COS Chapter Seven: "Mudbloods and Murmurs"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

 

* Collin’s really acting like an obsessive stalker here. I wonder if that’s how Harry appeared to Draco in HBP?

* Ron’s malfunctioning wand actually sounds quite dangerous, but nobody thinks it might be a good idea to replace it. Although OTOH having a lax attitude towards safety seems to be one of the few things about the WW that seems consistent throughout the books (they’ll show it again when Percy tries to stop people using dangerous cauldrons), so maybe I should be thankful that it isn’t just one of these things that changes whenever the plot demands.

* I assume that JKR’s just forgotten to mention the try-outs that every Quidditch team apparently does each year.

* I’m just going to tune out while Harry recaps the rules of Quidditch for Collin.

* Everyone’s not bothering to pay attention to Wood’s new tactics. Remember kids, teamwork’s for suckers! You just do what you want to do!

* Wood is still upset over Gryffindor losing last year. Serves him right for being too thick to have a reserve Seeker, IMHO.

* Note how Wood’s first reaction upon seeing Collin is to jump to the conclusion that he’s a Slytherin spy. Not that he’s in any way biased against Slytherin, or anything like that.

* Remember chaps, looking like a troll = evil. Part-giant, OTOH, = misunderstood woobie. Even though trolls don’t really seem much worse than giants.

* There are no girls on the Slytherin team, just to remind everyone that they’re sexist, and therefore evil. JKR hates sexism, which is why she took care to include so many liberated, independent-minded women in the novels.

* Wood’s “spitting with rage” now. Christ, Oliver, calm down, it’s not the end of the world. Maybe the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams could just play a friendly, or something.

* “Aren’t you Lucius Malfoy’s son?” says Fred, looking at Draco with dislike. Remember kids, it’s wrong to judge people based on their family.

* Is it possible to smirk so broadly that your eyes are “reduced to slits”, or is Draco actually grinning with happiness here?

* I don’t think that Malfoy did buy his way onto the team. For a start, Seeker is the most (i.e., only) important position in the game, and I don’t think that flying on better brooms would compensate for having an inferior Seeker. Secondly, he’s on the team for at least three years, when the Slytherins could easily have ditched him as soon as they’d got the brooms. They’d even have had a good excuse after losing that Quidditch match in “The Rogue Bludger”.

* Lucius seemed like quite a harsh, demanding father when we saw him in Borgin and Burke’s, IMHO, so the thought that he’s pleased daddy enough to make him buy new brooms for the team is probably making Draco grin even more.

* I bet he looks adorable in this scene.

* Now I can’t stop thinking of Lauren Lopez in A Very Potter Sequel. “Don’t worry, daddy, you’ll love me after this! I’ll catch that Snitch, mark my words!”

* Just thought it interesting to note that Malfoy wasn’t involved in the conversation until Ron brought him in. It’s not like he was strutting up and down, boasting about his new broom, or anything like that.

* Hermione’s the one who starts with the personal insults. Really, I think that the good [sic] guys are acting worse than the baddies here.

* If the theory that Draco’s really just happy because he’s finally made his daddy proud is right, then implying that he’d just bought his way onto the team is probably one of the most offensive things Hermione could say. Unsurprisingly, he responds with one of the most offensive things that he could say.

* Draco calls Hermione a “Mudblood”, despite the fact that she’s a Muggleborn, and therefore cannot be expected to know what it means, suggesting that either she’s upset him so much he’s not thinking straight, or that he wants to keep face in front of his teammates by responding to her insults, but at the same time doesn’t want to upset her. If the latter, it could be evidence for some kind of D/Hr ship.

