, is it a case of a singular subject possessing something or a plural subject possessing something? Depending on the word, in some cases, there isn't a clear distinction, nor from the subject being used as a different type of word entirely and changing the
meaning of the communication, all entirely unnecessary ambiguity. It's the exact same with the Oxford Comma and the other examples: one option works well, others work poorly, making them
bad options that, for the sake of doing a good job of the role, don't work, and no amount of contrariness for
whatever reason changes that; the one inflexible rule of language is communication.
Arguments of "lots of people do it" and "it's how I was taught" and the like miss the point. They don't make the position supported a
good option, just one supported.
Why might a given option be taken up, and what does it
contribute? For the sake of a writer improving technical skill, there is a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that.
On the actual topic of discussion, I think Taylor and Hedwig interacting might be interesting because unlike Harry and the other natives, Taylor is used to the idea that person != humanoid, and depending on interpretation, Hedwig isn't Harry's familiar, she's adopted a strange-looking owlet, or is the one sane woman, or... =)
That presents an interesting consideration. This is not a Taylor from even later in her career where in canon she eventually ends up getting closer to individuals such as Dragon, but all the same, the cultural differences could be a not insubstantial factor, and one that might come up... well, all over the place, potentially, honestly.
This is the world of Harry Potter, and she's from Earth Bet.
Taylor is perfectly familiar with the idea of people like Case 53 individuals such as the local psychedelic orange monkey-ish boy with whom she fought alongside early on and found to indeed just sort of be
a person who doesn't look quite the same as her. She likewise has a more unfortunate history with a both less and far more diverged ordinary girl and giant scary monster with a daunting crazed intelligence in Noelle/Echidna, and the hulking
beast of a monster that was Crawler who was, inconveniently, indeed very much a
who and a person, and just one that also happened to be a murderous asshole. Somewhat similar and quite different, too, the man who sometimes was a giant catlike lizard-y fire-spewing monster or the blender-wolf were sort of just normal fact of life for a long time.
But that was her world. Now, she's in some kind of
fantasy land place.
I think Taylor stands to form some quite atypical perspectives out of a combination of ignorance and different, preconceived expectations.
She has already been faced with house elves, who, though quite thoroughly non-human, present a semblance of sort of just being another fantasy race of people around in this fantasy world.
Goblins are a thing, too, though she doesn't yet know it, albeit with the caveat that she probably won't actually be terribly surprised to learn that, even if their preferred wardrobe might make her just sort of shrug and move on. This is, indeed, a
fantasy world, overtly, almost insufferably so, and thus it has human witches and wizards people, goblin bankers in business suits, little house elf people who raise a lot of questions, apparently fae straight out of folklore who are somehow different from house elves and open up a lot
more possibilities, and who
knows what else?!
It turns out, there's even legal recognition of a "magical being" category separate from "magical creature." Though... that is also indeed a
legal distinction.
So, what is Taylor to make of it if presented with other (not even necessarily living) things that seem to be a whole lot more intelligent than "just an animal" and yet not human? If Harry relates to her stories about Buckbeak and his all too typical misadventures, she might reasonably think that, though
she might find it odd, there
shouldn't be anything odd with just talking to the horse-bird like anyone else and expecting it to follow along with conversation even if it's one-sided. Hermione's cat may be around with the girl, too, on a similar note, and Taylor may be a little uncertain what to make of the fact that the cat apparently plotted and schemed Harry's godfather a while back in a complicated heist and intrigue, because, again,
fantasy, it seems, tying into a similar issue of another, more disagreeable cat at Hogwarts that is an assistant to one of the staff or something. Hedwig, meanwhile, and all owls used by wizards, apparently, are likewise far smarter than what she used to consider normal.
If Taylor ends up observing the new students' first Transfiguration lesson without knowing what to expect, I think there's every possibility that Taylor in a position of looking at a cat sitting at the desk with all of the students seated and no human teacher in sight may well just figure that, being a fantasy world, whelp, guess the cat must be the teacher, then, huh? And if the cat shapeshifts... is Professor McGonagall a human who turns into a cat or a magic, intelligent, possibly talking cat that turns into a human?
