It sounds to me as though this was Dumbledore's choice not to transfigure students and not a legal regulation of any kind.
Actually, the passage you quoted makes it sound like she expected that Dumbledore had told Moody the rules, not his personal whims. "We give detentions," sounds like, "this is what the rules say," not just, "this is what Dumbledore wants."
But Polyjuice has always been a slightly annoying plot-device to me. I think that to be logical the person taking the potion should appear as the person did at the time that the hair was removed, so if the ersatz Moody took a lot of hair from Moody early in the first term, he should continue to appear as Moody did at that time. (Which means that his hair shouldn't appear to grow at all, which is another bit of weirdness.) This means that if you take hair from someone BEFORE they die you should still appear as they did when the hair was cut, regardless of whether they subsequently expired.
The problem with this version is, of course, that if you can transform into the person whose hair you're using regardless of whether they're alive you shouldn't need to keep them alive, as Crouch kept Moody alive in the trunk. (Otherwise why didn't he kill him?)
Why do Bill and Charlie have to go to bed when Ginny is tired?
Because JKR doesn't understand the dynamics of a large family. She is trying to write a large family, born over a number of years, but she can't comprehend that a father wouldn't treat a daughter in her early teens the same as he would treat a son who's almost thirty. (For that matter, JKR hasn't even figured out when Charlie and Bill were born yet; she is currently laboring under the delusion that Charlie is three years older than Percy, which is patently impossible according to the books.) She may love the Weasleys but there are a lot of times when she reveals that she simply does not understand how a big family operates.
Why are the Veela mascots?
While this sounds rather bad, I don't think it's any worse than the leprechauns being mascots. What about them? The theory is supposed to be that they are magical creatures from the country in question. (I wrote about a European cup that had Romania competing and the magical creatures serving as their mascots were Vampires.) It might be a matter of the veela and leprechauns throwing up their hands and saying, "Eh. It's a living." We get people to demean themselves by dressing up in silly, hot suits to be team mascots. It's never really dignified, is it?
I doubt that the common room fires can be used for transportation (or else the point of house passwords would be nonexistent). You'd think they COULD be used for conversations between students in different houses, though, in addition to kids talking to their relatives, heads-of-houses making announcements to their charges, etc. She really hasn't gone to the mat in thinking about the full extent of the usefulness of this device; instead she's only using it when it's useful to Harry, once again. We don't need to see everyone else using it, of course, but hearing about it once, obliquely, wouldn't have been a bad idea.
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Actually, the passage you quoted makes it sound like she expected that Dumbledore had told Moody the rules, not his personal whims. "We give detentions," sounds like, "this is what the rules say," not just, "this is what Dumbledore wants."
But Polyjuice has always been a slightly annoying plot-device to me. I think that to be logical the person taking the potion should appear as the person did at the time that the hair was removed, so if the ersatz Moody took a lot of hair from Moody early in the first term, he should continue to appear as Moody did at that time. (Which means that his hair shouldn't appear to grow at all, which is another bit of weirdness.) This means that if you take hair from someone BEFORE they die you should still appear as they did when the hair was cut, regardless of whether they subsequently expired.
The problem with this version is, of course, that if you can transform into the person whose hair you're using regardless of whether they're alive you shouldn't need to keep them alive, as Crouch kept Moody alive in the trunk. (Otherwise why didn't he kill him?)
Why do Bill and Charlie have to go to bed when Ginny is tired?
Because JKR doesn't understand the dynamics of a large family. She is trying to write a large family, born over a number of years, but she can't comprehend that a father wouldn't treat a daughter in her early teens the same as he would treat a son who's almost thirty. (For that matter, JKR hasn't even figured out when Charlie and Bill were born yet; she is currently laboring under the delusion that Charlie is three years older than Percy, which is patently impossible according to the books.) She may love the Weasleys but there are a lot of times when she reveals that she simply does not understand how a big family operates.
Why are the Veela mascots?
While this sounds rather bad, I don't think it's any worse than the leprechauns being mascots. What about them? The theory is supposed to be that they are magical creatures from the country in question. (I wrote about a European cup that had Romania competing and the magical creatures serving as their mascots were Vampires.) It might be a matter of the veela and leprechauns throwing up their hands and saying, "Eh. It's a living." We get people to demean themselves by dressing up in silly, hot suits to be team mascots. It's never really dignified, is it?
I doubt that the common room fires can be used for transportation (or else the point of house passwords would be nonexistent). You'd think they COULD be used for conversations between students in different houses, though, in addition to kids talking to their relatives, heads-of-houses making announcements to their charges, etc. She really hasn't gone to the mat in thinking about the full extent of the usefulness of this device; instead she's only using it when it's useful to Harry, once again. We don't need to see everyone else using it, of course, but hearing about it once, obliquely, wouldn't have been a bad idea.