Sunday Potter Quiz: Luna Lovegood!

In the fifth Sunday Potter quiz posting, I continue our week-by-week march through the series one chapter from each of the seven books, one at a time, in sequence. We’re up to Order of the Phoenix, naturally, and I have chosen the chapter in which we get our first long meeting with perhaps Rowling’s most inspired student character, Luna Lovegood. Enjoy!

Phoenix Chapter Ten: Luna Lovegood

1. True or False? When first Harry meets her, Luna Lovegood is reading a magazine upside down and is wearing a necklace of butterbeer caps and Spectrespecs.

2. When Ginny tells Harry and Neville that Luna is in Ravenclaw, she says what Ravenclaw related rhyme?

3. What extremely rare magical plant did Neville show to Harry, Ginny and Luna?

4. And where did Neville’s great-uncle Algie buy it for him as a present?

5. Who unexpectedly enters Harry’s compartment to see him covered in Stinksap and clutching Neville’s toad Trevor?

6. Who are the Slytherin prefects Ron and Hermione meet in the prefects’ compartment?

7. True or False? Harry reads in Luna’s copy of The Quibbler about how Sirius is actually the false name of Stubby Boardman, lead singer of the wizarding band the Hobgoblins.

8. The magazine also claims that which Quidditch team is winning the League due to blackmail, illegal broom tampering and torture?

9. Who, to Harry’s befuddlement, was overseeing the first years on the train platform instead of Hagrid?

10. Who was the only other student who could also see the strange horses who pulled the Hogwarts carriages?

Essay Prompt-Discussion Topic:

Miss Lovegood’s first name is the Latin word for ‘moon.’ Explore the senses of lunar that are especially apt and those that are deceptive with respect to this remarkable character, e.g., the moon’s illumining glow is the sun’s reflected light that shines in the darkness and the Latin word luna is also the foundation of the English word ‘lunatic.’

Answers:

1. False, no Spectrespecs (185); 2. ‘Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,’ (186); 3. Mimbulus mimbletonia (186); 4. Assyria (186); 5. Cho Chang (187); 6. Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson (188); 7. True (191-192); 8. The Tutshill Tornadoes (193); 9. Prof. Grubbly-Plank (196); 10. Luna Lovegood (199)