* JKR seems to be expecting us to go “ZOMG Draco’s an evil racist!” suggesting that she’s forgotten why exactly it is that racism’s considered so wrong. I don’t think it’s just that you’re looking down on people for the way they were born – if it were, then jokes about stupid blondes would be considered as bad as jokes about stupid black people. Rather, it’s wrong because minorities often suffer from discrimination (and in many cases have suffered from it even more in the relatively recent past), and racist language helps to reinforce and normalise the prejudiced attitudes which lead to such discrimination. Because we haven’t really see people suffering from anti-Muggleborn prejudice, it’s hard to think of “Mudblood” as a particularly serious insult.

* This, BTW, is why I disagree with people who say things like “Rowling uses the Harry Potter books to teach children not to be racist.” If she were really doing that, she’d show how racism affects people’s lives (cf. To Kill a Mockingbird). What she’s actually doing is taking real racism and using it in lieu of actual worldbuilding and characterisation. We already know that racism is wrong, and we think Draco’s a bad person because his use of the term “Mudblood” is superficially similar to real-life examples of racism; we don’t learn about how racism is bad from its effects on HP characters, because it doesn’t really have any.

* Anyway, back to the actual story…

* Once again, the good guys are the first to use force. Why am I not surprised?

* I think it’s sweet the way Flint dives in front of Malfoy to stop him being attacked. The Slytherins often seem to look out for each other the most (see also Lucius patting Snape on the back when he’s first Sorted). Contrast this with the Gryffindors in PS, who refuse to speak to Harry, Hermione, Ron or Neville after they lose some House Points.

* What’s this, one of the good guys has suffered some negative consequences as a result of attacking someone else? Hold on while I go make a note of this in my diary.

* Again with the clothes! Lockhart’s wearing robes of “palest mauve” today. Harry’s really starting to look rather gay now; given JKR’s fondness for stereotypes (viz. the Finnegans) and inability to write a decent romance (chest monster!), I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find her way of showing homosexuality would be having someone spend all their time looking at their crush’s clothes.

* Note how Hagrid doesn’t remonstrate with Ron for trying to curse Malfoy. Clearly he’s a responsible adult and an excellent candidate for a prestigious teaching position.

* I know Hagrid doesn’t like Lockhart, but he really should know better than to undermine him like that in front of his pupils.

* So the jinx on DADA has been in place for what, forty or so years now? And people are only just starting to twig? I know wizards are slow learners, but really…

* Also, couldn’t Dumbledore find ways to either discover how Riddle jinxed the position and undo it somehow, or to get around it, such as hiring two teachers who each teach on alternate years or getting rid of DADA and replacing it with a class which is functionally indistinguishable but has a different name (“battle magic”, perhaps?).

* I think that this scene was one which the film actually did better than the books. Yes, having Hermione getting all upset may not have been fully logical, but it at least made Draco look like a hurtful bully rather than an eccentric crank. It also suggested that someone might have called Hermione that before, hinting at actual day-to-day anti-Muggleborn prejudice, which is more than the books ever managed to do.

* “Maybe it was a good thing yer wand backfired.” Wait, is Hagrid glad that Ron got to be on the receiving end in the hope that he’ll be less likely to curse people in future? No, of course not, he’s worrying that Ron might otherwise have got in trouble.

* Hagrid comes across as so judgemental when he says “’Spect Lucius Malfoy would’ve come marchin’ up ter school if yeh’d cursed his son.” Clearly, caring about your children being attacked is a sign of great evil. Good guys know that being randomly hexed is what makes a man out of you.

* Although Lucius doesn’t seem to have done much when Draco was hexed into unconsciousness on the train (twice!), which probably foreshadows the Redeemed!Malfoys situation at the end of DH.

* Hagrid’s been breaking the law to make his pumpkins grow faster. Which couldn’t possibly be dangerous in any way, oh no.

* Suddenly, Draco’s gossip about him getting drunk and setting his bed on fire looks awfully plausible.

* Everybody hates Filch, which is entirely understandable, given all the times he complains about having to clean up the mess children make and, erm, gives them detention for breaking the rules. Yep, entirely understandable.

