Lenore was fledged in Yorkshire, so if you know the dialect, go for it. Think of most of the farmers in All Creatures Great and Small, or Dickon in The Secret Garden. Failing that, think movie Hagrid -- Robbie Coultrane's doing some kind of North/West Country dialect. Brief guidelines: nobbut - only; summat - something; mun - must; cletch - clutch (of eggs); nowt - nothing; sluffed - fed up.
Lenore popped into being as a chance plot point (see an earlier chapter of Book 3), but I'm indebted to Textualsphinx for the idea of turning her into a very observant (and gossip-prone) familiar. In A Decoding of the Heart she creates a wonderful character in Salomé, Snape's pet. Salomé comes up with the euphemism "seeder," as follows:
"Got a lovely big ssniffer... " she offered perkily.
Harry tried very hard to keep his face straight.
"That'ss one of the things they don't like."
"Truly?"
"I'm afraid sso."
"They're mad!" declared Salomé.
"Why?"
Salomé rolled her eyes (or so to Harry it seemed.)
"If the ssniffer's big, the sseeder's big. Ssurely they know that?"
Harry was in serious danger of pissing on the Perriand.
This had me, quite simply, rolling. Not only the thought of Harry in agony over that particular image, but because if animals think about penises, I bet that's exactly how they do. As I recall Salomé came to Snape through Hagrid, too, but Hagrid doesn't get such good press from the serpent. Bit of a perv, evidently. (Well, big -- and I mean big -- lonely guy with no girlfriend, nice flexible, coil-y snake -- you get the picture. Ewwwwwwww.) I've used the euphemism with permission; many thanks to Textualsphinx. If you haven't read Why Slytherins are Sexier, A Decoding of the Heart, and A Letter from Exile..., go find 'em. Now.
'Odin's ravens': Lenore's version of a mild oath. Huginn and Muninn were Odin's companion-messengers.
'Sharp Female' is Minerva McGonagall. And Lenore senses McGonagall's Animagus form -- hence the unease.
I'm not telling you about the Snape Ravens. Yet.
Severus was, of course, reading The Raven by Poe ('-- vainly I had tried to borrow / From my books surcease of sorrow -- sorrow for the lost Lenore'). At least he wasn't reading Donne, for once.
If Lenore seems preoccupied with food and sex, it's because I figure she is. Most animals (including humans) seem to be concerned with three things: food, safety, and procreation (survival, in other words), and roughly in that order. However, while most ravens are omnivorous and have no problem with carrion, Lenore seems to have a preference for fresh. (I wonder if Snape trained her to take it: I can't imagine he'd tolerate feeding her, ah, aged food.)They do not imprint well on humans after three or four weeks of age, by the way, so Hagrid and Snape must have been very persuasive. And a couple other bits of trivia: they mate for life, and can live up to 30 years in the wild or 60 in "mild captivity." (Author resists the temptation to giggle and draw parallels with someone else's "mild captivity.")
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