You know you want it, baby.

[nemonowan]

M Fnord wrote:

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nemonowan wrote:

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May I point out that Doug inadvertently changing a nickname retroactively is mildly unsettling?

Hazard wrote:

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Not retroactively. I think the Trio just didn't pay all that much attention to Luna, so it's pure luck they noticed the change in nickname just as it had happened.

It's not retroactive, but if you look at the timestamps either there's a date error or something weird is going on:

Doug meets Luna wrote:

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Wednesday, September 18, 1995, 6:15 PM

The kids monitor the Ravenclaw Massacree wrote:

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Wednesday, September 18, 1995, 7:32 PM

Ron notes that people've been calling Luna Shirley for a while now... where "a while" means approximately an hour? I suspect shenanigans.

Not to mention that the Trio are looking at the Marauder Map. Which I don't think shows nicknames (or else Barty Crouch Jr. could never have been confused with his father Bartemious Crouch). That means that the knowledge that Luna's nickname now is Shirley just popped up into their heads, and Hermioned noticed that she doesn't remember when and where she learned that piece of data.
This seems at least a Fidelius-level effect, and that is if it only affects memories. When you think of how important names are in most magical traditions (think Dresden Files, Kingkiller, Terramar, Ananzi Boys, etc) the fact that Doug just changed one by a mere proclamation and the universe accepted it as truth is worrying.
Or else we are reading too much in an innocuous but ambiguous scene. But then maybe it should be corrected to point out that Hermione just read the nickname in the map.