* So how does Parseltongue work, then? ’Cause surely Lockhart ought to have heard it, even if he didn’t understand what it was saying? Or is it a sort of telepathy? But then Ron managed to speak it in DH…

* Awfully convenient the way the basilisk goes around describing its evil plan to itself, isn’t it? Do basilisks just have really bad memories, and need to keep repeating their plans to themselves in case they forget?

* Part of me can’t help but feel pleased that Ron vomited slugs over that trophy. Maybe next time he’ll think twice before hexing someone. Or not.
 

 

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/I used to quite like the Ferret!Draco scene, because I thought it was good to see the evil bully get his comeuppance./

Those are the same reactions that I had, too. The GoF movie sort of fixes this by having Moody bounce Draco up and down but never have him actually hit the ground. Moody does, to the amusement and squick of the fandom, levitate Draco into Goyle's pants, but never actually physically hurts him. And it's funny how nobody keeps in mind that it was really Barty Crouch Jr. who was doing this. None of the students, Harry included, ever reflect on the fact that it was a Death Eater who was teaching the class they loved so much, who turned Draco into a ferret.

/I must say I admire Draco for only shaking after this scene; if someone had done that to my fourteen-year-old self, I'd probably have burst into tears./

The thing is, though, if Draco *had* started to earnestly cry, then we probably wouldn't have viewed the scene in such a favorable light. Sure, there would still be people out there who would call him a pansy (the same people who called him a pansy for crying in the bathroom in HBP; yes, heaven forbid a boy actually break down about having to kill someone to save his family, whose surival depends on his success >_<), but the fact that Draco was relatively physically unscathed, and was described as being more humiliated than hurt lessens whatever outrage we may have had.

/He's just publicly humiliated her supposed best friend, and she finds that funny?/

This is why Lily was not Snape's friend. No true friend would react like that. Draco laughs at Harry, Ron, and Hermione whenever they're humiliated or embarrassed and he's a spiteful person for doing so, but Lily smiles when her own *friend* is being bullied and we're supposed to see her as the epitome of virtue?

/And really, couldn't she have been just a little bit more understanding of Snape's "Mudblood" comment? I mean, the guy's just been totally humiliated in public, so he probably wasn't thinking straight --/

I read an essay in defense of Lily and the author pointed out that if somebody's friend called them the N-word or a similar racial epithet, that person would have every right to be upset. Also, since it was said in a time of stress and the spur of the moment, the author argued that the insult showed Snape's true anti-Muggle-born prejudices. It's a tricky situation. Remember when Michael Richards, the actor who played Kramer in "Seinfeld," said the N-word after being booed by a group of African-American patrons during a show? Some people argued that he was showing his true racist colors, while other people argued that he was just throwing out the worst fitting insult he could think of because he was angry at them.

/And then she has the utter cheek to try and make herself out to be the victim here ("Oh, poor me, having to constantly answer my friends' questions about why I hang out with you!")./

That's when I really started to think that she was fickle and shallow. It'd be one thing if she and Snape were dating and he was abusive and her friends were warning her about him. Then I'd think, "Yes, you really should listen to your friends." But that's not the situation here. To me, this scenario sounds more like a case of Lily's "normal" friends not liking Snape because he's weird and he's in Slytherin. Again, if they really were best friends, Lily wouldn't care about what other people thought about him.

And you know what's worse? Lily never addresses the bullying. She *saw* what James was doing with her own eyes, and yet she never brings it up in her argument with Snape. She's ready to rail at him for calling her "Mudblood" and goes on about how he's really a bigot at heart, but she never addresses James' bullying behavior. It's as if it's an insignificant footnote, something not worth being discussed, even though that was the context in which Severus called her "Mudblood." But I guess that if she brought it up, she would be forced to confront her own disgraceful behavior.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

To me, this scenario sounds more like a case of Lily's "normal" friends not liking Snape because he's weird and he's in Slytherin.

And really, how is what her Gryffindor friends are saying when they're 15 any different than what her own sister Petunia said when they were nine and eleven?

