Alasse Irena

 I need help with an important Harry Potter-related question, for fanfiction purposes:

When you put a memory in a Pensieve, do you still hold it in your head, or is it only in the Pensieve now? Dumbledore kind of implies the latter when he talked about using it when your head seems too full of stuff, but I'm not sure...

So yesterday I got up at 5am to watch the Eurovision final, having not gone to sleep until about 1:30 or 2. We intended to go to bed about midnight and get some decent chunk of sleep before the had to get up, but I ended up in an interesting conversation with my sister about the Hogwarts founders. Anyway, with the help of hot beverages and blankets, we watched the thing, and I was eligible to vote in Eurovision for the first time ever! I voted for Israel, Lithuania and Serbia, I think, but Sweden was pretty clever, what with the animations, and we were pretty happy with the win.

As for Australia, we were quite pleased with our entry, and fifth seems like a respectable result for our first Eurovision entry (Sweden and Austria are our favourite countries ever now for giving us 12 points).

An honourable mention goes to Austria, because just as I was saying 'This one's a bit predictable", the piano burst into flames. We chose to imagine that it was a pyrotechnics malfunction, and the piano wasn't meant to be burning, but the pianist was very dedicated to his performance and played on, because it was more dramatic that way.

My brother's birthday is today. We went out to dinner last night (so much delicious Thai food), and midway through, my sister became aware that the elephant shaped candle-holders and scrunched-up napkins could be used to recreate Hannibal crossing the alps. So then she had to use all the dishes to re-enact the battle of Cannae for my mother, and basically hanging out with classics students is an A+ idea.

Here are the important questions we have about Hogwarts, if anyone can answer them:

1) We're told somewhere that Merlin was a Slytherin. Merlin is way before Hogwarts was founded. Is this the wizard equivalent of the thing where totalitarian governments claim their nation totally invented aeroplanes?
2) Castles in north-west Europe so far as we can tell were typically timber rather than stone in the 10th century. Did no-one notice and think to fill in the Chamber of Secrets when they were upgrading to stone?
3) The plumbing is clearly a later addition. Who the hell made sure Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was connected to the Chamber of Secrets when it was built?

There were many more questions, but this is a select few.