Sirius's player, here. I've been traveling this weekend, so hadn't seen your post until now.
Yes, it's a colloquialism that means raising one's blood pressure (through getting PO'd). Sirius was also making a rather oblique joke about Molly's hair-colour.
Sirius has a contradictory character, canonically. In "Goblet of Fire" he tells Harry, Ron and Hermione that one can judge a man by how he treats his subordinates, yet he is positively *beastly* to Kreacher.
Racism is a generational thing, and for Sirius's generation, the implications of ethnic phrases like that probably don't even occur. In fact, one could even argue that as a wizard he has *no clue* that it's an inappropriate comment. Unfortunately, Sirius, while he is more mature in some ways than the canonical version, also has his blind spots. If you were jarred by it, well, good. It was a deliberate choice that I hoped some people would understand to be an inherently flawed turn of phrase.
We still talk about people "Welching" (Welshing) on debts or being "Gypped" out of a deal, too - and those phrases are equally inconsiderate to the peoples they use as references.
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Date: 2009-02-09 02:16 am (UTC)Yes, it's a colloquialism that means raising one's blood pressure (through getting PO'd). Sirius was also making a rather oblique joke about Molly's hair-colour.
Sirius has a contradictory character, canonically. In "Goblet of Fire" he tells Harry, Ron and Hermione that one can judge a man by how he treats his subordinates, yet he is positively *beastly* to Kreacher.
Racism is a generational thing, and for Sirius's generation, the implications of ethnic phrases like that probably don't even occur. In fact, one could even argue that as a wizard he has *no clue* that it's an inappropriate comment. Unfortunately, Sirius, while he is more mature in some ways than the canonical version, also has his blind spots. If you were jarred by it, well, good. It was a deliberate choice that I hoped some people would understand to be an inherently flawed turn of phrase.
We still talk about people "Welching" (Welshing) on debts or being "Gypped" out of a deal, too - and those phrases are equally inconsiderate to the peoples they use as references.