Lily didn't care about Tuney's opinion back then, why care now?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Yes. If she had mentioned the bullying she would have been forced to face - at least in her own mind - the fact that she didn't even bother to cast Finite. And the "my friends" comment really puts a negative light on the scene in particular, I think. She doesn't even say "my OTHER friends." She says "my friends" - showing that there is already a very clear, very firm line in her mind between "Severus" and "friends" - when one would expect that an emotionally distraught person who had genuinely cared about the person who made them upset until now would be more likely to be a bit *confused* over whether or not that person still belonged in the *emotional* category of "friend," and so more likely to use the "other friends" wording.

I have no problem with Lily being hurt, angry, upset. She has a perfect right to feel that way. I wouldn't even condemn her for deciding that she can't be friends with Severus any more if this is how it seems to her that he really is, if - IF - it had been made at all clear to me that Lily did in fact think of him as a real friend before, if she had given him the space to face up to the issue and he had *actually failed* to grasp what was bothering her or to show that he did in fact care. But Lily behaves badly to him even before the comment (in multiple scenes), shows little concern for him after hearing he was almost killed, holds him guilty by association, and repeatedly refuses to let him speak or to try and meet him halfway in the hopes of *getting through* to him. All of which tells me she wasn't really invested in the relationship at that point and felt the peer pressure of the other Gryffs (including the Marauders, whose version of the werewolf incident she believes over Severus' own). She also, if we are to believe her own words, has permitted him to say the Unforgivable Word about others without making her disapproval clear, only to turn on him when it's directed against her - that's a confusing message to send.

I find Lily a disappointingly shallow character in the end. It's fairly realistic of her to behave as she does, but that doesn't justify it and it certainly doesn't add up with the Sainted Lily picture we had been fed. I didn't necessarily need that picture either - an ordinary girl with some real bravery would have been fine by me, if 1) we hadn't been told she was, in fact, Pure and Perfect still and 2) the double standard hadn't been applied. Both Severus and Lily were wrong, and both were wronged, and both played a part in the breakdown of the friendship. But instead we are supposed to see Severus as selfish, stalkerish, and inclined to evil, while Lily is not to be criticized in the least, it's All Severus' Fault. That attitude leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Hell, I was impressed that a teenage boy with the temper and grudge-holding ability we had seen in Severus actually bothered to apologize, without the least attempt to turn it into a "but you did this!" match. He had the right fundamental attitude there, which was "I've hurt her, I've done wrong, I must make it up to her and apologize." Imagine if he had actually been supported and encouraged in this sort of behavior. A point which seems to escape many people.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

it's funny how nobody keeps in mind that it was really Barty Crouch Jr. who was doing this. None of the students, Harry included, ever reflect on the fact that it was a Death Eater who was teaching the class they loved so much, who turned Draco into a ferret.

I don't think he'd have a problem with it. I mean, in DH, he's the one chillingly saying how 'Bellatrix was right, you have to really mean it'. Seems like Snape is the only DE he never was willing to take instructions from- even though he was the only one who wanted to protect him. *eyeroll*

And SWM...I am just so over it. The way people crucify Snape here, it just...argh!

Yes, Snape was not justified in using a racial slur against her.

Lily was within her rights to get angry about it.
I'd wish she was a bit more sensitive to the fact that he was humiliated, emasculated, that he's the school joke and she was a convenient target (I've had people lash out at me before since I'm the 'safe target', which is sucky, but I get that they don't mean it and it's because our relationship's strong enough to weather the small hits), but I get her being angry and not wanting to be a doormat.

But to say that ended their friendship and it was all his fault, well, no. (I find the fact that he camped out on her doorstep in hostile territory where kids hated him and would hex him, and to the disapproval of his own house pretty remarkabe. Enough of a grand gesture already!)

She clearly didn't have much affection for him ('I find nitpicking arguments like this a bit silly, honestly. It's like people who get mad at Lily for not making sure that Snape's airways were right and dandy after soap came out of his mouth. It's like...seriously?'- yes, seriously, because if you cared about someone, you would be upset and concerned for them) and couldn't care less about his wellbeing while James was tormenting him.

Fickle and shallow, I definitely agree. The way she taunts him about how her other friends look down on him, that's just catty. Their relationship is kind of emotionally abusive, really, she needs him to be her pet and as long as he's her tame Slytherin, it's all good, but one foot out of line, and she's an avenging harpy and he's not fit to lick her boots. I don't see any caring or affection in this friendship, tbh. Yes, I liked her on the train, when she dismissed James and Sirius, and was firmly on Snape's side, but that was about it.

And she wants to cast judgment on his friends but happily go on being friends with people who tell her she should cut him out of her life? Double-standard, much?

Lily never addresses the bullying. She *saw* what James was doing with her own eyes, and yet she never brings it up in her argument with Snape. She's ready to rail at him for calling her "Mudblood" and goes on about how he's really a bigot at heart, but she never addresses James' bullying behavior

YES. She can be annoyed with his friends or what he finds funny (from the girl who laughed at him choking and exposed before the school, yeah, people in glass houses, Lil), but she'll throw it in his face how James saved his life- from what, exactly? She doesn't buy the werewolf story, but she will accept that there was a monster and James was such a ~hero~ and Snape ought to be grateful...! After all those years of bullying? REALLY? And the bullying still continues after that and she's later willing to go out with James anyway? I can't even. *shakes head* So he bullies someone she's been friends with for years, and that's totally cool, but one ill-judged comment and she'll cut Snape out of her life. Right on.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I really don't understand at all what Lily saw in *James* to make him seem datable. Sure, he hid the fact he was tormenting Severus still, but Severus was not his only target ever, and Lily had seen enough of his behavior over the previous years to know what sort of thing amused him. The only partial explanation I come up with (that's not a truly cynical and non-generous reading of Lily RE social status and wealth) is that she was absolutely hooked on the idea that she 'made someone change,' she 'reformed' the bad boy popular jock. Which sort of makes me wonder why that didn't apparently hold any appeal for her when it was Severus she supposedly would have been reforming.

On the train she was better, yes, but she was still willing to blame Petunia's being upset with her entirely on Severus, even though it was *her* sister's room and so she must have been equally involved herself in order for them to get hold of the letter. It has to be only one party being responsible for negative consequences, not her admitting that they *both* played a role. Unfortunately her son took after her in this, and Gryffindor House culture reinforced it.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Which sort of makes me wonder why that didn't apparently hold any appeal for her when it was Severus she supposedly would have been reforming./

Maybe because James was handsome and popular and Severus wasn't? If Lily were Esmeralda, James would be her Phoebus and Snape would be her Quasimodo.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Book or Disney characters? Because if Disney, you're doing all the Hunchback characters something of a disservice.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant the book, definitely.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/She doesn't buy the werewolf story, but she will accept that there was a monster and James was such a ~hero~ and Snape ought to be grateful...! After all those years of bullying? REALLY?/

Again, that's why I don't buy that they were best friends, just because Lily is so *clueless.* How could she not know that the Marauders have been constantly bullying Snape? How could she not be the slightest suspicious about what happened the night of the Prank and how could she just accept everything that James told her without any questions whatsoever? She accuses Snape of choosing his friends over her, yet during the entire course of their argument, she's taking the Marauders' side over his!

None of your friends understand why you still talk to him, Lily? From everything you've said, it sounds like you *don't* talk to him, or, at the very least, you don't let him talk to you. Because I don't understand how you can be so oblivious about Snape's situation otherwise.

Snape ought to be *grateful?* Yeah, like Harry should have been grateful to Draco for stomping on his nose in HBP. I didn't realize that saving someone's life entitled you to be a complete and utter jerk to them.